We Speak No Treason Vol 1 (23 page)

Yet again, the Nevilles paraded Harry Six through London in a ploy to rally Lancaster. Pitiful dolt! with his emblem of two foxtails on a staff drooping in the mizzling rain—men said it shamed the stomach. Then, suddenly, his Grace strode into Sanctuary, taking the Queen in his arms, kissing all the ladies, offering prayers in thanks for the fair babe. He even gripped me by the shoulder for an instant, and shed one tear of gladness. That was the sign for general weeping from all the women. I thought I should be driven mad by their noise. So I stole over to the Princess Elizabeth and saw that she was laughing, as she ever did, and that her uncle of Gloucester laughed with her.

Then the fierce struggles at Barnet, at Tewkesbury, and the thousands slain, among which were the French Queen’s son, and the man who made and unmade kings, Richard Neville, Earl of Warwick.

Noble, hot-humoured Warwick, the flamboyant baron for whom the people once shouted so gladly, was dead. For Warwick had schooled his cousin well in the diversities of war and policy, and the princely pupil had overmatched him. I could not deny a vague regret—though I was right heartily the King’s lover, it was as if Warwick had donned the crown and sword of Gabriel, to drive corruption from Paradise. Although there were now fewer Woodvilles, they still fed on the realm, and its bounty.

And the Sanctuary of Westminster was free of us once more; of the women and children, the servants and the nervous dogs, of the sweet Princesses, and the new heir to England, whose entry into the sinful world had brought the omens of complete victory to Edward, his father. So I walked up Chepe with the ground sunny under my soles and the taste of freedom in my belly, with only one little bit of sour.

For beside all the great personages, there was one truly insignificant but exceeding dear, of whom I had no news, for she had vanished as if she had never been.

I carried a staff along Eastchepe, to guard me from the ’prentices, who would as soon pick a quarrel as sell you an oyster-pie. Loud and impertinent, they sought to emulate the quality, dressing beyond their means, wearing tall hats, piked shoes. Their finery was the spoils of gambling; today they would lose on the dice and pawn their doublet, tomorrow be peacocking in a friend’s attire, won at cards. Thus, thought I, the way of the world, the fortunes of York and Lancaster, and I smiled.

The door of the cookshop felt greasy to my palm. I went inside the brisk heat and bustle. Trade was good. Shortly before my father’s death, my mother had started this enterprise, moving from Hereford to London, while I played noble houses, itinerant with a group of minstrels, and learning my craft daily. My father was a fool, his father before him, and, in the days of Coeur de Lion, my ancestor was a jongleur, and rich rewarded.

A knot of cookboys toiled at the fire, and my mother came welcoming. Short-statured like myself, she was plump as a pigeon, with grey eyes and small firm mouth. I bussed her on the cheek; it was months since we last met. We talked of small family matters, and then of the King and Queen—she was glad of a diversion from labour and heat, though all the while there seemed to be some trouble peering round her shoulder.

‘So England has an heir at last.’

‘Yea, the prettiest prince,’ I answered. She leaped from thought to thought.

‘Did you see them bring the French Queen through the City?’ She laughed. ‘A right draggletail, and her eyes were mindless. Some hurled filth at her but’—she lowered her voice—’I felt pity—ask me not why.’

‘She’s lost everything,’ I said. ‘Her pride and her solace, her Silver Swan.’ (So they called him, this dead prince, this Anjou witch’s son.)

‘What of his widow?’ she asked. ‘Anne of Warwick?’

I told her the little I knew, from the time when Warwick had gathered up his ladies and sped them overseas. Anne and the Countess, George of Clarence’s wife Isabel, great with child. The hand of the youngest daughter for the French Queen’s son, and King Louis rubbing his palms over the prospect of Burgundy under his belt, and a fruitful harvest for Lancaster.

‘Is it the truth?’ asked my mother. ‘That proud Margaret kept the Earl on his knees a full hour before she’d consent to the match?’

‘Some say a half-hour, some ten minutes,’ I chuckled. ‘Their children were wedded at Angers, at any rate; thus is Anne Neville widowed at sixteen and lies at her sister’s house. They must be right doleful together. Isabel mourns her dead child—the one born aboard ship, off the French coast.’

I gave her shreds of gossip; how Isabel’s babe had been buried at sea; how it was Richard of Gloucester who persuaded Clarence to leave the ranks of his father-in-law and rejoin his brothers, before Barnet; how the swirling mists of that battle were said by some to be the product of sorcery, by others the benison of God. She drank it all, yawning at my description of the battle blows, but keen to hear everything concerning those of the blood royal and their rebellious kin.

‘I did hear,’ said she, ‘that the Duke of Gloucester hankered to marry Anne of Warwick, time past.’

‘He still does.’

She turned to clout a cookboy, who had let a pan of eels in gravy singe. When she came back her face was full of wonder.

‘Why, she’s under attainder, disgraced,’ she murmured.

‘Love makes fools of all,’ I chaffed. ‘And were they not children together at Middleham?’

‘So has she vast estates, through her mother the Countess,’ she reminded me, sharp at my sentimental drift. A woman of affairs, my mother.

‘He might feel kinship, sympathy. You pitied Margaret of Anjou,’ I mocked, and she coloured and dealt me a buffet in the chest, laughing.

‘We shall see what manner of man he is,’ she said. ‘I saw him last month, heading the procession, with the banners waving and his Grace smiling behind him. How they differ, Richard and the King! Such a pale, set countenance. So sombre.’

‘He’s a brave fighter,’ I said ungrudgingly. I admired his prowess, but otherwise I preferred Edward. There was a man, full of laughter and love, colour and light. I stole a hot sausage from the cookshop counter and blew on it. ‘And a bold leader,’ I added.

‘And now, you say, he seeks to prove the lover,’ said my mother, smiling.

I ate my sausage, good and spicy as it was, thought on Gloucester briefly, tipped him from my thoughts.

‘And what of your own affairs of the heart?’ I said suddenly, remembering something. ‘What of Master Fray?’

‘Do not speak of Daniel Fray,’ she said, and angry little scars of temper bloomed on her forehead.

‘Has he offended you?’

‘Certes, he offends me constantly,’ she said. ‘I’ll not speak of it before the knaves.’

She took me to the upper chamber and yielded an intelligence that made my blood simmer like the cookpots. Scarcely had she ceased when one of the kitchen maids intruded a head, saying that there was one without who would speak with her mistress. She admitted someone more like a ferret than any I have seen popping into a badger’s hide. A face the colour of curds and eyes like watery rubies, he was no more than nineteen. Hesitant too. He had not even the manners to doff his greasy cap—I lifted it gently from his head with my cane. He cast a glance at me as if unsure of my humour; my mother, too, looked strangely as if she wished I were gone. I asked his business.

‘My uncle and master, of the Eagle, sends words for this dame’s ears,’ he said, scarcely civil, and I laughed, saying: ‘Prate of devils and they appear,’ for I knew him now as nephew to Fray the tavernkeeper. An unsavoury house was that, in a mean court off Butchers Lane. They watered the wine there, and harboured thieves. It had offended me at first to hear that Dan Fray dared woo my mother, then I had been amused, to hear how he came creaking lean-shanked into her shop with his declarations, vowing he sought to protect the comely widow. I was confident she could look to herself.

‘Well?’ I demanded.

He swivelled his red eye at my mother. ‘My master your kinsman desires a final answer,’ he said, wriggling his feet about in their worn-out boots.

‘You speak of kinship!’ I cried, before she would reply. ‘What nonsense is this? Daniel Fray is naught to me or mine, and well you know it.’

My mother looked weary.

‘He vows he has proof of such, distant as it is on your father’s side,’ she said. ‘He has shown me letters—deeds of title; Master Priest has read them to me. He cannot make much of them, but there is something of validity.’

Forgeries, I thought. I said sharply: ‘Deeds of title?’

‘To half this property,’ said Fray’s nephew, and cast a glance around the parlour where a nice arras hung, gift from some long-deceased lord whom my father had contrived to amuse. Costly it was, woven all over with hawking knights and ladies, and bordered with hounds and grapes. His eyes took inventory; there was a fine glass window on to the street, a small coffer of Spanish chestnut, several carved oaken chairs. My mother was silent. I looked from one face to the other, starting a sweat of incredulous anger.

‘My master’s a fair man, sir and mistress,’ said the youth. ‘He bids me acquaint you again of his devotion and seeks your agreement to his proposal.’

To my relief she shook her head.

‘I will have none of him.’ Her voice was faint but steady. ‘As to this claim to half my livelode, it is all fog and mist.’

‘He will secure it without you, then,’ said the ferret-face, while I gaped at him. ‘Choose, dame, and I will bear your message back to my uncle. He would get these affairs settled once and for all.’

I have a temper. Looking at this young oaf, knock-kneed, his doublet foul with ale, then at my mother in her clean trim apron and neat kerchief, I came to the boil and overflowed.

‘Get you gone,’ I said, my words hot in my throat.

‘I will go when I wish,’ answered the ferret in a squeaking voice. ‘Master Dan has not yet his answer.’

I stepped up close. ‘Nor will he get one,’ said I in a fury. ‘For he sends a puling whelp to do a man’s work. All you see here is rightly my mother’s, by her own labour, and no poxy falsified deed can say otherwise. This shop was hers while your uncle was busy stealing the rings off slain soldiers in France, and you were still at pap.’

He put up his fist to me, and I laughed out loud. I took my staff to his head, and the blood flowed on to my mother’s clean boards, while he howled like a dog, folding his arms over his skull.

‘Take this message to your master,’ I said, and he flew downstairs, through the seething shop and out into the street. I spun his oily cap after him through the window.

I turned back to my mother, triumphant.

‘It was well that I came by this day,’ I said.

Her hands were trembling. ‘I am not so sure,’ she, said anxiously. ‘You should not have struck him—his uncle will be wroth indeed. Oh! and to think that villain spoke me so fair these past months!’

‘There’ll be no more business from that soapy pack,’ I said; but I realized her feelings were wounded—that she had taken some pleasure in thinking she was still a woman to evoke tenderness.

‘He will send others,’ she said, distressed. ‘Men stronger than that boy—he will set this place by the ears; others whispered that he wrought them ill but I didn’t believe it.’

‘Others?’ I said.

‘Mistress Petson.’ Her lips were tight. ‘Some tale of how he claimed she owed him money. She stood fast, and had her windows smashed by night—ruffians that ran too swiftly for the Watch to take them.’

‘Extortion! In Chepe!’ I cried. ‘Certes, I would have thought folk were too well dined here for such ill-humoured tricks.’

‘He has not been to dine with me lately—oh, let’s have no more ado with it,’ she said suddenly, descending again into the sweaty shop. ‘I have a marriage party to look to in an hour.’

She squeezed my arm. ‘Come back again to see me,’ she whispered, and I promised to return soon, advising her to bar her doors by night—though I was secretly well pleased that I had sent Fray’s lout off with such a straight answer, and thought we would hear no more of it.

There had been one last assault from the Lancastrians, when the Bastard of Fauconberg, with his force of Kentish men, made an attack on the south gate of London. Lords Essex and Rivers drove him back and held his army in abeyance until the King’s advance guard arrived, whereupon Fauconberg took fright and fled to where his ships lay in Sandwich harbour.

Then King Edward sent his brother Gloucester to quell the Bastard. It seemed no time at all before he returned, with the penitent Fauconberg suing for peace. This was the final campaign. I remember feeling a mixture of gratitude to God and a vague treasonable pity for those who had suffered most; the pawns on a great battle-board, a fierce game that, with real knights toppling, queens and would-be queens befouled with mud and curses.

Old, mad Harry the Sixth lay on a catafalque in St Paul’s. I went with the rest to look at the waxen white face of saint or idiot, none would ever know. Still and exposed he was, between the straight figures of a guard of honour. A strangely eerie sight. The church seemed full of ghosts that shrieked silently in fury or torment. I was glad to leave the vaulted quietness and rejoin the sun-drenched crowds outside, now gaping at a new spectacle.

It was the Duke of Gloucester returning from Kent, with Fauconberg riding meekly behind him under the White Boar standard. Gloucester marked the crush of people outside Paul’s, turned to his esquire with a question. ‘Old Harry’s dead,’ they were saying. ‘He pined and dwined of sheer melancholy.’ For an instant I saw Gloucester’s face. It whitened, he bit his lip. Some said he loved the saintly, traitorous old fool.

So peace came to England, and though his Grace laboured long of days to restore his shaken government, the merry nights returned; oh yes, we capered. And thus it befell that though I was far from forgetting my mother’s anxiety and the threats of Master Dan, I had no chance to visit her for many weeks, because of my duty to the King. To amuse the Princesses was a joy, not a labour; but their mother! Marry, there was scant humour in her. More regal than any born of a long line of monarchs, she seldom thawed to a smile. Great diamonds she wore, and pigeon-blood rubies, Italian collars of silver weeping pearls large as a finger’s nail, and more rings even than the French bitch was wont to wear. Mostly her gown was black—she spent hours in the Royal Chapel, and her pale confessors were seen to wander wearily after her wherever she would go.