We Speak No Treason Vol 1 (27 page)

‘Sirs, don’t pull it down—the roof remains untouched! Sirs, we’ll save it!’ She choked on a hot gust of smoke. I looked up to see billowing black blotting out the narrow gap of sky between the houses. They could not pull down the shop. The smarting in my eyes had naught to do with smoke. Again the water-cart trundled up—willing hands dipped and threw and dipped and wiped their brows, and cursing mingled with the pluming black haze.

My mother grasped my arm. ‘The well!’ she screamed.

I shook my head, dull, uncomprehending. ‘We have no well,’ I muttered, but she pointed to where, three doors down, the woman who said my mother gave short weight, who enjoyed the Duke of Clarence’s patronage, was calmly soaking her own door-frame with water.

‘She has a well in her courtyard—hurry,’ and I ran off, halting grimly and dishevelled before the lady, who looked at me aloofly.

‘Dame, we need water.’

‘You have buckets?’ she said, strangely cool and pointed through to the dark recesses of her shop and I yelled to the others to follow me, while the lady went on damping her door-frame as if she were alone in the world, and in no danger. It was a good deep well and the winch well oiled. Butcher Gould and I pulled on the rope like madmen, taking the skin off our hands, running back to cast water on the laughing flames until my chest felt it would burst asunder. On my sixth journey I had to stop for an instant, and then it was I saw another leather pail, half-way up the stairs; a welcome sight for there were scarcely enough to go round. So I ran up to seize it, not caring what the unfriendly owner might say—there was a maiden coming down as I went up and we met abruptly. She carried a candle; she was frightened, for the flame quivered and shook for all that she came so steadily. I sought to pass her, and she stepped the same way. The candle almost seared my eyebrow. I dodged round the other side of her, and she had the same idea. It was a mad dance, this tripping from side to side on the stairs. We darted and feinted at one another like fighting cocks in a Southwark pit. I had to take her by the elbow, and her bones were as small as a lark’s.

‘Mistress, for God’s love let me by!’ I cried. I took the candle from her for she was all a-quiver and dangerous. Her eyes looked into mine, and in that frantic instant I marked them as pretty eyes, nay, eyes of great beauty, the colour of woodsmoke, and filled with tears.

She said: ‘Are we in danger?’ She wore a serving maid’s white coif and I spoke her free, for I had had many happy hours of kissing and clipping, years gone, with such as she. That is, before I rose in the ranks and attained the court.

‘No danger, sweet, but you would be better outside.’

She shrank from me, tears brimming.

‘I cannot,’ she whispered, and the next moment took the candle back from me with a thin, work-red hand; a hand so delicate that the light shone through it. And gallant as ever, in all my distress, I snatched her other hand and gave it a kiss, closing my nose to the stench of garlic and onions that perfumed it; for she was a lovesome creature, if undoubtedly somewhat loony. I could not tarry when she tore her fingers from mine and whirled away back into the upper part of the house. Seizing the pail from the stair, I hastened to fill it and ran back, just as the door-frame of my mother’s shop collapsed, one beam leaning like the endpost of a gallows. I wished Fray on the gallows, and I started to pray.

I felt for my Christopher, who shielded me on summer forays when I rode forth to entertain the nobles—but it was scarcely a fit occasion for that sweet saint. I thought wildly of Barbara, to whom men call in thunder and in cannon-fire; and then remembered St Florian. Though he had been dead for twelve hundred years, I fancied him the very man for this work, and so I cried aloud to Florian of Lorch, to make the water flow faster and the helpers run swifter, and for a miracle to save my mother’s shop.

Blessed St Florian, you have ever a special place in my heart. It had been overcast all day, yet, when the first drops of rain, large as pennies, spattered on my brow, coming swift and blessedly cool, straight from Heaven’s own well, I could not believe it true and thought the moisture but my own mingling tears and sweat. Then, as I heard the downpour hissing on the smouldering broken gable and the red-hot beams, and saw the cobbles awash and the disappointed flames beaten from their supper, I gave thanks from a full heart and held my mother close, in an arm so stiff from bucket-carrying I thought I would never raise it again to quaff my ale.

We had a little reprimand from the Watch of course, but my mother drew the serjeant aside and spoke to him, and he glanced across at Mistress Petson’s house and nodded. The man responsible for storing the ladders and firehooks packed up his gear and we were glad to see him go. Then we inspected the damage. The counter had been destroyed, and most of the shop frontage, but it could have been a thousand times worse. A neighbour offered to make a new sign for the door, and my mother thanked him prettily. I saw then why cursed Dan Fray wanted to wed her, quite apart from her flourishing business. They carried the arras and goods back upstairs for her; and men with axes knocked away parts of the house still reckoned dangerously warm. My mother bade stupid Walter Cleeve bring up beer for all who had helped so valorously. When all were seated on those oak chairs of which she was so proud, and the boys were sweeping out the water into the street, she beckoned me and together with Agnes Petson—now conscious of her wanton appearance and full of shame—we went into that dame’s house and stopped in front of her spice cupboard. A bag of pepper had burst inside it, and the sneezes of Fray’s nephew mingled with his cries and thumps.

‘I am sorry, mistress, to burden you with such a guest,’ my mother told Agnes politely, though her lips twitched. If I have any humour in me, and men say I make them laugh, I swear I owe it to my mother. If I have any courage, that, too, is from her blood. On her own she had caught the devil’s henchman, though not before he had tossed his pitch-soaked brand in through the shop window. His nose was red with pepper when the Watch came for him, and he seemed almost glad to be out of that cupboard.

‘I could not lock him in my own place, in case he burned to death,’ she said. I told her she was too merciful, and she quoted to me: ‘Vengeance is mine, saith the Lord,’ then fashioned a paradox by saying she hoped they would hang the uncle first and make an example of him.

Later we rehearsed the case against Fray, and the boys were brought in to prepare their evidence, and they told how they had been roused by the flash of flame as they slept under the counter, going to my mother’s aid as she felled the nephew. And I was impressed by their wits, with the exception of Walter Cleeve, sitting stroking the dog, who had slain four rats. I compared them favourably with the servants of my mother’s neighbours.

‘What witless wenches she keeps,’ I said, pointing towards the uncivil one’s shop. My mother looked surprised.

‘I always thought Jane Thomson and Dyonsia to be rather sharp young maids,’ she said.

‘I met one on the stairs who seemed half out of her mind,’ I said, but I was yawning by now, and I looked out of the window and saw, in the square of reflected light from our chamber, my poor horse hanging her head. So I shoved her in the stall behind the shop with my mother’s black pony and a sumpter horse left in pledge by some fellow who had dined and could not pay, and I bedded on the floor with the cook-boys, and it was right chill there, the shop front being open to the wind. What with the smell of charred timbers and the cold, I slept exceeding ill. My body was one ache from running and throwing, my hands throbbed from their skinning on the well-rope. I lived through the whole night again, and when I rose before dawn, anxious to regain Westminster in time for Mass, I was still half-dreaming. I had been dodging the strange wild maiden on the stairs. Her mist-grey eyes looked into mine, her eyes of smoke with all their trouble and anguish; and in my dreaming I saw other things that my haste had marked without the realization. The little, drooping mouth, the small round chin. As I hastened with the Household to the Royal Chapel, her face floated ahead of me—I could not move it from my mind. Behind my eyes as I prayed her hands—the hands too fine of bone for a cook-wench-—clutched at me, and her face came closer. As the sweet boyish voices rose to the arch above me, I pictured that face smiling. Then all fell into place, though I would fain have dismissed it as foolishness. I would gladly have cast such thoughts aside, for she was but a cook maid, toiling long hours, lacking privileges, abject of a bullying mistress. Yet had she smiled...

Those heavy eyes could easily have smiled, and I would have marked that smile journeying to the small mouth and the chin round as a child’s. And, at the holy season of Christmas, four years gone, that childish face had watched my antics, and had smiled most delightfully. But then she had been seated with the Earl of Warwick, her noble father.

Up in the nave, together with others of the blood royal, Gloucester knelt. I saw his hard, pale profile; the set lips, the rigid chin.

The truth beat at me and I shrank from it.

I had found Anne Neville.

‘Lo, now comes in a Fiend,’ intoned the herald.

The mermaid sat wrapped in long silvery hair, with a tinsel tail made of oyster-shells. Anxious eyes peeped from under the counterfeit locks. The rosebud mouth pouted. With one hand, the mermaid held up the nether wall of a painted cave as if he feared, with good reason, it might collapse. An unpleasant youth, that mermaid, and an amateur, brought in that evening under the auspices of George of Clarence, who had been impressed by his talent at the manor. We had had words already, the mermaid and I.

‘Now comes in a Fiend!’ bawled the herald. I felt a thrust behind, and turned to see Alexander Carlile. Cold with horror, I realized I had missed my entrance. Robert Hawkins watched—and he ran out of spit—it’s not easy to play the shawm and laugh at the same time. Some kindly soul struck flint and tinder and lit my firecrackers, and, hideously late on cue, I leaped across the Hall in a burst of flame. It’s a dangerous game, the Profession.

‘Sir, mind the tent,’ hissed the mermaid, then broke into his wailing song, his voice like a cold douche of water. I capered about, menacing him—I swear his fear was unfeigned. Closer I danced, answering his piteous song with gleeful growling—I do not pretend to have a voice; my magical powers are compensation enough. Out of mischief I brushed the cave wall on my progress, and it shook alarmingly. ‘Charlatan,’ whispered the mermaid, and I roared like a lion. I was enjoying myself. The Princess Elizabeth had been brought down for the entertainment. I heard her laughter, free and joyful as a lark’s high blue song. Glancing up to see the pleasure of her, little and round as a peach beside the formidable Lady Scrope, I filled my eyes with the rest of the royal family, and my fleeting joy vanished. For the King was not even watching the play. His countenance was grim. Yet it had been he who had commissioned tonight’s show—‘to divert him from affairs’—so the Steward of the Household sent word to us. And I had a good notion what it was that troubled my royal and most beloved master. Gloucester: he and his fruitless quest. Gloucester’s anxiety was mirrored in the King’s fair face. The King loved Gloucester; and I wondered whether he himself, who had chosen the woman he craved in the face of Warwick’s anger, found his sympathy enhanced by old desires. But then, the King had been in love, lustful love; and of love, Gloucester knew naught. So I thought... I like men that laugh, warm men of lusty heart.

All the time, near me, was a devil, a conscience devil, slowly taking shape. For why should God have chosen me as the key to this baleful mystery? It was my duty to tell Gloucester all I knew. I should have gone straightway from the cookshop to the Duke, roused him from bed, mayhap, as Alexander Carlile had roused the King at Doncaster. It was as much of a duty as that. In failing Gloucester, I had failed the King. For I could not betray Anne Neville, although my devil told me nightly that the maid was weary and soiled and very afraid. God help me, I sighed, and forgot my words.

St George stood behind the screen, his plumes wavering in a draught. He looked distraught, waiting for his cue. I was extemporizing wildly—he should have entered minutes ago, to slay me.

‘And hurl us into Hell, ho, ho!’ I cried, and saw St George consulting with the prompter. Under his lifted visor his face was a troubled mask. I gave up and struck my final attitude, leaning satanically upon an unsteady rock draped with buckram at the cave mouth. A brief struggle with the Saint followed, and I writhed in a death-agony. I heard him muttering ‘Be still’ as he prodded me with his lead-tipped sword. ‘Fool I may be, but you ask much of folly,’ I replied, under cover of some rather faint-hearted applause. I rolled aside as he stabbed his point into the rushes an inch from my nose. A friend of mine was butchered thus, once, and all in play. As I made myself invisible and ran from the Hall I saw that Gloucester’s place was empty and remembered he had ridden north in search of Anne. I hoped he might remain there. I stood behind the screen and endured the reproofs of the Master of Revels for a poor performance, craved his pardon, and crept away to wrestle alone with my devil.

In the passage, I heard George Clarence congratulating his protégé. He was full of smiles and wine. I wondered if he knew what I knew, and what my knowledge was worth to him. In that unworthy moment I wished I had my own private confessor to run to like the King and Queen. I asked myself: how much of a sin was it? I had it in my power to ease the King, and did not do so. The King’s brother was being denied the right to augment his estates, and this troubled the King. I had done nothing to alter the situation. Therefore my sin was that of non-action. My sin was silence.

I told myself for the tenth time that I had been mistaken. It was a maiden very like Warwick’s daughter; a spookish trick of light, the hallucination of my frenzy. Or mayhap—and here my skin began to creep—it was a phantom. Anne Neville was dead, and because I had thought about her often lately, her spirit had wandered in my direction, appearing when I was weary and fraught and distressed for my loved ones. That night, when I slept, I shouted in slumber and woke the others. When I had made a light and sat among the straw all asweat, I saw fear on the faces of my friends.