Some Touch of Pity

by Rhoda Edwards

  I paddled across the courtyard, over-shoes all the way, hugging my most waterproof woollen cloak around me and jumping along like some monkish frog. My fellow clerks arrived in similar fashion. The Bishop of St Asaph strode in as if he would have walked successfully on the water; Dr Gunthorpe stalked after him like an indignant cat, and the King came with them as if he’d not even noticed it was raining. As they walked past, I flattened myself against the wall, but was close enough to see the King’s face. It had a pinched, pallid look, as if he were cold, and there were marks under his eyes the colour of charcoal. Yesterday, I wrote out with my own hand the proclamations against Lord Harry of Buckingham, calling him false traitor. Only weeks ago, he had been the King’s friend. I remembered witnessing something quite trivial between them, that seemed to show them as other young men are. The Lord Harry, in a break in a council meeting, had slipped the King a piece of paper with a drawing on it. I couldn’t see what it was — probably a comic head of someone at the meeting — a lord who looked like his own breed of hounds or some such thing. We clerks often amuse ourselves with making caricatures. Lord Harry was clever at this, and at mimicry — as good as a player. Well, the King had taken one look at it, and laughed, laughed out loud like a schoolboy, though he did screw the paper in his hand, so that no one might share their joke, or be offended. I remember that incident because the King had laughed, and as he looked that morning, I couldn’t imagine him laughing in this life again.

  Not, in the next few weeks, that any of us had anything to laugh about. On St Luke’s Day we rode to Grantham in the rain, torrential, pouring rain that made us sodden to the skin before we even left the gates of Lincoln town. It’s a long day’s journey — thirty miles — and the roads turned overnight into treacherous lakes of watery mud. The wind blew from the west, hard enough to send all Lincolnshire into the North Sea. In Grantham the King was lodged at the big posting inn called the Angel, where he’d often stayed before, when travelling the north road. I had to put up with a billet at the Peacock, and came away flea-bitten. After a few days we moved on to Leicester, which the King had set as a mustering place for his army. Buckingham was expected to cross the Severn from Wales and head south down the Wading Street to join the Kentish rebels and the west country men in an attack on London. We would have to prevent him from doing so.

  It was a dismal journey. The wind and the rain did not cease, so it was a wonder that by the time we reached the Leicestershire clay lands around Melton Mowbray, we did not come to a halt altogether, stuck in the mud. While the rain obscured my already poor eyesight, I listened to angry shouts, the creaking and groaning of wheels, the squelch of hooves and the splashing of marching men. Our passing left the countryside in a fearful mess, churned up as if by a giant plough. Sometimes I noticed the King, riding up and down the line, talking to the men he knew. Come to think of it, I was always seeing his big grey horse, all blurry in the rain like a ghost. His horses are beautiful creatures, usually satin-coated and in the peak of condition, but this one was a nasty, yellowish grey, straggle-maned and filthy as mud sprayed up on to its neck.

  Us clerks, who had charge of all the supplies of paper, parchment and documents, fought a losing battle with the rain. The trussing canvas of the quires of paper and bundles of parchments, and the leather coffers, unless packed with extreme care, were found to leak after exposure to steady rain for eight hours at a time. Bele was supposed to supervise these details, and being Bele, he did not even trouble to see if a servant boy had greased all the leather baggage every day. On the night when the worst happened, and Kendal himself could not make his pen write because the parchment was limp-damp, Bele unjustly put the blame on me. Kendal remarked, with his gallows look, that it was as well he, and not the King, had been sitting there unable to make his pen do anything but strew fuzzy blots instead of letters. But I noticed afterwards that I was not reprimanded, and Kendal was curt with Bele, so I accounted him a shrewd man. I wondered if he knew that Bele never took his turn at writing up the Signet Office register of daily business, a task we had to do every night. It’s a mark of Kendal’s efficiency that he insists on keeping this book; it is endlessly useful for reference, however tired we may be as we scrawl in the entries by dimming candlelight.

  When we set out from Leicester, we had doubled our numbers. The wind had dropped and the rain slackened, wetting us only on and off, instead of all the time. Sometime while we were heaving our feet out of the clinging bonds of Leicestershire into the not less miry depths of Warwickshire, on the way to Coventry, a messenger from the Marches of Wales met us. He and his horse looked freakish, plastered with many colours of mud. But he brought good news. The Duke of Buckingham’s rebellion was bogged down on the Welsh side of the Severn. They could get nowhere near the crossings. The Severn had flooded; nothing like it had been seen in the memory of man.

  A storm had hit Bristol on October the fifteenth, the day before we caught it in Lincoln. Ships in the Severn estuary were driven ashore and smashed like walnut shells. A whole hamlet called Saltmarsh had been washed away; hundreds of people and animals were drowned. The messenger had been with the King’s men this side of Severn, he said, and the destruction was hard to believe. The river as far north as Worcester was as wide as the sea, the only things to be seen were trees sticking up, the roofs of houses, and the legs of floating dead animals pointing to Heaven. To make doubly sure that Buckingham remained stuck in Wales, Sir Humphrey Stafford and a hardy band of the King’s men had seen that all bridges still standing were pulled down, and the fords destroyed. If they hadn’t been able to ride a horse, or slither on foot, they’d gone in little boats, he said. Now all the hill roads into England were water-logged gutters, guarded by the King’s men. I thought of them out there, in the barren, wet territories, and gave thanks to God, that there would not be a battle. As for Buckingham himself, he’d somehow got across the Wye and had been last heard of at Weobley, before he left his floundering rebels and disappeared. The Bishop of Ely had, of course, abandoned him and fled, none knew where.

  More good news came, that the Duke of Norfolk had dealt with the Kentish men, and with bands of rebels in Sussex and Surrey. London was safe. All that was left for us to do was mop up, when the rebels and the flood-water had drawn back. Buckingham was doomed; no dove would wing its way to him over the waters bearing an olive branch.

  We headed south fast, to Salisbury. I had a taste of campaigning, enough to last me the rest of my life. We did the hundred miles in under four days, on appalling roads, which was hard for everyone, and it nearly crippled me. The ground was hilly too, big, bare chalk hills, over which the wind could bowl a cartwheel unaided. And it rained — how it rained!

  On the road to Salisbury, a small party made a diversion of a mile or two, to see the famous Giant’s Dance. I’d heard of this place, which is called the second wonder of England. In the middle of a barren plain, are huge standing stones, built up in a circle of arches — like a giant’s game of closh. I was curious, and, as Kendal mentioned it, I asked if I might go with them. He was very amiable about it, said I was welcome. When we got there, I was more impressed than I had expected to be, the stones were so huge, so stark against the sky and plain, dark and dripping in the rain. The wind whistled and crooned around them like a dirge for the ancient peoples who had lived there.

  After I’d walked round for a bit, the rain began to pelt down, and we huddled round and under the stones, though they gave no shelter. Half a dozen men clustered round the arch nearest to me, and I squeezed in beside them. I couldn’t see the men properly at first, and then realized that one was Kendal, humped up in his cloak, his chin sunk in his collar, like a disgruntled bird. The other had his back to me, but seemed dimly familiar. The trouble with me is, I don’t recognize people until I’m within a foot of their faces — the near-sighted are often accused of not greeting their acquaintances, when really they have failed to see them clearly. Kendal opened his mouth, and I thought he was going to speak to me, bu
t before he could, the other one turned round and saw me. He rubbed the back of his hand over his eyes to get rid of the rain and it left a smear of mud across the bridge of his nose. His right hand had rings on it with gems the size of goosegogs, and I knew why he was familiar, in fact I saw his face quite clearly. Jesus! it was the King. I had blundered in among all the great lords of the realm, where Kendal was privileged by his office to go, but I was definitely not. In spite of being as cold as a wet flatfish, I broke out in a sweat. I was about to back away, anywhere, preferably down a coney hole, when the King spoke to me. ‘Master Bolman, did you ever see the Giant’s Dance before, in your travels? You’ve been in the Privy Seal Office a good many years, I know.’ I couldn’t get over the way he said it, as if I were someone he knew well, but hadn’t seen for some time — he even knew my name — me, an insignificant penpusher, middle-aged and passed over twice in promotion!

  ‘N-n-no, your Grace,’ was all I could manage at first. I knew I was stammering and hoped he wouldn’t think all his Privy Seal clerks were moonstruck idiots.

  ‘Kendal says he thinks Merlin had nothing to do with building this circle of stones, rather that it was raised by a race of people living before King Arthur, before the Romans came. I told him Geoffrey of Monmouth’s story, but he’s a hard man to convince. You’re a clerk, Master Bolman, and have no doubt read as many books as either of us, what’s your opinion?’

  My head was so entirely emptied of opinions by the amazing discovery that he’d asked me for one, that I stammered even more. Kendal had one corner of his mouth drawn back in what I realized was actually a smile. He didn’t seem to think it strange that the King should stand in the middle of the Giant’s Dance on Salisbury plain in the streaming rain, talking to one of the under-clerks in his Privy Seal Office. ‘Well, your Highness,’ I managed, ‘I have read the Chronicles of England as printed by Master Caxton, and he thinks the manner of raising the stones and the reason for it a mystery.’ We began to walk back to the horses, me still at the King’s side, astonished. As he walked, he kicked aside the thick, tussocky grass rather moodily, and the water sprayed off it in showers. But he spoke to me in a very friendly way.

  ‘Geoffrey of Monmouth says it was built as a memorial to the Britons who were massacred by Hengist the Saxon, and that Merlin brought the stones from Ireland by means of amazing engines. I’m inclined to believe him. The stones were raised by man’s means, not by magic, whatever Merlin had to do with it. None of our masons today know their secrets. Uther Pendragon, King Arthur’s father, and Aurelius Ambrosius are supposed to lie buried here, among the stones. They were famous men, who defended their land against the foreign invaders. England is still at the mercy of foreigners and traitors.’ I didn’t know quite what to say to that. The rain was streaming relentlessly down, blown slantwise over the plain; every time I opened my mouth, it ran chillily in. The King scarcely seemed to notice it, though I did see him hitch up his collar a little higher round his neck, in a vain attempt to prevent the rain running straight down the middle of his back, as it was down mine. My hat, bound firmly on by a tippet under my chin, felt like a bath-sponge filled to capacity. The King wore a cloak of thick wool, of some colour — blue or murrey perhaps — that looked black, carrying its own weight of water. My teeth chattered occasionally, both with cold and nervousness. He looked cold but did not show it. He seemed determined to take an interest in me. ‘How long have you been a clerk in the Privy Seal, Master Bolman?’ he asked.

  ‘Nearly twenty-five years, your Grace. I entered the service just at the time King Edward of blessed memory became King.’

  He seemed pleased by that. ‘Men of your experience are an asset to us. You must be one of the chief clerks by now.’

  Kendal shot me a sharp look, then his master another, and gave his twitch of a smile again. ‘Er — no, your Grace,’ I mumbled, ‘not yet. I’m only an under-clerk.’

  The King looked at me very straight for a moment, an uncomfortable, but not unkind, stare, that he had to break to blink the rain out of his eyes. ‘Why?’ he said.

  The simplicity of this question unnerved me, and without thinking, I blabbed out the truth. ‘Your Grace, I have no funds other than my salary. Men more fortunate than I have been able to purchase the vacancies among the chief clerks, even without the benefit of long service. I am not the only one to be passed over.’

  ‘I see,’ the King said, and frowned. Thinking him annoyed at what I had said, I prepared for a sharp rebuke from Kendal later. Then he said, ‘Does Dr Gunthorpe know of this?’

  ‘No, your Grace, he has been Keeper of the Privy Seal for only a short time. My Lord Chancellor may well know of it.’ Bishop Russell had been the former Keeper.

  ‘Who among the clerks has bought his office?’

  ‘Richard Bele,’ I said, without compunction.

  ‘I see,’ the King said again.

  Kendal, who looked as if he wanted to be on the move again, preferring to endure the rain on horseback rather than on foot, said only, ‘Hm-m’. I didn’t have much time for thinking about what we had said. Though I did not speak with the King again, I thought that next time I might not be quite so scared of him. He seemed so ordinary in conversation that I began to wonder if he really were the man that gossip told of, a King who had slaughtered the innocents. Kendal must know, I thought, and found myself watching his thin, wedge-shaped face. It told me nothing.

  Buckingham was taken before the feast of St Simon and St Jude, when we arrived at Salisbury. The King had put a price of £1000 on his head, and he was sold by one of his own tenants. If it hadn’t been one, it would have been another, for such a fat reward, and Buckingham was not loved among his own men. He’d gone into hiding near Wem, north of Shrewsbury. His tenant, Ralph Bannaster, had turned him over to the Sheriff of Shropshire, who was sending him south under guard, his feet tied to the stirrups. A long ride, for one who knew that a scaffold lay at the end of it. Maybe he hoped for mercy. I heard Lord Lovell say to the King, soberly, ‘Will you see him?’

  ‘No.’ The word was spoken softly, but had a terrifyingly bleak, empty sound to it — empty of hope for Buckingham. I couldn’t see the King’s expression from where I sat, but reckoned it must be as hard as granite.

  I was right. There was no delay in the matter. Buckingham was tried by his peers, headed by Sir Ralph Assheton, a hardbitten north-country man, if there ever was one. The sentence was inevitable, in spite of Buckingham’s grovellings. He was beheaded on All Soul’s Day, the second of November, which was a Sunday. People said that the King was a hard man, who would not stay the axe on a Holy day. Later I heard how Buckingham had begged to see the King once more, in the name of the old friendship between them, which he had betrayed. Some thought the King would soften, but he did not, he hardened his heart to adamantine. It was as well that he did, for it was discovered that Buckingham had a knife hidden in his sleeve, with which he intended to murder his one-time friend.

  Most astonishing of all was the discovery that Buckingham had sent letters to Henry Tudor in Brittany, arranging that his rebellion should coincide with a Lancastrian invasion from the sea! Bishop Morton of Ely, as I had suspected, had won Buckingham to his purpose. Morton always did favour the cause of Lancaster.

  Tudor’s plans for an invasion suffered as much from the weather as Buckingham’s revolt had on land. The storm beat his ships back, and it was not until the end of October that he managed to cross the Channel. We heard this news at Salisbury, and that his ships lay not far off Poole. The day after Buckingham’s heading, we went south into Dorset, a hurried, anxious journey. But by the time we slogged wearily into Poole that evening, the news of our approach had reached Tudor, and he sailed away.

  After that began a journey into the west country, which for me was a succession of damp, uncomfortable lodgings in strange towns, where I even found myself sharing a bed with Bele — a horrible experience! I was too saddle-weary to notice much about the country through which we rode, except that
each night I scraped mud of different colours off my boots and clothes. In the evenings, there was no time for the tavern, much to Bele’s disgust. Then, and at first daylight, we were busy at our clerk’s duties, at the call of Kendal, or of the King himself. As I sat trying to make hands stiff from clutching wet reins hold a pen, and longing for a cushion under my rear end, I thought that the King and his lords had only a few advantages over us — a hot bath-tub if they were lucky, a cleaner bed, and the pick of the food.

  One of the northern soldiers, a very dirty, bearded yokel in a rusty sallet with rain-drops hanging all round its rim like a string of beads, summed up my feelings. They put a lot into a few words, if one can understand them. He didn’t like his grub — last week’s bread and a nameless soup. After he’d swallowed it — he was too hungry to throw food in the midden, he spat accurately out of the window six feet away, and gave his verdict: ‘Nowt,’ he said, ‘but piss and cabbages!’ And he was right. Later, I saw the same man, mounted up on a horse much too good for him to have any legal right to it. Curious, I chatted to him a while, understanding about half of what he said. His name was John Key, and he was one of the soldiers of the city of York, a cordwainer by trade, who’d served an apprenticeship and was a respectable craftsman, though he didn’t look it. He was mud-caked to the ears, hadn’t seen a razor since he set out from York, and I wouldn’t mind betting he was lousy. He’d been hauled up before the captain of his contingent, because they were strict in the King’s army about thieving and looting, but when Key said the horse had belonged to the servant of a traitor, and was thus forfeited goods, they laughed and let him keep it. It turned out that he’d picked it up from the lands of Sir John Cheney, one of the rebels who’d now fled.