Why should he write in desperation?
It is hearsay, anyway.
K. must have it wrong.
I am still stunned half-silly, I can scarcely write.
Richard Plantagenet is King, by grace of God.
And by an old stroke of destiny, but even to me, this could never have been presaged. Now I know that this kingship was implicit in that night at Grafton Regis. Now and now only.
The ungodly, May Day marrying.
Now I know who ‘the other’ was.
Alas, poor Eleanor Butler! Among all the rejoicing and speculation, I’ll make for her a special novena, share the dead sorrows of Edward’s rightful Queen. How could he have been so cruel? He was out of his mind.
It’s past and done, poor Eleanor.
For all the music in the psalter cannot house my jubilation.
My hand shakes, I’ve spilled the ink. Robin’s tracking feet make the page look like a spiderweb. Gloria in Excelsis Deo.
Written Nat. J. Baptista, the first year of King Richard the Third.
May the King live for ever.
Vivat Rex! Vivat Rex!
I knew that by now he would have forgotten my existence, but I still dreamed, waking and sleeping, amid repenting. And he came, not as I had forecast, but upon his royal progress. Leicester had already learned how he refused the money offered him by other towns; they shouted their anticipation all the louder for it. They garlanded the streets, twined roses in the bush that hangs about the taverns. They cleansed the streets, at long last removing the rotting corpse of a cat from Town Ditch. Men went anxiously to see if Leicester Castle was habitable, while the Mayor preened himself and swept out halls. And they were ready.
I knew he would not look upon my countenance again. He would pass distantly with his vast train of knights and noblemen, his heralds and pursuivants. I did not for one moment think that he would visit our House, but I played with a fancy; I starched my wimple with arrowroot and laid my habit nightly among woodruff and rosemary, and lodged him as splendidly as we could afford, and saw him enter the church to prostrate himself before the altar, dignified and aloof, fittingly devout and earnest, with only the vague knowledge that behind him knelt a cluster of robed women and around him soared the high holy voices that he loved.
He came to Leicester and again I missed seeing him. Not even in the distance, which was all I had wished. And this time, as I had been so prepared for disappointment, the hurt was less. All I saw was a host of people beneath the jostling sway of the standards, the crowd breaking free of the cordon of King’s men and bailiffs and running with cheers; a splash of a gold pennon, the flash of a trumpet, a glimpsed knot of heralds shouldering aside a monk of St Mary’s, so that he rolled against an alehouse door and through it, and there remained. I saw all this in one instant’s peering through the outer gate, until the Mother sent for me. We were to have a guest from the royal entourage, and I must wait upon her. A lady renowned for piety and learning; I grew quite nervous.
When the page announced Lady Stanley it meant naught to me. I knew her as Lady Margaret Beaufort. I remembered her cursing me once for standing in her way. Her tight face was the same, with its prim mouth and narrow eyes, her stature scarcely higher than a dwarf’s. She had her chaplain, Reynold Bray, with her, and made straight for the church. The richness of her gown took all colour from its furnishings. She prayed lustily and long. ‘Judica me Deus, et discerne causam meam.’ Outside the streets grew quiet. But later, as I took our last flagon of Rhenish into the parlour, the King’s train must again have appeared in public view, for another great bursting cheer arose, and swarmed through the open window on a hot breeze.
‘By St Edmund! All this accursed pomp!’
I heard her distinctly, as I balanced the salver on my knee and fumbled the latch. Perchance she is weary, I thought. I went in and asked her, kneeling, had she a headache? Would she prefer a little violet cordial instead of wine? She answered tartly that she had her own physicians, and I felt my face scarlet for a moment. But she spoke kindly to me in the next breath, saying certes, the progress was exhausting work, but she already felt much refreshed. Then she prayed again, for hours, and after Compline sat reading aloud from a monstrous book of philosophy in the Greek.
So I missed seeing him for the second time, and could only remember him as before—sitting across the hearth from me, young and hurt, and ruefully smiling—or raising his hand in farewell, after a strange, glad, unhappy night.
Do I love him more, now he is King? I would love him were he King or beggar. The heart is no heretic. He is he, and I love him.
So wrote I, in my book.
Little do I know, for here all knowledge of the world seems slight. We are encased in our bubble. The days go on, a chaplet of constant, timeless prayer. Yet I imagine we know more news than most. The Mother seems au fait with London life, she it was who told me Hastings was dead. And Buckingham, whom last I saw gaily bending the knee to King Edward one Christmas, surrounded by Woodville wives. And gorgeous Anthony Woodville, who frightened me sore. Richard Haute too—him I do not remember.
And Dickon Grey, with whom I once played Hoodman Blind.
I might have wept for that one, remembering him as a little, wanton, naked boy—but the tear scalded my eyes, as if to direct their penance for a fleeting disloyalty.
For these men would have killed the. King. It is but lately I realize his double vulnerability. All Kings have enemies, and he is gentler than Edward. Five men dead, the Mother says. In lieu of five thousand.
Winter comes soon. The Mother bade us all give thanks. According to her we have just escaped a war. We sang a good Deo gratias. That Tudor will never invade again. Not after this latest, black-avised impertinence. One could almost laugh at him sparring for Richard’s crown. It is easy to forget that Lady Margaret is his mother. The next time, if she visits, I shall feel disinclined to serve her. Yet it’s duty, charity, to pray for her soul when she wishes it. And as the King still cherishes her at court, then so shall I.
For his wisdom was ever my wisdom, his way, my way.
Half a year since my last notation. Robin sits by me—the chaplain remarked the other day what a hardy bird he is. I had him the month of my profession and he is still chirpy and hale. I say it is my care of him in the winter. He is a housebird—sleeps nightlong in my closet on straw and feathers. Sin, to cherish him so. But at least he does not come jargoning into church to upset the others. So he’s an unholy, churchless fellow.
Lord! it seems that everything becomes a paradox, if you look at it long enough.
The Ancren Rule was writ primarily for female hermits but there’s a deal of sense in it. It says you should not overdo the bleeding. In one of my disputations with the Mother I brought this up, and she was bound to smile, while chiding me. Now I know for certain—she would like me to take office when she is gone. I just said ‘Domine, non sum dignus’ very loudly in church in response to the priest, and she looked at me while the candles flickered unsteadily. I am unworthy, in truth.
K’s last letter from Barnard made me blush. The Mother read out loud three phrases describing the joys, her new gowns, and the glamour of a recent joust. She is nearly fourteen, and no talk of a husband. I pray St Catherine she leads a proper life. It is a real little court they have up there, and I know the temptations.
His favourite saint is Ninian. This is news to me. His maxim was: ‘Even the highest shall learn from the lowest.’ One of the stalls at Middleham belongs to him who evangelized the Picts a thousand years ago. The Mother talked of the old custom of drawing straws for a saint to worship for one’s own. I said I’d choose Ninian, and she told me of the nun who once drew Jude the Obscure, was vexed and threw him behind the altar chest. He visited her that night, striking her with palsy. Apparently you cannot choose what you most desire.
After I closed my book and hid it again, I sat thinking about the nun who had the visitation from St Jude. I could imagine it very clearly. The Sain
t’s sad, militant face, possibly ringed with an angry nimbus of light, the powerful anger striking through the blackness of the dorter and across the woman’s bed. These thoughts led on to others of similar aspect. Before my lifetime, a nun, dying, had seen the Blessed Virgin herself. She came to bear her up, they said the perfume of roses lingered long after in the infirmary. And Ursula’s aunt had seen a fiend. He had waited for her when she went to bed, gibbering and frowning, and she had marched up to him, dealing him such a buffet on the ear that he howled for mercy, changed into a black dog and leaped through the window. I had not thought of these tales for years, but on this night they kept me awake.
I lay, and the moon peeped in on me. When I began to shiver, I wondered if in some way I had offended a saint, so said a few Aves with my beads under the clothes. But even the angelic salutation did not halt the feeling of melancholy, vague at first, which grew and enveloped me, worse than accidia, worse than the pain of a bad conscience, inexplicable, powerful, and terrifying. I thought that someone was standing against the window, very still. I dared not breathe or move. Once I would have leaped up and earned a penance by breaking silence, but this was no longer my way. Also I had no cause. No fiend attacked me. Only fear, the fear of fear itself, and a great sadness, of the same breed that had surged over me when I looked on Nottingham.
The shadow, if there ever was a shadow, was gone from the window. Only a cloud remained that stood across the moon, behind the dappled pear tree that waved in the April night wind. And sorrow, deep and heavy, not for myself. A visitation it was in truth, but that which was not seen, not evil, but dolorous behind all thought.
Now I know. I hardly needed the telling, by town crier or herald, that some dreadful calamity had overtaken him.
His little son is dead.
They say he is nigh demented, by reason of his sudden grief.
Yesterday we rang the bell merrily for St George of England. Today, another Requiem bears the blossom down.
Whom shall it toll for next, I wonder?
My sisters looked oddly at me for days. They reckoned I knew of the Prince’s passing before anyone. My face told it, they said.
Of course it’s true, and this frightens me. Yet can I help it if his sorrow is ever my sorrow, his breath my life?
I shall write no more this day.
Then came Katherine, soon after Christmas, taller than I, her waist no rounder, I swear, then the fine festive candle we had lit to Christ’s Mother. I watched her arrive, on a grey palfrey whose outline shimmered like a ghost horse in the lightly falling snow. She laughed, dismounting; one of her women chided her gently for laughing so loud within holy walls. When she knelt before me, with eyes bird-bright, the imprisoned smile still quivered on her mouth. She was lovely, fair. In her rich furs she was like a lissom animal. Her hood was forest green, her nut-brown hair silk to the touch.
‘Kate, you’re a song,’ I said, utterly foolish. The slender, snow-damp face smiled against mine. I drew her down beside me on a chest in the parlour. To London she had been, for Christmas. She burst into a recital; the court revels from end to end, from the entry of the Boy-Bishop to the dwarfs riding their mules around the Great Hall. She told it all to me, who needed no telling. She coloured an old picture.
‘Mother, the cook made a great pie! When the carver opened it, a lot of frogs jumped out. There must have been a score of them, all the ladies screamed. One of the frogs leaped into Lady Grey’s soup, and splashed her gown. She was furious.’
‘Where did you stay?’
If at Greenwich, she would have roamed those same passages, mounted those old, broad stairs. Yet she, the King’s daughter, would have walked in the light.
‘Crosby’s Place,’ she replied. For the first time I noticed the ring on her finger, a large beryl set in gold. Crosby’s Place, the tallest building in London. Was it still? My memory lurched with the sway of a crowded litter, the Duchess of Bedford’s dog yapped around my feet, someone pointed out the sights to me, a bumpkin. Seventeen years ago, and I with a light heart. Then I had not known a man, this man now King, who owned Crosby’s Place, had entered neither Heaven nor Hell. Kate was watching me. Probably I seemed stern, musing thus.
‘King Richard sent for me, and for John of Gloucester. To pleasure us for Christmas,’ she explained. Instantly I was hungry, longing.
‘How did he look?’
‘As a King looks,’ she answered, then shot me a sideways glance, mischievous and at the same time well pleased, as if she were bringing me a piece of sewing, or writing, for approval. ‘I am betrothed.’
With difficulty I tore my mind from the King.
‘His name is Lord Herbert. William.’
‘The Earl of Huntingdon?’ I asked. She nodded, came close to my ear to whisper.
‘And Mother, he is young! Handsome...’ Her manner grew frivolous. ‘We had thought he might be bald or squint. At Barnard we used to play for hours at guessing what my husband would be like! Ned and Dickon had a wager...’
‘Dickon? Ned?’ I asked sharply. She was laughing, she was fair, like a pretty, purring kitten. I had a sudden awful fear that she might have been foolish. With these unknown, teasing names.
‘I trust you’ve comported yourself virtuously, Katherine, in the north,’ I said severely, yet thinking Lord! how pompous! ‘There are temptations in a household where young women and henchmen are thrust together...’
I might not have spoken. The flood of her talk went on.
‘Yea, the Earl is handsome, and pleasant. And the King has settled a thousand marks a year upon us to start with, and he will send letters patent for at least another hundred pounds when we are wed. I had a private audience with him, in the State Chamber.’
All her laughter suddenly vanished. She twisted the beryl ring nervously. I looked at her, the long, odd-shaped eyes, and the hands like his, that moved like his, and I said, very quietly, for I wanted to hear, so much:
‘What was his dress?’
‘Black,’ she said, and without warning, burst out crying and cast herself into my arms. ‘His face was so sorrowful. So weary. He kissed me, his lips were cold. He seems... near death.’
I shook her, gave her harsh words. God forgive me.
‘Don’t say that! D’you want to put a curse upon his Grace?’
‘Ah, never, never, but the Queen is sick of lung fever and I thought he may have taken it from her. He looks as if he never sleeps. I did not know he was... so old.’
A pain gripped my heart. ‘He is but thirty-two,’ I said, without emotion.
She was quiet, shaking her downcast head like an old woman. After a time I asked: ‘Did he speak of the Queen?’
‘He spoke only of me. He said how glad he was I am his daughter, and that once he had a little son, whom God took from him. Ah, Mother!’ She raised eyes black with tears. ‘He’s a good man, good and gentle. And Ned and Dickon hate him so. When I return to Barnard they will call him names.’
I grew wrath with these unknown pages, who made rude wagers over Kate’s betrothed, who spoke against the King.
‘Who are these knaves?’ I asked, angrily. ‘Have naught to do with them. I forbid it.’
Now she looked mutinous. ‘I’m teaching them to dance!’ she expostulated. ‘They are fond of me, really. Dickon is naughty, Ned often sick—but they both call me fair.’
Her pouting mouth unnerved me. King Edward’s blood, I thought. As well as mine, and Richard’s. The late King’s lustful ardour, that seething itch. How much of it in Katherine? Holy God! next thing and Kate, royal maid or no, will be with child, not by Earl Huntingdon but one of these young rogues.
‘Give me your word you’ll have no more ado with them,’ I said wildly. Rainbow-humoured, she was laughing again.
‘But Mother, they are my cousins!’ she cried. ‘And if Dickon is sometimes rude, Ned is as courtly, in truth, as King Edward his late father would have been, had he not been drunken when I saw him last. Sweet Jesu! Mother, there’s no h
arm...’
Then she stopped. Stopped dead. Every particle of colour fled her face, so that the hand she lifted to her mouth looked golden against that sudden whiteness. Truly I thought she was taken with catalepsy, possessed. I sat frozen in horror. We stared at each other like fools.
‘What’s the matter?’ I whispered.
She said in an anguished voice: ‘I have broken a promise, a promise made not seven years ago. I should have my tongue cut out.’
It was half an hour before I could get it from her. And when all was told, it seemed very little. What if the royal bastards were at Barnard Castle? But she would not be quenched, she would keep repeating: ‘None must know, none must know. I promised King Richard. I swore on oath.’ At the last, she dragged me into the church, and, frantic, ran searching the most sacred object so that I too should swear. Had I not been grieved for her guilt I might have felt annoyed. For any secret of Richard’s I, above all, would hold most dear, whatever the reason. But she was not to know this and eventually she had me kneel with my hands clasped on the phial of Virgin’s Milk and swear before God never to tell the whereabouts of King Edward’s sons.
Then we pleasured ourselves. I took her to see Ursula, who let her put a stitch in the frontal. That meant that all of us had at one time had a hand in it. It was a marvellous piece of work already; Ursula raised her head long enough to say that she hoped to have it ready by the Annunciation, then immediately fell to unpicking the last spray of roses, and Katherine and I went away shaking our heads. Robin came, and Kate played with him. The brindled cat, still clinging round our house for scraps, sat in the snow and watched, malevolently, its tail draggled with wet, a lousy, unkempt intruder. I hope and pray that Katherine was happy that day. Had I but known she was to be part of the long pattern—Adelysia, Edyth, even the old ballad-maker, for everything I touched must die—I would have given her soft, kind words and kisses every hour. Had I but known I would never again set eyes upon her, that she would be dead within the year of a foul wasting sickness that naught could stay, I would have laid down my own life to halt her passing. Sweet Katherine. If you watch over me, pray. Give me the strength to finish this tale, and, if it is sad, remember, there is truth in sadness, joy being but an illusion.
We Speak No Treason Vol 2 Page 35