Kings of Albion

by Julian Rathbone

  Warwick did not take kindly to this ruse, though young March laughed it off readily enough. Warwick claimed treachery and trickery on his uncle's part and his face darkened with anger, but he was shouted down by the onlookers who declared Fauconberg and Dynham had won fairly. I had the reeling that many of the young men were glad of an excuse-to belittle their general.

  Well, cousin, as I said, the candles burnt low, and most of the men fell by degrees into a drunken stupor though not until they had sung many a maudlin song to the accompaniment of the musicians, mostly about lost loves, or the ladies they worship from afar and long for hopelessly, and one or two about friends slain in battle. Hut even as night wore towards day we were constantly reminded of the barbarity of the people we had come amongst. The stone floor was strewn with rushes and sawdust and this, they seemed to think, gave them licence to urinate and worse against the walls, and the dogs too, of which there were several and all very large, did their business where they wanted. We kept ourselves to ourselves, huddled in a corner near the fire, and dreamt, wrapped in a more complete darkness, of a home we had never perhaps properly appreciated until then.

  We were woken quite suddenly, even roughly, shortly after dawn, first by a servant who came and stirred the great lire back into life, adding some kindling and dry logs, then by the general shift and shuffle of men stirring whilst still suffering from the effects of carousing on alcohol. Into all this came the sudden clatter of horses' hoofs on the cobbles outside, challenges and passwords exchanged, and in came three men wearing chain-mail and conical helmets, with broadswords scabbarded at their sides. Their heavy boots rang on the flagstones. They also had plate armour on their arms and legs, but none on their bodies that we could see, though these were concealed by tabards decorated with a white diagonal cross on red, which we later discovered designated them followers of the Neville family.

  They strode up the hall and were shortly in animated conversation with the Earl, who had fallen asleep under the high table to which he had returned to nurse his pride and drown his sorrows after the horseplay tournament.

  Meanwhile, the grey light from the tall windows slowly spread and filled the great hall, casting its dull light over the mess and ordure left from the night before. I was glad at least to see that some of the boys who had served had reappeared with brushes and brooms to push the filth and debris into piles which they then carried out before strewing the floor with fresh straw and rushes. The to-ing and fro-ing also meant that various doors were left open, including the big ones through which we had entered and the smells and stuffiness were to some extent lifted by gusts of cold, fresh air. These, by the way, presaged a mighty storm of gales and rain that lasted almost a week. Ali hung around on the fringes of activity and was soon able to report back to Anish and me.

  'It seems,' he said, 'that a thousand men have gathered in Ingerlond on the outskirts of a small port called Sandwich, barely twenty miles away, across the sea, where they are led by officers of the King. It is expected that they will cross and join the Duke of Somerset at Guisnes as soon as the tides and winds favour them. Our hosts fear that, with this increase in his forces, the stalemate will be broken and Somerset will be able to attack Calais and either capture Warwick and his men or drive them into the sea.'

  'If he succeeds our own position will be compromised,’ Amsh interjected, with some anxiety. 'Somerset will not be pleased to find us still here since the passport he gave us was on condition that we made our way from here up the coast to Bremen."

  'Ali,' I commanded, 'go and see if you can find out how Neville is planning to cope with this crisis.'

  He was back ten minutes later. 'A John Dynham, he who won the contest on the back of Lord Fauconberg, is to lead a small force to Sandwich, where he hopes to do them some delaying mischief such as burn or steal the fleet of ships there. Apparently he knows the town and harbour and believes this knowledge will enable him to do much damage without too much risk, especially as the main body of the thousand men is camped on the outskirts of the town.'

  'If that's the best they can think of,' Anish remarked, 'I don't hold out much hope for their success.' And he went on to say that he thought we should try to get out of Calais before we were caught up in a siege or a battle.

  I reminded him that our aim was to get to Ingerlond and find my brother, and our only chance of doing that depended on remaining where we were.

  Well, once the storm had blown itself out, this Dynham embarked with three hundred soldiers Neville could hardly spare. He returned a few days later, but before I tell you what the outcome of his expedition was. I must fill in three more matters of some importance that we learnt or happened to us in the interim.

  First I asked Ali to find out what he could to add to the knowledge he already had concerning this feud or civil war that seemed to be occupying the lives of all the Ingerlonders. Here is what he told us after a day or two spent questioning the acquaintances he made amongst both the knights and the young men who served the nobles.

  Chapter Sixteen

  It all goes back,' he said, 'eighty years and more. At that time Ingerlond was ruled by a great warrior king called Edward, who conquered much of Francia and won many great battles against the Franks. He had several sons, the eldest of whom was known as the Black Prince because of the colour of the armour he wore and who was as great a warrior as his father. However, this Black Prince died before his father, and when Edward himself died it was the Black Prince's son. Richard, who came to the throne, following the laws that govern such matters in Ingerlond.

  'This Richard was a weak and pleasure-loving youth, who fought no wars against the Franks but stayed at home and lived in luxury with his favourites, wasting the kingdom with his extravagance. Many of the nobles began to hate him for this and eventually chose a leader to oust him, even though this was against the law and religion of the land.

  Their rebellion was led by a nephew of Edward called Henry, the son of John, known as John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster. This Henry thus became king. But many others of the nobles thought he should not be king and his reign was troubled with civil strife. Moreover, he connived at the murder of the ousted Richard. Henry survived and was Succeeded by his son, also a Henry. This second Henry, the fifth King of Ingerlond to bear the name, was another great warrior and returned to Francia where he, too, won many great victories before he died, leaving as his successor a child, hardly more than a baby, to be king in his place. 'This child was also Henry…'

  Here Anish intervened with a whining complaint. 'Are these people so short of names they have to give the same name to every king they have?'

  I reminded him that Your Excellency's three predecessors were all called Deva Raya, and he shut up.

  Ali continued, 'This Henry, the sixth to rule Ingerlond, is still alive and is now nearly forty years old. Like the Richard whose vices were the first cause of all this, he is a bad ruler, not a wastrel living in luxury but spending his revenue on colleges, monasteries and places of learning, all built with great magnificence to the glory of the Christian God. He is also a weakling in mind, body and spirit. He suffers periods of madness, is often ill, and lacks the ability to be decisive or firm. He is of poor judgement. He is ruled, and the whole country through him, by his Frankish wife, Margaret of Anjou, who wastes what is left of the royal revenues on less exalted things than churches and puts favourites whose families are of no consequence in high places. Because the royal coffers are often empty and her followers grasping and incompetent, the government performs ill and general lawlessness has become endemic throughout the land. Many nobles take advantage of this state of anarchy to pursue personal feuds over imagined injuries, or disputes arising from contested claims to property and demesnes.'

  He paused, took a turn in front of the fireplace, swinging on his pole, hitching his fur over his shoulder. 'Now,' he went on, once he had collected himself again, 'when the King's madness becomes insupportable and of some duration a regency is formed, of three or
four magnates, to rule in his name. And when this happens the Queen is usually one of the three, but another is Richard…'

  Anish sighed.

  '… Richard. Duke of York. This Richard is descended from a younger brother of John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster, and on that account has no claim to the throne. However, he is also descended in the female line from an older brother of Gaunt, which might give him a claim to the throne better than the present king's. But he has never pushed this claim – at least, not publicly. As I have said, though, he has ruled the country with others during the King's madness. You will have noticed how inbred this family is – hence the high incidence, no doubt, of illness and madness.

  'The Queen hates him and suspects his motives and intentions. He himself has proclaimed himself Protector as well as Regent. He has said that the country needs strong government to set all to rights, and that he should lead it. The dispute between them led to open conflict and the magnates and nobility of Ingerlond all sided with one or the other. At first this Richard of York gained the upper hand, made the King his prisoner and ruled in his place, but then the Queen won a battle and reversed the situation. At present the Queen rules, with the King by her side, from a city called Coventry in the middle of Ingerlond, not from London where the merchants generally favour Richard of York. York himself is in exile in Ireland, while, as you see, his cousin, friend and ally, Richard Neville, Earl of Warwick, maintains himself here in his support.'

  Thus Ali ben Quatar Mayeen. Now I must close, dear cousin, with an account of the two other significant matters that have taken place during the last few days.

  One afternoon, just after the storm had blown itself out and Dynham had sailed for Sandwich with his three hundred men, I, Anish and Ali were taking a turn round the courtyard of the keep. We were not alone. In one corner our fakir was entertaining a cloud of urchins with six-hall juggling and in another our monk was passing an hour or so in the lotus position or whatever.

  We were conversing about our situation. Were we prisoners or guests? Would Neville and his Yorkists aid or hinder our crossing into Ingerlond? Were our tradeable goods safe or would he simply confiscate them and turn them into commodities lie could use for his enterprise of taking one king from the throne and putting another in his place? Certainly it was a constant complaint amongst his affinity that funds were low; none had yet been paid their hire as liveried gentlemen in his service while the best they could hope for, if their enterprise failed, was a life spent wandering the continent and even the Orient, plying for hire as mercenaries… for in Ingerlond they were already attainted.

  We asked what this meant and certainly it seemed an unpleasant fate for anyone to suffer. First a bill of Attainder had been passed against them by Act of Parliament (of which more later if it becomes important). This meant that the King had legally seized all their lands, movables and money, disinherited their families and, if they fell into his hands, could have them hanged, drawn and quartered.

  This is a most barbarous form of execution and goes far beyond the foulest things even the Arabs have dreamt up -far beyond, for instance, impaling. First, the criminal is hanged by the neck, but not for long enough to kill him. Then he is laid on a table and the executioner draws out of his body his inner organs, particularly his intestine which he holds before his victim's eyes. Finally the heart and liver are plucked out. The poor man will now probably die after a process that will have lasted up to a full half-hour and the executioner will cut off his head and cut his carcass into four quarters. These will then be displayed separately at points some distance from each other, as at the gates of a city or over a bridge, as a warning to whomever might see them.

  Now, following a battle they had lost, through treachery, at a town called Ludlow, a couple of months earlier, all the nobles and gentry in Calais and the exiles in Ireland had been attainted by Parliament. Their lands in Ingerlond were confiscated, their families reduced to poverty. So, all we met and talked to during our stay in Calais were impoverished and thus open to temptation to steal from us.

  However, this they did not do, but one at least came at us another way. As I say, we were walking round the yard and had just passed the stables when a tall figure who had been grooming a big black stallion came out to us, wiping his hands on a cloth. Now that he was in full daylight (so-called, but still damp and grey) we recognised him as Eddie March. He came straight to the point. 'Prince’ he said, 'you are on your way to Ingerlond, seeking your lost brother.'

  Ali translated for me, though I had already picked up the gist. I assented.

  'You will need a guide.'

  At this Ali bridled somewhat. 'I can find our way around,' he muttered, but March pressed on.

  'I should like to present myself to you in that capacity. I have been in most parts of the kingdom and I have friends who will help you in your search and provide us with lodging. Quite often, out of friendship for me, they will not charge you."

  I looked him up and down. He was certainly a well set-up lad, with shoulders definitely broad even though the fashion of padded, fluted upper sleeves exaggerated the effect, with a narrow waist clipped in by a tight belt on which he wore a small dagger. On his lower half he wore tight woollen hose, which revealed well-shaped muscular thighs and when he turned, lean, hard buttocks. His expression was open and pleasing, and his features regular. He smiled often. His voice was mellifluous too, but fittingly strong. I looked at the rest of my entourage: Ali, like a cross between Sinbad and the Old Man of the Sea; Anish, plump and wheezy, and, since we had arrived in Calais, always with a drop of watery phlegm on the end of his pointed, drooping nose. And both of them elderly. With no soldiers we would be in poor shape if attacked by footpads.

  'It is kind of you to offer your services,' I said, and made a slight bow. 'We are happy to accept them.'

  'There is just one thing,' March now added, with some confusion in his face, a heightening of colour. 'I have no chinks at the moment, dead out of funds.'

  His speech, perhaps out of embarrassment, had become clipped and formal.

  'I shall pay you, of course.'

  ‘I would not dream of hiring myself out as a paid hand. However, a small loan… I do have prospects, you know.'

  'Say no more. Anish here will provide you with whatever you think you need.'

  And so, with little more ado, we settled on arrangements, and fixed a day, a week from now, for our departure. I looked up at the sky, wishing to bring to an end an interview that I guessed March might find embarrassing if it were continued in front of his companions.

  'It looks like rain. Again.’ Anish does not like to be caught in the rain. ‘And you will want to finish grooming your master's horse.'

  As we went indoors Anish grumbled that March would probably make the loan to which we had committed ourselves far too large, while Ali muttered that I had made a silly mistake: the stallion belonged to March himself. He might lack a servant to look after it for him, but he owned a horse fit for a king. Both of them were right.

  The second notable event was the return of Sir John Dynham and his three hundred men. His expedition had been successful. Knowing the harbour of Sandwich, where the commanders of the King's or Queen's men would be lodged, and the narrow streets of fishermen's cottages and ships' suppliers around, he had contrived to surprise and capture all who were within the town of the King's people without alerting the main body who were camped in the fields a quarter of a mile away.

  The commanders of the captured men were a certain Richard Wydville. Lord Rivers, his wife who had been born a princess, married a duke, and now was married to this Wydville-Rivers, and their twenty-year-old son. Anthony. Warwick decided to put on a show to humiliate these people, whose commission had been his arrest or death and who had been so ignominiously dragged from their beds and shipped across the Channel. He lit the hall with a hundred and sixty torches as well as many hundred candles, celebrating, he said the Feast of Candlemas and the Purification of Mary, the mother of Je
sus. Odd. I thought she was meant to be pure already. We fought our way through another huge meal, which was not, this time, quite so awful since there was spit-roast wild boar, and sweet puddings called syllabubs made from soured cream and honey which, with a little of our nutmeg, were quite palatable.

  When the tables were cleared Warwick called for these Wydvilles to be brought before him and, old and dignified though the father was, began to berate him. Apparently Dynham had reported to him that Richard Wydville had behaved arrogantly since his humiliating capture, calling the lords in Calais arrant traitors and worse. But it was Warwick's father, the Earl of Salisbury, much the same age as Wydville, who began.

  'Just who do you bloody think you are?' he shouted, using the clipped form of speaking which I have already noted is typical of the Ingerlonder nobility when they are crossed. Normally they drawl, in a lazy way, dragging out vowels and dropping consonants. 'Just where do you think you get off calling us traitors? We are the King's men, you know. It's from you people and your pernicious influence that we aim to free the poor man. It will be your lot to end up on the scaffold as traitors… mark my words.'

  Lord Rivers withstood this onslaught with, as I have said, some dignity, not to say continued arrogance. His son, too, contrived a superior sneer, though he said nothing. This infuriated Salisbury's son Warwick.

  'Just recall, my good man, who you are dealing with and where you came from. It may be forty years have gone since you were pushing a plough, caught my lady's eye and grubbed a coronet for yourself out of the ditch, but you still carry the smell of the farmyard with you.'