The Devil in Ermine

by Martyn, Isolde

  Each to his own. Lincoln, Surrey and I thieved some of the student gowns and slunk off into the city after supper. But the tavern ale did not lighten my spirits. I discovered from young Lincoln that Sasiola, the cloying ambassador from Isabella of Castile, was thick with my cousin, and there could be an alliance in the offing. Definitely time to dislodge the foreigner and request a private audience with Richard in Mayhew’s parlour.

  Once we had got rid of pleasantries, I came to the crux: how soon would the betrothal between his son and my daughter take place? I saw with dismay how his eyes grew troubled. Around us it was as if the books and papers fell silent in embarrassment. Even Loyaulté, belly-up at my bootcaps, sensed the sudden unpleasantness between us and removed himself to the hearth. A pox on Sasiola! I hoped his balls shrivelled!

  ‘Circumstances have changed by a mile, Harry. I am genuinely sorry to cast cold water on your earlier proposal but you surely can understand that as our future king, the Prince of Wales, must marry a foreign princess and cement an alliance that will keep the realm secure. Besides he is only nine years old and you surely remember your own reluctance to be made handfast at so tender an age. What about Northumberland’s son for your Bess and…’ Cement an alliance! A murrain on that! He could take all the posts he had given me and ram them up his arse! I did not listen to the rest of his excuses. He had promised!

  Could the fool not see that the betrothal would content my vaunting ambition? My child as queen. Had he learned nothing from Warwick the Kingmaker’s rebellion? By Jesu, just some vague promise might have saved my sanity. I left the room as soon as I could.

  ‘Hang about, Harry!’ At the sound of his voice behind me, my heart lifted but he had not changed his mind. ‘Anne and I are going to take the dog for an evening stroll along the millstream. Pray you, accompany us.’

  I had to stow my temper.

  An evening stroll? We had half the plaguey college and most of the retinue trailing behind us and it was only when we lingered afterwards on the freshly-scythed grass of the quadrangle that they drifted away and afforded us some privacy.

  Richard, still sensitive to my hurt, busied himself throwing a stick for Loyaulté but Anne had been trying to fathom the reason for my rare silence.

  ‘Are you truly sure you will not come with us to York, Harry?’ she asked.

  ‘There will be good hunting,’ promised Richard, resisting the urge to wipe his sticky glove on his haunch. He made a sheepish face at me across her wired veil.

  I admit I was still sulking. Pah, let him go swagger in front of his son and the northerners.

  ‘Harry? No, listen.’ He knuckled me in the chest and looked up at me as though I was a troublesome stripling. ‘Do not take the quarrel between us so personally. I am a public creature now. I cannot let my selfish desire dictate policy.’

  ‘Forget the matter,’ I muttered, looking beyond him. The marriage between our children would have joined the Houses of York and Lancaster. Could he not see that?

  ‘I need you, my friend.’ Another gentle buffet. Ah, so appeasement was definitely on the agenda. He gestured to the building surrounding us. ‘Look at what we can do.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ I asked, making a sullen art of being obtuse.

  ‘Open your eyes.’

  There was still some wooden scaffolding along one side of the cloister, but the waning sun had ripened the fresh wall of the Great Hall behind us to the hue of saffron and conjured the window glass to blazing buckles and jewelled pins. It lit my cousin’s face as he turned to me and he seemed to burn within as if his soul was reflecting back the fire of the sunset.

  ‘Think of all that can be done, must be done, to make England a just and fair land to dwell in. We can achieve so much, you and I. With lords like you and Jock behind me, there is no limit to the possibilities. I ask you, cousin, how do men remember King Edward the Confessor?’

  I groaned inwardly; the schoolmaster was back. ‘Banishing birds for disturbing his contemplations?’

  ‘Try again.’

  ‘The abbey at Westminster?’

  ‘Exactly! Every night, Harry, I pray to God that men shall look back on my reign as a golden age. An age not just of good laws and justice but of beauty such as this.’ Another flourish of sleeve at the architecture. ‘By such as this shall men shall remember us.’

  It was impossible to face down his dreams with huffs and sullens. He had clasped his queen’s hand and now swung her arm playfully. ‘Anne has decided to continue Elizabeth’s patronage of Queen’s College at Cambridge and I want to see King’s Chapel finished. It shall be one of the most magnificent buildings in Christendom.’

  ‘Cambridge!’ I scolded, crossing myself in mock fear. ‘I hope none of these doctors and demies overheard that heresy.’

  Anne prodded a finger into the pleats of my doublet above my heart. ‘Perhaps you should think about endowing a college, Harry.’

  ‘A university at Brecknock,’ I countered with a Welsh lilt. They could have a course on rearing godly sheep and writing poetry that was not about phalluses. Aloud I said, ‘I heard that an estimate of a good reign is whether a man can leave a bag of gold hanging upon a tree for a day and a night, and return to find it untouched.'

  ‘Or, better still, a woman can walk from Cornwall to Carlisle without fear of assault,’ declared Anne.

  ‘Indeed? Not even a tumble?’ I teased her.

  But Richard was too serious for my wit. ‘My brother was a fool to underestimate the gold in you, Harry. He mistook you for base metal when you have such ability, such energy.’

  Thank you for disclosing what Dead Ned truly thought, Richard! That’s shaken my self-esteem again no end.

  ‘Holy Paul, I thank God you had the stomach to come to me at Northampton else England shall not see what we three may yet achieve, eh Anne?’

  And yet you would not unite your house with mine!

  Oh Richard, Richard, Richard, what fools we were, what fools we were.

  BORING Brecknock! Although I was now the most powerful nobleman in England, riding back into the town, I found no exuberant welcome for me such as Richard would receive from York. Naught but a formal little reception, an exchange of news; yes, some acknowledgment that I now was overlord of Wales but not a skerrick of enthusiasm, no ‘Well done, my lord!’

  At least Uncle Knyvett, bless him, was waiting in the bailey in front of the assembled household to offer me a mazer of wine. He had arrived direct from London ten days ahead of me.

  ‘Did you enjoy the royal progress, your grace,’ he asked in formal greeting, dapper in his London doublet of mulberry velvet.

  ‘Yes, indeed, I met with the King and Queen at Oxford and then we ambled to Gloucester where we parted. God’s truth, it was like a jolly pilgrimage after the stink and strain of London.’ Apart from the hunting at Woodstock, it had been tedious. ‘How was your journey?’

  ‘Nothing remarkable, your grace.’ Then he lowered his voice. ‘Apart from my Lady Beaufort’s retinue passing us on the road. Her ladyship was right disappointed that you were on a different road and then she insisted on having a few words with Morton. I could not very well say her nay, could I? I hope I did naught wrong in that, Harry.’

  ‘Of course not.’ I flung an arm about him and my officers fell in behind us as we walked towards the steps. ‘But otherwise no trouble with our prisoner?’ I glanced up at the keep wondering whether Morton was watching me through an arrow-slit. ‘The worthy doctors of Oxford begged me earnestly to have a care of him.’

  ‘No, her grace your duchess has seen him well bestowed.’

  Oh, I swear she had.

  Cat looked as lively as Lot’s wife as I mounted the outside steps to greet her at the door of the Great Hall.

  ‘Ah, such a pleasure to be home.’

  ‘How many loans did that cost you?’ she sneered at my scarlet cote as I strode into the solar with our little girls in my arms and Ned tugging for attention on my hanging sleeve.

 
‘My dear, if anything gave delight to the Lombards, it was the bill for the cartload of damasks and Italian velvets that you have yet to peruse. I hope your fingers are not sticky, Ned.’ Across his neat head, my wife’s Woodville eyes still wished me to the Devil but the acquisitive greed in her was fully stoked.

  ‘My lord father,’ whined my son. ‘Why were we not allowed to come to the coronation?’

  I stooped so I was eye to eye with him. ‘Ned, how could I send for you when the King’s own son was absent?’

  Around us, my household knights muttered approval at my reply.

  Cat’s expression was evil. ‘Your pardon, my lord, I am confused. Whose absent son are we talking about? The usurper’s brat? Or the king’s son you should have crowned?’

  CHAPTER 13

  ‘The only ruddy thing that has happened here since we left is a substantial increase in the numbers of fleas,’ grumbled Pershall as he unpacked. Cat had deliberately let my apartments accumulate a summer of dust. One only had to stamp on the floor and a score of eager blood-suckers hopped out from the rushes. ‘Do you wish me to see if I can rustle up those twins, my lord? You haven’t had your leg over any wench since she-who-is-virtuous, an’ I think it’s puttin’ you in the dumps. It ain’t natural. A hearty bit of fornication—’ He thrust his hips forward.

  ‘Hold your tongue, Pershall.’ But he was right to warn me.

  Within a few days I was back down at the bottom of the well of misery. Soon I should be thirty years old and it felt like I had never left Brecknock. God knows, I had plenty to occupy me; dispatches from here, there and everywhere, including a letter from Richard still fussing about whether I truly understood his view that his son should marry a foreigner and hinting it might be worthwhile writing thank you et cetera to various worthies in Oxford. Ha, perish the thought, your highness, and there I was going to tell the deans in my own hand that their wittering made me spew. My cousin may be almost thirty-one going on a hundred but how old does he reckon me?

  I was never idle. My responsibilities as Justiciar for Wales were a distraction and, of course, local matters. I had two of the Vaughans’ ruffians hanged. (I’ll swear they were behind the burning of my second largest barn in Newport but we could only get witnesses against them for sheep-stealing.) I also rode around my demesne with my officers to estimate the harvest and the work of my bondsmen in my absence, and I was not particularly happy with the way I found things. Thieving Welsh! Some might say I dispensed justice with a heavy hand.

  I swear many of my dull-witted tenants barely knew that there had been another change of monarch let alone that I had become the most powerful man in England save for the King. All that they could mumble at me was about the hot sun scorching the grain and a murrain that was laming the cattle and giving them sores about the mouth.

  And in the evenings? Ah, the evenings. Such amiable repasts in the great hall with Catherine sitting next to me like a wooden funeral effigy! No, I lie. She wasn’t inanimate. Woodville waves of scorn constantly lashed my averted profile.

  ‘I don’t care if you are now High Constable of England and can piss on Wales from a great height,’ she had hissed at me as we took our places at the board on my first day at home, ‘all I can see before me, my lord, is the usurper’s arse-wiper.’

  VISITING Morton became like a breath of Westminster. If it had not been for his presence, I might have thought the kingmaking had been just voices in my head.

  The first time I went up to the keep, I found him sitting on a settle in a narrow patch of sunlight, peering over a manuscript from my personal library.

  ‘Who authorized this?’ I demanded curtly, jerking my head round to chide Bannaster.

  ‘Lady Catherine.’ Morton lowered the book. ‘How pleasant of you to call, Buckingham. Enjoying Wales again, are you?’ I ignored the jibe. I was inspecting the room. It had been whitewashed and there were new bedhangings. Cat’s meddling again. A fire burned in the grate and the vase of meadow flowers that stood on the window embrasure looked like my daughter’s gift. So hardly a prison, save for the window slit, the naked flagstones and the locked door.

  ‘Such idleness and luxury,’ observed Morton facetiously, as though he could plumb my thoughts.

  I bent down to brush a streak of mud from the Spanish leather of my boot. ‘Prisoners are not supposed to enjoy their captivity. Word gets out, even from Wales.’

  ‘I think you are wise, my son, for I have a good memory for faces. It is quite possible that the flaxen-haired groom with the slashmark on his forehead who you took from Lord Hastings’ household reports to Catesby still, and I am wondering if your swordmaster from Bedford is in Ratcliffe’s pay, and as for her grace’s hurdy-gurdy player…’

  ‘The hurdy-gurdy player!’

  ‘There was an excellent little entertainment beneath my window. The fellow has such a memorable nose. I would swear by our Holy Church that he was once in Lord Howard’s employ but I doubt he serves two masters since your wife pays him so royally. No, let us forget the hurdy-gurdy player. But it would seem that our new King’s friends like to keep themselves informed of each other’s activities ’

  I smiled but I was not amused. The fat old devil was trying to tuck burrs of jealousy beneath my girths.

  I strode to the arrow-slit. The poppies drooped like penitents’ heads among the wilting scabious. My summer was fading too and I felt misery swirling round me like a vengeful miasma. ‘Have you given thought to your future yet, Morton? You’ve changed your coat often enough.’

  The pectoral cross, heaving on the broad, cassocked chest, rose with a sigh.

  ‘It would be foolish to lie to you for I’m sure your grace would not believe me, but if the world had gone as I would have wished, Edward of Lancaster,’ he crossed himself in memory of the dead, ‘should have had the crown and not Edward of York. But only a madman would fight for the dead against the living.’ He closed the book, his blue eyes distant as he nodded wistfully. ‘Yet I was a loyal servant to King Edward and would have been so to his son but God’s will be done. Yet as for my Lord Protector who is now king…’ He broke off and looked up at me with resignation. ‘I have already meddled too much in the affairs of the world and I think it is God’s Will that I now meddle with beads and books and no further.’

  ‘Bishop,’ I smiled, leaning back against the wall. ‘We are not overheard. Why do you think I made myself your gaoler? I am most interested in your point of view and I can assure you that no harm will come of speaking your mind to me.’

  Morton folded his hands upon his paunch. ‘I know full well that it is dangerous to talk about princes since innocent words can easily be misconstrued.’ He lifted a finger to staunch my protest. ‘Surely your grace remembers Aesop's Fables from your nursery days? The Lion and the Horned Beast?’

  ‘What of it?’

  ‘Remember how the lion, who was king of the wild wood, proclaimed that no beast which bore a horn upon his brow should remain in the wood on sentence of death. One creature with a weird cluster of flesh upon his forehead began to run away and a fox called out after him: “Where are you going in such a pother?”

  The creature made answer, “I must leave the wood. I am fleeing because of the proclamation.”

  “Pah, you addlepate!” exclaimed the fox. “The lion meant horned creatures. That does not include you.’

  “Yes, I know this bunch of flesh is not a horn,” replied the beast, “but what if the lion should decide it is a horn, where am I then?”’

  ‘My lord bishop,’ I assured him, grinning. ‘I promise neither the lion nor the boar shall hear any of the words you speak in Brecknock.’ The boar was Richard’s badge.

  He nodded. ‘If I said what I truly thought, my innocent words would do neither of us much good.’ Interesting.

  I went to the door. ‘Well, since I cannot press you…’ but he had risen and moved over to the fire place, flexing his clasped fingers. His back was turned to me but still I hesitated to leave.

&n
bsp; ‘Buckingham,’ he said at last, ‘with regard to the Lord Protector, since he is now made king, I do not purpose to dispute his title, but as for the well-being of the realm of which he has the governing and of which I am but one poor member…’

  ‘Go on, bishop,’ I said coldly. ‘You are talking of the king I have made.’

  ‘I was only going to say that although he has so many admirable qualities, it might have pleased God to have given him some of those other virtues necessary for the ruling of the realm such as Our Lord has planted in the person of your grace !’

  He turned and his smile was broad as a cathedral door.

  I LEFT him alone again for another few days until I could bear it no longer. From then on I began to visit him daily. Sometimes we talked about books or hunting; other times, when the conversation slewed around to something more dangerous, it was like dancing with a shadow. Morton was the master of circumlocution. Phrase built upon phrase so skilfully that it was hard to find the cornerstone of truth, let alone purpose. But each day he grew bolder. At first when he spoke of Dead Ned, it was with respect. But gradually, drawing a fine line dextrously between comment and calumny, he shook out the tales surrounding Dead Ned, George and Richard: how King Harry of Lancaster had died so conveniently of ‘melancholy’ in the Tower after hearing that his son had been slain by the Yorkist brothers, how Lady Oxford had found herself impoverished after his grace of Gloucester’s dealings with her, and how, after George’s execution, his lands had all fallen into the hands of his brother Richard. Scandals, executions and slayings – including those of my grandfathers and my Beaufort kinsmen – all mentioned with a shrug, a world-weary smile or a sudden lift of eyebrow.