Under the Hog: A Novel of Richard III

by Patrick Carleton

  Lord Anthony thought: When all’s said, it is amazing how we hang from him like fruit, how he is our centre. We play with him as you would play with a lion-cub, but only until he shows his teeth. What is it in him? He is a self-indulgent, pretty overgrown boy, no more; but we obey him. That trick of mastership is the one thing he has that I have not. They say there is a curse on the whole family of Plantagenet. Very like: where there is so great a gift there must be, in reason, a great payment. If I can turn his temper to my advantage now, I shall get my purpose. They have angered him out of his conceit of mercy for a while. He stood up.

  “Your Grace,” he said carefully, “the question of the Lady Anne’s future, the question of the punishment of the Archbishop of York and of the rebels in Kent, will be decided by your good pleasure: but only provided that you remain King for long enough to attend to them.”

  He looked round to see the ripples spreading from his flung stone. Stanley, Essex, Hastings and Norfolk looked at him as though they were concerned for his wits. Sir John Fogg passed thin fingers across his mouth and squinted out of the corner of his eye at the King. Duke Richard’s busy hands fell still again. Even Duke George’s look of a whipped child was replaced slowly by a puzzled dull one. Edward was still sitting upright. He looked at Lord Anthony and said coldly:

  “I take it, Anthony, that you mean something by that very curious speech?”

  “I do indeed mean something,” Lord Anthony said with a planned gesture. “The Beauforts and the Courtneys and Kingmaker and Montacute are dead, and Marguerite’s boy. Henry Holland’s licking his wounds in Broad Sanctuary. Marguerite is your prisoner. Yes, but have you taken and headed the Bastard yet, or Oxford or the Tydders? Have you hanged the seven thousand who tried to stop our way to York? You have not. Has Calais sent in its submission? Has a single foreign ambassador come to congratulate you on regaining your crown and dignities? Have the people of Wales manifested any desire to salute that hopeful boy your son, my nephew, as their Prince? Why, half the counties North of Trent have not acknowledged us even yet. On the very day you were winning worship at Tewkesbury, Percy was risking his blood to put down a great Lancastrian rising in the North, and my Lord of Essex and I were victualling the Tower against the Bastard. You are not King of England. You are master of London, with your enemies for the moment in confusion. So was your great father before Wakefield. The mob cheered him in the streets as they cheered you this morning: and at that very moment the sword was sharpening somewhere in the North that was to take his head off.”

  “Come to your point,” said the King shortly.

  “It’s as plain as the point of a spear. You’ve broken the back of Lancaster, but an adder can still bite with its back broken. There are tens of thousands still living in this realm who hold by Harry of Windsor. For the time, they are harmless because they want a leader. One day or another, a leader will be found — Oxford, Jaspar Tydder or his nephew, no matter — and our work will be to do again. The tinder and spark are there. It only wants a hand to bring them together, and the roof is fired over our heads.”

  The small sounds of men at ease, enjoying drinks and sweetmeats, had died out of the room. The King was frowning unhappily. He never liked to hear uncomfortable things. Duke Richard, with his eyes almost shut, was rubbing his underlip along his teeth. Hastings looked impressed. The spell was working.

  “You can be as just as Solomon, Sire,” went on Lord Anthony, “and as bold as David. Many will love you: but there will always be others who remember that poor, witless creature in the Tower whose father fought Azincourt.”

  Edward’s fist, which could snap a sword-blade, came down with a thud onto his knee.

  “Mother of God, am I to have no peace all my days because a little monkish fellow with a long nose won a victory before I was born? William, Thomas, you’ve heard what Anthony says. Are the English really so besotted by the memory of two ploughed fields in France that they’d rather have a lunatic to their King than a sane man?”

  “The English, no,” said Hastings judicially. “I think there are as many in this realm for us as for Lancaster, especially now Warwick’s gone. But, as Lord Rivers says, there are tens of thousands who do love Harry of Windsor for the sake of Harry of Monmouth.”

  “Harry of Windsor,” said Edward with extraordinary bitterness, “who lost England every rood of ground in France that Harry of Monmouth won for her.”

  “They blame Marguerite for that.”

  “She’s not unloved herself,” said Stanley, “in the North.” Edward seized on the word.

  “I shall take order with the North. There shall be no more trouble there. In Warwick’s day it was more his kingdom than mine: but I’ll find someone to fill his room, and someone I can trust utterly. That’s certain.”

  “Yes,” said Hastings, “we want no more Kingmakers.”

  “Kingmaker or no Kingmaker,” interrupted Lord Anthony, “North or no North, troubles we’ve had and troubles we shall have, for just so long as any high-stomached nobleman or common rogue who chooses to be displeased with the King’s pleasure can raise a shout of the true blood and start pulling down the King that is and putting up the King that was. My Lords, has even last year not shown you Fortune is a whore? The English have been taught a fatal lesson: that a King may be put on and off like a doublet. At the first discontent now — and there must always be discontents whilst there are Princes and subjects — they’ll be for changing the colour of the rose again. Your Grace, it’s not only for yourself I say this. You know I love you. There’s your son. Is he to be Prince of Wales, and King of England in God’s good time, or is he to die on a battlefield in his ’teens like your brother Rutland or be murdered privately in a dungeon like Richard of Bordeaux?”

  Edward disordered his hair again. The droop of his mouth was like a child’s.

  “Anthony,” he said, “you’ve given me a sour drink to swallow.”

  “So do physicians.”

  “To a sick man.”

  “Your Grace is sick: all this broad kingdom — sick. It’s a plague that’s destroyed very many: your father, your brother Rutland, my father, my brother John, the two Herberts, Tiptoft, old Salisbury, the good Lord Say, Lord Cromwell, Warwick and Montacute who were your friends before they were your enemies. We want physic in England.”

  Duke Richard suddenly drew his chair closer into the circle. He thrust his young, bloodless face forward over his joined hands; said with the beginnings of animation:

  “And by the grace of God we shall have physic now. Justice without vengeance and without corruption; proper care for the poor; repression of law-breakers and law-twisters, not here and there as the fancy takes us, but everywhere, absolutely: that’s our physic for a sick commonwealth: that and a settling of accounts with France.”

  “That is just such a noble sentiment as I should have expected from your Grace,” said Lord Anthony quickly. “But consider that the country enjoyed the blessings of which you speak for ten years, and still revolted at the end of them.”

  Duke Richard looked full at him, and Lord Anthony experienced a small shock. Those very grey eyes were too hard, too seeing, and especially too unreadable to those who looked at them, to be in a boy’s face.

  “The country did not enjoy them. Many of the King my brother’s acts were unpopular.”

  Lord Anthony fingered his beard; looked away. He knew King Edward’s unforgiven act was his marriage and the advancement to honour after honour of his wife’s kin. He had not forgotten the blunt phrases of Kingmaker’s proclamation of two years ago that condemned the ‘deceivable covetous rule and guiding’ of the Queen, himself and their relations. This boy is going to be more difficult than his brother, he thought. I must get young Thomas into the Cabinet Council, and brother Ned. We want more voices. Bowing with a grave air of concurrence to the Duke, he said:

  “At least it enjoyed them in greater measure than in the days of Harry of Windsor and his wife; and there was a Lancastrian revolt for
all that. I repeat, your Grace, that we have no security whilst Harry of Windsor is alive.”

  King Edward moved his head from side to side like an irked beast. He said:

  “Well, even if that’s true, the old idiot can’t live for ever.”

  Lord Anthony drew a slow breath. Then, staring directly at him, he spaced his words:

  “You have said it, your Grace. Harry of Windsor cannot live for ever.”

  He looked round him narrowly. No one else would have had the bowels to say that, he thought, for no one else would dare to think it. Now I have voiced it, now I have dared to look farther than they into the dark, half of them will be with me, the men of the old nobility who sneer at me for a made Lord and man of yesterday; let them hate me for climbing by my wits to where they stand by birth, and once there, for elbowing them from the good marriages and profitable appointments. Let them hate me, so they follow me. They do not know the proper meaning of what they were born to, these Howards and Bourchiers and Stanleys, as I do who have crept to it by difficult ways. Rulership is a stag in their coverts, driven up to them by the keepers and shot from the butts. But I am the poacher who tracks it down alone, worming up to it on my belly, reading the tale of its slot and fumes.

  Hastings had got the meaning of what he said. His mouth opened a little and his eyes narrowed. A curious and disconcerting look of intelligence came and went, like the glint of a swung lantern over water at night, across the gross face of Thomas Stanley. Sir John Fogg twiddled with the sleeves of his unconvincingly smart gown. Edward of England stared at Lord Anthony as though he had grown suddenly and miraculously out of the ground.

  “But what …”

  “The spark is there and the tinder is there, I have told you. There’s only the hand wanted to bring them together, and our thatch is fired. Damp the tinder? There’s too much of it. Gut off the hand? We don’t know whose. But put the spark out. That would be very easy.”

  “Be plain. Anthony, I order you to speak plainly.”

  Lord Anthony could feel his knees twitching a very little. He jerked his thumb toward a window that looked eastward.

  “Holy Harry of Windsor is in the Tower there at your disposal. Send him to God.”

  The Cabinet Council were like the painted figures put up over great men’s coffins. The midday sunlight, entering the room, made much of the jewels on their chests and fingers and of the gold threads in their clothes; and they sat stiff and inadequate. Their eyes were off each other; searched the carpet. Have I said enough? wondered Lord Anthony. Shall I say more? He counted ten to himself and spoke. No one else in the room had uttered a sound.

  “Neither you nor your son is safe, Sire, whilst he is outside Heaven.”

  The King’s voice was thick and pleading.

  “Think. Oh God, think what you’re asking, man.”

  “I have thought. I am asking for your safety and your son’s. I will ask for that until you silence me. Your son was born under a Lancastrian King, in sanctuary like a beggar’s bastard. Either he will die under a Lancastrian King, too, or the Lancastrian King dies in the Tower now, to-day, under the Yorkist one. Why did we come from Burgundy and fight Kingmaker and Marguerite and win against odds no one would believe? To stretch our legs and wear cloth-of-gold for a little before the Lancastrians chase us out again, or to make the throne of the house of York so sure that your son and your son’s grandson shall sit on it? You have your choice. But choose now. This world moves.”

  He stopped, aware of being intently looked at by someone who was not the King. Duke Richard had twisted his meagre body round in his chair and was staring at him with the blazing intensity of a leopard or a hawk. His mouth was as tight as a crack between two paving-stones; then opened as he took a loud breath, drawing his chin into his chest. Lord Anthony was sure that he would speak; but he did not; only wrinkled up his wide, flaring eyes until they were two slits in his face, and stared. It was Lord Anthony now who felt like a beast at a stake. In spite of the suspense of the moment, he was aware of an extraordinary discomfort, as though he were a child caught in some dirtiness by an elder. He pointed a finger at the Duke and burst out:

  “His wife’s moss-troopers crowned your great father’s head with paper and put it on a common spike.”

  It was King Edward who answered. His voice came almost as a shout:

  “Mother of God, do I need any of you to remind me of that?” He closed his right hand and pushed it repeatedly against the arm of his chair. “But my father himself would not want that poor, silly creature’s life.”

  “Your father has two more sons in this room, Sire. What do they say?”

  “George, do you want his life?”

  Heavy and red, Duke George took his cup in both hands and stared into it like a diviner.

  “We should be safer with him gone. It could be done privately.”

  “Dickon?”

  “They killed our father. We killed his son: even and quit.”

  Lord Anthony said:

  “Why cut the branch and leave the root in the ground?” He felt easier now. Duke Richard was not looking at him. He had moved his eyes to the distressed face of the King and was saying in a voice that was wonderfully persuasive: “Lord Rivers is your Grace’s brother-in-law, not your brother. If we do not wish to make a pagan sacrifice on our father’s grave, then why should he? Is it any wish of yours to be called Bloody King Edward?”

  “It is not,” said the King vigorously.

  “Then leave this wretched old man to end in peace.”

  I must cut in here, thought Lord Anthony, or lose my pains. I must cut in now, before it’s too late. He spoke in a louder voice than he had used before.

  “Your son, Sire, remember him.”

  “Oh God!” shouted Edward, and got on his feet sending his chair skidding. His mouth was twisted and his eyes narrowed, not like his brother’s, but with distress. Impersonally, Lord Anthony was sorry for him; said to himself: Poor boy. He looked round the Council; spread out his hand.

  “My Lords, is it not time you did your duty? We are the King’s Cabinet Council to give advice in his affairs, and you are leaving him to make this very hard decision alone.”

  He looked at Lord Stanley. No weakness of pity in those hanging chops and little eyes, he thought, and no scruples either. The big man moved in his chair and cleared his throat.

  “Speak to the King, sir,” Lord Anthony insisted.

  “Your Grace,” said Stanley.

  Edward drew his hand down the side of his face and looked at him like a hurt child.

  “Yes, Thomas?”

  “Your Grace is merciful. Your Grace is too merciful, by God. Lord Rivers is in the right of it. That’s my opinion.”

  Lord Anthony heaved a deep sigh; did not care who heard it. Stanley, Clarence, that’s two, he thought. We shall win him over. The made Lord will kill a King.

  “I swore not to hurt him,” said Edward in a repressed voice.

  “You swore to spare Beaufort at Tewkesbury, Sire,” answered Stanley flatly.

  Duke Richard spoke urgently, as though his unnatural calm were breaking and showing something underneath.

  “That is a lie,” he said. “His Grace swore only to respect the church. You make me a murderer if you say that.”

  “Oh, Christ, I don’t know what I swore now. Beaufort could not have been spared, anyway: but Henry …”

  “You at least know that you swore his safety. You know that for sure. William, are you going to sit still while these men plot murder? My Lord of Essex, since when have the Bourchiers listened to talk of assassination? Is this how you and my father conducted your wars in France? Holy St. Paul, are we Irishmen or Turks, or are we the nobility of England? I’m the youngest of you, I should keep silence. But you old men, you must have taken your vows of knighthood so long ago that you’ve forgotten them, I think.”

  Duke Richard was leaning far forward and talking with a peculiar checked vehemence that suggested two hard words for
every moderate one he used. Everyone turned to him, staring, a little blockish. Hastings’ face was wrinkled with distress. Duke George’s mouth hung open. Henry Bourchier’s old, rough voice suddenly barked out like a wheezy cannon:

  “Well said, sir! Your father would never have listened to such talk, God rest his soul.”

  “If he had,” suggested Lord Anthony gently, “he might be alive now.”

  The old man rounded on him in a bristling fury.

  “Yes, sir, and if he’d run like a coward from the battle of Wakefield he might be alive too. But he wasn’t a coward and he wasn’t a murderer, and so he’s dead, and a sort of people that he wouldn’t have permitted to hold his squire’s horse are alive, and you can go to the devil.”

  “Gently, gently, my Lords,” exclaimed Hastings; “let’s have decency at least. My Lord Rivers, tell me plainly, do you really think it necessary for his Grace’s safety to be so extreme? A foolish, infirm old man whom the citizens hardly raised a finger to help last month …”

  “As I hope for salvation, I do think it necessary.”

  “Salvation of the devil’s grandmother,” shouted Essex furiously.

  He rose and stamped to the far end of the room, where he stood staring out of a window, muttering and pulling his beard. Lord Anthony turned to the Duke of Norfolk. He was a man of honour, but the hatred of the Mowbrays for the house of Lancaster was part of English history.

  “Your Grace of Norfolk, you were in England during the exile of our King. You had a taste of the Lancastrian hand then. They say you had to make suit to John Vere of Oxford as humbly as your own tenants ever did to you. Now answer me, my Lord, is the life of one impotent madman too high a price to pay to assure that those black days shall not come back again? Is it? I know you love our Lord King as much as I do, and I know you cherish your honour as much as my Lord of Essex; but answer that question.” Norfolk looked away from him, rapping his knuckles on his teeth. Edward had dropped into his chair again. He called out like a man at the end of his strength: