We Speak No Treason Vol 1 (18 page)

‘Patch, good night!’ I said, and left him, trying not to run, feeling his stare probing my back.

Harry took my hand.

‘My lord commands...’ he said. He had not learned his lesson. Light as air we flew, running together round and round the ascending stair, across the hall, the breeze of our passing disturbing the skirts of some tiny noble lady. ‘By Saint Denis!’ she cried. ‘God’s curse on these churlish manners!’ Lady Margaret Beaufort, I thought; and she was already left far behind, to damn the sound of Harry’s laughter as we ran, we flew, air-light, dove-light, down the Hall, and I remembered just in time to pull my hood across my face before we knocked on the oaken door, the fairest oaken door in Christendom. A squire of the bedchamber opened to us, passed with downcast eyes, and departed as we entered.

Had it not been for Harry’s lingering I would have rushed wantonly into the arms of my lord, but I waited standing before him till I heard the door close behind the page and I lifted my face and felt Richard’s lips, hard and soft, cool and burning, on my brow, my eyelids, and my mouth, and I wound my arms tight about his neck, and he tasted my tears.

The chamber was the same, though it might have been a year since I was last within its loving walls. There was one addition, though. His sword, and a pair of steel gauntlets lay across the table. For all my joy, a little cold spot began to form in my mind at the sight of these accoutrements.

‘Don’t weep,’ he said softly.

At this I had to smile, a poor watery smile, for men never know a loving woman’s heart. Poor fools we are, ruled by the moon, and variable, prone to her waxing and waning, all our tides sorrow and gladness. Men never know a woman’s love.

He led me to the couch where we sat hand in hand and I gazed at him. Gently I smoothed the hair from his brow. He seemed excited, and I knew that in a moment he would be up again and pacing the chamber, for I fancied I knew him as I knew myself. Still he smiled.

‘My lord, my love,’ I whispered. ‘I am joyful we are met together again.’

And he laid his hands about my face and looked at me with that look that turned a blade in my heart, and he smiled.

‘You are happy,’ I murmured.

‘Sweet heart,’ he said, in a cramped, glad voice, ‘wait till you hear my news.’ I could only say: ‘Whatever pleases my lord, lightens my heart.’ And he held me at arm’s length, and already he seemed far from me. I had a precognition of what he was going to say.

‘His Highness,’ he whispered. ‘His most noble Grace King Edward...’ and he swallowed his excitement and continued, calmer. ‘... After many days I have at last persuaded the King that I shall ride with him against Robin of Redesdale. We leave the day after tomorrow... God grant we are in time, for we should have been north long ago to crush this rising... Is it not fair news? Now, by St Paul, I shall have chance to prove myself, utterly fearless, utterly loyal... But I am ranting on like a woman,’ he finished, with an anxious laugh, and took me to him roughly and laughed again.

With difficulty I said: ‘Your first campaign, Richard.’ My voice sounded distant. ‘I wish you joy, my dearest lord.’

He jumped up and walked about. And it was in that moment, all the sweetness mixed with the sour, that I knew I loved one born under the planet Mars. I fought my dismay, saying: ‘I will make a novena for you, beloved.’ And, because I had visions of mighty battles, thousands slain, I continued:

‘I will pray that you shall smite this Robin a dolorous blow, and return in glory.’

He laughed gently. ‘It will be but a little skirmish. But it is enough for my purpose. My esquires stand ready, my good friends Robert Percy, John Parr, and I shall wage more men to ride with me. His Grace will not find me lacking in resourcefulness...’

Then he looked at me. His eyes were tender as I ever remember them.

‘Sweet heart,’ he said, and he spoke my name, and sought my lips, and war battled with love in the mind and was unhorsed for a little while. I shelved my dolour while he held me in his arms, and tried to forget that the day after tomorrow he would ride north, and I knew not when I should see him again. For I ranked myself as the loving woman of a soldier, and I vowed I would train myself to be as others of that ilk, and not weep.

So when, too soon, I parted from him, and we kissed and blessed one another, I smiled a tinsel smile and carried a mask as gay as any of the nice disguisy things the mummers wore at Yule-tide. And he could have known no difference in me, for again, when Elysande opened the door to me and brushed her hand against my breast in the darkness, she shrank as if scalded and whispered, laughing, of the ardour of fools. Though that jest was rubbing a little thin.

It was very lonely when they had gone. Few remained at court, for most of the lords had left with the King’s army, leading their own small levies, intending to wage men en route to the camp at Fotheringhay. The King’s mother lived there, and, thinking of her for the first time, I remembered that she was Richard’s mother too, and wondered about her. She had not visited the court since I was there, for it was said that she too had little love for the Woodvilles; and besides, was pious and devout more so than many widows; she still wore mourning for the Duke of York. Men called her the Rose of Raby—she had been wondrous fair.

I did not see my lord ride away. I had been in pursuit of a duty, and when at length I had managed to reach a window the last of the baggage trains was grinding and clattering through the gate, and the stiff new banner of Gloucester, with its grim boar’s head, no longer splashed its pride against the sky.

I had not even Patch to talk to, as the King had given him leave to visit his mother, who kept a cookshop in Chepe; and for this reason I was able to resume my duties at Jacquetta’s side. For if my lover had gone, why should there be need for Elysande to play proxy for me? I found the Duchess something altered; harder to please mayhap, I could not tell, but Elysande had little ways to which she had grown accustomed, and she grumbled more fiercely when I could not anticipate her whim.

So I withdrew into my own mind, and dreamed of my beloved; of his lips and his eyes, and of the words he had murmured to me in his quiet voice; how he had talked again, sadly, of his loves. For Clarence and Warwick had rejected him for what they mistook as the cowardice of youth, and Clarence was his tall and golden brother, lightsome and frivolous, as Richard could never be. He had told me, with a frowning smile, how the Lord Mayor of London had fallen asleep during a hearing of oyer and terminer: ‘Speak softly, sirs, for the Mayor is asleep’—Clarence had provoked mirth by his wit on this occasion. It struck me that Richard, while counterfeiting disapproval, envied in secret his splendid, feckless brother. ‘I know I am too serious,’ he had said, and so I had assayed to make him laugh, with my foolish, loving ways, and often succeeded.

And Warwick! there the hurt lay deeper still, for Warwick had been his lord during the years when the will was formed, the pattern followed closely until it becomes the fabric of the soul. Warwick! who now, for the first time, disdained to ride with the King, no doubt eschewing the little skirmish as small meat for his blade to bite upon.

Richard had turned his back on Warwick, for of all his loves, there was but one. Would that it had been me.

I had alluded to the writing I had seen on that first night in his apartments, the French words of power.

‘That is the code I live by,’ he had said, his eyes like steel. ‘Loyalty binds me. So will it always, to the Crown of England, to his Grace King Edward, and to all his kin.’

He had spoken these last five words as if they were dragged from him, for he had seen King Edward, as had all men, grow sleek and careless under the touch of a bewitching woman; one who stole the Great Seal to avenge her vanity.

‘A hard road to ride,’ I murmured.

‘Yea, hard, foul and devious,’ he said violently, and I knew that when he was violent he was sad, so I kissed his hand and held it to my cheek, for all his sorrow was my sorrow.

And now I guessed he would be glad as I was doleful, for he rode under the banner of England, and his golden brother’s smile.

The flowers waved in the fair green gardens, but only in mockery. The sun had ceased to shine; the sky was blue no longer. The Duchess had a little slavering dog which jumped on my lap, shrieking shrilly. Sharp pains fleeted through my head. My lady was full of rancour and small malices. The Queen’s bread was new-baked; mine was four days old, like the trenchers. I had no taste. Though the Palace still scampered with life, all who ran and walked and diced were creatures unearthly. Their voices reached me through a mist. Their faces were unreal.

I tried to conjure up his countenance, crushing my eyes closed, but I could not see him. At times a vague figure, armed and mounted, rushed through my mind, flanked by a fog of faces that mouthed silently, drowning his voice. I had no notion of how long it would take them to ride to where the rebellion flamed, but already my ears rang with the slithering crash of steel, loud formless noises, spewed out by my ignorance. My knees I wore red in prayer.

Queen Elizabeth remained calm, playing at merels and chess with her ladies; cool, with a carved coolness, retiring early to a great bed to which no tall young form strode to visit her, and she betrayed no longings, no lusting for his arms.

It was I who quivered and shed secret tears. It was she who smiled, prayed gently, drew on again the veil of the widow of Grafton Regis, patient and resigned. Then I remembered she was more than twice my age, and thought that with the years, passions burn fainter, lips lose their clinging strength, pulses grow weaker; and I thought of Richard, and knew in my mind I lied.

Had I thought to appease my hunger by that last encounter with him, I misled myself cruelly. It soothed me for a day, two days, and then began again the pain. Once I slipped like a spy into his chambers and lay for a moment on his couch, breathing the lost scent of him, to be chased from the room by an outraged butler.

I thought of him, upon his first campaign, and grew sick with fear. I minded John Skelton’s words: ‘He was seventeen. And they took his head and... speared on pikes at the Mickle Gate.’ Edmund, young Edmund Plantagenet, and sharp points in my mind for Richard his brother.

On the ninth day of this torment, I paid no heed to Elysande flinging clothes into a chest, or her anguished cries for help, until she came to shake me.

‘Am I to toil alone, then?’ she cried. ‘I vow you are as useless as yonder popinjay!’ and she gave the bird’s cage a vicious clout, making it scream.

Listlessly I turned to her.

‘Will they have crushed Robin of Redesdale yet, Elysande?’ She dropped the lid of the chest in a burst of exasperated laughter.

‘Holy Mother of God, you are the most witless... the most...’ She stopped suddenly as the Duchess entered, glowering, muttering
I would know my enemy,
the old incantation.

‘Do you never listen?’ Elysande said softly. ‘Her Grace has declared the Palace needs sweetening, and for sure, the stink is enough to make you swoon. And it was arranged before they left that...’

I looked out of the window again. I did not care if the Palace stank like a midden. I could not even smell the vast bed of white roses below me.

‘Help me,’ she pleaded.

‘How long will it take them to journey north?’

‘Oh, the King will not hurry,’ she said easily. ‘They ride first to Norwich, then to pray at Our Lady of Walsingham, then Lynn, I think, and thereafter up the Nene to meet with us at Fotheringhay.’

‘What say you?’ I whispered.

‘Fotheringhay, half-wit!’ she said patiently. ‘And if you don’t help me with the packing, we shall not be there until Christmas next coming.’

Right in front of her I fell to my knees, crossing my breast, my mindless thanks soaring like smoke. Hastily she lifted me, glancing round.

‘They will be bringing a priest to exorcize you,’ she muttered. ‘Now fold these gowns, while I assay to cram my lady’s vanities into this box, which is far too small.’

So we went to Fotheringhay, and I had to control myself, for I feared they would think me truly mad and have me hidden away somewhere with the gibbering and the dying, when I wanted to laugh and live. So I curbed the smile on my face and travelled cool, sparing of words, with the Duchess’s new pet upon my lap; a monkey that bit me often, and whose teeth I did not feel. Fotheringhay sprawled on the north bank of the river, bounded on one side by a double moat, gazing lonely and proud over the marshes from whence came the hoarse roar of bittern and the beat of herons’ wings, mingled with the seagull’s lament as it winged back and forth from the distant sea. A massive place, with mighty battlements, it was built in the fetterlock shape of the old Yorkist badge. As we trundled over the drawbridge I remembered that this was Richard’s birthplace, where he had grown, sickly and brave and single-hearted. And once more thought of John Skelton, and the first time I heard the name of my beloved.

We were installed in a rather bleak apartment, but one which I loved, for I could hear the wind mocking over the fens, and smell the salt sea faintly in the darkness, and I could lie listening for the sound of the King’s army, for none knew quite when they would arrive. And I could not contain my longing to meet with Richard again, to feel the soft hardness of his lips and hear his whispered voice, and I planned the things I would do to make him glad, the things I would say to make him merry, when he came to me at last. At a distance, I saw the Rose of Raby. I marked her coolness when she greeted the Queen, the same courteous ice I had seen in her youngest son. She wore the widow’s barbe and wimple, and on her breast hung a great reliquary like a fetter, and there was something of Richard in her face. I thought her handsome, though Elysande murmured that she was also known as ‘Proud Cis’ and in these parts was much envied and feared.

Vast wagon-loads of armaments rolled in, and then came soldiery, all ages, some coarse, all dusty from the dry roads with their gaping pitfalls; a few laughing, some looking up in wonder at the great castle as they assembled tents for their officers and supplies within and without the bailey. And July was almost out when a barge came up the Nene, and in it were King Edward, Earl Rivers and his sons, the Lord Chamberlain Lord Hastings, and the King’s youngest brother, together with a fistful of retainers.