“It will not be endured, Sire.”
The King’s voice was huskier than ever.
“And who is left in England to resent it? Your Captain Welles is dead. Lord Stanley and Lord Wenlock have parted company with you; and I have heard your noble brother, the Marquis Montacute, was on King Edward’s side in this late affair.”
The Earl, looking at his rings still, smiled.
“I do not despair of my brother, Sire. Edward made a mistake when he took the Earldom of Northumberland away from him and gave him a magpie’s nest to maintain his state with. Marquis Montacute: it’s a fine title, but I think my brother would rather have kept the lands that Edward gave back to the Percys: and for the rest, there are the common people.”
“Are they all the hope Edward has left you?”
“Remember, Sire, they are different from the commons of France. They are not serfs. They wear wool and eat flesh and fish, and if they ever drink water, it is by way of penance. They are rich men beside yours. Also, they are very good archers. The commons of England are powerful people, Sire; and they regret my exile. I have been a kind lord all my life. Men trust me: and they are getting very tired of Edward. He is jolly and hearty; but they know which is worth more: a kind word and a clap on the back or an abatement of taxes. When we crowned him they believed he would amend everything the house of Lancaster had done amiss. All he has given them is more battles, loss of their goods, ruin of their trade, continual calls to leave their homes at their own charges and fight his rebels. His marriage stinks in their nostrils as much as mine, too. They would be glad to see the world change again.”
“I wonder how you will change it.”
“As I set out to do, your Grace: Edward has shown himself unworthy to rule. At least, I can persuade England that he has. I crowned him. I shall uncrown him. My son-in-law has set forth the reasons why we ought still to maintain the right of York against the right of Lancaster, and as he himself says, he is the next heir after his brother. I need only ships and money. If your Grace will help me with those, I can make Duke George King of England.”
“There is another brother, is there not?”
The Earl looked sideways. The question seemed to have surprised him.
“A child,” he said.
“Sickly,” added the Duke.
“In such a quarrel as you are making, however, he would be for one of his brothers and against the other. That is, you may say, inevitable. Whom would he favour?” “Edward,” said the Duke; “he is his shadow.”
The Earl shrugged his shoulders.
“I assure your Grace it is of no importance. He is only seventeen, very undersized for his years, bookish. He has ailed from birth; will never make old bones I fancy; has no name in the country.”
“Then it seems that we need not regard him. But tell me, my Lord of Warwick. You will have some plan, I make no doubt, for dealing with Edward when he is deposed. An uncrowned King is a very dangerous and difficult person.
“I hope his death may not be necessary. I’m fond of the lad. We were friends once. I had thought of imprisonment: in the Tower probably.”
“Mercy is a precious thing, my Lord. We ought all to be merciful and long-suffering, because bloodshed offends God.”
Sir William moved his shoulders a little on the hard wall against which he sat. He always experienced a slightly chilly feeling when the King talked of mercy and the eschewing of bloodshed.
“You would doubtless require men as well as ships, my dear Lord?”
The Earl and the Duke leaned forward. The Duke drew his chair up a little nearer to the King’s settle. The Earl said:
“Not many, Sire: once landed in England I could raise twenty thousand; and it would damage the Duke’s cause if he arrived with a large foreign troop. Artillery would help more. We shall need that; and money.”
“Money.”
The King was almost whispering now.
“Against good and sufficient pledges, of course.”
“Then with ships and artillery and a loan against good pledges, you can uncrown King Edward?”
“As surely as God made me, your Grace.”
There was a long quiet in the room. Suddenly, the King lifted his hand. The big dog looked to see why the scratching of its ears had stopped.
“I regret it with all my heart, my dear Lord, but I will not lend you either a fishing-smack or a Paris sol to make Duke George King of England.”
It appeared to Sir William, that of the two, the Earl was more surprised. He sat up quickly, like a man who has been stabbed under the ribs, and put his hand to his gold chain. The Duke lifted his voice:
“But, Sire, you cannot …”
Kingmaker threw out his right hand, the palm toward him, stopping his words. Then he stood up; began to walk about the room. His feet hissed on the rushes. The King was stroking the dog again. Presently, the Earl stopped. It was growing very dark now.
“My Lord King, I have known your Grace too long to think that you do anything without counsel. Our enterprise must seem perilous to your Grace: too perilous, perhaps. But there is one consideration I have not spoken of tonight. It has been handled between us before now. It touches your Grace’s own crown very nearly. Edward of England is allied with the Duke of Burgundy.”
“I know it.”
The magpie-voice was so faint now that it seemed to speak inside the listeners’ heads, like a voice in memory.
“Your Grace knows also that Charles of Burgundy will turn his duchy into a kingdom if God gives him scope. He would be at open war with you now if he could find support. Your Grace, Edward is no longer popular in England: but there is one way by which any King of England can gain popularity, if he were as wicked as John or as mad as Henry. It is by a successful war with France.”
In the increasing shadows, the Earl seemed very tall. He stretched out one arm stiffly toward the settle.
“Make your market for it, my Lord King. You have trusted me before. Trust me in this. If you refuse us your help to dethrone Edward, then within two years the allied forces of Burgundy and England will invade France. I will borrow the words of my Lord Duke, ‘Your Grace will scarcely have forgotten Azincourt.’”
There was a sudden scuffling in the rushes as the mastiff jerked itself. The King must have pulled its ears too hard. Sir William heard its ribs sound under his hand as he patted it. His voice suddenly had become round and cheerful.
“My very dear Lord, and you my dear Lord Duke, it seems my foolish tongue has done me some injury. Forgive me. I have not explained myself. I beg your forgiveness. I said I could do nothing to make you, my Lord Duke, King of England. I did not say I wished your brother to continue in that dignity. I never said it.”
His face came round the edge of the settle like the face of a village idiot playing at peek-a-boo with the farmer’s children. A look of peculiar absurdity was given him by his black velvet cap with the nap rubbed off it, which was very greasy and stuck full of holy medals, and under which the hair was scraped into a fringe on his low forehead. He was as yellow as cheese, with a long nose and a loose mouth. His whole appearance suggested a country curate much given to good works and not quite right in his wits. Harmless, one would have said.
“It does not seem to be according to God’s will that King Edward should continue in contempt of his fellow-princes and of his own people. You tell me that he oppresses his poor commons and lavishes extorted money upon unworthy and profligate companions. Under God, I have always tried to aid what was right and just. His behaviour appears to me to be scandalous. It would not be right for us to let him rule any longer.”
The Earl had sat down again; propped his chin on his fist and was staring. The Duke of Clarence grabbed the back of his chair with both hands, twisting his body into a schoolboy’s attitude; called out:
“Then you will help us, Sire?”
“No,” said the King, “you will help me.”
He stood up and began to shamble about the room, st
ooping, in a black gown to his ankles, wiping his mouth with his hand.
“My Lord of Clarence, I feel great affection and respect for you. You seem to me a most worthy young prince. But I am not so ignorant of English affairs as you suppose. When Sir Robert Welles told his men to shout: ‘Clarence for King,’ no one heard them outside Lincolnshire. You have been driven out of England, and I do not think that anyone has made much protest. In effect, it would seem that the English do not want you for their King, and that though your noble father-in-law might put you on the throne, he could not keep you there. Your brother, I am informed, has still some following in his kingdom, so that people have not observed your greater merits. I fear, my dear Lord, that the English would never see the sense of pulling down one Yorkist King merely to put up another.”
“But I am the next heir after Edward.”
The Duke sounded like a child who has been promised a treat and will not forget it. The King wiped his mouth again.
“People are very foolish,” he said vaguely; “we have a Yorkist King who must be pulled down at whatever cost. So it seems to me, speaking under correction, that it is time for us to think about the house of Lancaster.”
Sir William heard the Duke gasp as though he were winded, and the Earl’s fist dropped with a faint smashing noise onto his knee. The King halted with his back to the empty fireplace, his head down and his hands closed behind him, and went on:
“The course of action which I shall suggest to you is that we should approach the Lady Marguerite, the wife of your King Henry, and discuss with her the means of restoring her husband to his crown and dignities.”
The Duke exploded onto his feet and began shouting: “God’s truth, am I mad or is the rest of the world? Is it possible that you’re asking me, me, to make an alliance with the she-devil who killed my father? D’you know that after Wakefield her people hacked off my father’s head and put a paper crown on it, mocking him as the Jews mocked Christ, and stuck it on a spike over Micklegate Bar, like the head of a murderer; and that they served my brother, the Earl of Rutland, in the same way? That was Marguerite. Now you want me to shake hands with her and give up the crown I ought to have to her old madman of a husband. Do you, by Christ’s blood? I’ll see the whole kingdom of France sunk in the sea first.”
“George, George,” the Earl had found words now, “hold your tongue, for the love of God. Sire, you will not be offended. My son-in-law’s a little upset. Your Grace’s suggestion took him by surprise. It was unlooked for; startles us. Sire, can you have considered what this means? Say York and Lancaster, you say cat and dog. My son-in-law believes strongly in the justice of his father’s claim. You ask him to waive it on behalf of a prince whom we both look on as a usurper: mad, too. And think of me, Sire. The Lady Marguerite regards me as her worst enemy in the world. I have been against her. It was I who published it that she is an adultress and that the late Duke of Suffolk was the father of her son. I hounded her out of England. I fought a dozen battles against her. When Harry of Windsor was captured it was I who cut off his spurs and led him through London as a traitor. How in God’s name am I to make an alliance with her now? You might ask a lamb to ally itself with a wolf. She’d give her immortal soul to put my head where she put the Duke of York’s.”
The King said to no one in particular:
“One might make some means,” and the Duke snapped at him:
“But we don’t want means.”
A thick, shaking sigh came from the Earl of Warwick. “No, Sire, it’s not possible. It’s not even to be thought of: an alliance of Trojans and Greeks, something outside imagination. Even if I and the Duke of Clarence were willing to go down on our knees to her and say that all we’ve done and thought these last ten years has been rebellion and bloody treason, that when I took arms against her I was not defending the right but destroying it, she could not listen. If she were on the throne again I should be shorter by a head before she’d sat there long enough to warm it. Set up the house of Lancaster again, Sire, and you sentence me to exile for life.”
“You are an exile now, my dear Lord. As you yourself said, with much eloquence, your only retreat is to advance. King Edward assuredly will have nothing more to say to you. I have told you, with such poor plainness as I can command, that I, for my part, will have nothing to say to King George. So there is King Henry. You tell me — and I do not doubt it — that with ships and artillery and a loan against good pledges you can uncrown King Edward. Do so, I say, and put King Henry, whose sorrows I pity and whose piety I unfeignedly admire, in his place. Patience: allow me to continue. You were about to tell me again that he is mad and that his wife would never have you as a friend. My Lord, his wife is desperate. That she does not think you an angel I, who have often heard her speak of you, am thoroughly aware; but she has the best reasons in the world for knowing your name is powerful in England; and she has a son: a most noble young prince, eighteen years of age, wonderfully handsome. Your younger daughter is fourteen, if I remember: marriageable. Bear with me a little longer. Were King Henry on the throne again, some sort of regency would be necessary. That sacred man, a true child of God if ever there was one: well, in effect, his preoccupation with heavenly things has perhaps a little unfitted him for the cares of this world. Yes, a regency certainly seems indicated. The Queen, of course, and the Prince: they would both have their share in it, and then the Prince’s father-in-law, the father of whatever young lady he might marry. A fourth person would be desirable. The son-in-law of the Prince’s father-in-law would have no great claim by blood. The relationship is a remote one. But if the son-in-law of the Prince’s father-in-law had powerfully helped the Prince to gain his rights, even making war on his own brother in that quarrel, then I think he ought to be rewarded.
“These June evenings are oppressive, I find. They make one sleepy. You, my Lord of Warwick, will have a great deal to talk over with your son-in-law, your future plans to discuss. It is a heavy responsibility to undertake the regency of a kingdom: but you will rise to it. My Lord of Concressault, will you tell the people in the ante-room to conduct the Earl of Warwick and the Duke of Clarence to their apartments? A most illuminating chat we’ve had; and there was a remark you made, my dear Lord of Warwick, that I thought was very apt and memorable about advancing and retreating. I must remember that. How pleasant it is when people can sit down and discuss all their agreements and disagreements frankly and quietly like this. No, no, not another word, I beg of you. I won’t keep you now.”
The King’s speech was becoming disarticulated. As Sir William opened the door and shouted to the valets for torches, he could still hear him scattering sentences all ways like small coins of largesse.
“An adjustment here, a small concession there, and one finds things arrange themselves neatly enough in the end. Oh yes, things arrange themselves not at all badly. It is a question of viewpoint. Eighteen is a ripe age, too, and he is really a most amiable young man. A desperate woman, my Lords, and of a consuming ambition: she will come to terms. It is only a matter of adjustment and the virtue of charity. We must not bear grudges. If all you tell me is true, these Wydvylles must be shocking people, and of course my sister-in-law was very much disappointed. Piety outwears adversity. Bead sunt humiles. I could manage the artillery, I think. This June weather exhausts one, don’t you find? And I wonder whether anything could be done about Lord Wenlock? But let us say no more about it now: not another word this evening. Are you fond of dogs, my Lord of Clarence? To me they seem the most admirable of creatures: faithful, unambitious. We shall have to think about the Burgundian navy, too. You must have a talk with the Bastard of Bourbon. He understands such things. Here are the torches at last. A thousand goodnights to you both, dear friends: think over what I’ve said; and my Lord of Warwick, offer my most distinguished compliments to your younger daughter: a thousand goodnights.”
Torches spilled into the room a pink-gold glow and smell of resin. Sir William bowed to the two Englishmen going out.
Kingmaker’s mouth was stiff and a vertical cleft was marked between his eyebrows; but his expression did not tell much. The Duke of Clarence breathed through his nose; was red. Their feet sounded loudly in the ante-chamber and went away. A valet lighted candles on the table.
“You may sit.”
Sir William took the chair the Duke had left. The King was in his settle again. By candle-light his complexion was almost deadly. He sat with his mouth open and his eyes nowhere. Sir William noticed how his shoddy gown was marked by the droppings and dribblings of his meals.
“You are tired, Sire. Shall I call your people?”
“Burgundy.” The King whispered the name and let it dangle, adding nothing to it.
“Or let me give you a drink of wine?”
“Be quiet. Burgundy, England: which have we most to fear from, de Concressault?”
“Burgundy, Sire.”
“No: Charles the Hardy by himself I can deal with. I don’t fear him without England. But England alone was too much for us in Henry of Monmouth’s time. We must fear England most.”
The King’s eyes were brightening a little, fixed straight in front of him.
“Is it really possible that your Grace can contrive an alliance between Marguerite and the Earl of Warwick now? Is it not too late in the day?”
“They call him ‘Kingmaker’ don’t they — a maker of Kings? He’ll never swallow exile; pocket his pride first. So will she, that odious woman. Adversity is a strong argument.”
“But to marry her son to his daughter …”
“A detestable youth: I am sorry for the Earl’s daughter with all my heart. We shall contrive it, though; and that’s the end of Edward: Warwick as the ruler of England; and Warwick is my friend.”
Under the Hog: A Novel of Richard III Page 2