The King's Bed

by Campbell Barnes, Margaret

  He was carried away by their talk of roof vaulting and dazzled by the prospect of carved statues. But it all seemed of a richness, and designed on such a scale as to be too large and sumptuous even for the tomb of a king. Moreover it seemed that a dispute was going on between Westminster and Windsor about the removal of poor Henry’s corpse from the royal chapel there, a dispute of which the issue was still so uncertain that it must be referred to the Pope himself. To pull down and to build on such a scale on the chance of gaining his Holiness’s permission to re-inter seemed to Dickon the height of imbecility, and in all that Henry Tudor had so far done, he had shown himself to be no fool And while he wondered about this, the Vertue brothers went on talking about vaults. Vaults beneath a marble-tiled floor. And as far as Dickon knew, all important personages were buried above ground, their coffins placed within their carved tombs. Wooden effigies, clothed in the best garments of the deceased, and complete with painted waxen faces which had been made like masks upon the dead by chandlers, were placed on biers beside them until moth or time destroyed them.

  “It is a new idea to put the coffins on shelves beneath the tombs,” explained Dale, seeing how puzzled he was.

  “But so — so impersonal,” complained Dickon. ‘When one looks at a beautifully-wrought tomb one likes to think that the body of the person it commemorates is in it.”

  Robert Vertue leaned forward, holding out to him the rough sketch of a grand tomb with stairs leading down to an immense vault in some crypt below. “But, you see, Broome, the tomb as we know it has limitations. There would be room for man and wife, and perhaps their children. But with this idea of family vaults, there would be ample room for more than one generation. For — shall we say? — a whole dynasty.”

  Dickon saw that perfectly, but was still mystified. “But poor, simple, saintly Henry the Sixth. His wife and son are both dead. And he seems to have been, by all accounts, an inefficient weakling.” Dickon waved a hand towards the drawing and treated the master mason to his most attractive smile. “His slender bones could scarcely fill all this — ”

  There was a suggestion of embarrassment in the ensuing silence, so that for the first time Dickon felt that they had been holding back something of importance from him. But either because Robert Vertue was bemused by the smile, or because he needed everyone’s full co-operation in order to get the work set in train before his own strength failed, he decided to take the young mason into his complete confidence.

  “You may as well know now as later, since Master Dale vouches for your discretion,” he said, leaning back rather wearily in his chair. “The honour to be paid to that other Lancastrian monarch is only a beginning. A popular move, perhaps, to gain the Abbot’s consent, to raise the necessary money. For what we are going to do will cost vast sums of money. Hundreds of those shining new sovereigns which the King is having minted. It will be an age-long memorial to the Tudor family, to a whole flourishing dynasty. And now that his first son is born his Grace is all the more anxious that we should overcome the initial obstacles and begin.”

  Slowly Dickon laid the wonderful drawing down on the table. Slowly full comprehension seeped into his brain. Incredulously, he strove to accept it. “You mean — this will be Henry the Seventh’s chapel — to house his family tomb?” he stammered, too aghast to put his question more formally.

  And Robert Vertue, seeing him so overcome, warmed to what he supposed to be the astounded excitement of his questioner. “Yes. And every spare moment he devotes to it. Although it may be months before we can clear the site and begin, he is already making plans and inventories with his own hand. He is a better business man than many of his Treasurer’s clerks, and a genius at raising money. He is as proud of his kingly Welsh ancestry through Cadwallader as of his blood through John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster, third son of King Edward the Third. This tomb and chapel will hold him for ever in men’s memories as the founder of a great Tudor dynasty.”

  “While the mutilated body of the last Plantagenet lies mouldering and unmourned beside the Soar.” Dickon found himself carrying on a silent conversation as Tansy used to when she dared not comment aloud to her step-mother.

  “Abbot Islip himself is beginning to be caught up in our vision, and he is no mean builder,” went on Robert Vertue. “There will be a fine east window, the roof vaulting will be talked of from here to Rome. You will meet some of the finest architects, designers in glass, joiners and bronze workers in the world. The King is thinking of persuading the celebrated Torrigiano to come from Italy to make the actual effigies on the tomb itself. He has even thought up an apt and effective device to be carved recurringly upon the corbels or possibly upon the surrounding grill.”

  “What sort of a device?” stammered Dickon, accustomed only to the old escutcheon of leopards couchants and fleurs-de-lys used by the Plantagenets.

  “A golden crown resting on a thorn bush, in memory of Bosworth,” put in William Vertue, unwittingly adding the final factor to a half-formed decision.

  “My father’s treacherously stolen crown,” echoed Dickon’s mind. “And I am expected to decorate a Tudor’s memorial by carving them — recurringly!”

  “It will not be only men of note who will be working on it; There will be other young men, too,” said Robert Vertue kindly, noting the young mason’s silence. “Men of promise like you, because we must keep alive the art of building in this land. I myself may not have long to live, but before I go I long to see something of this beauty rising. And after my brother and I are dead, who knows but what you yourself might rise to be King Henry’s master mason?”

  Dickon saw the other two men looking at him with fresh interest — almost with awe. “But I would sooner die than be Henry Tudor’s mason!” said his inmost mind.

  They went on talking technicalities and discussing how much labour they would need, and he stood there cold and still as one of the statues they had described.

  Presently Hurland Dale thanked them for inviting him to see their plans and, as the meeting seemed about to break up, turned with an air of relaxation to depart. “Well, Broome, you are made,” he said cheerily, clapping him on the shoulder. “And no one is more pleased than I.”

  “One moment, Dale, I shall need you,” broke in the business-like voice of William Vertue, who was gathering up his estimates. “I need scarcely tell you, Broome, that it may be weeks before we start work. We will let you know, of course. I understand you live at Richmond, not far from my brother’s country home. But there is a contract to sign, including a promise to keep silence about all we have told you until such time as it becomes common knowledge. You had better sign now, while Master Dale is here to witness it.” He held out a pen with one hand, while holding down an unrolled sheet of parchment with the other. “Come, sign, man, so that we can all get to our dinners,” he added impatiently, tired of holding out the pen.

  “Come, come,” urged Dale, shamed by his proteges slowness. “There is no difficulty. Builders’ contracts are not in Latin now.”

  “No, my father changed all that,” thought Dickon. “Not that it would make any difference to me if it were. But he knew his tenants and soldiers personally and was human enough to appreciate their difficulties.”

  “All you have to do is to sign here,” went on Dale, with a guiding finger on the document. “I, Richard Broome, agree to give my services as a mason in the building of King Henry the Seventh’s chapel at such and such a salary’ — or whatever the exact words are — ”

  “And since the King himself will be paying your salary, it will be considerable!” commented Master William dryly.

  “To take money to glorify the Lancastrian dynasty, I should need to be a second Judas!” thought Dickon.

  “Well, young man, are you struck dumb?” demanded the King’s mason testily.

  Dickon moved then, and came closer. He looked across the table at the ageing master mason with heart-felt admiration. “Sir, if I lived a hundred years I could not express my gratitude, o
r the deep — the humble — exaltation I feel because you have judged my work worthy to be of use to you. But I can neither accept nor sign.”

  Unconsciously he opened his fine skilled hands in a dramatic gesture of renunciation, as if he were relinquishing something as precious as the Holy Grail.

  Dale stared at him aghast. “Sirs,” he intervened. “He is always like this … It is lack of self-confidence, nervousness, I know not what. You remember, Master Vertue, how he was before his examination?”

  ‘Yes, I remember. And I understood. The humility of an artist who would give all he has, but fears it is not good enough.” He looked at the young man, marvelling how one so unhappy could look so coldly proud. “But this time I do not understand. It is not that he fears to give — but that for some mawkish reason he will not.”

  With quiet dignity he rose from his chair and turned away, finished with the matter.

  “You mean — you refuse?” exclaimed the two other men.

  Dickon turned to Hurland Dale almost pleadingly. “It is something which I cannot do,” he began, but Dale cut him short in envious fury. “It is something which any other jumped-up nobody would give his eyes to do!”

  “I would sooner go on as I am,” Dickon forced himself to say.

  But Hurland Dale flushed with anger. “That you will not do, by Heaven!” he vowed. “Ingrate that you are, you have made a fool of me, and insulted the greatest men in our craft. I wash my hands of you.”

  ”Let the dog lie, who is too dull to hunt his chances,” soothed Master William. “There are plenty of others. Though none, I fear, from your kennel, friend Hurland.”

  They bent over a list of names, discussing them, striking out a name here and there. Dickon left them at it and walked blindly towards the door. As he opened it he looked back at the comfortable room, comparing his feelings of elation when he had first seen it so short a time ago with his present misery. He knew himself to be infinitely worse off than if he had never entered it. Already, to the three men at the summit of his craft, he no longer existed. There would never be any niche for his name upon any future scroll of fame.

  23

  “No one in London will give me work now that Hurland Dale has dismissed me. It is not fair to you. But say that you understand,” entreated Dickon. “That you know I could not bring myself to help beautify a memorial to the Tudor.”

  “I think that I should have despised you if you had,” answered Tansy slowly. “Though I am sure that many — placed as you are — would have done it for the dazzling prospects and the money.”

  “There cannot be many who are placed as I am,” said Dickon bitterly.

  It was long after midnight, and he and Tansy were still crouched over the dying fire in the cottage where they had known such happiness.

  When he had first come home and told her, all their high hopes had turned to gall. He had stumbled in from the stable, and she had not stirred. Although she had been waiting for him all day, she had not even recognized his step, which was usually so firm and buoyant. But when she looked up and saw his face she had rim to him, comprehending his misery before ever he spoke a word. He had looked much as he had after the mob had chased him in Leicester — wan with strain and suffering — and she had pulled him inside and shut the door as she had then. “I have lost even what work I had,” he had said, with complete and instant honesty. And she had drawn him to a chair, brought him reviving wine, and listened with her whole compassionate heart, just as she had listened to his story after Bosworth.

  “I am a poor sort of husband. You would be well rid of me,” he said. “It is not right that you, too, should pay the price of bastard Plantagenet birth.”

  “You are the husband I want,” soothed Tansy, kneeling on the floor beside him. “And if the celebrated Vertues sent for you, what went wrong? Why am I to be pitied?”

  He had told her then, word for word, everything that had happened. The shock of it had nearly caused her to swoon, but she rested her forehead on his knee and said nothing until the faintness passed.

  “I could have grown rich — famous perhaps — by making a fine monument to my father’s murderer,” he said more than once.

  “King Richard was killed in battle,” corrected Tansy.

  “As he would have wished to be. But this was murder by treachery. By sheer quality as a soldier, he should have won that battle. From the little hill where I stood I saw him hack his way through the Tudor’s bodyguard, one man against scores, until the Stanleys betrayed him and struck him down. Only a few more paces — and he would have killed this usurping Tudor in fair fight, and the Tudor knew it. Single-handed, he was no match in skill and courage. And had he been slain the treacherous Stanleys would have pretended they were still on Richard’s side. Such grasping curs must always be on the winning side. And I — had I accepted this alluring offer — should have been a bigger traitor than any of them. A Judas, betraying my master for money.”

  “It would not have been for the money alone,” said Tansy, with maturing insight. “Through love I can share your feelings, but I doubt if any uncreative person can know how much it cost a craftsman like you to refuse.”

  “It was a terrible temptation,” admitted Dickon more simply, beginning to relax. “But had I succumbed I know that I should not have been able to put in my best work. Something would have held me back. And that would have been perhaps the worst punishment of all. Anyway, my sweet love,” he added, achieving a tender smile, “I am glad that the awful moment of decision is over.”

  “And I shall always be proud beyond words that you did not succumb.”

  Tansy had coaxed him to sup then, and made some pretence of doing so herself. He had eaten ravenously, with no idea what he swallowed. Between them, they even achieved a land of rueful merriment. “You must think that my sole accomplishment is to refuse delectable offers,” he said. “That fantastic pretender business, and now this.” Unfortunately, this was his whole life, and he almost broke down, covering his face with both hands. “I, who worked so hard as a ’prentice and was so sure I would achieve something worthwhile.”

  “But how you were handicapped, my love!” consoled Tansy, drawing his bowed head against her breast. “One offer was made, and the other refused, because of your strange birth.” They had sat by the fire, far into the night, trying to face frightening reality with common sense. And in those quiet hours Dickon came to learn that even the fierce, tender ecstasy of physical love was by no means the crown of marriage. And even to guess, perhaps, that any woman who is capable of motherhood must always have known this. He realised that although he had more wisdom of the mind, Tansy had a deeper intuition of the heart. And in the close communion of shared difficulty and disappointment the spiritual side of their marriage was consummated that night.

  “Are you certain that Master Dale will not take you back?” she asked, after they had sat silent for a while.

  “A man does not easily forgive being made to look foolish before his superiors. Nor condone such apparent ingratitude. No one could expect him to.”

  As they talked quietly in the firelight, Tansy saw her husband’s profile grow set and strong again against the glow. “We must accept it. The whole trade will hear that he has dismissed me. No builder in London will employ me now.”

  “You are at home now, where no one condemns you.”

  “Tansy, Tansy, what a sweet fool you were to marry me!”

  “The problems that kings create when they beget bastards!” she sighed pitifully, smoothing back his disordered hair as he bent over her. “I have often wondered, Dickon, do you not sometimes wish that King Richard had never told you?”

  He turned her hand over and kissed the palm slowly, giving the matter thought. “No. Particularly as he cared for my up-bringing. Knowing has made me somebody. Having no people, no background, I was nothing before. I grew accustomed to it, of course. But sometimes when I heard other fellows talk of going home for May Day or Twelfth Night, or saw their mothers
smile at them — ”

  “Oh, Dickon, that must be why I sometimes feel like both wife and mother to you”

  “You are the whole world to me.”

  “Except your craft. Alas! I cannot make up for what you have lost in that.”

  “No. Nothing and no one can. But I must learn to face it. It is no longer a matter of ambition and high success. The simple facts are that we must eat, and that I have no employment at all.”

  “We can live for quite a long time on the money from the Boar — ”

  “Do you think I have no pride, Tansy?”

  “You are eaten up with it.” She laid a hand quickly on his arm, to wipe out the asperity of her words. “But it is the right kind of pride. And, oddly enough, it is counterbalanced by your true humility.”

  Seeing how tired she looked, he rose and lit a candle to light them up the stairs. “Even though our whole world be changed, we must get some rest. To-morrow I will go out and look for work,” he said.

  Most of the night they lay awake, each, for the other’s sake, pretending to sleep. “He could not have heard me, when I called after him yesterday that I might have good news for him,” thought Tansy, as the light of dawn began to glimmer through the willows along the river bank. “If he had heard he would surely have asked about it. He loves me too much just to forget. But I cannot tell him now. Since he has no wages coming in, perhaps my hope that we are going to have a child is not such good news after all!”

  She rose with the sun to sweep the hearth and set out the platters for their breakfast, but Dickon did not come down. She found him lying, hands clasped behind his head, staring at the ceiling. “I thought you were going to look for work,” she said, almost reproachfully.