Under the Hog: A Novel of Richard III

by Patrick Carleton

She did not answer at once; was startled. The man came forward a foot or two and said:

  “In God’s great name, Madam, I am the Duke of Somerset with news of the first urgency for the Queen. Oh, Christ’s passion, êtes-vous Française? Alors, écoutez-moi. Je suis le Duc de Sombrasset …”

  “I am English, my Lord Duke.”

  Somerset: the man in the shadow between the hearth and the door was Edmund Beaufort, a great Lancastrian. The hate between her family and his was old and personal; transcended politics, so that St. Albans and Wakefield, Sandridge and Towton and Hexham had been as much battles of Neville and Beaufort as of York and Lancaster. Her father, almost as often in the secure old days as he had talked of Queen Marguerite and her bastard, had talked of the Bloody Beauforts.

  He came right into the firelight now: a big, heavy-boned man in sopping clothes and with his wet bonnet still on his head and wet black curls coming from under it.

  “Your pardon: to whom have I the honour to talk? Perhaps you will carry a message from me to the Queen’s Grace. I am sorry I spoke so rudely, but I am over-tired.”

  His face was a little reddened with weather, broad across the cheekbones, with a thin, short nose and a pointed chin. His black eyebrows were very heavy and sullen, but there was nothing horrible about him. Steam began to rise from his soaked clothes in the warmth of the fire.

  “The Queen’s Grace is over-tired, too. We were seventeen days stormbound at Dieppe, and the road here from Weymouth was cruel. Must we break her rest now? Look how you’re wet. You’ll have an ague. Sit down by the fire and I shall send for some wine.”

  The Duke of Somerset shoved both palms against his forehead; then drew them slowly down across his face. He said in a slow, wondering voice, as though the discovery surprised him:

  “If I drink anything now I shall be drunk.”

  “Sit down and rest, then, at least. Have you ridden far?”

  He twitched his bonnet off; dropped his cloak round his feet; groped backward for the chair opposite hers. He moved like a man who has been tortured, put to the brake.

  “From London.”

  “Tell me your news before we trouble the Queen. There’s not been a battle?”

  He nodded.

  “Yesterday at Barnet Heath, in the morning.”

  She found that her hands jerked up suddenly and came together at the level of her breasts.

  “Who had it, sir? Who had it?”

  “Edward of York.”

  He went on in a shout, leaning forward and shouting up to her face:

  “Gone, all gone, everything that we had our hopes in: there was sorcery. Edward’s neocromancers darkened the sun against us; made our guns shoot wide. The fool Oxford broke his ranks and rode off on a wild-goose chase. Then someone cried treason, and that opened the pit of hell. I heard old soldiers calling out to Christ to have mercy on them in the fog. Christ has no mercy for Lancaster, Madam, or the Earl of Warwick would be alive now.”

  It was as though one of the great guns had boomed suddenly in her ears: a ringing shock of noise, explosion, blowing out the light in the brain.

  She became unaware of her own body, or aware of it only as a downward tube through which her blood and senses were emptying into the ground. There was no realisation and no pain. She put her hand against the wall in order to feel that it was there. Presently, through the echoes in her mind, she heard him talking.

  “Does that give you a start now? He was killed yesterday, the great Kingmaker who ruined all our fortunes and was going to restore them all again. I tell you Christ has no mercy for Lancaster, or why did he preserve that master-traitor of the world in a dozen rebellions against us and drop him dead the first time he drew his sword for the true blood? He killed my father at St. Albans and prospered after it. His brother sent my brother to the scaffold and God did nothing: but when our Queen was so reduced at last that she would even make alliance, alliance of blood, with him — the subject who dared call himself a maker of Kings — if he would undo what he had done, then down with him to join my father and my brother and every other honest Lord he ever butchered. All the good he did us in the last winter’s died with him. Edward of York’s back in London. Our holy King Henry’s in the Tower again: and all we’ve gained is the marriage of our Prince to a dead rebel’s daughter.”

  She said, not speaking to him, speaking to assure herself that she had still the use of her mouth:

  “Holy Mary have pity on me.”

  “Holy Mary have pity on all of us. Who are you if you want pity more than the Queen? I’ve this news to tell to her yet: our greatest hope smashed, and she’s gained nothing, nothing at all on earth, by stooping to make that shameful marriage for her son. Or look at my case. Seven years I’ve been an exile in Burgundy waiting for the red rose to flower: and now by God it’s flowered. I shook hands with my father’s murderer for nothing. Don’t I need pity?”

  “My lord, if we have both lost our fathers we can pity one another.”

  The Duke looked oddly at her and heaved himself with a grunt out of his chair.

  “You have not told me who you are, Madam.”

  “The Princess Anne.”

  “God forgive me,” said Edmund Beaufort, and went down slowly on his knees.

  Shameful marriage, she thought, marriage of our Prince to a dead rebel’s daughter: he thinks the words have hurt me.

  “Stand up, sir; I do not know why you kneel.”

  “I am kneeling for pardon, your Grace. As God sees me, I did not know who you were.”

  “Who are we, any of us? It does not matter. But stand up, and for charity’s sake tell me how my father died.”

  The Duke had to help himself to his feet by the chair-arm. She thought: He must be dead weary with riding. But he blessed himself formally and slowly. The titles of his hereditary enemy rolled in his mouth as though he were a herald at a tournament.

  “Madam, your great father, the high and noble Earl of Warwick, Aumarle and Newburgh, Grand Chamberlain and premier Earl of England, fought like a second Hector yesterday; never budged a foot while there was hope; and when he did retreat, it was with his sword in his hand after his people had thrown down their weapons and run past him. I saw him almost at the end, Madam. A common pikeman, one of the North-country scum Edward had with him, tried to trip him with his pike. He turned and cut him in two. I lost him then, but I have heard he got to his horse and rode into a little wood. Its name is Wrotham Wood. There is no way out of it. They surrounded him there, and he gave up his soul to Christ, by whom I pray that he has been accepted.”

  “Thank you, sir. That is generous. For some of what he did he will need your prayers.”

  “Let me call your women, Madam. It is terrible for you. I wish I might have had my tongue cut out …”

  “No, please, my Lord: we’ll sit together a little.”

  His mouth and tired eyes opened a little. He said softly: “By God, now I see you are your father’s daughter.”

  “Do not quarrel with me for that. He was my father, though it was little enough I knew of him.”

  “He was a man of endless deeds. I can understand he would not spend much time in his homes.”

  “And yet he was always at the back of our lives. The crown went from Lancaster to York or York to Lancaster, but there was still my father. It is strange I have never wondered until this moment whether he was a very wicked man or a very wise one.”

  “We hated each other. But I will say this freely. If he did wrong and drew blood unjustly, we can hope that his death has been an atonement for all his transgressions. Your father was at the back of many lives as well as yours, Lady. I do not think we can judge him like a common man.”

  “That is generous too. Don’t blame yourself for what you said before, sir. But oh, God, who would ever have prophesied that Edmund Beaufort would comfort Anne Neville? Tell me what has happened; if any of my friends are left, my uncle Montacute …”

  He looked away from her, and made the sig
n of the cross again. Then there is nothing real now anywhere, she thought, except Edward and Richard who are now our enemies. She asked:

  “Was it such a slaughter?”

  “Your father and your uncle dead, God rest them, Henry Holland of Exeter dead or wounded, John Vere of Oxford fugitive: only I and my young brother have come to join the Queen here.”

  “You say there was a cry of treason.”

  “Do you wish to hear the battle, Lady?”

  “I think so. It is best to know.”

  “There was a mist. We bombarded what we thought was Edward’s line all night. He was nearer than we ever dreamed, though. Sorcery, I say: his friend Friar Bungay. When it was morning your father spoke to the troops. He reminded them they were fighting against a tyrant who had wickedly invaded the royal seat. Edward set upon us with shot first, and then with hand-strokes. Our battles were not front-to-front. Oxford on our right over-reached the Yorkists and must needs go in chase after them as far as Barnet. God pardon John Vere of Oxford, for I never will. He lost that field for us. On our left it was worse. Your father and Exeter commanded there. Who d’you suppose was opposite to them? Edward of York’s dwarf brother, little Dickon of Gloucester, a boy of eighteen, and no bigger than a wet cat, against the greatest soldier in Christendom. You need not tell me the devil cares for his own. All of us on the field had proof he does. Madam, that little boy fought like a fiend from hell. The Yorkist battle over-reached us at that end. He led them, on a white horse twice as tall as himself: and in the centre there was Edward Longlegs, like Golbrand the Giant. I saw him over the heads of the men even though he was on foot, and tried to come at him. I could not. He beat and bore down before him all that stood in his way. I had the marshalling of our middleward with the archers. All the arrows in the world couldn’t hold Edward’s rush. It was like the sea: and your father was being driven back toward us where Gloucester had turned our flank. No one knew who had the better. It was all jolting and running in the mist. But we were being ringed in closer all the while, with Edward in front of us and Gloucester thrusting at our side and Oxford God knows where. They told me Henry Holland was down. Someone cut his horse’s throat under him, they said. It lasted three hours, till Oxford came back and then — oh, my God.”

  He stopped and rubbed his eyes.

  “The whole field had turned a circle like a wheel. We were facing back the way we’d come; and Oxford charged our rear. That was the end. He smashed into us and thought he’d saved the day. The saints know how many he killed before he found out his mistake. Our men took the silver mullet of Vere for Edward’s blazon of the rose and sun and loosed arrows at him. When he found we weren’t Yorkists, he thought we must be traitors. Or perhaps our people raised the shout first. All one: treason was shouted and we broke; and when a battle breaks after three hours’ fighting it does not form again. I did my best. I brained a standard-bearer who threw my banner down. But the next thing I knew, there were Yorkists all round me and I’d my blood to save. You have heard the rest.”

  “You say Duke Richard had the battle opposite my father.”

  He looked a little dully, as though he had not expected that question.

  “Yes, Lady, an under-sized child who was riding his hobby when your father was commanding armies. I saw him toward the finish, not three spears’ length away. The devil can make the strangest instruments terrible. That little thing like an ape, perched up there on his great horse and all bloody from his hand to his shoulder: Jesus, there was something horrible in it, unnatural.”

  “Sir, was he there when … ?”

  “I do not think so, my Lady. I heard it was common men who followed your father into Wrotham Wood.”

  “I am glad of that. Duke Richard and I were children together. My father was a foster-father to him in the old days. The world changes and changes, and it seems not even hate or love mean anything for long. What sort of a world is it, in God’s name, when a man’s fosterling commands the army that kills him and his old enemy comforts his daughter for his death? I am only a foolish little girl, though you call me a Princess now. I am in the dark. I cannot understand these things.”

  “I think it is the will of God that in this world we breed up our own destruction. For ten years your great father carried the House of York on his shoulders. Now it has broken his back. My Lady, you knew all three of the brothers very well: Edward the giant and Dickon the dwarf and George — God blind his eyes — the turncoat. Do you not think they have a devil?”

  “No, my Lord, I only thought they were three familiar laughing boys, very human and kind. Dickon — Richard of Gloucester — was quieter than his brother, and George of Clarence was always feather-headed. But I saw no devil.”

  “Am I to believe that God was on their side, then? Something not earthly was. Consider. Six weeks ago Edward of York was a conquered King, living on charity at Charles the Hardy’s Court, and no man in Christendom believed that he would ever see his throne again. A month ago he lands in England with a bare thousand men. The commons of Yorkshire, to the number of seven thousand, rise against him; but he takes no harm. Your uncle Montacute and Percy and Vere and Holland are all in the North with power enough to crush him ten times over. He slips past them and never draws a sword. Your father himself is ready for him at Coventry. But your father hears that George the traitor is on his way North with a huge army, and holds his hand, which was to his destruction, as it happened afterward. George the traitor shows himself to be George the traitor: and that at least we might have foreseen. I and my brother in London hear that your people have landed, and ride West to meet you. Edward slips like a fox into a goose-pen into London almost before our backs are turned. But you, with the army that should have joined our forces and your father’s, are delayed by storm. We ride back again. We aren’t out of hope yet. Is not Warwick on our side? But that’s not enough, says the devil who sent the storm: so he sends the fog as well. He turns a boy of eighteen into a great captain. He makes Oxford blunder into his own allies as though he were pixie-led. Is all that chance? Or has Edward or George or Richard or all three of them a familiar spirit? It was the elements themselves were York’s best allies: and we know who it is that is called Prince of the Powers of Air.”

  A crust had formed over her mind. Memories could take shape and move under it, and it kept out the essential news she had not got by heart yet: that her father, on a cold morning of mist, had ridden his horse into Wrotham Wood and had not ridden out again.

  She sat and thought calmly, save for the ticking and twitching of muscles in her thighs and belly, folding her small hands and thinking back to the old days before Kingmaker had quarrelled with King Edward. She remembered Middleham Castle in the rare sunlight of a Yorkshire Spring, and four children in fine clothes taking the air in the base-court. George of Clarence was there, grown-up, really, and the three others listened to him. He was telling them, in his voice of seventeen years, first gruff, then squeaky, about the fine times at his brother Edward’s Court, hunting and dancing, viols, bitter honey that came in odd-shaped jars from Candia, lions and leopards and Holy Harry of Windsor, all on show in their prisons at the Tower. “And when I asked him,” he told them: “‘How did you take it upon you to be King of England, seeing that that was my great father’s right and my brother Edward’s after him?’ he shook his head at me like a sick cow. You would’ve laughed. ‘My help cometh of God,’ he says, ‘who preserveth them that are true of heart.’ Mad as Bedlam: ‘My help cometh of God,’ he says. I couldn’t keep my face straight.” She remembered how her sister Isobel laughed at that, throwing her head back and showing her white teeth, Little Richard — he was fourteen then, and already Duke of Gloucester — had looked inquisitively at his brother and said in his attractively low voice: “But, George, was that courtesy, to ask our defeated enemy that kind of question?” George laughed irritably. “Why, what in God’s name’s courtesy to do with it? I’ve told you, this was Harry of Windsor I was talking to.” “I only wan
ted to know,” said Richard meekly. George went on talking, and presently Richard and Anne wandered away from him and Isobel and began to play ball. Richard was always very kind to Anne, in spite of being three years older, and she was not afraid of him, as she might have been of other older boys, because he was so small. George teased him for it, but he did not seem to mind. “I know I’m little,” he told her once secretly, “but I can lift my Lord of Warwick’s sword if I use both hands. He let me try yesterday, and I did.” Anne had been very much impressed by that. Her father’s long-hilted two-handed sword was taller than she was, and could whip a man’s head off at one swing.

  She sat with fixed eyes and remembered that: her father’s sword with the killing double edge, and the well-spoken little boy who could lift it if he used both hands. Presently she said:

  “My Lord of Somerset, I believe you are my kind friend and will not impeach my loyalty to the Queen if I answer what you ask me. George’s treachery has sold my father to Edward’s and Richard’s swords: but for all that, the Duke of York’s three sons do not seem devils to me.”

  Edmund of Somerset nodded.

  “I am the better pleased to hear it,” he said seriously, “for we shall have to do with them. This game’s not ended yet. The Bastard of Fauconberg is lying at Calais with ships. He will be loyal, and if we could draw Edward down into the West he could make a snatch at London.”

  “So you’ll still fight?”

  “Yes, by God’s passion, we’ll still fight. We’ve the troops King Louis sent along with you, and the Courtneys’ men; and Jaspar of Pembroke will raise all Wales for the red rose. We’ll fight. Give us time and we could face Edward in an open field: but before that, if God’s any way good to us, the Bastard will be in London, and we’ll have Edward and Richard and our double-dealing George between two hot fires.”

  “As easily as that, my Lord?”

  “I do venture to hope so, my Lady: and the North’s not quiet yet. Percy might declare for us and lead his men on London. Oh, there’s still hope. London and the Eastern shires are Yorkist; but here in the West, and even northward in Edward’s own duchy, we have all the friends. We’ll lure him down to us and keep him running until the Calais fleet is in the Thames.”