by Robert Nye
‘One drink will do no harm to an old soldier,’ I said, winking at Nell. She shrugged. She stroked her horns. So I called him up.
This entertainment did not work out well. Doll was further on in her cups than I had gauged. She also regretted rather bitterly the intermission which Pistol’s arrival occasioned in my fondling of her titties. Pistol, for his part, the silly old fool, started making dirty jokes and puns which nobody could have followed without footnotes. This was a fault of his. He was a kind of failed actor.
Doll replied to the complicated insinuations with straightforward names –
Filthy bung!
Fustian!
Mouldy rogue!
and worse. She also accused him of living on stewed prunes and dried cakes. Which seemed a bit much. On his salary.
Pistol started off on some extraordinary rigmarole about pack-horses and hollow pampered jades of Asia, apparently only capable of travelling at thirty miles a day, which he was inviting us to compare with (I think it was) Caesars and cannibals and Trojan Greeks.
That was enough for me.
‘Pistol,’ I said, ‘I want to be quiet.’
That started him off into a kind of Italian, and stuff about those three old spinsters, Clotho, Lachesis, and Atropos. Atropos, the Fate who did the cutting, especially excited him.
‘My rapier,’ I said.
And kicked him down the stairs.
Doll was enchanted by this small display of gallantry on her behalf. ‘You valiant little villain you!’ she cried. ‘Come here! Come here! I want to feel your rapier!’
Nell threw a whole shovelfull of sea-coals on the fire, and went on in a kind of ecstasy about naked weapons. She grew even more ecstatic when the possibility occurred to her that I might have been hurt in the groin in the tussle with Pistol. She wanted to examine me.
I wanted to be rid of her. I pretended to be worried about Pistol.
‘The man’s a villain,’ said Nell.
‘I know that,’ I said. ‘But he is my friend. Besides, he was drunk. And he thinks you are Helen of Troy.’
‘Go on!’ said Nell.
‘My fair Calipolis,’ I said. ‘His very words. He thinks you have a face capable of launching a thousand ships and burning the topless towers of Ilium.’
‘I’ll go and see if the gentleman’s got no confirmities,’ said Nell immediately. And left us.
We were alone. The fire blazed bright.
‘Jack, you sweet little rogue, you!’ cried Doll. She trickled her fingers through my beard. ‘I love you,’ she said. ‘You’re as valorous as Hector of Troy. Worth five of Agamemnon. Ten times better than the Nine Worthies.’
‘That Pistol!’ I growled. ‘I’d like to toss him up in a blanket!’
‘That Fastolf!’ purred Doll. ‘I’d like to toss him off between sheets!’
She sat on my lap. We kissed and played. There were musicians in the chamber next to ours, and the music was both sweet and sad. It had an edge to it. As though the strings could scarcely bear the beauty of what they had to sing.
All at once Doll said – and I swear in that moment, inspired no doubt by the sweet sadness of the lutes, she had a look in her eyes such as I have seen lately again in the eyes of my niece Miranda:
‘Jack, when will you leave off fighting by day and fucking by night, and begin to patch up your body for heaven?’
I kissed her mouth. ‘Peace,’ I said.
Our tongues played together.
‘Don’t speak like a death’s head,’ I muttered, when that was done. I stroked her cheeks and her chin. ‘Don’t ask me to remember my end.’
Doll nibbled at my ear. She was off already on another tack.
‘What’s that Prince Hal like, really?’ she said.
I watched the armies fighting in the fire. The sparks in the chimneyback. I selected my words quite carefully. ‘Good,’ I said. ‘Shallow,’ I said. ‘Young,’ I said. I could see Badby in that fire. And Hotspur too. And the eyes that flashed like eagles and the mouth that always drank the one cup to my two. And the Mock King in that room downstairs in this very tavern, addressing me as his Mock Son, and promising with no mockery – suddenly Hal himself again – that at the end of time he’d have no time for Fastolf. Banish plump Jack? I do. I will.
I sighed. I smiled. ‘A good shallow young fellow,’ I said.
Doll started rubbing at my codpiece. ‘They say that Mr Poins has a good wit,’ she remarked provocatively, putting an emphasis on the word wit which I can only describe as voluptuous.
‘Wit!’ I said. ‘Is that what you’d call it? His wit is about as thick as Tewkesbury mustard.’ I roared with laughter. ‘Little Miss Poins!’ I said. ‘You know the tale about him and Nellie’s harm-pits?’
Doll nodded and giggled. She had my member out. She was playing with it, making it slap up and down against my belly. ‘Then why does Prince Henry love him?’ she asked.
I plunged my fingers between her legs and whispered a suggestion in her ear.
‘Ugh,’ she said.
‘Well, no more of that,’ I said. ‘Kiss me, Doll!’
She did. On the tipmost top of my towering prick. She was very drunk. Yet also, I think, she was very sincere. ‘I kiss you,’ she said, ‘with a most constant heart.’
‘And a most heartstant cunt?’
‘You know, you know.’
‘Let’s to bed!’
‘One more little cup of sack before we go?’ Doll whispered.
‘Of course,’ I said. I snapped my fingers.
Two potboys stepped forward out of the shadows to attend us.
Two sweet little potboys in leather jerkins and shiny aprons.
Two potboys.
Two spies.
Two practical jokers.
Two poppinjays.
Two prigs.
‘I love your leather jerkins, lads,’ I said. ‘But buckram suits you better. Buckram becomes you. It goes with your eyes.’
Chapter Sixty-Nine
How Sir John Fastolf went to war again
17th July
His Royal Highness the Prince of Wales saw fit graciously to observe that I was a globe of sinful continents.
I put away my Africa.
‘What a life you lead!’ muttered Hal, striding up and down the chamber, kicking at the furniture for want of anything more sensible to do. What bit of kingship there was in him at that moment – and it always fluctuated, reader, like one of those stars that is at some times a bright glory, at others so much a speck you doubt its very existence – that bit of kingship was suddenly embarrassed by the trick he had played upon me, dressing up as a potboy at the instigation of that master-mistress archimandrite of practical jokers, Yedward Poins, and spying from the shadows on my love-making with Doll. ‘What a life!’ he shouted, booting a cushion into the fire.
I watched it burn, and I watched him watch it burn.
‘A better than yours,’ I said.
3d a day.
KNOCK KNOCK KNOCK.
KNOCK KNOCK KNOCK.
(You absolute idiot, Nanton. Sit down. I don’t mean there’s anyone here. I mean there was great knockings there, then. God has sent me gowks for secretaries. O nit. O wit.
Hanson has it right at least. Deo gratias. One quarter of something like a brain out of these two half-wits. I suppose in a world ruled by reason it’s as much as a gentleman might dare expect.)
KNOCK KNOCK KNOCK.
It was Peto. My man Peto (a born knocker if ever there was one), come as it happened to put an end to this pretty scene in the Dolphin Chamber, with the news that messengers were charging into London from the north with reports of a fresh insurrection. The Leper King, at Westminster, was howling for Hal. His mind was cracking, Peto said, since he kept comparing his own estate as King of England very unfavourably with the situation of a ship-boy clinging to the top of a mast in a storm-tossed ship. He seemed to think the boy up the mast would be able to sleep better than he could. As usual, he was bemoa
ning the civil wars which prevented his crusade to the Holy Land. ‘He talks to himself a lot,’ said Peto.
‘What does he say?’ Hal demanded.
‘Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown,’ said Peto.
Poins giggled.
But Hal already had his leather jerkin off. ‘My sword and cloak!’ he said. They were brought. He put them on. He stopped in the door, and turned.
‘Fastolf,’ he said, ‘goodnight.’
It was the closest he ever came to an apology.
I paid the musicians. I said goodnight to Doll. She wept.
Chapter Seventy
Why Sir John Fastolf went to war again
18th July
Why did I follow Hal? Why did I go to the wars again?
Two questions, Worcester. Three answers.
First, I followed Hal because I was his education.
I do not say I was his tutor. No dry nurse, I. No proctor or praelector. No abecedarian. Nor of course was I anything in the way of an example to the young Prince, a model for his imitation.
No. John Fastolf was Hal’s university. I was his teaching, not his teacher. In me, with me, by me, through me he was prepared for the throne of England and of France. The battle of Agincourt was won on the playing fields of Gadshill.
Harry Monmouth, you see, was essentially an actor. Without a role, he was nothing. What some have since chosen to speak of as his misspent youth in my company was really his rehearsal in a variety of parts. I led him on. I let him play. I provided his preparation and his training ground.
Consider. A King is a man who plays a King. In the court of my company, Hal was always acting. I let him play at thieves. I let him play at putting thieves to rout. I let him play at roaring boy and whorer. I let him play at drunkard – and never let on that I noticed his weak head and iron will, the emptying of the tankards in the flower-pots when he thought no one was watching, the drinking of the one glass only to my two, or three, or four, or seven. I let him play at being his own father, admonishing me, his son, his prodigal. I let him play at potboys and Peeping Toms. I let him play at being himself.
(And that not just when I was cast in the role of his father.)
I come now to the hardest thing to say. It is even possible that I let him play at having feelings. God knows now what ever passed through Harry Monmouth’s heart, and if there was ever in that strange cold organ a movement, a stirring of affection, a feeling of true friendship for me. If there was, then I salute you, Hal. And not as an Emperor, either. If there was not, then I salute you only as an Emperor, a King who learnt to play at making friends by his play-acting friendship for his fat court fool.
I followed Hal because I was his shadow.
Shadows at sunset, madam, as at dawn, are longer than what casts them. Only at noon is your shadow underfoot. At Agincourt was Harry’s noon.
But why did I go to the wars again?
First, because I am an Englishman, and my country needed me.
Second, because I needed the money.
Chapter Seventy-One
About glory & double Gloucester cheese
19th July
Not that there was much of it. Money, I mean. There never was, for me, in England. France was where the pickings were to be picked. And the pluckings plucked. Still, in that long hot summer, following Hal north to face the rebel forces, I mislaid a map and found myself in Gloucestershire.
Gloucestershire is a state of mind I am very fond of. Apart from the double cheeses and the cider and the perry, there is the fact that the word Gloucester comes from the old British word Glou (meaning city) and ceaster (meaning camp). Caer Glou – the bright city. That’s what they used to call the town of Gloucester in ancient times. And from CEASTER to CAISTER is just a couple of hops.
I had my eye on bright possibilities in Gloucestershire, and discovering myself there I determined on a recruiting drive. I stayed with our old friend Mr Shallow, now Justice Shallow, his majesty’s judicial scourge of the Cotswolds. Shallow was in business there with his cousin, Silence. Never was jurisdiction better christened.
Shallow had assembled men for me. There was
Ralph Mouldy
Simon Shadow
Thomas Wart
Francis Feeble
Peter Bullcalf
– fine old English names.
It fell to me to examine them for military service, and to assess their pecuniary status as regards buying themselves out of the Army once enrolled. The two most likely lads from the martial point of view were Mouldy and Bullcalf. But Mouldy was worried about how his old woman would get on without him, and besides could afford to pay Bardolph forty shillings for his release. Bullcalf, for his part, coughed up another forty, so we released him also. Wart was a very ragged wart. No money to buy himself out. I took him. Shadow ditto. And Feeble, a woman’s tailor.
Shallow, as bird-brained as ever, missed the whole point. He thought I should have selected Mouldy and Bullcalf, because they were young and strong. I had to explain to him my principles:
‘Do you think I care for the mere limbs?’ I said. ‘It is the spirit that counts. And, besides, your choice of sturdy men shows how little you know of the realities of battle. Look at this Shallow. Give me a man like that any day! He’s so thin he presents no target to the enemy. Their archers might just as well take aim at the edge of a penknife.’
I pointed at Francis Feeble, the woman’s tailor. ‘Then there is the question of retreats,’ I said.
‘Retreats?’ said Shallow.
‘Your retreat,’ I explained, ‘is a military manoeuvre by which many a knight has carried all before him. This Feeble here, this woman’s tailor. Now there is a man built for running. A spare man.’
‘A spare man,’ said Shallow, ever the little Sir Echo.
‘Unanimously,’ I said. ‘Give me the spare men, and spare me the great ones.’
My Corporal Bardolph marched the men away.
You think this episode inglorious, sir? Ah, well, it depends what you mean by glory. I mean what the Psalmist meant, when he cried out: Awake up my glory, awake psaltery and harp. No doubt you mean something else. No doubt you mean the great glory which – while I was at work in Gloucestershire – attended the confrontation of the Rebels and the Royalists in the north?
Gloria virtutis umbra. The shadow of virtue there was cast by the trees in Gaultree Forest, in Yorkshire. The Rebels were gloriously persuaded to meet in the middle of the wood, with Hal and the bull-necked John, Duke of Bedford, where they were promised that all their grievances would be redressed, so long as they dismissed their men immediately.
‘Let’s drink to friendship here,’ said Hal.
The insurgents took him at his word. They dispersed their forces. The next minute, Hal and John had the ringleaders arrested and clapped in irons. They were brought to London, and their heads were soon singing all kinds of old songs about glory from the tower on London Bridge nearest the city gate. Some wit – I should think it was Poins – persuaded the Prince of Wales to arrange the heads also so that the two principals, the Archbishop of York, and Lord Hastings, were turned to be facing each other, with their lips kissing.
Just to remind us that they had been more than good friends.
Or that they had drunk to something more than friendship in Hal’s glorious Gall Tree Wood?
Dismas. That was his name. The Penitent Thief.
O glory. O piss off.
And Justice Shallow and Justice Silence talking in that summer afternoon, while the flies buzzed, and the wasps on the fallen apples:
‘Jesu! Jesu! The mad days that I have spent!’
Silence.
‘And to see how many of my old acquaintance are dead!’
‘We shall all follow,’ Silence said.
‘Certain,’ said Shallow. ‘That’s certain. That’s sure. That’s very sure. Death, as the Psalmist says, is certain to all. All shall die. How much for a good yoke of bullocks at Stamford Fair?’
‘I wasn’t there myself,’ said Silence.
‘Death,’ said Shallow. ‘Death is certain. Is old Double of your town still alive?’
‘Dead, sir.’
‘Jesu! Jesu! Dead!’
‘Dead, sir.’
‘He drew a good bow.’
‘Dead.’
‘How much for a score of ewes?’
‘Depends. Good ones – say, ten pounds.’
Dismas. His feast is kept in some places. The Good Thief. He’s named in the Martyrology on 25th March. Fr Brackley tells me that’s his day. It’s in the Acta sanctorum Martii of Bede and Florus. It’s in Wandelbert and Notker and Rhabanus Maurus. It’s in the Depositio martyrum and the Depositio episcoporum, which go back to the year of Our Forgiveness 354. It’s in Usuard. 25th March. Dismas.
That’s right, Worcester. It is the day on which we started this book.
Chapter Seventy-Two
About the death of the Leper King
20th July
Hal now indulged his talent for play-acting to the very hilt. It was the night of his father’s dying. Bolingbroke’s face was hideously disfigured with disease. He looked like a toad. His nose, his fingers, and his toes were all rotted away. His body was so contracted that it was scarcely a cubit long.
The Leper King lay on a pallet of straw in front of a great fire in a room of Westminster Palace called the Jerusalem Chamber. The Crown of England was set beside his pillow on a cushion of gold cloth. Bolingbroke came by that crown by a crooked path, and since he’d had it he had hardly let the thing out of his sight.