by Mary Lide
The third day of imprisonment there came a scratching at the door, a tap, tap, tapping such as the wind might have made. It sounded like a drum in the silence. Philippa could not have sworn that it was the third night, by then both day and night had become one. Fear had been replaced by hunger, and hunger by despair. Had not this sound roused her she might have sunk into a lethargy. She started up. The great oak door to her father’s room was doubly barred and its thickness made hearing difficult, but when she pressed her ear against it she could make out a voice, itself as thin and scratchy as a file. ‘Lady,’ the voice was whispering, ‘lady, be on guard.’
No one called her lady in that house and she knew of no one who would, yet its use heartened her. ‘Tonight I saw your stepfather’s paramour,’ the voice went on. ‘That whore came into the kitchen when she thought herself alone. She had come earlier when we sat at meat, and had sent all the maids away on some pretext, all chores that could have waited until morning. She wanted to get us out of the way. But I took care she didn’t see me left in my chimney piece, and, to be sure, I didn’t tell her that I was there.’
Philippa had begun to recognize the speaker, her mother’s old nurse. And she knew what chimney was meant; the huge stone fireplace in the kitchen, large enough to roast an ox, with its stone seats cut into its sides, where a man might hide himself. The old voice went quavering on; how had that old dame found the strength to creep out to whisper through a keyhole in the dark? But although the voice was feeble, the sense was firm. ‘When she thought the room empty the whore pulled out a phial beneath her robes and sprinkled the contents on a loaf of bread. With my own eyes I saw her crumble the loaf to bits and pour fresh milk on it. She left the whole to steep before the fire, inches away from my feet, where I sat among the pots and pans and soot. “Tomorrow morn,” she ordered when the others returned, “give her that. Let her feast on slops.” Away she went, nose in air, and when they had done with grumbling, for as mistress she is hard on them, when every jack straw of them was snoring fast, up I wakes and makes for the stairs. I loved your mother, lass,’ she said, her voice unexpectedly assured, as if there were no doubt of that. ‘In her old home in Bristol town, you would be safe; she should have returned there herself when my lord died, if pride had not held her back. I would have left for there long ago had it not been for her. There’d still be a place for you.’
Out of breath, she leaned against the door-jamb and wheezed. ‘When my dear mistress first was wed it was for love, against her father’s wish, out of her class. But he, your father, would not be denied. Her dowry was large from ships and trade. Should’ve been large enough for de Verne needs, although he said the wars had impoverished him. For there be other things you need to know.’
She put her mouth to the crack and whispered. ‘In Vernson there is a rose garden that everyone praises; sailors say they can smell it out to sea. But I remembers another rose garden whose flowers brought grief. They say two lords were fighting for the crown, and wanted to pick a rose for their emblem. One side picked white, the other red. White for death, white for mourning, red for blood and war. Your father chose the White Rose side. They call it the Yorkist side, and they say some of its kings once ruled. I only know your father found his death supporting them. But when the wars were ended, when all those great lords were gone, who got the crown?’ She gave a cackle. ‘Why a Tudor princeling did,’ she crowed. ‘He found it rolled under a bush at a battle’s end and popped it on his head quick enough to make himself a king. And your mother gave her money to your father to keep him safe. Instead they hanged him and stuck his head upon the gallows tree. Lord, how she wept. And then she married Bully Higham fast, to keep the rest of those monies safe. But a loveless marriage is an offence to God. So it was for her and so for him. And will be for you if you don’t watch out.’
Her message delivered she shuffled off. Philippa heard her footsteps on the stairs; then all was still again, nothing except the wind against the shutters, and the rain thrumming on the roof. She was an old crone, living on scraps herself, relying on pity, yes, and on forgetfulness, since those who would have remembered her would have turned her out of doors. But her message was both unexpected and frightening and must be acted on. And her wish, that Philippa try to find her mother’s kin, touched some chord that somewhere in this loneliness there might be help. But if she were to have her uncle’s help, she must go looking for him herself. And before her stepmother poisoned her.
Certain that no one had overheard, not giving herself time to think, hurrying herself into her warmest clothes and knotting her shoes about her neck, Philippa climbed onto the broad window seat, set under the roof like the prow of a ship. The night outside was dark with wind and rain but that would hide any sound she made. She knew there were creepers hanging on the wall and hoped they would bear her weight. The wind blew the rain in gusts against her face and the branches shifted and swayed. In bare feet she crept down the wall, flattened against the stones like a fly. The darkness hid the void below and the solid earth felt as unstable as sand. Yet she found strength to run towards the barn, snatching up the first saddle she could find, and choosing the nearest horse. It was one of Master Higham’s hunters, his favourite (which pleased her later when she found out). In haste she saddled it, hung a small sack of oats in front and led it away from the house.
She went on foot at first, past the litter of fallen trees. The darkness was so complete that no one could have seen her through the driving rain and almost instantly the house disappeared. And when she came to the park gates, using a fallen log to mount, she gathered up the reins and thrust along the left-hand road at a gallop, like any other fugitive. And as the horse thudded over the frozen grass of the common land and came to the high road in a clatter of hooves, she sensed, beneath the fear, some ripple of excitement. Somewhere she passed the old gibbet with its creaking arms, but there was no reason to avoid it tonight, no need to remember a past that had been put to rest. And so her journey began.
In later years, in other times, Philippa was to speak often of that ride, always marvelling how one so gently reared could have survived. She would recall the details with a mixture of amusement and surprise. ‘Perhaps I was my father’s daughter in more ways than looks,’ she used to say. ‘For as I moved steadily on towards the border, that ride began to take on aspects of other rides, becoming the symbol of other escapes. So when I skirted sleeping farms where dogs howled alarm, I tried to think as my father would have done, or when I glimpsed the outline of a town and made a detour to avoid its walls I sensed a comradeship with Richard’s men. The horse was strong and young; I was no weight, we made good time. And when with the dawn I had the sense to leave the road and make my way across country out of sight I might have been making journeys all my life. I tied the horse to graze and, burying myself in my cloak out of the wind, I slept, almost as peacefully as any mercenary, armed with sword and pike. Not quite perhaps. I still was young and inexperienced. If I had known at the start how long the road, and how difficult, I might not have gone off so readily to find an uncle I had never met. And if I had known that I left home just at the time Richard Montacune reached his, I might not have appreciated the irony.’
‘I shall not recount all that journey,’ Philippa used to say. ‘That first night was repeated many times. I confess that only then did I begin to appreciate the difficulties that Richard Montacune had faced. But neither lack of food nor sleep, nor even cold and loneliness bothered me as much as the thought of pursuit. Master Higham’s rage when he found me gone, and his best horse gone, haunted me. I started at every sound, and, afraid to ask the way, often wandered in a circle. When hunger drove me to seek food I stopped at isolated farms whose peasants would not recognize the value of the trinkets I traded. Once I found a clutch of eggs which I swallowed raw; another time, too cold to care, I slept in some sort of shed where a store of apples had withered almost to the core yet still tasted sweet. And when at last I came within sight of Bristol, by too m
any detours and sideways to name, I was almost surprised that I had reached it at all.
In those days Bristol was a fine and prosperous place, a great trading port, north and east of Vernson, the pride of the west country. My mother had been born there, and there I hoped my uncle still lived. Once, it had been famous for its cod fishermen; now many of its sailors had crossed the Atlantic Sea to the New Lands which they say lie at its end. Such a man was my uncle, Captain Harvey. It seemed he was well known. For when I asked for him the guards let me through the gates although I must have seemed a vagabond indeed, riding a horse too good for me. I might have found my uncle’s house without asking, though; it was the largest one, centred in a line of tall thin buildings facing a wharf, resembling the spars and masts of the ships that rose in front of it.
‘For a while I dared not approach but sat on my horse, seeing it through my mother’s eyes, until the servants inside began to point and whisper. What they thought of me I never knew but the effect upon my uncle was disastrous. He appeared almost at once, as if he were on the lookout for me, a stout, broad-shouldered man, showing his age in his grizzled hair and beard, although in all things else the years had been kinder to him than to my mother. Yet there was something of my mother in the way he braced himself, and he had her eyes, blue grey like a wintry sea. He stared at me as sailors do, used to vast distances. “Well, niece,” he said coldly, “I would recognize you even if your stepfather’s man had not been here looking for you.”
‘This greeting was not exactly welcoming, and mention of my stepfather’s man terrified me, “A small lame man, with a shifty look,” he went on, “who claimed you had stolen off in the night with your stepfather’s horse. I told him I knew nothing of that. She’ll not come here I told him, what am I to her or she to me? But here you are, turned up like a piece of driftwood. And he’ll be back. ” He stood with legs apart on the white steps of his house, as if on the deck of his flagship, reminding me, if truth be told, of my stepfather himself. They shared the same solidness, that same truculence, above all, the same dislike. For dislike there was and my uncle made no attempt to hide it.
‘But he was an honest man as my stepfather was not. “Niece,” he said, as if he owed some explanation, “when your mother was your age she was the most gentle of maids, as merry as a bird which sings all day long. Or so I thought, until your father rode into her life. My father, your grandsire, was a seafaring man, a trader of wool and hides; had he wanted he could have bought up Vernson Hall and stuffed it into one of his own money bags. Your mother told him she must have Edward de Verne as husband, or die, and that he himself, and I, who once had been her favourite, were nothing compared with this marvel of nobility.”
‘Here was the same bitterness that my stepfather had shown. It spilled out of my uncle now, in a flood, old unhappiness, old regret, old hostility, which I was not prepared for.
“‘I warned her,” my uncle said. “I argued that the marriage would never last. Your father sloughed off the coils of matrimony soon enough and replaced them with the coils of conspiracy. And when he died your mother married a second time, an even worse match, not caring what it did to her, or to us, as her kinfolk. I am not likely to be involved with Vernson Hall again.”
But when I told him of my stepfather’s plan his expression changed. “Get you down,” he told me, his eyes never flickering from my face as if to learn it by heart. “Advice is free for everyone. And I see you are my sister’s child. I cannot keep you here. My family has offered enough because of yours. But what I can do, I will.”
‘So it was, the first part of my journey done, I found I was obliged to go on. But true to his word, before I left, my uncle gave me help. It was of a practical sort, advice from his friends, letters of credit to London acquaintances, even introduction to lawyers who might get my lands restored. All spoke to the same theme. As ward of the king I and my lands would be free of Master Higham; otherwise I might never succeed. And to become ward of the king I should have to find the king myself, and his court, in London.
‘“Yours is a difficult situation,” my uncle told me bluntly. “Your father’s fault was grievous, and your stepfather’s tricks to hold on to his lands were devious. All agree that finding ways to present your case will prove as hazardous as steering a passage through a sand shoal. But if luck favours you, you may find the means to throw yourself on the king’s mercy, and beg for forgiveness in your father’s name. Once the taint of treason is removed, then you may get your lands back. If not,” he shrugged.
‘It was not an inviting prospect, but again I had little choice. He was a hard man, my uncle, but a just one. He gave me passage on one of his ships, to avoid pursuit, but he never could take me to his heart. And neither could I him. We parted with mutual respect and little liking. Yet I think I could have liked him once, as my mother had when she was a little girl, free to roam among her father’s wharves and ships.
‘As chance would have it, I left on one of those small trading ships, just at the very time Richard Montacune set off on his travels again. His purpose was more forthright than mine, looking for a new war to wipe out the stain of defeat. But we were both enthusiastic, resolute, and in our unequal ways, stout-hearted. He was a man of course, accustomed to hard knocks, not exactly cynical, but not dreamy-eyed. I was a girl, used to country ways. I might have had justice on my side, but it certainly was not royal justice. And when we both reached the king’s court, neither of us found what we were looking for.
‘Before I left my uncle tried to warn me. “My voyaging days are done,” he told me, standing stiffly on the pier to watch me embark. “But when I was younger I sailed to the New World with the Brothers Cabot. I do not brag about what we saw, but on my return I was hailed as a great navigator and found favour with the Tudor kings.” He drew a breath. “That court is a cesspit,” he cried, “where the scum of England sink or swim.” He gave me his hard uncompromising stare. “In the sea,” he said, “there are creatures with smiling snouts, full of teeth. They swim beneath the surface with sharp black fins, waiting to attack. The young king’s court is filled with them. Remember that. They will lie in wait for you. And remember that the king may become vicious too, for all he smiles at you.” He meant well by his advice, I am sure, and it showed him in a less harsh light. If I never followed it nor met his friends nor asked for help, it was not my fault, nor his. And perhaps in the end it was better that I never did.
I set sail then in the late afternoon, going down the wide estuary with a following tide. The wind was strong enough to blow us through the Bristol Channel towards Land’s End; then along the Cornish peninsula and the southern English coast. The vessel was not a great seagoing ship, but old and small, used for inching around headlands from one little port to the next. It changed its cargo at each stop: wool for tin, tin for grain, grain for hides, and its crew was as simple and homespun as the goods they carried. It was then I learned what a lookout was and from the prow of the ship kept watch for the sheer Cornish cliffs, whose rocks lie under the water like black pointed fins. I saw the small fishing villages where my father had found his men. The sight of their poverty made me realize what exactly it was he had done to make them follow him. Battered finally by fresh storms that kept us land-locked later than we meant, we came by slow degrees to the mouth of the river Thames and dropped anchor within sight of London, months after I had left home.
‘By now it was early June. When the moment came to disembark I was almost loath to leave. The little ship, with its cramped quarters, took on the appearance of home, and the crew seemed my only family. They set me on dry land as they had been ordered, and rowed their skiff back to their waiting ship, as if relieved that their duty was done. I watched them with a sinking heart, as they hoisted the patched sails, retracing their route westward again, and so found myself alone, on the river bank, clutching a bundle of clean clothes, my uncle’s letters of reference tucked in the waist of my gown, a vast city spilling about me on all sides.
‘For the first time I think the realization of the immensity of my mission swept over me, this asking of a king’s pardon, for my father and myself, a mere nothing when spoken aloud, that encompassed within itself a magnitude of difficulty. I had no reason to doubt the honesty of my uncle’s friends, whoever they were, nor their friendship for him. But could they win me an audience with a king who sounded anything but trustworthy? And having won it what was I to say on my behalf? As for the king, he might as easily refuse; or send me back to my stepfather in disgrace; or worse, reminded of my father’s offence, take offence again and so seek new revenge.
‘So there I was, set down amid the bustle of a city that made Bristol seem smaller than a village. Like any other country lass, I was bewildered by its variety, caught up in the many city currents that seem to run as fast as those at sea. Although the streets teemed with folk, I never found one to ask the way; all seemed too intent upon some purpose of their own; all seemed bent on hurrying in the same direction. For lack of anything better I followed them, idly at first, then after a while swept along as in that sea current, helpless to turn aside. And presently, in the distance, I began to hear a hum, a kind of insistent clamouring, that sharpened and intensified as I drew near, resolving into one constant shout, one single cry, “The White Rose, the White Rose,” as if a thousand voices were shouting in unison.
‘By now I was jammed in such a crowd I could not have broken away had I wished to. The thought of any sort of garden, any flower, seemed preposterous in those dark and stinking streets, and for a moment a wave of homesickness swept over me. It was replaced, instantaneously, with feelings of a different sort. I remembered another kind of white rose that was the emblem of the Yorkist side; the white rose my father had followed. White rose for grief, for death. Fear suddenly leapt into my throat, hot as vomit; had not the mass of people held me up it is possible I might have lost consciousness, suddenly aware of the press, the heat, the stench of those unwashed bodies close to mine.