We Speak No Treason Vol 2

  ‘Yea.’ I can smile into her pretty, wrinkled face. ‘A daughter. She died.’

  My Katherine. There are days when I am certain it was better so and this is one of them, for I have heard fresh lies about her father, and though the oath I gave her kept me silent once, now it is too late.

  But my guest’s face becomes sorry, thoughtful.

  ‘I had hoped at least one of his children lived,’ she says. ‘Especially after the business with John o’ Gloucester, which was one of the most heinous acts ever wrought. You know why Henry had him killed?’

  Nodding, I say: ‘For having treasonable correspondence with Ireland.’

  Years ago, the heralds had bawled it in Swine Market, lest any be in doubt.

  ‘One letter,’ says my lady, angry and sad. ‘About hawks and fishing and a new doublet. And to a kinsman of mine, too. It makes me feel to blame. Cursed be the King.’

  I feel a tremor of life. I will offer her refreshment, later, and we will use her last words for a toast.

  ‘There was no harm in John.’

  ‘Yea!’ she answers. ‘But he lost his life. Because he was a King’s son!’

  I think of John sadly. I was once jealous of his mother. So was I jealous of this gentle lady, standing with her hand in my twisted claw. I think of John. And young Warwick. And Warbeck. Warbeck of Barnard Castle. Richard the Fourth, silenced for ever. But the brief fire dies and Katherine of Desmond is looking down, face quiet and tender, concealing all the things of which we need not speak. The talk that still goes on, unfought, for there is none to fight it.

  ‘Jesu preserve thee, Richard,’ she says, softly. Then: ‘Why, the weeds grow on his grave!’

  It’s true. They break through even the cloister wall and come up in between the stones. Nasty, trailing, tangling things, they wrap themselves around his rest, and the ivy is the worst of all. As soon as I strip its horny tendrils down, a fresh growth seeds itself. But while I have the power I must combat it, for it rots the fabric and the roots go deep. For all it symbolizes Fidelity, it clings like a slander.

  Soon my lady of Desmond and I will go inside to pray, and. take wine, and then she will leave. I shall write of her coming in my book, which I must burn before I die. I can smile at that! It should have been burned sixteen years ago.

  ’Tis no heresy to love, and be mad.

  For I have known death, and am risen, not to glory but to a plain of calm shadows. What I have told my lady today is all like something read in an old romance, and there is no movement in me, not even of sadness. And I construe this, for I can do no other, as the sure and true manifestation of mercy, contained in a special prayer whose touchstone of worth I have but lately learned to value.

  Then may that mercy be in my heart, my mind, my wit, my will, for ever and sustain me. Through the last stages of this old complaint called life.

  HERE ENDS THE NUN’S TALE

  AND THAT OF THE MAIDEN

  We Speak No Treason

  Book 1

  The Flowering of the Rose

  Rosemary Hawley Jarman

  Against a magnificent backdrop of lusty, dangerous fifteenth century England, this novel shows Richard III as seldom seen – passionate and troubled, loved by two women and one man, and torn apart by a civil war waged by powerful barons, while bound by loyalty to his royal brother. This sees the beginning of a journey through hazards and hopes to a bliss shattered by the death which will change Richard’s life and the lives of all who care for him. Peril is everywhere – betrayal threatens his peace. And there is a lover he has left behind...