Under the Hog: A Novel of Richard III

by Patrick Carleton

  Amiens was still occupied by royal French troops. Duke Charles, cursing vilely, began to listen to his wife.

  The Duchess shook a little bell of ivory and silver that stood on her painted escritoire. The man who had been waiting in the passage came in: a short man, dark and attentive-looking, wearing the clothes of a pilgrim. She sealed her letter and held it out to him at arm’s length, saying in English:

  “This is only a letter of credence. I’ll tell you what you’ve to say in a minute. Have you decided which shrine you’ll be visiting?”

  “I’d thought of Canterbury, your Ladyship. It’s the most central, you see.”

  “Yes, a good idea: if by any chance you should really go there, you might offer a candle for our success. I mean that. Now listen. You’re to begin by telling the Duke of Clarence that their Lordships of Exeter and Somerset will be sailing for England very shortly, and they’ve been using very hostile language about him, and he may expect trouble from them when they land. They’ve been heard to say that once Queen Marguerite and her son cross over from France and are established in England again there’ll be no further need of him, and as Queen Marguerite hates all the house of York, it will be easy to find some means of getting rid of him.”

  “I quite understand, your Ladyship.”

  “That should make him reflect. Then if he goes on to speak of my brother the King, say that he and Duke Richard have had many messages from our friends in England. Say that if they were to return and enjoy their former state, neither of them would bear grudges, as their one desire is for trust and amity between all the children of our great father, sweet Jesus have mercy on his soul, and that is my desire also. You follow me?”

  “Perfectly, your Ladyship.”

  “Good: now go carefully here. If — only if — he shows you encouragement, you may say that his Grace King Edward has entered into a secret understanding with Duke Francois of Brittany, who will aid him in a brotherly manner to recover his kingdom.”

  “I’m very glad to hear it, my Lady.”

  “So should I be if it were true. He is going to write to Duke François, but the saints know if there’ll anything come of it. We must put our hopes on England. Tell Duke George to believe no tales that my brother and my husband are not in amity. They are only put about to deceive King Louis. Be firm in that; but don’t run before your horse to market. Sound him cleverly; and if you think he has begun to lean our way, then you may ask him — say that I ask him — what he has gained by destroying our father’s house, and whether his state is better now than when the Rose of Rouen was King.”

  “I will ask him that. He should know the answer, I think.”

  “So do I think. All he’s gained is the name of Duke of York and the Lieutenantship of Ireland that he had before. But there’s no telling where you have him: a weathercock. You must go to work carefully: nothing sudden. Get a word, if you can, with my lady mother or the Cardinal of Canterbury. You may be plain with them. Tell them I’m at my husband day and night to help us. The news of the Parliament has shaken him. Say my brother is writing to Brittany. My mother should sound Lord Stanley. He might take our part again. That family are always turning their coats. The Mowbrays have hated Lancaster ever since Richard of Bordeaux’s days. We shall need to hire German ships, I think. My brother and Lord Rivers are going to Bruges soon on that business. Tell my mother if she can send a thousand pounds it would be blessed. Be on your way now. If you’re taken and tortured, hold fast to your faith, and confess nothing. All saints be good to you.”

  The man bowed with a jerk; had gone. The Duchess of Burgundy placed for a second the palms of her hands upon her eyes. It was a gambler’s game that she was playing, matching against Kingmaker and the soft, fluid devilry of the Christian King nothing stronger than her husband’s grudged help and the chance that George, with his too-small eyes and his loud voice, since he had been a traitor once, might be a traitor twice. She felt hope suddenly leak out of her and leave her empty. The odds were ruinous. Queen Marguerite and her son were still in France, but at the first word that Edward was in England again surely they would be across the Channel in King Louis’ ships, with King Louis’ mercenaries, to join the Earl. Forty thousand, fifty thousand men might take the field for the red rose, swords, axes, pikes, crossbows and longbows, big iron and brass guns on their carriages, horses trampling the fields to mud, ranks spreading out of sight on either side, vanward, middleward and rearward, drawn up before some quiet market-town to roll over and stamp flat a slender company of Yorkists. Edward would die like his father in a ringfence of enemies. She stood up and crossed herself, meaning to pray. There were two faces in her mind. One was long from eyes to chin, its small mouth tilting ironically upward at the corners: face of Kingmaker, the unmaker of Kings. Edward’s was the other, smooth as a boy’s, with the straight Plantagenet nose and arched, fine eyebrows, the wide eyes matching the sapphires in the ring he wore. He was smiling; had smiled himself and smiled all England and Burgundy into this coil of troubles; smiled at a woman, laughed at a jealous friend, and paid with a kingdom. My husband is a cruel man, thought the Duchess, with devils of arrogance and anger all at rage in him. But Edward is, by far, more terrible; is ruinous because people love him. His charm will bring more sorrows into God’s world than Charles’ anger or Louis’ policy or Queen Marguerite’s hate. Bright Mary, star of the sea, help me to help him out of his troubles for now.

  CHAPTER TWO

  FOG

  (England: 1471)

  Entre vous, Franchois,

  Jectez pleures et larmes.

  Vervic, votre choix,

  Est vaincu par armes.

  Burgundian popular song, fifteenth century.

  MARCHING and going on marching down the uneven roads and sleeping where he could, sweating under his leather jack and catching his feet in ruts, was all he had seen up to now of soldiering.

  His name was Young Ralph at Mill, but now they were all calling him Ralph Miller. He was tired of carrying heavy cornsacks. When they said in his village that Sir William Parr was getting men together to fight for a King — they could not tell which — he went up to the Manor and they gave him his jack and a pike and an old steel sallet. His cousin, Red Tom, was a man-at-arms of Sir William’s and knew him again. They were nicer to him than people had been in the village; and Sir William mustered them all in the park and said he was going to pay them threepence a day. So they marched to Nottingham, and found the city as full as at Goose Fair, and everyone armed, and heard tales. He could understand part of them. The York King, Edward, the one Kingmaker chased out last year, had come back; was at Doncaster. Some people said he had taken an oath not to fight the mad King, King Harry; only wanted his friends to come with him to London, in arms, to ask King Harry to give him his dukedom again. Red Tom grinned and asked Ralph: “Isn’t it likely?” When they marched out for Leicester they were more men than Ralph ever saw in his life: fellows in sallets and jacks like his own, and men-at-arms in real steel armour like Tom’s, and archers by hundreds. Knights rode among them, steel from sole to crown, metal men. But Red Tom pulled a face and said:

  “I don’t like this. If these’re all the friends Edward Longlegs has got, he’d ’ve been better to stay out of England.”

  “Nay, but Tom, there’s crowds of us.”

  “Crowds, you holy innocent: d’you know how many we had at Towton when we beat the old Queen? Forty thousand. There’s not four thousand here.”

  “What was Towton like, Tom?”

  “Like hell: snowing fit to cool the devil, and the Lancastrian thieves on top of the goddam’ hill and us at the bottom of it, and the Duke of Norfolk was late bringing his men up. Seven hours of it and twenty-seven thousand dead at the upshot: Christ keep me out of another field like Towton.”

  “Will we likely have to fight a field this journey?”

  “Oh, holy St. Anthony, what d’you think you’ve got that toothpick in your hand for: to scratch your arse with?” The men b
egan to talk about what their captains were planning and who their enemies were. They were heading for Newark to fight the Earl of Oxford, they said. He was a famous captain and his soldiers came from East Anglia; would be as stout as trees. Then it was said he had retreated, and they turned back to Leicester again. Then a new name began to be spoken from file to file, under the breath mostly: “Kingmaker.” He was at Leicester, the great Earl, with an army. Ralph didn’t pretend he knew much, but he knew what that meant. Tom told him how Kingmaker fought at Towton when he was friends with King Edward. There had been dead men round him, heaped up like faggots. He hefted his long pike in his hands; wondered what it was like to see one of those knights coming down at you, swinging his sword about.

  “Jab at his horse,” Tom said, “in the neck if you can. It’s worth it. There’s pickings on a dead lord if you’ve time to strip him. I got one at Towton: ten angels and a gold ring with stones in it.”

  Eh, thought Ralph, you could buy land with that.

  No battle was drawn up in front of Leicester. They marched into the town, and people watched them out of windows. But Kingmaker had been there; had marched out the day before, with seven thousand men wearing the ragged staff and the silver saltire, the townsmen said, and taken the Coventry road. Was he running away? Waiting for reinforcements more like, the old soldiers said. It was his fashion. His brother, Marquis Montacute, had one army and Lord Oxford another. They would all three join, and then the dance would start. The only comfort was that men were coming into Leicester in troops of two and three hundred at a time, very well arrayed, saying they were for Lord Hastings and the white rose. Ralph had seen Lord Hastings once or twice, a handsome, dark-faced gentleman in splendid armour. It would seem he had friends in these parts. Their own Lord, Sir William, had given them a quarter-royal each as advance on wages. That was a lot of money. He went with Tom and two lads in his village to an inn in a fine street and they had strong beer and broth and beef and a capon and white bread; drank Lord Hastings’ health and Edward of York’s.

  “And he can take his crown again as well as his dukedom for all of me,” Tom said. “He’s a soldier, and he’s got what you might call the looks for a King. I banned him when he brought that new-fangled money in, it’s so cursedly hard to reckon it, but I’d as soon him as Holy Harry.”

  They had another gallon between them, and one of Sir James Harrington’s men came in, swaying and bedazed, drunk as a gleeman’s bitch. He pointed to them and stammered: “Have you heard it?”

  “Heard what, man?”

  “The talk of the town: goddam’ Duke of Clarence coming this road with seven thousand men to join Kingmaker. I’ve some of my pay left, and I’m going to have a Mass said for me when I’m dead.”

  It was true, too. They were all roused out of the town and on the road by dawn. It seemed very unkind to Ralph that the Duke of Clarence should be for fighting his own brother; but, then, he didn’t understand Lords’ policies: they were too high for him. Red Tom was glum and would not talk much, except to say there were a bare six thousand of them and Clarence and Kingmaker would have twelve thousand between them at the smallest.

  “We’ll be shent,” he said.

  They marched a sullen day over the flat Leicestershire plain, touched by spring, from Narborough to Hinckley, from Hinckley to Nuneaton, places and names that he had never heard of. He felt hideously far from home. The men who knew the countryside began to whisper to each other.

  “Making for Coventry,” he heard one say, and Red Tom answered:

  “Aye, it’s our only chance.”

  “But isn’t Kingmaker there?” he asked.

  “Why yes, addlewit: Edward’s best play’s to try the issue with him before the Duke comes. You’ll see a field, my lad, before you’re two days older.”

  He saw, in the doubtful owl-light when his thighs ached with marching, a city with a wall and trees about it. Someone pointed to a spire, standing up black against the sunset, and said: “Christ’s Church.”

  He leaned on his pike and looked and looked. The men all round were silent. He knew why. Under the spire, inside the walls that had the red West like a threatening flag behind them, the great Earl was. They had come South for this: to stand and wait and look, whilst shadows closed in on them, until Kingmaker sounded his trumpets and rushed out destructively. The men’s faces were lined, pensive under the curved brims, shiny with sunset, of their sallets. They turned their tired eyes on the city. Ralph looked from one to another of them. They had been good to march with and they might all be dead to-morrow. He did not understand the garboyles of the two Kings and two roses; but he knew the tales of Kingmaker that were told in his village. Kingmaker had won bloody victories; had defeated everyone. He was rich past words. The money that a plain man saw in the whole of his life would not amount to the price of his horse or his bed-hangings; and his castles were everywhere. When he was in a town, any fellow could come in his kitchen; take as much cooked meat away as would go on a dagger. He never missed it. Kingmaker was more of a matter than forty Kings. It seemed unnatural for the armoured captains to be riding through their ranks now, giving orders to forage and bivouac. Could they mean them to go to sleep so close to the Kingmaker?

  There was a queer thing next morning. They were wakened by trumpets, having slept with their jacks on and their pikes beside them. Their own lord. Sir William, was in the saddle already, harnessed except for his helmet, and shouting out in his loud angry voice: “Come on there. Stumble up there. Follow on after me.”

  All over the fields in which they lay, knights and captains were getting their files together, leading them down to the crossroads. There was a vast crowd there and banners were showing. Ralph had learned some of the blazons. The white boar with the golden bristles belonged to Edward of York’s young brother, the Duke of Gloucester, an easy one to remember; and Edward’s own device he could see too: a white rose inside a gold sun with rays all round it. There were men of all sorts streaming down to join the crowd. He saw some queer ones with good armour and beards, that he had not noticed before. A man near him said:

  “There go the Flemings.”

  Sir William pushed his horse through the mob, and they followed behind him. There was a clear space in the midst of the crowd, a ring kept by knights and lords, wearing sur-coats of all sorts of colours over their armour, sitting their horses and looking proud and solemn. It was still misty, and the breaths of the crowd made smoke, but the sun streamed pure fire over the armour, blue, white and black, so that men’s heads and shoulders burned. It was all gorgeous for Ralph to see. The Lords were like saints and angels shining each in his place. Their horses were big and beautiful, standing stock-still, with gay saddle-cloths and their tackle all polished. He could see into the middle-space, peering between Sir William’s horse and another’s. There were people on horseback: Lord Hastings for one, and a tiny little man on a white horse who must be the Duke of Gloucester. There were heralds on foot, holding trumpets. But there in the middle, high on a black horse, wearing armour of black and gold, was someone he knew in a flash. No one but Edward of York could so tower like a ship’s mast over the rest of the crowd. His helmet was off, and his hair, the colour of copper, took the light like his harness. Ralph gazed. He had been King of England once. Suddenly a great blare of trumpets ripped open the silence, and a man’s voice sounded, sing-songing words, such fine language that Ralph understood only half of it:

  “We, Edward, by the Grace of God and by lawful inheritance King of England and France and Lord of Ireland …”

  He gulped, excitement thrilling him; caught more words:

  “… resume and take upon us again the said right, title, dignity and estate of the crowns of the realms of England and France and of the lordship and land of Ireland, of right, law and custom appertaining to us, as well by inheritance as by lawful election …”

  He puzzled what could lawful election mean; missed something and then listened again.

  “… pardo
n and oblivion for all such offences by them committed, except only such as are capital enemies to our said crown and dignity, without punishment of whom good peace and prosperity of this realm cannot be had, and except all such as at this time make any resistance against us …”

  Nay, he thought, but the tales I’ll have to tell when I get home: me hearing all this like as if I was a fine Parliament gentleman.

  “… all well-disposed persons of this realm to take and repute the said Henry of Lancaster, calling himself King of England, to be our rebel and traitor, and neither to comfort nor assist him as they would eschew our heavy indignation. Long live King Edward!”

  Then it seemed as though the pale March sky would split. The tearing noise of trumpets and loud burst of voices went up together, making the eardrums shake. “King Edward! King Edward!”

  They waited all day for Kingmaker to come out of Coventry, and had no ease in their waiting, watching the roads and walls and listening for music. The old men said, who had seen wars before, that Edward had chosen today for calling himself King again so as to draw Kingmaker like a badger and fight him before Montacute came from the North or Clarence from the West. Archers that day saw to the feathers of their arrows and tried their bows out. Such armourers as were with them lighted fires, and one heard everywhere the quick, sweet language of their little hammers: ting-tingtang. But no men with the silver X on their tunics and banners of ragged staves moved out across the green-and-brown March fields. Christ’s Church tower and the castle looked at each other. Smoke flickered up from chimneys, and the city was shut like a box, and mute.