We Speak No Treason Vol 1 (28 page)

‘Jesu, he affrighted me,’ said John.

‘Such wild words,’ whispered the man who played the rebec.

‘What was I saying?’ I muttered.

‘Of Death, and a maiden, and the mandrake root,’ he said softly, and to a man, they crossed their breasts and turned from me; in the dark, I heard them whispering, and knew they thought me possessed. As indeed I was. I closed my fingers on the crucifix my mother had given me when I was a child. Yet the devil still sat near my head, and nibbled at me with questions. Why had I appointed myself the warden of her peace? She was a gentlewoman of lineage so rich and ancient it was almost lost in time, a Plantagenet, cousin to the King. I cringed as I remembered how I’d called her ‘sweet’. She was a noble lady, such as those for whom knights maim each other in the lists. She was a pawn in the game of acquisition. The devil nudged me, and then the answer came flooding clear. She was little, and lost. She was a maiden, slender and fragile, like my own Maiden, and such pluck at my heart. Thus stands the case.

Then I slept, and the Maiden came to me in a vision. I stretched out my arms to her, and she stood in a dress the colour of water and her ardent eyes big and brown and her hair streamed about her, full of flame.

‘Be happy,’ she whispered. ‘Dear one, be merry and glad. Be no more sad…’ the words from that very song she loved so much, that paltry song.

I cried and ran to her, and then I saw that her loving gaze looked past me into grouped dark shadows, and the shine in her eyes grew and grew until it consumed her and she wavered into fire; and someone said: ‘They are burning a witch.’

I sobbed, ‘Nay! ’tis but the glory of her soul ablaze!’ and woke, glad to wake, to find the year was dying, and cold to my bones.

Two days I lay sick. Word went about and his Grace sent one of Master Dominic’s assistants—there was never such a King as Edward. The young physician told me that the sovereign had heard of my illness and was sorry. I asked how the King did, and he looked sober, saying that his Grace was troubled still for his brother’s sake, and that other things too disquieted him. I drank a foul potion to mend me and probed further.

‘The astrologer,’ he said furtively. ‘He has finished the charts, and men say he has told his Grace...’ He stopped abruptly.

‘Well?’

‘No more.’ He plucked the swollen leeches from my flesh, laid a toad-cold hand on my brow, made the Holy Sign over me and rose to go. I frowned imploringly.

‘Can you not tell me?’

‘I should never have begun,’ he said. Then, on reaching the door, he halted, itching to share his secret, full of wavering indiscretion.

He said: ‘It concerned the royal succession,’ and departed. I recovered swiftly after that, for it seemed that events were busying themselves and I was gossip-hungry. Upon rising from my bed I found that the astrologer’s prophecy was not so much a secret as the doctor had made out. John had it, from one of the Chapel boys, who got it from a clerk belonging to Bishop Morton of Ely, who learned it from the under-falconer, and he was enamoured of one of the Queen’s tirewomen, who were part of the furnishings and knew everything.

‘Her Grace became sorely agitated,’ John told me. ‘She sent for the Dowager Duchess of Bedford and they had high words together. Her mother said she was becoming too old to do aught and went to her prayers ill-pleased. Construe it how you will.’

‘And the astrologer said?’

His warm breath tickled my ear. ‘That the next King’s name will begin with G.’

‘Surely,’ I said softly, ‘George Clarence would never dare aspire again to the throne, as when Warwick was alive. Pardoned, enriched, he holds all the cards.’

‘Clarence was ever reckless,’ said John, and we were so near talking treason, with its old familiar fearful excitement, that I had to check him swiftly.

‘The Duchess Isabel is ailing,’ John said.

‘As ever,’ I replied. ‘She and her sister were always frail in body...’ and I ceased suddenly, for with the thought of Anne there was my devil, full and venomous and real, as real as the man standing next to me. He was peering round the ribbed stone arches of the Great Hall high above, ready to spring.

There was less than a week to Michaelmas, when I could claim my wager, but the thought gave me no joy. I went down into the City one day when the river was mantled with haze, and took a penny-boat from just below Westminster Hall. I tried to enjoy the voyage; at any other time I would have risked the ebb tide and the treacherous currents under the Bridge, for with a clever boatman this could be fierce sport, but not that day. The gilt and azure and crimson of barges floated magnificently among a throng of lesser vessels. We rocked on the swell of the Earl of Essex’s carved boat, sailed near the gold-hung splendour of Lord Hasting’s craft. The misty river echoed the strains of pipe and viol from the barges’ depths. Under the flaming banners liveried oarsmen rowed lustily, with great dipping strokes. All the way from Blackfriars to the Tower great cranes bristled bowed-headed among the myriad quays and warehouses. We passed the massive pile of Baynard’s Castle and the stone fortress of the Steelyard, home of the strange, martial Hanse traders. On the southern end of the Bridge sat three heads, staring with great melancholy over the city through which their legs had walked the week before. Two galleys stocked with tuns of good Bordeaux were anchored at the Vintners’ Wharf. Next moment we were beneath the Bridge, and the roar of hooves and wheels above competed with the rushing water that lapped us for a few dark moments. I saw the wooden starlings over my head, slime-green and crusted. On the other side, Brown’s Wharf was boiling with trade. A Spanish merchantman was tied up low in the water from a cargo of iron and madder and oil. At the next quay a vessel Calais-bound and laden with sarplers of wool was hoisting sail. Towards St Catherine’s a Flemish carvel, carrying fine Holland cloth, came slowly, like a great indolent bird.

The eel-ships were tied up at Marlowe’s, and the voices of housewives fighting to board them rose shrill and impatient. The water-bailiff’s men held them back while their master searched for red or undersized eels, and the women railed at his sloth. The rush-boats were in. I saw Palace servants, bent like cripples, running with their great green loads. As we pulled towards Billingsgate, the salt-cod smell wafted to my nose from an Icelandic trawler.

There was a high-masted Venetian galley wharved below the Tower, weighted with damask, velvet, and rare spices for sure, judging by the perfume. The crew were like monkeys, little and dark with gesticulating hands. My pilot spat over the side of the boat at them, and their outlandish tongue. On either bank the peter-nets lay like floating spiderwebs, dripping water as the fishers hauled in, a load of salmon and barbel and flounder. The autumn sun turned the drops to jewels. A swan took flight astern of us, flying strongly east, the thin light gilding its wings. I pushed my devil to one side and tried to be happy.

I disembarked and fought the seething crush in Petty Wales, dodging the carriers and wains, assaulted by the dreadful language of the carters, vaguely comforted by the presence of that violent life. Down Thames Street I went, turned up from the river, came into Mincing Lane and walked westward into Eastchepe. There I met Beatrice the wimple-washer with her maids all loaded with laundry, and she had linen cloths for my mother in her bundle. I took these and went on down to the cookshop. The men were chipping away plaster to fit the new door-frame in and the master carpenter told me, with shaking head, that it would be a long work, and costly. Yet we laughed together at the news of Dan Fray and his nephew, lying hungry in the Fleet. To be in jail is an expensive business too.

‘One meal a day, if he can pay,’ said the carpenter smoothing the fractured gable.

‘Or eat the rats!’ said I merrily, and went into the shop to find the borrowed fire-bucket. I then made my way to the house three doors down.

I contrived to look into the back room. She was still there: Anne of Warwick, late Princess of Wales. There was no doubt in me as I watched her, slender and wearied, plunging her arms deep in greasy washing-up water. Her little chin sank on her chest. She did not look up. I marked her sorrow, felt her loneliness. The other wenches gave her sharp words, pushed past her, wearing the livery of resentment. She was an upstart, an unskilled stranger in their domain. Sick-hearted, I sought the owner, to return her bucket. I had no lust to stay. The mistress of the house raised sparse brows at me as if I were some rare beast. I stared her out. I spoke her soft. I thanked her for the loan of the fire-bucket.

‘’Twas naught,’ she said. There was truly a nip in the air as I passed out on to the street, wishing I could leave my devil within to sour her salmon morteux.

Walter Cleeve was killing a sucking-pig when I returned. It shrieked as he smote it in the middle—I could hardly hear my mother’s voice. She was full of smiles. She had appealed to the Gild; they would loan her money; not enough, mind, but better than naught. We went aloft.

‘You’ve been sick,’ she said. ‘What ails you?’

I longed to tell her. I told her half of it.

‘I know where Anne Neville is,’ I said softly.

She said instantly: ‘You have acquainted the Duke of Gloucester of this?’ and when I confessed I had not, her face grew livid and her eyes like stones. Never had I seen her so angry.

‘’Tis your duty.’ I strode maddened about the parlour, trying to explain that which made nonsense. Shortly she cooled and tried reasoning with me.

‘Every maiden has a dowry—wedlock is a business... you have not the right.’

I knew all that, I said. I repeated Clarence’s mocking words: ‘She’s but a little maid,’ then my own thoughts: ‘Alone, unloved.’

‘Mary have mercy!’ cried my mother. ‘I have reared an idiot!’ An hour we wrangled, and I grew stubborn and would tell her no more. I sought comfort and advice; she advised me and left me comfortless, only enhancing my guilt. ‘The King loves Gloucester,’ she said.

The King loves Gloucester, and is troubled by his trouble. God help me.

‘Do not fail in your duty,’ she repeated.

Thus I left her. I was shaking, and thought of going to the Boar’s Head for a drink and idle talk. But instead I went past the tavern and found myself at the London Stone; and on a whim went into St Swithin’s, where it was dark and the wings of God beat through the mutterings of the Mass. There I knelt for an hour. The devil came into church with me and tried to look devout, sitting with folded hands on the stall-carvings above my head.

When I came out into the thin air and falling leaves of the churchyard, my mind was clear. The things about me were no longer misted as on the river trip, but sharp and solid. An old beggar lying dead against the iron bars of London Stone. A grey cat, disembowelled on the cobbles. Two disreputable players of the
scurrae vagi,
prancing to the noise of fife and tabor. A merchant, wife and daughter, dismounting outside the church. He rode a fine bay. The women shared a big white mare. I looked at the daughter, and she at me. Pale, big-breasted, with black eyes, she stared at me as her father helped her from the horse. She toyed with her beads and her gaze was unflickering. Even in my anguish of spirit I marked the wanton sparkle of that look. I fancied I saw ardour in it; a promise of forgetfulness, came the chance. Then, that warmth dazzled me—for how could I know that this was but the kindling embers of a foul humour—and that she would use me very unkindly throughout our wedded life.

I spoke of my devil to none, but there were those who, I fancied, gave me strange looks, and I had need to be doubly foolish and gay to belie my dread. Actually, my devil was not an ill-favoured fellow by any means. He had horns, for sure, and a neat little beard, and I think his feet were cloven, but as he usually had them tucked under him I could not swear to it. His face was mild and gentle, with large eyes and a protruding mouth; it was only the expression on it that chilled me, and the reproving way he wagged his head. When I was busily occupied he let me alone, but when I stopped and thought of Lady Anne Neville, abandoned among the slubberdegullions, he came nimbly down from his little niche or dropped from a flying buttress and spoke me soft. He would say: ‘Go to him,’ and I would shake my head, for my mind—which at one time I had thought made up—had once more turned traitor.

Gloucester was back from Sheriff Hutton, more grim-visaged than ever. Still he searched. He sent letters, he questioned folk, he took barge upriver and back again; he walked leagues, attended by his household knights. He went from the great sprawling wards of Cripplegate and Farringdon Without, to the Priory of St Bart’s and the Inns of Chancery, the shops of Fleet Street, the Temple. Along the Street he walked, the Poultry, the Vintry, Jewry, up Bread Street and Milk Street; north he rode to the Grand Priory of Holy Trinity. He wandered through Moorfields, and in all these forays he spoke with an hundred holy men and women, abbots, prioresses and clerks. He dispatched emissaries to the sanctuaries with sealed writings. He was unsparing and unwearying. He grew thin and hard and eager, and the King glowered at him with an impatient, loving look. Clarence departed to tend his sick wife, the Neville inheritance still secure within his hand. I thought of Anne, and the devil swung from the vaultings and tweaked my hair.

‘Tell him,’ he said.

‘Avaunt, Lucifer!’ said I, and he looked injured. ‘Give one good reason why not,’ he asked. ‘She is afraid,’ I said. ‘She is wretched,’ answered the devil. ‘You bear a bond for Clarence? While the maid lies low
he
is rich. You are his man in this matter?’

Nay, I was not for George Clarence, fair and jocund though he was, for he was a silly fellow to betray the King with Warwick and lucky, yea lucky, to escape retribution. The devil listened, his head on one side.

‘Certes, Barnet,’ he said. ‘’Twas Richard who was the peacemaker there. Blessed are they...’ and it seemed so strange to hear a devil quoting the Scriptures that I tried to look him in the eye but it was impossible. He would just fade and become part of the stonework or curl himself up into one of the bosses on the ceiling. He was at my other ear now. ‘Of what is she afraid?’