He Who Plays The King

by MARY HOCKING

  The fortifications must be kept in repair. He saw to it. It was something beyond duty; there was a sense of inheritance, a stewardship for which he would be held accountable. He liked particularly to watch new work in progress. The stone itself drew a response from him: it was hard, durable, unrelenting, all of which he found admirable, but at times it was speckled with darting shafts of light by that rare northern sunlight which sparked his own brilliance.

  ‘This is the life for Dickon, he thrives wonderfully in this bleak soil!’ Lovell remarked wryly after he had accompanied Richard on a tour of inspection, albeit a little reluctantly for he preferred a softer climate. ‘I think Dickon would not much like it were the Scots to turn their swords into ploughshares.’

  But Richard had other achievements. The Bishop of Durham could have wished him more concerned with warlike pursuits. He told Dr Morton, who had now become Bishop of Ely, ‘The Duke of Gloucester has instructed that all fishgarths be removed from rivers in his estates, and I am invited to follow his enlightened example!’ The Bishop’s full lips drooped; he was wont to dine well on the salmon trapped in his fishgarths and saw no reason why he should be deprived of his privilege in order to meet the demands of the common people. ‘The Duke of Gloucester,’ he said privately to the Bishop of Ely, ‘is now so rich and powerful he can afford to sacrifice a few salmon in order to win popularity.’ Publicly, the Bishop promised to consider the request.

  Few shared the Bishop’s jaundiced view. ‘Never have we been so justly ruled,’ was the verdict of the aldermen of the City of York, not a little influenced by the fact that the Duke was always prepared to use his authority to further the interests of the City.

  When he went in procession to York Minster, his secretary, John Kendall, thought that his master now had a nobility and dedication of the highest order, the austere simplicity of the saint. ‘I have seen that look on the face of men on their way to the stake,’ he breathed.

  His companion, more cynical, replied, ‘Aye, and on the faces of those who sent them there.’

  But even this cynic must concede that, whichever way you judged him, Richard Duke of Gloucester, had become very impressive. As he walked up the aisle, he looked over the heads of the people to some authority which lay beyond of whose judgement he appeared to have no fear. He was now balanced at the supreme moment of his life, utterly sure of himself and his purpose, equal to the tasks set upon him which demanded sufficient of him to still ambition and discipline his restless energy. His wife walked beside him; she was thinner but had a gaiety of spirit which seemed to increase as she grew more frail as though this very precariousness of existence was a source of positive joy. Even their young son, about whom they had had many anxieties, had at this time a fitful bloom in his cheeks. There was about the family an aura of happiness, piercing in its intensity. The bells rang out, one joyful explosion after another. This was in June of 1482.

  2

  In London, in April 1483, the bells rang a muffled peal.

  Three days before, King Edward had been out hunting. On his return, he said, ‘I think I have caught a chill.’ He tossed the reins to a groom and walked away. Now he was dead and the bells rang a muffled peal.

  Part III

  THE LAND WHERE THE

  CHILD IS KING

  ‘Woe is that realm that hath a child to their King’

  Chapter Ten

  1

  It was April and the air keen, there was little warmth in the pale sunlight, so it was estimated that the body would keep for a few days.

  ‘But I wouldn’t risk it beyond the week-end,’ Lord Stanley said to Lord Hastings.

  The body of King Edward lay upon a board, naked save for a cloth laid across his loins. Such of the lords spiritual and temporal as could be quickly assembled had been invited to the Palace of West Minster to view the body. Lord Stanley and Lord Hastings, having done this, left the Palace together. They looked thoughtful; there were other questions to be considered besides the time the body would endure in a good condition.

  Stanley squinted in the sunlight, sandy eyelashes brushing his puckered cheeks. ‘I never expected this,’ he said peevishly.

  Hastings said, ‘No one did.’ At least they were all at a disadvantage.

  ‘Last thing he said to me before he took to his bed was that he had lost his appetite,’ Stanley said. ‘After that, he didn’t seem to bother. Extraordinary.’

  In the streets people stood about, some ostentatiously prayed, a few women cried, but mostly the people stared up at the faces of the noblemen who rode by in the naive expectation of seeing marks of grief. But death is a busy time for those who are left, and never more so than when a king dies. Even Hastings, genuinely bereft, put grief to one side until there was time for it. ‘They say the Queen is too overcome to leave her chamber,’ he said.

  Stanley did not reply. Already there was a need to watch one’s words, and no one knew better than Stanley how to keep his own counsel. His face was tired and the mouth sagged as though he had received cause for complaint. This constant need to reappraise one’s position was beginning to wear him down; he wasn’t young any more and he would have been content to see his days out in Edward’s service. It was damnable that his allegiance should be so ill-rewarded. ‘In the end, he didn’t even seem to try,’ he muttered. ‘He just let go of life.’

  Two grubby-faced urchins squatting in a doorway watched the men as they rode by. ‘They looked sick, you see, didn’t they look sick?’ one said to the other triumphantly. ‘I told you, didn’t I tell you? They cut him open and take out the bowels.’ He made a graphic movement with his fingers accompanied by an unpleasant sucking of saliva between his teeth which made a sound like rending calico.

  ‘But they say he’s going to lie there for a week!’ the other boy protested; he had gone pale beneath the grime and this made his face the colour of bad liver. ‘They couldn’t cut him open and leave him for a week.’

  ‘They left old Harry Gymes hanging longer than a week!’

  ‘Harry Gymes!’ The sick face turned in the direction of the Palace of West Minster, awed at the company in which Harry Gymes, one-time highway robber, must now find himself.

  It was evening when the last of the lords spiritual and temporal had satisfied themselves that the King was indeed dead and that no violence had been done him. The body had then to be purged (though not yet disembowelled) and prepared for the morning when, covered in cloth of gold, and with a sceptre placed in the right hand, it would be brought into the chapel where masses would be sung.

  At night, by the light of candles, Edward was as well watched over as ever in his life. On the watch list for the first night appeared the names of Lords Howard and Hastings among others. Lord Howard had but lately arrived in the city and there was information which Hastings could give him.

  ‘The Queen is no longer one of the executors. This will not please her.’ Hastings lowered his head and muttered a prayer as the Queen’s son by her first husband, the Marquis of Dorset, moved forward to kneel before the bier. Hastings and Dorset had little liking the one for the other, but in the emotion aroused by the King’s brief illness they had embraced and sworn to forget their rivalry. The emotion had been short-lived and the vow would not long survive it.

  ‘There is one other change,’ Hastings said, turning again to Howard. ‘He has named the Duke of Gloucester as Protector.’

  Howard said ‘aah!’ in a non-committal tone. He liked Hastings well enough; he was no prude and did not condemn Hastings for his debaucheries, his own reputation did not stand high with some people who called him a buccaneer. But there was strength in Howard’s bold, dark face. He was a man to be trusted, a good man to have at your side in a fight. Hastings hadn’t this kind of strength. He had been loyal to Edward because he loved the man; but now Howard could sense him feeling his way, as unsure of himself as of others. Henceforth, he would be guided by ambition. What else remained to him? Howard moved away.

  That night, the
noblemen present did not form into groups, there was still a semblance of men performing a vigil. The candlelight flickered, shadows danced on the wall. One of the guard watched a spider climbing the side of the bier: from the expression on his ox-like face it was doubtful whether he derived the same inspiration from the spectacle as had that great opponent of the early Plantagenets. Lord Richard Grey found he was kneeling on a crack in the stone floor and tried to readjust his position while keeping his face set in lines of deep melancholy which he thought suited to the occasion and to his delicate good looks. Behind him, Lord Edward, who had bladder trouble, fretfully drew his robe about his abdomen. The room was very cold and damp rose from the ground. The Marquis of Dorset, his head bowed, thought that now that Edward was dead he would be free to seek out Mistress Jane Shore.

  On the Wednesday of the following week, the body was moved to the abbey. Lord Howard bearing the King’s banner. After the mass the great procession of lords set out for Windsor, the King’s body carried on a chair covered with black velvet and draped with black cloth of gold with a cross of white cloth of gold upon it.

  The first night was spent at Syon. It meant three nights away from London at least. Hastings was unable to conceal his impatience. ‘I have sent a messenger to Gloucester,’ he told Lord Howard. ‘The Queen has not informed him of the King’s death. I doubt that she has been so tardy in sending to Lord Rivers at Ludlow.’ The boy King, Edward the Fifth, was at Ludlow.

  ‘When will your messenger reach Gloucester?’ Howard asked.

  ‘He should be there by now. But that is a week’s delay.’

  Meanwhile, there remained the ceremony in the newly-erected chapel of St George at Windsor, which was followed by a watch kept by the lords, knights, esquires of the body, and the next day there was the mass of Our Lady sung by the Bishop of Durham, the mass of the Trinity sung by the Bishop of Lincoln, and the mass of requiem sung by the Archbishop of York.

  The chapel, so recently built, was bright and richly decorated, but many of their lordships’ black robes were old; furthermore, it had rained during the procession to the chapel. The smell of mould and damp mingled and it was as though several hundred old dogs had gathered here together. One or two of the aged lords looked as though they were weighed down by thoughts of mortality. Hastings, who expected to live a long time yet, was concerned with more immediate matters. When would Gloucester come, and how many men would he bring with him? Now was the time for a display of strength. Would he realize that?

  2

  An April shower, rain heavy against the window, great globular tears running fast.

  ‘Get you to London,’ Hastings had said to Gloucester. His message bore all the signs of panic. The second messenger brought even more urgent demands, advising Richard to come in strength and to make sure he secured the person of the young King. It was a time to think clearly.

  Richard had sent to Earl Rivers in Ludlow, a reasonably worded request for information as to the route which the young King would follow on his journey to London. No answer had been received. He shivered and crossed himself, not an act of piety for his dead brother, but an instinctive wish to preserve himself from the evil which now distorted the natural world. He could hear his secretary pacing about in the corridor. He had told him that no one was to disturb him. No doubt the man considered, as did all the others who now waited on his word, that he was planning his future course of action.

  A great gust of wind and rain buffeted the window and for a moment everything beyond broke up into unrecognizable fragments; it seemed impossible that walls, tower and barbican gate should ever assemble themselves again in any meaningful pattern.

  Pattern was destroyed anyway, the centrepiece had gone. He had waited in here for a sign and had been vouchsafed a vision of chaos. The chaos was tangible. Some of it was trickling down the wall beneath the window and forming a puddle on the floor. He crossed himself again, lest the chaos should invade his own person. Already it had made a preliminary foray. He could not think clearly. His mind insisted on relating to a higher authority by which his actions would be judged and eventually rewarded. He was deeply religious, but it was secular authority which he sought. He accepted the death of a brother, but not the demise of ultimate authority.

  He stood, one hand fingering the brooch on his doublet. His face betrayed no dramatic signs of strain; a slight frown drew his brows together, his eyes were bemused. He might have been trying to remember something recently related to him, the elusiveness of which irritated and disturbed him because it indicated a failing in his powers of concentration. To those who knew him as a man of sharp wit and formidable energy, resolute if sometimes rash in action, it would have seemed that he was bewitched. If this was so his wife, now entering the room, did something to break that spell.

  ‘I said no one was to enter!’ He was angry at being caught at a moment when he was so little able to command himself

  ‘You have delayed too long,’ she replied. ‘Edward has been dead for over a week.’ She imagined that excessive grief had paralysed his will to act. She had never thought that Edward’s influence was a good one, and that he should continue to exert it after death was not to be borne. ‘When I am dead I hope you will not linger over me like this.’

  She made these references to her death from time to time as though she was rehearsing it. She tried not to play on Richard’s emotions because she loved him, but sometimes it gave her a pleasure which she could not resist. Today, however, she had good reason to be cruel. Someone must goad him to act.

  ‘You should be in London by now,’ she said. ‘You are the Protector. If you do not go, then someone must represent you there. I shall go. I do not like London, it will kill me one day; but I shall go. I should not dream of staying here when there is such need to be in London.’

  In spite of the frailty of her appearance, which was enhanced by the sombre clothes which mourning necessitated, the ferocious strength of her determination demanded she be taken seriously. As a child she had frightened her nurse, not by anything she actually did but by her ability to suggest that nothing would be beyond her should she set her will to do it. Her husband was dazed by her. He put his hands over his face, cupping them over nose and eyes like a mask; he drew a long, deep breath. Something tingled at the back of his nose. He sneezed violently. All things considered, something of an anti-climax. He sneezed again. When he opened his eyes tiny spots of light danced before him as though a fire¬cracker had gone off in his brain. The terrible inertia was over. His mind was sharp and clear; and beyond the window he could see that a great blue wedge had been cut in the grey sky.

  He made his preparations quickly. Those who had grumbled at his delay had little cause to grumble on that account now. Hastings had warned him that Earl Rivers was travelling with a large escort. ‘I shall travel faster with a few men,’ Richard said.

  There was no more irresolution. Yet during that strange upheaval which followed the news of Edward’s death, something had happened. The world had settled down after the tremor much as before, but something was missing. It would take him by surprise sometimes and he would look round, trying to think what it could be.

  Events crowded upon him. On the day that he set out from Middleham a messenger arrived. ‘What ill news does Hastings send this time?’ he commented, grimly amused as he saw the rider from a distance. But the colours were not those of Lord Hastings. The messenger was from the Duke of Buckingham, who offered his loyal service and hoped to join the Protector on the route to London.

  The rain had ceased by the time Richard set out with his party, but it was still misty and the hills and sky ran together like the landscape in a badly smudged painting. Richard rode frowning, as though displeased by the messiness of Nature. There was a lot to think about and most of it unpleasant. Earl Rivers had sent word that he would be leaving Ludlow with the young King on April 24th and it had been agreed that Richard would join them at Northampton so that they could make the progress to London togeth
er. Reports had come in since then that Rivers was making some speed on his journey, and that he was travelling with a considerably larger force than was necessary merely to convey the young King to London. Whatever Rivers’ intentions, they could hardly be construed as friendly. As Richard urged his horse up a steep, stony path an old resentment throbbed and seemed to communicate itself to the animal who thrashed about, his hooves dislodging the stones. Richard listened to the clatter of the stones, one striking another until it seemed that to his left, somewhere in that misty territory, the whole hillside was on the move. He slowed his pace. It would mightily please those in London who awaited the arrival of Rivers and the young King were the Protector to make a false move in this precipitous place.

  The path led to high moorland. Below, the mist still hung thick and yellow in the valley, and it seemed to Richard that it smelt foul as the breath of an unclean spirit. But ahead, the swathes of mist grew gossamer thin and finally dissolved; the air was cleansed of all impurity and they could see their path clear and straight as an arrow pointing them towards the south. Richard, riding along the spine of England, felt free of the dark spirit which had invaded and impeded him during the past days. He recalled that he was shortly to join forces with Buckingham. How good it was that there were still loyal men who offered their service immediately and without question! Buckingham’s gesture was the more splendid for being unexpected; the people from whom much is expected so often fail. This gesture was all gold. It was timely, too. The Dukes of Gloucester and Buckingham would be a formidable combination. As he rode across the wild, soaring moorland, Richard experienced a surge of hope. But years in the service of Edward had made him a lonely man and a wary one, and soon he became suspicious of his own hopes and cautiously reminded himself that the Duke of Buckingham was descended from Edward the Third, and men of such lineage tend to ambition. Even so, when the next day he arrived at Northampton and Buckingham was not there, his disappointment was sharp. Worse was to come, for he soon learnt that Rivers and the young King had already passed through Northampton and were reported to be encamped at Stony Stratford.