He Who Plays The King

by MARY HOCKING

  So, he asked himself, as he trudged along the road, who am I to serve? The vagrant life was too tough for him and before winter came he must turn back to the only trade he knew. Either he must convince Henry of Richmond that he had information which would be of value to him; or he must convince someone else that he could obtain information of value about Henry. His shoes must have the deciding of it, and they voted for London and someone else.

  So, to London he went, and in three weeks ‘someone else’ had clothed and equipped him and he was on his way to Brittany. He had lost weight and the thick curls were grizzled. He hoped this would convince his master that his faithful servant, Robin, had suffered much in his cause. The more he thought about it, the more true he felt it to be; he was so touched by his loyalty that his eyes filled with tears. It was seven months since he had seen Henry and seemed much longer. He enlivened the journey by imagining the reunion of a Gaveston returning to his Edward. King’s favourite was a part he would play well: was it possible that Henry might one day be king?

  Things had changed in Brittany. Henry moved about with even greater freedom and numbered his followers in hundreds. It wasn’t as easy to gain audience with him as once it had been. ‘It seems to me he must already be king by the way you behave,’ Robin said impudently as he was handed from one dignitary to another. ‘In which case, there is little reason for me to see him since I thought to help him gain a throne.’

  By the time he was brought into Henry’s presence he had warmed to his part and immediately prostrated himself on the floor. No hand was stretched out to raise him. His heart pumped at the exertion but had time to slow to its normal beat before a voice, cool and amused, said, ‘The English climate does not seem to have agreed with you, Rob, it has turned you quite grey. Let’s hope it suits me better.’

  Robin looked up to see whence came this voice. There were four men in the small chamber, three standing back a little, their faces pinched with irritation and contempt. The fourth man stood in front of Robin, tall, slim, and young in years, but with that kind of face which never knows a summer. The narrow grey eyes were shrewd, but not ungenerous; nor was the wide, thin-lipped mouth ungenerous; in fact, the face had resolved to be tolerant of life’s little failures of whom Robin Prithie was undoubtedly one. There were limits to tolerance, however: this king would have no Gaveston.

  Robin, who had thrown down his pride in the expectation that it would soon be gathered up, began to feel very foolish; he raised himself to one knee, but receiving no encouragement to proceed further balanced there as best he might.

  ‘And what news do you bring me?’ Henry asked agreeably.

  Robin would like to have said that he had news for Henry’s ear alone, but there was something about that face which warned against making extravagant claims which could not be met. He said instead, ‘The people wait for you impatiently.’

  ‘They will have to learn patience,’ Henry said. ‘It is a great virtue.’

  ‘I have letters for you.’ He had been provided with letters from men who promised what they had no intention of giving and he now wished he had weighted them and dropped them into the sea.

  For the first time Henry held out his hand. He took the letters and dismissed Robin. The men with Henry all began to talk at once, each saying in his own way that Robin Prithie was not to be trusted. Henry nodded. ‘You see how wise I was to use him? Had these letters come to me by anyone else, we should have wasted much time over them, whereas now we know who our enemies are.’ He laughed about it and would not be serious. ‘So long as we know we cannot trust him, he can cause us little harm and may do much good. Those who do good involuntarily often have more to commend them than those who make it their business to be helpful.’ He could not bear to squander life, to let it slip through his fingers unused.

  ‘This is nonsense,’ Jasper said to him later when he tackled him on the subject.

  ‘Oh, everything is nonsense!’ Henry’s mood had changed and he had become pettish. ‘What else is there but nonsense?’ He drummed his fists on the window sill, staring out at the bruised purple sky as though he feared the coming rain would wash away the last trace of reason from the earth. Every day that passed now helped Richard to establish himself on the throne and there were times when Henry found the tediousness of waiting in Brittany hard to bear. When his patience was not being tried, there was Duke Francis to try his nerves. Repeated attempts to get rid of Henry had made the Duke aware of his value; but now that his mind was failing the Duke sometimes evinced a regrettable desire to get rid of his valuables. ‘It was all right giving him shelter when he was a cub,’ he had mumbled to Pierre Landois. ‘But now there’s a whole pack, roaming about wherever they please.’

  The vagaries of Duke Francis, however, were as nothing to compare with the agonies inflicted on Henry by the Princess Elizabeth. The women whom Henry took to his bed as and when the need arose troubled him little and he would have been hard put to it to have remembered them subsequently. But no ardent lover was ever so tormented as was Henry by the inconstancy of the Princess Elizabeth who, by one report was still held virginal in sanctuary, by another was given as a reward to one of Richard’s lowliest supporters, and by yet another was pledged to a Spanish nobleman. The situation became so bad that by Christmas he must declare his right to her, and on Christmas morning in Rennes Cathedral in a ceremony so moving that the actual marriage rites seemed an irrelevance, Henry pledged himself to marry the Princess and thus to unite on one stem the white and the red rose.

  Among those who knelt and did their King and his unseen betrothed homage was the Marquis of Dorset, half-brother to Elizabeth. As he knelt, he studied Henry’s intent white face. He recalled his half-sister as a smiling, golden-haired lass as full of joy as a sunbeam and reflected that the House of Lancaster had more to gain by this marriage than the House of York.

  5

  It was achingly cold. There were icicles on the walls of Foxlow Priory. The square of sky framed in the window of the chapel was blanched as were the faces of the nuns. It had snowed a little yesterday, but not enough to relieve the intense cold. The villagers had raided the priory’s store of kindling and all that remained was a stack of logs in the empty strangers’ stable which must be kept to light the kitchen stove so that once a day they could have hot soup. They had been under siege for several weeks now and must go sparingly with their stock of food. The priory, which for many of them had been a shelter, was now a prison.

  The cold preyed on their minds. Then, because of the cold, they began to think of fire. They thought about the dancing flames, the reflection on the walls, the gradual warmth stirring in the limbs; after a time, they began to see something in the fire which at first looked like a very long log, but which they eventually realized was an empty stake around which the flames roared wasting their radiant warmth and power. It did not take long for the nuns to decide that the stake was waiting for a body which they could supply.

  ‘He is a bad priest,’ they murmured among themselves. ‘Why should we be punished for his sins?’

  The prioress argued with them, using the weapon of her intellect; but the one power which these weak women appeared able to resist was the power of the intellect. The old cook answered the prioress by throwing pots and pans about the kitchen and vowing she would do no more work. Her face had changed, the years in the priory had peeled away as though they had never been and the prioress was confronted by the face of a peasant, stupid, sly, obstinate. ‘I know your kind,’ she shouted. ‘You mean to be a saint if it kills us all!’

  The prioress’ control held for another week. Then, one morning after the nuns had sung Lauds and were on their way back to the dorter, the youngest nun had a vision. She became rigid, blocking the doorway to the dorter. It was the worst possible time for such a thing to happen, the darkest, coldest hour of the night and the nuns longing to get back to their beds for what little comfort remained to them before dawn. The young nun, however, was quite rigid and there w
as no moving her. The doorway in which she stood so arrestingly led from the chapel to the dorter so that the nuns were forced to remain in the chapel. The prioress had already departed to her chamber. While they huddled together debating their predicament, the young nun began to speak in a strange high voice using words which none of them could understand. Gradually, her voice rose to a wolf-like howl and her lips were flecked with spittle. After making frantic snatching movements at the air, she began to tear off her gown and the nuns realized that this visitation was of the Devil; one of them sped towards the prioress’ chamber while the older nuns wisely covered their faces and prostrated themselves on the floor. By the time the prioress arrived, two of the younger nuns were letting their heads roll back and were making inarticulate gargling sounds.

  Ormond had been listening to the sounds for some time. His room was on the far side of the cloisters, but in this still, icy air the tormented howls vibrated in every chamber, stable and store and beyond the outer walls. He went out into the cloisters, walking carefully so as not to slip on the icy stones. When he entered the chapel the prioress was laying about with a whip but the blows only increased the nun’s excitement. Ormond strode across to the demented creature, who was gyrating with arms held above her head. As he looked at her he saw that her little breasts stood out like unripe apples and he thought, ‘Why, she is only a child!’ And he felt the pity he had always felt for young, helpless things, unfledged birds, motherless ewes left out in the cold, abandoned children . . . Terror bubbled from her lips like rainwater spurting from a gargoyle; it was just as he had dreamt of her many years ago. Then he had not understood what he must do; but now . . . He laid his hands on her shoulders. ‘I am your devil,’ he said. She drew breath for a scream but only managed a hiccup whereupon she clapped a hand to her mouth; over the splayed fingers her eyes stared at Ormond, wild and wide, but not without intelligence. He felt a current begin to flow through him as something he had stored away deep moved at last in his body. He said, ‘It is I who have brought evil into this house. But I am going away. I promise that tomorrow all will be well and you will live here in peace.’ He was not confident about this since he himself had never known peace; yet as his hands held the young creature’s shoulders, there seemed to flow from them the fragrance of Balsam of Gilead on a sunny day with the light breeze stirring the ancient, healing trees. He was intensely surprised.

  The young nun looked about her and said childishly, ‘My robe is torn . . . and my shift!’

  The prioress put an arm about her. ‘You are all right now; everything is all right. Come . . .’

  By the evening, Ormond had gone. The nuns came quietly to compline; the prioress could not complain of any lack of devotion. The air was so still one might hear a feather fall.

  In spite of cold nights smelling of frost and the hectic bluster of the wind, spring would not delay its coming and daffodils thrust green shoots through the hard earth. Soon the grass would start to grow again in the pastures. Winter dies hard though and foodstocks were low; life was dull and monotonous. Perhaps even now there was a child asking, eager for an event, ‘Is it today they are burning the priest? What has he done?’

  It had taken Ormond a long time to realize what he had done. He had assumed he would be tried for treason and was puzzled by some of the questions put to him which seemed irrelevant.

  ‘When you were priest at Foxlow, did you not take a woman who was accused of witchcraft to be your servant?’

  ‘I had forgotten,’ he said, surprised.

  ‘And the witch, Ankarette Twynyho? Have you forgotten her, too?’

  ‘She was not a witch,’ he answered angrily.

  They brought forward a plump matron whom Ormond did not recognize; she said that she had been Ankarette Twynyho’s maid and had seen Ormond kill one of the Duke of Clarence’s men. ‘Do you deny this?’

  ‘No,’ Ormond answered indifferently. ‘I have worse things than that to repent.’

  ‘And when you were tutor to Prince Edward . . .’ Ah, now we come to the nub of the matter, Ormond thought. But the man was talking of a conversation about the printing of the Bible. Ormond began to be uneasy.

  ‘And when the young Prince very properly said that it was men such as you, the priests of God, who should be the guardians of the truth, did you not reply “You must be the guardian of your own truth”? What meant you by that, Dr Ormond?’

  ‘Why, that he must guard the treasures of his mind.’

  Their faces, which had seemed so unintelligent, had become as sharply evil as the gargoyles which laughed down from the roof gutters of the little church at Foxlow. He stared at them fascinated. The lips of the nearest gargoyle moved.

  ‘Do you remember talking about this question with Sir Geoffrey Warent at Foxlow Hall? No? Let me refresh your memory. Sir Geoffrey said, “Will we have masons and carpenters reading books? We can’t tell but what one day it might even spread to the peasants. They’ll be going to a book for instruction rather than a priest.” And you replied that you looked forward to a time when all men would be trusted with the holy mysteries and there would be no need for priest, bishop, or pope. Later, you referred to the writings of Wyclif . . .’

  So, it was as a Lollard that he was to be condemned! It had never occurred to Ormond that he would be called upon to die for a belief; even though men counted that belief heresy, he knew that he was still unworthy of such a death. When he was back in his cell, he prayed, ‘Oh God, thou knowest my life has been devoid of charity. I sheltered a woman who was charged with witchcraft, but I took my pleasure of her. I tried to find help for the young Princes because their plight was thrust upon me. And those healing hands . . . I did not know what they were doing, they were not my hands! All my life my good deeds have been done accidentally while I was thinking of something else. I am not worthy of this death.’

  As the days went by, his mind, of which he had been so proud, began to betray him and spiralled beyond his control. When eventually he was led to the stake, he called out to the crowd, ‘You do not know what you do. This is blasphemy.’

  There was a big crowd in the market place and soldiers were clearing a passage for men carrying faggots; a man with a torch thrust the flame threateningly towards a tinker who was trying to steal some of the tools which had been laid down by the men who built the bonfire. ‘Be off unless you want your beard singed!’ he cried. The upper rooms of inns and houses were crowded with spectators. A woman was shouting to two boys who were scaling the roof of the White Hart Inn, warning them not to interfere with the lines of washing strung across the narrow street leading off the market square. At first, the fire burnt slowly and faggots were dipped in barrels of tar and forked onto the flames.

  Two friars had stopped to watch the burning and one said to the other, ‘A Lollard, so they say.’

  ‘There can’t be any Lollards left to burn!’ the second friar protested.

  ‘Heresy dies hard. Perhaps we have the last of them here.’

  As the flames began to lick his shirt, Ormond shrieked, ‘Lord, I am not worthy!’

  A breeze was blowing now, stirring the washing and fanning the faces of the crowd with hot fumes. Smoke dimmed the brightness of the bunch of grapes which hung above the inn sign.

  ‘If that is the last of the Lollards, then it’s a bad end for them,’ the second friar commented as Ormond shrieked for mercy. Although the friar had no love for the Lollards, he needed them to make a good end.

  More tar-soaked faggots were forked onto the fire and suddenly the flames soared. Now Ormond was a sheet of flame. The breeze was stronger. It filled the shirts and hose on the washing line and Ormond, gazing at them, saw his own poor body dancing there in grotesque agony; he watched while the bits and pieces of his body jerked and twisted, writhed and turned and gradually lost all human semblance. The flames formed like petals around his spirit, and when he could no longer see beyond the rim of the petals, there was stillness in the centre of the flower.

 
The sudden quiet of the burning man surprised the two friars. One said, ‘They don’t feel the pain after a time.’

  ‘Is that so?’

  ‘Yes, that’s the reason. They don’t feel the pain.’

  Chapter Seventeen

  *

  ‘The willows are coming out all along the river bank,’ Princess Elizabeth said. ‘It is beautiful, beautiful!’ She leant far out of the window as though she might breast the buoyant air and fly away from the Palace of West Minster, beyond the willows and the river. ‘There is a scent of something . . . what can it be?’ She closed her eyes and inhaled deeply. Behind her in the room her younger sisters made no answer, but one of them sniffled. Elizabeth remained leaning out of the window, not daring to let them see her face because she was so happy; even if the willows hadn’t been green, if there had been no scent carried on the spring air, she would still have been happy.