Kings of Albion

by Julian Rathbone

  There. That is quite enough for now. Much was happening in the south, which Ali knows far more about than I do. I'll leave him to take up the tale.

  Chapter Forty

  Actually not. More letters from Prince Harihara to his illustrious cousin, written out in Chamberlain Anish's neat hand, were left out for my perusal.

  Dear Cousin

  We have been relieved at last, taken out of our palace/prison, and set free. Wonderful! Let me tell you how it happened while it is fresh in my mind. You will remember, if you ever got the letter, that we were still in the Tower, though London was in the hands of the Yorkists, that the main Yorkist army had inarched north under Warwick. Fauconberg and March, leaving two thousand or so under Lord Salisbury, Warwick's father. For three weeks they laid siege to the Tower but without a great deal of effort, being prepared to starve us out. Meanwhile our host, the irascible Lord Scales, continued to hurl cannonballs amongst the houses his guns could reach, to the annoyance and discomfort of the burghers who owned and lived in them.

  He boasted loudly that no fire was returned, because if it had been he would have cannonballed the guns aimed at him. But in this he had made one foolish miscalculation: all his guns were sited in the towers that overlooked the city from which he might expect any attack to come. Lord Salisbury, after a fortnight or so, perhaps during which he ascertained that this was indeed so, moved five large cannon across the bridge (the move necessitated the destruction of a row of shops) on to the south bank and thence downriver so they could fire across at the riverside walls from a mere two hundred paces and without any danger to themselves – the guns in the Tower were so securely emplaced they could not be easily or quickly moved.

  A lesson for us here – again obvious in its way, but the sort of thing one does not think of until too late: one's guns need protection from the enemy's, but the protection should not be such as to render their redeployment difficult or impossible.

  For three days they pounded the riverside walls, which soon began to tumble as they had not been designed to withstand any sort of punishment, and by the fourth day the south wall of the inner keep was exposed. We were now in some danger and certainly suffered severe discomfort from dust, falling masonry and noise. It was not long before the lords who, as I told you in my last, had come with their families for shelter from the Yorkists, now urged Lord Scales to surrender. Since, as I have said, we were also running short of food, this he felt constrained to do, and yesterday evening it was proposed between heralds chosen by each side that this morning there should be a formal handing over of the keys of the great gate. Our chief concern now is that Lord Salisbury will remember and recognise us from our brief sojourn in Calais nearly seven months ago and thus identify us as people sympathetic to the Yorkist cause.

  At nightfall, after this had been arranged, Anish and I came upon Sergeant Bardolph Earwicca in the Tower Gardens, drunk and maudlin: his fear was that, having merely done his duty for the King and the King's man, by which he meant Lord Scales, he would now be out of a job, that another, more solidly inclined towards the Yorkists, would be given his place as Under Master Sergeant of Ordnance, and he would end up begging on the streets. Where, if his identity and previous occupation were revealed, he would probably be torn to pieces as the main instrument of the bombardment of the town. Anish, ever quick to see an opportunity, immediately promised him employment in Vijayanagara if he had no objection to travelling some distance. He had no objection for he had lost his wife and three children to the most recent outbreak of plague and was on his own, at which he became maudlin again and began to sob for the loss of the people he referred to as his 'fucking loved ones'.

  That he was right to fear the citizens was vindicated, just at that very moment. We heard shouts of anger, the clash of weapons, a howl of rage. Then, over the battered ruins of the riverside fortification, was thrown a head. Ghastly and bleeding though it was, twisted into a grimace of fury and fear, we recognised the face and beard of Lord Scales. Advised of the hatred the people of London now bore him he hail attempted to row himself in a skiff, upriver to Westminster Abbey where he hoped to achieve sanctuary. Apparently, under certain complicated rules compounded by these people's superstitious beliefs regarding holy places, even convicted criminals can escape arrest by entering the chancel of a church. Once inside, their bodies are judged to be inviolate.

  Anyway, sundry watermen of the Thames, men whose trade it is to ferry people and goods both across and up and down the stream, recognised him and guessed his plan. They dragged him from his tiny boat, took him to the steps of what is called the Traitors' Gate, for through it traitors are brought to the Tower by boat for execution, and there stabbed and beat him to death before chopping off his head.

  I am not sorry he has gone, though I would not have wished him so harsh a departure.

  Next day, the eighteenth of july, by their reckoning, Shiva knows what by ours, and we are back in Alderman Dawtrey's house on the corner of the street they call East Cheap. Now that Lord Scales has gone, the Yorkists here are in control and we are identified with the Yorkists, the vintner and his emotional wife are all over us, insisting we should stay until we can find lodgings of our own. They have also kept safe the the goods we hail left unsold, and we still have a fair quantity of gold and jewellery hidden about us, so one way and another our fortunes are well mended.

  But there is more than this to tell you. Yesterday, apparently, though no one told us and we were suffering for most of the time from the last hours of the bombardment of the Tower, the Yorkist army returned, having won a great victory ewer the Queen's army at a town called Northampton, where they also took the King prisoner. The King has been lodged in the Bishop's Palace close to Baynard's Castle, which is where the Yorkists stay, a fortification close to Lud's Gate, now a palace. The King, who is frequently disturbed in his head, is quite content to be guided by the Yorkist lords.

  All that now remains is for the Duke of York to return from Ireland and assume the reins of government in the name of the King, but in effect on his own account. The thing is, cousin, and I may have mentioned this before, these people have an irrational reverence for a crowned and anointed king, believing superstitiously that to do one harm is to invite the curse of their god. So, although this king is the grandson of a usurper who arranged, so everyone agrees, the death of his rightful king, nevertheless, this one old before his time and subject to grievous fits of madness, is still reckoned to be touched with a sort of holiness, a sanctity.

  Finally, a wonderful piece of good fortune: Ali ben Quatar Mayeen was with this Yorkist host, in the company of a Franciscan brother called Peter Marcus, an intelligent and open-minded person tor an Ingerlonder. Ali still has with him the two kurundam crystals I entrusted to him. I'm not sure of what use they are since they are far too valuable to be sold or bartered, but no doubt their time will come. At all events it's good to have him with us again and he seems to be none the worse for his adventures.

  The Buddhist monk who left Gove with us seems to have disappeared, as has the fakir. Well, they were just hangers-on, but I feel a certain responsibility for them and I don't like to think of them wandering about this barbarous island on their own.

  News just in. These wars are not over yet. The Queen escaped after Northampton and is rumoured to be in Scotland raising an army. Even in Ingerlond she still has many adherents amongst the nobility. They fear to lose the huge gains in land, fortune and position they made under her protection, and also they fear the revenge of Yorkists whose families have suffered at their hands. No doubt we shall see more military activity and learn more from it.

  The worst is that we have moved no nearer to finding my brother Jehani, though Brother Peter thinks he may have heard of a person answering his description. However, he advises caution in our attempt to find him. He is almost certainly in the company and under the protection of a secret group called the Brothers of the Free Spirit who are known to preach a free society and look towards a
heavenly city on earth where all are free, well fed, equal and happy. Sounds like Vijayanagara. However, to hold to such beliefs is considered heresy and sedition and punishable by a protracted and painful death.

  There is a ship in the port of London, chartered by the mercers and bound for Jezair, which the Ingerlonders call Alger, on the north coast of Africa. Alderman Dawtrey has arranged for the master to take this letter thus far. Well, it's a step in the right direction, and who knows?, it might get through to you.

  Your affectionate cousin and servant.

  Prince Harihara Raya Kurteishi

  Chapter Forty-One

  Dear Cousin

  What joy, what bliss! Through what adventures and vicissitudes I suppose we shall never know your letter, sent to me in answer to the one I sent to you from Calais nine months ago, has reached me. It was handed to me this morning by the mate of a cog that had just come in with barrels of a drink they call sack from Jerez in Spain, now in the hands of the Christians but still trading with the Arab port of Motril south of Granada. It has done our hearts immense good to know that four months ago at any rate all was well with you and the City of Victory, that indeed your new Bedu cavalry have had some success over the squadrons of the Bahmani sultans. We are glad, too, to learn that the extensive building programme you had planned before we left is now in hand and going well, and that the dispute with medical practitioners over free public health care has been resolved. Enlightened self-interest usually works.

  Since my first letter got through to you I must now assume that the later ones will do so too, so I shall not bore you with a recapitulation of these (though I shall ask Anish to provide a brief summary, just in case) but will instead bring you up to date with what has happened since I wrote to you a month after the summer solstice. Well, the answer for the first couple of months is – not a lot. The seventh, eighth and ninth months would undoubtedly, in this generally rainsoaked and wretched island, be the best for martial enterprises, since the sun achieves a certain warmth and, even after rain, dries the ground quite quickly. However, there is an abundance of new food in the land, first pulses and roots, then grain and fruit, and fodder for animals and the common people are loath to turn out for their lords and indeed many lords are loath to ask them to.

  The reason is clear once you realise that these three months provide, in a sudden rich harvest, the food off which the whole nation will feed for the rest of the year, and what is left ungathered will rot in the fields, creating shortages in the coming winter. So although we received a steady trickle of news that the Queen was first in Scotland and then in the north of Ingerlond raising a large army, she made no move on us, and this perhaps because this army was a figment, an unborn entity, a series of promises which, now, in the month they call October, are about to be fulfilled.

  Meanwhile, here in the south in London, not much has happened of importance either, until the last two weeks or so. The interim was filled with festivity and celebration on the part of Warwick, Fauconberg, Salisbury, March and the rest, much time spent in their absurd tournaments and even more in their absurd mode of hunting, which, as Ali warned us, really does consist of pursuing animals – yes, even foxes – across the countryside on horseback with dogs! When I suggested to these magnates that a more civilised way of proceeding would be to station themselves on the side of a valley with crossbows and have their followers drive previously corralled quarries in front of them within range of their engines, I was laughed at outright – even though I was prepared to use my crossbows to demonstrate what I meant! I know you disapprove of hunting of any sort but you must concede that my method is more civilised than that employed by these Inglysshe.

  However, generally speaking we have been treated with courtesy by the Yorkists and allowed to rent a substantial dwelling in a street called Lombard Street (it takes its name from the Milanese merchants who have settled there), hire servants and so forth, and all with the money we can get from selling the precious stones we brought with us. Rubies and pearls are especially valued and sell for prices that would amaze you, especially the former. They have hardly seen true rubies before and cannot believe the brightness of their colour or their hardness. Indeed the King's crown was reputed to have one set in it, very large, which once belonged to the Black Prince, the great-great-grand-uncle of the present king. I was shown this 'ruby', a dull, brownish stone, almost certainly a garnet.

  Where was I? Tournaments and hunting. And also a lot of dancing, something, would you believe? the lords and ladies do together rather than watching trained professionals. The result is, as you would expect, a certain lewdness of behaviour that leads to worse, especially when it is compounded with the drinking of vast amounts of alcoholic beverages.

  It has not all been pursuits of this sort. During this time the Yorkists, under Warwick, have consolidated their relationship with the City of London, giving the merchants more and more privileges and rights, restoring old ones taken by the Queen, and withdrawing those given, or rather sold, by her to the foreigners who trade here, especially the Germans of the Hanse.

  But what of York? Well, nothing, not for three months. This great man, this magnate, this man who had ruled before as Protector during an earlier fit of madness suffered by the King and who, it was said, would be king himself, on whose behalf great men had stirred themselves and many small men have been slain or maimed, remained in Ireland. But a week ago he came at last and. with one throw of the dice, seems to have lost it all.

  I have told you how much these superstitious people revere kingship, and what they call the Lord's Anointed. Well, Henry remains King Henry, and Richard Plantagenet remains merely Duke of York, however good his claim to be king. And duke he remains until he is anointed. Yet he came to London with trumpets before him, the sword of state unsheathed in front of him. This is a gigantic, ornamental affair of, again, mystical significance for these strange people. No one will deny, while barbarians exist, the necessity of swords, but to make a revered fetish out of such ugly things bespeaks psychopathology. Worst of all, banners were displayed with the lions and lily flowers that, undifferentiated with any other mark, are the King's alone. Thereby he lost the support of half his followers or more, who, fearing the fires of everlasting torment, would no longer side with him. Indeed this whole business led to a near terminal falling out between York and Warwick…

  At this point a page ended and I turned it over on to the pile of those I had already read. As I did so a splash of monsoon rain plopped on the comer furthest from me. I looked up. Ali had arrived by my side, was looking down at me with his one good eye gleaming in his destroyed face against a background of dragon eaves and purple sky. He was rubbing the swollen knuckles of his good hand against the cloth that covered his pigeon chest, while the claw of his left hand endeavoured to scrape bent nails through his ragged goatee beard.

  'You've no idea,' he rasped, 'what October was like in Ingerlond.'

  And he pulled up a cushioned chair and sat beside me, eye now almost sightless as it looked out across his garden, which seemed to burgeon even more beneath the evening downpour. He was high, high on bhang, I could smell it. He leant into the table between us and, taking a small hashish cake between his thumb and finger, popped it in his mouth. His eye glittered.

  He turned over the page of Prince Harihara's dispatch that I had just read, swallowed, then wiped his mouth on the sleeve of his bad arm. Nodded to himself a little. 'Read it,' he said, 'aloud. I'd like to hear it all through again.' I picked up the next sheet and, returning to the Prince's account, did as he asked.

  Warwick and his brother Thomas Neville were actually at our lodging in Lombard Street, buying pearls for his wife Anne. He had a jeweller with him who was picking out what he needed to make a coronet for the Countess, when a squire came banging through the doors demanding to see the Earl.

  York, he said, had arrived in Westminster, with a vast retinue, trumpeters and the offensive banners. Since it was known he had been at Abingdon, not f
ar from Oxenford, only two nights earlier, he had not been expected before evening at the earliest.

  Well, I was curious to know what this Dukc of York, who had caused so much trouble, was like, so Anish and I. with Ali too, all bundled behind Warwick to Westminster Hall, at the other end of the track called Strand, a distance of a couple of miles or so, and got into Westminster Hall, where Parliament was met, just ahead of the Duke.

  I think I told you in an earlier letter that I would explain what Parliament is when an appropriate time came, and this would seem to be it.

  Parliament is a large gathering, first, of all of the lords and magnates of the realm, then of the knights of the shires, as they arc called. These are landowners or holders, often chosen by their neighbours, a certain number from each shire or county, and all having a fair amount of wealth, which expressed in terms of income is at least forty pounds a year. Such is the general poverty of the country compared with ours, the buying power of forty pounds is about the equivalent of what a good temple dancer might earn in Vijayanagara, or a holder of a market stall. Yet in Ingerlond it is thought of as a noteworthy fortune. Anyway, these people are gathered together usually once every year by the King to ratify whatever laws he wants to have passed, or taxes raised, and so on. It is rare that any objection is made to what the King wants since those who come have been summoned by the King himself and it all seems something of a waste of time. It dates back. I believe, to customs that were in force and meant something before the Norman invasion four hundred years ago and was a sop to the Inglysshe sensibilities and traditions.