“You are keeper to his Grace of Clarence, dear son?”
“I am that.”
“Then will you take him a little present from his well-wishers?”
“If I’m ordered.”
“A little tonneau of the best malmsey wine,” the friar smacked his gross lips and nodded, “it is waiting below. Take it to him at once, my son.”
By God, thought Miles Forest, but I smell smoke. He looked at Sir Richard Hawte.
“Is that right, sir?”
Sir Richard jerked his shoulders and did not look back at him. A sort of tension thickened between them for a second. Then he answered: “Quite right, man.”
“What’ll I tell the Duke, then?”
“Tell him, my son,” said the friar, who had not ceased to rock from foot to foot, “that it is sent by friends who know of the labours now being made for his pardon to the King’s Grace and who wish to give him some cheer during these hours of wanhope whilst he is still in doubt. His good Grace of Gloucester is not the only man who concerns himself for your prisoner. Those who send this small gift by royal authority — royal authority, Sir Richard Hawte — have also an interest in his fate. So take the wine to him, my son. Take it quickly before the King’s pardon is announced, as we all pray and believe it must be. The tonneau is below stairs: and God be with you, my son.”
He finished with a grin so impudent that Miles Forest wondered the roof did not crash in on him. The whole look on his sweaty, wide face was of a hypocrite who deliberately willed his hypocrisy to be blatant, to offend rather than to deceive. He almost winked. I’d best not think of what he means, Miles Forest told himself. It’s money in pocket for us, I shouldn’t wonder, and know-naught was never hanged. He nudged Will Slater, and they went down the stairs together without saying good-night.”
“Christ,” Will grunted as they were hefting the little cask between them, “that was a rogue.”
“If you want to keep the house clean,” Miles Forest told him, “’ware monks, friars and pigeons. It’s an old saying, and it’s true.”
“What d’you reckon to this business, Miles?”
Miles lost his temper. Trying to make me a party to Christ knows what, he thought.
“I reckon nothing, and if you’ve more sense than your mother had when she listened to your father behind the barn, then you won’t either. Poor men can’t keep consciences. Now shut your gob.”
It was fortunate that they knew their way: across the Green, skirting St. Peter ad Vincula’s Chapel, and so to the North wall. They were as remote in space as two demons carrying a soul to hell. The whole fortress was gone, wiped out in fog. They could hear voices, faint and from unsure directions, but saw nothing. Soldiers, yeomen, gentlemen, grooms, servants, mint-workers, prisoners, horses, lions, were crowded round them in the small area of Tower Royal, but the damp visible breath of the Thames isolated them as though a spell had been put on them until their job was done. They say that damned friar raised the mist at Barnet, thought Miles Forest. This must be his work too. Holy St. Peter look down on us and help us. Remember we are poor men and can’t pick and choose like rich ones.
They were at the door of the Bowyer Tower.
Miles Forest set his end of the little cask down to find the key. The Duke of Clarence was allowed no servants since his condemnation; was alone in the small turret, locked in one room. They humped the tonneau up the very narrow stair to his door; unlocked that also. Five candles burned, one before a crucifix and four on a large table spread with a good damask cloth, and in that light the round face and big body of the Duke was seen, stooping a little forward above the broken meats of supper on the table, blue eyes looking hard at them under frightened eyebrows, the top teeth showing. The Duke had lost colour in his nine months’ imprisonment; was stouter. He looked older than twenty-eight. When he was put in ward first he had been in unabating rage; threw dishes at the servants’ heads; cursed everyone. He fell sullen next, like an adder that has struck and missed until it is tired. He ceased to dress himself properly or use the barber; lay the whole day in bed, refusing visitors; and since Parliament had declared him attainted in blood and issue, unworthy to live, he had asked occasionally for a priest. Miles Forest, from being in awe of him, despised him next for a bellowing calf; came finally to be sorry for him. He’s a man in trouble like any other, he thought. It was a merely silly face that looked over the table at them: whitish puffed cheeks with a day’s rust of beard, hair with the curl gone out of it. The fat had subsided under the small chin and around the throat, and left the skin in bags. The lips were a bad colour and sagged downward. The whole look was that of an out-at-elbows gentleman who had drunk himself into the gutter; was not even sure now of his welcome in low company. The Duke of Clarence was completely tamed.
“Good evening to your Grace.”
“Hey?” The Duke got on his feet. He wore a furred bedgown over shirt and hose with the points untied. The size of his stomach showed. “Hey, what have you got there?”
“Cask of malmsey wine for your Grace.”
“Malmsey for me: what’s this?”
“I think it’s from the Palace, your Grace.”
The Duke came round the table to them, his face pinkening. His eyes were open wider than they had been before.
“God,” he said in a quick voice, “who sent it, you fool? Don’t you know?”
“The man that brought it,” said Miles Forest, looking past him, “said something about cheering your Grace whilst your Grace’s pardon was being sued for to the King: but I don’t know. I don’t know anything at all, your Grace.”
“Splendour of God, but I do, though.” The Duke’s voice had a different pitch now. He was smiling, and it was possible to distinguish under the flabbiness of his cheeks the fine bony structure that had made him handsome once. “Go on, set it on that trestle there. It’s ready tapped, isn’t it? Malmsey, by God: who says George of Clarence has no friends? It’s long since I tasted it: and here’s to tasting it again outside of this mews. Here’s to an end of this fool’s comedy. You fellows, I think there’ll be a message for me to-night. I’m sure of it. See that I have it at once, even if I’m asleep: at once. Reach me that cup off the table, one of you. Whether I’m asleep or awake, mark you. The man who brings me the news I want will have a half-royal for himself.”
They had a last glimpse of him as they shut the door. He was standing up to his height, the pewter cup in one hand and the other on his hip. His head was thrown back and he was laughing, giggling and gasping with laughter like a man who finds that what he thought was a wolf padding behind him in the dark is only a stray dog. The candles touched up the yellow of his hair.
“Poor whorson,” said Will Slater as they were locking the lower door. The Tower was dead and wicked still, fog pressing its shapeless face to theirs. Between St. Peter’s Chapel and the Devereux Tower, they separated, not saying anything. Miles Forest was on duty. He could not go to bed; marched down past the White Tower to the King’s Lodgings; marched back again. He thought for a foolish moment that he would go to Dr. Stillington’s cell and talk to him for a little. Nay, I must keep my mouth shut, he told himself. If I’m a tattler there’ll be trouble either way. He coughed and walked, thinking of a reward. When, an hour later, he stiffened himself to look into the Bowyer Tower again, he saw what one half of his mind had expected from the beginning. George Duke of Clarence lay on his back under the trestle where the tonneau stood. His teeth and the whites of his eyes showed frighteningly in the candlelight against the colour of his wrenched, horrified face, which was between black and purple. He must have died at the very instant of drawing himself another cup of wine, for the cock of the tonneau was still open, and drops of malmsey fell with a thick, regular splash upon the body, whose clothes and hair were already flooded with it, soaked, sodden, as though drowned.
CHAPTER SIX
HEROD
(England–France: 1483–1484)
So that the man is over al
That we Fortune clepe so,
Out of the man himselfe it groweth.
John Gower: Confessio Amantis.
“WELL, I say all it’ll mean is new taxes and nothing to show for them, the same as it did before.”
“And I say it won’t, then, and I’ll tell you for why: because our Duke’ll have the guiding of it.”
“Nay, he won’t, man. King’ll go himself.”
“Ah, you can say so, but I saw the King when he came to York five years back. I saw him. I went to York city on purpose and I saw him, and he was a fat man.”
“Well, what in the devil’s that to do with it, man alive?”
“I say he was a fat man. He rode in the like of a litter with fellows to carry him. He won’t go to the war.”
“Aye, but that was just because he was a King, like. He’d ride in a litter because he’s a King, don’t you see? But he’ll go across and make war on the French for all that, and then he’ll ride on a horse.”
“Well, now, I’m asking you somewhat. Did he go and make war on the dirty Scots?”
“You don’t understand …”
“Nay, but I’m asking you. Did he go to make war on the dirty Scots?”
“No, but …”
“No, he didn’t: well, then. Our Duke made war on the Scots last year, didn’t he?”
“Aye.”
“And he went to Edinburgh and made ’em sign a writing that they’d do as he bid, didn’t he?”
“Yes, but what I mean …”
“And he took Berwick that the wicked old Queen sold them before Towton battle, didn’t he?”
“I’m not denying he did.”
“You’d best not, lad, because my son Ned was there at the siege of Berwick himself, as you very well know: and I say our Duke’ll have charge of this war too, and it’ll be a proper war.”
Thomas Oakroyd and Edmund Taylor were discussing the prospect of a new French war in the alehouse of Middleham village. Being very old and rather silly, they did not know much about it: but they had heard rumours of how the French King had insulted King Edward by arranging to marry his son to a foreign heiress although he was plighted to the Princess Bessy. It was said King Edward had fallen down in a fit when he heard the news. Perhaps it was all lies anyhow, but it made something to talk about. Except for the Duke’s war with Scotland last year, there had been nothing to talk about in Middleham for a long while. The Duke had come riding home, white-faced and small as always, and had been met at the foot of the village street by his six-year-old son. He had swung the boy up on his saddlebow to kiss him, and the boy had snatched the reins and guided the white charger, his father’s hands on his wrists and the two of them laughing, and everybody had cheered. That was the only kind of sensation there was in Yorkshire nowadays, where there had once been robberies and hangings and fights between noblemen. The Duke had altered things.
“Well, and if he does have charge of the war, there’ll still be taxes,” said Edmund Taylor.
“Aye, aye, but it’s the King raises them,” Thomas Oakroyd explained to him. “King takes the money and our Duke fights the war.”
“Ah, but there’ll be money taken, choose how, and that’s the devil in it.”
“Oh aye, it’s we must pay: and if we don’t it’s King comes near on us. Duke’s got to do what King bids.”
“I’d wish he might go his own road about it. He’s the master for me, the Duke is.”
“Aye, well, so he may be, but he’s afraid of the King, same as the rest of us. He has to do as he’s told.”
“Our Duke afraid: don’t talk so daft, man. He’s afraid of nothing; and he’s the King’s brother.”
“And look what King did to his other brother: drowned him; drowned him in a barrel of wine, they say.”
“Devil take that for a rhyme. I never did credit that London clack. What’d he go to drown him in wine for? Have they no ponds down London way?”
“Well, he was a Duke, see. They’d never go to drown a Duke like a common fellow.”
“I don’t believe it, Tom; never did. Nay, God’s body, it’d be as bad as old Adam’s two sons the Friar was telling a tale of that was here last week.”
“I never heard him. What’d he say, then?”
“Nay, I couldn’t rightly make it out: something of two brothers killed each other. It’d be a long while back it happened: something in Holy Writ.”
“Ah, there’s all manner of bloody wickedness in Holy Writ, I believe. But he’s a right hard one, King Edward is. Hundreds and thousands of men he’s killed.”
“That’d be because he has to be King. Kings have their own consciences, I uphold, and they answer to Almighty God in their own way.”
“Happen they do. Happen that’s gospel.”
“And we don’t have the garboyles and battles nowadays as we had in Kingmaker’s time. Things are better in that way, so how it is.”
“Duke stopped that, Edmund. See how he punished the whorson Scots when they tried making commotions. My son Ned says they were that afraid of him they never even stood and made a field.”
“They’re all scum, the Scots are — muck. That Scots Duke our Duke had guesting with him, Albans, Albany, what his name was: he wasn’t what you could call the make of a real nobleman. Our Duke was a kitten to him, go by their build; but he was the master, man, I tell you. I saw ’em riding together plain as how I see you. Scots Duke, he was a big bastard, red hair; ran through hell with no bonnet on, like they say. He sat up on his great horse, talking and babbling and telling what a grand one he was, the like of a tumbler at a wakes: no decent quietness about him. Our Duke, he looked little, all drawn up in himself, like, the fashion of a hawk on a cadge, and smiling as sweet as you could ask. But I saw him looking under his eyes at the red fellow, as good as to say: You’re not worth two groats, and I know it, so you may babble. He’s a deep mind, our Duke has.”
“Aye, he has that. That’s what I was saying. I uphold as he’ll fight this French war. King Edward …”
Daaarr:
a deep, sad note, final and startling as the fall of a headsman’s axe, jarred the air they sat in. It seemed to come like a presence into the alehouse and march through it and out again, going away into the park and fields.
Daaarr:
it was repeated after flat silence: the bell of St. Alkelda’s Church tolling for death. The two old men looked at each other. A murmur of puzzlement and question grew up gently in the street and doors were opened. Feet tapped the cobbles.
“Nay,” said Edmund Taylor foolishly, “nay, but there’s no one sick I know of.”
“It’s sudden death, then,” said Thomas Oakroyd, “we’d best go and hear.”
Daar
Daar:
they got out of the alehouse, wondering, going over names in their minds. In the uncoloured April light, women and old men were peering out of windows and coming together on the cobbles, beginning to straggle up like nervous cattle in ones and twos toward the church. They chattered, and the slow, unpardoning voice of the bell repeated its phrase over their talking heads.
Dr. Beverley was standing for them in the lych-gate. His canon’s scarlet robes were part of the surprise and question of what was happening. He had the look on his face of a man whom something altogether unthought of has frightened. When they saw him they all slowed a little and came up almost unwillingly.
“Who is it, doctor?” “Who is it, Canon Beverley?” “Dr. Beverley, who’s gone, rest their souls?”
Dr. Beverley lifted his chin a little and tightened his mouth, staring out over their heads. His voice came between two strokes of the bell, solemnly giving an order:
“All good people, pray for the soul of our Sovereign Lord, King Edward IV of gracious memory, whom it has pleased Almighty God to call to himself by the path of sickness.”
My Lord Duke and Brother
I grete you well, letting yow to witte yt my Lord Prince is to
go up from ys place to London ys Thorsday next ensewing, to he Crowned: and he wil go in my charge. My Lord Duke and very trew Brother, it is so yt owr Lord Kyng Edward of fulnoble memorye deceas’d, on whose sowl Jhesu mercie, did in his life-tyme point ye Duke of Gloster to be Protector of ye Reaulme in ye infancie of my Lord Prince, in soch fashion as Humphrey Duke of Gloster, Unkle to Kyng Harry ye Sixt, hadde yt Office aforetyme, and ye said Duke is riding incontinent up to London, wth but a slendre company, to take uppon him ye ordering of al things within ye Reaulme. So, at ys sadde tyme, I ask yow hastily, who are my Sister’s husband and whom I ever cherish’d as kindly as in my powre was, whether it be better one man, and he lytyl lov’d and less known in yse South Partes, shuld have rule over us al, seeing there be some amonge us he doth lytyl cherish, or whether it be not a more natural thing, and surer for owr safety and ye common wele of ys Reaulme, yt my Lord Prince shuld rather be in ye guidaunce of his Mother’s kindred. And ys I ask ye more, for yt I am creditablie informed how ye said Protector (as we must for ye present cal him) purposes a hard rule and ye undoing of soch as he loves not, wch might be to ye jeobardy of us al.
My very dear Brother, for ye rest I pray yow give credaunce to Sir Tho. Vaughan, bearer of yse, who shal trewly deliver yow my entyre mind herein. And I wold have you know yt I have longe thoghte how yr Grace shuld have some great Office of State, by favour of my Lord Prince, ye Kyng yt now is, and yt I have made diligent labor to him for yt ende: and if in anything I can serve yow, my dear Brother and good Lord, I shal do it wth al my powre, and so God keep yow and bring yow to a good decysion.
Wrytyn at Ludlow, y5 XXIJ day of Aprile wth ye hand of your frend
A. REVIERES
To my Lord of Bukynghame, good Grace, in his Castle of Breknok.
Henry Stafford, Duke of Buckingham, read Lord Rivers’ scrawled letter through: lowered the paper a little between his hands and looked over it at the Welch face of Sir Thomas Vaughan: a face with high cheekbones and thinned, white hair, the skin stretched tightly on it and its black eyes attentive.
Under the Hog: A Novel of Richard III Page 37