“I have humbly laboured in a cause that I think pleasing to God; and I shall have further openings still. My work has been commended by the usurper with words that I shall not repeat. I have the key of his ear, and he has spoken to me recently concerning a bishopric. If only our Lord God would see fit, in the issue of time, to call that good man Thomas Rotherham to himself, you might one day call me Chancellor. The abominable kinsfolk of the woman Elizabeth — Rivers who cries peace and bites with his teeth, the fornicator Dorset, all the tagrag of them — are taking more and more heed of me: my good offices for this, my opinion of that. I will tell you a very strange thing, Mr. Colyngbourne.”
Dr. Morton’s large eyes, with the bistred, scorched-looking skin about their sockets, looked straight in front of him. He thrust out the tip of his tongue between his close-fitting lips for a second and went on:
“There is someone in this realm of whom the Wydvylle rabble are mortally afraid: someone who is very near the King.”
“Lord Hastings?”
“No: they envy him. Perhaps they hate him. But they are not afraid of him.”
“The Duke of Gloucester, then.”
“I had supposed you would say that. Richard of Gloucester with the crooked shoulders: I verily believe he was the murderer who killed our holy King Henry. He was at the Tower that night. A dangerous, bloody-minded beast, and the only one of the whole house of York with wits enough to see where his brother’s clever treaty with France really tended: if I were a Wydvylle I should shake in my shoes each time he looked at me, for I believe he hates the pack of them; and yet it isn’t he has fluttered their dovecote. It’s his brother of Clarence.”
“Not that wine-swilling turncoat?”
“No other: ask anyone but me to read the riddle, but the fact’s plain as noontide. The Wydvylles and the Greys and their jackals — Fogg, Hawte, Vaughan, the rest of them — walk in mortal fear of him. I shall tell you everything I know, which is much less than I wish it were, and if ever you should stumble on anything that we can lay beside it, give me your news.”
“You can trust me for that, sir.”
“I am sure I can. Well, here’s my part of it. This fear the tribe have of Duke George has grown up since the King came back to London; and I believe it is because of some matter that the Queen heard whilst we were all in France. Whether the Wydvylle crew themselves know what it is, I am not sure. Elizabeth is that kind of fool who babbles what she should keep secret and makes secrets of what she should talk plainly of. The only thing that I am certain of is that my Lord Bishop of Bath and Wells, holy Dr. Stillington, is in some way party to the business. On my faith as a priest, there’s all I’ve known how to discover. But I want more. You must understand, Mr. Colyngbourne, whatever comes to our mill is grist. There is no quarrel, no secret, no dirty private little shame, that we cannot make use of. Our task for the next many years is such a simple one. We have only to make sure that every disgrace of the usurper’s utterly disgraceful life is known to his subjects, that every act he does, if we cannot make it either foolish or tyrannical, shall anyway appear so, that England under Edward of York shall be weak and not strong, poor and not rich, oppressed and not free, and as day follows night, the time will come when the whole land cries out to be delivered from a cursed dynasty, an unendurable rule: and then, Mr. Colyngbourne, we shall find the deliverer.”
“Quousque tandem, Domine?”
The bitter Latin sentence sliced into Dr. Morton’s talk like an axe. Mr. Colyngbourne, in awe from the beginning of the Lady Margaret whose name was magical to a Lancastrian and who was known, too, for her learning and hard, mannish wits, jerked in his chair. She sounded hideously contemptuous, hideously unbelieving in every act and aspect of what they had planned. Dr. Morton moved nothing but his eyes; said in the same sensible, gentle voice: “What, my Lady,” and circled his plump hands one over the other again. The black-browed woman in the middle chair — one could tell her anywhere for a Beaufort, thought Mr. Colyngbourne, snarled like a cat at him.
“How long, Lord God, how long do I have to listen to you fools clacking of what you will do the to-morrow after to-morrow, and the King my son away from me in Brittany and unsure of his life?”
Dr. Morton dropped as softly and certainly as a pouncing owl on the most questionable part of what she had said.
“Unsure of his life, my Lady?”
“Ach!” The Lady Margaret made a furious noise and twisted her head round as though the sight of the Doctor’s healthily pale, round face disgusted her. Her foot beat the fine carpet and her hard little breast moved up and down. “You dare to boast of your intelligence about the Yorkist Court and you don’t know that the usurper has planned to buy my son from Duke Francois of Brittany?”
“I knew that Lord Rivers had a commission for it in his embassy of three years ago, Madame, but he failed.”
“The thing’s on foot again. Edward persuaded Louis of France not to wage war on Brittany; has a claim on Duke François now; can ask for gratitude. He will make an offer for my son. A marriage for him will be the pretext, with one of Edward’s daughters: a precious likely story. It’ll be the death of my son, whilst you babble about deliverers. Duke François has refused for now; but he’ll consent in the upshot, wearied with prayer or vanquished with price. Be certain of it.”
“Where have you this story from, my Lady?”
“From a source you’d never guess: Lord Thomas Stanley.”
“Lord Thomas Stanley?” Dr. Morton put his eyebrows up and let the tip of his tongue show again. “I thought he was wholly devoted to the usurper.”
“So he is, but he has a kindness for me. Ask me no more about that. Out of plain charity he’s told me what to fear for my son the King; though King’s not what he’d call him. He’d never have told you, Mr. Morton; does not trust you; but he thinks me a harmless woman who have suffered because I was married in childhood to a man I did not choose.”
She laughed: a high sound as joyless as a sneeze.
Dr. Morton nodded slowly.
“He should know. He’s one of the adulterer’s trusted men, one of the Cabinet Council. He might be useful to us again.”
The woman glared at him.
“After my son’s death is it you mean?”
“Be easy, my Lady, be easy. Don’t harp on that string. If you know one secret from me, I make bold to say that I know some from you also. I know who rules in Brittany; and it is not Duke François, who, as I thought you were aware, is half a madman.”
“Who does then?”
“His Chancellor, Pierre Landois, a greedy man I have some hold over. Put your heart at rest, my dear Lady Margaret. His royal Grace, your son Henry, the last heir of the house of Lancaster, whom God bless and bring into his own, amen, isn’t in any manner of danger. There are a hundred ways to make sure he will never fall into the usurper’s hands.”
“A thousand to make sure he will, though.”
“Never, my Lady: you forget I am a person of some influence about the Court, even if I had not heard of this particular matter. If it were necessary, I could even get myself appointed one of the commission sent to fetch your royal son from Brittany.”
“There is always that.”
The Lady Margaret had reassumed her pose of a wooden idol, head up, chin down, hands on the big arms of her chair. Her brows bent themselves against the play of flames in the fireplace again, and she appeared already to have forgotten the two men, to be satisfied for now.
“I was speaking of the French journey, I think,” said Dr. Morton, “and how it marches in every respect with our needs. One of my fellow-commissioners for the treaty was Sir Thomas St. Leger. I think I have gained something like mastery over him now, by one means and another, and he might be useful. Then the business of the treaty has made a little strife, the smallest breath of a grudge, between that dangerous Richard of Gloucester and King Edward. That might help one day. I could wish we had more intelligence in the North, but Gloucester has
most lamentably perverted the loyalty of the silly commons there. That irks me: what was the best Lancastrian part of England turned Yorkist for the love of a misshapen lad in his twenties. That irks me. Still, this little beginning of a division between him and his brother is a thing to watch.”
“If he and Clarence both hate the Wydvylles, sir,” suggested Mr. Colyngbourne, looking at the chased silver ring on his finger, “is there a chance they might make common cause against them? I could wish there were. It’s an old saying, when two fall out the third rejoices.”
“I fear we can have no hope of that. George of Clarence and Richard of Gloucester quarrelled forever on the day Duke Richard found Anne Neville and married her. You surely haven’t forgotten how we all hoped it might come to blows between them in the question of her inheritance.”
“But that’s better than two years ago.”
“Richard of Gloucester may have forgotten the quarrel. He had his half of the Warwick lands. But Duke George will never love him again. Duke George does not love his mother or the usurper either. There was a prophecy once — I forget the words of it — touching the changes to come when England should be dealt into three parts. I do not myself think that this realm will be great enough to hold those three stubborn, violent men very much longer. Edward’s luxuries are finding him out. The stalled beast grows fat. Duke Richard sits in the North, thinking his own thoughts, and I tell you it is not the white rose they love there, but the white boar. The little man has it under his hand to be another Kingmaker. One day, please God, the usurper will be jealous of him: and Clarence is jealous of them both already. Something must crack, my Lady Margaret, and whatever cracks helps us. Quiquid delirant reges, since I know the next way to your heart is through the Latin language, plectuntur Achivi.”
“God make it so,” said Lady Margaret Beaufort. “The beasts that killed my uncle and my three cousins: let them kill each other so that I can believe in justice again.”
“There is justice, my Lady: the sure and pitiless justice of God who neither delays nor makes haste.”
“I will believe it when I see my son, who is the only last true heir of John of Ghent, sitting crowned on the King’s Bench.”
“You will see it. Now, Mr. Colyngbourne, this is where you can show us your loyalty a little. You have an eloquent tongue; talk well in corners. There must be grumbling over the shameful issue of the French journey.”
“By God’s passion, saving your reverence, but there is that.”
“Augment it, then. Bring fuel to the burning.”
“I will, sir, but it burns enough without that. I’ve heard the precious Rose of Rouen called more hard names in taverns in the past month than in all the years since Tewkesbury. A hundred-and-fifty thousand pounds he’s pilled and polled the citizens of — four pounds eleven shillings was the least any man gave in benevolences alone, leave aside taxes — and all that’s gone only to get him another eighty-five thousand out of France. What’s the profit in that for us? the citizens are asking each other. They know where the money’s gone: in jewels for the Queen and gifts for Shore’s wife and women for the Marquis Dorset and salaries for Friar Bungay and all the sort of necromancers and warlocks Edward keeps about the Court. Look at the disbanded army, the poor commons who left their work and went across to make a fortune in France. They’re back at home now, and one-half of ’em are on the road as masterless men. They’re turning robber by the thousand at a time. You know it yourself, Dr. Morton. The roads ten miles out of London are less safe to-day than a bridle-track in Wales was before this glorious and immortal victory. The citizens know all these things without my telling them.”
“Tell them for all that, Mr. Colyngbourne, tell them. Rub the wound with that particular salt you have. They say you are gifted in making rhymes. English me this little song they are singing in the taverns in France just now:
“J’ai vu roi d’Angleterre
amener son grand hôte
pour la française terre
conquêter bref et tôt.
Le roi, voyant l’affaire,
si bon vin leur donna
que l’autre, sans rien faire,
content s’en rétourna.”
Mr. Colyngbourne grinned, and the Doctor looked gravely and benevolently at him.
“I am glad it pleases you. Let it be sung in England. These must seem trifling affairs to you, my Lady Margaret, not helpful to us who aim at nothing below a crown. But remember that this great London itself, which God grant shall one day be your son’s royal chamber, is built simply of bricks laid upon other bricks: and remember above all that to-day whatever harms the state of England helps us.”
*
It was spring weather in Middleham, and Alderman Thomas Wrangwysh hummed a tune as he rode past St. Alkelda’s Church and up the sloping cobblestones to the Castle. It was a tune he had first heard there and that had stuck pleasantly in his memory.
Oh the white and goodly may,
Oh it is a goodly tree,
And oh when wilt thou return
My own true love to be.
Alderman Wrangwysh stroked his chin and grinned. Nay, but they’d make eyes at him in York if they knew how much he could tell them of the manner in which Kingmaker’s daughter had returned to be the true love of his Grace of Gloucester. He remembered a room in Eastcheap and his sister-in-law Jonet, looking as though she had been dragged by the heels through a dusthole, nearly going off in a swoon when she was told that she’d been having her evening draught served her for the last twelvemonth by the Lady Anne Neville. He remembered the Duke of Gloucester (whom he had thought mad when he first insisted on galloping off to the Sign of the Silver Pack merely because he had told him there was a distressed gentlewoman there who had been in the household of the Duchess of Clarence) coming into the solar with the lady’s hand in his; had reason to remember it; had been a made man from that moment. They said of him in York now that he was one the Duke of Gloucester would do anything for.
Certainly he enjoyed his visits to Middleham Castle. The men-at-arms saluted him. If there was a fine new horse in the stables or a room had been repainted and hung with fresh arras from Flanders, the Duke would detail someone to show it to him. There was always food and drink beyond what one dreamed of, and at Christmas-time the Duke, as gravely as though he were speaking to my Lord of Northumberland at the least, would implore him to accept the gift of a haunch of venison or a brace of peacocks, and the Duchess would insist on adding something, candied oranges, bitter honey, for his wife. Invitations to the Wrangwysh table at Christmas-time were much sought after in York.
The Duchess had become almost as much a patron-saint in Mr. Wrangwysh’s calendar as the Duke. She was so gentle, so serious and under it, anyone with eyes in his head could see, so blindly, so unstaleingly happy. It was as though she had been in prison and now found it miraculous simply to breathe fresh air and look at flowers and walk. God bless her, said Mr. Wrangwysh to himself. God bless her lovely little face; and she’s been as good as bread to sister Jonet. Two whole marks it was she sent her last time, and the Duke said something about some eels. God bless them both.
The rest of the people of Yorkshire, he knew, were of his mind in the matter, if with less personal reason. Everybody knew the trouble his Grace of Gloucester had been to, and was still at, in the matter of fishtraps. Everyone knew the kind way in which he had treated the Austin Friars of York, who deserved it a great deal better than some Friars did. One could trust his Grace to take a plain man’s view of a matter, and not to look down on it from the perspective of a grand nobleman’s saddle. Early that year there had been riots in York. Grumbling began it. We paid for the King’s war, and the King’s war paid no one but the King. Rhymes that were being said with a sneer in London had found their way North; were repeated. Then the mob was out, shouting that the King’s tolls and fees ruined the city, and only to put strings of pearls round London whores’ necks. Alderman Wrangwysh remembered the end of that busine
ss: a great mass of men-at-arms badged with the boar or the crescent drawn up outside Bootham Bar and the Duke of Gloucester and the Earl of Northumberland sitting their horses at the head of them. He had gone out with the Mayor and the other Aldermen, who licked dry lips and could not keep their hands still, to do reverence. Duke Richard, not wearing armour, had ridden his big white horse up to them and accepted their greetings as though it were a holiday. “You must know, my Lord Mayor, that the reason of my now coming to your city is for its own honour, the good rule of our Lord the King’s people and the preservation of our said King’s peace”: quite formal and meaningless words, said in a clear, expressionless voice. Then he had ridden into the city, leaving his men-at-arms outside. The rioting stopped, and the Duke issued a proclamation in the King’s name, in which he asked for the help of the people who had been throwing stones and calling the King a bastard a few minutes ago to seize and bring to prison any misguided person who might hereafter pick any quarrel or make any affray — which God defend. That was the whole of it. There were no fines and no pilloryings. The men-at-arms stayed outside in the cold and presently were marched home again. Next morning, none of the rioters was able to say exactly why he had stopped throwing stones when he did.
He’s a masterpiece, Mr. Wrangwysh thought as he turned his horse over the noisy drawbridge. He’s a deep, subtle one: plenty of those in the world if it comes to that, but he’s honest with it, and there’s your difference.
“You’ll find Mr. Kendal in the Auditor’s chambers,” said the groom who took his horse.
Alderman Wrangwysh, who knew his way about the Castle very well by now, went up the stairs to the right of the great gate and knocked on a door. A sharp voice, as of a man expecting something, told him to come in. Mr. Secretary Kendal had been writing, but he was now on his feet with his hands holding the edge of the table, snapping out:
“Any news, any news yet?”
Under the Hog: A Novel of Richard III Page 31