When she had gone, my thoughts returned to the King. I thought: Let him come to me, as I have dreamed it, saying: ‘My son is dead, my wife also. Give me your smile, your joyful words, your welcoming hand.’ And, though I could only offer him a psalm, a candle, the sound of sombre music, both he and I would be assuaged. That he should come again, I prayed it.
And my prayers were answered: in blood and fire and tears.
‘Miseratur vestri omnipotens Deus, et dismissis peccatis vestris, perducat vos ad vitam aeternam.’
Ursula squinted up from the frontal. Though by now she was almost blind, she had an eye at the end of each clever finger.
‘Can you make it out? Is it clear, and fair, and true?’
Softly I read it. ‘May almighty God have mercy upon you’ (in purple). ‘Forgive you your sins’. A silver cross, and then the green, colour of hope: ‘and bring you to life everlasting.’
Another cross, and then the royal Rose.
High above Ursula’s cell, thunder shivered the skies. The seeing hands clasped my own.
‘Tell me,’ she said, a little querulously. ‘’Tis good? Are the colours too bright?’
‘It’s a masterwork,’ I answered. Thank God, Dame, that you have lived to finish it. I swear you would have returned yearly, from your heavenly reward, had it been left undone. I said none of this.
‘That is well,’ she nodded. ‘Now, I must make alteration. The border troubles me. The stitches seem lumpy and coarse. Hand me the gold, Sister.’
‘Sweet Dame, sweet Ursula,’ I said, doing as I was asked, ‘leave it now, I beg you. You cannot better it. We must go. The Prioress has ordered that we pray. The Great Intercession...’
‘Are we to be invaded?’ she asked, calmly threading. ‘I heard that the King is coming, in arms. Thank Christ I am too old to be afraid.’ Her needle began to swoop and flash. ‘It must be to the glory of God,’ she said, for the thousandth time.
‘Yea, it almost looks as if we shall be in the heart of the battle,’ I said. She must have heard the tremor in my voice, though she could not know its true cause. He was coming. Even now, he rode to Leicester. Ursula sang half of a short psalm, bent low again, and went on sewing. I walked among her silks and tapestry frames, while the fitful August sun pried through the high window. I imagined all that Ursula could not.
The villagers were arming. From the south-west of Leicester, men marched to his standard. From Stoke Golding, Earl Shilton and Stapleton, from the hamlets of Kirkby Mallory, Atterton and Fenny Drayton they came. A few of them had knocked last night upon our gate for a blessing, strong, rustic men, soft-spoken, coarse-tongued, shuffling their thonged feet awkwardly up the nave. The King was coming to Leicester. Tomorrow, the day after, they were not sure. Little villages, known to us over the years for their poverty, their surly, crying needs, yielded up their men. Northeasterly marched the yeomen of Glenfield, Desford, Kirby Muxloe and Newbold Verdon. And from farther west they came, grim, patient and hastily equipped, the men of Atherstone, Maxstoke, Stone, Stanton, Sapcote and Appleby Magna. We had nursed and succoured them, these men of Leicester, over the long years, and now they crowded through Swine Market to the Cross, and down to the sign of the White Boar where the King would surely lie, tomorrow or the next day, before his triumph, his great campaign and acquittal, his vengeance and the wreaking of his might.
I had completed five days of the novena I was making for him, so I went into the church and stayed there to augment it after the others had gone. For the first time the words came haltingly, some I even had to grope for. There was too much distraction. Sounds drifted from the distant street, men’s voices, the occasional trundle of wheels. I closed my eyes and pictures formed out of my blindness. I saw the men, the arms-cart, the plodding mule. One of the marchers played a little experimental riff on a drum. A great deep-throated roar of laughter sounded, as if they were going to a cockfight rather than to battle.
A female voice shrilled unintelligibly. More laughter. The camp-followers had come already. I wondered about men’s lust, the strange potency that grips each soldier in the last hours before death, the weird need to perpetuate, in the jaws of extinction, his fleshly image... God! what thoughts! in the midst of my most special novena. I finished my broken prayer, flushed with shame, projecting the Cross into my mind. A face rose and blocked it out. Narrow, poised, with a sharp, inward-looking cleverness, it stared from behind my closed lids. There were demons in me, surely. Why, when my thoughts should be of God and the King, should she arise, little Lady Margaret Beaufort? I crossed myself and she faded, did Lady Stanley, who even now must hang her head, do penance for being mother to the enemy. Or would she, instead, seek comfort in old books of learning, tomorrow, or the next day, with her Henry justly slain?
I knew that Richard cherished her still. He would; it was ever his way.
I got up and went outside. By the pear tree, Robin provoked the brindled cat, with fluttering runs and leaping. Giles was there too, long-shadowed, simpering with excitement.
‘Why aren’t you at work?’ I asked.
He was a great lummox. With sparkling baby-face, he pointed towards the dove-cote. On the bench beneath sat a man, a dark-jowled stranger, holding a harp.
‘Pretty!’ said Giles.
The man rose unhurriedly. His eyes mocked us both.
‘Good day, Sister!’ he said, pulling off his cap. ‘Your knave kindly gave me water. Playing to an army is thirsty work.’
All this came forth in a bastard accent. Another French import, I thought. Soon we shall have no good English minstrels left. On sight I disliked him.
‘You’ve had your water? Then go.’
‘Without payment?’ he asked, with a smile, and stripping eyes. ‘By St Denis, Sister, I thought the English gave rien away! I’m fortunate indeed. What shall I sing for you?’
‘This is a holy house,’ I said coldly. ‘We need no bawdry.’
‘Not even a psalm?’ he answered softly and, with a still softer chord, began.
‘Agnus Dei
Qui tollis peccata mundi
Miserere nobis
Dona nobis pacem.’
I admitted the music’s beauty. He said quickly: ‘My skill is much praised. Your Bishop Morton ’ad me sing for him. An whole hour.’
‘Certes, you do well.’
‘You know the Bishop of Ely?’ he asked, eyes half-closed against the sun. ‘One more song, then, Sister. Something to make you remember how life was before you took your vows.’
‘No more,’ I said.
‘But oui!’—brows lifted. ‘A song in English. ’Twas penned by Robert Cornysh—all admire ’im.’
He sang, warming my stale nunly blood. I did not like the words, but he was a craftsman.
‘Adieu! Adieu! my heartis lust,
Adieu, my joy and my solace,
In dubil sorrow complain I must
Until I die. Alas! Alas!’
‘So we are having a little war tomorrow,’ he said gaily, as I sat silent. ‘The King comes to Leicester.’
‘Have you seen him?’ I think I would probably have asked the Devil himself. Out of the corner of my eye I glimpsed Robin, strutting around the cat, who lay jadedly licking a paw.
‘I ’ave seen the King’s bed,’ he answered. ‘They were carrying it into the Inn. He takes it with ’im wherever he goes. ’Im, I have not seen.’
He slung his harp and sauntered towards the outer gate. One hand on the latch, he said:
‘The King sleeps badly, you know. As well ’e might!’
At that instant, the cat sprang. There was a flurry of feathers, a thin stream of blood upon the ground. Too late, I ran to Robin. The brave, silly bird had played his last, teasing game. Bright-breasted, he lay dying in my palm. So still, so pretty. Giles snatched up the snarling cat and broke its neck.
After a long time I said: ‘Come, Giles, into the street.’
To see his standard, that was all I wished. Or his face among the banners? I
thought: Richard, Richard, can my eyes support it? Or shall I, coward, run with turned-down face to cloister, rather than wake that joy and grief, at sight of your eyes, risk hearing that voice and falling again into the abyss of love?
I felt faint as ever I did when I was a young maid. Down the road toward us came two heralds, and I heard those words again, which might as well be shaped in this wise: your heart is coming, your life is swelling, all the joy you had in this world rides towards you; for these men, whose faces I never even saw, doffed their caps within the shadow of our House and murmured:
‘The King comes to Leicester.’
I had seen his standard, it was enough. We turned back towards the house. Giles made a little bubbling noise. ‘What did they say?’ he wanted to know.
‘King Richard is coming,’ I said, and began an Ave, my fingers slipping moistly.
‘King Richard.’ Giles, the popinjay. Repeat the last phrase spoken, as if to lock it in the mind, but alas, poor Giles, there was a little door at the nether end of his head and in a trice he would forget.
‘King Richard.’ Giles, of the wanton tongue. He was fumbling for something deep within the recesses of his mind, furrowing his brow, gasping and spluttering, all the while tugging at my sleeve, so I looked with a smile of encouragement at the bursting lips, the bubble of intelligence that would never be born.
Lightly I smoothed his eyes. ‘Yea, our King,’ I said. ‘Perchance, if you go down to the market, you will see him.’
I was unready for his look of terror. ‘Nay!’ he cried, and twisted out and away, gathering himself to run. He pushed me back through the wicket, slammed the door and leaned against it, panting. And because I knew myself called to spend most of my life among idiots and the afflicted, I spoke him kind, while he blubbered palely as he did at nights when his dreams came upon him.
‘Do you not want to see our King?’ I asked gently, and it was as if the little door in this poor idiot’s mind were half-open for words came tumbling out and his spittle streaked the front of my habit as he buried his face against me, and I knelt with him, trying to string the senseless beads of thought together. I felt the fear in him, like a sharp heartbeat. All he would do was wag his tow-head back and forth, shivering and sobbing, and I grew uneasy that if he were to suffer such fits more often and the Bishop saw him in one, he would once more be put through the torment of exorcism, tied foaming to the rood-screen in the nave, for they were doughty demons, these, and loath to leave their gentle host. I started to shush and chide him, while he whimpered of murder.
‘And who is murdered then, chuck?’
It was best this way, as with his nightmares, to go along with the story until it unfolded in splutter and moan and was forgotten.
‘The little King’—this came out well—‘and his brother. In great London Tower.’
‘You have never seen the Tower,’ I said, laughing. ‘And there’s no little King. Only King Richard. He comes to deliver us from our enemies.’
What was he saying, this idiot boy?
‘King Richard... did have them done to death. King Herod. Jesu, Jesu! King Herod is coming!’ and he fell lower still, worm-like, his arms about my knees.
‘God help you, child.’ My lips were stiff. ‘What’s this talk?’
‘The man said...’ he blubbered.
‘What man?’
He was crooning a little song, vaguely familiar, about love and joy and regret, a French air.
‘Who spoke of King Herod?’
A fresh fit of shivering. A peeping eye, wet with witless tears. A smile to chill the blood with its empty charm.
‘The man who played the harp,’ he drooled. ‘He did gi’ me this... to buy suckets with.’ He displayed a mark, a whole mark. A generous minstrel.
‘And what said he of the King?’
The smile went again under a fear-cloud. His put his lips close to my face.
‘He is a murderer,’ Giles said, very clearly. ‘The harp-man did gi’ me a penny. Look! Pretty!’ and he held it up, so it winked in the sun.
I had not finished the Novena, so many things unfinished, I thought, lying stretched on the stones, pressing my hands over my ears so that I should not hear the royal army riding by. Hour after hour the vast train had clattered through Leicester to the field of battle, with fife and drum and chafing, creaking leather, out over the bridge westward. The calm church enfolded me as the last hoofbeats died and the trumpet faded in the light wind. Spots of thundery rain smacked against the window. The coloured saints darkened at a passing cloud. But beneath the phial of Virgin’s Milk my candle burned with a steady flame.
Behind my closed lids, he sat opposite me and stretched his legs in the hearth. His eyes caught the firelight. They were so dark and intense they were almost frightening, until I took the courage to look deeply, past the eyes themselves, as it were, and caught at their spark, which was no more than a lonely kindness, a fragile hunger. Wisdom and sorrow to make him old beyond his years lay in that look. The essence of those eyes was pain. In church I thought of him lovingly, and my sin fled suddenly away. For had I not seen Christ, at the Mystery Play, chide those who would have stoned an adulteress? I remember Christ laughing to see them shrink and hide their own shame. He had a lovely laugh. I thought, in church, with love upon the King: I shall love him until I die. We shall grow old together, leagues distant, rank and station apart. Though we shall never meet again, I, a nun, will love him with my last breath, my heart’s blood.
‘Jesu ! you are fair!’ he whispered, and the altar candles wavered, merged in points of light. ‘My maid, my maid, my true, good maid,’ he murmured, and I felt the stone beneath my body grow fluid and warm like molten gold, like the fruit of the Philosopher’s Stone, with which foolish Edward Plantagenet had once toyed; like the sap of the lily, the scent of the rose. And, call me by my name, sweet heart. Richard, my lord, my love, my heart was sad because I needed you, I said, and somewhere outside the church an anxious, rusty voice called me, and there was the floor chill beneath my hands, the candles flickering coldly, and sunlight looking gently in, the brief storm over.
‘Are you sick?’ Dame Lucy asked. She had with her a boy who had been crying. She touched my cheek with a worried finger. ‘You are so pale.’
I recognized the youth, he was the son of the woman who lived at West Gate, the troublesome hussy who had been stricken with the kidneys.
‘What’s to do, Frank?’ I asked, still dazed and in a dream. I had been in the fire, and burning. Slowly my visions ebbed away.
‘’Tis my mother, passing sick,’ he gulped. ‘Please come, Sister. Make her well again.’
‘At this time!’ cried Lucy, scandalized. ‘Have sense, knave. There’s soldiers on the road. Don’t you know we are at war?’ She pressed my hand. ‘Are you well?’ she whispered. ‘You have been in the church all night. We heard Prime in the Mother’s Chapel. We would not disturb you, as it was a novena. But you must eat, or you’ll swoon.’
I smiled. ‘All night?’ I asked. Poor kind Lucy was wandering, but I would leave her her fancies.
‘I’ll go, if the Mother says I may.’
‘The Mother is abed, too weak to rise this morning,’ she muttered. ‘And you, Frank, you’ve earned us all a penance! I should not speak And the battle has begun. They camped last night around Market Bosworth, and fired the first shots an hour after Prime. Sister, don’t go out today! You might be...’
Ravished, she was about to say, hence her rosy cheek. Again, I smiled. I had stolen a look into Katherine’s mirror, the last time she came. Only a blind man would rape me now.
‘I’ll get my medicines,’ I said.
The juice of stichwort, those white delicate flowers with their golden anthers – a sunbeam in a jar. Saxifrage, the plant with which the Romans broke down rocks. And cherry, to give the woman tranquil sleep. I went with Frank into the bright day. One or two windows trembled on their catches as we passed through Leicester, but the streets were very quiet.
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‘My uncle rides today,’ Frank said, his lips quivering. ‘And glad to go, he said. That Henry Tudor came up by Earl Shilton and brought his men right through Brocky Fields. He ruined our corn.’
When I arrived, the woman had already passed two stones. I bled and physicked her and made her easy. Then, because she thought she was dying, she spoke of her sins—a neighbour cheated some months ago, an afternoon’s whoring at the tavern, a blow, a blasphemy. She coughed of sundries, while Frank sat on the step outside, disconsolately picking his nose and staring at the empty street.
‘Jesu be thanked for a little peace,’ she said, after a while. ‘All yesterday the army plagued my rest. Very fine they looked, going by’—with a leer. ‘The King too, with his golden crown. His horse nigh threw him on the bridge, they say. What a pother! I’m a sick woman.’ As if the battle should have been postponed, to her comfort. Her light eyes held mine contemptuously. I remember that woman well. She was part of the day.
‘They fight for England,’ I said. I dismissed that about the bridge as gossip. He was a consummate horseman.
‘Pah!’ She nipped off a flea between her breasts. ‘Who cares? One King’s the same as any other. What if they should lose? ’Tis naught to me.’
‘God be with you.’ It was hard to say. Rising, I instructed her which draughts to take, and she watched me, then said without warning: ‘Good to be out, eh, Sister? There’s still some lusty fellows in the ale-house with more sense than, to march Bosworth way. Tell ’em in cloister that I kept you...’
‘You’ve kept me all morning.’ Have charity, I told myself. ‘I’ve missed three Offices through your sickness, which I trust is mending.’
She opened her lips and Lord knows what gibe they would have uttered, when suddenly afar off, and nearing every moment, came a sound like a gale rattling window-panes, a heavy, urgent noise, the angry sound of horses hard-ridden under mail. Outside the open door and past it in a trice, a score of riders flashed by, so fast it was impossible to read their colours. We heard them roaring up through West Gate and on into the town, clashing and slithering on the cobbles. They screamed inaudible tidings, and were gone. Frank rushed in, his face alight.
We Speak No Treason Vol 2 Page 36