He Who Plays The King

by MARY HOCKING

  It was a murky evening with a grey mist curling up from the river; Buckingham felt a sickness in the air that nothing would cleanse until they were rid of this bestial thing. He felt justified, his mission purified. He had needed this certainty and it had been vouchsafed him. As usual, feeling ran away with him, and he saw himself as taking on the mantle of the saviour who grants release from evil, who protects by his strength. Richard needed him, Henry Tudor needed him; who knew but that one day England might need him?

  Part IV

  THE WINTER OF OUR DISCONTENT

  Chapter Fourteen

  1

  There were pilgrims on their way out of London; they were singing, this being the beginning of their journey and their spirits high. The roads were not safe for the lone wayfarer and people usually banded together, so as well as the pilgrims the cavalcade included merchants, clerks, jugglers, a bear-baiter, scholars and stone-masons. It was a fine day and for one reason or another most of the company were in a hopeful frame of mind. Robin Prithie, however, had small reason for hope.

  The Duke of Buckingham, who had been well-pleased to receive the information which Robin brought to him, had revealed another side of his character on their last encounter. It was only by the chance slip of a foot that Robin was with the pilgrims on this high summer day.

  ‘You will be rewarded,’ Buckingham had assured Robin when they last met. The Duke’s manner had changed. As soon as Robin entered the little room where the Duke always received him, he was conscious of a change in temperature. The room was like a vault, yet the sun shone and through the open window came the sound of bees, drowsy with heat. The cold was inside the room. Buckingham was studying a roll of parchment on the table in front of him, he did not look up immediately and when eventually he glanced at Robin, only the eyes moved; Robin saw that the frost had been at them. Buckingham listened to Robin and asked a few questions, but those eyes which previously had watched Robin’s face so avidly, now had no real concern with him and the occasional smile was only a crack in the ice.

  From the far side of a green lawn, near the stables, children who should have been otherwise employed were playing, their excited voices piping a round. Robin wished profoundly that he was out there with the children, and perhaps this thought communicated itself to Buckingham. He stopped talking and for a few seconds it was so quiet that the room seemed full of the children’s nonsense. Then Buckingham crossed the room and closed the window. The idea sidled into Robin’s mind that the Duke wished the Princes might be silenced as easily. Then, as Buckingham turned to face into the room, his eyes met Robin’s and Robin realized that murder was indeed on his mind. At this moment, the two men understood each other too well for Robin’s good. It was then that Buckingham said, not bothering to cloak his meaning, ‘You will be rewarded.’

  Buckingham summoned two of his retainers to escort Robin and to give him his reward. They were strong, thick-set men and needed to be so, Robin reflected grimly, else the weapons they carried must surely have weighed them down. He was relieved to see that they were leading him towards the door by which he had entered. At least he was not to be done to death here and now. When they came out into the sunshine, he said, ‘If you leave me here, I’ll find my own way out through the stables yonder.’

  ‘And forgo your reward?’

  ‘I have no thought of reward,’ Robin assured them. ‘It is enough to be of service to so noble a lord as your master.’

  There was silence while they walked across the lawn and the men digested this sentiment; from their expressions and heavy breathing it seemed to lie like lead on their chests. They came to a gate in a high brick wall and one of the men produced a key and unlocked the gate beyond which was another high brick wall; the thin alley between the two walls led towards the river where Robin could see the sun glinting on water and a small rowing boat chafing at a stake. The tide was flowing towards the Great Bridge.

  ‘It will be safer for you to leave by the river today,’ one of the men said.

  The brick walls came to an end where a willow bowed over the water. Robin, not usually given to admiring Nature’s effects, felt his heart contract with wonder at such effortless grace. This evening, when the first cool breath came off the river, the willow would shiver gratefully, while he . . . He was staggered by the monstrous impropriety of it all; but by the time they came to the river’s edge he was thinking calmly, ‘It will be wiser to go with them in the boat. I can’t be worse off on the river than here on firm ground where a man can more easily wield a weapon.’ There was a lot of traffic on the river and it would surely be too cynical, even for the powerful Buckingham, to have a man murdered by his retainers in full view of so many gaping citizens. But then Robin remembered how fast the current ran, and how little chance a man would have were he unfortunate enough to go overboard, especially near the Great Bridge.

  By now, one of the men was in the boat and had motioned Robin to join him. Robin put one foot over the side of the boat and then his other foot slipped on wet stone; forgetting everything else in an attempt to regain his balance, he grabbed frantically at the man standing beside him. They swayed drunkenly, Robin clutching at his companion as though nothing more was at stake than saving himself a wetting. The man tried to free himself, and while he had his mouth wide open cursing Robin, they both pitched forward into the river.

  The man in the boat shouted, ‘Stop him! Stop him!’ but his companion had his lungs too full of water to heed him. The little boat was swinging round aimlessly and Robin, blinking water from his eyes, saw that one of the oars was floating out towards the centre of the river. He followed it; indeed he had little choice for already the tide carried him. The man in the boat was shouting, ‘Stop him! Stop him!’ He might have saved himself the trouble and let Robin do his own drowning, but he was in too much of a panic to leave anything to chance. Men rowing a boat loaded with pigs and poultry lent their voices to his, and several small craft manoeuvred towards Robin; but he was carried away from them towards the centre of the river. His ‘rescue’ was effected by one of the crew of a big barge who threw a rope to him.

  ‘Bring him back here!’ Buckingham’s retainer called as Robin was hauled aboard the barge. The cry was faint, but it was taken up by voices in boats nearer and came clearly enough to Robin’s ears when he had drummed the water from them. The men standing around him, however, appeared smitten by deafness. The barge was on its way to the docks beyond the Great Bridge and they were anxious to shoot the Bridge before the current became too strong. Delay would mean that they would have to wait another tide.

  Now the situation seemed very much brighter. Fate, as usual, had looked after Robin Prithie; Buckingham’s men would undoubtedly keep watch for him at the gates leading out of the city and the river represented the best way of escape. At the docks he would get aboard a ship for France and all would be well. He leant his elbows on the rail and looked towards that eighth wonder of the world, that floating city, the Great Bridge, without fear that he would be sucked into the torrent beneath it. Fate, however, was in capricious mood. The men on the barge had had second thoughts and now decided that it would not be wise to take him beyond the city walls. For a moment he thought that they, too, planned to throw him overboard, but instead they hailed one of the watermen and told him to put Robin ashore at a wharf near Queenhithe.

  Ten minutes later Robin was shivering in a narrow alley at the back of a warehouse. He wondered how this had happened to him. When he was young people had said how ‘knowing’ he was, and he had cultivated this talent, as talents should be cultivated. Whoever would have thought knowing could lead to this? It wasn’t how he used his knowledge that mattered, whether he was discreet or untrustworthy was immaterial, it was the knowing that was his doom. There was nothing he could do since he could not unknow it. He was caught in a trap he had not foreseen when he began to trade in knowledge.

  And what knowledge! Even in his miserable state, and little given as he was to thinking of othe
rs, he spared a prayer for the Princes, but forgot them when ahead he saw an inn of the kind frequented by beggars and ruffians which might provide an answer to one of his problems. His clothes, though wet, were of good cloth and he was able to exchange them for the robes of a nun who had but lately died in this place while giving birth to a child. She must have been a big woman for the robe was long and the girdle had to be drawn tight to enable Robin to walk; but this was no bad thing, since it restricted his gait to one more appropriate to a woman.

  Soon he was on his way and now Fortune favoured her darling once more. As he came into Budge Row he saw a slow straggle of men and women coming from the direction of St Paul’s and on enquiry learnt that they were pilgrims on their way to a shrine at a distant place which they would not reach for many weeks. What more natural than that a nun, seeking an excuse to adventure beyond the priory walls, should form one of this humble company?

  The pilgrims wound their way to the Great Bridge, singing as they went, and Robin walked well to the centre, his head bowed. As he had feared, Buckingham’s men were waiting at the gates; they stopped the pilgrims and asked questions of the man they took to be the leader, although no one man could know the business of all the diverse people gathered here. Their examination of the pilgrims was cursory and the cavalcade was soon inching its way across the Bridge. There was quite a forest of heads on the poles decorating the Drawbridge Gate, some with hair and beards remarkably well-groomed while others looked as though they were left over from King Edward the Fourth’s days. When he was young, Robin had laughed at such sights, saying if a man was fool enough to be caught he deserved what came to him. But now, wits not so nimble, nor so fleet of foot, these spectacles became more distasteful. He took no last look at the city when they had safely crossed the Bridge.

  He was not the only fugitive in that company. Robin had seen death in Buckingham’s eyes: Christopher Ormond had seen it in King Richard’s eyes and his own death at that. How strange that he whose aspect was so forbidding should have been undone because a frightened child had run to him for protection! He kept his head low and rode hunched on his horse. The men at the Bridge were not looking for him—King Richard’s men did their master better service than this and he would not have escaped them—but they were a reminder of the need to be careful. So, too, were the heads. He heeded their warning, but it was his hand not his neck which itched and he felt flames licking up from the hot stones.

  It was dark by the time the pilgrims reached their first stop at a town in a narrow valley with houses built so haphazard on the hill slopes it seemed that at any moment they must fold up and come tumbling down on the inn, itself a precarious-looking structure in half-timber and white-washed plaster. They ate in a big hall already crowded with other travellers, very hot and clamorous. Ormond, not usually sociable, kept close to the other pilgrims. It would be wise to remain with them during the first two or three stops in case men came searching the inns. When he felt he was safe, he would set out for Brecknock and there try to get word to John Morton. Morton was Buckingham’s prisoner, but it was reported that he was living in conditions which were not uncomfortable and Ormond thought there was a chance that he might be allowed to receive visitors.

  When they had eaten, the pilgrims departed to the sleeping quarters. The women’s quarters were in a long, low building little better than a lazar house in Robin’s view. It was a long time since he had been so uncomfortably lodged; not, to be precise, since that journey to St. Malo when Henry Tudor was all but taken by King Edward the Fourth’s men. How might life have turned out for Robin had that adventure ended differently? Overlooking the fact that he had first attempted to poison his master, and was now in trouble as a result of trying to sell information to Buckingham, he blamed Henry for his recent woes. The broken wrist which had never mended properly ached as a reminder of Henry’s spite.

  The heat was stifling and it was over an hour before the other occupants of the room settled down. When they were quiet, Robin went outside, hoping to steal a horse. There were few people about now but a light burnt high in the church, like an evil eye looking down on the little town.

  2

  Now, when he least wanted it, how belief surged up, how it began to curl around Ormond! He was in the winter of life and if he played his hand well and Morton eventually came back into power, advancement might lie ahead of him; his last days would then be honourable, to say nothing of comfortable. This was no time to find himself negotiating the testing ground of belief. It was cold in the church, which was surprising when one considered what a hot day it had been. He would have to break his vigil and go outside again; something, he didn’t think it was compassion, had loosened his bowels.

  Man is small, helpless, he thought in uncharacteristically humble mood as he squatted looking up at the dark hills massed above the town. What can such as I do for princes in danger? Could I say: I have seen them playing on the green, merry as children should be, yet bearing the mark of those who are doomed like the children the fairies spirit away because they are too lovely for mortal life? That would rightly be dismissed as superstitious rubbish. Added to which, these children were not lovely; apart from being princes, and standing in the way of a throne, they were unremarkable. But that was no consolation, their very plainness only made their fate harder to bear. ‘I have done all I can,’ he told himself. ‘At least, all that it was wise for me to do.’

  Nevertheless, he returned to the church. It was after midnight now; he would stay here and make intercession for them until the dawn came and he must be on his way.

  Before it was quite dark, the children had had their effects packed and had been told to wait in their chamber until the men came to take them on their journey.

  ‘You are going north,’ Brackenbury told them. ‘You will like that.’

  ‘We shall not like it,’ Edward said firmly. ‘We want to stay here and be near our mother.’

  It was the worst argument he could have put to Brackenbury who was not entirely happy about what was happening. Brackenbury would have been hard put to it to have explained his disquiet. He knew that Richard had at one time spoken of putting the children in charge of the Earl of Lincoln, and moving them to Sheriff Hutton. There was nothing untoward in the decision that they should be sent north. Perhaps it was Buckingham’s repeated insistence that this was the will of the King which rang false in Brackenbury’s ears. Buckingham liked power and it was more usual for him to assume responsibilities that were not his than to take shelter in the King’s authority. Edward’s remark about his mother, however, served to remind Brackenbury that there were good and sufficient reasons for removing the princes from London.

  The starlings were in flight, like ashes born before the wind. Colour was draining from the sky, one gash of pink, the rest grey. Was there no one, no one among these grim, gaunt men whose heart could be touched? What change had come about since the days when they had romped with their father and quarrelled as to who should play the King? When had life been wrung dry of love? Where was their mother, why did she not come to them? So many questions: no answers.

  Edward said, ‘We should pray. Our Lord Jesus will protect us from harm.’

  They knelt on the floor, hand in hand, and Edward prayed while his brother stared up at the bars at the window. There were swifts swooping round the battlements, later there were bats; and, in the last level light before it was quite dark, a white owl glided by on silent wings. Still Edward prayed.

  The younger boy said, ‘My knees are hurting.’ He was kneeling on a crack and could not bear it another minute whatever might happen to him in another hour. He got up and rubbed vigorously at one knee. ‘Look, it’s got a furrow in it!’

  There were footsteps in the corridor. It was a relief that the time of waiting was over and they felt a lightening of their spirits as they were mounted and the horses clattered across the yard. Some little flicker of exitement, a feeling of embarking on an adventure, spurted into brief life when they le
ft the city behind. They passed a wayside gibbet and the young boy thought he would like to be a robber and live in very wild country where there was no one to tell him what he might and might not do. Edward imagined he was setting out on a crusade.

  At first, the night was bright and stars came right down round the edge of the fields. A group of vagabonds, who tomorrow would harrow town dwellers with a story of how they had not eaten for many days, feasted round a fire. Further on, a lantern swung from side to side and soon they passed a peasant singing drunkenly as he made his uneven way to his village. The village when reached was a cluster of cottages surrounding a church and manor house. Edward wondered what it would be like to live in one of those cottages so snugly hunched into the earth. The fancy, bringing him nearer home than the crusade, left him disquieted, so that he noted with misgivings that ahead the country grew wilder. The road ran along the edge of a wood. Soon it began to climb steadily. On the skyline a stag stood sentinel guarding the pass into his territory; it put its head back, but no sound came and after a few moments it turned and trotted into the wood. Soon after this, the moon went down. One of the men said it was a black night, and another man agreed that it was indeed. They could tell that they were moving out of the shelter of the trees because there was a smell of fern and bracken and the wind had become desolate.

  ‘We are on the moor,’ the man who appeared to be in charge said. He reined in his horse. ‘We will rest here.’

  ‘A strange place to rest,’ Edward thought.

  ‘You go ahead and make sure we are awaited. We will follow more slowly.’ The men to whom he spoke rode off as though the devil was at their heels; only one other man remained.