“Then you really trust me?” sighed Dickon, persuaded at last.
“After this morning, how could I not trust you? You paid back that ridiculous money, although in a sense it was more yours than mine. You came when I so desperately needed you.”
Conscientiously, he warned her that, once in London, he might have little time to look after her. “When Master Dale gave me leave to come I promised I would make up the time on the work I am doing for Sir Walter Moyle’s house,” he explained. “My master has contracted to finish it before Sir Walter comes back from Calais.”
The place name turned the thoughts of both of them to Tom. Dickon released her and said with scrupulous loyalty, “I want you to know that there was nothing Tom could do, short of losing this fine new appointment Otherwise he would have come himself, instead of rushing round in the early hours of the morning to tell me. You do believe that, don’t you? He was even then due to start for Dover. Would have to ride hard to catch up with Sir Walter’s party.”
“I know that Tom had a fine appointment and is a fine horseman,” said Tansy. If she spoke coldly it was because her heart was aching with tenderness for the man who was only a penniless apprentice and an inexperienced horseman on a hired nag, and who had yet come to her.
Dickon laid a hand on each of her shoulders and looked searchingly into her face. “This hasn’t made any difference — about your feelings for Tom?”
“No. If he were here in this room, with his gaiety and laughter, we should both be adoring him. But he isn’t. It is you and I, Dickon.”
He kissed her hands with gratitude. “I have always thought — been mortally afraid — that it was he whom you cared for.”
“I did. In a different way. I have always turned to him, shared every foolish joke with him. Sometimes he could charm the heart out of me … ”
“And will again?”
“No.” Tansy kept silent for a few moments as if trying to be quite sure of this herself. “No,” she repeated, looking up at him with smiling reassurance. “If I trust you enough to come to London unwed, you will have to trust me in this and never let a single twinge of jealousy mar the friendship of you two. I know now that our love — -yours and mine — is something of body and soul which transcends anything that happened before.”
“So that you are now prepared to leave all your familiar friends and go out into a new, unpredictable world with me,” marvelled Dickon out of the lovable depths of his essential modesty.
They stood before the open window as if making some silent, informal marriage vow. Everything was very still in the house. And still out in the streets. The hurrying footsteps and the excited voices had all passed by — to Gallowgate. In the midst of their own urgent affairs they suddenly became aware of this. And then of the stench of burning flesh drifting faintly on the evening air. Suddenly Tansy’s resolute calm broke. She turned and clung to him, hiding her face against his breast. “If you hadn’t come, it might have been me!” she cried, in a choking voice.
He held her tightly in his arms, while gazing out over her head into the gathering twilight with a kind of awe. “You and I have been called upon to suffer more than most young couples,” he said. “Yet now we have much to thank God for.”
But, after resting acquiescently for a while, Tansy tore herself from his arms in a fresh frenzy of horror. “Let us go now!” she cried, in an unnaturally high-pitched voice. “I can’t stay here another moment. Always when I try to sleep I see Gladys’s clever, strangling hands. Rose’s eyes, beseeching me … Leicester is too full of memories.”
Leicester was full of memories, too, for King Richard’s bastard. But he had the sense to recognize that it is better to come to terms with even the most terrible memories than to try to evade them. “You always said you wished you could show me the King’s bedroom,” he reminded her gently.
She almost shrank from him. From what she thought was his lack of understanding. “But not any more — now — ”
He drew her towards the door and up the stairs. “You will be doing me a great kindness,” he persisted.
Outside the best bedroom she stopped and shook her head piteously. “I can’t go in there — again.”
“You can — with me. Together we can do anything.” He pulled her inside. “Pretend you are showing it to some traveller. You need not think what you are saying.” Obediently, Tansy began the familiar patter, pointing out all the tokens of his father’s last night beneath a roof. Gradually, though she kept her eyes averted from the bed, she began trying to endow each souvenir with reality for him. And gradually, as if her last experience in the room were being exorcised, she herself began to see it as it had been, hospitable and ordinary, on the night of the late King’s arrival, before Bosworth. “He explained to me about those carvings of the Holy Sepulchre,” she said, surprised to find herself looking at them with interest again without seeing her step-mother’s red head against the pillows. “So kind he was, and with a pleasant voice. I liked him instantly.” She turned and looked at her future husband, standing at the foot of the bed. “Standing just where you are, he was,” she added, marvelling afresh how much they were alike. “And in this fading light you might be he,” she added, with no supernatural fear, but with only anxiety for the man she loved.
The fine fingers of the younger Richard caressed the coverlet. There was a smile on his lips, as if he saw someone he loved lying in the bed. It was doubtful if he even heard her. “I shall sometimes remember him now in a homely room — not always as he looked being brought back across Bow Bridge,” he murmured gratefully.
They closed the door on that part of their life, and went side by side in silence down the stairs. Out in the yard their mounts were waiting to take them into their unknown future. Mettlesome black Mopsy and the lovable pony, Pippin. And there with them was the bent old man Jod, serving her as he had been all her life, but now with the tears of parting running unashamedly down his wrinkled cheeks.
It was nearly Tansy’s undoing. She clung to him, weeping, and saying through her sobs, “I can’t! I can’t!”
But there was the comforting thought that she would have news of him in letters from Will Jordan, and be able to send him messages.
“Be good to her,” muttered the old man, knowing well enough that he was tersely ordering a King’s son.
Dickon lifted her into the pony’s saddle and pressed the ostler’s gnarled hand. The last half-angel of a ’prentice’s pocket money would have passed between them, but Jod would have none of it. “Keep it for her comfort on the journey,” he said. And years spent in an inn yard had taught him which types he could trust.
16
The journey to London was so great an adventure for Tansy that it helped to wipe out recent painful recollections. Friends of the Marsh family took her and Dickon in for the night at Lutterworth, and the following night they received similar kindness in Oxford. While looking for cheap lodging in the High Street, which seethed with lively groups of students, Dickon had the good fortune to meet one of his friend Piers Harrowe’s brothers, who was studying at St. Edmund Hall.
“I will ask the porter at our gatehouse if he knows of anyone who can take you in,” he offered, after Dickon had explained something of Tansy’s story and exchanged news of London. And while the three of them stood there, looking in at the courtyard with its well and wisteria-clad walls, it chanced that young Harrowe’s tutor came out. A youngish, bustling priest, followed by a servant bearing books and baggage. Intent on some journey of his own, he acknowledged his pupil’s good wishes abstractedly. But, while wedged among them in the narrow entrance arch, he could not but overhear their unhopeful conversation with the porter, and paused to see if he could help. “In an urgent hurry to get to London, are they?” he said to Harrowe. Then his glance shifted to Dickon, and he appeared to like what he saw. “If these are friends of yours whose honesty you can vouch for, and they can fend for themselves, there is no reason why they shouldn’t sleep the night in my empt
y house, put their horses in my stable and return the key to the porter here in the morning,” he offered.
All three of them began to thank him effusively, but he was still looking hard at Dickon. “Since you have the key of my door, I had better know your name, young man,” he stipulated. But when Dickon told him he laughed pleasantly and added, “My name is Richard, too. Richard Simon.” And then, remembering the urgency of his own affairs, he left them abruptly and strode swiftly up St. Edmund Lane.
“What an extraordinary kindness!” exclaimed Tansy, suddenly aware of how desperately tired she was.
“He evidently took it for granted that we were married, and I would to God we were!” said Dickon, putting an arm around her. “But how does a young tutor priest come to have a house and stabling?”
“He takes younger pupils there, coaching them for their studies in college. But he is off to Ireland again, taking one of these boys home to his parents perhaps,” explained Harrowe. “I will show you the house, and I pray you give all my messages to my family when you reach London.”
Tansy slept like a log in the housekeeper’s bed and, in spite of her protests, her betrothed slept in the hayloft. “And it won’t be for the first time, as you very well know,” he said, making light of his care for her good name. What she also knew, more surely than ever, was that his word was always to be trusted.
Her first sight of London temporarily banished the kindly priest and his house and all the tragedy in Leicester from Tansy’s mind. Coming through Aldgate towards Lombard Street, they caught glimpses of the massive white keep of the Tower, then the gleaming river alive with masts, and the gabled houses on London Bridge stretching to the Surrey shore. And riding along Cheapside they could see the fine houses of the goldsmiths and the spire of St. Paul’s. To Tansy, who had never been out of Leicestershire, it was as breath-taking as a dream. And if she had to stay alone in this bustling strange city, with her betrothed bound to report immediately to his master, it was some comfort to sleep that night at the familiar sign of the Blue Boar.
“You will have to share an attic with two of my maids,” the busy Cheapside landlady told her. “We never seem to have a room vacant since this new King began encouraging foreign merchants and livening up trade. With all the shipping lying in the Pool, and the captains and traders coming ashore, my husband and I scarcely know which way to turn.”
Tansy was quick to seize her chance. She said that her father had kept the Blue Boar in Leicester, where — as everybody knew — the late King Richard had slept. And that she would like to help. She was soon the centre of good-natured questioning, during which it transpired that both inns had, with prudent haste, changed their Boar signs from white to blue. And so, with her fund of good sense and will to work, Tansy stayed on and soon became invaluable to the overworked hostess of one of London’s most thriving taverns. And if it wasn’t home, at least the sea-faring and foreign guests were interesting, and jovial Mistress Goodyear was considerably easier to work for than Rose Marsh had been.
They were happy days for Dickon and Tansy. They were both interested in their work and well trusted, and because they had little free time their hours together were all the more precious. Dickon took her to see the splendid house on the Strand that was rising for Sir Walter Moyle, and although his talk of corbels and quadrants and trace wheels left her puzzled, she was able to glow with some of his enthusiasm for the almost finished beauty of the structure. He presented her to his master whom she thanked so charmingly for allowing Dickon to come to Leicester that, apart from professional interest in his most promising pupil’s work, Hurland Dale found himself taking a personal interest in their fortunes.
On Sundays they walked over London Bridge to Southwark or to Smithfield so that Dickon could take part in some of the sports. Or along the river past Charing village to see the royal palace and the Abbey at Westminster. Dickon could gaze indefinitely at dim vistas of arches and shafts of light filtering down from a finely carved clerestory, and told her with pride that it was Hugh Hurland, an ancestor of his own master, who had built the wonderful hammerbeam roof in Westminster Hall for Richard the Second. “The King used to call him ‘our beloved carpenter’,” sighed Richard Broome, the humble apprentice. “What would I give to create such beauty for a King!”
A remark which Tansy rightly supposed referred only to a Plantagenet King.
But often they would just sit beside the Thames in the sunshine, eating the midday food which she had brought, and talking. Making up time for all those months which they had spent apart — joyfully exploring each other’s heart and mind. The time together was never long enough. But even in talking of ordinary things, Tansy was rather sadly aware that she did not know Dickon as intimately as she knew Tom. There were places in his mind which were still remote from her, reactions which sometimes startled her by their vehemence.
“Have you ever seen King Henry coming in or going out of the Palace?” she asked, watching a gilded barge moor alongside the royal wharf.
Dickon spat an apple core with unnecessary violence into the rushes. “Once. Without intent.”
“I saw him in Leicester, of course, when he was staying at the Golden Crown. A mean-looking man. But they say he works harder than most of his subjects.”
“It may well be so. He was on his way to the docks to inspect some new merchant ships when I saw him.”
Meeting this barrier of angry reserve, Tansy handed him a pasty and hastened to change the subject. “I worried so much about you last autumn, my love. When we kept hearing how bad that epidemic of sweating sickness was.”
“It was horrible,” agreed Dickon, in more normal tones. “One of our best carpenters died. Making us all laugh with his bawdy tales at noon, and dead by midnight.”
“We heard that even the Lord Mayor of London himself died of it.”
“Two Lord Mayors — within five days. And a whole clack of aldermen. But the plague ended as suddenly as it had begun. In time for the Tudor to have his coronation on the date he had announced, of course. The fates are always with him!”
And there they were, back on a topic which — however carefully avoided — was seldom far from their consciousness. “How could the people accept him and shout for him so readily?” murmured Tansy, tucking her feet under her lest they be wetted by the gentle lapping of the encroaching tide.
“Most of them did. The merchants and ship-owners with good reason, perhaps. But underneath the prosperous face of London there is still plenty of bitter muttering. You hear it at every archery butt and tavern. Particularly because he declared all who had fought for my — fought on the Yorkist side — guilty of treason. And then forgave most of them, so that they should seem to owe their lives to his magnanimity.”
“I know. People were raging about that in Leicester. How could it be treason to fight for the man who was still their living King?”
“Even some of his supporters must have pointed out to him the absurdity of it. Men like Stanley, perhaps — who should know all there is to know about treachery! So the Tudor began to count the date of his accession from the day before Bosworth. That Sunday, you remember, when I rode out after the army to the King’s tent.”
“With that unspeakable Gervase man who stole your money,” said Tansy, thinking how Dickon could do with it now. “Lord Stanley has been created Earl of Derby for his pains, hasn’t he?”
“Yes. He is very much the royal father-in-law now, although it is common knowledge that he and Lady Margaret Beaufort haven’t lived together for years. And ‘our dear Uncle Jasper’ of Pembroke is now Earl of Derby. While loyal men like Lovell hide in exile somewhere — if they still live!”
“And what happened to dead Clarence’s son, young Warwick? I heard milord Lovell telling someone that King Richard had him sent up north with the Lady Elizabeth of York for safety.”
“To Sheriff Hutton, in Yorkshire. But the Tudor had him brought to London and put in the Tower. And that is another thing the people are mu
ttering about. Some say that he has been done away with.”
“Customers at the Blue Boar in Cheapside are always talking about the new King’s tardiness in keeping his promise to marry the Lady Elizabeth. And complaining that even now, when she is Queen and has borne him a son, she has not been crowned.”
“All the women seem to be enraged about that.” Dickon brushed the crumbs from his Sunday doublet and turned to Tansy with his rare, attractive smile. “But why should we let the usurper and his sorry affairs spoil our few precious hours together?” he demanded, pulling her against his hungry heart.
“We seem to be living in such difficult times,” she murmured, sadly aware that it must be much more difficult for him to shake off such thoughts than for any of his carefree fellow apprentices, even when the girl he loved was in his arms.
“It is bound to be difficult, living into a new dynasty,” he said, looking down at her with tenderness. “But I promise you that whatever happens I shall always care most for my sweet wife and for my craft.”
But this was a promise which was becoming increasingly hard to keep. For Francis, Lord Lovell, was not dead. And John de la Pole, son of one of King Richard’s sisters, had crossed to Dublin to join him, spreading a rumour that Warwick had escaped from the Tower of London and come with him. And the pupil whom Richard Simon had taken to Ireland at their instigation was no longer being coached in the classics, but in the far more dangerous game of being a Plantagenet pretender.
In England he was beginning to be talked about. He and his promoters were working for a Yorkist revival. Some people said he was only a baker’s son. Others believed him to be the younger of the two Princes who bad so mysteriously disappeared from the public scene after Bishop Stillington had sworn to the illegality of their mother’s marriage, and their Uncle Richard had accepted the crown. The Queen Mother was naturally intrigued, and another of Richard’s sisters, the widowed Duchess of Burgundy, was only too eager to aid anyone who conspired against the man who had usurped her brother’s crown and stopped her annuity. So publicity concerning this lad began to stir the placid pool of Henry the Seventh’s apparent popularity — an impersonal popularity fostered by a war-torn nation’s longing for security, and lulled by expectation of some era of extraordinary felicity when he chose for his son, born in Winchester, the legendary name of Arthur. For, astute and hard-working as Welsh Henry was, he lacked charm or any spell-binding personality. Unlike Richard Plantagenet, whom men either hated or fought for, some of them risking their lives for his cause even after he was dead.
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