We Speak No Treason Vol 2

  ‘Beggar! Harlot!’ she cried. The dog bawled limping at her side.

  I felt Edyth press close to me in fear. I felt the crispness of Katherine’s little headdress under my hand. Gently I turned her, and held her face against my thigh. I closed my eyes.

  That same day she sent for me. I had known it would be soon, for she had so little time. Even so, this preparedness did not stop my bowels from turning to jelly when the summons came. Edyth held on to my gown all the way through the frater. ‘Sweet mistress,’ she said. She always called me that.

  ‘Madame will not strike me,’ I said, laughing. An awful laugh it must have been. But she will not harm me, I told myself; there is a boon, a favour she would beg, a request that may become an order. I must therefore be as steel, as adamantine; I must not lose what wits are left to me, nay, I must be cleverer than ever I was. For I knew the Prioress’s mind, as surely as if the interview was already begun, and the knowledge brought fear. Dame Johanna’s door looked big and black.

  ‘I’ll wait,’ said Edyth.

  When I went in, the Prioress was standing by the fire, shivering gently as if she were cold. This set up an even deeper dread in me, like entering a tomb. Then she faced me and smiled with pretty teeth. So like Elysande was she at that moment that I felt the hair lift on my scalp. Her dog was there, growling sulkily, with a bandaged paw.

  ‘Hush!’ she told it crisply, like one anxious to set a cordial mood. Then she murmured: ‘’Tis cold for February, think you?’

  So she would sharpen her blade upon the weather. Very well.

  ‘I am always cold, Madame.’

  She was solicitous. It suited her ill.

  ‘Winter does strike hard,’ she remarked.

  ‘Summer or winter,’ I pursued. I tried to catch her sliding gaze. She said calmly:

  ‘You shall have more bedcovers. Dame Joan can give you some lengths of stuff. I hear you are passing skilled at thread-work.’

  Dread from her unnatural kindliness grew in me, and, paradoxically, courage.

  ‘Even damask wouldn’t mend a rotten wall, Madame. My cell’s like a marsh.’

  Silent, she took two paces right, two left, the hem of her coarse, poor habit, newly donned, rasping on the stone.

  ‘We are a penurious household,’ she said suddenly, looking somewhere above my head. ‘Would I could have the place repaired, fitting and seemly. To please my lords. I am embarrassed, ashamed.’

  She takes me for a fool, I thought wildly. Does she think me ignorant of her simony?

  ‘You are happy here?’ she asked, eyes on the ceiling.

  ‘Nay, Madame.’

  The heavy-lidded gaze swept down. ‘But you have no cares,’ she said softly. ‘You have food and shelter. You have your daughter, have you not?’

  Like the trumpet call before a tourney, a warning sounded in me. Beasts are sensitive to such a mood-change; the little dog yapped suddenly, then began to whine. I looked at it.

  ‘The Archbishop detests dogs,’ I heard myself say. I was quoting the emissary, and she knew it. I was sounding the attack. I waited.

  ‘But he loves children.’ Her full lips closed round each word as if it were a plum. ‘I’ve heard it said that a little holy maid touches him like naught else.’

  I waited.

  ‘Where is Mistress Katherine? she asked gently. ‘Bring her here.’

  Edyth brought her, while I stood calm and chill and wishing I were a man, a powerful man with a keen weapon in my hand, and an army behind me. Edyth must in some uncanny way have shared my thought. She had robed Katherine royally, like a gay banner, in the orange satin gown which I had cut down to fit, the neck and sleeves slashed and hemmed with fine linen bleached to cream. She wore a short hennin and veil made of the same fiery cloth. Her hair hung down, as befits a maid. No jewels, save for her eyes. She looked brave. There was no other word, and, as she came sedately, holding up her gown, I knew that here was army and sword, drawn and cast from my own heart’s blood.

  She walked well until she reached the Prioress, when she sat down hard and suddenly on the floor, a gold bloom sprung from the stone. Johanna stretched out the arms that had beaten Edyth so cruelly, and a restrained madness took me so that I bit my tongue and sought silence in the pain. The Prioress’s hands raised Katherine; I fancied Kate was soiled by the touch, and wildly, irrelevantly, thought: Fool, fool! not to have sent that letter! But to have sent it would have been like presenting myself at the gates of Middleham, and the Lady Anne doubtless enjoying her honeymoon... ah, God! not to think on that! the Lady Anne, proud Warwick’s daughter, would surely look askance, but would her lord? I knew not, I only conjured his spirit into the room to shield Katherine, thinking how well he would abash the Prioress with his icy chivalry, his stern will... I saw the Prioress’s hands on Katherine, heard her chanting a blessing, as if in conspiracy with the child.

  ‘What say we at the ending, Kate?’ the soft voice asked.

  Katherine turned to give me a smile. ‘Te rogamus,’ she said obligingly. Then she went pell-mell through her brief repertoire, Jube, Domine, benedicere and all, and Bye, Baby Bunting crept in somewhere too, which had certainly no part in the office, but as good as any of the fat priest’s gibberish.

  The Prioress rose. ‘She has a marvellous keen wit,’ she said. ‘I vow her advent was a blessing to this House.’

  I had dreaded the guess, and guessed right. She was bending again, holding Kate by the shoulders.

  ‘Shall you like to be a nun, Mistress Katherine?’

  I had planned to be calm, but one cry burst from me, I could not help it. Across the floor in an instant, I snatched Katherine up into my arms.

  ‘She will not be professed,’ I said through clenched teeth. ‘Not in this evil house. Nor any house. She will grow strong and fair and marry a good man. By Jesu!’ I said, starting to laugh and cry. ‘She’s scarcely two years old!’

  Dame Johanna came very close. She took a snippet of Katherine’s orange gown, my gown, the Duchess of Bedford’s gown, in thumb and finger. Holding it, she said quietly: ‘You refused to be professed. The corrody pays only for one. This child is the property of Holy Church.’

  I did not know all of the law, but I knew a lie when I heard it, and said so, screamed it into her face.

  ‘Then there will be food only for one,’ said Johanna, kindly.

  I abused her, weeping. I said her day would soon be done, and that the new Prioress would look after us both. Anger bleached her face.

  ‘You are a fool,’ she said. ‘Your dower was small enough, God knows. (In all my frenzy, I knew this to be another lie; I recalled her saying: ‘I would not have priced her so high,’ to the men who brought me.)

  ‘Well then, dame,’ she said, hard yet cunning. ‘What do you propose? There are walls and roofs to be repaired, as you say. Has your knightly father more money? Or am I to please the Archbishop with a new postulant?’

  ‘My father is dead,’ I said, trembling. ‘Sir Richard Woodville is dead also. There is no more money.’

  In my frantic grasp, Katherine stirred fretfully. Dame Johanna’s long white finger stole out to touch her cheek.

  ‘Kate, you’ll make a fine nun,’ she said, and smiled like a serpent. ‘I shall write to my lady of Bedford, asking her blessing—it is only courteous.’

  But that’s impossible! I thought stupidly. Then realization, a great bolt of it, struck me. Immured here in the north, the Prioress was far more ignorant than I. She had no Patch, to bring her grief and joy and news. Accursed and blessed Patch!

  ‘The Duchess of Bedford is dead,’ I said.

  She did not speak for a long time. Then she whispered: ‘Who told you? Sir James Tyrrel? By God—he told me naught! He said the foggy ride had wearied him and he needed sleep!’

  Quietly I said; ‘The jester who came with him,’ and she knew I spoke the truth. Now she did not seem so tall. She was a little crouched, a preying beast.

  ‘Once, I gave you a penance,’ she
said. ‘I fancy it was not enough. Give me the child, I’ll say no more. The man who got you with child—he’s dead, the nuns whispered it at Christmas. Dame Joan thought you would miscarry. You are alone. Resist me, and I’ll have you scourged as a harlot.’

  Anthony Woodville once threatened to have me whipped at the cart’s tail. I looked down at Katherine. The child of my beloved. We were two. Such threats could never more affright me.

  ‘My lord lives,’ I said. Kate smiled and yawned. ‘He lives, and he is Constable of England, Lord of the North. The King’s brother. Richard of Gloucester.’ (And mine for a little space, and I his true maid, his Nut-Brown Maid, who loved but him alone.) I did not say this, of course. I only said, as I watched the lost power, and the fear in her eyes, as I quit the room and joined Edyth, coughing outside:

  ‘Remember his name. The first and last time I shall ever speak it in this house.’

  When I saw that Edyth, in my chamber, had a bundle fashioned of my one remaining gown; threadbare as a hermit’s shift, my seal, my cake of lye soap and Katherine’s few little garments, all tied with hemp and thrust on a pole, I did not ask her how she knew my mind. Nor if she was coming with me, for I could tell there was no gainsaying her. One pocket bulged bread, and in her hand a leather flask was hard with water.

  ‘The porteress sleeps,’ she said, and I answered:

  ‘But it’s a long way, Edyth. And for us, farther than any pilgrimage.’ In love and pity, I looked at her misshapen foot.

  ‘I’m strong,’ she said. She put out the hand that was to lead me through the dark.

  None travel by night, but we did. And none should attempt such a long journey on foot with a child and a cripple, without it be on pilgrimage, that being another matter, for my parents had once walked from Worcester to Canterbury, but during daylight and lodging in religious houses on the way. There was only one house I wished to see, and it was far. Leicester. Edyth, whose mind was already made up, never even asked where we were bound. I told her it was a place where they would take good care of us.

  ‘Middleham,’ she said instantly, and for the first few miles would not have it otherwise. I gathered from her that I cried the name in sleep, and wondered what else I had said. There were always dreams, of course. And often of Middleham. But in one dream particularly, I was at Eltham, where the men were working on the new Hall commissioned by King Edward. It was to have round windows all along the upper wall with the rose en soleil and the falcon of York alternating in fine coloured glass. Elysande had told me about it all. Running down to the lawns hard by the tilt-yard, there was a little stone tunnel, its mouth draped with suckling vines, wild-growing roses. Only in dreams had I seen Eltham, had I waited for him there. Though he never came, I was always certain of his coming, so the dream was neither happy nor sad.

  The Priory weathervane, etched black upon the fragile sky, shivered north-west. We struck out into the wind, keeping close to the trees; we went soft as rabbits, three trembling does, one full of her own conceit. James Mustarde’s dim shape, moving drearily among the sunset hogs, was the last I saw of the Priory inhabitants. For a heartstopping moment he looked up, and I darted behind an oak tree, pulling Edyth down. But he merely glanced in an aimless circle, blew his nose on his fingers and shuffled off. For once I gave thanks that the house was in such decay; the outer wall was virtually in pieces and we slipped neatly through a gap in the stone and found the rough-trodden moorland path beneath our feet. So we began our journey: we must go south, that I knew, and in my crazed conceit trusted that the rest would follow, that once upon a good road the way would uncoil before us like an obedient map. Edyth walked well, with a peculiar, swinging sideways gait, not delaying me as I had anticipated, and she was strong: for Katherine, swaddled like a beehive in her warmest clothing, she carried easily. Thinking back on it, ’twas a wicked, heartless act, pardonable only if I had waited till summer, to take a child out into the unknown night. But fear, illogical and instinctive, had mastered me. Despite my proud words to Dame Johanna, I felt that, did we wait for summer, we would both be dead.

  It lacked half an hour or so to sundown, and my steps were strong and light. As the moorland slope cut off our view of the Priory, a kind of dauntless rhythm came into my stride. Left foot, then right, steady and strong. The Priory was a league behind. There was freedom in my urgent, springing step. Freedom. At least five miles between the evil and ourselves, and the sun downing for Compline—who would toll the bell? Not Edyth. We went faster. Edyth should never ring Compline again. The short coarse grass pushed at my heels and spurred me on. Even the wind was a whip, whispering freedom round my face. We came to a patch of rising ground, and the summit ran to meet us. We fled gratefully down the other side, our feet going faster than our bodies; we slithered on pebbles, strode through sucking moisture in a sheltering copse, right, left, right. I became momentarily changed, uncaring if the brambles tore at my gown, talking wildly to Edyth in an effort to cheer her, who needed no cheering, intoxicated by my thoughts. We were free. Free to die. But I did not think on this.

  I had not planned the date of this, our flight, but perchance my woman’s body had, for there was a moon, good and big, watching us with full yellow eye through the upper branches of the wood. A good omen; I was minded that all of this was meant, was written long ago. So it was, of course. Everything is, good and ill, but I was so proud and conceited at that moment I fancied I was master of my own fate, could bend even the planets to my will. I think it was the recent speaking of his name made me feel thus. It gave me so much joy. His name armed my very feet. Left, right, left. So easy and light. I began to weave fancies. He would be riding through the next wood—alone. He would draw up his horse at sight of us. I’d call: ‘God greet my lord,’ and he would marvel: ‘Sweet heart, what do you here?’ a little shocked, but pleased and pitying, and he would lift me up. I watched the moon, and smiled. I ran. Mad was I. I said, as he wound his arms about me, as he shook his horse’s reins, whose leather I could even smell... as I leaned my head upon his breast: ‘Ah, Richard, Richard, you are my joy in all this world. I would not leave you—I was taken. Ah, Richard, my heart’s blood!’

  I could not read the stars, but watched the moon, chased it down the crackly, stony track, through briars and bushes and the spreading, frosty branches of oak and elm and trees unknown, brought perchance by the Romans, centuries ago. We went stoutly through deep underbrush and, when the moon wholly commanded the stiff icy night, my first doubt awoke and stretched its limbs. We seemed to have been on the same rough road for hours, and the moon, into which at one time we seemed about to walk, now hung at our right hand, as if wearied of the journey and standing to bid us farewell.

  ‘We’ll not turn back,’ I said out loud. ‘Edyth, are you cold?’

  ‘She’s warm,’ Edyth answered, feeling one of the hands which protruded from the mass of Kate’s clothing. She was at one with Kate, and I, suddenly put to shame by her selflessness, asked no more of her comfort. All about us rose a symphony of night noises, the owl’s high, mounting moan and, farther off, the blundering squeal of wild boar.’A fox, whip sleek, darted across our path; at sight of the lithe creature I smiled, but Edyth, for some reason, fell into a quiet tempest of fear and came close, hugging Katherine. I looked up at the free wide sky. Dark puffs of cloud rode the moon’s face. The fox snuffed and ran for cover. I watched the bushes fold thornily behind it, and I laughed. I was not afraid. Vixen-colour, my hair! Edyth pressed me, and something hard swung at my hip. I said, madly gay: ‘Are you armed, fair Edyth?’ She stopped, looked sadly at me through the gloom and fumbling, produced yet another leathern flask, so tightly filled with milk it felt like stone, milk for my Katherine, and again I felt ashamed that she, who always had been derided for her dearth of sense, had had the forethought which I lacked.

  ‘’Tis well we have you to look after us, Edyth,’ I said, shaken.

  ‘I knew you would want to go,’ she said, shifting Katherine to her left arm so that s
he could hold the edge of my cloak. ‘When I heard Madame so wroth. Will they make Kate a nun at this new place, sweet mistress?’

  Never had she spoken so well. It was as if, free from the poisonous air of sorrow we had left behind, all her crushed intelligence had bloomed at last.

  ‘Nay, she’ll be a great lady,’ I said softly, but I was only half listening. Our road had narrowed to a mere trickle of flint, and my first creeping doubt grew large and was joined by another. I began to hear a voice inside my head, and words long pushed away for their very hatefulness. ‘You have flown exceeding high, and may God have mercy...’ The road was disappearing, likewise the spring in my step. There was an ache in the sole of each one-time courageous foot, starting as a prickling cramp and mounting to my calves and thighs like a fountain of hidden fire. And ahead, the road vanished among bare arched trees curving black and frostily like demanding hands, and an aperture laced and criss-crossed with twigs, like a wicked mouth, which we must enter. A road cannot go nowhere, I thought. I took Kate from Edyth’s arms. She was quiet, easy breathing, warm as coal. As soon as I relieved her of Katherine’s weight, Edyth began to cough. She coughed and coughed, staggering under each spasm as if it were a blow. She flung herself on the ground to cough better. When it was over, she got up, shook herself like a dog, and smiled.

  ‘’Tis done,’ she said.

  We must go on, I told myself. So we went into the black thorny depths, for what seemed hours and hours, and I left part of my cloak and a great clump of my hair in the eager grasp of one clawing tree, for they were like real creatures, those forest-dwellers, bare and silent. And I suddenly knew how cold I was, cold and sweating, going bent low over Katherine with her face folded into my bosom to save it from the tearing thorns, and that the soles of my shoes, patched a score of times, were there no longer. I took every thorn, every stinging pebble, every gob of mud, between my naked toes. And all this was naught, all this, the cold and the dark and the weariness, compared to the voice going on and on inside my head. It said: You will never get there. Never, never, never. And if you do, what then? You have no money, no money. They will turn you away. Katherine should have been a nun. Mayhap it was the will of God! But I replied, God’s will in that house? A godless place, by my loyalty, and Kate shall be a lady, have the gladness and comfort I knew but once in my ill-starred life. The voice said: Kate will be neither nun nor lady; Kate will walk the world a beggar, and through your fault. Through your fault. Hear Edyth cough! Your fault, your fault. Ah yes, that too! Peccavi nimis cogitatione, verbo, et opere; mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa... My doubts writhed like serpents, each feeding the other. They would turn us away. When we reached the door, they would slide the little grille to one side—and what was her name, the one who kept the gate? Would she still be there? Nay, it would be a strange, hostile face, a head-shaking face. Useless to cry ‘Remember me?’ They would turn us out. My sore teeth chattered together.