Some Touch of Pity

by Rhoda Edwards

  From Stepney, Norfolk accompanied me to inspect the gunsmiths’ workshops at St Katherine’s, where they wrought serpentines for the Calais garrison. In the Tower storerooms there’s a good stock of gunpowder, for which the account is not yet rendered. The same can be said of the bows, arrows, spears and lead for the defence of Harwich. The Tower is not in as defensive array as could be wished, and repairs in good Caen stone expensive. After the invasion of rebels will come the invasion of creditors.

  In mid-April we went to Windsor for a few days. There my wife’s Month Mind was kept without pomp, in accordance with her own wishes. She saw no reason why her demise should provide more than one excuse for the court to bloat itself with a banquet. Whatever offering was made in her memory went to God, in prayer.

  I succumbed to an urge for being incessantly out of doors, whatever the weather, until my conscience was pricked by the sight of Francis Lovell, waiting for me under dripping trees in the Great Park, drenched, mud-splashed from head to heel, sneezing and cursing quietly to himself. After that we went out on drier days with hawks. Francis’s big gos took a heron in to river meadows by Runnymede, where our horses trod fetlock-deep in water, duckweed twining round their hooves.

  We left for London before the St George’s Day feast, though I felt guilty of shirking my duty. A deputy to conduct the Garter ceremony and the mumming was easy to find. I’ve no heart for feasting. It was hard enough to see the new buds unfurl upon the trees, and hear unseen cuckoos calling through curtains of green willow by the river. From an orchard near Brentford, apple petals blew in milky showers through the spring squalls. They lay, pink-veined white, upon the black of my sleeve, or clung like a touch of grave fingers to my cheek, scarcely heeded, for my mind is in winter.

  Soon after, I sent Francis to Southampton, to oversee a small fleet patrolling the Channel; it’s time he had an independent command. He was reluctant to leave me, and I miss his company, but strain and distress seem to have had their effect on him also.

  I could not muster the decision to leave London until ten days into May. Where should I go? Nottingham, I supposed, equidistant from all possible sources of trouble. Though possessing a fair kingdom, I no longer have a home. Perhaps one day, when war is over and done with, I may have leisure to take my wife’s body home to the north. I’d have her lie at York, in St Peter’s Minster, her son at her side, in alabaster tombs. My chantry at York shall be the most beautiful in the realm, to rival my brother’s chapel at Windsor, the finest in Europe, perhaps. It shall see a new flowering of architecture in the north. Italian sculptors and masters of metalwork shall teach our craftsmen; John Tresilian, the Cornish smith who wrought at Windsor shall join them. And the windows shall be the glory of St Peter’s, for our York glass-painters are surely without peer. I’d like a window of the Resurrection, Christ breaking the bonds of the Tomb. Masses for our souls shall be sung into eternity by a hundred priests, clad in copes of white silk embroidered with joyful angels blowing on shawms and trumpets, or playing golden harps. It shall be a memorial to my years of youth, before I left the north, that shall live as long as there are men in the streets of York to see it.

  By Ascension Day we were at Windsor again, and from there I rode to visit my mother at Berkhampstead, taking with me only a small escort of about twenty persons, as she now lives according to the Benedictine Rule, and a great train of my household disrupting her regimen would be unwelcome.

  She greeted me in the courtyard, among a flutter of women and doves, standing out from the cluster like a queen bee, partly because of her height, but also perhaps on account of her legend. We all hold her a little in awe. In her lifetime she has earned two nicknames, ‘the Rose of Raby’ and ‘Proud Cis’, no one denying that the rose bore some thorns; now one might call her the grand old lady of York. She carries herself very straight for seventy, her head poised on her neck with familiar arrogant grace. The severe black robes and white linen bands of the coif binding up her chin, set off the not inconsiderable remains of her beauty, an effect of which I suspect she was aware. Seeing that perfect profile in a kind light, one would take her for thirty years younger.

  She made profound obeisance to me, though without humility, inclining her head and sweeping her skirts with the correctness of a fashionable lady. Then she kissed my cheek with that slightly proprietary air she bestows upon her children and grandchildren, and led me in to dine. As she walked, she clanked gently, like an armed man with an unsheathed sword at his side, this being caused by the number and size of her devotional jewels hanging around her neck. She wore a reliquary as big as my fist, which held a piece of a nail from the True Cross, a gold crucifix as knobbly with gems as a cardinal’s, hung on a rosary of sapphire-studded, gold beads, and an image in ivory and silver of our Lady of Walsingham.

  Her conversation avoided both condolences and politics, for which I was grateful. She spoke first of the chantry founded by Otto Gilberd at Marledon in Devon, where prayers were to be offered for her soul and mine, then asked after the health of old friends, of Chancellor Russell, of John Howard of Norfolk, of Lincoln her grandson, but not of her grand-daughter Elizabeth, nor of old friends now my enemies, in self-inflicted exile in France. Forthright in her opinions though she is, she does not lack tact.

  At Berkhampstead, the round keep and many of the older castle buildings have fallen into disuse, my mother making herself comfortable in the smaller, timber-built living quarters. After Vespers, we walked in her gardens, between low hedges of box and yew, lavender and quince. Most of the plants had been chosen for their sweet scent: a lawn of close-clipped, springy camomile, that, when crushed by footsteps, releases a scent halfway between peeled pippins and balm; banks of rosa alba still in green bud; wallflowers of lemon, amber, brown and scarlet; clumps of clove-gillyflowers to open in July. In her old age, gardening has become my mother’s passion, having for her the additional virtue of being encouraged by her Rule. A gardener I had recommended for employment pleased her; she declared he was a positive magician with flowers, and pointed out her peonies that had been brought on early by his skill — crimson and rose-coloured ones fully out, the pale pink about to break their buds.

  On one of the grass lawns, my mother halted and looked down, a frown drawing the fine white brows together, as she stubbed the toe of her shoe in the turf. ‘Daisies,’ she said pointedly, with more dislike than the offending intruder merited, ‘play havoc with a good lawn.’ I took her point. The pretty, feminine device of Lady Margaret Beaufort, Tudor’s mother, is a knot of growing daisies, or marguerites.

  ‘They’re hard to get rid of,’ I said. ‘You may clip the heads, but you might ruin a lawn uprooting them all.’

  ‘Nasty weeds grow apace,’ she replied, ‘and she is a very clever woman. There may be no more of her than would fill a pint pot, but every inch of the Lady Margaret is as purposeful as any man. Make no allowances, Richard, you are too soft with women. Prim-mouthed little bitch!’ This was hardly a suitable comment from a woman of religion, said with a well-remembered curl of the lip, and the superiority of a woman nearer six foot than five to the diminutive. Proud Cis clearly wasn’t humbling all her pride before God.

  ‘What do you suggest I do with her, other than leaving Stanley to answer for her? He is her husband.’

  ‘Husband, indeed! You know as well as I do that she swore celibacy soon after she married him. She could manipulate him with her little finger, and convince him he pursues a self-invented policy of infinite wisdom! As for that son of hers, the unknown Welshman, of bastard stock, she bore him when she was fourteen, barely saw him for his first fourteen years, then saw him exiled for his next fourteen — she dotes upon him as only an absent mother can. She would raise Antichrist if it would aid him. If you find her over-ears in treason, as I suspect she is, you should deal with her as a man is dealt with.’

  ‘You can’t mean I should take her head!’

  ‘I do.’ The answer was as forceful as she could make it.

 
; ‘Jesu! Mother, I don’t make war on women!’ Frankly, this ruthless female logic left me a little aghast.

  ‘Then you condemn yourself to be their dupe…and don’t take the Name in vain in front of me!’

  I said angrily, ‘Madam, do you take me for a fool?’

  ‘No. You, my son, have more intelligence than any of my children. But in some things you’re too obstinate and too upright to use it as it should be used, as Edward would have used it.’

  ‘Are you suggesting he would have headed a woman? More likely he would have bedded her and won an admirer for life. Well, I’m not made for that, either.’

  ‘You underestimate yourself, child, you always have. I’ve watched self-doubt hold you back too often, these thirty years.’ I turned away from her, embarrassed.

  ‘My lady mother,’ I said, my voice rather harsh and abrupt, as it is when trying to hide my feelings, ‘did I do right — to take the crown?’

  She was silent for a space, while I stood with my back to her, snapping sprigs off a rosemary bush. A bumble-bee, late from home, tumbled about among a border of purple fleur-de-lis. In the chapel, they had decorated the altar, standing in those blue and white painted earthenware jugs from Antwerp.

  ‘What’s done,’ she replied, ‘cannot now be undone. You decided the answer to that yourself, two years ago, and you must abide by it. Have faith in yourself; without it you’ll be a King stuffed with straw. You’re too like your father, and doubt was his downfall, God rest him. Yet I think you are made to suffer even more. Don’t scourge yourself. You do, I can see it written all over you. I neither condone nor condemn. You are my son.’ This was all she would say. She was never one to bolster up the doubting with empty assurances.

  ‘You give me no comfort,’ I said bitterly, left unreasonably desolate by her answer, refusing to turn round to face her.

  ‘Richard,’ she said gently, ‘you’re young. You’re breaking yourself, to no avail. I cannot help you. No one but Christ can heal your bitter pain.’

  ‘Young! You’re mistaken there. Even if spared the hazard of war…’ At that juncture, the clock in the tower over the west gate began to strike seven, making me jump violently.

  My mother touched my cheek with one finger. ‘Hmm,’ she said, looking at me rather fiercely, as she does when concerned, ‘you’re nervous. Your hands shake. You’ve just jumped out of your skin. You’re pallid as a fasting monk, and there’s about as much flesh on your bones. You haven’t taken to a hair shirt like that play-actor Rivers?’

  ‘No.’ I shrugged and tucked the offending hands into my sleeves to hide them, making no further comment. Seeing me unwilling, she did not pursue the subject.

  ‘It is my custom,’ she said with dignity, ‘to pray a while before I retire at eight. Will your Grace come in?’

  ‘No. I’ll walk a little. Your gardens are pleasant.’ I kissed her. ‘Good night, Mother, may God give you sound sleep.’

  That night I slept hardly at all, though the bed was comfortable, and well aired, with finest lawn sheets, as one might expect in my mother’s house. I regretted leaving my own travelling bed, having thought that one night in a strange one would do me no harm. Well, it did me no good, and in the morning I winced at the sight of my face in the barber’s mirror.

  After Mass I took leave of my mother. In the gravelled courtyard our horses’ hooves crunched, a groom leading Lyard Mountfort round gently in wide circles, letting him fret against the bit a little, to take the edge off him. That one goes as sweetly as a lady’s palfrey after the first half-hour, which he spends pretending he has never been backed. It had rained in the night, and white doves strutted across the yard, dabbling in puddles and preening to their reflections in the early-morning sun. In the bright daylight, my mother bade me a conventional farewell: the cool kiss upon the cheek, the blessing of a woman of religion, when I bent my knee to her as a gesture of filial obedience. She is not a woman to whom the expression of affection in public comes easily — in that we are alike.

  This time, however, she took my face between her hands and held me still, quite firmly, so I could not escape her eyes, looking down into my own — as she is a tall woman. She wore a strange, heavy look, as if she had come upon a derelict building remembered from childhood, expecting to find it inhabited, a look of memory disappointed, to find all who lived there dead. God knows, after last night I was the usual corpse-candle colour, but she gazed at me as if she were at my funeral, about to lay me under the earth, and that I already wore a shroud. She has extraordinarily bright blue eyes, always as I remember them full of life and decision, young eyes. I had thought her to have been dry of all tears for many years, so was surprised to find they swam with tears, had become rheumy and old.

  If I were more prodigal with my emotions, I think I should have fallen at her feet and wept myself back into childhood, submerging her in the undammed flood of my own agony. But apart from a certain reserve of pride between us, I had no right to unload my burden on her. She has suffered a lifetime of sorrow and bereavements, beside which my own diminish to little grains of sand.

  I detached myself from her hands and moved aside, before she should see the evidence in my own eyes of pricking tears. I had the reins in my hand and my foot all but in the stirrup, when she suddenly held my wrist to detain me. Uncertain of her intent, I stood facing her, my hand still on the saddle-pommel. She embraced me with unwonted tenderness, kissing my mouth and stroking my hair. Her lips trembled. We stood cheek against cheek, inarticulate with choked emotion. I don’t know if she felt me shake within her grasp.

  ‘Mother,’ I managed to say, ‘pray for me. I need your prayers.’ The Jack o’ the clock over the gate swung his mace with a whirr and a clank and began to strike the bell.

  ‘Every hour of the day, as the clock tells them, as long as you go in danger, which is all a King’s life, Richard. May our sweet Lord Jesu Christ guard you and bring the evil plotting of your enemies to nothing. I have only one son.’ As she finished speaking, the last stroke of eight struck and Jack was still again. My mother had borne eight sons.

  I squeezed her hand, but did not kiss her again, or give assurance of a next time of meeting. In our family we do not make such promises, and she knew as well as I that before she saw me again, I must ride to war. While she had been so close to me, I noticed with a shock that her hair under the nun’s coif had been cropped. Three feet of magnificent snow-white hair clipped close as her camomile lawn. Proud Cis had sacrificed her greatest vanity.

  We rejoined the household at Aylesbury, and progressed without lingering to Kenilworth. I had chosen this place in preference to Warwick, which holds too many memories, for there, in her father’s castle, two months short of twenty-nine years ago, Anne my wife was born.

  This part of Warwickshire is a heavily wooded, secret sort of land, where the sky is glimpsed in patches and the wind filtered by leaves, in which, if left too long, I’d feel enclosed. In Kenilworth chase, the game almost falls out of the trees and cover; hawks and falcons grew indolent with the abundance of quarry. From this greenwood retreat, I sent my bastard son John to the north, to Sheriff Hutton. It was for his own safety, but he protested as if banished to far Cathay, and looked at me with those injured squirrel’s eyes, as his mother had when I left her, which had been often. John pleaded, ‘My lord father, your Grace, you went with your brother the King, to fight, when you were fourteen.’

  I said patiently, ‘When I was fourteen, it was not necessary to go; later, I went, but saw no fighting. John, you are not even fourteen until December. No.’ When I say no, he knows better than to argue. ‘Afterwards,’ I said, in an attempt to cheer us both, ‘I’ll send you to Calais. My Captain will have to start earning his wages.’ He smiled at this, looked pleased and proud, but his unease was not entirely dispelled. Sometimes he seems as vulnerable as myself at his age, but less enforced to hide it. I kissed him on both cheeks and hugged him, conscious that I said farewell to the last of my children. He swore to pray
daily for a victory over my enemies, especially to St George and St Anne, also to apply himself to improving his Latin, French and law, and to practise hard with bow and weapons, so he might serve me well when he is full fourteen and a grown man. He doesn’t know how lucky he is: bastards, if God is willing, more often grow to old age than those born in wedlock. I was sorrier to see him go than he knew, I’d grown used to finding him for ever standing in my shadow. Though he is not Anne’s child, it is good to have a son.

  At Kenilworth, one night near Whitsuntide, I was made to suffer the very thing I had gone there, in preference to Warwick, to avoid. I couldn’t sleep, and got up from my bed at the hour of deepest dark, to open a window. Sometimes I’m stifled in a closed room. Going barefoot on the tiles, to leave my squire undisturbed, sleeping on his truckle-bed at the foot of mine, I opened a casement and stood mindlessly looking out. In a sky of fleeing cloud, the moon rode high and full, mirrored on the Mere, where dark clotted shapes of beech and oak lay reflected at its rim. This lake, guarding the castle on north and west, is one of the most attractive features of Kenilworth. One almost expected to see an arm arise from it, clad in white, like that which brandished aloft the sword Excalibur, thrown by Sir Bedivere, when Arthur lay dying. Not long ago it had rained; somewhere a gutter dripped loudly and persistently. The chill of night was sharp enough to raise hairs on my arms and prickle me with gooseflesh, though I’m accustomed to bear cold without much discomfort.

  I leaned my head against the window-frame. The quiet made me feel slack in body and mind, though pleasantly so; the days are filled with noise. The room overlooked a rose garden, where colourless and formless flowers clustered on dark bushes. Climbers had been trained up the wall under the window, and their scent on the rain-washed air was very sweet. I shrank bodily away from it, stricken by a pain sudden as a weapon jammed in the gut. I shut the window none too gently, and dived back into bed, shivering between chilled sheets.