12 The Bastard's Tale

by Frazer, Margaret

  ‘Yes,“ Arteys said. ”Yes.“ Then, ”Oh, God,“ as his own hurdle lurched forward, jarring him against the straps. Laid out as he was, he could not brace himself, only endure the jouncing across the cobbles and through the first of the gateways from the Tower of London onto the causeway into the city itself. They were to be killed at Tyburn, far out London’s other side, meaning they were to be dragged the length of the city, first by way of Tower Street, then up to Cheapside, broad enough for the crowds to gather at their thickest and on west past St. Paul’s Cathedral to go out at Newgate onto the Holburn road. Coming and going with Gloucester, Arteys had ridden that way often enough to know it. Had more than once ridden past Tyburn and seen the bodies hanging and never thought…

  The hurdle bumped over a rougher patch of pavement, jarring his thoughts along with his body. They were into London now, the street narrow here, the crowds of lookers-on close on both sides of him and people leaning out of the overhanging houses’ windows, staring, talking, pointing. Arteys stared straight up, past the faces, refusing to see them, trying to sink into his mind. If he could just not see, not think, not hear even Master Orle walking near the hurdle’s end, praying aloud. If he could just know nothing from here to the end…

  How could the sky be so piercingly, purely blue when he was going to die?

  Ahead, one of the other men cried out to God, his voice so shrill with fear that Arteys did not know who it was. Not Sir Roger or Sir Richard, surely. Master Needham? Tom?

  It was his fault that Tom was here at all. That last day in Bury, when Suffolk had seen him and he had run, he should have gone on running but he hadn’t. He’d left the abbey, lost himself in the crowds, wandered while trying to know what to do, unable to make up his mind. He’d happened on Tom, been so grateful to see him that he had gone with him into a tavern to get warm, to gather his wits, to be with someone he knew instead of alone. Suffolk’s men had found him there, and because Tom had been with him, Tom was here and going to die.

  Arteys would have vowed to Suffolk or anyone who asked that Tom was no part of anything that Arteys knew or had done but no one ever asked him. He had not even seen Suffolk from that day in Bury until faced by him as their judge two days ago and by then he had known there was no point in avowing or disavowing anything. Suffolk was going to have him and the others dead and nothing would change it.

  The hurdle scraped onto more even pavement and the street widened, the houses farther away to either side. “Cheapside,” Master Orle said. Arteys heard himself groan, hurting from the jouncing, from being strapped down and helplessly sprawled out. But that was the point of all this miserable dragging through the heart of London. He was supposed to be hurt and humiliated before the agony of rope and knife and, far too late, death.

  ‘Do you hear them?“ Master Orle asked. ”Are you listening to them?“

  Arteys shook his head the little that he could. He’d kept the crowd noise around him to a half-heard, meaningless surf sound, not wanting to hear people cheerful for his death.

  ‘They’re angry,“ Master Orle said. ”Listen.“

  Arteys listened. Master Orle was right. The crowd was angry, but not at him or the others. It wasn’t the cheerful jeers that usually kept traitors company on their way to die but a growling displeasure and voices calling out, “God bless you! God keep you!” and once and again and another time, “Down with Suffolk!”

  For the first time Arteys swallowed a sob. They knew. They knew it was Suffolk who was a traitor, not him and the others. And suddenly rage scalded up in him— rage at the stupidity of having to die because Suffolk was a fool—and he lifted up his hands, lifted up the cross, and cried out, “We’re guiltless! Pray for us! We’re guiltless!”

  Ahead of him Sir Roger and the others took up the cry. “We’re guiltless! Pray for us!”

  The crowd’s cries rose in answer to them, with women’s sobs mixed loudly in. A half-hope of rescue stirred in Arteys. If they all rushed the line of guards…

  But there was no rush, though the crowd at Newgate had to be cleared before the horses and hurdles could pass through, and once outside the city, Master Orle said, “They’re coming with us. They’re following.”

  Arteys pulled his head up long enough to see people were pushing through Newgate to join the throng already along the road here, bringing their anger with them. Arteys let his head drop back. The road was worse here, jarring his breath away, and it wasn’t the crowd that mattered anymore but how much farther there was to go and how much longer.

  The sun was well up the sky now. He turned his head aside from it. To both sides the crowd was calling out to him and the others and cursing Suffolk. Master Orle tried to give him more wine but the guards wouldn’t stop the horse and more spilled down his chin than reached his throat. And there at last came the jeers—shouts and hissing and cries of “Traitors!”—and Master Orle said angrily, “We’re passing Suffolk’s place. Those are his people, no one else.”

  From the crowd, people jeered back and stones flew. A rush from the guards stopped that but there was no more jeering.

  ‘St. Giles’s church,“ Master Orle said quietly.

  Meaning not far to Tyburn. Arteys shut his eyes, there was nothing more he wanted to see, and finally the hurdle bumped off the road, thudded across hummocky ground, and came to a stop in welcome shade under trees. Elm trees, Arteys saw when he opened his eyes. Tyburn’s tall elms.

  Bruised and aching, Arteys was almost grateful.

  All went quickly after that. Master Orle had just time to give him a last gulp of the wine and take the cross from him before being put aside by the guards, who knew their business and wasted no time at it. Two guards to a man, they unstrapped the prisoners and hauled them upright, unmanacled their wrists, and stripped off their doublets to leave them in their shirts and hosen. Their arms were pulled behind them and tied at wrists and elbows with rough rope. More guards were around them, keeping the crowd back and a way clear to the scaffold, Arteys saw as he was jerked around and shoved forward with the others. It was new-made of raw wood and high enough for everyone to have good view not only of the noosed ropes hanging ready from the crossbeam above one side of it but the boards where the slaughter would be done, slanted up on trestles to give the crowd better sight of the killing.

  At the foot of the scaffold’s ladder there was delay. Unable to help themselves up the ladder with their bound hands, the five of them had to climb with their feet while the guards braced their backs until the men waiting above could grab them and haul them the rest of the way.

  Arteys was last, with chance to see the others clearly one last time as they went ahead of him. Master Need-ham stiff-backed and blank-faced. Tom tight-mouthed and wide-eyed, holding in dry, heaving gasps of terror. Sir Roger and Sir Richard staring into the distance, grimly showing nothing.

  His own turn came to be shoved up the ladder, grabbed, and set roughly on the platform. He had time to see there were five hangmen waiting, each with a helper standing behind him, and an array of knives on stools beside each of the five boards waiting for the butchering. Unlike the scaffold, the butchering boards were of old wood, used before, dark-smeared with other men’s dried blood. But at least it seemed he and the others were to die all at once, rather than one at a time with the last one having to watch and hear all the others die before him. Something to be grateful for, he vaguely thought before he was grabbed again and pushed toward the last waiting noose. The hangmen’s helpers, well-practiced, moved with him, one to each man, quick-tying rope around their ankles to keep their legs from thrashing when the time came. Arteys, without time for being ready, gasped at the sudden pain as the rope was jerked tight, but the hangman was already there, putting the noose around his neck. They weren’t even going to be allowed last words, Arteys realized, and then the noose tightened on him, closed off his air as behind him someone hauled up on the rope. He had told himself he would not struggle but he did, his body demanding against his brain’s knowing it
would make no difference if his toes touched the scaffold a broken second longer. He struggled but was swinging and there was red darkness in his eyes, red roaring in his ears… pain…

  He didn’t feel himself fall but found himself lying with his face against wood planking and someone taking the noose from around his neck, stripping the rope from his elbows, wrists, ankles. He was still gasping for air as someone turned him over but relief went from him with the return of the terrible knowing that it wasn’t ended. That worse was coming…

  But it didn’t. It was Master Orle who was there, not the executioners or guards, not dragging him to his feet and to one of the waiting slaughter boards but helping him to sit up with an arm around his shoulders, saying in his ear, “It’s over. You’re pardoned. You’re not going to die. It’s over.”

  ‘Sir Roger. Tom,“ Arteys croaked.

  ‘They’re pardoned. You’re all pardoned. You’re going to live.“

  Arteys’ shaking hands could not hold the bottle Master Orle held to his mouth but he drank despite the swallowing hurt. Around him there was a glad babble of other voices, and when Master Orle lowered the bottle, he turned his head to find the scaffold was crowded with laughing people. He glimpsed Tom being held by his brother, both of them choking on tears; could hear Sir Richard praying aloud and fervently to seemingly every saint he could think of; saw Sir Roger and Master Need-ham being helped away…

  The hangmen and their helpers and the guards were all gone.

  ‘You’re pardoned,“ Master Orle insisted. ”Do you understand?“

  Arteys nodded, although somewhere in him a voice was crying out that he couldn’t be pardoned for a thing he hadn’t done. But more of him was sobbing with thankfulness that he was alive. Alive and not in pain. Not dying. But it was an inward sobbing, he realized. Outwardly he seemed only frozen, unable to help himself as Master Orle and another man, a stranger, helped him to his feet and to the scaffold’s edge opposite to where the others were being helped down the ladder into the cheering crowd.

  ‘How?“ he asked of Master Orle. ”How are we still alive?“

  ‘Suffolk was here. He had your pardons ready. From the king. You’re free. Go on. With these men. Go with them.“

  Arteys tried to ask, “Where…” but Master Orle and the man with him were urging him off the scaffold’s edge. There was no ladder here but two men were waiting below with hands raised to take him. He didn’t know either of them but let them lower him to the ground, let them hold him up when his legs tried to buckle while the other man he did not know swung down from the scaffold, leaving Master Orle behind. One of the men was pulling a doublet up Arteys’ arms and around him, vaguely fastening it as all three of them began making a way for him through the crowd with elbows and shoulders. Some people close to hand were cheering him— for what? for not being dead?—and reaching to touch him, but most were surging away around the scaffold to where the others were being led away among more cheering. The three men guiding Arteys went sideways through the surge, then turned around and went backward, letting the crowd flow around and away from them, losing themselves and Arteys until there, in the midst of everyone, no one around them knew who he was; and when they came clear of the crowd, the men hurried him away among the trees.

  Four horses were waiting there, held by a fourth man. One of the men with Arteys took a horse’s reins from him and mounted. The other two moved to help Arteys up behind him, one of them saying, “We didn’t think you’d be fit to ride alone. Can you hold on, though?”

  ‘Yes,“ Arteys croaked. ”Where am I going?“

  ‘Away from here.“

  ‘Whose men…“ are you? he wanted to ask but the words wouldn’t come from his aching throat.

  The man answered anyway. “The duke of York’s.”

  Chapter 27

  Outside another long summer’s evening was gold behind London’s rooftops but the hour was past for guests to be received in St. Helen’s nunnery, Bishopsgate. Only because she was wife to the marquis of Suffolk had Alice been allowed in and Frevisse allowed to see her after Compline, but the parlor’s shutters were closed and barred and only by the light of the small-cupped oil lamp on the table beside them were they able to see each other’s faces.

  With no one else to hear them and no need of other greeting between them, Frevisse asked, “He’s safe?”

  ‘He’s safe. York’s men had him away within minutes. He was at York’s house long enough to be fed and re-clothed and seen by a doctor. He’s said to be unharmed.“

  Frevisse could only hope that was fully true; but there were harms that went beyond the body, harms that went deep into the heart and mind.

  ‘Yes,“ Alice agreed, though Frevisse had not said it. ”But bodily is something, considering.“

  Frevisse granted that with a small gesture. “And then?”

  ‘By now he’s with a few of York’s household knights somewhere well away up the Thames in the duke’s own twelve-oared barge. They’ll take to horse at Abingdon or Oxford. Arteys will be in Wales within a week.“

  And as safe as they could hope to have him.

  ‘And Joliffe?“ Frevisse asked.

  ‘Gone as soon as he brought me that word. I don’t know where.“

  Yesterday, after Frevisse had agreed to the lies she was to tell, Alice had written a brief message to the duke of York, asking him to give heed to the bearer of it. That night, after Frevisse had won her ugly bargaining with Suffolk—promising that, in return for Arteys and the others being pardoned and set free, no one would ever see Gloucester’s will by her doing—Joliffe had gone with the message to the duke.

  ‘Tell him,“ Frevisse had said before he went, ”that the pardon won’t come until they’re on the scaffold. That’s what Suffolk swore. That he’d have that much out of it.“

  Suffolk had sworn other things, too, mostly at her, and given his promise angrily, grudgingly, ungraciously. He had threatened her, too, although Frevisse told neither Alice nor Joliffe that. She did not tell them, either, how black-angry at him she had grown in return, so that at the end she had been viciously glad to drag the promise out of him and wished she could have rubbed his face with it afterward. He had attempted Gloucester’s murder, was attempting five more, and all he felt was anger at being thwarted of them. Nor was he ever likely, this side of his own death, to be called to account for any of it so long as he held the king’s favor.

  She, on the other hand, had penance ahead of her, both for lying and her anger, but what had been worse burden then was having to go to bed not knowing how Joliffe had fared with York. Only in the morning had she been able to meet him briefly in the garden, with him saying without greeting, “York will do it.”

  ‘What did you say to move him to it?“

  ‘York knows Suffolk well enough he needed little convincing that even with the pardon Arteys won’t be safe, being Gloucester’s son.“

  ‘How did you explain the pardons?“

  ‘I said someone showed Suffolk he had more to lose by killing Gloucester’s men than letting them live.“

  ‘That was enough for York?“

  Joliffe’s smile had been grimly humoured. “I told you—he knows Suffolk.”

  She had given way then to another fear that had come to her and asked, “And you. What if Suffolk finds out your part in this?”

  Joliffe’s smile had deepened. “I doubt I’ll wait around to find out if he finds out. When he has time to think all this over, he may come to be suspicious and especially suspicious if he learns by household spies that Master Noreys was in close talk with Lady Alice and her depraved cousin in the afternoon and at the duke of York’s at an odd hour of that night. I’ll stay until Arteys is safe. Then I’m gone.”

  Because she might never have other chance to ask him, she had said, “Why are you risking all this? Arteys was no friend of yours before now, was he?”

  ‘At Bury he trusted me. Worse, without telling me, he left three rings that must have been his fath
er’s hidden among my things. For safekeeping, I suppose, if anything happened to him. Which it did. I found them later and… I hate being trusted.“

  He was so grim about it that Frevisse said, deliberately to irk him, “You know I trust you.”

  He had given her a hard look and half a smile and said, “I know. I try not to hold it against you.” Then he had left.

  Frevisse had wished she could leave, too, but until this was over she could not, the fear unspoken between her and Alice that Suffolk might be treacherous at the last. He had gone off the night before—to the king to get the pardons, he had said—and not returned. With no way to know his mind or how he meant to play the day, she and Alice had withdrawn to the walled garden to wait, no one with them but order given that any news about the executions should be brought immediately. For too long they sat, they paced, they hardly spoke, and heard the crowd on the road before a servant came running, excited with word the prisoners were being dragged past and could be seen from an upper window if Lady Alice hurried.

  Alice had sent him away and they had sat side by side, silent, staring at the grass in front of them, listening, while the crowd passed; and when it was quiet again, Alice had whispered, “Tell me again that he promised.”

  ‘He promised,“ Frevisse had said back. But there had been no way to get word to Arteys of it. Which might be as well. If Suffolk went back on his promise, it would be more merciful that Arteys had not been betrayed into hope.

  Alice had bowed her head into her hands and wept and it was forever until another servant brought word of how Suffolk had kept his promise. How he had been at Tyburn, waiting, when the prisoners were dragged up. How he had sat his horse at the rear edge of the crowd while they were made ready and brought to the scaffold. How he had waited while the nooses were put around their necks and the strangling began and how only then he had finally ridden forward into the crowd, holding up the pardons and calling out to let the prisoners down, they were freed by the king’s good mercy.