“It will be done,” I responded, “as should have been done long ago!” Glimmering in my robes, I rose from my throne, the candle light making a halo of my hair. “Now to hear Mass and to praise Him who has ultimately enabled this peace to come upon us. Then…to the bargaining table!”
The deal with the Scots was concluded swiftly and effectively, despite the years of hostility between our two countries. I would never fully trust a Scot but if I could forge ties that bound, it might prove the better for our two countries nonetheless. At least a breach in the treaty would result in more negotiations rather than outright war. As it was, a truce of three years was made, and my niece Anne de la Pole, sister to John, betrothed to young Prince James, heir of Scotland.
Once the treaty was duly signed and witnessed, we held great celebration in the castle on the rock. The Scots had brought their own pipers and other musicians, and the English court watched their wild dancing and antics in the great hall with a mixture of feigned disdain and eager admiration. As the wine flowed free, a few even joined in, and there was Scottish firewater being passed under the trestle tables.
At the end of it all, the Scottish delegates, bleary eyed from excess and looking the worse for wear, trundled off toward the north under my protection, and I was left feeling smug at my success. The treaty was signed; a marriage alliance had been undertaken. No one had been stabbed at dinner; in fact, no one had even suffered a bloody nose for either England or Scotland’s honour.
At one point I looped a companionable arm over the bony shoulders of Archibald Whitelaw, who had given that flattering oration upon the Scots’ arrival. “You are a splendid soul, Archibald!” I told him, when I had grown hazy and free-tongued from imbibing my best vintage wines, hauled by the barrel from the deep cellars in the caves under the keep. “About your speech…Do you really think I am god-like?”
I noticed nervous sweat gather on his thin upper lip. “Your Grace….” he began, embarrassed.
I roared with laughter. “I know, ’tis but the usual flatteries spoken in public address! But I like you anyway, Master Whitelaw! To the alliance of England and Scotland! To the success of the truce!” I raised my cup to him as a page refilled it.
“To England and Scotland!” Archibald Whitelaw said with a queasy smile, raising his own cup on high.
We both drank. And so it ended in amity.
Once the Scots had departed, I spent some quiet time in Nottingham with Anne. We visited the great priory at Lenton and the holy men in their hermitages hewn out of the rock at Sneinton. We purchased fine altarpieces of Nottingham alabaster—images depicting the Bosom of Abraham and the martyrdom of Thomas a Becket.
We prayed for a child…but there was none.
And bad news came, as it always seemed to, tainting my joy at the Scottish alliance. One of my fiercest foes, John de Vere, Earl of Oxford, long held in captivity in Hammes Castle in Calais, had escaped and fled to Paris along with his gaoler, James Blount, with whom he had struck up an unlikely friendship. Oxford had been imprisoned since 1474, and with Ned’s permission I had taken control of his aged mother’s lands in what perhaps had not been one of my finer deeds, though the old lady never came to any harm and it was not as if she has been sent to the streets to beg. John de Vere was a feared opponent and an unabashed Lancastrian and wanted to wreak his revenge upon the House of York.
It was time to return to London. We had long been away.
Leaving Nottingham, we crossed the Hethbeth Bridge with its small upright chapel, while the great castle, our Castle of Care, sank down at our backs, furled by the low-hanging clouds of winter.
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CHAPTER EIGHT: CHRISMAS REVELS
“The Rat, the Cat and Lovell our Dog,
All Ruled England under a Hog!”
Riding into London, the first thing that assailed my ears was a disrespectful ditty. Looking down from my steed, I saw a pack of grimy-faced street urchins singing as they danced around a steaming gutter in their rags. They were only four of five years of age, so young that perhaps they did not even know the meaning of the words they sang. Nonetheless, I felt my cheeks burn with embarrassed outrage.
A guard in my party turned to me, gruff-voiced, clutching his bill. “Your Grace, shall I arrest them?”
“Christ’s nails, man, they are but infants. Disperse them—no more.”
The man and his fellows took purposeful strides towards the gutter brats, waving their bills. The urchins shrieked and scattered into the ramshackle buildings on the roadside. Small, white faces appeared at the windows, pulling disrespectful faces.
The royal entourage trundled on towards Westminster.
Once inside the palace, I took to the council chamber with my companions, all glum and seemingly very disconcerted by hearing that seditious rhyme spoken aloud on the street. If Will Catesby was indeed a Cat, he was now one that had digested sour cream and was spitting, while Lovell affected the stance of an angry dog stalking about the room with hackles raised. As for Dick Ratcliffe, with his dark eyes glittering and his long, pointed nose thrust forward angrily, he did look a bit like a….
Unexpectedly, I began to laugh, a choking, bitter laugh. The others halted in whatever they were doing and stared at me as if I had gone mad. They had expected outright anger, not mirth.
“Well, it is laughable, isn’t it?” I threw myself into my high seat. Someone had left a tray of sugared almonds on the side; I popped them viciously into my mouth, one after the other. The sweetness would make my back teeth hurt like the devil but I cared not. “Though clever in its own, treacherous way…”
All within the room knew the author of the rhyme. William Colyngbourne, manager of my mother’s Wiltshire estates before he joined Buckingham’s rebels, had composed it. When the rebellion failed he went to ground but, an arrogant rogue, he did not stay silent and secret for long. In July, while I was busy in Scarborough manning the fleet, he scrawled his malicious doggerel on a scrap of parchment and pinned it to the doors of St Paul’s for the entire world to see.
The Paul’s Walkers, those men who lounged and gossiped all day in the church’s nave, had jumped on this new excitement with glee, and circulated the mocking words throughout London, from the lowest alehouses and the stews to the monastic houses and hospitals. All over London men laughed—at me, at my government.
I had sent out proclamations at once, condemning Colyngbourne’s behaviour and seeking to quell the inappropriate and treasonous mockery that followed the publication of the rhyme.
Colyngbourne had to die. A warrant was written for his arrest.
But not, as many fools believed, for composing a disrespectful poem.
His crimes were far greater than trying to embarrass his King with damning words.
William Colyngbourne was a spy for Henry Tydder.
Once he had entered London and fastened his poisonous rhyme to the doors of St Paul’s, my spies were able to track his movements to a disreputable inn on the city’s outskirts. A bag of coins was dangled before a greedy innkeeper; the man’s tongue loosened and the truth spilled forth.
Colyngbourne had contacted a local knave called Thomas Yate and offered him a handsome payment to take a message to Henry Tydder, imploring him to invade before the summer was out and take the crown. In addition, he advised Henry to inform the French Court that I planned to make war upon France and that any offers of peace I made were nothing but lies. That was treason of the highest order, not his stupid ditty.
Frank’s ire over hearing the poem repeated in the streets had dissipated. Earnest-faced, he came over to my side. “Although today it was but children who chanted Colyngbourne’s rhyme, such libellous nonsense must be nipped in the bud before it spreads. Before men think it is somehow acceptable to speak such treason. By Christ, Richard, he slandered you, the King! He called you a Hog! I mean, a hog is…”
“A male pig grown fat and with its bollocks cut off,” I said sharply,
rapping my knuckles on the table before me. Catesby made a choking noise, turned a mottled shade of red.
“Well, if that’s what he believes, it will be to his peril.” I grasped my dagger hilt as I often did when strain assailed me. My fingers coiled around the familiar pommel, smoothed by sweat, the cabochons set in it dulled from the salt of my palms. “I have been long away from London but now I am back and will brook no more mischief from this perfidious fellow. I have good leads on Colyngbourne’s present whereabouts. I will find him. And when I do…there will be no mercy.”
My agents scoured the city and beyond…and within the month they had hold of William Colyngbourne and his accomplice, an oafish dolt named John Turbyrville. I was jubilant. A trial would be held and adequate punishment given; a message would be sent to all those who dared defy me in such a manner.
Hopefully the news would reach John de Vere too, hiding at the French court and now bound to the lawless cause of Henry Tydder. Edward had once assured me that in some situations having a man’s fear surpassed having his love. I would put his words to the test. I had tried to win the people, killing only rebel leaders, letting the commoners go. I thought my mercy would be appreciated, I was wrong. How it pained my heart…
Colyngbourne and Turbyrville were brought into the heart of London in chains and sent for trial in the Guildhall, where Buckingham had first spoken of my rightfulness as King. Naturally I was not required to attend the proceedings, but many of the highest in the land gathered there to see justice done; Francis, Jockey Howard and his son, and Lord Stanley among them. The place, by reports, was packed to the rafters.
Turbyrville, it turned out, was merely a greedy, addle-pated fool who had been gulled into acting by the cunning Colyngbourne—he had been drunk when he stuck the rhyme on St Paul’s and unaware of the extent of his master’s loyalty to Henry Tydder. He could not read and was scarcely aware of the seriousness of the words he had helped display. No evidence of further misdoing could be found against him, so mercy was granted and instead of facing the executioner, he was sent to gaol to mull on his folly in choosing evil friends.
William Colyngbourne, however, had no defence to give. His crimes were clear. He had supported the Duke of Buckingham. He had used my mother’s lands to foment rebellion then abandoned them. He had tried to contact Tydder in an attempt to subvert the realm’s stability. He had written poison and shown it to the world, to make the crown a laughing stock.
After only a short period of deliberation, the panel of judges declared Colyngbourne guilty of high treason and sentenced him to death. As a commoner, he would not face the headsman’s axe, a relative luxury, as it was most times a quick death. Instead, he would endure a far worse fate, the worst possible, invented to instil terror into all potential traitors.
The erstwhile poet, wag and Tydder spy would be hung, drawn and quartered before a baying mob on Tower Hill.
When the trial was over and Colyngbourne and Turbyrville returned to their cells, Frank sought audience with me to tell me of the results. “I do not know what Colyngbourne expected for his treachery,” Francis grumbled, shaking his head. A winter storm had rolled in over London; droplets of rainwater sprayed from the ends of his curled fair hair, rather like the dog described by Colyngbourne…but I would never tell him so.
“When sentence was passed his screams of terror nigh cracked the windows in the Guildhall. The bailiffs had to wrestle him away as he begged for mercy.”
“He obviously thought Henry Tydder would arrive, waving his sword and save him,” I mocked. “Then shower him with gold for his loyalty. Bastard! His fate is well deserved.”
“Aye. He knew the price of discovery.”
“When?” I asked. Glowering, I leaned in a window embrasure; beyond the rain lashed down in sullen sheets.
“Two days. On Tower Hill, as usual. Huge crowds are expected; the news of the arrests travelled swiftly around London and even further afield.”
“And do my loyal subjects approve?” A trace of sarcasm deepened my voice.
A moment’s silence from Frank. “Most. But not all of them, Dickon. You know Henry’s supporters are out there, and those who believe…the lies. But most who attend the execution will care not either way—they will have come just to see a man die.”
“Yes,” I turned from the window and, listless and fretful, slumped into my chair. Although I had not attended the Guildhall trial, in my mind’s eye I could clearly see Colyngbourne, traitor to his King, traitor to my mother, whom he had sworn to serve, hauled screaming to the cell where he would spend the night before his death, while the stern, painted faces of Gog and Magog, guardians of London, frowned down upon his terror.
It should have pleased me; another rebel brought low. Strangely, it did not, for how many others like Colyngbourne were there?
The chill rain of the winter storm had ceased. Clouds now brooded, thunderous, tops still shot through with lightning. Hail threatened as the sky grew black. On Tower Hill a scaffold was erected, high, tall, so that even those far back in the crowd could see the gory spectacle. People gathered from miles around, creating a fair-like atmosphere in the streets and lanes around the base of the Tower walls
But it was no fair. They were not there to buy wool or linen, food for the table, or pretty gewgaws for maidens and mistresses to wear. They were there to savour blood. For the spectacle of a grisly traitor’s death.
That did not stop them from eating and drinking to excess, of course. The hawkers would be out in full force, selling jellied snap-jawed eels from the river and greasy pies filled with Christ-knew-what kind of rotting offal disguised by spices. The crowd would munch, chew, and imbibe even as the blood ran over the scaffold and into the gutters…
I had taken to the White Tower that morning; sat, alone, in a room near the top of Bishop Gundulf’s great keep, the strongest and most feared stronghold in all the land. It was so high up, I could see beyond the curtain wall to Tower Hill itself. It was far enough away that I could not determine individual figures amidst the crowds milling like ants, but a shaft of sunlight through the heavy clouds lit the scaffold as if to give me, and the expectant mob, a clearer picture of what torments took place there.
The executioners were entering the scene, two tiny doll-like shapes furled in black. They mounted the scaffold and began pacing, tense as caged lions, around a table smeared with unnameable stains and a fire brazier that burned with hellish intensity.
The table was for the disembowelling, the emasculation. The fire was where they would burn the criminal’s entrails before his eyes, while he yet lived.
Momentarily I turned away. The storm wind burned my eyes, made my head ache.
I was hiding in the dark, no candles lit at my request. My pages and squires were outside the door, awaiting any instructions, eager to attend my needs. I wanted to see no one, needed nothing. Only to know that it was done, and another traitor destroyed.
Outside I heard a roar from the waiting crowd, an awful primal sound filled with hate, fear, and a horrid jubilation. Colyngbourne must have arrived from his place of incarceration. Unpleasantly, my own heart began to beat harder, an uncomfortable thud below my ribs. I glanced towards the open window, looked out again at that distant gallows of the Hill. I could almost see, despite the distance—the small figure surrounded by pikemen, climbing the scaffold’s wooden steps with faltering tread. A drum rolled a tattoo of death. The crowd screamed again, frenzied, excited. The gulls from the river took off in great clouds, shrieking at the sudden human noise, their cries mingling with that of the surging horde.
I could see nothing now except the press of heaving the masses at the foot of the scaffold. Colyngbourne was off the gallows, cut down before death claimed him. He would still be alive, purple-faced and choking from the partial strangulation of the noose. They would strip him, castrate him, and the executioners open his bowels with a knife. His guts, those vile white ribbons that I had seen strung out across so many battlefields, would be r
ipped out by hand and cast into the burning brazier. In his last moment upon earth, the traitor would see his own innards burn before his dimming, tormented eyes.
Another frenzy of yelling and screeching came from the assembled mob; I saw them rush up against the scaffold, pushing and shoving in bloodlust and the pikemen holding them back with the tips of their weapons. Could I also hear Colyngbourne’s agonised screams mingling with the crowd’s clamour? The executioner must be busy with his final grisly duties now—and the servant of my adversary sent to Hell where he belonged.
My gut suddenly lurched as the wind carried a sudden waft of rancid smoke through the window. Smoke from the scaffold that bore the taint of burnt flesh. It was over. Now all that would be left to do was quarter the corpse and send the parts far and wide as a warning.
I slammed the window shutters with an almighty crash that reverberated throughout the upper floors of the Tower. “Bring me some wine!” I shouted to the pages hovering outside the closed door. If I needed naught before, I needed it now; my head reeled, though I knew not why. He deserved it, I was a soldier. “Bring it now. Now!”
The next morning Francis told me further details about Colyngbourne’s execution; he had been an onlooker, seeing that all was done correctly. “I could not believe my eyes and ears, Dickon. As Colyngbourne lay there on the table, half-hung, gelded, with the executioner reaching his hand into his guts, he suddenly looked at the crowd, almost like an actor playing to his audience and cried out, “Jesu, not more trouble!’ as if the entire event was some terrible jest, on him, on all of us. No more screaming, howling or begging for mercy. It was…uncanny and made the hairs stand up upon my neck. It did not seem natural. A moment later, he gave up the ghost.”
I, Richard Plantagenet: Book Two: Loyaulte Me Lie Page 28
