Wrath and indignation walked with me as Bannaster and I set forth again. We were to sorely miss Pershall’s foraging. In truth, the sides of our bellies were almost clanging together in emptiness when we finally reached Wem. We dared not show ourselves until after nightfall and then we crept past the cottages and at long last sighted Bannaster’s farm, a crude little holding north of the village with a modest orchard, a few cows and a small flock of sheep.
Three farm dogs barked at us as we wearily stumbled up the track. Bannaster kicked them away, cursing, and smote upon the door. It was scraped open by a pinch-faced, skinny slattern bearing a candle. Bannaster thrust me inside with an oath and swiftly barred the door.
‘Can’t you recognise your own man, you slut?’ he snarled and received the woman’s spittle for answer.
The place stank of beasts and cheap tapers. There was a scramble from the loft and I found myself surrounded by curious faces, all of them sleepy, dirty and unkempt: four children, a serving wench and an old gaffer.
‘Bring food, wife, an’ stop your gapin’, the rest o’ you. You’ll have your pennyworth of tidings in the mornin’ an’ much joy to you. ’ Bannaster shooed the brats away and growled at the woman, ‘Say aught, yer mawkin, an’ you’ll have the back o’ my hand!’
His wife bit back her shrewish tongue and sullenly stooped to rekindle the embers below the cooking pot, hanging from the hob. The children scrambled back up the crude ladder and the old wight disappeared behind a ragged curtain.
Mistress Bannaster slapped jacks of thin ale before us and glared at her husband. I dared not say a word but hung my head. I could see this was a mistake but I was too weary to leave. Nor did the tepid broth restore my spirits for it was greasy with fat, lacked flavour and its maker looked as though she wished it full of poison.
Bannaster ignored her. Not one word more was spoken between them until he had drunk and eaten his fill and then he checked to make sure the old man was asleep.
‘What pitherin’ be you at then? Who be this stranger?’ demanded his bawd.
‘Been on fut for days,’ he muttered. ‘Duke’s army was flooded out.’
‘Need some fuckin’ sense shaken into ye, the lot of ye.’ Now she had time to inspect me, she seized my hand and jerked it over. I had calluses from holding the reins but her fingers found the soft skin of my palm. ‘I tell ye, Ralph Bannaster, ye are not riskin’ our necks givin’ shelter to one of ’em as is on the proclamation.’ She flung my hand back at me, her face ugly with contempt.
‘Get you gone then!’ growled Bannaster. ‘You and ’im.’ I started to my feet but he shoved me down. ‘Nah, sir, ’er and her da! Ha, see, now yer pipin’ to a different tune!’
The slut’s rebellion subsided but she was still sullen.
‘E’s not one of our kind,’ she muttered. ‘Just look at them nails.’ I had put a weary hand to my face. ‘Wait on.’ Her eyes narrowed to vicious slits. ‘Without that beard…’
Pox take the bawd! She must have glimpsed me some time in the past.
‘You brainless ful, Bannaster!’ She crossed herself as though I was Satan come to visit.
‘God nail your tongue to your arse or I’ll do it for you, you foolish blabbin’ shrew,’ snarled Bannaster.
‘What you brought him here for?’ she mouthed. ‘Godssakes, we’ll all be hanged!’ Her knuckles rose to her mouth and I swear she would have screamed if Bannaster had not grabbed the neck of her kirtle.
‘He is our lord, woman,’ he growled. ‘This place is his.’
‘Not any longer,’ the woman hissed with sudden glee, looking afresh at me. ‘He’s naught but Harry Stafford now.’
I stumbled to my feet. Weary and desperate though I was, I did not want her charity and the thought of bearing either of them gratitude filled me with loathing.
‘Gracious mistress,’ I began and inclined my head grandly. ‘My life is in your hands but I’ll relieve you of it.’
‘Ohh, gracious mistress, now, is it?' she mimicked. ‘It wanna gracious when we was askin’ to ha’ our rent reduced last Lent. It wanna gracious when you denied us new thatch las’ winter an’ refused us the stewardship at Yalding.’
‘Good lady, I leave such matters to my bailiffs. My estates are too great for them to inform me of every little grie…matter. If I had known. Bannaster, you should…’
‘If?’ she jeered. ‘This poor ful ’as worked his guts out for you. Pah, we allus knew you for a hard man.’
Bannaster raised his fist to her but I stayed his arm.
‘Mistress Bannaster,’ I replied proudly. ‘I had hoped that you might give me shelter for a few days until the hue and cry has passed but if you lack the stomach for it then I’ll not endanger you further. Ralph, I thank you, and I’ll be on my way.’
‘Ballocks, ye cannot go any further tonight nor me neither.’ He turned on the harridan. ‘You drive him out wi’ your friggin’ tongue an’ I’ll go too an’ God knows when you’ll see me again.’
She stuck her hands on her hips. ‘You’d do that, for ’im?’ She spat.
I swore, but as I laid my hand upon the doorlatch, Bannaster knocked her to the floor.
‘I am the master here!’ Then he turned to me. ‘If you are minded to remain here, you must dissemble. There’s them as would turn you over to the sheriff right willingly. I'll tell ’em you’re a soldier an’ you deserted Buckingham’s army, right? But you must do the rest, see?’
‘I shall one day make you wealthy beyond your dreams,’ I promised.
‘We shall most like be dead o’ the plague ere that day comes,’ sneered Mistress Bannaster. ‘An’ where would your gracious lordship like to sleep, in the grand solar at the end of the great hall?’
‘In the barn, I thank you,’ I replied tersely and let myself out into the fresh air promising that I must be quit of this harridan, but I had not the strength to run that night. Finding the door to the byre, I stumbled in with several dogs joyously joining me. The place smelled mungy and there was a crack in the roof that let in the moonlight. Ralph followed me with a lantern and a poor blanket. Two labourers roused up but he grunted at them and they settled down again. When he had gone, they tried to question me but I feigned sleep.
Nightmares trampled through my slumber and I dreamed I was still struggling through the mud. I might have slept deeply through the dawn with three happy dogs against my legs but I was woken by prods. Eager, stupid faces, anxious for tales to thrill their humdrum lives loomed over me. I swore at them like a soldier, but they pestered me like children and so I told them how we had fled the traitor Buckingham’s army.
Bannaster suggested I work that day lugging bales of hay into the feeble barn against the winter. I did not complain for the work was not arduous and the pale sun on my back was comforting. Besides, the more hardened my hands became, the safer I felt. I even scraped my nails into the dirt to make them ragged. All day I laboured and felt some satisfaction although my belly was gnawing on itself from hunger. I should leave. Yes, I knew that, but my feet still had painful blisters.
Bannaster took off in the farm wagon to Wem next morning without a by-your-leave and returned with a squealing piglet for roasting. His reasoning was that, better fed, I’d recover sooner and he would be quit of me. He was terrified of being hanged. The gossip who had sold him the sucking pig had been right curious, wanting to know why he was back in Shropshire. Bannaster was sure he had dissembled well enough but he also told me that every man and his dog was eager to bring me in for the reward on my head and that Sir James Tyrrell was already in the shire, riding round with the sheriff to seize my holdings.
We agreed that after dark, he would take me to a safer hiding place at Milford, which was a small holding near Barchurch that he had inherited from his family. It was not far, down to the south-west, but when nightfall came, and I sought Bannaster out, he had drank so deeply that he could scarce direct himself to his bed let alone guide me six miles across the fields.
I though
t about making my own way but without a local guide, it was too dangerous. Tomorrow night I would definitely move on, maybe make for Chester and thence to the Mersey.
Next morning, Mistress Bannaster took great pleasure in setting me to muck out the byre. I did not argue. If the sheriff’s men chanced by, they would not look to find a duke spattered with cowdung. A neighbour came a-calling. Perhaps it was the curious owner of the sucking pig. For sure, my taskmistress made a great show of bawling at us underlings across the yard. Bannaster at least had sobered up. I told him we should leave for Milford.
‘At dusk,’ he promised.
Towards the late afternoon when my arms were aching and my clothes reeked worse than a swineherd’s armpit, one of the children came racing into the yard yelling that soldiers were coming. I heard the hoofs, saw the collars of authority rattling across the breastplates of the first two riders. One of them was Tyrrell. The other, I guessed, was Mytton, the sheriff.
I had no intention of taking off across the fields. Calmly, I pulled my filthy hat down further and leaned on my shovel.
Instead of ordering his men to surround the farmhouse, the sheriff waved a writ at Bannaster. Devil roast them, they were not here to search for me but to seize the farm. For an instant, relief flooded through me and then I realised the irony.
My hands were shaking as I backed into the byre. I exchanged my spade for a pitchfork and forced myself outside again to gape like my fellow labourers.
The Bannasters had taken Tyrrell and Mytton inside the homestead but their half-dozen soldiers were left outside. With naught else to do, these knaves sauntered across to the barn and began to poke the bales with their pikes. They jeered at me, holding their noses, and as I edged towards their horses, I prayed that my churlish companions would not blurt out that I was newly come but the churls, good fellows, said naught.
When Mytton and Tyrrell came out, their men swarmed back for further orders. All’s well I thought. But then Tyrrell looked straight at me. I swear the soldiers heard his command in disbelief before they came running.
I was ready.
‘No!’ I bawled, whirling my weapon in a vicious arc. I hurled the pitchfork at the nearest man, leapt for the closest saddle. As the beast moved forward with me half sprawled across its saddle, I grabbed the mane and dug my heels in hard. I gained the road but they were after me soon enough. I outrode them for a half a mile but the horse was a poor creature with little heart, and soon my hunters surrounded me and dragged me to the ground, wrenching my arms behind my back and twisting a rope around my chest until I was as helpless as a cobwebbed fly.
CHAPTER 16
1st November 1483, the Feast of All Saints
An inn cellar in Salisbury is my duchy now. A makeshift measure since the town gaol is already crammed with Woodville followers.
My face feels swollen. My belly is purple and tender with bruising. My hands are bound in front of me and my head aches. Tyrrell’s men did not permit me to sleep during the long journey from Shrewsbury and, when we arrived here, Dick Ratcliffe’s whoresons half-killed me as they hauled me in to him for interrogation. Mercifully, because I am of royal blood, they dared not scourge me or drive splinters beneath my nails.
I have some solitude at last and try to keep moving to stay warm. There are no rats – so far – and my keepers have left me a candle. I have had to cram my shirt into the grille that looks out onto the street to stop the children crouching down and spitting. One of them even managed to stick his prick in and piddle at me.
Oh Jesu, how cold it is. Even when I was sodden to the skin, I never felt so cold as this. The winter has come to Salisbury.
Have you ever been so lonely that words with any man are like snowflakes on the deep drift of your loneliness? Save for my few months of alliance with Richard, I have trod this lifetime alone. But no matter, I can survive. Once I have had speech with my cousin, all will be well. He is coming to Salisbury, they tell me.
The hours labour past. I try not to think. Thinking will bring despair. What if Richard does not come?
Has the landlord left no firkins of ale in this place? Yet again I search the corners of my small prison for some means of forcing oblivion.
If Richard does not come, I have thought about killing myself in Roman style. I still have my son’s little dagger hidden in my boot but men say that the ghosts of those who forestall God’s will never leave this earth. Haunting this cellar does not appeal.
Perhap some wrinkled churl can bring me some vipers in a bowl of pippins and I shall sit like ancient Egypt’s queen, seeing into the future with dead eyes. ‘Look!’ they will whisper. ‘How noble in death! How proud!’
God help me, Tyrrell and Ratcliffe want to watch me die in the marketplace.
‘MY LORD?’ It is one of Ratcliffe’s sergeants shaking me. The kindliest of the bastards.
‘What is it?’
‘You cried out, my lord. They could hear you up in the kitchen.’
‘Did I?’
‘Are you in pain, my lord?’
‘No.’ I say with faint puzzlement and then wearily, ‘no.’
‘I’ll have some clean water brought down to you, sir.’
Do I still smell? With difficulty I squeeze my fists into my eye sockets and realise my cheeks are wet.
He turns. His toe encounters one of my discarded boots and the interfering beggar picks it up and hears the rattle. ‘What’s this, eh? Can’t have you depriving the crowds now, can we?’
Damn the tidy-headed son of Satan! He’s found Ned’s dagger.
YESTERDAY, the Devil’s Eve, they dragged me with my wrists bound up to a hall packed with Yorkist surcotes; the boar badge was everywhere but not the Boar himself. Grim-faced Ratcliffe, in his soldier’s black leather with metal studding, and John, Lord Zouche, a Midlands baron – hardly impartial since he is Catesby’s brother-in-law – took their places upon the bench but the central chair was empty.
‘Make way for my lord the High Constable!’ I assumed it was me they spoke of but the throng parted to let through my deputy, Sir Ralph Assheton – the harbinger of death, the messenger who carried Rivers’ death warrant to Pontefract.
God’s fist squeezed my heart as I was thrust forward to face him.
‘You are Henry Stafford, late Duke of Buckingham?’
How quaint.
‘Not late. I think I arrived before you, Sir Ralph.’
The roar of laughter washed around me. My deputy smiled tightly at the double meaning but his face turned a dull red. ‘Clear the court!’ he ordered. ‘This is not a bear-baiting.’
The soldiers closed the door behind the last of my audience and now only the clerks waited for a fresh witticism. Beside Assheton, Ratcliffe lifted cold eyes to mine and I knew the dogs would bite.
The clerk of the court mumbled the litany of charges brought against me and then I was given a chance to answer.
‘If it is treachery to raise a banner on behalf of the rightful king, then, yes, I suppose I am guilty.’
I paused. Zouche was staring at me as though I had two horns; Ratcliffe showed no surprise and Assheton merely stroked his forefinger across his jowls.
‘However, that was not the sum of things at all, gentlemen, as I have reiterated in the several interrogations you have put me through already. My entire purpose was to lure out the King’s enemies and destroy them.’
Assheton had not heard any of this. He drew in a long breath. ‘I see from your confession that you have already named your fellow conspirators.’
‘Yes, I have provided names, but none of those traitors were my allies. I hope now that you will grant me leave to explain my actions to the King’s grace in person.’ Swift looks were exchanged between them before Assheton cleared his throat.
‘You do not deny that you raised an army against the King.’
‘No, it was against the King’s enemies. I dissembled to let Tudor’s supporters use me as captain of their forces. Have I lifted a sword against the Kin
g’s grace on the battlefield? Never!’ I let that sink in before I added, ‘Look, Assheton, I agree that it was a dangerous strategy easily misinterpreted. Did my lord the King not receive my letter from Weobley?’
They just stared at me with distaste. Damn them! Assheton should have galloped after that one, but Ratcliffe’s snort of disbelief had him sidestepping.
‘Why did you refuse to attend your liege lord the King when he requested your presence, giving out you were sick?’ he demanded. ‘We have testimony from our agents at Brecknock that you were in rude health.’
‘Of course, I was in rude health. How else would Morton have believed I could lead a rebellion?’
Zouche asserted himself at last. ‘Should you not have sent to the King and told him of your plan to deceive his enemies?’
‘I-did-send-to-the King, my lord.’ That had become my credo over the last week. Even a beating had not made me change the lie. ‘Mayhap someone envious of my friendship with his highness deliberately withheld my letter.’ I raised my eyebrows at Assheton, remembering that he had once said that Catesby did not have four limbs like a normal man but tendrils.
Maybe Assheton understood. He looked as though he wanted to chew his lower lip and then thought better of it. ‘Stafford, this court does not believe—’
‘May I suggest this court does not want to believe,’ I interrupted. ‘My lord, it is my understanding that his highness the King wishes justice to be dispensed impartially in this realm and yet I know full that at least one of you on the bench would cheerfully see me brought so low. Is that not the truth, Ratcliffe?’
A hit! Ratcliffe looked like he was whetting a knife for my throat beneath the board. His tanned visage darkened further, and an uncomfortable silence gripped the chamber until Zouche took up the reins again and leaned forward.
‘If you are innocent, Stafford, why did you not surrender your person immediately instead of evading capture?’
‘With a price on my head, it seemed risky.’ Then I let dismay suffuse my voice. ‘My lords, this entire business was not meant to become so messy. If my enterprise has been utterly misconstrued by those I thought friends, I assure you, this can be resolved. If his highness will graciously grant me an audience.’ I held up my tethered hands in supplication wondering why at least two of these fools were not moved by my words. ‘I assure you even before we left London, the King’s grace and I discussed ways to winkle out our enemies’
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