Under the Hog: A Novel of Richard III

by Patrick Carleton

  When he had done, be bowed stiffly again; held out the letter. The King said nothing. One white weak hand made a drooping gesture in the direction of the Sieur de Concressault, who, taking the scroll, presented it upon his knee. The scrunch and crackle as the seals were broken was the only sound in the whole place. De Commynes watched the King, wondering whether he would be smooth or angry. There were moments when that long, mild, milk-coloured face with the drooping nose and the damp mouth changed terribly, the features seeming suddenly to recompose themselves on a new pattern, and the generally ingratiating, gossiping voice slowed and harshened into a growl very like a bear’s. This was not one of them. The King read in silence. Once he raised his eyebrows. Twice he scratched his lip; put the parchment aside and blinked for a moment; got up and wandered abstractedly down from his chair and out by a side-door.

  The Norman in the English tabard looked thunderstruck. There were courtesies extended to his office which were not waived even when the message he carried was a message of war. But he did not gawp long. Very soon after the little door had shut behind the King it opened again and a valet, a rough country-fellow not of the royal household, peered into the room. It seemed he identified Garter King-of-Arms, after a little consideration, as the man he had been sent to find, for he walked up to him, putting a hand under his elbow, and summoned him out with a jerk of the thumb over the shoulder.

  The talk in the room blazed up as suddenly as fire in straw. De Commynes took no part in it. Looked at on paper, this was the end. The French intelligence department was well informed as to the nature of the bargain struck between Edward of England and Charles the Hardy. Charles was to be a sovereign and absolute Prince in his own right, with Champagne and Nevers, Eu, Guise, Rethell and the Duchy of Bar, as well as the Somme towns, to spice his dish with. The rest was Edward’s. They had divided the bear’s hide. Charles the Hardy, though afflicted by God, as de Commynes seriously believed, in respect of his wits, commanded the most perfectly equipped army in Christendom, and Edward of England was a captain who had never lost a battle. There was more to it still. Sixty marks in silver the King had paid a confidential secretary of King Edward’s Court for copies of the letters in which Duke François of Brittany boasted that he would perform more exploits in one month against the realms of France than England and Burgundy could achieve in six. It was true Duke François was a shuffler, a little mad, but there was the remote chance that he might keep his word. England was sending three thousand archers again to hearten him in his decision. Four thousand such had piled the road once between Azincourt and Tramecourt with the stripped carcases of the nobility of France.

  It would be the end, thought de Commynes, if it were not for the providence of God, who, I believe, must have this realm of France in his especial keeping. This is Charles the Hardy’s war, and that beautiful-faced, indolent Edward would not be waging it without him. He must be marvellously discontented with him already, because he sits there in front of Neuss, glorying that the grand army of Germany, with so many princes and prelates — that greatest host which has been seen assembled in man’s living memory — cannot budge him. That glory will cost him very dear in the end. He has the real glory of war who has the profit of it. I was right to leave him, that besotted Duke. God has troubled his wits, or how is it to be believed that he would be battering obstinately at the gates of Neuss, when all his life he will never find the English so ready to carry arms over the sea, and when he knows clearly that by themselves they will be as good as useless? There is nothing more maladroit and fat-headed than they when they first cross the sea. They will need his instruction in the French fashion of making war at every turn. But instead of getting it, they will find we have taken Tronchoy and Corbie, Roye and Mondidier and Arras, and wasted and burned all the country of Picardy they will have to march through, and Charles has not detached one single lance from before Neuss to stop us. They will find we have set Sigismund of Austria and Rene of Lorraine and the free nation of Switzerland onto Charles like three bottles tied to a dog’s tail, so that even when he does turn his face from the Rhein at last he will have his hands full. What make of ally will they call him then? Certainly God has guided this man to do in every point what is the opposite to right reason.

  The talk dropped away round him as a defeated wave drops downward from the flanks of a coast rock. The King had come into the room again. He was smiling and sliding his hands over each other, as pleased, to all appearance, as a peasant after a good market. No one could have less the look of a man whose prescribed hour had found him out. Garter King-at-Arms, walking a pace or two behind him, carried a pleased face, too. The King stopped in front of his chair of state; did not sit down in it.

  “My Lords, gentlemen, you have heard the challenge which our cousin of England has been moved, and we may well guess by whom, to bring against us. His pretended right we utterly deny. To his menaces we respond that our trust is in God and Monsieur St. Denis, as our fathers’ has been, who twice drove the English out of France. It is our hope, in eschewing the effusion of Christian blood, that some amicable means may yet be found to compose the differences fomented between our dear cousin and us: but should that prove impossible — which God defend — then we must do our best to show him that if he has not forgotten Azincourt, we also have remembered Patay and Formigny. Let us all pray God with a firm heart that so bitter and disastrous a conclusion may be avoided and that our dear cousin may yet be moved, as we are, to consider the great blessings of peace and the hatefulness to heaven of bloodshed. Gentlemen, you are excused.”

  He bent a long, ringless finger at de Commynes on the last word; took him by one arm, as he came forward, and the Herald by the other.

  “Monsieur d’Argenton,” he said in his most confiding whisper, “you will entertain this good Herald until a safe-conduct and an escort can be found for him; and do so in such a manner that no one will contrive to talk to him. Cut him a piece of good crimson velvet — thirty yards, say — from the wardrobe as a little gift from us: and let no one talk to him under any circumstances, dear Monsieur d’Argenton.”

  De Commynes nodded at a job altogether in his comprehension. “I will attend to it, Sire.”

  The Herald fell into step beside him, and he steered him swiftly and without words to his own room.

  “Wine or cyder?” he asked when the door was bolted behind them.

  The Norman’s face, which was pleased and friendly, wrinkled into a smile.

  “You know where I come from. That’s not hard to see. Cyder: it’s a while since I tasted any fit for a Christian stomach.”

  “What sort of service is it, with the King of England?” de Commynes asked as he filled two cups and found a plate of cheese-cakes on the buffet.

  The Norman shrugged.

  “I can’t grumble. Mine’s an honourable office. The pay is good. There’s many a gentleman in Normandy would be very glad of half of it: and there are perquisites.”

  “Quite,” said de Commynes, wrinkling his nose over his cyder, “how much did the King give you just now?”

  The Herald’s face went wooden: a peasant’s face.

  “The King of England, you mean, sir?”

  “I do not.”

  “Then I don’t understand you.”

  “Oh yes, you do. Come along, man. I shan’t ask for a share of it, you know: and I’ll see you get your crimson velvet.”

  “There’s nothing in my duties forbids me to accept a gift.”

  “Assuredly not: how much did you accept?”

  “He talked so nicely to me I couldn’t refuse it; gave it me with his own hands in cash: three hundred écus.”

  “And how much did he promise you if Edward consented to a separate peace?”

  Garter King-at-Arms put his cup down on the table.

  “I know you’re a great gentleman, but you’ve no right to ask me such a question.”

  Most men know when not to tell the truth, thought de Commynes, bored, but so few know when
to tell it. This fellow seems to have lived long enough in England to acquire their national hypocrisy on the subject of money.

  He continued aloud: “The function of a Herald as I understand it is to promote the intercourse of Kings to the achievement of their mutual desires. If he is paid by results, I cannot see that he has anything to be ashamed of. Do you find this cyder to your liking?”

  The Herald scowled pettishly at him.

  “I’m a subject and a servant of the King of England. You’ve got no business suggesting I’d take bribes. Besides, what can I do? I’m a Herald, not a Councillor of State. I’d be glad enough of peace, especially after what your King said; but how could I bring it about?”

  “How much will you get if you do?”

  “Well, he did name a thousand écus to me, it’s not to say it would be a bribe. It won’t be me that makes the peace, but the King’s Councillors. If he gives money to them, that’s bribery: but I’m not bribed. If anything came of it, it would be only a present.”

  “I must say you have the tenderest conscience I ever encountered in a Norman. My master is accustomed to give presents to such as serve his cousins and fellow-princes; but if even Heralds in England are so sensitive, he would do well to tie a knot in his purse-strings when he is dealing with King Edward’s ministers.”

  The Norman vented a short cackle of laughter from pulled-down lips.

  “He’d better so unless he wants the purse emptied.”

  “Do you say that now?”

  “Splendour of God, I do. The English nobles aren’t different from any other, so far as I’ve seen, and I’m speaking no treason if I tell you the half of them care no more about this war than I do about the Alcoran.”

  “If you have told our Lord the King that good news, I am not surprised it was worth three hundred pieces to you.”

  Garter King-at-Arms leaned suddenly forward over the table and opened his hands with the air of a man abandoning a position.

  “Well, what good to hide it, when all’s said? I’m not one of those dogs that bites his master, and all the gold in France won’t buy a word from me that can harm King Edward. But what I told your King I’ll tell you, and that’s what’s common knowledge already on the other side of the water. Edward of England’s had four easy years. He’s not drawn a sword since the day of Tewkesbury. It’s not he that’s for making this war now, but his brother-in-law of Burgundy, who took very strict promises from him before he would help him back to his throne.”

  “No one knows that better than myself. Go on.”

  “And second in that business to the Duke of Burgundy is our King’s own brother.”

  “The Duke of Clarence?”

  “He — never: King Edward will never listen to a word he says: the Duke of Gloucester.”

  “Oh.”

  “And besides that, sir, you must understand in England they have their Parliament, which is like the Three Estates of France. The King there can undertake no greater enterprise without consulting his Parliament.”

  “That seems to me,” said de Commynes, who meant it, “to be a very just and blessed thing.”

  “Yes, sir, and when the Parliament is called he declares his intention and asks for a subsidy. He never raises any subsidy in England except to invade France or perhaps Scotland: and very gladly and liberally they give it him, especially for going into France. It’s quite a practice among the Kings of England when they want to raise money to get a subsidy for a three months’ campaign and then break up their army and go home with enough in their pouch for the year. King Edward’s a master at it.”

  “I see,” said de Commynes. He was beginning to see many things.

  “But I warn you,” went on the Herald, “this time the King has gone to work as though he were in earnest. The subsidy hasn’t sufficed him. It would open your eyes if I told you all the ways he has of finding money: selling of vacant bishoprics, dealing in wood and tin with the Greek merchants as if he were a common man that lives by trade. We never saw such things in France; and the cunningest of them all is the invention of a certain priest named Morton. It’s what they call a benevolence.”

  “What manner of tax may that be?”

  Garter King-at-Arms chuckled.

  “No tax at all, a free-will offering, a love-gift: this is the way of it. Anyone that’s worth so much as forty English pounds a year, the King calls him to an audience, and welcomes him as though he’d known him all his life; and presently he asks him what he’ll give out of mere benevolence to help him to conquer France. If he offers a proper sum, then there’s one of the gentry in furred gowns ready to make a note of it in case it slips his memory after ward; and if he offers too little, the King will clap him on the back like a brother and tell him: ‘Come, come, Monsieur so-and-so, such-a-one, your neighbour, is poorer than you and he gave me twice as much. A sound substantial burgher like yourself can afford not to stint me’. That’s the way he brings them up to the mark. Have you ever set eyes on our King Edward?”

  “More than once: he is the handsomest prince I ever saw.”

  “That’s right, and the most affable, and I say that without denigration of the good King Louis who has treated me so civilly. I’ve seen neighbours of my own who were summoned before him, and when they went they looked as if they were going to the gallows; but they’d come back smiling to tell me the King had spoken so benignly to them that he was welcome to their money. They say one old woman, a widow, gave him twenty pounds and he clapped her in his arms and kissed her. It’s the English fashion. She made it forty pounds then. It was a long while since a pretty young man had kissed her. There’s a new means for filling the treasuries of Kings for you.”

  De Commynes privately thought that it was the most disgraceful means he had ever heard of in his life. He plucked the enamelled chain round his neck and said dubiously:

  “Was the subsidy from his Parliament so small, then?”

  “Small, God aid you? In all, they’ve given him more than a hundred-and-eighteen thousand English pounds, and with benevolences and suchlike shifts it will be a hundred-and-fifty thousand by now.”

  “But that can mean only one thing,” insisted de Commynes, alarmed. “He must intend a most serious campaign, two or three years’ war.”

  The Herald shrugged, flicking his open palms almost at right angles to his wrists, and pouted his lips out.

  “It is possible: but he has other expenses. The Queen of England, the Count of St. Pol’s niece, is a very luxurious lady and has many relatives. All these spend money.”

  “Then do you honestly believe that there’s the possibility of an agreed peace?”

  “I have told King Louis of my King’s many expenses. I have told him that Duke Richard of Gloucester desires this war as eagerly as Duke Charles of Burgundy, but that some of the other English noblemen, in especial the Lords Stanley and Howard, who are now serving with the Duke of Burgundy and are familiar with his conditions, are not so eager: and I have promised to do my own poor best on his behalf to obtain a friendly reception for his messengers before my Lord and master. That is the utmost I can say, sir.”

  De Commynes nodded twice.

  “I think you have earned your three hundred écus, then. Do what you can to earn the thousand he has promised you.”

  The door bounced in its frame under a loud knock, and a voice said:

  “In the name of the King.”

  De Commynes opened. A thin-lipped, over-dressed man with hard, pale eyes and a gross jaw was on the threshold, attended by a servant carrying a big parcel. It was his fellow-renegade from the domains of Burgundy, Oliver Necker, alias Olivier le Daim, alias Olivier le Diable, King Louis’ barber-surgeon, valet and jackal-in-ordinary, who gave him a formal little bow and said:

  “The escort is ready for the English Herald, and my servant, Daniel here, has his present of red velvet. We are to go to the King at once.” He went on in Flemish, making a puzzled mouth: “I’ve never seen the like of this. He’s smiling an
d joking as though he had been given a present. What can be in his mind?”

  “I have no more conception than yourself, Monsieur le Daim,” answered de Commynes coldly, in French; fare-welled the Norman Herald and went off to find the King.

  King Louis was sitting in the embrasure of an upper window that looked out upon the stable-yard. His loose, deathly face was set in an expression of most genial vacancy. Cher-Ami snored at his toes. His new physician. Dr. Jacques Coictier, was running over what looked like a list of accounts — for it was the Christian King’s foible that he engaged men in one capacity and used them in another, turning physicians into auditors and barbers into ambassadors — and the Seigneur de Brosse and the Sieur de Concressault were leaning beside the window. Grooms and servants were busy in the yard below, and the sound of their voices could be heard plainly in the little shabby room that had the King’s bed in one corner of it. De Commynes bowed.

  “I have carried out your instructions touching the Herald, Sire.”

  “Thank you, d’Argenton. I knew we might rely on your discretion.”

  “You whorson rogue,” added a low, rusty voice behind de Commynes’ shoulder, a voice so horribly like the King’s own that he jerked round with a suppressed gasp. One of King Louis’ playthings, a crimson-tailed grey parrot with an eye full of sin and understanding, was hanging head-down-wards on the arras wobbling its misshapen tongue at him. Pleased with the success of its remark, it began to bob up and down as though convulsed with paroxysms of secret laughter.

  “Perrette,” said the King indulgently, “you are being rude again.”

  “Get out, you thief,” creaked the bird, pausing for a second in its bouncing, and twisting its head sideways.

  “Nor ought you to call me a thief, naughty Perrette. Keep that name for the English King who is trying to steal all my broad realm of France. But God is just and hears prayers. Remember that, Perrette.”