We Speak No Treason Vol 1

by Rosemary Hawley Jarman

  Something in this tickled my spleen. I remembered the little Neville well; thin and fair and flaxen, with a gentle smile and small, anxious hands. ‘Now he seeks his reward,’ Master Carlile had said. Her mother’s lands were forfeit to the Crown. With a sudden distaste I thought of Dan Fray, who had talked of love to my mother, and to what purpose, and then envisaged Gloucester, distant and frowning these past weeks. I had seen him wandering about the Palace at evening, preoccupied with what thoughts one could only guess at. George had married Isabel Neville—Richard’s almost perverse loyalty had curbed his own ambition. As we rode I wondered whether there was a spark of tenderness in him for poor, beleaguered Anne, and saw the red eyes of greed in the face of Fray’s nephew, sweeping up the contents of my mother’s parlour with a glance.

  ‘He has not seen her of late,’ I said. The serjeant looked oddly at me.

  ‘So? He saw her, and so did I, after Tewkesbury. I had blown my last attack and the enemy were cut to pieces or drowning in the stream; my lord Stanley came to take the French Queen. She had just learned that her son was slain. By my loyalty! her screams rang in my head for days.’

  ‘And Warwick’s daughter?’

  ‘Still, she sat, and the colour of a tallow dip. Eyes open, seeing naught. Then up rode Gloucester—harness shining with blood—even his horse’s coat black with it—and he doffed his helm and looked at her. Hair wild, eyes rimmed with blood and mire on his face. And the maid, corpse-mute, staring as if he were the foul fiend.’

  ‘Did he speak?’ I asked.

  ‘Nay, not a word. Yet he looked at her, for a long space, with a strange look. Then he turned and rode off to join the King, while Anne was taken under the protection of Duke George, to her sister’s house. The Neville affairs are entirely in his hands, so he says. Thus her inheritance lies safe within his walls, until the maiden shall be married.’

  I had noted the dark glances between Clarence and Gloucester. The picture was emerging.

  ‘And yet,’ he continued, ‘I think my lord of Gloucester will have his way. For the King’s Grace is inclined to dismiss Clarence’s right of wardship as nebulous.’

  I saw life as a spread chessboard neatly partitioned, though some of the black ran into the white at times. It shifted and wavered in my vision. The smallest pawn was Anne of Warwick, a little ivory figure. The Maiden and I were not on the board—we were of no importance, and I was glad of it.

  Then suddenly we had reached the top of Shooters Hill, and there was London, again lying like a wanton along the breast of the swift river, while in the distance all the green turned blue as it merged with the hills of Hampstead and Highgate. Down the slope we came with a throng of people all hurrying to be within the walls by sunset. Their frantic haste put me in mind of a rhyme. I took out my tablets to snare it, and the fortunes of the nobility faded and were gone.

  The Master of the Revels had his eye on me. I knew it, and he knew that I knew it. He was minded that my jests were too bold, and would have had me booted from the court had not the King unwittingly shielded me with his ready smile. None could gainsay his Grace in matters of pleasure, and I was a very small matter for dissent. Though there were a few, deeply devout, who would fain have called the Church down about our ears, with their rumblings that we trouvères—to wit, ‘jesters, jugglers, histrios, dancing women and harlots’—were lewd leaders to damnation and the Devil. Strong words these, for the belly of one who worked hard for his money. I would have found solace in giving the Revels Master my task for a day. He would have taken his bed a wearier man, and stiff of limb.

  One late summer evening he was watching me, and he was robed and regal and ready to frown. We, the joculatores, skilled in singing, in recounting of fable spiced with mime and posture, had been summoned to the King’s chamber. It was an island of informality betwixt the outer hall of reception and the inner mysteries of Edward’s bedroom. Within this middle haunt the King would snatch his pleasure after hours of wrangling in the chair of Council. He sat fair-humouredly, his astute brain free to wander, like his well-shaped hands to the dish of grapes and walnuts near his couch. A few of his intimates stood about him. There was a lady there, Elizabeth Lucey, whose husband had met his death fighting for the Royal House... the King made much of her. Did I not say he rewarded loyalty well? In her butterfly headgear and gown of sapphire silk, she looked queenly. There is treason. Lord Hastings had his gaze on her, as she sat on her little velvet cushion, and his smooth jaw quivered with the fullness of his thoughts.

  And the Master of the Revels had his eye on me.

  I fancied I excelled myself at reciting one of the Gesta Romanorum, one of those tales fashioned by the monk Pierre Bercheur at the convent of Saint Eloi. Latin lends well to a double meaning. The King beckoned me nearer. I shot a sly complacent glance at my mentor as I drew a new pack of cards from my sleeve. I threw them high in a rainbow skein from one hand to the other. Some charlatans use a silk thread through the pack: I first mastered the trick when I was eight years old and was beaten if I dared to let them drop thereafter.

  ‘If you, most dread Sire, would...’

  ‘Take a card,’ laughed Edward. He reached out his fingers. He liked cards. Dame Elizabeth Lucey stretched her fair neck like a flower. I palmed the Death Card quickly ere he should take it. Kings must only see and hear what is good. The royal astrologer stood near, fingering his pearl reliquary. Edward’s hand hovered over the blind, spread fan of cards. A distant sound, growing louder, came to our ears. Heads turned at the noise of two sharp voices outside. A henchman tapped, entered, knelt. He announced that the Dukes of Clarence and Gloucester sought audience. Edward raised his eyebrows.

  ‘Bid them come.’

  I stayed, one foot lightly on the dais, my eyes on my cards. Under my lids I could study George and Dickon as they entered. Clarence came first, laughing a little ill-temperedly. He flew the pink flag of temper on his cheek, but he was full of grace as he kissed the King’s hand.

  ‘Talk! talk! by my faith, it’s thirsty work,’ he remarked. Crossing to a side table, he lifted and drained a cup of hypocras. Edward’s keen eyes smiled.

  ‘Come, my lord, here’s something to intrigue—a new piece of magic from our friend. He seeks to blind us with swift skill.’

  Clarence leaned over me. The smell of wine was a heavy song on his breath. His bright hair fell about his rosy cheeks. A young pagan god was he, tall and gilded, but alas! the hand that touched the cards was over-plump, and trembled.

  ‘Good fellow, what is it?’

  Edward said softly: ‘A game of chance, fair prince,’ and for a brief instant the plump hand was rigid, and I knew that even my little diversion had its use, the reminder of old sins.

  George laughed too loud. He straightened his back. ‘I’m done with such,’ he said with a candour that made me squirm. ‘Besides, I am lucky in love—’ He turned to include the silent Gloucester in his charming smile. ‘Therefore I should not meddle with these nice tricky pastimes, neither will I.’

  Gloucester moved forward into my sight. White as a ghost, more slender than ever, he looked as if he could be broken in two. His hair shone dark, and his eyes smouldered. Quietly he said: ‘Your Grace, I would speak with you on a matter of gravest importance.’

  ‘Concerning?’ said Edward gently.

  Richard glanced at my intruding figure almost with hatred. He fiddled with his finger-rings. In the privacy of our stable, we fools often mimicked him; but then we aped everyone, from the Dowager Duchess downwards; it was sport. Discreetly I huddled from the step, and watched him. I would have thought he might have looked happier, for lately he had again earned the King’s praise. There had been trouble on the Scottish border. The North was a seat of unrest, and the King was cautious in his attitude to Lord Percy, Earl of Northumberland. Thus he had accorded his youngest brother the Wardenship of the North, all dead Warwick’s commands. Richard had resigned his offices of Chief Justice and Chamberlain of Wales to the new Earl of Pembro
ke and now, with his northern holdings went Warwick’s estates: Sheriff Hutton, Penrith and, above all, his beloved Middleham. He should have looked happier, but by his demeanour, these things were not enough. Something vexed him, and judging by Clarence’s uncomfortably high spirits, I knew what it was. Earl Warwick’s lands were Richard’s, but not the Countess’s, and the marriage ring was not yet on her daughter’s finger. I heard Anne Neville’s name, and knew that Gloucester still hankered. Little Anne, buffeted and tossed from the arms of the fierce, arrogant Silver Swan to those of the strange, unsmiling Silver Boar. Anne, who had looked with terror on the bloody Richard at Tewkesbury and who trailed the fetters of vast wealth. I glared at Gloucester, and catching his long dark eye, hastily turned my baleful look into a fool’s grimace.

  I was thinking that I must go back and see my mother, and that all men were acquisitive save for myself, who would have wedded the Maiden in the shift she stood up in, when a sudden explosion from the dais came.

  ‘O Jesu! Cannot you, my lords, be at peace one with another?’ The King’s jovial mood was gone. He sat bolt upright on the couch, glowering at his brothers. Elizabeth Lucey scuttled off her cushion and fled. Lord Hastings studied his nails, while Thomas Grey smirked openly from behind the dais.

  ‘Sire,’ said Richard, ‘how shall I live happily with one who will not give me answer?’

  The King turned his fierce look upon Clarence.

  ‘How say you, my lord?’ he demanded. ‘It seems the lady Anne is no longer in your household. Where shall my brother find her?’

  Clarence turned up his eyes. ‘Fair Sire,’ he said eventually, ‘it grieves me, by my loyalty, that I cannot ease our noble brother. Though I know he desires the lady my sister-in-law, how can I help? For, since Your Grace would have it that I own no wardship over her—her whereabouts are surely no concern of mine.’

  George’s tongue was gold. This statement was a mingling of airy simplicity and innocent amazement. Richard kept silence under the King’s troubled gaze.

  ‘Well, sir?’ said Edward.

  ‘I’m of the opinion,’ said Richard with difficulty, ‘that she is concealed somewhere.’

  Clarence laughed gently. ‘Likely, good brother,’ he murmured. ‘But ’tis naught to me. London is a great place, likewise York, or Canterbury or any other fair town. She is but a little maid,’ he mused.

  He came over to me, where I still held the cards fanned out.

  ‘Let us play one game of hazard, Dickon,’ he said kindly, and under cover of his sleeve flicked up the cards for a lightning look. Richard stood mute, his hands behind his back. I could almost hear his thoughts, as the Countess of Warwick’s lands, so nearly gained, were slipping from his grasp.

  ‘Come!’ George said. ‘Won’t you tempt Dame Fortune? Draw a card, and see if the omens are good!’

  Gloucester was silent.

  ‘Then I must play alone,’ sighed George, and with thumb and finger tweaked out a card. I knew what it was for I had placed them; so did he, for he had cheated. Richard’s face, when confronted by the Queen of Diamonds, betrayed little, and the jest went sour. He made an obeisance to the frowning King, and quit the room. The minstrels quietly gathered up their instruments.

  ‘Certes, I found a lady,’ murmured Clarence. ‘A grey-eyed lady for my noble brother, but he misliked her.’ I followed the tall prince in the wake of a soft French air that drifted from his lips and on the terrace waylaid him. There I showed him a little game—played with three walnut shells and a pea, and he achieved much skill with it, laughed for full five minutes, and gave me a mark.

  Richard had gone, tight-lipped, down to the armoury, or I would have sought to please him with it too. Would I though? There was no humour in him, and I knew I would only be wasting my time.

  *

  Robert Hawkins played the shawm, John Green the lute, and exceptionally tuneful were they, in sounds both sacred and secular. Also they had another love, that being gambling. So, through my lord of Gloucester’s whim, I had a wager of two marks with John, and the price of a good pair of hose with Robert, and I would have had the stakes doubled had it not been for their cautiousness, so sure of victory was I.

  ‘My lord went down into Southwark two days ago,’ Robert said uneasily. ‘He took with him a train of henchmen, two knights and some fellows in jacks and sallets—while yesterday he was combing the ward of Bishopsgate and had an hour’s talk with the Prioress of St Mary Spital.’

  I laughed merrily and measured my leg against his, for the new hose.

  ‘I will have them in green,’ I said. ‘And sure enough ’tis a fool that will place them on my feet. For does his Grace seek to find the lady all among the Bishop of Winchester’s geese?’

  This was a time-honoured jest among us. Once, the bagnios that housed the whores over the river paid rent to the Bishop’s bailiffs, and brought him in a tidy sum.

  ‘Today he went alone, and on foot,’ said John. ‘With but two squires to guard him.’ He sighed. ‘Jesu! he loves her.’

  ‘There’s no such thing as love,’ I said. And I tried to believe it, for my own heart’s peace.

  John took up his lute. His voice was pure, falsetto, silver, to set the hair on your head tingling.

  ‘Belle, qui tiens ma vie

  Captive de tes yeux

  Qui ma l’âme ravie

  Ton souris gracieux.

  Vientôt me secourir

  Ou me faudra mourir.’

  ‘Pretty,’ said I. ‘But he will never find her. He may have slain her husband at Tewkesbury, but she’ll stay widowed if my lord of Clarence has half the wit...’

  John rested his lute on his knee. ‘I never knew it was Gloucester that killed the French Queen’s son,’ he said, interested.

  ‘My cousin was in the battle’s thick,’ I boasted. ‘Were not the young princes rivals for Anne of Warwick?’

  I embroidered, as Alexander Carlile had done, and my colours were even brighter than his. So is history made. Detail and truth both done to death for drama’s sake, with hard bright fact concealed under the pretty swirl of histrionics. I am no worse, no better. Others have done it. But so is truth butchered, for the sake of a song.

  They hung on my words, and they composed a sad little tune.

  ‘His horse’s bardings—black with the gore of. the fallen.’

  This I liked well, and should it be the lady’s husband’s blood, splashed up from Gloucester’s blade, an even more thrilling ballad could be fashioned. Unluckily for me, a few words of this lay (which smacked of unchivalry) crept to my cousin’s ears. He sent a boy to fetch me to where he was practising at the butts. I watched him admiringly as he drew his bow. Muscle the size of an orange blossomed under the fine hide of each sleeve. The thrum and swish of his dart caused the heads of the watching esquires to turn; against the cloudless sky it cleaved an arc, striking the target just south of the bull. My cousin swore softly, but I clapped hands and cried bravo. Anthony Rivers took up his turn, standing a good yard back from my cousin’s mark, and loosed a clean quill. Under the cries of acclaim, my cousin said softly: ‘So you deem yourself a chronicler, kinsman,’ and flashed his steel-grey eyes at me. I was a little put out and busied myself applauding Lord Stanley’s shot.

  ‘I’ve heard your account of Tewkesbury,’ he continued drily. ‘I knew naught of my little cousin’s war-lust. Mayhap I can arrange a battle for you to see all first-hand.’

  The thought of fighting made me quake. ‘Sir, what have I said?’

  ‘Lies, tales of murder in the field,’ he growled.

  So I stood on one leg and sang:

  ‘I saw a codfish corn sow,

  And a worm a whistle blow,

  And a pie treading a crow,

  I will have the whetstone, and I may.’

  ‘Fool,’ he muttered.

  ‘Yea, ’tis my calling,’ said I.

  ‘You may yet have the whetstone,’ he said. ‘Hung about your neck for perjuring my account of a bloody
battle nobly fought.’

  ‘I’ll do penance,’ I whined. Only last week I’d seen a convicted liar in the market-place, with folk sharpening their knives on the great stone around his throat.

  ‘Sit, then,’ he commanded. ‘I’ll tell you of Tewkesbury.’

  So I sat, and the sun was hot, and I closed my eyes the better to hear his tale; and woke with a jump to a cool breeze and his voice, quieter now, saying: ‘Thus ended the House of Lancaster. Not, good friend, with silly tales of stabbings over a maid’s hand, but in dust, and heat, and honour.’

  ‘It’s a fine story,’ I said, blinking. He looked so sternly at me I wondered if he knew I’d been asleep. All he said was:

  ‘More credible than yours,’ and I answered meekly:

  ‘I will have the whetstone, kinsman,’ and left him. I had thought to mention Dan Fray and my mother, but I thought he might wax wroth at my clouting the nephew and risking a brawl, so I thought better of it and went to visit her myself.

  The cookshop was hotter than ever. The smell of dead dinners clung to the buckram hangings of the kitchen-chamber and the rushes were greasy with fat-splashes. I leaned on one side of the fireplace until the cook, with a heavy politeness, told me I was in his way. So I retreated to watch all the diversities of cunning employed by the cook-knaves. One was preparing a venison frumenty; he had leched the meat into strips and had his wheaten soup made ready, to which he was adding egg yolks, salt and sugar. Another, more ambitious, struggled uneasily with a fylettes en galantyne, stirring chopped roast pork and onions into beef broth boiled with pepper, cinnamon, cloves and mace. Old Mary was grinding fresh brawn in a mortar. I watched her temper it with almond meats and strain the mess into an earthenware dish, boiling the mixture with sugar and cloves, thickening it with cinnamon and ginger. The near-solid mass took shape—a hare, was it? a hog? I was about to ask her, when my mother appeared, beckoning me from half-way up the stairs. In the upper room, I knew there had been trouble. Her face said it.