A Princely Knave

by Philip Lindsay

  “It is the truth, I tell you,” she cried and began again to sob. “Not until nearly dawn did he leave us and when I hurried to the garden the gate was locked and bolted and there was no key in the lock. I was half-mad with worry and thought at first that you must have deserted me, locking me in while you stole off alone. Then I heard that you were at the Charterhouse and then I realized that it had been the king's sly work. Somehow he knew about our plan.”

  “How?”

  “I have thought and thought and can think of only one thing,” she sobbed. “That fellow in the garden that day, that yeoman watching you. He kept close and there were times when we forgot our danger and raised our voices. He was a spy, of course, and caught our drift.”

  That at first had been Perkin’s own belief, but having wrought himself to anger against this woman, he dared not believe her now lest he weaken and become again her slave. And she was not to be trusted. She was a woman and her flesh was weak, and she was Henry’s pensioner. Outwardly temptingly fair, within she was as rotten as a Gomorrah’s apple. That was why the king in his cunning had sent her here like another Eve. Mayhap a rumour had reached him of their conspiracy being spun throughout the country and he expected this woman’s caresses to tease the secret out of him.

  “Madam,” he said coldly, “you might be telling the truth. You might have been detained, as you say, and found the door locked; that yeoman guarding me might have overheard our talk and betrayed us. Ay, yet all these ‘mights’ only add up to one great ‘might’. Also, that other ‘might’ — you might be the king’s servant, another Delilah, who enticed me from the palace, had me locked out that the king should have his excuse for sending me here. Each ‘might’ balances with the other.”

  “It is the truth,” she wailed. “God’s love, it is the truth! I thought I would not live after I found that door locked, thinking you had deserted me as in my proud folly I deserved. Yea, husband, as I deserved. I had been unjust and imperious with you because I felt I had been cozened into marriage. I swore that I’d be no meek wife while giving you no cause to complain that I denied you what was yours by right of husband; but I was determined never to love you. That my cousin the king could so disparage me by giving me to a man whose lineage remained uncertain was torment to.my foolish young girl's pride. Yet why should it have mattered who you were when you were my husband?”

  “You need suffer no further doubts of my descent,” said he; smirking. “I have had the truth, told me, at last, and the king himself has admitted it; and although of the bâton sinister, my descent is quite as high as your own, lady.”

  “Yea, the king told me. You are the bastard of a bishop and the Duchess of Burgundy —”

  “The king told you! By God’s glory, he shall pay for that! Here have I buttoned down my secret for my mother’s honour, and that base rogue with a stolen crown dares blab of it! Ah, but let him talk, let the rogue talk, no one believes his lies.”

  “Does it matter?” she asked.

  “Does not a woman’s good fame matter? Glory of God, lady, are you so lost to shame that you care not if my mother be called whore! Is this the morality you learn at Tydder’s court?”

  He was trembling, teeth chattering with rage, and his eyes glittered snakishly in the rush-light. Astonished, Katherine drew back a little, not understanding the reason for such vehemence. Then, feeling the cold reach from the stone floor up her gown, chilling her legs, a rush of pity brought the tears faster to her eyes. He was fevered in this damp cell and talked wildly as men do in fevers, fantasies out of their own hearts appearing to be lifelike and the ill humours smoking sense out of their brainpan. This was no discovery about his being the son of the duchess and the bishop. Often had Bothwell mentioned it in Scotland, piffling on it as a scandal that he might disparage the duchess. That it should happen to be true did not surprise her in any way as she had long since concluded that it best fitted the facts and explained his likeness to King Edward and his knowledge of the English court.

  “You believed me base-born,” he shouted, “thought me the son of my foster-parents, those good Warbecks of Tournai, and felt yourself degraded in having to call such a fellow ‘husband’. And all the while I was as great as you, having in me also the blood of kings. My mother is sister to King Edward and King Richard, both my uncles, and my two royal cousins have been murdered in this very prison by that accursed Welshman who usurps our throne. Yet you ask what of it! as though it were all of little import! By God’s splendour, lady, if those had been your cousins murdered you’d talk differently; or are you so captured by the trickeries of this foul Tydder that you pay homage to the man who stole our throne?”

  “They call me the White Rose there,” she ventured timidly.

  “Because I am the White Rose,” he cried, “and by reflection are you also the White Rose, but not in your own right, lady. My branch may be a broken one, yet it springs from the parent tree and I am prepared to die that it might flourish again.”

  “What do you mean? how can your death help?”

  She saw a cunning look narrow his eyes and curl his lip, and she wondered if misfortune had not driven him a little mad.

  “Nay,” he giggled, “you’ll not make me your blind coney again. Those days are over when I was fool enough to trust you. But no longer am I your mammet. Go back to your master; you white witch, and tell him that your enchantments no longer have any potency because I am not Perkin Warbeck, the cowardly son of simple folk. I am a prince, Prince Perkin, and the days are over when you could make me feel as helpless as a kitten in your palm.” He laughed and went closer to her, taunting her with a smile scarcely a kissing-distance from her mouth. “See,” he cried, “you can’t hurt me any more. I am free of you and your disdain. If I were a lecher and wanted women, I could marry the eldest daughter of any queen in the world after … well, in time; but I have been cleansed of my lusts and I distrust all females because of you. Mayhap I should be grateful to you because of that. You taught me cunning and how to read the treacherous riddle of your sex. And now I am free, free, free, and quit of you all!”

  “I have not wronged you,” she said, not flinching from his stare.

  “When women talk of wronging their husbands, they have but one dirty maggot in their minds, and doubtless, for your reputation’s sake, you have not wronged me in that feminine fashion. But, lady, you have dealt me greater wrongs than cuckoldry, you have draggled my pride in the dirt, you have scorned me at court before them all and slapped my face because I kissed you; and then, at a snap of Tydder’s fingers, you came fawning that you might entrap me outside the palace. Yet, say you, O, you have not wronged me! Better ten thousand times that you had been the common strumpet of the court than that you should seek to destroy me and rob my family of its throne.”

  “Your family’s throne, not yours?”

  “Yea, my family’s, certainly not Tydder’s …” He edged away, muttering, afraid lest he had said too much. “Well,” he said harshly, “why have you come here? what does Tydder want of me this time?”

  “Nothing,” she said, and sighed; “at least, nothing he told me of.”

  “Yet you are here, alone with me. He must have sent you or the jailers would not have let you pass.”

  “He granted my plea when I asked if I might see you. That is all, before God, husband.”

  He laughed and clapped his hands. “Think better than that, lady,” he cried merrily. “I warn you that I am no longer your mammet at your feet for your treading. You pleaded to see me! how good of you, how devoted a wife you are! He sent you here, else he’d not have let you come. I know the blackness in his heart and he could never act out of compassion. That he sent you here is proof sufficient that there’s some wickedness behind your coming.”

  Wearily, she turned away, one hand shading her eyes from the spitting rush-light while she tried to think, and could not, so heavy seemed her head as though it were weighted within. This wa
s not the Perkin she had expected to meet. He had changed and the arguments that had been so ready on her tongue while excitedly she had sat in the barge on the way from Westminster seemed now dangerous to use. Whatever she might say, he would not believe her and words were no sure interpreters of love.

  “I came,” she whispered, “although I know you’ll not believe me, because I love you. Yea, I love you. Does that content your pride, to hear me say I love you? It is true, I did not realize how deep was that love until I feared I’d lost you. It is not always easy for a woman to unthread her thoughts and to untangle them from her moods, for we change with the turning of the stars, and are we not called the minions of the moon which waxes and wanes by the month? One day we are as soft as Venus’ milk, and the next, Saturn has changed our hearts to lead or Mars has blown trumpets through our blood. That is why men say that we are fickle when our hearts are truer than yours, only we are more easily swayed by body’s humours and lose control often when most we need it.”

  “Yea, yea,” he mocked. “Blame the stars, blame God or the devil, blame men, blame anyone but your own self. That is the way of women.”

  “Nay,” she said, “I am far from blameless. I did despise you, not knowing then that lineage meant naught beside the pull of love. I have been taught my lesson and been well-whipped for it in my soul. Won’t you be gentle with me now?”

  “What did Tydder want when he sent you here?”

  “He asked me nothing, nothing. Only he said —”

  “Ay, ay, now we have it! What did he say?”

  “Mother of God!” She placed her hands over her face and breathed a prayer, swaying on the stool as though about to swoon; and when at last she lowered those hands he saw how white and drawn she had become, how piteous were the downward curl of her lips and the droop of her eyelids.

  “You’ll not believe me when I tell you,” she said, “for your heart has closed against me. But he did say that he bore no malice against you —”

  “Hey,” crowed Perkin. “For him that stole my uncle’s throne to say that he bears no malice! Here’s a jest to stick in the throat, by God!”

  “Please,” she whispered, “please, listen. I came here so merrily I could have sung on the river like a bird, thinking that we would be together again at last. I thought of how lovingly you would greet me and how we would laugh to think what fools we’d been …”

  “What!” he cried. “You thought to tempt with the same old lies a second time! beguile me from the Tower into a nest of enemies that your new leman might chop off my head for having escaped!”

  “Nay,” she sighed, “I came to offer you freedom, release out of this jail and a life with me in England.”

  “I will hear you out,” he said grimly, showing his teeth. “I will be patient and hear you out. Only, be brief. Tell me, what is the trap this time?”

  “No trap,” she said. “All that the king asks is that you proclaim the truth of your birth. Surely that is also what you want? Then you will be accepted as a gentleman, not Perkin Warbeck but Perkin Plantagenet.”

  “He would have me traduce my own mother, would he? He spoke of this before and I spat it back at him. Now he thinks to seduce me to it through your smooth tongue and white body; but nay, madam, nay. Greatly as I loved you once, I love my mother more. Think you that I would make her name a naughty by-word in the courts of Europe and disgrace that good man, my father? And for what? The body’s comfort, the sky above me again, sweet foods for my belly, rich wines to make the world seem pleasant, satins for my back, and a Scottish whore by the name of Kate for my bed? Think you I could live at ease, a very villain, with my parents cursing me? A bastard is honoured when his father’s known, providing that father be a great man, as mine is; but it is very different with mothers … The world is harsh towards them should they sin, and the greater they be the louder is the censure. Not if he offered me his kingdom with every woman in it would I do this thing you ask. Tell him that. And tell him that I spit upon him.”

  “I had not looked at it in that wise,” she said and all her body drooped. “I did not think of the duchess or of the bishop and their good fame. I was selfish, being in love, and thought only of ourselves and of our happiness. I see now that you are right, that in the great world we are only little creatures and the duchess must not be shamed because we need happiness. Yet she is growing old and can’t have long to live, while we are young and there are years ahead for our enjoying.”

  “She is not very old, no more than fifty. But if she were one hundred, still would I not do what you ask and live dishonoured.”

  “I, too, had high thoughts of honour once,” she murmured. “I, too, believed myself so great that none were worthy of my bed; I, too, believed I was ready to die for the glory of God or my good name; now I am not so certain. Why should we not have happiness?”

  “There can be no happiness when it’s based on dishonour,” he cried. “I can tell you nothing further; even now I dare not trust you for you dazzle my wits; but I may not always be here in jail, I have friends, many friends … Nay, I have no friends! I have only dreams and one of those dreams was built on you. For hours have I sat and fed my anger with a dream of your humiliation. O, in those dreams I was always fierce and cruel and I pushed you from me with my foot; but I am of flesh and am weak like most men. Yet not too weak to be enslaved again by you, by God!”

  “You must not try to escape from here! That is what the king wants you to do, to try to escape so that he can kill you.”

  “I am no longer the simpleton I was at Sheen,” he laughed. “A man does not need to escape from prison to be free of it.”

  “You … please, husband, tell me, you don’t believe that you’ll be rescued? For the love of God, put that thought aside. The king is cunning and has spies on every hand. Trust nobody, have no dealings with men pretending to be your friends, for they’ll betray you.”

  In her anguish, she stood to her feet and held out her arms appealingly. “You are my husband,” she said, “and I am your loving servant in all things. All I ask is the opportunity to prove that I am not the Lady Katherine you used to know. Whether you be Warbeck or Plantagenet no longer matters in my eyes. You are the man I love; and I am proud to say it, whatever be your name or lineage. ‘Husband’ is sweeter far to me than any ‘lord’ or prince’. How can you, locked here away from the world, think to conspire against him in his guarded palaces? The men around you are his men, his spies, and therefore are your enemies.”

  If he would only take her in his arms, she might conquer him and bring him back to sanity, she hoped; but he did not move and she feared to touch him lest he throw her aside. Madness to stand thus separate in the fitful light that flared along the walls and ran black shadows up and down their bodies, madness when time was precious and they had not even kissed.

  “You love me no more,” she said wearily, and her arms dropped.

  “That is not true,” he cried. “If you could read my heart, lady, you would see the tempest in it. My love is such that it cripples me and after this I’ll not sleep for weeks with thinking of you. But I must be strong. I am not merely a man with a man’s weaknesses, others depend on me and my steady resolution. I cannot love you.”

  “That means you do not love me,” she whispered. “Cloak it in fine words as you will, it comes to that. Love is not so feeble a thing that it can be bound so easily. Memory of me, you say, will tease you for a few nights; but so would the memory of any woman after you’d been locked from them so long. It is not I, not Katherine Gordon, but Woman that disturbs you, and I am but one in many millions. That is not love,” she sighed. “There is another name for it.”

  “It is love,” he cried. “I want no other woman, only you. Nor do I want you with my body only, but also with my soul. Without you, I am but half myself, my heart going from my breast. But I dare not, I dare not, I tell you, because I am weak and once I was in your arms I might become bewitch
ed again.”

  “Words,” she said softly, “words”; and, drooping, turned away from him.

  “What can I use but words, words soiled by a thousand lips, mayhap, yet fresh from my heart. I love you, Kate; I only wish to God I didn’t. I love you as some day you will understand. But until I can meet you worthily, I’ll not ask you for the base coin of pity. I want you as my equal, as my wife, in generous partnership of love, both giving and both taking, one loving breast together. But to have you now in my arms would be like a beggar hugging a coin thrown to him in charity. I’ll not do it.”

  “Not if I asked you, I the beggar, you the Samaritan?”

  “Nay,” he cried, sweating. “Not even you.”

  “Yet I do ask it,” she said, moving closer to him while he drew back. “What care I for modesty and the pretences of women? I am beyond that now, seeing how they helped me lose you once. It is not easy for me to say, even though you be my husband, but I am still a woman under my gown of greatness, and every woman needs to be loved. What satisfaction is there for me in my family name when I am glad to lose it in yours? what satisfaction in thinking of the kings who bred my ancestors when I am husbandless? See now! You make me say things that hurt my mouth and which I’d never have believed possible a few months since, but my pride has gone with my grandeur. I love you.”

  He could step back no further. The damp stone wall pressed on his heels and he breathed heavily, trying to stay firm of will, trying to think of other things, of Henry the devil and of poor Warwick who must be made king in his place; of enslaved England waiting for a St. George to free it from its Welsh dragon, and of the satisfactions of revenge and the joy of proving to his mother that he was worthy of being called her son … This woman was dangerous, trebly dangerous because he loved her. Once already had she betrayed him at Sheen, and always before that had she treated him as though he were a servant to whom grudgingly she had to submit like a great lady who must pay a debt of bad silver. He must think hard on those occasions, remembering how she used to scorn him, making him tremble before her glance. He must not think of her white skin, her long-legged body and her golden hair. This was a plot devised by the king who had sent her to tempt him with apple-eyes that in the weakness of love he might blab secrets not his own.