It was as though that lanced, but did not cure, a tumour; as though a gush of filthy matter broke out at a touch, the corruption of men’s courage and wits. The whisperers were not silenced with blows now; could tell their tale at every market-cross and in every inn. England was under the anger of God. A sinner beyond all common measure stood between the people and mercy, darkening heaven to them as they had just seen it darkened to their bodily eyes. He had been marked out before all of them: the small, white-faced devilish creature with the face no one could read. Born unnaturally, bred up among calamities he had unnaturally survived, crowned after mysterious happenings whose truth no one would ever know, he was a man with a curse on him; had shed blood of his own blood.
The rumours maddened as the madness of fear increased. In London chiefly, the city King Richard hated and that hated him, impossible tales began to be told. Men who had never seen him learnt that their King was a hunchback with a crippled arm and eyes that whirled round continually in his head. He had stabbed Holy Harry of Windsor in cold blood, without King Edward’s warrant; had murdered his unarmed and helpless son after the battle of Tewkesbury. Even in King Henry’s lifetime he had aimed for the crown, and when the good Lord Hastings refused to help him he sent him to death without trial, swearing in a climax of rage that he would not dine until he saw his head off. For his nephews, kind King Edward’s children, he had never proposed any better fate than murder. He had poisoned — they carried it that far in the South — his wife and son.
King Richard had laid hands on a few of the prattlers, Lancastrians all of them. A certain Mr. Colyngbourne of Lydyard in Wiltshire had been too clever; had nailed a rhyming couplet on the door of St. Paul’s and been caught doing it.
The Cat, the Rat and Lovel our Dog
Ruleth all England under the Hog:
Catesby and Ratcliffe, and himself whose badge the dog was, rulers of grumbling England under the silver boar. Mr. Colyngbourne, who had served King Richard’s brother and mother in his time, would make no more couplets. Tried at the Guildhall before the Duke of Suffolk, he had been proved a Lancastrian of old standing with a record as black as the devil’s arse. He had had part in Henry Stafford’s plot; was a friend of Lady Margaret who was Lord Stanley’s wife but Henry Tydder’s mother, and among the trusted tools of the fox, Morton of Ely, now gone to earth in Flanders. There was no doubt that he had had a hand in the worst setback to King Richard’s policy. Last year, a little after Edward of Middleham died, the upstart Treasurer of Brittany, Pierre Landois, came to terms; would deliver up Henry Tydder so that there should be final peace in England. But someone had warned the little Welchman. Like a hero in a romance he changed clothes with his servant; got — though he was said to be no horseman — on the swiftest mount he could borrow; spurred for his skin over the border into France. The governors of the boy-king, Charles VIII, received him kindly.
Mr. Colyngbourne had had his part in that; no doubt of it. Well, they had paid him. A good new gallows was built on Tower Hill for his special use. The rope failed to kill him, for when the hangmen dragged his clothes off and had their knives at him he shrieked out hideously: ‘Lord Jesus — yet more trouble?’ and lived whilst the whole business of gelding, gutting and burning was carried out. If the job could only have been done two years ago, in the days when the world seemed real and King Richard human, they would not now be riding West from Leicester in harness.
This time the end had come. St. Albans, where the nobility of England had learned to kill each other, Bloor Heath and Northampton, Wakefield and the Duke of York’s dead head with a paper crown on it, Noman’s Heath and Mortimer’s Cross, where Owain Tydder’s head paid for the Duke’s, Towton of the twenty-seven thousand dead, Hedgeley Moor, Hexham and Edgecote, Barnet and the fall of Kingmaker, the Bloody Meadow and the Bastard’s siege of London: all the madness that for thirty years now had made England rip out its own bowels like a wounded wolf was coming to its end and resolution. This would be the ultimate bloodletting. The Cat, the Rat and the Dog were riding with all the strength of England behind the silver boar for that. Three Plantagenets, four Nevilles, four Beauforts, three Bourchiers, three Staffords, two Courtneys, five Wydvylles, had died in the garboyles that led up to this. To-morrow or next day some more would die, and they would have quiet for good; breathing-space to take order with England.
Henry Tydder the Welchman, the last bastard offshoot of the House of Lancaster — a little rat-faced man, those who had seen him said, with yellowish hair going thin already and small peeping eyes — had landed at Milford Haven in Pembrokeshire on the Feast of the Transfiguration, just fourteen days ago. He had with him two thousand Norman and Breton fighting men, under the command of Philibert de Shaundé; and in his company, as though ghosts walked out of their graves to trouble men, came his uncle, Jaspar of Pembroke, and John Vere of Oxford, whose wife King Richard had made his pensioner and who had repaid him by escaping from his prison at Hammes. Lord Lovel did not know for certain what could have moved the Welchman to this last risk, to fling himself under the very tusks of the boar with only two thousand soldiers of fortune, a superannuated captain shaking with gaol fever, and the good wishes of the rulers of France to guard his skin. Some said the Lady Bessy, Queen Elizabeth’s daughter, had a hand in the business. That young lady, now kept in seclusion in the Castle of Sheriffhutton, had shown herself recently to be a proper Wydvylle; had suggested, a small matter of weeks after Queen Anne found rest, that her uncle the King might get a Papal dispensation to marry her, which would, she said, end all the grudging between her family and him. It seemed even that thin-jawed Medusa of Westminster Sanctuary, her mother, thought this incest a hopeful plan. King Richard, without change of face, had announced publicly in London that the proposal had been made to him and that he had refused it; that there would be punishment for those who even spoke of such an infamy. It did not touch him. But perhaps the pleasant news that Lady Bessy, if she could wear a crown, would not be particular who put it on her had helped to call Henry Tydder out of France. Women — Lord Lovel damned them wholemeal — had too many hands in politics. There was the Lady Margaret. King Richard should have killed her after Buckingham’s Water. Now she had done her share for the corruption of England. They had found out a week ago at Nottingham.
The news had come to them there that Henry Tydder had reached Shrewsbury. In his own country of Wales no one opposed him. His little regiment of gaolbirds — the French had not gone so far as to provide him with men that could be trusted — had slouched from valley to valley behind the banner of a dragon passant, gules, on a field vert and argent, the standard of Cadwallader. That had been clever of the little Welchman. He claimed descent from Cadwallader as well as from John of Ghent and Brutus and King Lear; and there was a prophecy that a man of that blood would one day recover the ancient empire of the Britons. Welchmen in ones and twos began to join him: savage men with pedigrees as long as their pikes and bellies as empty as their purses: Gryffudds, ap Thomases, Morgans, Vaughans and Gams. Shrewsbury would have shut its gates to him but for his numbers. He got in, and the rumour ran about that there was one Englishman at least who was ready to fight shoulder-by-shoulder with the Welch and French against his King. Sir Gilbert Talbot had raised five hundred men and declared for Lancaster.
That was the news they debated in the tower-room at Nottingham.
“The rot is spreading,” said John Howard of Norfolk. “We may hear worse things before we’re done. This gives the Welchman four thousand at least: twice what he started with.”
King Richard clicked his dagger and looked down. His face was a dead face washed clean by too much unhappinness. But he said quietly:
“I wish the Great Turk, with Prester John and the Sultan of Syria, were against me with all their power. For all their manhood I would be King of England.”
A little stir went round them, like wind going through tired leaves in the autumn. It was not the King of silences that they had grown used to in the mo
nths since Lady Anne died, but their old Richard, who said that. But whilst they were still looking at one another with the sadness of men whom a relic had put in mind of a dead friend, Sir Richard Ratcliffe was in the room with them.
“Your Grace, I found my Lord le Strange with his horse saddled. He was making ready to leave Nottingham and your person on his own concerns.”
Lord Scrope swore and grabbed for his dagger, and the Earl of Northumberland went white, when they heard that. Lord le Strange, who had raised ten thousand against Buckingham, was the son of Lord Stanley; and Lord Stanley was the stepfather of Henry Tydder.
He was brought in. They had taken his sword from him and there was blood on his mouth as though he had made trouble and been given a blow. The King’s voice was as gentle as the croon of a pigeon and his face was blank.
“Lord le Strange, why were you leaving Court without my word?”
Suddenly, with the quickness of a frightening accident, Lord le Strange dropped on his knees. He was a young man, big and fattish, and his face was as flabby as a dead fish with terror.
“Mercy, your Grace, for Christ’s sake mercy: I’ll tell you everything.”
“Lord God,” whispered John Howard of Norfolk to Francis Lovel, “what’s this to mean? Are the whole Stanley pack in it?”
“You will tell me everything,” said King Richard, looking down at his hands, agreeing with him.
The story came, Lord Lovel thought, almost too freely. He had listened to his stepmother, the Lady Margaret.
She had begged him to help her Welch son to the crown of England; had talked of rewards. She had said King Richard could never prosper now the world knew he had killed his nephews. Like a disloyal fool, he had come to terms with her. So had his cousin, Sir John Savage. Let the King have mercy. His uncle, Sir William Stanley, was not clean of the matter either. He would tell the whole truth. His uncle had sworn to give King Richard such a breakfast as no knight had ever prepared for a King.
“And your father?”
“Your Grace, do what you please with me. Kill me. But if I were at the edge of the block I would tell you the same. My father never conspired against you. He would not listen to her. He knows nothing of all this. I swear it on the sacrament.”
“You will write a letter to your father. Tell him that if he does not join me with five thousand men to break this Welchman, you will pay me your debt. Your uncle and your cousin I shall proclaim traitors. They will answer to me in my own time. If your uncle keeps his promise to this woman, if he sends one man to the aid of Henry Tydder, you pay.”
Sir Richard Ratcliffe cut in then.
“Your Grace, for the love of God you’ll never trust a Stanley now? Trust none of them. We’ve plenty of men. Send ten thousand into Cheshire to pull down the gryffon’s claw wherever it flies. Christ’s body, you can’t trust them now.”
“I trust this coward’s love of his life.”
“No, no, your Grace, for all hallows’ sake remember Henry of Buckingham’s last words to you. Everything is for sale in England.”
“And I have bought Lord Stanley with his son’s head. Will he fight against me with his son in my hands? and if he fights for me, will his brother fight for Henry Tydder? Write your letter, George Stanley, and save your neck from the axe and your father from the sin of treason.”
“Ah, let me cut his throat now and his father’s tomorrow. We’ve time yet before we deal with the Welchman.”
“No.”
No one argued with King Richard now. Some ranks ahead of him, in the middle of a thick clump of spears, Francis Lovel could see Lord le Strange riding with his feet lashed to his stirrup-leathers. Lord Stanley had heard what the conditions were on which he would see his son alive again. He lay ahead of them, camped in the Deer Park before Market Bosworth, with his five thousand. If his honour was for sale, it seemed the King had got the price for it.
They had power enough without him. John Howard of Norfolk and his son the Earl of Surrey, Henry Percy of Northumberland, young John de la Pole of Lincoln, Neville of Westmorland and Gray of Kent, Lord Dacres, Lord Ferrers, Lord Zouche, Lord Ogle, Lord Beauchamp, Lord Greystoke, Lord Scrope of Upsall and Lord Scrope of Masham, and fifty-nine knights, each with his following, were somewhere in the long fourfold column, flanked on each hand by a single line of outriders, that churned the August dust up. The metallic, comfortable noises and sweaty smell of a great army on the march came to Lord Lovel as he rode. He felt a sudden keenness of liking for the archers slouching beside his horse: sun-bitten, red necks and unthinking faces. Sweating Death or none, treason or none, these — some twenty thousand of them — had turned out to have a hand in the finish of it; put an end to the madness of the two roses.
Someone had pulled his horse out of the line ahead of them; was standing and letting the column pass him, shouting to each captain as he came up:
“Stapleton Village ahead: we harbour this side of it where the bridge is.”
He swung in his saddle, acknowledging the order with a lift of the hand; shouted to his men:
“Harbour in a moment, lads.”
A kind of muttering cheer wandered from mouth to mouth. The sun had flogged the spirit out of them. The whole column moved a little sullenly, heads down, eyebrows drawn, hating the dust and the hedgerows that looked cool but were not. Sooner we get them off the road for the night the better, he thought, and shouted to his harbingers to get ahead and pitch camp.
Only the church-tower showed above the trees from Stapleton village. The Camp-Marshal’s pickets were out on the road to turn back those who dreamed of the alehouse. Like King Edward in his great days, King Richard kept his men sober on campaign. In a hollow meadow by the roadside, with a stream through it, horses were being picketed and tents put up. The harbingers quarrelled and advised each other. He let a groom take his horse, and stood at the roadside watching one company of men slouch past him behind another. Presently someone said behind him:
“Well, my Lord Viscount?”
The face of John Kendal, Secretary of State, looked strange with the steel frame of basnet and gorget round it, like the face of a friend seen suddenly in the dark by a tinder-flash.
“Well, Mr. Secretary?”
“The King is to sup alone: but you and Sir Richard Ratcliffe sleep in his tent.”
“Very good: is there any news of Lord Stanley?”
“The King has sent an outrider.”
“Then we shall have news soon.”
“Yes.”
There did not seem any more to say. Almost horizontal beams of sunshine, as red as blood, stretched over the half-pitched camp. The voices of men unloading carts and setting up tents sounded flat and low … It’s queer, thought Francis Lovel, the little crew of us who stand round our King like mourners keeping the month’s-mind round the grave of a friend, and queer how we come together in corners when we think no one’s looking, and then find that we have nothing to say. Ah, Lady Anne, wasn’t it hard enough for us to lose you: need you have taken Richard away as well? John Kendal lifted his hand in a kind of salute and slouched off, clumsy in his unfamiliar harness, and Lord Lovel went to see if his supper were ready.
It was nearly dark when he was called to the royal tent. The great cloth-of-gold pavilion, as big as a barn, with the leopards and lilies hanging lax over it in the unmoving air, was the one King Edward had used in France ten years ago. The gold thread was a little tarnished now. The captains were all there: Norfolk, dark-eyed and thoughtful as he always was; his livelier son, the Earl of Surrey; handsome young John of Lincoln; Henry Percy of Northumberland, thin-faced, unsure in his movements, not looking much like a man who had the blood of Hotspur in him. Sir William Catesby was there too, the Cat; and the Rat with him. Colyngbourne deserved to be hanged only for calling that honest mastiff of a man a rat, Lord Lovel thought. John Kendal and Sir Robert Percy were in attendance.
The King sat in a small, low-backed chair. He had his harness off and wore black velvet. The men
stood around him, some talking, but he did not appear to see them. His hands with their many rings lay on the chair-arms and he was looking down. His face was deathly, the bones standing out as though to cut the skin and the muscles round the mouth like wires. After a little, he held one hand out and John Kendal put a paper in it. He read it through, drawing his colourless under-lip backward and forward over his teeth; then talked. His voice was as dead as his complexion.
“Gentlemen, this is an assurance from Lord Thomas Stanley that he is and has been loyal. He will fight tomorrow. He has implored his brother, Sir William Stanley, either to seek my mercy or at least not to draw his sword on me, and he has a certain confidence that his appeal will be heard. None of the name of Stanley will be on the Welchman’s side to-morrow. He gives me news of the rebels. Their force, he says, is not above five thousand, and their French and Breton mercenaries are of the poorest. John Vere and Jaspar Tydder are old men. As to Henry Tydder, he would seem to be altogether what we supposed he was: a milksop who never saw an army. It seems he is regretting his hardiness already and wishing himself back in Britanny; Lord Stanley tells me for the truth that on his road here from Lichfield he tried to desert his own army and hide alone. His uncle Jaspar prevented him. That is the man we are to fight.
“Now, gentlemen, here is the disposition of the matter. The Welchman and his five thousand are at a place called the White Moors, three miles away on our left hand. Two streams lie between us and them and there is no good road. Sir William Stanley, in whom the rebels put all trust, lies almost two miles north of them near a village that is called Market Bosworth, and a mile from him and on the other side of Bosworth Park is his brother, Lord Thomas. We have assurance that these two will not join the Welchman. Then he must join them. To do this, he must cross the River Sence at a certain bridge and take a road about a marsh there. A hill overlooks this road. Its name is Ambion Hill upon the edge of Radmore Plain. We shall station ourselves there to-morrow. From it, we can see the Welchman and both the Stanleys, and we can force a field when we desire. If we engage the Welchman when he is round the marsh, Lord Stanley can take him in the rear. I have commanded him to do this. As for our marshalling: Norfolk, you take the vanward and form it on my left when we pitch field. My Lord of Northumberland, you take the rearward. I shall command the middleward. Sir William Gatesby and Sir George Buck will remain here to oversee the camp.
Under the Hog: A Novel of Richard III Page 50