Some Touch of Pity

by Rhoda Edwards

  ‘Thank you! Not tonight.’ I thought I showed admirable restraint in not answering rudely, having one eye on the dying light and the other on the King. Richard looked from one to the other of us and gave a little twitch of a smile. ‘Why not you two, another day? John, I think you might take on more than you bargained for, in George.’ I was secretly pleased at this. Richard has a knack of turning aside sharp words, and his rather soft-toned voice is very persuasive.

  Salazar strode up to him and said something I did not catch, obviously a compliment, though Richard, as is his way when flattered, made little response. Then Salazar said, ‘This ’Enrico the Welsh Bastard, must take care to stay clear of your Grace in the battle, or else…’ He jerked his thumb explicitly earthwards. Richard looked up at him — the Spaniard was a head taller — and gave him one of his fleeting smiles, charming, amused. ‘Yes,’ he said, without emphasis, and left it at that.

  *

  Eleven days of August were gone, when the news came at last. We had begun to worry that it would never come, for a bare month was left before autumn gales began in the Channel, and Tudor could not risk an October disaster as he had two years ago. After mid-September he’d have to wait until next spring. Richard said bitterly that such an event would bring himself and the realm to beggary, being not far short of it now, the money was swallowed so fast in defence. But Tudor had sailed from the mouth of the Seine with his little fleet, to invade England. The winds that favoured him perhaps also spun the wheel of Fortune, and who knew what it held for him. One thing was certain, he would not have the chance to play the game twice; he staked everything on this August adventure. I knew too, that if he had not some certainty of my family’s support, he would not have played the stake at all.

  We had gone to Bestwood, a hunting lodge in Sherwood Forest, about five miles north of Nottingham, for a few days’ hawking. In the forest, those days of high summer seemed as if they could have no end. Sherwood was greenly peaceful, lapped at last in fair-weather warmth, its very quiet lulling one into pushing the threat of invasion into the farthest corner of the mind. On the evening of the following day, when the messenger came from Wales, we were so absorbed in making music, all thoughts of war banished for a space, that the shock hit all the harder. Richard played a lute very competently, while I have some talent upon the shawm and hautbois, so together with a few minstrels and boys of the chapel royal who had come to Bestwood, we managed very well.

  Bestwood is a large house, like a country manor, built in two storeys, with tall clear-glazed windows that have been let into the lower floor quite recently. These windows were now flung wide open, for the night air was very warm, strong-scented with green bracken. Outside lay a black gulf where no stars could be seen, until you leant out and craned upwards, for the leaves in the forest grew so thick. Inside the room, candle light blazed, spilling out like a sunburst through the windows, in long, slanting strips across the grassy lawns around the house. The King was playing alone, an old air by Dufay, the notes of his lute carrying far out among the trees. I knew the refrain:

  Adieu dames, adieu borgois,

  Adieu celle que tant amoye,

  Adieu toute playsante joye…

  A plaintive sound it was, as if the music craved the company of a human voice, marooned and solitary within a candlelit island deep in a dark forest. I am rarely given to melancholy, but this air affected me as a sudden mist shrouds a traveller; this transient life is full of farewells.

  We failed to hear the soft thud of hooves on the turf outside, until they crunched hastily into the gravelled yard. In the corridor, voices gabbled. An usher slipped round the door and whispered to Robert Percy, who nodded, frowning. A man entered, travel-stained and unshaven, flecked with foam from his horse’s bit, dried white like salt, pale dust thick in the creases of his long boots. As he crossed the room, his large-rowelled spurs clinked lightly on the tiles.

  Richard was sitting in the alcove-seat by an open window, bending over a lute, adjusting a new string. His deerhound with the odd name lay flat on her side near him, like a pony indoors. A pair of golden, feather-tailed setters sprawled blissfully asleep, one with its muzzle resting on his foot. A little orange and white spaniel was curled up on the seat beside him. At the messenger’s approach, Richard looked up, and slowly put down his lute. He must have recognized the man, for he said, in a soft, deliberately emotionless voice, ‘What news from Wales brings you here, Richard Williams?’ I knew him then, Williams, a good Yorkist Welshman, was Constable of all the west-coast castles of Pembroke, Manorbier, Cilgerran, Tenby and Haverford-West; Richard had appointed him.

  He knelt, hat in hand, grimy and furrow-faced with tiredness. The dogs at Richard’s feet, woke, stretched, yawned and sat up, pressing against his knees, laying their chins across his thigh, ogling soulfully upwards, tails softly sweeping the rushes, hoping for attention. He pulled gently at their silky, hanging ears, waiting for the man to speak.

  Williams appeared to take very deep breath. ‘Bad, your Grace. The rebel Tudor landed at Angle in Milford Haven on the seventh day of the month. I could not be holding Pembroke. Four-fifths of my garrison laid down their arms and declared for Jasper Tudor the rebel’s uncle, as if he were the prodigal returned and true Earl of Pembroke. Shame it is! They have forgot their allegiance.’ He paused. The King’s face did not move a muscle. He let the man go on.

  ‘The King of France has furnished Owain Tudor’s grandson with an army. That is to say, he has opened up his prisons and enlisted every thieving, murdering, frog-fed criminal fit to wield a weapon, and some that are not. Nearly three thousand of them, under some mercenary captain called Shanty! Sire, the man must be desperate to take such rabble, even as a gift.’ The Welshness of his voice came over very strongly as he said, ‘It is singing they are. All the bards in the valleys are singing and there is the sound of harps in the mountains. He marches, under the old standard of Wales, the red dragon of Cadwallader, and at the sight of it, look you, no gate is closed to him. The poets draw men who see a new promised land in Wales, a leader who’s a cross between Moses and the hero princes, the sons of Llewellyn. It is Arthur himself come forth from his cave under the green hill that they see. A Bull of Anglesey, they say, the hope of our race!

  ‘Your Grace, this rebel is a pawn of Englishmen who exploit the old cause of Lancaster, seeking to regain their fortunes — red rose favours, they wear. As for his army! A villainous mob, it is, spreading their poxes through Wales and ready to stab any man in the back. But from a few real soldiers, they’d run, look you, like mice. And their arms! Scythe blades bound on staves with twine, butcher’s knives, clubs with rusty nails, sickles to reap legs with — and themselves as near naked as makes no odds!’

  Sensing that something was wrong, Richard’s dogs tried to squirm closer and lick his hands. He put them aside, and stood up, beckoning to a page. Williams stood looking down at his own feet, turning his hat in his hands. The two men were of a height, Williams being one of your little cock-sparrow Welshmen.

  Richard said, ‘I am grateful to you for riding so far with this news. I am glad that he is here at last. I should have guessed that he might return to Wales. He has given Lord Lovell the slip. At least my worst fear was baseless, that he would land at Milford in Southampton Water and march on London before I could stop him.’ Then to the page, ‘Fetch Master Kendal, Ralph.’ He picked up the discarded lute-string, and wound it round and round his finger in a nervous, jerky way, that entirely belied an otherwise calm manner. ‘Who has joined him?’

  ‘Few, thank God, your Grace. Rather they allow him to pass unhindered, than commit themselves to his cause. Rhys ap Thomas of Dynefor has sworn that the rebel will have to step over his prostrate belly on the ground, before he deserts his King. There are a few of Tudor’s kin. The rest are wild men from the mountains, poor herdsmen from the valleys, and cattle drovers with beasts to feed the army.’

  ‘How fast does he march?’

  ‘Slow, your Grace. When
I left, he was heading up the Cleddau valley towards Cardigan. I left Iolo my brother, to keep watch on him. Stick close to him, boyo, I said. When he has kept his eyes and ears open a while, Iolo Williams will ride to Nottingham.’

  Richard gave a flicker of a smile at that, though it did not seem able to travel from his mouth to his eyes. ‘I wish there were more Welshmen as loyal to me as you, Richard Williams,’ he said.

  I was not slow to comprehend the import of the news for myself. That Tudor had chosen Wales, where he had not been expected, meant that between him and the King at Nottingham, lay the more northerly Marches, Denbigh and Montgomery, whose defence was the responsibility of my father and uncle William. Still I do not know what my father intends. The King will summon him to arms with all the rest, but there is no telling how soon cracks in his loyalty will show. I, meanwhile, occupy a very uncomfortable seat.

  Late into the night, long after I had retired to bed in thoughtful mood and lay trying to get some sleep, shafts of candlelight from the King’s room, falling across the grass, brightened my own window. As on some of the bad days last summer, when we had been pounding the length of Yorkshire, Richard and Kendal his Secretary worked half the night, so that letters to the commissioners of array in the counties were dictated, written, sealed and ready for the messengers’ saddle-bags at first daylight.

  Our party left for Nottingham that morning. We did not expect to go back to Bestwood. John of Lincoln rode beside his uncle, now and then trying to prise him out of his long silences, without much success. The dogs ran loose along the broad verges of the road, in grassed-over ruts, sniffing and sneezing as they scattered seeds and scuffed up brick-coloured dust, or leaving paw-prints in mud where puddles still stood. North of the town were several windmills, each on its hillock, stolid as men-at-arms, the white sails turning very slowly in the almost breathless air. On the azure ground of the sky small clouds hung motionless as painted scutcheons. Below the mills, stretching towards the town wall, lay open fields of barley, whiskery-eared and faintly rustling. A poor crop, patches of it flattened by storms.

  Lincoln was saying ‘Williams told me he heard that Tudor knelt on the beach where he had landed, with only diving cormorants and the cockle gatherers to watch, and kissed a handful of wet Welsh sand! They recited a psalm, too: “Judica me Deus et discerne meam causam” — Judge me, O God, and uphold my cause.’

  The King gave his nephew a somewhat ironic glance. ‘Against an ungodly nation? And deliver me from the deceitful and unjust man,’ he said gently, ‘amen.’ This, from one who had clearly read the psalms of David, emprinted Lincoln’s face with a delighted grin.

  ‘Did you kiss the sand at Ravenspur in ’71, when you came back with King Edward from Burgundy?’ he asked with expectant relish, guessing the tone of his uncle’s reply.

  His grey horse going delicately over the hard, pebbly road, almost in step with Lincoln’s, Richard said, ‘With a spring tide running on the North Sea in March — one half of me in it, and the other being kicked in the ribs by a mad horse dangling from a ship in a sling? And a wind straight from the shores of Greenland. The Lord God wouldn’t have heard it if I’d shouted psalms the length of Holderness. As for kissing the sand, well, it was down my neck and in my ears already, and far from welcome. I must lack a sense of occasion.’ Even at this time, Richard is not without his glimpses of humour. As with many a northerner, his wit is unobtrusive, a little while before one appreciates its bite.

  Three days later we were still at Nottingham, waiting until further news arrived, and more important, until we had an army to go out and fight with. The King had at first intended to leave for Leicester, and gather his army there, but as no news came, we made no move. Richard seemed curiously reluctant to take any decision, which was most unlike him. On Monday, fifteenth of August, the feast of Our Blessed Lady’s Assumption into Heaven, the day in the year most sanctified to Her name, he flatly refused to do anything but properly observe the festival, in the castle chapel.

  That morning, at long last, letters came from my father, one directed to the King, one to myself. It appeared that he had left Lathom, but got no further than the manor of Manchester, where he had been stricken with the sweating sickness. In bed a week, the man who brought the letters said, sweat pouring off him and weak as a blind kitten. He had been expected up and about again, and should be on his way to Derby in a day or two. The Lancashire levies were in the main assembled, but delay unavoidable. The King bit his lip when given this news, but said only, ‘I am sorry to hear it. I will see him when he has recovered.’ He didn’t look as if he’d hurry to extend a loving welcome, either.

  The contents of my own letter afforded me more concern than my father’s health. If he really had been taken with the sweat, and recovered in ten days, then he must be strong as a Liverpool ferry-man. The disease has already taken off young men in a day! His letter was brief: he expected to join the King at Leicester by the appointed time. It was better, he said, that he went there straight from Manchester via Derby, rather than divert to Nottingham. But he asked that I should take leave of the King immediately and meet him at Derby, so that I could be in effective command of his two thousand men, he being still far from well, and not yet able to sit a horse. It took no prolonged thought to grasp the meaning of this. He could position himself between Tudor coming from the west, and the King, able to join either, or remain neutral, without the encumbrance to his conscience of threats to my life! He would not deal honestly even with me, his eldest son and heir. Frankly, I was undecided on what to do. I could ask the King for leave to go to my father, but felt instinctively that it would be refused. Richard can be alarmingly peremptory if he chooses. Also, to make such a request would inevitably make him suspicious of its intent. So for the moment I did nothing.

  Later in the day, at dinner, the household sat in formal state, the King at high table. He wore unrelieved black, very rich and elaborate, a long gown of silk damask figured with pomegranates and lined with black satin, that fell in heavy, gleaming folds, like robes carved from basaltes. Even the collar round his shoulders was of massive lumps of jet, set in dull silver, bordered by black pearls and amethysts. I hadn’t seen him so deep in mourning since St Anne’s day, which he had kept in memory of his wife.

  Our meal had progressed no more than two courses, when a messenger was brought into the hall, his news too urgent to be kept until after dinner. Dusty, he knelt at the King’s feet; one of the men who had been posted to watch the Severn crossings — from Shrewsbury, I heard him say. Into the silence that fell among us all, he spoke words which in different ways, meant nothing less than disaster both to Richard and myself.

  The man’s voice forced itself into speech, as if dust still grated in it. His eyes would not face the King’s. ‘Your Grace, the rebels entered Shrewsbury yesterday.’

  Shrewsbury! But that was the strongest garrison-town in the Marches. I watched the King’s face turn from pallid to plain sheet white. Slowly, he laid down his knife upon the table. The voice went on mercilessly. ‘The town surrendered — not a stick raised in defence. At first the bailiff, Thomas Mytton, closed the gates, but within a day or so, word came from Sir William Stanley, that the town must give the rebel free passage, or he’d personally see Mytton hanged.

  ‘They let down the drawbridge on the Welsh side, and this — rebel — marched in over the Severn. Your Grace, I stayed long enough to see him march out over English Bridge, and take the road for Newport and Stafford. His intention seems either to approach Nottingham, or to head down the Wading Street for London.’

  The squealing noise of wood on tiles, as the King’s chair skidded back across the floor, made us all jump. The dogs shrank under the table. Richard flung himself a few paces away from the messenger. The silk of his gown crackled with the force of the movement.

  When he shouted ‘Shrewsbury!’ his voice was loud enough to make us all jump again like plucked harp strings; it ricocheted from the roof. ‘You tell me he has wal
ked into Shrewsbury unmolested — at the invitation of my Sheriff? He could have been halted in half a dozen places before he ever left Wales. Where was Lord Stanley — laid up with the sweat at Manchester? When I see him at Leicester he’ll sweat more, I guarantee! And Sir William Stanley dares use his word to free this bastard Welshman from all hindrance — the word he gave to me. I’ll choke his gullet with his treachery!’

  We were too stunned by this outburst to do anything but stare at him. Great God Almighty! he had fully as much power to frighten men as King Edward when crossed. It was as well, perhaps, that I was given an opportunity to realize it. A subtlety modelled in hard sugar had been set on the table near me, representing the coronation of the Blessed Virgin Mary. I kept my eyes fixed upon the base of this confection, where a scroll picked out in gilt letters read, ‘Hail Mary Queen of Heaven’. All eyes turned on me. Will Catesby gave me a warning look, compressing his mouth. No one dared utter a sound. Even the crouching dogs forbore to whine, but peered anxiously out from behind the tablecloth. Richard’s voice lashed us.

  ‘Was there no man in all the Severn towns to lift a finger against him? Men of straw — afraid of burning their tails if they fired the guns. We pay good money to give them guns and they hand them over to my enemies… Were they afraid of his scrofulous army? Army! He has no more idea of commanding an army than a troupe of tumblers ‘ He laughed, a sound to splinter the air. ‘I wish the hordes of the Grand Turk were against me, and Prester John, and the Sultan of Syria — for all their armies I would show them I am still King! By Christ and His Holy Mother — I swear that from Lancaster to Shrewsbury, Holyhead to St David’s, I’ll tear their castles down, and parks, forest and open fields shall take their place. Those who bear the name of Stanley, knight or squire, will regret this treachery to their King.’

  At last then, he knew his enemy. Sweat broke out on me as if I’d been suddenly doused, though I sat frozen, hoping to escape notice. In vain, for the King swung round on me, his hand, white-knuckled, clenched on the hilt of the dagger at his belt, as if to withhold it from use. The barely contained violence in his voice made me draw back in my seat. ‘Write,’ he said, and the word had the sound of a slap in the face, ‘to your noble father. Tell him what I have said. That I will see his brother’s castle at Holt fall in ashes in the river Dee before the year is out, if he dares break his oath to me.’ With that, he walked swiftly from the room, the door slamming to behind him with a crash to set the knives jittering on the table. One by one, the dogs went to the door, whimpering and scratching at the jamb until someone let them out to run after him.