“I half-lied to you,” she whispered, staring into his dulled eyes. “Not with my love. There was no lie in that. But it was because of that love that I lied to you, afraid to tell the truth.”
“Why afraid?”
“Because I feared you’d not believe me. O, God,” she sighed, “I can pretend no longer. Kill me if that’s your wish and I’ll not struggle. I want to share all things with you, your hopes and dangers, and only when I consented to try to win you to his cause did the king consent to my coming here.”
“You must devise a better lie than that, lady,” he said; and his hands slowly left her throat.
Half-sorry that he had turned away, almost regretting, the loss of his threatening fingers, she watched him in the dim light and yearned with such force to love him that it hurt and seemed to mm her stomach and make her ill.
“It is the truth,” she whispered. “The king thought you loved me, and I hope you loved me —”
“Therefore would you act Delilah and betray me!”
“For God’s love, my lord, do not say such things even in anger!” With the lifting of his hands, the tension drained from her limbs and she lay trembling and began to sob. “He said that he would give me your freedom if I could have you agree to proving Warwick guilty of treason.” '
“And you thought I’d do it! Hey!” he cried, “here’s worse than treachery, that you should think me so mean a thing, so villainous, that I’d betray my prince! Lady, you are beautiful, but were you Dame Venus herself I’d not turn traitor for your filthy favours.”
“I never believed you would,” she sighed, knowing how helpless she was before his dream of kingship. “Yet this Warwick is naught to us and from what I hear he is a witless dribbling creature, a Bedlamite, and we could be so happy together if you would forget him. All I want from life is you.”
“Warwick is no witless dribbling creature, no Bedlamite,” he cried. “I have not met him yet, even Cleymound’s not dared arrange it, but we have corresponded. He writes a clerkly hand and is as wise as you or I. That he's not been driven out of his wits by Tydder’s cruelty is proof that he is sane above most men. Yet even if he were a Tom o’ Bedlam he would be still my prince and I would not desert him. Now that we are certain that Tydder murdered Edward’s sons, our loyalty must turn to Clarence’s boy. He will be King of England or I’ll die for it.”
“I care not who is king,” she sighed, “so long as you are my husband.”
“Yet you’d conspire to ruin me? thinking me so base, so lost to shame, that I’d betray my liege lord that I might live in sinful plenty for the sake of you!”
“I knew you’d never do it. I said so to the king.”
“Yet you are here, he sent you here.”
“Yea,” she said, “I am here. He judges others by his own heart. He was certain that you'd abandon any attempt that might fail and that you’d snatch at wealth and body's ease, f told him that you wouldn’t, and he laughed and would not believe me; but I could not let pass this chance of being with you. Therefore I promised I would try.”
“My adventure might fail, you say?” he cried. “What's this, lady? There will be no failure.”
“He seems to know so much. Someone is spying ...”
“Ay, lady — you.”
“Nay, but someone. The king knows more than I have told him; and when I asked if the spy were Cleymound or Astwood, he smiled. And why did he place you under Warwick’s chamber unless it was to hope to have you plot with him?”
“There are always traitors,” he muttered. “I was not tricked by being put under Warwick’s cell …” He shifted from her on the straw and she heard him groan. “But two can plot,” he cried. “He can plot and I can counter-plot.”
“With whom? Either Astwood and Cleymound, or both, are traitors.”
“Of course, Tydder knows that I am plotting,” he muttered and she heard fear and irresolution shake his voice, “for I’d not be a man to sit tamely under misfortune. But there are things he cannot know, which no one knows except myself. The time and the night of the escape. Without knowing that, Tydder can do nothing. Only one other and myself know it and we await news from the ship. He could rack us to make us speak, but that’d not suit his purpose. No one would accept confessions given in that manner. If he would kill me and Warwick, as he doubtless intends, he must have us tried in open court and our guilt proved. He has to catch us while we are escaping. That’s his sole hope.”
“This other?” she whispered. “Can you trust him?”
“What can I do but trust them all,” he sighed.
She was about to question him further, then closed her lips lest he believe her curiosity had a crooked purpose. And she wondered who could be this other confederate of whom he spoke. Either Astwood or Cleymound? — which? and was he the traitor who fed the king with details? Others besides Perkin must know. A ship had to be hired or bought, guards had to be bribed, and someone would have to warn Warwick to stand in readiness.
“I’ll not burden you with any secrets,” he growled, “lest when next you meet the king he should ask dangerous questions.”
“And you believe I’d tell him!”
She sat up and glared at Perkin in the taper-light, but he was to her only a greyish shape with the light flickering in his yellow hair. And in the dark it was impossible to make someone appreciate the truth beneath your words. Words words words. Words as thin as air and soon forgotten, words themselves meant nothing. Only face to face, eyes looking into eyes, could conviction be given to soul-less words.
“What do I know of you?” he said. “You are a woman. That is all I know. I know that in person you are fair, but what lies hidden I cannot tell. Who can be sure an apple’s sweet by looking on the skin? Once you used me like a dog to come to your whistle, hut I hear no hatred because of that. Only, the chameleon must understand that the blame’s its own if no one knows its rightful colour. The king sent you here to spy. Why then should I trust you?”
“If I were your enemy would I have told you he’d sent me?”
“Yea,” he sighed, “if you were cunning; and I think you are.”
Desperately she sought to convince him that she was honest and that he should suspect either Cleymound or Astwood, but love convinces the lover more than the loved one. He could remain withdrawn. Ay, even in kissing, he was never wholly hers. Some part of his mind stayed separate, pondering on Warwick and suspecting her of duplicity, while elsewhere the true traitor spun his treason. Cleymound or Astwood? The king would give her no hint. He merely smiled before her questions and told her that time was running out, Unless she netted Warwick in treason, her husband must suffer. No one would care if he were to die; with Warwick it was different …
She could not reach into Perkin’s heart. Sighing, she slid out of his arms, sick with the thought of failure. She who had never doubted her mastery over men knew now that, no matter how strongly he might desire her, he kept jealously hidden that dream of honour and loyalty towards an ideal greater than she could offer with all her beauty, her obedience and her love. No, she had failed. Weak and abased she felt, clinging desperately to him as though with kissing to force a way into his secret castle of the rose that she might triumph through surrender. O, he was grateful to her, yea! he was excited and grateful that she should love him with such ardour. Nevertheless, withdrawn, untouchable, beyond love’s groping, her enemy, his dream, defied her. Had Warwick called, had Cleymound tiptoed to tap his shoulder and whisper that it was time, had Astwood cried to him to make haste, out of her arms he would have started, forgetting her In a snap of fingers and in his thoughts she would have become no more important than a figure of straw. For what weapon had she other than love? And love had failed …
Close on tears, shaking as though she were fevered, she crouched on the padded-topped stool before the king, and with satisfaction he noted the torment in her eyes and her quick breathing.
&nbs
p; “I have waited too long,” he said harshly. “Lady, you have failed and your work is over.”
She gaped at him, not fully understanding what he meant, and slowly shook her head. “My work is over?” she repeated.
“Yea,” he snapped. “You. must go no more to your husband.”
She had been expecting some such disaster; nevertheless it struck her like a blow over the heart, and she clenched her fists to press her nails into the palms to keep herself from swooning.
“Nay,” she whispered, “please, sire, nay.”
“I have been very patient,” said the king, standing up as though to dismiss her while he watched her shrink back, her eyes half-closed and her face as white as a lily. “You have had opportunities enough for any woman to winkle the truth out of a lovesick man,” he growled, “and you’ve not done it. I must act without your help.”
“Please,” she whimpered, “nay.”
“Why should I tarry for your pleasure? Lady, you have been welcomed to my court as though you were a friend. Never have I once reproached you that you entered my kingdom the wife of my enemy. For your sake, I spared your husband. For your sake, I have offered his life if you could win it for him. But there comes a time when mercy becomes parched, and I have reached that time. I’ll hang the fool if he’s been so foolish as to reject my offer.”
“I — I have not asked him, not really,” she said. “I was afraid to ask him, but I will.”
“Nay, lady, it is too late.”
“Sire, pray, do not turn from me!” On her knees she went and she raised her pointed hands as though he were a saint. “I have known such little happiness I feared to lose it, and I am only young,” she whispered. “I cannot help it if I love my husband. In that, most wives would think me fortunate but it has brought me only misery. What are we and our happiness in this great realm you rule? does it matter to England if we die or live? We would not trouble you again, sire; we would live quietly, shutting out the world, for that is all that I desire; and I’ll keep faith with you. I swear it.”
“Yea, yea,” he jeered. “You will keep faith, eh? True woman, faithful to her selfish desires. So long as you can have your husband to yourself, my realm can be rent by dissension, false Warwicks, false princes, rising to. defy me. But you, O, you will be content, because you’ll have this fellow in your bed. My thoughts are on higher things and I have no patience with this dribbling mooncalf that women call love. You know the tale of Cleopatra and how she made a zany of a hero until he lost both his kingdom and hers, turning softsword through dalliance. It was ever thus. Sick-souled Achilles sullen for his bully, Patroculus; Hercules peeling his skin, in the shirt of Nessus; and even our late king, Harry the Sixth, wrecking England for the sake of that naughty pack, his adultress wife, Queen Margaret. I am not made of that feeble nature whose heaven lies in a lady’s lap. Therefore have I contempt for those who think a kingdom worth a kiss. If I freed your husband, he would plot again.”
“I’d not let him!”
“You’d not let him! Is there witchcraft in your spittle, can you net him forever a prisoner in your hair? You have failed. For all your boasted beauty and your pride and his lust, you have failed, as you deserved to fail. Your husband dies and there’s an end to it.”
On the stool she slouched and wept noisily, her head drooping that he might not see her twisted mouth and red-rimmed eyes. Tears before this man were useless. Nothing could soften his stone heart. The more she wept and showed her anguish, the greater, she realized, would be his satisfaction in having such power over a woman that with a word he could break her to despair or upraise her to delight. Yet she could not, as she longed to, show him a calm demeanour. She had grown weak, her will feeble after her failure to recapture Perkin, and she felt that she must be ugly, repugnant in some way, that men could spiritually torture her while she was not able to touch them.
She heard the king move, snapping his fingers, and shuddering, taking a deep breath, she managed to look up. With cold eyes he stared at her and she felt as Eve must have felt when she knew that she was naked and could not conceal her nakedness.
“Have you finished weeping?” he asked coldly.
“I — I have — have finished,” she gasped, gulping back tears.
“Good,” he said. “I find that tears disgust me; therefore do not try that womanly trick. I am not your lover to be twisted in a lock of your hair, and the more you weep, the more do I dislike you. These drops come rather late. You have had your opportunity. No king could have been more generous to an enemy than I have been to you, yet you have failed me. Now I would be alone and you may retire.”
Retire! leave him alone to plot to kill her Perkin! That was impossible. If he had to call the guard to drag her out, she would remain, praying and hoping. But to go of her own will, to find herself alone, watching the hour-glass, waiting for news that Perkin had been killed … That would be impossible. She would turn to the river, yea, to the river. She had heard that there was no pain in drowning, that you drowsed gently until you died.
“Would you kill me, too?” she cried. “For I shall die if you kill Perkin. O, my good lord, give me another day, another night, one last chance. God might pity me and move my husband’s heart for our love’s sake. One night, your grace, one night is all I ask.”
On her knees she edged towards him, timidly gazing up at him. Dignity did not matter, nothing mattered so long as she could save her Perkin. The proud Scottish lady would gladly have changed her gay gown for the rags of a beggar-woman could such degradation have won her her heart’s desire. What did it matter what she did or what was said of her? Let the court jeer, on her knees, holding the penitential candle, stripped to her kirtle and with no stockings or shoes, would she do open penance should the king wish it. Yea, yea. Had he been a carnal man, she would not have shrunk from surrendering him her beauty if that might have freed her husband. There was nothing in the world, no matter how vile, she would not have done to save him … only, alas, there was nothing, nothing that could move this man to pity.
“One night?” he jeered. “What could you do in one night?”
“I would pray. There have been miracles before this. The good Mother has helped lovers in the past, yea, she has even taken their place that they might not be missed while they sinned together. She will move her Son when she knows my plight. For the love of Mary, sire, grant me this one thing, this one last hope.”
“Nay,” he said; then he looked more sharply at her. “You may have an hour or two,” he growled. “No more. Tonight, you must warn him, is his last chance. If he has not repented before midnight, I will send for him, and it will be the last time.”
Behind this reprieve there was some threat that she could not understand, and she puzzled to discover what it could be, but her wits were distraught and she could not think. Only in her relief that brought her near to swooning she knew that there was danger in the offer. In the king’s sly smile she saw it, and in his twinkling eyes.
Slowly, staring into her eyes, he said: “I will be honest with you, lady, that you might understand what you must do. Your husband has been plotting treason with my other prisoner, Clarence’s son, and, through friends, their escape has been arranged … The ship has waited many nights yet they have dallied. That is not your husband’s fault. He is impatient to be off because waiting frightens him. See! I know what’s going on, everything. I even know what you have whispered to him when you believed yourselves alone. Yet you thought, silly child, to deceive me, your king!” He laughed a little, softly. “The plot is mine, not his,” he said. “Why think you that I set him under Warwick’s chamber? That they might plot together and Warwick be delivered into my hands. But on they go, and on they go, exchanging letters, plotting, plotting, and doing nothing. I’ll have no more of it. This rebellion I have recently put down shows how I cannot trust the traitors pricked on by enemies. Again they’ll come, saying that they are Warwick. Therefore must
Warwick die. Therefore I put your husband near him that two fools might do what one should fear to do; and they’ve done nothing.”
Desperately, she forced herself to listen, still not fully understanding, for her heart’s beating wellnigh deafened her.
“As I said,” smiled the king, “the blame cannot be put upon your husband; nor on Warwick; but on another. His name I’ll not tell you lest you blab it. But he’s content to let things be so long as my coins swell his prouch. He is the one who must be prodded. And you must prod him to it.”
“I? when I do not know him?”
“Better that you do not know him. All you must do to fire the powder is to go straight now to the Tower and tell your husband that my men are coming tonight to arrest him and Warwick. Tell him that you learned it by chance, that I let it slip. He will inform the others and they will hurry to escape.”
“I — I can’t see why,” she whispered,
“Because my man there will be frightened; he’ll know that I’m displeased and will hang him with the others. He must act to prove to me that he’s not wasting time. He’ll spur them on and drive them into my net.”
“You mean — you mean that you will take my husband, too? that you would use me to have him betray himself?”
“Your husband means nothing to me,” groaned the king. “How often must I tell you that? but, drunk with love, you think of nothing else. He will not be harmed. Once he and Warwick have broken free of the Tower, he can skip where he wills, and the devil take him. He is merely the means of bringing Warwick into the open. My men will have their orders to let him go. You can take him to that ship that’s waiting, and I’ll not have you stopped, so long as Warwick has been captured in the open, d’ye understand? I must have him in the open, his treason manifest, a creeper from my comfortable jail.”
How could she trust this man? She realized that she could not trust him yet what else could she do save to obey him? He knew so much, and she could understand his fear of Warwick after the recent revolt. But when she told Perkin that he was to be taken that night would he believe her? and afterwards, when Warwick had been snared, would he forgive her? Yet there would be no proof of her treachery, and all might come well, God only knew … It was better than to bow to fate.
A Princely Knave Page 31