Towards the end of the meal, when we were served the last course of wafers and hippocras, dates, almonds, hard-sugared caraway comfits and quince preserve, some of the musicians of Richard’s household played to us upon lute and viol. Buckingham had brought a Welsh harper in his train, who made a strange, wild music and was well rewarded, though we did not understand the language. One of the north country lords had brought a ballad singer — a woman. It’s a custom of the Border lords to keep pipers and ballad-singers, to tell of the deeds of their families in fighting the Scots. This is an entertainment that Westminster might well scoff at. I wondered if this woman were one of those who follow their men in war, a knife hidden in their skirts, and no hesitation in using it. She stood with her arms and hands stiff and straight at her sides, a curiously wooden, dumpy figure, who left one unprepared for the huge voice that came from her. It was not sweet, or even womanly — she wailed like a bagpipe, setting the teeth on edge, and with me, the hair prickling and blood tingling. I could just understand her words, though she might have been as much Scot as English.
‘There came a man by middle day,
He spied his sport and went away;
And brought the king that very night,
Who brake my bower, and slew my knight.
He slew my knight, to me sae dear.
He slew my knight and poind his gear;
My servants a’ for life did flee,
And left me in extremitie.’
In every song made by a minstrel, he has locks of golden hair, and builds his love a bonny bower, but it always ends the same way — the worms get him. I’d never yet seen a Border pele tower clad about with lily flowers either. Most of them have a huge midden by the wall, and are so dark and smoky within men come out pickled like a side of bacon. I wondered what Rivers made of it. He listened, but could not follow the words. His face expressed polite interest, like a traveller who finds himself in the land of the paynims and is invited to observe their customs. After the singer had done and collected her coins, he said, ‘A harsh music, from a harsh land. I once heard the like in the Earl of Warwick’s household.’
Richard was sitting back in his chair, and playing with his set of table knives, slipping them back and forth in their case. His face betrayed no reaction to Rivers’s remark, but I knew better than to imagine it went unnoticed. Soon, I thought, Warwick will be avenged and the Queen’s rapacious family brought low, with few to mourn their fall.
It was late when Rivers left us, to ride down the street to his own inn. His farewells were as calm and friendly as his greetings had been. He should have been warned, by the obvious deference Buckingham accorded Richard.
‘There goes our pilgrim,’ Buckingham remarked, looking from the window. ‘I suppose he chose that scallop shell to mark his men because it is the pilgrim’s sign.’
‘It has been known for pilgrims to be ambushed on the road,’ Richard said. ‘Harry, I want to settle our score with Rivers quietly — no show of force. It must be done before he returns to the King, before he deals with us as he has no doubt planned. I cannot allow him to reach London before us. Sir Richard Ratcliffe, will you take sufficient men to surround his inn, request the keys from the landlord, and have the yard gates bolted? He’ll find himself unable to leave in the morning, in short, under arrest, for plotting to deprive me of my power as Protector. We’ll ride for Stony Stratford very early. It should not take much more than an hour. None of Rivers’s men must be allowed to warn Grey and the others of our coming.’
‘Or,’ Buckingham said with a smile, ‘our little royal bird will have flown.’
We retired to bed. My squire shook me awake at three, shaved my bleary-eyed countenance, thrust me into the black clothes he had brushed down the night before, and pulled on my riding boots. I breakfasted in the big room downstairs, where we had dined. Richard was there already; Buckingham joined us in a few moments. We ate standing up, a few mouthfuls of still hot white bread, a slice or two of cold sirloin, washed down with hot spiced ale to keep the chill out of us. There were a number of other things on the table we didn’t have time for. Richard was still in his shirt, though he had his boots and spurs on. His squires were more or less dressing him as he ate. I noticed they dressed him in a coat of brigandines covered with black velvet. Buckingham was wearing one too. I sent my squire to fetch me a similar protection, to be on the safe side. We didn’t want to look warlike, and arrive in armour but preferred to guard against the knife in the back. I wondered if Rivers had awoken yet, and found himself a prisoner, just when he thought himself in command of the situation.
As we walked out into the yard, I shivered. The day was grey, cold and inhospitable, drizzling half-heartedly. We rode as fast as we could, slowed only by miry patches of road. Richard kept the lead almost all the way; his great black horse had a long, easy stride that ate up the miles. We were only just in time. As we pounded down the long street of Stony Stratford, the inn where the royal party had stayed was in a turmoil, horsemen spilling out of the yard across the road. Richard’s horse slithered to a halt. One of his men grabbed the reins as he dismounted. He stood there, looking at the milling assembly of the King’s men. After a moment, when the shouting ceased, they stared at him, then a single yell went up — ‘Gloucester!’
The throng parted, and a boy rode out of the inn yard, followed closely by a man a little younger than myself. The King wasn’t dressed in mourning, but in a purple cloak and a hat with a blue ostrich feather. When he saw the man standing at the end of the path his men had made, he drew rein. Richard walked towards him, alone, between the ranks of the King’s men. It made my hair stand on end to see him — Jesu! they could have ridden him down in an instant. But they let him through, in silence. The King’s horse backed a little, shaking its head, feeling the uncertainty of its rider. The boy’s voice was gruff with adolescence at first, then high as a child’s in query. ‘Your Grace of Gloucester! We did not expect… Where is my Lord Rivers?’
I didn’t hear Richard’s reply, for he was speaking quietly. He knelt to the boy, in a token of homage, though the road was muddy. When he got up, the King dismounted, I think because Richard told him to. They stood facing each other, one confused and angry, the other quiet, and immovable as rock. The King, quite a tall boy for twelve, was as big as his uncle. Buckingham went next to Richard’s side; he knelt to the King and kissed his hand. Ratcliffe and I followed him. The King’s face was white as his shirt, and though he held himself upright, he was trembling from head to foot. His hand, when I kissed it, was chill and clammy. It was plain to any onlooker that he was extremely frightened. ‘My Lord of Gloucester,’ he said, his voice flying up and down with fright and anger, ‘my uncle Rivers has been my guardian for ten years, all my life; I will not have him made a prisoner!’ He was making a valiant attempt at royal dignity.
‘His Grace your father, King Edward,’ Richard said patiently, ‘has left me Protector of his kingdom, and his children. It is a lawful precedent, and cannot be disregarded. Lord Rivers has tried to disregard it. Your Grace, I give you my word, as your father’s brother, that I will serve you as faithfully as I served him. He has left you a great kingdom; I wish to help you rule it wisely.’
The boy’s face showed only unfeigned astonishment. ‘If my father made you Protector…’ he began. Clearly he had not been told that this was his father’s will.
The King’s Chamberlain, Sir Thomas Vaughan, an elderly, Welsh Border lord, looked nervous, but spoke up bravely, ‘Your Grace of Gloucester has no right…’
Lord Richard Grey, the King’s half-brother, did the rashest thing possible — he drew his sword. A gasp went up — it’s a treasonable act in the King’s presence. Two of Buckingham’s men grabbed him, knocking the hat from his fair hair into the mud; two others took Vaughan. Richard, still alone and unarmed among his enemies’ followers, did not speak until Vaughan and Grey were both disarmed. Then he merely said, in a voice cold as iron, ‘Those who wish to question my right ma
y do so before the council at Westminster.’
We rode slowly back to Northampton, and, while the town enjoyed its May-day games, spent an uncomfortable time trying to overcome the King’s hostility. The boy was too old to comfort as one might a smaller child, and too young to realize that men cannot be clearly divided into those who are good and those who are wicked. He obviously adored his uncle Rivers. Strange, that a man we find so unlovely should receive such unstinted affection. Young Edward had been at Ludlow since he was three, in his uncle’s care; I suppose Rivers had taken the place of a father.
At supper, the first night, the sight of the King’s bloodless, pinched little face took the edge off my appetite. He began by refusing to eat, which was a pity, for the waterfowl and fish were particularly good — Northampton is conveniently close to the river Ouse and the fenny parts of Huntingdonshire. Richard, despite every effort to make a dent in the uncompromising armour of hatred that met him, could get nothing out of the boy. The one thing that he thought would succeed, their shared love for the late King, did not. He talked of Ludlow, trying to convince the boy that he was human and could remember being a boy as well.
‘Your Grace has been lucky, living his life at Ludlow. It’s a good place for a boy. When I was seven, your father took me fishing there. He taught me how to catch trout in the river Teme. He was nearly eighteen, and Earl of March, yet he hadn’t forgotten how to lie flat on a river bank with his sleeves sopping wet, tickling the trout’s bellies. When we got back, I never minded that I got beaten for getting my clothes muddy, and he didn’t. Did you go fishing, Edward?’
‘No,’ muttered the King, hating to be drawn into conversation, then, grudgingly, because a gleam of interest did lie under his prickle-backed manner, ‘I had a proper rod. My brother Dick Grey put the bait on and taught me to make a cast. I caught a fish once — oh, that big…’ He made the customary gesture of a proud fisherman with his hands, indicating an impossible, pike-sized catch. ‘The village boys caught the fish with their hands, as you did, uncle.’ The Prince of Wales clearly hadn’t been allowed the freedom of the Duke of York’s sons. I didn’t much like the way he said that only the village boys went tickling trout, as Richard had.
Richard said, without rancour, ‘Will your Grace take some of this? You must eat. A King can’t do his work on an empty stomach. Look, we’ll send this dish over to your uncle, Lord Rivers, as a token of goodwill. Things are not so black — he’s alive and well, and dining with us here.’
The King became suddenly eager. ‘My uncle Rivers and my brother Grey may be released?’ But then fell instantly sullen again, having read in Richard’s face the answer.
Richard sighed. ‘Perhaps,’ was the only reply he could make. It was, of course, impossible. Richard had already decided that Rivers, Grey and Vaughan should be escorted north and be detained under guard at Sheriff Hutton, Pontefract and Middleham. They would be allowed plenty of servants and comfortable lodgings, but would have no chance to plot against the Lord Protector — his men would see to that — and there would be no danger of insurrection in their favour, as there might be if we took them south to London.
Afterwards, he said to me, sadly, ‘The boy knows so little of his father, and cares less. He’s more Woodville than Plantagenet.’ This was true. The boy had been taught to fear and mistrust Richard, by his mother’s family.
We rode into London on Sunday, the fourth day of May. The Mayor, Sir Edmund Shaa, the Aldermen and citizens turned out in full splendour of scarlet and violet gowns, to meet us at Hornsey. The crowd gave the young King a hearty welcome, because he is his father’s son, and the Londoners had loved King Edward. At this open acclaim, the boy looked happy for the first time since leaving Stony Stratford, and he received the Mayor’s compliments with smiles. The crowd lining Cheap and Ludgate Hill gave Richard a warm welcome too, pleased that he had dealt so successfully with the Queen’s kin, whom nobody loved. The church bells rang joyfully and they cheered, as they had two months ago, when he was thanked for his success against the Scots. To show that the Queen and Rivers had resorted to arms in order to forestall the Protector, men went in front of the procession bellowing out the fact, and showing all the carts of armour and weapons, taken with their badges on them. Because the day was the King’s first in his capital city, Richard and Buckingham purposely made themselves inconspicuous in plainest black, riding one on either side of him while he wore blue velvet and ermine. When the procession was past St Paul’s, the lords and citizens dispersed. I went to my own place, Lovell’s Inn, by Paternoster Lane. The King was lodged at the house of the Bishop of London — Westminster was out of the question, for his mother lurked in the Sanctuary there and refused to come out. Richard went to his town house in Bishopsgate, Crosby’s Place.
Among the first to greet us in London was Lord Hastings. He clasped Richard’s hand, kissed him, said that he’d never been so relieved to see a man, and that he heartily supported all Richard’s actions, especially the arrest of Rivers and Grey. This one bold stroke had prevented untold violence, he said; the Queen’s upstart family had been put down with no more shedding of blood than might issue from a cut finger. Now, the realm was safe, in the hands of two powerful men, Richard and himself, as King Edward had wished. To express his friendship and support, he presented Richard with a great wine-cup of silver gilt, a six-inch chunk of unicorn’s horn set in the lid, which, significantly, is supposed to render all poisons harmless.
Before we had been in London a week, I realized that Hastings, whatever his ideas to the contrary, was not the man of the moment. Perhaps he discovered this too, and found it irksome. As he had said, two predominated — but they were Richard and Buckingham. It would have been easy for me to predict the former. Richard is not the man to be Protector in name only, or to be content with the position of merely the highest ranking member of the King’s council of lords. Those who think he may be wrought to any temper that suits them are gravely mistaken: it’ll be he who wields the hammer. In the north, I have heard men remark, he has done a job that would have broken the back of many a tough Border lord twice his age, and, the same men say, they’ve never known anyone do it better.
Harry Buckingham is cast in a different mould. At twenty-eight, he has never been of much use or importance in the realm, apart from duties of bearing swords at ceremonies, and Dorset’s helm at joustings — that last must rankle! Now, I’ve never had any great ambition for political power above that due to my rank and necessary for safety, I’m too lazy, but I’ve led a more active life than he. At least I served as a soldier with Richard against the Scots, on three years’ hard campaigning, and King Edward rewarded me with the title of Viscount for it. All I knew of Harry Buckingham was that his father had been killed at St Albans in the cause of Lancaster when he was a baby, and that he had been made a ward of the Queen. Before he was ten, the Queen had married him to Katherine, one of her brood of younger sisters. For this I was disposed to be sympathetic to him. He has lived beyond his means, trying to outshine his Woodville relatives, is over ears in debt, with five children to provide for. I suspect his eagerness to support Richard is prompted by desperation as well as resentment. Good service goes well rewarded, and Richard is the only man able to give him rewards that might restore him to solvency. In this hope, then, set free by events, he is soaring as high as a young eagle.
He didn’t take much notice of me. It has been a custom with us, Richard and me, when finding ourselves in London or away from home, to sup with each other, play at chess, listen to music, and talk in the evenings. Richard is not one who seeks pleasure out of his wife’s company. Now, when there was time, I went to Crosby’s Place, only to find Harry Buckingham there already. Being an easy sort of fellow, who does not jealously covet the exclusive company of his friends, I greeted him in an amiable way, tinged with just the right amount of deference a newly created Viscount might allow a Duke of royal blood. He was prepared to be lordly with me, but when he saw my familiarity with Richard,
he made himself affable and charming.
At the end of the first week, Richard sent a letter to Anne, asking her to join him in London. ‘It should be safe now, so far as I can predict,’ he said. ‘I need her with me. Poor Anne, there’ll be so many wives to entertain, while I deal with the husbands. She’ll have to be prepared for a long stay.’
Harry gave him a look, as if he envied him. ‘I’ve only had the pleasure of meeting your wife a few times, Dickon. It was a pleasure, too, a rare one. Westminster has so many overblown flowers, too many cankered blooms!’ He had been eating dates, and slung a handful of stones onto the fire, where they jumped and popped viciously. He had a queer expression on his face, unpleasant and vindictive. Richard gave me a startled look. We refrained from passing any remark on Harry’s own wife. She had been left behind at Brecon, no longer able to rule him through her sister the Queen.
Some Touch of Pity Page 5
