We Speak No Treason Vol 2 (3 page)

Young John had no such doubts. The words he used about them were strong for such a gentle fellow.

‘Rivers came again,’ he said finally. ‘He spoke me fair, and said he could do naught for us. Then he would have me ride with him—I have no stomach for it.’ And Young John, looking old, had called for his clerk and started a rush of dictation, all about life’s hardship, begging his brother to succour them in their accursed hour.

My sorrel laid back her ears, and nipped at Gloucester’s horse. I gave her a swift stroke with the flat of my sword, and she flaunted forward jostling the line. Sir John Woodville, scarcely two years older than I, half-turned to his esquire with a little sneer. ‘Green as grass, I vow, some of my lord’s waged men,’ and I would lief have asked him what he knew of fighting, or how his aged bride did. Then I saw Richard of Gloucester smiling at me, a little sadly.

‘The Pastons are friends of yours,’ he said, and I had the notion he knew everything about me. ‘I am truly sorry I could not help there,’ he continued. ‘His Highness said that they should have put the case before the oyer and terminer a month after it happened. And now he has this rebellion astir in his mind.’ His gaze went ahead to royal Edward, who sat tall and gleaming on his black horse. I saw that Richard’s face wore the same guise as when I had observed him at Mass that morning, mingled with that of my maiden-haunted friends. I said, truthfully: ‘What a glorious prince he is.’ Richard turned to me, shining like the sun.

‘Yes, and he has a great heart,’ he murmured. He started to tell me what I already knew: that during the commencement of the war with Lancaster he himself—a little boy of seven or eight—had been lodged in London with the Pastons.

‘He came every day to visit us, my brother Clarence and me,’ he said. ‘Every single day, mark you, full of affairs as he was; though he was striving to put this land to rights. I shall never forget how eagerly I looked for him. He would ride through the gate like... Phoebus, or blessed St Michael. He brought us gifts and clasped us in his arms. Strong arms,’ he said a shade wistfully; and I noticed a slight unevenness about his own body. The right pauldron of his mail was fashioned larger than the left. He caught me glancing at it.

‘I have suffered much ill-health,’ he said, and he seemed rather amused. ‘So, to counteract my frailty, I wielded arms so lustily that it left me with more in the right, less in the left. It was a battle of my own; a battle with the battle-axe, and made me doubly puissant thus,’ and he rapped his shoulder with his mailed fist, making it ring.

‘And I have unnatural sight,’ I said, rather softly in case I should be put off by any as a wizard. ‘Long eyes—and I love archery.’

‘But you conquered,’ he said, looking ahead as he rode.

‘I did, my lord,’ I said, and saw his little satisfied nod.

He was so easy with me. He looked gratified, then vexed, then tortured, his face hiding no thought. He talked of Yorkshire, and ere long I was passing eager to see this land which, according to Richard, was Paradise on earth and, sadly, as unattainable to him as the hidden Grail which all men strive to find. So I kept an acute silence, sorry to think that Elizabeth Woodville had marred his future by marrying the King and alienating Warwick.

Our progress was slow. We passed through cornfields and apple orchards; and when we finally rode up the incline to Castle Rising and saw its hundred steep steps, the King took it in his head to go hunting, and went off accompanied by the Woodvilles. I was left with Richard, and Robert Percy, and other engaged in overseeing the provisions and armour and marshalling of the troops. In the ward, knots of men muttered together. One song was in every mouth: ‘When is the paymaster coming?’

The faces of the gently born wore little sneers; the rough soldiery shuffled their feet and jangled the groats in their purses as if to turn them into marks by necromancy. In front of the treasurer’s tent they formed a line; the men of Sir John Woodville and his father, and those of Lord Anthony and the King; the archers doffing their metal helmets, rubbing their sweated palms on the breast of their deerskins. The close line merged forward, swaying like wheat, and the lightness on those faces as they came away was like a ripple of sun on corn. Money chinked in their hands. But Lord Richard of Gloucester’s men, his precious men whom he had asked to ride with him, stood jostling their feet in the long meadow-grass, and whispering of niggardly masters. Bernard, Barney, Broom and Calthorp murmured that there would be no dicing that night. Robert Percy and Thomas Parr conferred with Gloucester.

‘This has gone beyond jesting,’ said Sir Thomas.

Robert Percy had a mouth that looked as if it always smiled. Though he was a good friend to Richard, I do not like faces which smile without cease. Yet Robert smiled, saying: ‘They are full of rancour surely; they foresee victuals neither for their horses nor for themselves, I vow.’

‘They will be fed,’ said Sir Thomas roughly.

‘I spoke of other needs,’ said Robert Percy. ‘Ale and cards and gowns for their womenfolk.’

I heard my lord of Gloucester’s voice.

‘By Christ’s Passion,’ he said, ‘they will be deserting!’ This cast the others into silence. Richard looked in my direction. I bowed slightly. Suddenly I wished I had money for him.

‘Where is my clerk?’ he asked suddenly, still gazing towards me. I moved forward as a young man carried pens and inkhorn into the tent.

‘Would that I could aid you, my lord,’ I said.

‘There may yet be time for that.’ He started to pace about the tent. ‘Right trusty and well-beloved,’ he began, and we all listened to the rasp of quill on parchment, while outside a lark sang madly. A little haltingly he dictated, and when he came to the part explaining how the King had summoned him to attend his highness in the north parties, and yet had left him so ill-purveyed of money as to need beg a loan from this old lord and trusty follower, I marvelled still more at Edward’s forgetfulness. Yet verily, he was always a marvellous creature, King Edward the Fourth.

Still unfinished, Richard turned to Sir Thomas Parr.

‘How much will I need?’ he asked.

‘Say an hundred pounds, Richard my lord,’ suggested the knight.

‘Until Easter next coming,’ murmured Richard. ‘Tell him I will repay in full—and will serve him the same if ever he needs it.’

The clerk set it down. Suddenly Richard snatched up a pen. ‘Sir, I pray you that you fail me not...’ and I saw that his hand matched his voice, and trembled.

His esquires withdrew, but I stayed. I wanted to offer him some word of good cheering counsel, out of all my seventeen winters. Half-jesting I said:

‘Sir, it seems his Grace would rather chase the stag than see his brother and his brother’s army satisfied. It would seem ill-considered...’ And then I all but cut off my tongue with my teeth, for he swung round upon me like a true boar, with lowered tusks, and the first fireflash I had yet seen in his eyes.

‘You speak against the King?’ he said softly.

I should have knelt, but I was fixed. His face came very near. There was sweat-dew on it.

‘No treason, my lord,’ I said, clearing my gullet.

He gave a deep shudder, and his body lost its tension and became pliant again, like the heartwood—sapwood in a fine bow.

‘Words...’ he muttered.

‘My words were fool’s words,’ I continued. ‘For his Grace...’

‘His Grace is supreme,’ he said, without violence. ‘My brother his highness is omnipotent. Yea, my friend’—and all his swift powerful anger was vanished in the joy of speaking of King Edward—‘he can do no wrong. I am but his humblest servant—we are all his liege men, bound till death.’

‘Noblest prince, give me leave to excuse myself,’ I said, affected by his own fervour. ‘May Our Lord empower him with great glory and a thousand blessings. Always.’

‘Amen,’ he said, as the constraint between us lifted. He then made a retreat into his own mind, for the line between his smooth brows came hard and then faded—I watched him. He was saying something about it being a full day’s ride, and I leaped into the breach, mad to make atonement. ‘Sir, my horse is...‘

‘Strong? Fleet?’ He turned, anxious and amused, guessing my desires.

I looked in his eyes. ‘I am no royal herald, my lord,’ I said. ‘But I will have the money in your hands by day’s beginning.’

He smiled. ‘You would go through the night, with an hundred pounds in gold across your saddle-horn?’

‘I will take armed men, if it please you.’

A rich laugh he had; you could warm your hands at it.

‘That you will... the stoutest!’

He would trust me with his money. Fleetingly, it came to me how willingly he trusted. The esquires were ready, and I marked with some dismay how weighty with harness they were. I determined not to let them impede my progress.

‘My friend will house you overnight,’ said Richard. ‘Guard well my wages.’

‘With my blood,’ I answered.

‘Or we shall have a rebellion of our own here,’ he said, and added, a little mockingly: ‘I will have prayers said for your safe passage.’ Then he grasped my forearm and I his, and I turned into the southwest wind, glad to feel it, for the morning sun looked on me with fierce eyes. And I thought, riding, of the gesture of good-fellowship from a sovereign prince, and set my spurs in sorrel hide the faster to do his bidding.

That was a good mare of mine. She lived long, and was well tempered and puissant, and was speared under me finally by a dozen shafts. (So, also, died White Surrey...)

I slept ill that night, though the bed in the old lord’s castle was soft enough to please the noblest lady. My host asked with great love after Richard and the King, but when in all innocence I mentioned some doing of Anthony Woodville he could scarce contain his apoplexy, and swore oaths, ill-fitting such a great knight of ancient line. Thereafter I took a secret vow of silence, and fancied as I lay to hear a voice grumbling, night-long. Again, I had touched anathema, and lashed myself with penitent prayers.

I went straight from Mass into the June morning. There was a waist-high white veil, spreading over the fields, gilded to cloth of silver by the sun, hiding the boles of trees and changing the forest into a place enchanted. The spiders had woven night-long, and their tapestries brushed dew on my cheek as we rode. Through wild country I glimpsed thick clustering bluebells, and delicate damp buds of thorn unfurling. Waywardly I pushed my mount; her feet seemed to leave the ground; my half-armour was weightless, the money-pouch across my mare’s withers light as air. My tongue gave gold to a summer song, while behind me I heard the thud of the pursuing squires. I had to rein in and wait for them. They pounded up, their helms shiny with dew.

‘You ride fast, my lord,’ one said, gasping.

‘I’m no sluggard,’ I answered gaily.

‘There are thieves about...’

‘Stay by me, then!’ I cried. ‘My lord of Gloucester waits!’ I felt like one who had drunk deep. ‘Sweet life!’ I shouted, and was off again, a creature possessed, hearing the grunts of my followers, and the rattle of their mail. I left them a bows-length behind, then the gap stretched into a quarter-league. I felt the sun hot upon my parted lips, the breeze warm in my teeth. I dreamed of the archery. I was champion of all England—I was master bowman of Burgundy. I was my lord of Gloucester’s trusted fellow, and wild with delight; so full of virtue, in fact, that I omitted to watch for the foul wounded roads, downfall of better than I. The sorrel was dainty of foot for so big a mare, but I had driven her cruelly. She fell, her nose between her forelegs, and rolled, and for me it was a starless night, a sense of buffeting blows on my skull and a sun bright with pain.

I lay near a gateway, and the light flickered down through foliage on to my face. I had a great dint in my breastplate but was otherwise whole, save for the deathly fear when I thought of Richard’s wages. When I saw the mare, standing shamed but still gold-laden, near to me, I knelt and gave thanks to the blessed St Anthony for saving what was deemed lost. As I prayed, I heard a faint chuckling and looked up warily to see a figure mounted on a gate, a man who laughed at me with a sound too high-pitched for beauty. He must have come from the field, likewise the black-garbed, weeping woman who sat on a mule the other side of the hedge. He had a longish beard, dung-coloured, though he was about five-and-thirty; he was dressed in a hermit’s robe, and looked unclean.

‘Too fast, fair sir, too fast.’ He wagged his head, and his beard swung, like an old goat chewing hay.

‘Why does she weep?’ I asked, still dazed.

Again he chuckled. ‘She weeps ever. To good cause.’ I felt a pain in my nose, and tasted blood. My head seemed invaded by a hive of bees.

‘A sorry fall,’ said the stranger. ‘Where, so hastily?’

I gathered my fuddled wits. ‘My affairs are not yours, fellow,’ I replied.

‘Your speech is that of Kent,’ he said, as if he had been on earth for hundreds of years.

‘How are you called?’ I asked. My hands were still shaking.

He was laughing quietly. ‘My name is Hogan.’

I looked at the woman. She quivered with sobs, sitting her mule under a hawthorn tree.

‘Your wife?’ I was curious.

‘Her tears are for the doom of man, not because she is wed to me,’ he answered. He slipped down from the gate and came close. He had a sideways gait, and I felt. strangely chill, as if the sun were less bright.

‘So,’ he said. ‘A Kentishman. They have fought and died, in fury and despair.’

I reckoned him struck by the moon.

‘Many have died,’ I said.

His laughter ceased. ‘As will many more. This England will be a stew of red life. Yours also. You have few years left. Pleasure yourself, my fair young sir.’

I was not afraid, only angry. I wiped the blood from my nose and glowered, hating this Hogan, who had cooled my day. ‘By the Rood, you lie!’

He laughed again, knowingly, pointing to the weeping woman, then at the tree under which her mule stood patiently,

‘The Thorn of Joseph,’ he said. ‘In a dream, I saw it—crowns rolling, wondrous death, and the end of the House of Plantagenet.’