Some Touch of Pity

by Rhoda Edwards

  The farewells, next morning, were hard to make.

  ‘May I ride just a little way south with your Grace, please?’ The Prince was as near wheedling as he could get, though he’s been taught not to whine after his own way.

  ‘No. You must stay here to look after your mother the Queen.’ I couldn’t be harsh with him, but he must learn that now he is Prince of Wales and seven, he is no longer a nursery child. I couldn’t bear to watch his disappointment. ‘You can get up with me and ride as far as the outer gate,’ I said. One of the grooms, grinning, cupped his hands for the Prince’s foot, and put him up, to sit squeezed between me and the saddle bow. We rode the couple of hundred yards to the gate like this, with everyone laughing, and cheering the Prince. He felt important, and waved, from his vantage point on the tall horse.

  ‘When I come back,’ I told him, ‘I expect to hear you construe some Livy or Vergil, and to see you make a high score at the butts.’ He turned his face to look at me, subdued at first at the thought of the Latin, then gave me a gap-toothed smile.

  When we reached the gate, I said, ‘No further,’ and lifted him up to let him slide over my knee and down the horse’s shoulder into the arms of the groom. He went to his mother then, and held her hand. She gave me a little wistful smile, but said nothing. In his descent from my horse, my son had managed to cover the seat of his black hose with short white hairs. That was the last thing I noticed about him, as I rode south, that my lord Prince’s behind was absurdly and unfortunately piebald!

  October–December 1483

  6

  Most Untrue Creature

  Told by Robert Bolman, a clerk in the Privy Seal Office

  Here loved be God ys alle welle and trewly determyned and for to resyste the malysse of hyme that hadde best cawse to be trewe the Duc of Bokyngame the most untrewe creature lyvyng whome with godes grace we shall not be long tylle that we wylle be in that partyes and subdewe his malys. We assure you there was never falsse traytor better purvayde for as this berrerre Gloucestre shalle shewe you.

  Letter from King Richard to the Lord Chancellor, written at Lincoln, 12 October 1483

  ‘Northerners,’ Bole said, ‘are a pain in the arse; first cousins to the Scots and the Devil!’

  Strong language so early in the morning jarred on my ears. Last night’s Lincoln ale seemed to have risen from my stomach and settled in my head. Bele, who has the clerk’s job over mine, had drunk more ale than I had, and was worse tempered than usual.

  ‘Anyone in particular?’ I said carefully. My tongue felt, and tasted, nasty.

  ‘The whole contrary lot! Not been here five minutes and think they know the Privy Seal Office business inside out. Master Secretary Kendal too — where does he hail from, Kendal in Westmorland? — they make good cloth there, but it never stops raining. He’s a hard nut to crack — as the saying goes, like master, like man.’ Bele hadn’t just got up from the wrong side of the bed this morning, he’d fallen out on his head and put his foot in the jordan.

  ‘Walls,’ I said, ‘have ears.’

  Kendal, the King’s Secretary, walked through the door. ‘Master Bele, Master Bolman, good morning.’ His lean face was expressionless. I didn’t know if he’d heard what Bele had said. He’s a man of about my own age — just the right side of forty-five — with strong north-country speech and a laconic turn of phrase. Bele is right, we’re surrounded by too many northern voices, using words no Londoner can be expected to understand, and by the blunt, rude manners that go with them.

  Kendal looked out of the window at the clock over the gatehouse. ‘Not to the Scots, Master Bele,’ he said mildly, with his back to us. ‘Say that to a man of York, and you’ll find yourself slit up the middle like a blood pudding.’

  Jesu! He had heard. We froze. He didn’t elaborate on this cheery warning; it wasn’t necessary. The clock’s hand pointed to seven. Outside the window, birds were taking an encore of their dawn performance. The hazy, early sun of October showed the table-top gritty with spilt pounce.

  ‘Right,’ Kendal said, ‘you’ve five minutes to clear up in here, before his Grace the King comes.’ He went out of the door again. No one can say that he wasted words.

  Bele made a rude gesture at the empty doorway. I hastened to dust off the table, and to see that the inkstands were ready, the pots full and plenty of fresh quills lying in the trays — right-hand quills for everyone except me, and extra ones for the King, who writes fast and often breaks his pens. I laid out pans of wax over their chafing dishes, the seal matrices, the silk cords and rush plaits, tinder to light the charcoal for melting. The Privy Seal itself stays in the custody of Dr Gunthorpe, the Keeper. A learned man, Dr Gunthorpe, the Dean of Wells, who studied at Ferrara in Italy, and is even familiar with Greek scholarship; he served King Edward long and well.

  When all was ready for the morning’s business, I took a look out of the window. The room was on the ground floor of the Bishop’s palace in Lincoln, which is comfortable quarters, even for us clerks. We enjoy the hospitality of Bishop Russell, the Lord Chancellor, though he is not in residence himself. He suffers greatly from the stone, and this has prevented him from moving out of London since the King’s coronation. Yellowing fronds of a weeping willow dangled down in front of the window, moving to and fro in a slight breeze, making waving patterns of sunlight across my face. Orange-yellow lichen grew on the stone window-frame; it gave the place a mellow look, which made me think of autumn. The smell of a bonfire made by the Bishop’s gardeners drifted indoors. We were at the eleventh of October already, with only a week to St Luke’s Day, indeed, we seemed to be having his ‘little summer’ now.

  We wouldn’t stay long in Lincoln. We were on our way south. Rumours had been abroad ever since we left York that the Kentish men in the Weald were preparing rebellion. It doesn’t take much to stir up the Kentish men. Lord Rivers had a following there, especially round Maidstone and his manor of the Mote; they may wish to avenge his death. It’s too much to ask, I suppose, that the new King should be allowed a peaceful reign, taking the crown as he did, but they might have given him more than three months.

  As Bele was demonstrating, we Londoners resent the arrival of the northern men in every public office, and their determination to act as new brooms. Well, many of us feel that way about the King himself. We may mock and scoff, but the north-country men are a formidable lot, no doubt of it, and among them, none more formidable than the King. Once or twice, I’ve been close enough to him to make out his features clearly — I am near-sighted, and doomed to see life in a blur. What a straight-lipped, uncompromising mouth, and eyes that look harder into your own than many a judge on King’s Bench. I wouldn’t want to face his disapproval. When he turns up, I keep very quiet, or scuttle out of his way. His manner is mild enough, though, and his voice most pleasant. The roughness of his Border reivers doesn’t seem to have rubbed off on him. He never addresses his servants as if they were animals, a habit all too common among the lords of this land.

  We worked that morning until dinner, without a break. Hard work is the order of the day now. I don’t mind that too much, remembering the days when King Edward led his government at a lively pace. Bele doesn’t like it, though. He prefers a day that begins at nine, and a four-hour break for a tavern dinner washed down by five or six pints of ale.

  None of us in the Privy Seal Office are fond of Bele, because he bought his post of chief clerk, simply by paying a cash sum for it, no doubt provided by some noble patron. Since he did this over the heads of several of us under-clerks, of whom I am the senior, there has been much discontent.

  That evening, for want of anything better to do, I went down to the tavern with a few fellow clerks. My wife is in London; she never travels about, or offers to share my lodgings. My son is a scholar at King Henry’s college at Eton, and does not write as often as he should. I had to wait until I was nearly thirty to get married — an under-clerk’s salary is not enough on which to keep a family — and have spent most of
the next dozen years regretting it. If the new King continues to travel about his realm as he has in these first three months, I’d see even less of my family. In their eyes, I think, my failure to get promotion, even when it was my due, has branded me as an unsuccessful husband and father.

  The tavern was crowded, even for a Saturday evening. We elbowed our way in, and in the crush I jolted a man’s arm, so that his ale slopped over from his pot and wetted my gown.

  He turned and mouthed something at me, but the babble was too loud for me to hear his words. Every man was talking about the same thing.

  ‘Kentish men are up in the Weald!’

  ‘St Luke’s Day they said it was to be — the rebels have shouted too soon!’

  ‘Exeter’s buzzing like a hive with treason!’

  ‘Are they coming out for King Edward’s Queen and the lord Marquess?’

  ‘For King Edward V and the little Duke of York? God help the poor innocents!’

  ‘Wait for it, lads — who d’you say they have at their head?’

  I had to hear it yelled half a dozen times across the tavern noise before I could take it in. The voice of one of those who are always in the know rasped in my ear, ‘The Duke of Buckingham!’

  ‘What lunacy!’ I shouted, to make him hear, and grabbed his sleeve. ‘You’ve heard wrong, my friend, surely. The Duke of Buckingham is too great a noble to become a rebel overnight! Why, he’s second only to the King in the realm, by birth as well as all his high offices.’

  ‘Maybe he’d like to be first!’ Someone laughed.

  ‘They say he tried to free little King Edward and his brother from the Tower and found they’d been murdered — and he cannot keep faith with Herod! Well, first bastardize those boys, then put them to silence — doesn’t that follow on as surely as night follows day?’

  ‘Hush!’ a man said uneasily, looking at us, and round for the white boar badges of any King’s men. ‘We talk treason, and I’d rather not have it in my tavern!’ It was the landlord himself, alarmed and flustered.

  The arrogant, know-all voice went on, ‘News came in from London, landlord; the story’s all over the city there. The King’s done in his nephews — like I said, when I heard it was King Richard instead of King Edward, it had to come — only a matter of time before those poor little bastards were finished off — stands to reason!’

  Bele and I made our escape as quickly and quietly as we could. ‘Well, Robert,’ he said, grumbling, ‘we’ll be needed back at the Bishop’s palace. No sooner do we put down a pen than we have to pick it up again. King Herod or not, old Dick will drive us until we drop!’

  ‘With a rebellion on our hands,’ I said, ‘I wouldn’t be surprised if we do. Is this story true, about the Duke of Buckingham, and King Edward’s sons? Tales fly about with the wind.’

  ‘We’ll soon find out,’ Bele said grimly.

  We did. Buckingham had raised an army in the Marches of Wales; the Woodville partisans had a force out in Kent, and another in the west country. And how they had caught us napping! The King had no soldiers with him, nor even the Great Seal, without which he was unable to issue his commands correctly. One of the most urgent tasks, then, was to send for the Great Seal, which was still in the keeping of the Lord Chancellor in London. Kendal drafted a letter to Bishop Russell, then wrote out a fair copy, and gave it to the King for his signature. I watched the King write a postscript to the letter. He wrote very fast, angrily. I sneaked a look at his face, and was relieved that I could not see his expression unblurred. His handwriting is large and clear, but this time it would be made scrawly by haste and anger. When he turned the letter round and wrote along the side, the pen nearly went through the paper on the down-strokes of the long-tailed letters, even my dim eyesight told me that. It scared me, to see his anger flow out in ink. Frankly, I’d been scared of him before, as one is of someone unknown, who is the King, and to clerks, next only to God Almighty, but I sometimes caught myself watching him now as if he would grow horns and a tail in front of my eyes.

  In the two following days, while I was writing out copies of a proclamation against the traitor Duke of Buckingham, straining my eyes by candlelight, I wondered: in the name of all the Saints, why? Why had Buckingham so suddenly and startlingly turned his coat? Until that day no one, least of all the King, had the slightest inkling of his intent. Was the man mad? He was Constable and Great Chamberlain of England. The King had been more generous to him than many thought wise, giving him lands, princely offices and honours. Even the old Bohun inheritance, about fifty manors, worth more than £700 per annum, had been given him. He’d been glutted with favours, all within the space of three months; I knew, for I’d written out many of the grants. Now he was willing to risk all, for the sake of the exiled Welshman. It didn’t make any sort of sense. I thought that the popinjay young Duke had fancied himself as the maker and unmaker of kings. I was not the only one to overhear him say that he’d soon have as many men wearing Stafford knots as the Earl of Warwick used to have ragged staves.

  Buckingham had taken off with him to Brecon, ostensibly as a prisoner, the Bishop of Ely. No doubt it was thought the Bishop would be safely out of the way in Wales. Having worked in this office for many years, I had heard and seen much of the Bishop of Ely. John Morton is a clever man, to whom intrigue is the breath of life. I was always frightened of him, for he is one of those who enjoy bullying men younger and humbler than himself. I’ve seen some of his clerks in tears after an interview, lashed by his sarcasms. I’m told he likes young men who stand up to him and return a witty answer, but despises those who are afraid of him. If I knew anything about it, the ambitious Duke of Buckingham would be as clay in Bishop Morton’s hands, and that King Richard’s enemy was more the Bishop than the Duke.

  As for the story about King Edward’s sons having been murdered, it was common gossip in every tavern in Lincoln, but no one within the circle of the court, or the Privy Seal and Signet Offices, seemed to know anything, or were giving nothing away.

  Before the two rebel armies could move out of the west, meet the Kentish men and attack London, Fortune came in on the King’s side. It’s always been said that the elements fight on the side of the House of York, and the fouler the weather, the luckier they are. This October proved no exception. In the middle of the night of the fifteenth I woke up suddenly, which is an unusual thing for me; I can sleep like a log anywhere. The noise that had woken me was a steady slamming. Then came a great crash. I started up, swearing, heaved myself out of bed, fumbled around for the iron and tinder, meaning to strike a light, then decided it wasn’t worth the trouble. The room, and the night outside the window, were black as the Devil’s backside. I got up, stumbled over my own shoes, and opened the window. I had to jump back as the wind knocked it out of my hands. That shutter had been blown clean off its hinges and spun away, God knew where. Rain came bucketing in, wetting me. I backed away, naked and dripping, while in seconds a pool formed on the floor where I’d been. The wind screamed, hauling and tugging at everything outside like a straining draught team. I could just make out a cluster of narrow chimneys of Flemish brick above the buildings on the other side of the yard. In front of my eyes, one of them snapped off and disappeared; at the same moment, a bush, roots and all, sailed with a scratchy slap into the other half of the casement. I had seen enough. I forced the window shut. Jesus, what a night! Out there one could all but hear the leathery flap, flap, flap, of the wings of all the demons in Hell, as they rode the storm, shrieking their delight at our poor earth’s discomfiture.

  I climbed damply back into bed, buried my head and managed another hour’s sleep. I woke feeling stale and irritable. Daylight of a sort had come. There was only one word for the sky — evil; it closed down on us like a curfew. Rain was streaming out of it, not abated one jot from the night before. A drip plopped on to the floor in one corner from a weak spot in the roof; the room felt chilly. The mellow stonework of the palace seemed to have turned greenish with damp already. Dow
nstairs, the Bishop’s servants were trying to sweep water from the passageway with brooms. But the water merely sloshed dirtily out into an already flooded yard and then slopped slowly back over the doorstep. ‘St Luke,’ one of the men said, ‘has had his little summer — good and proper!’