We Speak No Treason Vol 1

by Rosemary Hawley Jarman

  One of the front line of horsemen leaped from his mount. With a stride he was upon the Princess, grasping her by her flying hair. He wore the livery of the White Boar, and there mounted behind him was the Duke himself. The horsemen milled in a circle, exclaiming harshly, looking to see if the child had been harmed. The young knight who had caught her had been rough in his handling, and Elizabeth was on the point of tears. At that moment her nurse, the accursed, witless old fool, came panting flatfootedly across the yard. Gloucester dismounted, and the Princess ran to him. She threw herself against his legs—he lifted her up. He was chiding her gently, calling her ‘sweet Bess’. She wound her arms around him, burying her face in his fur collar.

  Gloucester spoke to the nurse. He did not raise his voice, but its tone sent frissons down my spine.

  ‘Well, dame?’ he said, while the Princess peeped out at us with one eye.

  The nurse fell to her knees, weeping and wailing.

  ‘Is this how you guard the blood royal?’ he asked. His voice was soft; soft and dangerous.

  ‘Your Grace, I did but turn my back an instant...’ she whimpered.

  ‘An instant,’ he repeated. ‘I doubt not it would have been likewise with the Prince Edward! An instant’s heinous idling—a hound at the cradle—a spark from the fire...’ He bit his words back in fury. ‘It seems that princes are cheaply begotten.’ He turned to two of the pallid guard. ‘Put this woman under arrest.’

  ‘They’ll flog her,’ whispered the groom.

  ‘They’ll hang her, if he’s a mind to it,’ said the steward who was trying to gentle Lyard Duras. ‘If he takes a leaf from the Butcher’s book.’

  So I thought on our last Constable of England, Tiptoft Earl of Worcester, who had devised new wondrous methods of impalement for felons... a brave man, who requested his own head shorn off in three strokes to honour the Trinity. As they led the weeping woman away Gloucester took the Princess up higher in his arms. She clasped and prattled. ‘Bess, my love,’ I heard him say.

  My devil took shape beside me, romping in the day’s dour colours, pleased at the aura of recent fear.

  ‘He is capable of tenderness,’ he murmured, and I instructed him to depart to his master, whoever that might be; while I heard Gloucester telling the Princess it was wrong to wander off, she all the time putting up great arguments—her nurse bored her and she would sooner be out of doors.

  ‘We must all do things we mislike,’ he said seriously, but she took it upon her to start kissing him, all over his face. She was more generous with kisses than protocol allowed; she had once kissed me before I could stop her. I have been kissed by a Queen.

  ‘What great wrath lies in him too,’ whispered the devil. He was beginning to talk more subtly to me these days. ‘Your Grace,’ I said, in a strangled voice, but by now the Duke was disappearing through the archway. Elizabeth’s hair caught the wind of their passing and lifted, cloth of gold but richer.

  I feared his anger which was rare as his smile, but I also marked his gentleness with the child and sought portents in all this. But then my portents came so thick and fast I did not know what to believe, and the next thing I knew I was on my way, drearily, to his apartments. One of the young pages opened and asked my business, so I told him it was none of his. When I said it was an urgent and secret matter he seemed impressed. A pinelog fire burned in the hearth and one of Gloucester’s huge hounds lay before it. It was a room of paradoxes: there was a lute, a set of tables, and Caxton’s new printed book on chess, loaned from Flanders, but the Duke had a suit of harness piled against the wall, and I wondered if he contemplated joining forces with the Easterling traders, it being their custom to keep armour in every room. Then I remembered the purpose of my visit, and my heart started knocking at my ribs.

  ‘His Grace is taking a bath,’ announced the henchman.

  The hound eyed me and growled. Murmuring voices came from behind the closed door of the bedchamber. I turned tail. I would shirk this odious duty. I had just convinced the page that what was important to me was of no consequence to the Duke, and was talking my way across the room when the bedchamber door opened. I heard Richard’s voice as one of the Yeomen of the Body came through.

  ‘If you will bring the book, Jervais, I’ll prove both you and Lord Anthony wrong,’ he called out. There was laughter.

  Jervais picked up Caxton’s book lovingly.

  ‘They’re arguing a point,’ he told the page. ‘Last night Lord Anthony vowed...’ He saw me and raised his brows.

  ‘You wish to see the Duke?’

  ‘Who is it?’ said the Duke from his bath.

  I knew then that matters were out of my hands. The henchmen whispered together and Jervais went through to the inner room. Miserably I heard him repeat my own words ‘urgent and secret’ and let them escort me to where Richard sat up to his armpits in warm water. He and I faced each other through curtains and steam. The aroma of coriander and rose-water tickled my nose. He looked at me apparently without recognition and the man Jervais bent over the bathing tent and murmured: ‘One of the histrios, sir,’ an unkind designation which at other times would have made me burst with rancour, but now I did not care. Richard nodded, then he said:

  ‘What is this matter concerning me?’

  I tried to speak and found myself dumb.

  ‘This good man seems ailing,’ Richard said mildly. ‘Give him a drink.’

  I gulped down a cup of Rhenish, which went straight to my head. I saw them all, grouped expectantly, save for the body servants who went on calmly pouring hot herbals over the Duke’s neck and back. Francis Lovell glanced up from the Game and Play of the Chess and smiled. I always liked him—he had a lucky face. Richard gazed quizzically at me over the high tub. I whispered my secret.

  ‘Come nearer,’ he said with impatience, and as I did not wish him to take me for a fool, I marched up to the parted curtains of the bathing tent and told him what I knew, louder than I had intended. Something strange befell his face. He waxed white and then rosy red and the skin seemed to be stretched tight over his cheeks as his normal pallor returned.

  ‘Help me out,’ he said and extended a hand on either side. Jervais caught one, and I the other. I took the Duke’s wet hand, all slippery with fine Bristol soap, and nearly had my fingers mangled by his inhuman grip. He was as thin as a whip, straight though not overtall, and well made, particularly about the shoulders. After my curiosity was sated I looked at his eyes, and ever afterwards he held my gaze with his, while they dressed him and I stood plaiting my fingers behind my back.

  They dressed him with care. While one knight tied the points of his hose, the other put over his head an applebloom shirt of the finest Rennes cloth. They clothed him in the purple, the narrowwaisted doublet edged with gris, and with the new-fangled sleeves like bladders, arranging the tucks of the tunic to achieve the desired triangular effect. Two esquires knelt to introduce his legs into the soft leather thighboots with the grey silk lining. Jervais fastened the gold collar of York about his chest, and gave him his velvet bonnet with the pendant bauble of rubies and he said, without taking his eyes from mine:

  ‘Now I am ready, Frank, to go a-wooing.’ And under young Lovell’s soft mirth, I felt murder in my soul at so sickly a jest.

  He slung his cloak about him, and it too mocked my sad thoughts of Anne Neville, for it was velvet on velvet, precedent of the highest nobility. Yes, you are very grand, Dickon, I thought. I hope that the stench of onions and greasy water will not taint you. Soon you will be even wealthier. May she spit on you.

  London is dirtier now, under Henry Tudor. Ugly little houses clog the streets, though this is not, of course, the fault of his Divine Majesty. He has put much hard-earned money into the building of his Chapel to the Virgin at Westminster, where they sing Masses night and day for the souls of the dead. Speaking of death, he has given directions for his own funeral, commanding royal and proper magnificence but no outrageous superfluities. Such a King he is.

&nb
sp; As I say, now it’s dirtier, but on the day I walked through town with Richard of Gloucester, going a-courting, I thought I had seldom seen it so foul and knew a peculiar shame for the filthy alleys and the stench which rose about me and my sumptuous companion. I was horrified that he had decided to walk anyway—I thought we would go by boat at least, and when he marched out of the Palace gate into the howling thoroughfare, I stopped in amazement.

  ‘I’ll get horses for your Grace,’ I murmured. He said grimly: ‘Friend, I have walked miles on this errand which ends today. I’ll see it through in like fashion,’ and added, as if to himself: ‘They marched further to Tewkesbury.’ I reckoned he was just rambling, being so full of triumph. We went together along the Strand, with the bishops’ palaces lining the south side, past Temple Bar and through Ludgate where the press thickened. I had need to run to keep up with him—all the while I was fearful that he might be assaulted or robbed, and I leaped from side to side of the street endeavouring to guard him. My disquiet must have been apparent, for at one point he stopped while I panted at his elbow.

  ‘My lord, why have we no esquires to ease your passage?’ I gasped. A smile crept over his face and he murmured:

  ‘Good fellow, there are times when one goes where no other should penetrate,’ and with that smile there was something in the back of his eyes that perplexed me utterly; that, coupled with the really mischievous look, man to man, which he gave me. I had never seen him with a woman; his habits were not those of the King and Clarence, both of whom had bastards all over England; then I remembered talk of Richard and a woman of Bruges, whom he had got with child.

  Eastchepe was crammed, redolent of food and filth. I whacked the cook-knaves aside as they clutched with foul hands at us both. The Gild had prohibited the practice of soliciting, but they still did it. ‘Hot sheep’s feet!’ they yelled. ‘Ribs o’ beef!’ I saw a grease-smear on the Duke’s velvet cloak, and, surreptitiously sponging at it with my glove, wished I had never been born. A ragged band playing harp, pipe and psaltery impeded us—they sang of ‘Jenkin and Julian’. The fishmongers shouted their melwell and mackerel earsplittingly. Even the oaths sounded worse in a prince’s presence. The window overhead flew open and a wife, with careless cry of ‘Gardy loo!’ hurled the contents of her pot almost on top of us. A dead dog, maggot-white, stank in the gutter. This was my Eastchepe, and, for the first time, I felt shame for it. ‘Good lord, excuse this foulness,’ I said, and was angry with myself as soon as the words were out.

  ‘Is it all of your making, then?’ he said, with a cool dark look. ‘Southwark is also somewhat unsavoury, but it has a fine inn.’

  ‘The Tabard,’ I said eagerly.

  ‘Yea, Geoffrey Chaucer’s tavern. All one hears is Chaucer. He has still an ardent following, and rightly so.’

  ‘His works would fit Master Caxton’s skill,’ said I, fawning. Kiss-your-arse Patch, I was. Am.

  ‘Of course you’re more familiar with such gestes than I,’ he said, and I caught the hint that he thought I could be more honourably employed than amusing the court with my fellow joculatores. But his wit was only slightly barbed and we talked culture. Of course he knew more than I, yet we enjoyed the same things, and as we walked, he recited ‘The Love Unfeigned’, and very well too; and when he came to the line This world, that passeth soon as flowers fair, I wanted to weep, as ever, and came near liking him. But then we neared the cook-shop and, remembering who lay within, I thought the title of ‘Dan’ Chaucer’s poem, coming from him, in poor taste.

  My mother’s shop, as we approached, looked a rather pitiful sight, and I would fain have hurried him past, but he slowed and looked up at it. ‘Whose place is this?’ he said, and squirming, I told him. I knew he would now think I was serving him for a reward and I felt like Judas Iscariot already without the thirty pieces being added.

  ‘She should have compensation,’ he announced, and I said that the Gild had matters in hand. He said ‘Hmmm,’ and was loath to drop the affair, but the next minute we were at our destination.

  I went first, and the haughty mistress stepped from behind her counter unsmiling, but when Richard of Gloucester darkened the doorway in his velvet and jewels and with his eyes like arrowheads, she swept to the ground, all her hauteur gone. As Gloucester only stood and looked about, I enquired of the mistress where the young lady might be found. Speechless, she pointed aloft, and I hung back as Richard strode through the shop. To my great dismay, for I had thought my task was done, he beckoned me from the foot of the stairs.

  ‘Give me a watch while I talk with the Lady Anne,’ he said, and turning, I saw the popping eyes of the cook-knaves. They were creeping imperceptibly towards the stairs, leaving their pies to catch at this latest entertainment. The owner was gone, I assume, to fashion an explanation for George of Clarence.

  I followed Gloucester upstairs. ‘Dismiss her servants,’ he said, then sharply asked me why I laughed and I told him; the lady’s status was not now what might be expected of Warwick’s daughter, and he would find her much altered. He swore a most fearful oath, and struck the door a rap with the hilt of his knife. My heart went into my boots as Anne opened the door. Now I have witnessed many executions, and taken my due lesson from them, as is intended. I have seen the faces of those about to be hanged, disembowelled and cut up, burned in barrels, and beheaded. They have a mingling of abject terror and resignation, patched over with a fierce bravado. This vanishes into mist at the first touch of the knife. Anne Neville carried that look. I knew better than any how Judas felt.

  Richard said, ‘Wait here;’ then: ‘Let none come up,’ and I saw Anne’s little white face, with the blonde hair dull from grease and her white coif smudged with dirt, blotted out by the Duke’s dark shadow, as he closed the door behind him. The servants were grouped at the stairfoot. They were straining to hear like a pack of hounds at a treed quarry, but in vain. I, on the other hand, had no wish to know what went on behind that door. But it had great cracks where the oak had shrunk, and I could hear every word.

  At first I thought on Daniel Fray and his lust for my mother’s livelode, and wondered if that old play would be performed within, before realizing that lords do not, as a rule, chase women round tables, although the Maiden once told me a fantastic tale about King Edward threatening Elizabeth with his dagger at Grafton Regis. Well, the King was one on his own.

  There was such a long silence that I was full of anguish. If he harms her, I said to myself, trembling fiercely, I will knock and enter, asking if they wish for wine. I will risk his wrath. Lord Jesu, keep my tongue still.

  His first words were shockingly clear.

  ‘This is an unseemly place to find you, my lady.’

  He got no answer to this, so he said: ‘Are you well, Madame?’

  Had he no eyes? He could surely see she was far from well. Again she did not reply.

  ‘I have come to fetch you away.’

  ‘I thought you would come,’ she said.

  ‘You heard that I was seeking you;’ he continued. ‘Why did you not send word of your whereabouts?’

  She coughed. She said, very fast: ‘I was warned of you, my lord.’ Then, more softly: ‘I was afraid.’

  ‘Warned? By whom? By Clarence?’

  No answer.

  ‘Yea, by my brother,’ he said. He laughed harshly. ‘Lord, how flown are some with ambition, how unbelievably cunning and devious...’ Then, less bitterly: ‘And you? What of your feelings in this… this conspiracy?’

  ‘I was not consulted, your Grace,’ she said, her voice battling with tears.

  ‘He brought you here by force,’ said Richard.

  ‘Nay, not by force. He said it would be better...’ her words started to run away, tripping over each other ‘...that you were so full of spleen, so hot in your desire for my mother’s estates... so full of fury because of my treasonous marriage you wished me ill. I was afraid,’ she said again, and changed it. ‘I am afraid.’

  Do not weep, I thought. Suppo
rt your soul before him, for the love of God.

  ‘The day I called at his manor he would not let me see you,’ Richard said. ‘He told me you were sick—was this the truth?’

  She was silent.

  ‘Three days I waited, close by,’ he said inexorably. ‘Then I returned, to learn you were so ailing you could not be disturbed. And then you were vanished, utterly. I’ve journeyed miles to find you.’

  ‘And now you have,’ she said wearily. ‘What do you wish of me, my lord?’

  ‘Why, to have you with me, of course!’ he cried. His voice dropped as he said: ‘We have been apart too long.’

  ‘There has been too much blood shed,’ she said sadly.

  The boards creaked as he started to walk about the room.

  ‘’Tis true, that in his Grace’s service I rode against your father. Of your husband I will not speak, but you know well my one-time affection for Richard Neville. That foolish, gallant knight,’ he said softly.

  Her voice trembling, she said: ‘Did you see him die?’

  ‘Oxford had fled, Montagu was cut down. The Earl of Warwick made for Wrotham Wood and the Barnet Road. He was pursued and slain. Once, through the fog, I saw his standard, then I was unhorsed. My esquires were dead—I was still embroiled in the fray. Then I saw his standard flew no more, but I heard only of his death when I was in the surgeon’s tent.’

  ‘’Tis hard for me to brook these thoughts,’ she said, in great sorrow.

  ‘And for me. I too remember Yorkshire, and happier days. But you, my lady, have been constantly in my mind.’

  ‘The last time we met was after Tewkesbury,’ she replied. ‘You had a terrible aspect. You did not speak to me.’

  ‘I was too overmatched, Madame. And, unlike my brothers, I am unlettered in fair speeches. I could but look at you and love you. Be sure of this, I shall not let you go again.’

  ‘When we were children,’ she said slowly, ‘I thought you loved me... but that was long ago.’