At the ale in Eden Berrys on Goodramgate it was ‘Dickon, God preserve him!’ from one roisterer who should have known better.
All the way it was Richard, Richard, Richard. From the Merchant Adventurers to the smallest craftsman. They loaded his table with the choicest food in Gildhall, they set before him the finest wines. They arrayed the aldermen in scarlet by the score and horsed them grandly for his welcome at Bootham Bar. The banners danced above him. The trumpets blared for his entrance. He wore York like a jewel in his bonnet.
Lord Percy rode a little behind him, and was deafened by the noise.
And there are days in life which start out so fair, and end up black, like the hand of God descending to chasten men for their sins, for none knows when the Day will be. Hogan and others had prophesied the world’s end in the year 1500, but I still live to speak of a day I hold in my mind clearer than many.
The sun was shining. I was a little anxious about my sparrow-hawk; she was baiting, and I took off her hood to look into her misted eye. She would not eat, not even the choicest morsels, and I did not want to spoil her for future sport with temptation, so I left her with the falconer and walked across the ward. The drawbridge was down, for a horseman had lately ridden in, flecked with spur-blood and spume. In the green meadow across the moat, I could see Edward on his pony, trotting in a circle, round and round like a leaf in the breeze. He was laughing. Little John sat on a sturdy bay in the corner of the meadow, watching Edward as a priest guards a shrine.
I walked back to the Castle. Folk were gathered at the foot of the steps and more were issuing from the great door. I raised my eyes to the battlements; they were lowering the standard that flew there in the moorland wind. At the same moment as a bell began to boom slowly, the horseman I had seen emerged and ran down the steps, unwashed, foam-spattered cloak wafting about him. He called for fresh horses. A page ran beside him, and passed close, so I caught at his sleeve. He wore Lord Hastings’s livery.
‘What news?’ I said. He looked excited and fearfully pale.
‘The King is dead,’ he said, shrugging me off in his haste.
It was like a blow, a douche of icy water. The whole ward shimmered before me into something alien and fierce. I caught at the boy as he hurried past.
‘You lie,’ I said softly.
Then I looked again towards the Castle and saw Lady Anne, Lady Lovell and a few other women. Anne Neville was descending the steps; I fell on my knees and offered her my arm, for she almost stumbled in her haste to reach the level of the yard. She leaned on me briefly—like a willow tree she was, for she wore palest green and she trembled and shivered and swayed like a willow in the wind.
‘What tidings, my lady?’ I cried. ‘Pray, go carefully,’ for her feet caught in the hem of her gown. ‘Ill tidings,’ she whispered, as people came running to strain for her words. Her voice rose from a mere breath to a sorrowful cry.
‘Our Sovereign Lord is dead!’ Then, softer: ‘O Jesu, Edward is dead! And Dick is in Scotland! He has been cold a week; our Sovereign Lord is dead!’
Over and over she cried it. We all knew it was impossible. Yet it was true.
Thus ended my time at Middleham.
The sun was brighter then.
HERE ENDS THE FOOL’S TALE
* Old French—‘joy’.
We Speak No Treason continues
Book 2
The White Rose Turned to Blood
Rosemary Hawley Jarman
The sweeping epic of England’s last Plantagenet king continues with the testimony of Richard III’s sworn man, Mark Archer, a sharp-sighted soldier, who follows his lord into an adventure-filled exile and beyond. Through the bloodiest battlefields and the devious atmosphere of a royal court where every other nobleman is a traitor, to the solitude of the cloister, this stormy, tragic tale concludes with the story of the Nut-Brown Maid who loved and lost Richard, her gruelling ordeals at the hands of unscrupulous nuns, her courage in the face of danger, and a fateful reunion as the wheel comes full circle...
We Speak No Treason Vol 1 Page 31