We Speak No Treason Vol 2

  ‘Mayhap your lord will come soon to see you,’ she said slyly. ‘For I fancy he is a lord, and you a lady, once, at court.’

  Did she taunt me? Nay, not Joan. Did she expect an answer? Did she think me mad, never to speak of him? to have no pittance from him, the father of my child? Did she deem him dead? And with that thought, the snow started again, silently swirling, each flake a ghost, a white flame in the greyness. Did she deem him dead, in truth?

  ‘God’s nails!’ cried Joan, and clapped a hand over her mouth, slipped gabbling down her beads in swift penitence. ‘I pray you, Madame, cease that crying!’

  ‘It’s Christmas,’ I said.

  ‘Holy and joyous season!’ she cried. She marched me to the window. ‘Here! Watch for the minstrels!’

  I stood against the glass. Cold wind eddied about my face. And in the embrasure, with carven grin, was a little stone monk, his features rugged under my hand. The chill, carved faces, and music in the wind, a cold song ringing, rising high, an ice that burned as it froze. He was dancing, dancing with Katherine of Desmond. So agile and gracious, so light in the dance. The velvet of his doublet was a dark fire. His sombre eyes gleamed. Once, I saw him laugh—it pleased her, she looked at him as if she thought him pleasing indeed, and I was not jealous, for she was his good friend, and widowed, and used cruelly—a husband headed, and two little knaves, ah, what, what had he said, all white and red? The shedding of infants’ blood? Those who do such... what then? For my life, I could not remember, though all his words lurked ever on the lip of my mind. I could only watch him, hearing the plangent lute, feeling again the gallery’s icy cold which turned to such heat, such flowering warmth, such madness, at one touch of my lord’s hand. I saw the sway and shimmer of gay Edward’s poisonous court, far below me on the rose-painted floor. And eyes looked on me from the darkness, eyes like no other eyes in the world, and there was the feel of velvet cloth, the bruise of a heavy jewel crushed on my breast. And Richard’s arms, and the Blessed Mass of Christ, holy and joyous season. And despair, to ring me round. The music fell faster, and the snow sang full strongly, I could distinguish each instrument now, rebec and reed, tambourin and harsh cromorne, but he was gone, and so was Countess Katherine, and the rose-decked floor laid waste, a white wilderness, and he was gone, I knew him gone, and felt Joan’s arm, blacksmith-brawny, about my shoulder, red drink roaring down my gullet.

  ‘Don’t spill it,’ she said. ‘’Tis of my best. Good Clary wine.’

  ‘They gave his mother that,’ I heard myself say. ‘Each night before sleep. A cure for childbed vapours.’

  ‘Whose mother?’ said Joan crossly. ‘Drink.’

  ‘He’s dead,’ I cried. ‘Hear you the music?’

  They were playing, strong and sprightly.

  Beauty, who keeps my heart,

  Captive within thine eyes.

  I rolled my head in my hands. The music was within.

  ‘You hear it, Dame?’

  ‘Yea, the music,’ she said, releasing her grip, moving away. ‘They must have crept through the snow. Now Madame has them at their craft, wet clothes and all. Good fellows, too,’ she said, tapping her foot. ‘Belle, qui tiens ma vie!’ She sang, out of tune. ‘How I love Christmas!’ she said..

  I was reeling. ‘I must lie down,’ I said. The words drifted away, unheard.

  ‘Two moons ago, you promised me the receipt for hypocras.’ She had her roll ready, pen poised, saying we might as well pleasure ourselves at Christmas, if ever. It would do Gertrude good, Gertrude who was frail and old, and I must lie down, and weep, fully, without the fear of chiding.

  ‘Later, later, Dame.’

  ‘Hypocras, child,’ she said firmly. ‘Haven’t I given you of my best Clary?’ A bargain was a bargain to Joan.

  ‘Aqua vitae, 5 ounces.’ How slow she wrote, while he lay dead by sword or bludgeon! ‘Pepper, two ounces.’ There was poison in the knot garden, swift and sure.

  ‘Two ounces ginger.’ The dreadful unknowing, not daring to know.

  ‘Cloves, of the same.’ He was dead. Dead, yet dancing?

  ‘Grains of Paradise.’ The quill broke, she fumbled and clicked her tongue.

  ‘Ambergris, five grains.’ Costly, costly. Was the King dead too?

  ‘Musk, two grains.’ To perdition with the King.

  ‘Infuse for a night and a day.’

  Joan sighed. ‘How much sugar? How well they play! London lads were ever best, yet these were trained in France, that I warrant. By St Loy! I can’t afford this drink. Not unless I teach young Mustarde threadwork too. How say you, mistress, if we...’

  ‘You say they’re from London?’ Trembling breath, and hands gone witless, flying to my throat, my heart.

  ‘Fresh from London, gossip-choked,’ she said, and may have laughed at me a little, I did not stay to see.

  There was one tall curly-haired boy, and the only one who did not snigger behind hands at the sight of me, young, unwed, swelling with child in a nunnery. I knew that they made songs about such as I. He was however kind, polite, and winked only once towards the ribald cheer that rose from his fellows as I, unthinkingly shameless, pulled him into an alcove, pleading, begging.

  ‘Worth a kiss, is it?’ he asked agreeably.

  ‘I would hear of his Grace the King,’ I said, trembling hard, and, so that there should be no confusion: ‘His Grace King Edward Fourth, and his family.’

  He gazed at me frankly. ‘Stands the case so?’ he said, with a little more respect, and I knew that he thought me one of Edward’s lemen, and I wanted to laugh at the incredible thought, but checked myself, for the words from this young lutanist’s tongue were more priceless than all the jewels round Elizabeth Woodville’s throat, more precious than any of Joan’s costly hypocras, and yet, my wits knew not how to mine for them. I looked up at him, saw his blond curls dabbled with melted snow, his merry, shining eyes, saw him not. His mouth took mine then, cool, ale-fresh, hearty. The kiss marked me, emboldened me, like the opening phrase of a song. Softly I asked him: ‘How should Earl Warwick loose so royal a captive?’

  He laughed, his contempt veiled in kind sadness.

  ‘Dame, I would not for the Kingdom of Heaven,’ he said, and stopped and laughed anew. ‘Nay, that’s too high a price. For Heaven’s estate, and that only, would I trade my condition for yours. ’Tis passing sad. To dwell here at the world’s end. To have September’s news for Christmas!’

  O God! We were interrupted then by the nuns. They came into the frater with a great commotion, Dame Bridget harrying them. The minstrels watched, grinning covertly.

  ‘Accursed, accursed. To leave off spinning thus!’

  ‘I’ve spun enough,’ said Agatha rudely. ‘’Tis Christmas. I’ll hear Vespers, then I’ll enjoy myself.’

  Fiercely gay, she tripped on by, touched the lute in passing as one might stroke a baby’s face. Its owner stood splay-legged and watched Bridget, reflectively chewing his top lip.

  ‘She’s poison, that one,’ he remarked. He plucked a chord.

  ‘Like marsh grass is my lady’s countenance,

  Both wild and sour...’

  ‘I kissed you,’ I said desperately. ‘The news now. The London news, for Jesu’s love.’

  He was looking this time at Adelysia, who came tapping, beads swinging to that light, quick tread.

  ‘A special tune for you, holy fair,’ he cried.

  She smiled wanly. The chaplain had gone to York for Christmas, to the house of his benefactor, a wealthy merchant taylor, leaving the fat gabbler to say all the offices alone, much to his displeasure. Adelysia therefore could have flung herself into devotion; should have been merry, heart-free. She was not, however. Tortured, heretic, solitary, Adelysia loved. I could have spared her a thought. I, who had once comforted the lonely, the tormented—yea, dear Lord! could have halved her burden. I have often been sorry.

  ‘The King does well, then? And all his henchmen?’ Mad, I was willing to buy news with another kiss, but his e
yes were straying again, this time over my shoulder. I felt a grasping at my gown and had no need to turn, but saw the minstrel’s face, a little taken aback. Edyth, so thin and green, could shake one’s soul at times, with her unearthliness. And she wanted something.

  ‘Yea, what is it?’

  ‘’Tis hard,’ she said, her usual fashion. Hard it is, I thought, to bend to your prattling while news of my love is so near. But the well was solid ice, she said. She was strong but not that strong. Dame Joan was roaring for water. Edyth had been prodding for an hour.

  ‘I’ll do it,’ the minstrel said. We went out into the snow. Black ice lay on the lake. The stream was patched over with the same. Here and there a trout, dark and sullen, rose thrustingly to the brittle surface. White and silver the reeds, and stiff as swords. Was he safe? happy? alive? I stood mute while the minstrel drove his staff at the well’s hard depths. Edyth held his legs as he leaned dangerously over the side.

  ‘Certes, it’s good and deep,’ he said, peering, as water began to suck and trickle through. He turned the winch, tore his hands, cursed, and said: ‘An easy drowning death, I think.’

  ‘Not for me,’ one of us answered.

  ‘But for some,’ he said, grinning. ‘Yon sour-faced nun, perchance?’

  Yea, he’s right, thought I. Here were the grasping depths, the darkness, the slime. The goal of accidia. Bridget could well drown herself, in one of her melancholy spasms. But he was walking back towards the house, and I was running, all thoughts of Bridget, and Adelysia, and Edyth flown from my mind, straining to hear. What did he say? That the King was taken to Pomfret by Warwick, and from there, rescued. And how cleverly they turned the trick! One shot an arrow into the bailey while His Grace walked the lawn, signifying their presence. Another climbed the wall and asked would the King go hunting. Edward liked the audacity, the jest. (What a man, what a King!) Made brash by their endeavour, he sent word that he would gladly hunt, an the quarry be fair. Send all my lords to Pomfret, he said, and I’ll go there to meet them.

  ‘But he was already at Pomfret!’

  ‘Nay, Middleham,’ he said, cross and careless. ‘Did I say Pomfret? Are you faint, mistress?’

  ‘I thought... the King were dead,’ I whispered.

  (He was at Middleham. So near.)

  ‘’Twas but one of those flying tales.’

  ‘Who... who were the lords that rescued him?’ I could scarcely shape the words.

  ‘Hastings, they say,’ he replied. ‘Young Buckingham, that I do know. Suffolk, I think. A few good archers. Archbishop Neville is disgraced. The See of York will soon be vacant. Earl Warwick fumes, but can do naught. Daft Harry’s in the Tower again, Clarence in France, and Edward on the throne. Jesu, mistress! Aren’t you glad I came your way?’

  Never was there a more garbled tale, like a skein on a loom all twisted, with the colours showing the wrong way round, yet with a semblance of truth. But if the colours shone bright, I cared not a jot.

  ‘And all were safe.’

  ‘Not a head broken,’ he said gaily. ‘A good young man, the King’s brother. Scarcely rest nor food did he take, till Ned was safe.’

  ‘Gloucester.’ Oh, the pain and bliss of saying it. A wound within the mouth.

  ‘Yea, Dickon. He’s in Wales now, Governor of the Marches. Didn’t I say Earl Warwick fumed? All his old commissions gone to the stripling Duke...’

  A wound, born of a kiss.

  We were at the door of the frater. Be good to him, Wales, fortunate Welsh. The players struck up again, each note a sweet, cold icicle.

  Vientôt me secourir

  Ou me faudra mourir...

  Aid me or I die. He was beyond my call. He was conferring with his Welsh chieftains, hearing the oyer and terminer in wild valleys. Bards hymned him on the harp. He rode a black mare over the mountains. He did not think of me. He was alive.

  He was alive.

  Within me I felt the joy. It leaped and sang in my breast, in my belly. Startlingly potent, it turned and fluttered within my bowels, at the burning core of all my loyalty and my hope. Joy leaped lustily, with such vehemence that I swayed, clutched the cold, stone, searing wall, a wall of flame. Richard lived. My joy bounded through me like a bird.

  His child reeled within me. Richard lived.

  ‘The Welsh seem greatly attached to him,’ said the lute-player, departing.

  The room was full of people and shadows and pain.

  ‘This is surely the true penance,’ said an awed voice. Soft though they were whispered, the words lashed me like a running sea. My mind seemed split in two. One half was dead, the other knew everything sharp and clear. I did not know my name. I knew that the sun had shone all day, fierce for April. I did not know that they had built a great blaze in the hearth. I knew that night had come, but the sun’s heat still poured over me, they had brought the sun into the chamber. I knew that Edyth was in church, praying for me to St Bernard, yet Edyth knelt beside the bed—so Edyth could be in two places at once, sweet Edyth with her green marsh-face, and therefore she was a witch and I screamed for they were going to burn her. Nay, it was Jacquetta of Bedford they were going to burn. I took their pains upon me, double pains, too much to bear, and screamed in the flame. Yet it was meet they should burn Jacquetta, she of the mischievous potion and the little lead lovers twining beneath the moon. Vervain and cinquefoil, aconite and amanita, she had given them to the King. Nay, I had given them, had mixed them in his wine, and they were burning me. They burned me slowly, in a fierce foreign garden. Even white-muzzled Gyb had come to watch the burning. He sat on my belly and sharpened his claws, a cat painted from out of the air by a man with raw Spanish colour on his brush. He stroked the colours on me one by one. Each was a molten pain as it ran down, he moaned as he worked, he did not want to hurt me, but it was written, my daughter, men are fickle, fickle, forget not the other!

  ‘Jesu, mercy,’ said Elizabeth Woodville, and crossed herself. I fell at the Queen’s feet. I was in darkness for a space, while the fires died down. Above my head came a muttering.

  ‘The fever abates,’ I heard. ‘’Twas the yarrow-flower water she took. It never fails.’

  ‘Nay, the Saint answered. I looked just now. The candles are right down, and burning.’

  Burning. I saw horsemen, their harness rent and bloody, arching dark vaults peopled by demons, the devils of the green fens with their malefic lights held high to shine in my eyes. They were tearing my sinful flesh with pincers. A shrieking voice curled around the ceiling. ‘O blessed Lady, help me! Sweet Bernard, succour me!’ I wondered, through my agony what poor soul cried in such anguish.

  ‘The creature is right small; I fear she’s not mighty enough in body.’ Hands stroked my hair, a rough stale touch unused to caressing. With difficulty I looked to see a stout red face, the sweat-soaked wimple clinging to either cheek. The lips moved.

  ‘Help me, child,’ they said. ‘Give life. Come, give life to your lazy lord.’

  Monstrous, Gyb fell on me again, a swollen-furred tiger.

  I did not know that Joan was such a skilled accoucheuse. She told me later she had learned her craft in Cîteaux, before entering the Founder House. They held a crucifix before my eyes; on that I hung, while my strength ebbed and waned and became as a mere dot of life, suspended for a spell, utterly in its stark shape. And the Cross spoke to me, in a woman’s voice, saying:

  ‘She has a maid—right fair and lovesome it is, too.’ Another wiped the sweat from out of my eyes and I saw the stern and kindly faces about my bed, then looked down, and for the first time beheld my Katherine, who had the nut-brown hair, to say naught of the blood royal.

  A royal bastard maid. Born to glory, death and sorrow, like her father. Like all the ill-starred Plantagenets.

  I had her named Katherine. All the nuns lost their wits over her. Even Juliana, the most unlikely person, kissed her often when she thought no one was looking, and gave her a blue beads to keep her from harm. Bridget kept away from her, an
d the Prioress said naught, which should have warned me. And the nuns exalted my choice of a name for her, as Catherine is the patron saint of maidens, and reflected well on all of us. Yet they did not know my own reasons for calling her thus.

  I did it in remembrance of my Lady of Desmond, who had been kind to him.

  I recall when I began, vainly, to care about Adelysia. It was the Feast of St Hilary of Poitiers, a sharp black January in the eleventh year of Edward’s reign, and I was teaching Katherine the opening passage of the Credo, and to say Jube, Domine, benedicere, though that will not go down in the chronicles. She was almost two, full of wit and fair beyond belief. Venus was strong on her natal day. I should not, cannot, speak much more in this wise. There are things past bearing, made harder because they are unforgettable. She impressed Dame Joan, ever vigilant for a show of sharp wits. She had her on her lap, giving her French endearments. This vexed me, I grant it. I went from the scriptorium, leaving them together. I was always jealous. I know not who petted her the most: Edyth, with her timid amorousness, Joan, who made her laugh or long-faced Juliana. It was only when I learned that Juliana, before being professed, had miscarried a child, that I understood. In those days I was so single-minded, clinging desperately to my heart’s one token, I was blind to the hardship of others. Kate was a fleshly covenant, and all beauty. And I wished with my soul that he could see her. I myself never wearied of looking at her. And what was it I sought? Of course, of course. In morning and evening light, I turned her about, smoothed back her rich hazel hair. I gazed in her eyes, and prayed for one glimmer, one shadow, striking in the same way. On the Feast of St Hilary, it was there. She looked at me obliquely, and my breath caught up in my throat. She sat in kind, cursed Joan’s lap, with her hands joined like a wreath of flowers. The winter sunshine made her eyes long and oddly tilted at the outer edge. She had in no way a childish face, there was scant roundness about it. The fine high bones showed clear. I saw that spiritual, fatal arrogance, that delicacy. I kissed her so hard that she was frightened, and Joan gave me a slap.