We Speak No Treason Vol 1 (20 page)

Calthorp bowed swiftly and faded away. The three young men shuffled their feet.

‘Good night to you, Bernard, Barney, Broom,’ said Richard, and he ran their names together so that it sounded like one of Patch’s conundrums, and I wanted to laugh, and cry.

‘Is all well?’ Robert Percy said.

‘This person is my acquaintance, and doubtless brings word from the castle,’ said Richard. ‘I will speak alone with her.’

‘As your good lordship desires,’ said Percy. ‘I will remain and escort you to your apartments.’

‘Nay, Robert,’ Richard said. ‘Get you to bed. We must be up betimes.’ He held the tent-flap open for me as Percy vanished in the murk, and he followed me in, and there we were, among all the turmoil of preparation. Pieces of harness stood everywhere. Richard’s sword, his banner with the Boar emblem, leather jackets on a couch, a silver basin and ewer in the corner. Brigandines, and fierce, eyeless casquetals. He came and stood before me.

‘Why did you come down here?’ he asked quietly.

I could not answer.

‘You should not have come,’ he repeated, and turned away, and stood looking out of the tent-flap into the misty darkness.

‘I crave your Grace’s pardon,’ I said, and I think there was a little hauteur in my tone, for he had welcomed my presence when he was lonely and sad, and now he was glad and occupied in the King’s service, it seemed he had no further need of me.

‘I will leave you, my lord, straightway, and beg your indulgence for this misconduct,’ I said formally, and I heard my voice quaver. Still he did not answer, standing straight and slender of waist, with his uneven shoulders and his smooth hair falling to his neck, a dark shadow against the tent wall. So I made to walk past him and would have dived out into the unfriendly night, but his hand caught my wrist and gripped it, with a hard tenderness.

‘You are angry with me,’ I whispered.

He looked down, and my eyes drooped, for his glance was the same as it ever was, deeply cool and burning and loving.

‘Not with you, damoiselle, but with your folly,’ he said. Then, anxiously: ‘Have any harmed you, sweet heart?’

Gladness nudged at my bones. I shook my head.

‘Sweet mistress, this is a world of men.’ It was as though my dead father spoke to me. ‘No place for you, among the rude soldiery and the harlots. Women, children, things of weakness in this time of strife.’

And I marvelled at the way he spoke, calm and controlled, full of wisdom and concern as if he were old beyond his years. And while he began softly to stroke my hair, I remarked on it, aloud.

‘Yes, I may seem thus,’ he said, then stopped, and I said gently: ‘Yea, my lord, my love?’

‘My childhood ended when I was seven years old,’ he said, and a heavy silence hung between us. He lowered his hand from my hair, and we both thought of the heads on Micklegate Bar.

‘You know what the King did?’ he murmured. I shook my head.

‘A ceremony of remembrance,’ he said slowly. ‘Five years ago, here in this very place. We rode behind a great death carriage, to the memory of my father and my brother. Under the banner of Christ in Majesty, Christ on a rainbow, flanked by the suns and roses. Gilded angels were fashioned, to cherish their souls. They lived again, that day. Then, through God’s grace, and his own kingly might, Edward avenged their death. He brought peace to the realm.’

His voice shook. He turned to face me again.

‘Thus, through my gratitude, have I striven to grow wise and strong, that I may be his right hand always. Great Jesu! I love him.’

A pain in my heart. Kings come and go. If only he could have said: ‘Great Jesu! I love thee.’ But in face of this strong and bitter love, I was no more than one of the village trulls, moaning in the long grass. I think it was then I decided my love must do for the two of us.

He went on: ‘So, I will be true to him, and to his heirs, so long as I shall live.’

In the distance a woman’s chuckling shriek, lewd and profane, sullied the grave quietness. For no reason at all, I thought of little Lady Beaufort.

Richard glanced round, anxiously. He put his hands over my ears, my hair, so that I should not hear the coarse sounds. ‘Sweet heart, you should not be here,’ he said, his voice coming faintly through a dim, rushing noise.

Then he said: ‘Why did you come?’

I put my hands on his, and he held me, on either side of my head. I had never told him how I loved him, for it would not be seemly, but this night, I felt, with a strange sadness, might be the only time I should have the chance. So I told him, all of it, and when I had ceased, his hands were trembling under mine, and the rushing in my ears became a roar.

His voice sounded quite loud when he took his hands away. ‘I wonder,’ he said thoughtfully, ‘if I am worthy of such love.’

I could not speak, for I was weeping, and I was angry with myself, for this was not what I had planned; I had wanted to make him glad, not bring him dolour.

I therefore took his hand and kissed it, and his rings were cold to my mouth. And he put his arm tenderly about my neck, and my hair came loose and streamed over his wrist down to the ground, as I leaned back and felt his lips on my throat, my heart.

And before I left him, because it was such a warm, damp night and he looked weary, I took a cloth with water from the ewer and washed his face as he lay on the couch. He closed his eyes for an instant and he could have been dead, with his high-boned countenance and his pallor. So hastily, to chase a demon, I signed his brow with the Cross and kissed him, and he clasped his arms tight about me, saying I was a true maid and had brought him much joy and comfort. He summoned a sleepy young man to escort me back to the castle, one who had but lately come on duty, so that none should know, for the greenish dawn was rising over the fens and the camp would soon be stirring. He raised his hand to me as he stood between the tent-flaps, and there was a light about him that was not earthly; or it may have been the marsh fiends dimming their night-lamps behind him; I did not know.

Neither did I know that I should not see Richard Plantagenet again for many years, and then he would be greatly changed.

I never had such a friend as Elysande; and Elysande had a new dress. It was green as a willow and suited her golden skin and tilted eyes. She was kind and lovesome and I loved her. It seemed I had more need of her than ever, particularly the day they left to meet with Robin, riding to Newark in their martial blue, for to save my soul I could not watch them go. I wanted to remember him as he stood in the lambent dawn, dark figure of my fate, holding all my happiness in one lifted hand.

Elysande sat beside me, stroking my cold fingers, for no flame burned in me. Only a block of ice, and I knew not why, for he had said: ‘God keep you, sweet lady, be comfortable. When we have put down this pesky rising I shall come back and all will be well with us again.’

Yet all was not well with me, for, overlaying my great sadness, another shadow had fallen upon me, out of the past, and I was full of fear.

When I was returning from Richard, walking as in a deep sleep and still with him in spirit, I had not seen the tall figure advancing noiselessly along the twilit passage until we collided fiercely. Candlelight flared above me and a drop of hot wax fell on my neck. Like a blare of trumpets, I heard the warning that tore through my mind. I raised my face and saw Anthony Woodville gazing down at me from his slender height. He had just come from saying a Night Office, and his rosary beads were twisted round his fingers. Instead of frowning and passing by, he stopped and his eyes roved over me: my tumbling hair, my exposed throat and breast; my guilt.

‘Well, madam?’ he said. ‘You are late abroad, or should I say early?’

And I was a child again, another oath broken, for I had sworn he would never again bring me fear.

‘I know you, mistress, do I not?’ His voice was kind, as a sword is kind until you feel the edge. I pulled my careless cloak together, confused. He had seen me more than once, sitting quietly in his mother’s apartments.

‘I had not recognized you before now,’ he said, just as if he had read my thoughts. ‘I vow—’tis those incredible headpieces you ladies wear, but now ’tis all plain ... were you not with us at Grafton Regis?’

It was undoubtedly true. With my hair fashionably hidden, the forehead shaved for height, I owned a different countenance. Without my wealth of hair, I was but another little pale face.

His eyes, cold depths of a winter lake, held mine. My gaze showed unease, I know, but strangely so did his, as if I were some little wild animal of uncertain temper. For a moment we looked at one another, and my heart, lately lulled to bliss by Richard’s touch, began to leap and bound as do the birds cruel boys fasten to stakes and stone to death.

‘Yes...’ he said, very slowly, and that one word held more meaning than the longest speech. Then suddenly he turned on his heel and strode in the direction of the Duchess’s apartments, while I stayed, paralysed with dismay, for there Elysande waited to let me in. I saw him halt outside my lady’s door, musing deeply, and he must have thought the hour too late or too early, for he moved away without knocking, and vanished down the staircase, his tall shadow following him.

Now fear such as I had never known held me fast. He had remembered me, and with that remembrance, had come a reprise of that night at Grafton Regis, when he had bullied me into forgetting what I had seen. And what had I seen? Something not clearly understood, something evil and dangerous. He was plainly haunted. And I feared the outcome of his malaise.

‘Holy Jesu!’ I whispered outside the Duchess’s door. ‘He will send me back to Grafton!’

He would send me back to Grafton, and I would never see Richard again. Elysande slid back the bolt and I fell into her arms, weeping as loudly as I dared.

Now she was pressing my hand gently. She had been looking out of the window.

‘He rides with Edward Brampton, the Portuguese,’ she murmured. ‘They make a goodly show—all of them...’ stealing a sideways glance. ‘He loved you right well last night?’ she whispered, and I nodded, because she was a dear friend to me and full of understanding that love was not always carnal sin, as the priests said.

‘You were courageous,’ she whispered. ‘To venture among all the military. I warrant you saw sights to bring the colour to your face.’

Even as she spoke, I knew for certainty that she herself must have made like journeys in her time, and wondered if she had loved a soldier ever, and knew the feeling. All the while she smiled; it was as if she applied the smile with her face-paint.

‘Did you ask him?’ she said.

I had to tell my little lie, truth as it was, that Richard did not know the real face of Robin of Redesdale. Her smile grew broader as if it were stretched and the paint on her lips cracked a little with the sweetness of her smile.

And then, that day, Lord Anthony entered, giving us all a fair good-day, and passed through to the Duchess’s chamber. And strong terror gripped me, more than I could bear, and I turned trembling to Elysande, who put her arm about me as if she had only been waiting for me to tell her the old secret that had plagued me for years.

So while my lord was closeted with his mother, I sought comfort and reassurance from sweet Elysande, and I told her all about it; the moonlight, and the manikins and the black cat, and the herb garden, and Elizabeth Woodville’s uncertainty as to the wisdom of their actions, and her mother’s fierce words. I told her all, and waxed fat in the telling, for she was a kind and tender audience, and hung on every word and her eyes grew wide and she asked me many questions and showed horror and sympathy.

Then she told me to set it all from my mind, as if it were one of my bad dreams, to forget it all and be glad and think only of my dear love. How could Sir Anthony send me back to Grafton for that which was not my fault? Sure enough she was right, for naught dreadful happened, as when my lord and his mother came out of the chamber they did not even look at me.

So I ceased to be disquieted, and was only full of love-longing instead, and I know which was the heavier burden.

He had told me he had written a letter to a friend while he was at Rising, for he had had no money with which to pay his men, and he had even jested about it, as we lay in each other’s arms.

I wished he would write
me
a letter, but I knew he would be far too busy for that.

There came August, and a day so full of sorrow that only one other summer day can best it for its anguish and that I cannot speak of yet.

Elysande’s dress was red this day, like a fair red rose, like blood, but we were not sitting quietly together on this occasion. We were at Westminster, running here and there, throwing things into chests, packing urgently, while the Household flew about as feverishly as did the panicking crowds in the street below.

For the King was taken. The King was a prisoner, and his captor was the man who had been his friend, the one who had set him on the throne, the knight Richard had loved.

Robin of Redesdale was not Robin Hood after all: he was Sir John Conyers, cousin of the Earl of Warwick; and Warwick had taken the King. Edward had left matters too late, with his hawking and his bedsport and his dalliance at Fotheringhay. While he pleasured himself thus, and his wise young brother chafed to be off, the man who made and unmade kings had been wondrous busy.

Horsemen on steaming beasts cried frenzy through London. Elysande cursed under her breath and I sought to calm my churning stomach, while we piled clothing and jewellery into coffers, bed-linen and arras into cases, helped by pallid manservants with the smell of fear about them. Hoarse shouting came in gusts over the screams of the mob. I rushed to a window; whenever I made out the word ‘slain’ or ‘beheaded’, a ghastly grinning spectre rose up to wave at me through the panes. Of a sudden I dropped the end of a Turkish rug and rushed out into the teeming passages, frantic for the news I dreaded. In a niche in the stones sat a small figure, weeping. I had never seen Harry cry before. In the midst of my demented progress I stopped and knelt to him. He pressed his face against me, his tears fell on my bosom. He would not be comforted.