What it cost him to swear this, John Kendal reflected, it would be wiser for a man without Plantagenet blood in him not to speculate: but it was clever. Queen Elizabeth and her five daughters must be growing mightily weary of Broad Sanctuary. Since Henry Stafford’s head had bounced on the scaffolding before the Poultry Cross six months ago, there had been little hope that the eldest of them, the plump Lady Bessy, would ever see her Welch bridegroom come riding into London to crown-her Queen by the right of Lancaster. Half a loaf, even to a hate-crazed polecat like King Edward’s widow, would look vastly better than no bread. They would come out for certain, and then — Mr. Kendal grinned faintly over his papers — some gentleman born to whom the King owed a grudge could be found to make a husband for Lady Bessy. Bishop Morton’s outrageous vision of a marriage-alliance between Wydvylle and Lancaster would blow out for ever. Yes, it was cunning: King Richard’s device to the last letter: the removal of a great menace to the peace of England by just a few words and a little money, with no bloodshed.
The King looked up again. His eyes were very narrow.
“How this tick bloated himself on England,” he said quietly. “Mr. Dean, did you dispatch that grant to Sir Robert Fenys?”
“Yes, your Grace.”
“Kendal, you said something of some Scots papers.”
“Only spies’ news, your Grace: they say they can learn nothing of whether King James means to send the commissioners that he promised or not.”
“These Scots: once let me have England settled as I’d wish to see it and I’ll give ’em a sit up. In the meantime we need a truce till Christmas or at any rate All Hallows. We’d better send a herald to Berwick in case the commissions do come. I should suggest Northumberland Herald. What do you say, Sir Robert?”
“Good enough, your Grace: but if I may speak my mind …”
“Always.”
“We’ll never get a truce from the whorsons whilst we hold Dunbar. Albany gave us the wolf by the ears when he surrendered the pestilent place to us.”
“We’ll hold the wolf; but you may be right. I must do something with Scotland more than a truce: peace or war. You’re a North-countryman, Robert. Why must I do something with Scotland?”
He gave them his first real smile and their first real rest of the morning, leaning back in his chair and twisting his ring. Sir Robert Percy grinned like a bright schoolboy.
“Imprimis, because they’ve earned it: item, because your Grace is also a North-countryman: item, because Louis of France has gone to the place where he belongs.”
“Your arrow’s in the gold. But it’s deeper than that. I have assured the child who now rules France that I mean nothing against him: and I haven’t named it for a lie in the confessional. I do mean nothing against him while the Welch milksop’s at liberty. If he, or rather his governors, once so much as glimpsed my real drift — which is to leave my son the crown of France along with the crown of England — they’d have that little upstart out of Francois of Brittany’s hands, lend him an army and send him here as though all the devils in hell were after him: and I will not suffer another war in England. We must clip Henry Tydder’s sting for a beginning. Next we quiet Scotland. I’ve no great wish — pardon me, Robert — for conquests there. We’ll keep Dunbar, and for the rest peace will serve us as well as war. There are more ways of killing a cat than putting it to death with cherry-stones. When that’s concluded, why, when that’s concluded we can pray God for a fair wind to France.”
“Amen.”
Not quite for the first time, Mr. Kendal felt his sceptical, phlegmatic mind stirred, listening to his master; saw the world he aimed to leave his son, the English Empire stretching from Ireland to Champagne and from the Tweed to the Garonne; its great cities equal in prosperity so that York was as Rouen and Nottingham as Tours; Spain, Brittany and the Low Countries its allies; Scotland spanieling at its heels with no Valois on the other side of St George’s Channel to make trouble between them; subjects of one crown and one King meeting in innumerable open markets to exchange the wool of Yorkshire and the wine of France; the conquered French, even, in time, learning to bless God for the mild rule of Plantagenet after the iron rule of Valois. It could be done. Harry of Monmouth had almost done it, that man of stone whose nostrils loved the smell of a burnt heretic; and this man was not stone; was steel. He sat there, small as a frog, worn thin, just as a steel blade would be, on the incessant grindstone of his occupations, tired as a tree is tired of the wind; but sure. He was utterly sure: a carved image in a cathedral, sitting and abiding the flux and outcry round his seat, content in the purpose of God. He would reach his aims, because, John Kendal thought, staring through the paper in front of him at the future, he aimed at nothing for himself. England, my son: those were the two words with which he ordered everything. They were a talisman against failure. A man who did not regard himself could hardly fail.
He jerked his head. I’m growing fanciful; shall become a second Anthony Wydvylle at this rate. It’s all fine and fair to talk of what we shall do when we’ve caught Henry Tydder, but we’ve to catch him yet. In the disconcerting manner he sometimes used, the King spoke his thoughts for him.
“Pierre Landois, Treasurer to Duke Francois of Brittany, is an upstart, avaricious like all upstarts. We can bribe him, and shall.”
“To kill Henry Tydder, your Grace?”
“To cage him: that is sufficient.”
Sir Robert Percey rattled his parchment at the end of the table.
“Stone-dead has no fellow.”
The liveliness went out of the King’s face suddenly, as a candle-flame would go out in an unlooked-for draught, and left him staring straight ahead of him almost like a man at a loss. Then he reached for his papers.
“We have still work to do.”
Mr. Kendal returned to the list he was engrossing of certain properties: the manors of Eydon and Thorphill in Northamptonshire of the yearly value of seventy-four pounds, the manor or lordship of Great Billing in the same of the yearly value of twenty-three pounds fourteen shillings and fivepence, late the property of Margaret, wife of Lord Thomas Stanley, now held for life, with their knights’ fees, advowsons, stews, waters, stanks, woods, underwoods, markets, heriditaments and commodities, by the said Lord Stanley, with reversion to the crown. He clicked his tongue over them. The sullen-faced Beaufort woman, Henry Tydder’s mother, had been as deep as the pit of hell in Buckingham’s conspiracy. What mother, even were she not a lifelong enemy of the house of York, would not have taken art and part in a plot to make her son King of England? You could as soon wash an Ethiopian white as clear her of it. When Buckingham’s head fell, John Kendal had looked to see her clapped up for life in the Tower or exiled to the Isle of Man, attainted, even put to the axe. Lord save your soul, no. He nibbled his quill irritably. She had not even been chased into a nunnery; had merely been remanded into the custody of her husband, who was to enjoy her estates during his lifetime, with order that she was to be allowed no communication with her son. Certainly, it did seem as though the fat Baron himself were a safe man. He and his family had provided the bulk of the royal army for the bloodless West-country campaign last year, and he had been given the office of Constable in reward for it. Nevertheless, thought Mr. Kendal, had it been he who wore the crown, the Lady Margaret would have been put where she could make no mischief. She was a schemer and intriguer to her fingertips, and whatever they had done against Buckingham, the family she was married into had the reputation of going where the cat jumped. Yes, the act of a thoroughly cautious man would have been to end her: but King Richard’s clemency was a byword.
Clemency and generosity: certainly they were no ill weapons, and the bloodless, frigid little gentleman on Mr. Kendal’s right knew how to use them. King Richard had forgotten the enemies but never the friends of Duke Richard of Gloucester. Mr. Kendal himself, as well as the offices of Secretary of State and Controller of the Mint, had just received a pleasant Easter gift of eighty pounds a year. His o
ld friend Thomas Wrangwysh had an annuity too. Lord Lovel was Chief Butler of England and making a better showing in that office than Lord Rivers ever did. These things were for old friendship’s sake; but only pure Christian charity could explain the King’s dealings with the Countess of Oxford. Since her husband had been captured at St. Michael’s Mount twelve years ago and shipped across to Calais to look out over the marshes from a barred window in Hammes Castle, the unfortunate creature, who had never mixed herself with politics, had been in a most miserable case. King Edward, after stripping her of every rag she possessed, had been pleased to pardon her misdeeds and leave her to God. For ten years she supported herself with her needle as a common seamstress. Her friends made interest for her to the King, who clicked his tongue sympathetically, wrote out a grant for a pension and forgot to implement it. She would have been sewing yet had not King Richard had the crown. She received a hundred pounds a year now.
Lord, the web of it, thought John Kendal, through whose fingers many strands of the web ran: the criss-cross out of sight of small decrees and grants and readjustments, the gift of a living, the reduction of a subsidy, the remission of a fine, seal upon seal, patent upon patent, day upon day, all for the one end: that King Richard might leave England a little easier than he found it. It had hacked the lines into his forehead and round his mouth as deeply as a knife would; had turned his skin as translucent as the rim of a candle. His scruples were ageing him as quickly as his pleasures aged King Edward. Well, he was not a man whose ways one questioned.
The King spoke again.
“I see Sir John Fogg had the guardianship and marriage-bargain of a boy, one Robert Arundel of Treriss, poor child. Sir James Tyrell spoke of it to me. Did I ask you, Mr. Dean, to make out a grant of them to him and some other person? I forget now.”
Dean Gunthorpe snapped his fingers to Mr. Bolman, who passed a writing to him after a little search. The Dean cocked his silver spectacles at it and said:
“Yes, your Grace, the new guardians arc Sir James himself and one Richard Gowld of London, mercer.”
“I remember. Seal it, please.”
“Yes, your Grace.”
Wax spat in the little chafing-dish. It was as Dean Gunthorpe actually pressed down the seal that the door was knocked. Robert Bolman went to it.
“It’s Sir James Tyrell here, your good Grace.”
“He’s come in pudding-time. Admit him.”
Sir James was a tall, cold-lipped man. His usual face was as expressionless as his master’s: but now the look on it seemed to pierce Mr. Kendal like a sword in the belly. His hands moved senselessly.
“Your Grace, your Grace …”
“What’s amiss?”
The King was out of his chair. Sir James moved toward him draggingly, like a man exhausted with running; leaned one hand on the table as though he did not trust his knees.
“Speak out, man.”
“A message from Middleham, your Grace: late last night, the Prince — it was a sudden sickness, your Grace; last night. God took him.”
*
“Dickon, oh Dickon, you must sleep now.”
“I can’t.”
“Oh, my love, it is two nights now. You must. You must, indeed. Oh, Dickon, aren’t I suffering too? Come to me. Come here and lie down by me. Lie down and shut your eyes. Look, love, we’ll hold hands, so, both with our eyes shut; shut out everything. We’ll think of nothing at all; make our hearts quite dark and quiet as though we had drawn curtains round them. We shall sleep then. We are together. We’re still together, Dickon, still. Only shut your eyes now.”
There was no sound in the room. The bed was scented with musk and violets. The thick hangings were walls round them, darkening darkness. For a long while he might have been asleep. Then a noise began that she could not recognise; had never heard before. It terrified her almost out of the memory of her own grief when she understood that her husband in the dark beside her was weeping as though his lungs were torn to pieces.
“Dickon, oh, Dickon, Dickon, for pity’s sake.”
She got her arms round his cold, smooth body, dragging it to her. He lay on his back with his hands shut at his sides, and she threw herself over him. But the terrible rending noise of his sobs went on. His whole chest shook with them.
“Dickon, Dickon, Dickon!”
“Oh, God, my punishment is harder than I can bear.”
“Our punishment?”
“Anne, forgive me. Oh, forgive me, forgive me.”
“Dear heart, listen. You are out of yourself. Think clearly a moment. There is no punishment. I have nothing to forgive. God took him. He was quite innocent. His little soul is with God now. He is happier than he could have been with us. We shall see him in the end. Oh, Dickon, you know that.”
“Forgive me, Anne.”
“Love, there is nothing on the footstool of God I would not forgive you: but why now? You have done nothing. Didn’t you give him to me, Dickon? You made me happy with him for seven years.”
“Hush, for God’s sake. You can’t understand. I killed him.”
“No, no no.”
“I killed him, woman. The punishment for my sin: God took him from us.”
“Dickon, you mustn’t talk so. I won’t hear you.”
“God’s justice: I wanted a quiet England.”
“Hush, your wits are all shaken. You’ve not slept for two nights. You’ll have forgotten all this after you’ve slept. You must shut your eyes now. There, I’ll kiss them shut. You must sleep.”
“Oh Christ in heaven, oh Jesus, you won’t understand. We are punished for Edward’s sons. I killed them after Buckingham had revolted.”
CHAPTER SEVEN
THE ROASTED COCK
(England — August 1485)
‘If this be truth,’ King Herod said,
‘that thou hast told to me,
the roasted cock that lies in the dish
shall crow full senses three.’
Oh the cock soon thrustened and feathered well
by the work of God’s own hand —
and he did crow full senses three
in the dish where he did stand.
English Carol: N.D.
THE green of August leaves they rode under was livid; suggested the corruption of metal. Heat, that clung deadly round their armoured bodies, was stagnant. There was no health in the sun. Leicestershire, ordered like a chessboard, was spread out for them: one comfortable little swell of land behind another, black-and-white houses, churches like cats asleep. The land was sick and rotten; sick England a widowed King rode through to fight civil war again.
Last year the trouble called the Sweating Death had come; was a curse specially sent by God on England. Even abroad, they said, it attacked only Englishmen. London festered with it. It had packed Mayor Byllysdon and Sheriff Chester into their graves. It had struck York, and Mayor Wrangwysh and his Aldermen had fled out of the city. Men working in the fields or treadling looms felt themselves suddenly tremble, ripple upon ripple of shivering chasing through them. Then they sweated, and presently felt the cramp in their muscles, and began to die. It was rarely that a man lived overnight with the Sweating Death on him. The sexton, after a heavy day of making graves, was seized with pains that were not rheumatism. The physician, with a dried orange stuffed with helpful perfumes at his nose, felt the cold leap from the patient to himself. The priest, standing at the altar, began to tremble, and the hands he put about the chalice were sweaty.
It had been on England a year now. The land stank. Autumn woodsmoke, fog, smell of spring hawthorns, seemed to corrupt in the nostrils and become a stench of corpses. It did not help the towns that their dues were remitted and their gates not banged upon by rebels demanding shelter against one King or another. Infection bred in their narrow streets and the passing-bells lamented over their roofs all day and night. Poor people in cottages could have justice easily; but what oppressed them was outside the sheriff’s jurisdiction and they could not appeal from
death to Westminster. In monasteries and great houses, in cities, in the fat little villages snugged down between the wood and the hill, people died quickly, unreasonably, as though stabbed from behind. The saints did nothing. Prayers and incense, candles and vows, did not move them to one petty miracle. The land was as though under an Interdict.
As winter lengthened and the frozen sewer bred pestilence as freely as the running one, until death was the companion of the solitary, the third fellow when two sat together, the quickest mover in every crowd, Lollards and others who were not afraid of twisting Holy Writ whispered an atrocious thing. They whispered that when King David of Jewry had offended God by a great wickedness a plague was sent upon his people to punish them. King David’s son had also been taken from him on account of his crimes.
They were called liars and struck across the mouth by honest men when they first whispered. Loyal people said that King Richard, who had punished the Wydvylles, who had abolished benevolences, who protected the poor, was not the King for whom God would afflict a nation. The bastards of Edward of Rouen had died as he said they died. But the carts still creaked down the streets with their piles of bodies, and the whispers still spread and multiplied like the very sickness; and in March of the new year the sun was darkened.
A shadow came over it in broad daytime. The light curdled unnaturally, thickening as if for evening, so that owls and bats in the countryside were deceived and flew abroad. Blackness appeared to eat inch by inch into the sun’s very disk until, against a benighted sky, it was a disk of the dark with hell’s flames burning round it. Wherever people had knotted at a street corner or in a market-place to watch the portent a low, formless sound broke out: a noise between a moan and a whimper, as though the courage of a sick land were audibly breaking; and the sound rose into a wild, bewildered clamour of desolation when the news ran about that a fresh scourge was laid upon the King: that at the very moment when the darkness was absolute, the Sweating Death had sent Queen Anne, Kingmaker’s daughter, to join her son.
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