We Speak No Treason Vol 2 (17 page)

‘She was thrown into Newgate, bare as a worm,’ Margetta said as we lay nestled together at night.

‘So are the others gaoled,’ I said. ‘Stanley, Rotherham, and Morton; he is a prisoner of honour, that one, at Brecon.’

‘Whyfor?’ asked Margetta. ‘I count him a flickering fellow for all he is a great, clever Bishop. Why did my lord not send all three to the block?’

Sweet Margetta, you spoke truth that night! Why, why indeed?

‘I reckon Mistress Shore full fortunate,’ she went on, while a bird cried dreamily outside the window and the night Watch pursued some felon down the street with oaths. ‘Richard could have had her head. He hates wanton women. So men say.’

I stretched. I felt weary, and jaded beyond belief.

‘He would not harm her,’ I said, yawning. ‘No Plantagenet has ever shed a woman’s blood.’

‘Earl Rivers made a song before he died,’ Margetta said, punching the bolster with loud slaps. ‘’Twas fair indeed...

‘Somewhat musing, and more mourning... in remembering
Th’unsteadfastness, This world being,
Of such wheeling, Me contrarying,
What may I guess?’

‘My lady, sleep, for God’s love,’ I said desperately. Through the window a chink of light came from across the courtyard. And I knew where that flame burned so late and sad. The sleeplack was once more with Richard Plantagenet.

‘And were you there, zur, when they crowned him King?’ asks William Brecher, kneeling by me on the foul prison straw.

They have lately brought Catesby in, flight-grimed, and still with the drought of fear upon his tongue. He does not speak, not even to answer the fierce rebukes of the man from York. That one is angered, his talk is never-ending. Powerlessly immured, he would kill with a curse. He rails of Northumberland, the shame of the North. Northumberland, who has knelt in homage to the Dragon. The stench here is noisome, and waxes more poisonous each hour. How many days and nights? I know not. The sun rose with thunder this morning, as if heaven were angry. But Brecher is speaking and this, my last duty to comfort him and myself, by talking of... ah God, where have they taken him, all in his felon’s halter? He, who was so fine, so fair...

‘Yes, my friend,’ I say, soft. ‘I was there, in truth. I saw all.’

And I saw also the withered countenance of Fortune. In the plays and the disguisings, Fortune is a lovesome woman. But I have seen Fortune, have seen it smile on Richard, with a smile full of dolour and woe, sitting sadly upon the face of an aged man. Like an old song, that smile hung heavy on the heart.

So came this sombre-clad Fortune, within a week after little York was taken at last from Sanctuary. I was one who went upriver from Crosby’s Place to carry out this mission for the Council. And how Elizabeth Woodville stormed! When we entered, she was seated low on the rushes, babbling of injustice, raising a gossamer veil of real and imaginary tribulation, blinking her blue eyes as she cried of her brother’s cruel beheading. And she sobbed piteously of how one son was gone from her, all the while clinging closely to little York. She contrived to loose her hair until it hung like a gilded shroud, and Archbishop Bourchier, ill-ease at any event at this violation of Sanctuary, looked anywhere but at her beauty. Then all her grief ceased of a sudden; she began to abuse the Council, the Protector, Buckingham and all of us, and little York writhed from her grip.

So we took him from Westminster, and the Archbishop entreated Elizabeth to follow likewise, with all her daughters, and be welcome at the house of the Protector, to which plea she all but growled, headshaking, a golden tigress with her cubs about her, sharp claws beneath the silk. I looked deep in her eyes from afar, and marked she was afraid. Of what? Dare say of retribution. She did not know the Protector, for she had never chosen to know him, and had she power, I doubt not she would have ground him beneath her heel. Watching her guilt, her fury, I was minded to laugh, and must indeed have smiled, and so doing, caught the eye of tall Princess Elizabeth, who looked as if she would fain be out of Sanctuary, and with her brothers. Eighteen and beautiful, more Plantagenet than Woodville, and a gem of price.

While Richard waited, we were mindful that the Parliament could no longer support this obloquy upon its being and, further, that the King waxed sorrowful without my lord of York. Thus we delivered little Dick to Edward’s apartments at the Tower, and saw the young King step down from his dais to embrace the younger boy; the joy on each face lit smiles like lamps.

So it was that both awaited the coronation there, while the gowns were fashioned, the bidding letters written to the gentlemen whom King Edward would honour with knighthood, and the cloth of gold, the satin, velvet and sarcenet cut and slashed and broidered for the banners and the hangings and the horses’ trappings. And the Nativity of St John Baptist drew near, and with it came a knocking on the Privy Council door which split our destiny down the centre, as a thunderbolt an oak. I remember well the place of revelation, and even the one who kept the door that day. For we attended the Protector in the Star Chamber, and William Colyngbourne, Gentleman Usher, stood guard.

Richard had the great Book of the Household open before him, and was dictating to Kendall, at times snatching a pen to add some postscript, smiling, knitting his brows over a wardrobe account, a jeweller’s bill. He looked up at Colyngbourne of the white face and twitching hands, asking: ‘Who comes? Can they not wait?’

‘My lord,’ said Colyngbourne, strangely unquiet, ‘the Bishop of Bath and Wells seeks audience.’

‘Stillington?’ Richard set down his quill. ‘Is he in London? I have not seen him since Clarence... I have not seen him for years.’ Musing, he said: ‘We are hard pressed—’

‘He has waited long, your Grace,’ answered Colyngbourne. ‘He begs...’

‘A boon, I doubt not,’ laughed Buckingham. ‘We have had our fill of Bishops, ha, Dickon?’

Buckingham waxed hourly more stout and proud; his body in its peacock raiment was bloated by arrogance.

‘Some feud in his diocese, I’ll warrant,’ he went on. ‘Some brawling, of priests. So he comes to the Council as a last resort. He must be three score years at least.’

Richard got up instantly. ‘Let him enter.’

Sir Robert Stillington came in, and he took long to approach the Council bench, for he was verily an old man, who seemed to have gathered many years in the two months since I saw him last. Then, outside King Edward’s chamber of death, he had grieved to excess, and that sorrow was still with him, mingled with a kind of bitter desperation. His cheeks were grey, his hair stark white, and the hand extended for the Protector’s salutation fluttered and shook. Buckingham offered wine.

‘I will not drink,’ said the Bishop in a voice like crackling leaves. ‘Neither drink nor meat before I have spoken. For speak this day I must, or die.’

Waveringly he seated himself, and passed a hand before his eyes.

‘Come, my lord,’ said Buckingham. ‘Do not talk thus of death.’

‘Is your Grace sick?’ asked Richard. ‘The fault is mine; we have delayed you overlong.’

‘Not you, my lord,’ said the Bishop, with a faint smile. (The pallid smile of Fortune.) ‘Mine the delay, mine the fault and mine the reaping.’ A cloud settled on his face, leaving it drawn. ‘I hope only that God will not judge me for this same delay.’ With this he ceased, clamping his mouth, while his glance roamed over Buckingham, Lovell, John Howard, Catesby, Ratcliffe, Kendall, Brackenbury; Piers Curteys, standing with a bolt of green silk in his arms, Lord Scrope of Bolton, the two men in the livery of the Goldsmiths’ Gild, myself, Colyngbourne and the henchmen. Then his eyes returned to Richard Plantagenet, and stayed there.

‘Well, my lord Bishop?’ said the Protector.

And Stillington was dumb, and I began to wonder whether age would addle my wits too, and mused if it were not better to die young, with all the senses sharp and clear, then Harry Buckingham coughed loudly, and the Bishop’s eyes fastened on his face.

‘I would speak with my lord Duke of Gloucester,’ said Stillington gravely.

‘He awaits your words,’ smiled Buckingham.

‘Alone,’ said the Bishop.

Almost before the flame of anger rose on Buckingham’s face, Richard leaned over to lay his hand upon the Bishop’s sleeve.

‘Your Grace knows that all here are my good friends and advisers,’ he said gently.

The Bishop looked down at his velvet lap.

‘Speak, my lord, for Jesu’s love,’ said Buckingham harshly. We are not here to judge your Grace. If ’tis some boon, I doubt not it will be granted. If some error, the lord Protector will no doubt be lenient. He loves loyalty’—with a flashing glance at Richard—‘and you come as a loyal subject of the Crown of England, do you not, your Grace?’

‘Ah, certes,’ said the Bishop heavily. ‘In truth, I do.’

‘Gentlemen, good day,’ said Richard to the goldsmiths, at the same time nodding dismissal to his henchmen. They withdrew, looking wonderingly at one another.

‘Now, sir,’ said Buckingham.

‘I have sinned,’ said the Bishop softly.

Buckingham’s lips made a hard line. ‘Why are you come before us, my lord? Would you bring wisdom to the government? Or have you some request? For you make us your confessors—how can we offer penance to a Bishop?’ Then in a voice wily with friendship: ‘Was your Grace not once immured by King Edward? If my memory serves me, I knew not why.’

The Bishop began to shake, and not only his hands. His voice was a breath as he answered: ‘For speaking words defamatory to the King’s Grace.’

Buckingham became an inquisitor. ‘Words, my lord? But were you not the tutor of Bishop Alcock?’

The Bishop said quietly: ‘He was indeed pupil to me, sir; he rose to great estate. He kept me close to him.’

By now the chamber was full of muttering; I heard the hiss of ‘Woodville-lover’ from one corner.

‘He kept you close, my lord?’ cried Buckingham, incredulously. ‘What a world is ours, when pupil can bid master come and go? Or was there’—his tone became harsh again—‘was there some bond betwixt the two of you... some privy tithe he owed you, or
you owed him
?’

The Bishop’s eye roved wildly again to the Protector.

‘My lord of Gloucester,’ he said faintly, ‘I bear news which may set our world upon its head. God has moved me to come here this day. But all this is for one only. He of the old royal blood.’

Richard spoke quietly. ‘My cousin here is Plantagenet, your Grace, and without these my councillors I am as naught,’ he said.

I saw the gleam of a tear in the Bishop’s eye.

‘Sir, you are true brother to our late sovereign lord,’ he said. ‘I am an old man. Full heavy with this burden that I bear.’

Even Richard’s patience was waning. ‘Your Grace forgets that we are busy men,’ he said shortly. ‘Each hour is precious. The time is short until my nephew’s coronation.’

Stillington drew a great breath.

‘There can be no coronation,’ he said. ‘I have toiled long with this secret. While King Edward lived, I could only hold my peace. But now...’ and the tear in his eye started its journey down. ‘I cannot see a bastard receive sacred the Chrism. I cannot see a bastard on the throne of England.’

Piers Curteys dropped his bale of silk and it spread out, richly green over the lozenged tiles. The sound of its fall was like a corpse upon hard ground. And there was an end to quiet. Amid the gasps, the stifled oaths, I heard the word ‘Blayborgne’ and an old image leaped to my mind: the leering face of a French ambassador’s henchman, with whom I had once passed an hour, an hour that had ended in blows when he, drunken and tongue-loose, had whispered of our King’s own parentage, as it was sung in France.

‘
Le fils d’un archier
,’ he had sniggered, swaying on his bench. ‘So tall, so blonde, that Blayborgne... so low, so dark, the Duke of York, God him pardon. Proud Cis was not too proud...’‘Then it was that I struck him, to rob him of three teeth and send him asprawl and bloody... Buckingham had heard of it too. For Buckingham, drunk with a kind of madness, was daring to voice it. Through the confusion of my own stunned dream I heard Richard’s answer, and trembled for fear of him.

‘May God forgive you, cousin,’ he said, on his feet and stumbling with rage. He turned savagely to the Bishop.

‘And you, my lord? Would you impugn our royal line? Do you prate of old, vile rumour in this Chamber? Do you question my late brother’s ancestry? Mine too? For you but lately called me true brother to his Grace. We, who are descended by pure blood from Edward Third? Would you cast filth upon the name of Plantagenet?’ The blood left his face and with a gasp he caught at the throat of his own doublet.

‘I lie at Baynard’s Castle,’ he said, in a choking voice. ‘Think you that I can brook such evil and kiss my mother’s hand this night?’

For the first time, Buckingham looked uneasy, and glanced towards the door, perchance wishing he were hunting, or drinking. And the Bishop stayed calm, old, and far beyond passion.

‘My lords, you misconstrue my words,’ he said with a ghostly smile.

Next instant, Buckingham was babbling to the Protector. ‘Your Grace, forgive my folly! Am I not your true friend and lover? It is but that you, my lord, resemble in face and body both, your father Richard, whom God assoil. Aye, you, sir, more than any other man.’