We Speak No Treason Vol 1 (17 page)

He was frowning.

‘I pray he is not becoming unwary, complacent,’ he said under his breath. He often spoke of his Grace the King as if I were not with him; I did not know whether to be sad that his thoughts went from me so often, or flattered that he trusted me. In any event it was Richard’s way, and therefore a joy.

‘Will there be real trouble?’ I asked him, remembering the omens with which Patch had tried to frighten me. ‘People spoke some time past of bloody rain and a child that cried out in the womb...’

He dropped my hand to cross himself.

‘Who is Robin of Redesdale, Richard?’ I asked suddenly. ‘Some say he is a man of the people, others that he is the agent of some alien power sent to stir mischief. Who is he?’

He looked at me; a swift, shrewd look. I lifted my face; the sun, or his glance, danced on my eyelashes. His expression melted; became charmed, and over serious words he smiled as if he could not help it.

‘My love, would that I knew,’ he said. ‘But I can vow this is all more than just an agitation set up by the northern citizens. Though they yelled for the return of Percy as Earl of Northumberland, saying they misliked Warwick’s jurisdiction, this trouble stems from deeper things. I am convinced of it.’

Then we had reached a favourite arbour, which to my joy was unoccupied by amorous couples gowned in indolence. And we stepped softly within the shell of roses and green leaves, and like lightning I doffed my headdress for he had no need to tell me how my hair pleased him. And again he held me in his arms, and kissed my mouth, with a trembling fierceness, while I clung, breathing my love into him on a sigh. Others came soon, heralding their approach with brittle mirth.

That was the pattern of my days; to meet, to kiss and part, for privacy was more precious than the finest gems, rare as true love in this place, this time. A fleeting figure, I wondered what they thought, who came to see my lord of Gloucester sitting alone in a lover’s bower?

King Edward nearly discovered us that day. I had need to run swiftly, though I do not doubt he would have been glad to know his brother had a mistress. He came along the pleasaunce path, singing about lemen and Maying, and he had on many occasions been heard to remark that all men were frail. So he might have been pleased. Ah, I wonder.

Daily we sat with our distaffs or broidery frames in the Duchess’s apartments, and the weeks slid by. Each night I lay wakeful, burned with a fever for which there was but one cure, and that denied me.

A yelp from one of the women roused me from my thoughts. A wasp had flown in through the open window. The Duchess of Bedford, who had been nodding, woke and flapped her hands angrily, and watching her, I thought how she had aged these last months. Her hair was snow white and the lines on her face deeply scored.

Elysande whispered: ‘Sleep is good for the aged: but you are like a woman dead. Wake up! Answer me!’

‘Forgive me,’ I said. Vaguely I knew she had been asking me something, an urgent question on a breath.

‘Who is Robin of Redesdale?’ she murmured. ‘Really, I mean. Any fool knows that name cloaks some angry lord. Who is he, say?’

The woman who had been stung rubbed her neck, listening. ‘Yes, who is he?’ she echoed.

‘’Tis the French Queen’s captain,’ said another. ‘The whore of Anjou’s liegeman, Beaufort of Somerset.’

‘For God’s sake, soft,’ said Lady Scrope. Margaret Beaufort had but lately come and gone, visiting the Duchess. Bemused on all sides, I sought diplomacy, said naught, wishing I were out, roaming the grassy fields of Bloomsbury with my lord, my love.

‘Beaufort!’ said another.

‘Why do you not ask the fool, Patch?’ Elysande said slyly. ‘He seems to know all of policy; you two are hand in glove.’

‘Beaufort is not in England, surely,’ said Anne Haute.

The others had lost interest. They were playing with the lap-dogs, yawning, picking at comfit-dishes. Elysande pulled her chair close to mine.

‘By the Rood!’ she whispered. ‘Fools make fair paramours!’

My eyes on my work, I said: ‘Why think you thus?’

She laughed softly. I was minded of Gyb’s lilting purr.

‘Why, maiden, you come to bed some nights with your flesh afire, blazing like the sun—I cannot bear to touch you, that I vow.’ She shuddered, she watched me for some little space, her hands busy at her spindle, smiling her kind, cat’s smile.

‘Well, for sure,’ declared Anne Haute, though none listened, ‘England is safe from the Lancastrians, for my lord of Warwick’s fleet lies in the Channel warding off invaders.’

The Duchess roused herself, spoke roughly. The harshness in her voice shocked me from my fading dream.

‘By Christ’s Blood, I would know mine enemy,’ she said. ‘I would know who labours against me and mine.’

Elysande whispered: ‘Is Patch a fine lover? Lusty and lickerish, and hot to bed a maid?’

Removed by a thin veil from her friendly, bawdy talk, my spirit soared. I thought of Richard, and his tender, ardent lovemaking, and thought that young as he was, the fiery blood of his brother the King surely ran in his veins, for Edward had bastards which were openly acknowledged and all the maids he had bedded had long queues of knights clamouring for their hand, for that which had pleased so fair a prince was a prize in truth.

I thought thus and my heart grew heavy. For I would not now even be able to meet him of an evening, to find some chamber or terrace where we could clasp each other, kiss lingeringly, talk quietly. For tonight I must sleep at the foot of my lady’s couch, and another six weeks would pass before I found my stealthy freedom, as we all served a tour of two moons tending her during the night, and this gave rise to a great sigh. And Elysande read my thought. She breathed in my ear:

‘Far be it for me to stand between a lover and his maid,’ she whispered. ‘Would it please you, sweeting, if I cosseted my lady tonight and left you to seek your heart’s lust?’

‘But she clings to me,’ I whispered back. ‘Only I can comfort her at night.’

The Duchess had awful dreams, waking screaming and roaring.

‘Men do say she is a witch,’ breathed Elysande even lower, and looked at me.

There was the night at Grafton Regis, mewed up in my mind, now loosened by my friend’s words. I thrust it away, took refuge in Elysande’s own light laughing speech.

‘You will have us thrown in the Fleet!’ I said, as she had done, once.

‘I jest,’ said Elysande. ‘But I thought you might have heard tales,’ and her lips curved, and she looked down.

‘I know naught,’ I said. ‘I have heard naught.’

‘But—to our little strategy—it would please you?’

‘It would delight me,’ I answered.

‘So be it, then,’ said Elysande, and went straightway to Jacquetta of Bedford, wringing out cold cloths for her wrists against the heat, whispering sweetness in her wrinkled ear.

Seeking delight and sweetness both, I sought Richard that night, straying with trembling near to his apartments. I noticed much activity all about, even apart from the comings and goings of the esquires and yeomen of the bedchamber and the great unruly hounds. There was one face that I knew: Harry, the little page, who lingered to comfort me with saddening news, because while I would gladly have entered Richard’s chamber with arms that craved him, he was not even there. For Harry told me that the King had finally listened to his advisers, and there was a council of war that night, and Richard sat on it, together with Lord Hastings and the Woodvilles; and that the King was arraying an army against Robin of Redesdale at last.

Now it was I thought I should never set eyes on him again, for although Elysande out of her charity kept the Duchess well satisfied and swore she never noticed the difference between us of a night, Richard was ever closeted with the King and his councillors. And if I knew him at all he must have been so joyful at being included in the discussions that he bore equably the presence of the Woodvilles. For, as was to be expected, King Edward’s chief advisers were the Queen’s father, Earl Rivers, Sir John Woodville, and Lord Anthony, laying his verses and his jousts aside to turn his talent to war.

I hung about the passages, shameless, all my conceit blown from me by the blast of my longing to be near Richard, if only for an instant, to hold his hand, to look into his unfathomable eyes. I even sought out Harry for news of him.

‘How does my lord?’ I asked him one evening, when thunder muffled the air and my head ached to match my heart.

He shrugged. The White Boar rose and fell on his doublet. ‘There is that which gnaws at him,’ he said, and my hopes leaped high for a moment, because I fancied he spoke of our separation.

‘Harry...’ I said, and ceased while he cocked an attentive brow. ‘You know how dearly I love his Grace...’

‘Mistress, I see naught, and hear less,’ he said, folding his pink lips together like a night-flower, and I was moved to think how soon children grew old in this place; babes were youths, and youths, men.

‘Tell him, Harry, if you see him... that I long to know he is in good health and spirits, I pray you,’ I said miserably.

‘This I’d do gladly,’ he answered. ‘But I scarcely have time to snatch a word with him myself—it’s as if he sees me not—or any of us, for that matter. He is ever flying to the King’s chambers, begging for audience, and he is in there half the night when the King has space to see him.’

‘Of what do they talk?’

‘Mistress,’ said the little page patiently, ‘how should I know what is discussed between great princes?’

‘Of course,’ I said, bending to kiss the small face swiftly, for the sole fact that he served Richard and had led me to his arms by night. He flinched from my sad lips and ran away.

Then one day I saw him, but he was completely surrounded by henchmen and esquires, young men who laughed with strong teeth and looked about them as if they looked at life itself and loved it. He did not laugh; his countenance was full of thoughts and he withdrew into them. He did not look around but strode on relentlessly, with full purpose and I would fain have known his mission. I stepped aside as they passed, and there were one or two who looked at me with the expression I longed to see in my lord’s eyes. I willed him to see me with all my power.

But he strode on, so full of strength and grace and seriousness that my heart rose up to bursting at the sight and knowledge of him, and my lips grew cold for the touch of his. I would have thought he heard my mind crying of my long desire; for having tasted the apple no other food could sate me now, so deep in love was I.

I burned him with my gaze, and he walked on by. He was on his way to the King’s chamber, on business of which I knew naught. He walked on by and did not look at me.

He had forgotten my existence.

News came to us that Robin of Redesdale rioted merrily in Lancashire. There were lootings, slayings, burning of property, but I was still curious to see this man. I was sure that he wore green and carried the long-bow, and that mayhap Maid Marian, with her false breasts, trailed wearily behind him.

The court was bored with his name by now, and new dances and sports would have taken the place of speculation, but the King wished for none of it. There was a change in him. The gallant courtier had disappeared and in his place was a stern and martial campaigner, the veteran of fearful Towton Field and Mortimer’s Cross, with its holy sign of the Three Suns. Yet, paradoxically, he lingered at London, though he had ordered his tents and artillery and hundreds of jackets of murrey to be carried to Fotheringhay, whence he planned to direct his attack upon the rebels. With him he planned to take two favourite captains, Sir John Howard and Louis de Bretaylle; and Edward Brampton, a great, beetle-browed Portuguese warrior, added excitement by his arrival at court. Now the armourers polished the harness to blue-black fire, and the blacksmiths honed the swords and axes to a deadly tooth, and the banner of England with the leopards and lilies and the supporting standards of suns and roses sprouted like great dangerous blossoms wherever the eye turned. And in my heart I was glad, that though Richard could listen to those older than he laying their plans in the council chamber, all knew that the King thought him too young to join the affray. George of Clarence showed no interest in this time of preparation, for he was on one of his manors, attended by two hundred servants, basking in the sun and doubtless thinking of Isabel Neville. So men said.

The Duchess of Bedford said, waking and sleeping: ‘I would know mine enemy.’ I heard her without comprehension, through my shell of sick-heartedness. For Richard was daily cloistered with the King, and no man knew what passed between them, until I met with him again, on the last day of May.

The Duchess had been bathed and bedded, and there were few abroad save for the anonymous, hurrying servants in the passages, and I spoke with Elysande before she seated herself with her tapestry at the foot of my lady’s couch.

‘Think you she’ll sleep?’ I whispered. Come to think of it, most of our conversation took place in whispers. ‘I must go out.’

Elysande’s pointed teeth winked in her smile.

‘Certes, what a lusty lover he must be!’ she teased. ‘And constant too! All these weeks you have languished for his arms!’

That I have, I thought, then gathered my wits as again she alluded to his motley dress and I was hard put to find a jocund answer. With little hope I strayed aimlessly up towards the gallery and, as it happened, I did see Patch, wandering, lack-wit as a sprite.

‘I never see you now,’ he said ill-humouredly.

‘Well, we are on the edge of an array,’ I answered. ‘Shall you too put on harness?’

‘I was trained for mirth not slaughter,’ said he.

‘Have you seen my lord of Gloucester of late?’ I asked, throwing caution away.

‘Certes, yesterday,’ he said instantly. ‘And he too was doleful as a drunkard in a dry tavern. I know not what ails folk these days... And as for you, mistress, become much more slender and I shall be able to nip your waist with one hand, so...’

I would have turned on him out of sheer misery as he stretched out what was only the hand of comfort, when my eyes fell on a small figure, patient, motionless under the torchlight a few feet away.