Under the Hog: A Novel of Richard III

by Patrick Carleton

  “You are for Amiens, my Lord?”

  “I thought I would ride in.”

  “So didn’t I, until his Grace of Gloucester sent me.”

  “His Grace of Gloucester?”

  “Yes, he wishes to see how the men of his division are comporting themselves with all this French wine at their disposition.”

  “So: our men certainly seem — pox take you, get out of my road, you oaf: damn the fellows, they’re as thick as bees — seem to have wakened with a thirst this morning. You fellow with the red beard, if you can’t make room for your betters the Camp-Marshal shall have a word with you.

  “Christ pity us, my Lord Lovel, I think half of ’em are drunk already.”

  Certainly, some men were already coming back out of the town and not walking steadily. A big archer was lying in the crops by the roadside, vomiting. Lord Lovel smiled again.

  “We must celebrate our victory, I suppose.”

  “You are using an odd word.”

  “It’s better than an ugly one.”

  Lord Hastings did not answer that, and they sidled through the thick townward column of men to the bank of the river. The crowd was as close as herrings in a barrel on the bridge, and Lord Lovel sent his squires ahead to clear their way. A gaminerie of little dagget-arsed French boys held dirty palms out to them in the shelter of the gateway squealing: “Anglaish, ’allo, gif me some money, gooday Anglaish, gooday!” They gave them nothing.

  Riding down through the mob that choked the narrow street was a man in sober, handsome clothes, youngish, with a lined, strong-lipped face and watching bright-grey eyes full of irony and intelligence. He managed his horse carefully to avoid the English soldiers and had his mouth pursed as though something troubled him.

  “I’ll renounce Mahomet,” said Lord Hastings, “but I’ve seen that man in Burgundy.”

  The man appeared to recognise him at the same moment. He whipped his bonnet off and kicked his horse forward, crying in English:

  “Milord Hastings, Milord Hastings, you are very welcome.”

  “God bless you, sir. I’ve seen your face before.”

  “That is so, Milord.”

  “In Artois it was. I have your name — of course, yes: Monsieur de Commynes.”

  “You flatter me, Milord: but they call me the Sieur d’Argenton now.”

  “My felicitations on the advancement, my dear sir.”

  “And mine, noble sir, upon the fortunes of war.”

  He had me there, curse him, thought Lord Hastings, clear through the joint of the harness. If Louis bought him from Burgundy, he has bought us too. The pot called the kettle black. He presented de Commynes to Viscount Lovel.

  “And how are our English governing themselves?” asked the Viscount cheerfully, smiling like a choirboy: “not abusing your royal master’s hospitality, I hope and trust?”

  De Commynes pursed his firm lips more and looked sharply round him.

  “To tell you the perfect truth, Milords, I have been sent by his Christian Majesty to find some English captains such as yourselves.”

  “Trouble?” asked Lord Hastings sharply.

  De Commynes raised and shook one hand, rebuking the word.

  “No, no, no, never at all: they are, what do you call it, good companions, your English, very jolly. But, well, we think there must be some nine thousand of them in the town by now, and they are not all strictly sober.”

  “So I perceive,” said Lord Hastings. He had just seen a feather-bed drop mysteriously out of a first-floor window higher up the street. It was followed by its occupants, a yellow-haired Englishman and a big French whore. They landed on its softness and sprawled cursing. Red, sweaty faces laughed through the window at their discomfort.

  “If you will be so friendly as to come a little way with me, I can show you what it is that disturbs us.”

  “I suppose we’d better,” said Lord Lovel.

  Lord Hastings sighed. He liked the new fashion of making war even less than ever.

  It was to one of the ten cabarets set specially apart for the free entertainment of the English that de Commynes brought them: a big, prosperous house with carved beams, a green bush over the door and a well-painted sign of a dove with the name Au Sainct Esperit. Lord Lovel’s man held their horses. They pushed the door open and went in.

  Lord Hastings had an enormous experience of merrymaking. As an intimate companion of King Edward, he had attended court festivities at Westminster, Windsor and Eltham that ended with scarcely a chaplain or a kitchen-boy in the whole palace sober. In Burgundy he had sat through nightmarish Flemish supper-parties where the guests disappeared under the table and reappeared an hour, two hours, later to begin the work again. He had dined with the Duke of Clarence. Never in his life, not even in the pictures of hell which one saw in churches, had he known anything to equal the interior of the Tavern of the Holy Ghost. At first glance the courtyard appeared full of corpses. Those who could neither see nor speak had been dragged here from beneath the feet of their fresher fellows in the taproom. They lay among shards of crockery and broken barrels, filth in their hair. One, a boy of sixteen or so, had a bloody face, as though someone had laid his head open. From the taproom itself an endless senseless din broke out in waves: clash of pots, cursing, singing. The room was choke-full; reeked indescribably of sweat and vomit. Five or six men in the Duke of Clarence’s livery were dicing at a table they had cleared of mazers and dishes simply by sweeping them all, full and empty, in a smash to the ground. The drawers, scurrying from side to side with food and wine, had terrified faces. One of them, when he answered a call, showed a raw gap in his mouth where teeth had been knocked out a little while ago. A big, bare-armed man with a beard was in a corner trying to shout down the singers to tell some story of his own. Lord Hastings caught the words: “Our whorson King, the bastard King of England.” I’ll remember that pig’s face, he thought. I’ll see him hanged for that. The loudest group was round one of the Earl of Essex’s men who sat on a table with a girl some twelve years old sprawled in his lap. Her kirtle was dragged up to her armpits and she was otherwise naked.

  De Commynes beckoned to the host. The man was sweating and twitching, glancing always at the girl on the table, who was perhaps his daughter.

  “Combien d’additions as-tu déjà ce matin?”

  “Cent-et-onze, Seigneur, s’il vous bien plâit. Ca ne fait rien. Notre bon maître, vous savez, va payer tout. Je n’en ai de souci, pas du tout. Mais, Seigneur,” he spread his hands, “ces Anglais, ils sont des ours, des fauves. Que faire? Je n’ose pas dire un mot, pas pour ma vie, et on casse partout, vomit partout, fait des cochonneries. Ah très-illustre Seigneur, ma pauvre maison, elle est devenue une Géhenne! Ces sales cochons de Goddons …”

  “Ferme done ta bouche, est-ce que tu es fou? On entende.” He turned to Lord Hastings. “You will forgive this silly fellow, Milord. But you have heard: one hundred-and-eleven reckonings; and it is not nine o’clock in the morning yet.”

  The Viscount Lovel pulled Lord Hastings by the edge of his surcoat.

  “In Christ’s name let’s be out of here. We can do no good.”

  They stood in the street to take long breaths, clearing the badger-stink of the place out of their throats. Lord Lovel’s face was more serious and distressed than Lord Hastings remembered to have seen it. The gently ironic voice of de Commynes said:

  “I confess, now I have seen how peaceably they are disposed, I feel less alarmed: but you will understand that it is, what should I say, disturbing to remember that there are nine thousand like them in the town and more coming, in pure friendliness, every moment. Suppose the wine were to run out. You English are a choleric race. They might be angry and remember feats of arms their fathers did in this unfortunate realm. In fact, my master, the Christian King — though this is the octave of the Holy Innocents, a day on which he generally refuses to transact business — has given me orders to lay the matter before some such captain as yourselves.”

&n
bsp; “The King’s Grace of England shall hear of it at once,” said Lord Hastings sadly.

  Lord Lovel looked straight at de Commynes. “I shall also attend to that,” he said. “For your part, though, Monseigneur d’Argenton, you might perhaps remind your royal master that it was not we who wished his taverns to be thrown open.”

  De Commynes bowed slightly, with a mere flick of a smile.

  “I will remember that, Milord Vicecomte: but in the first place the guests were not invited.”

  They got on their horses.

  “I must return to my master,” said de Commynes, bowing more deeply. “He will bless you for your good offices. I hope we shall meet again whilst you are in France. Please to commend me in most dutiful humility to your noble King. You have been very kind, Milords. God requite you and give you a good day. I am your servant.”

  “God bless you, Monseigneur d’Argenton.”

  “Soyez à dieu, Milord Hastings, et vous, Monseigneur le Vicecomte.”

  “À dieu soyez, Monseigneur d’Argenton.”

  They said nothing until they were through the gate and across the Somme. Then Lord Lovel, with a gesture that went oddly with his girlish face and his gold-tagged clothes, leaned out of the saddle and spat.

  “Christ!” he said briefly.

  “I know, I know,” agreed Lord Hastings. “I think it too. But, after all, they’re only lads on a holiday, and not used to strong wine.”

  “A holiday they haven’t earned: holy St. Francis, d’you suppose I’d care if they broke every bottle and every maidenhead from here to the Loire, so they did it as soldiers and not as brigands being paid ransom? God rot and damn and wither and blast to everlasting perdition the soul of Louis of Valois. He’s made us the laughing-stock of Christendom. What will the Empire, Castille, Switzerland, the Italians, what will the Scots and the Turks think of the English army: an army that’s twenty thousand strong and sits on its arse in the rain for two months without drawing a sword, and then straggles into a hostile town with no more discipline than a band of Bohemians, dropping its arms where it pleases, and goes to sleep among the pots, nine thousand at a time, with its head in its enemies’ lap? Passion and cross of God, are we Irish or what? Five hundred sober men at this moment could send every one of those hiccoughing sots in there to eternal damnation. There’s more shame and dishonour to us in this armistice than in twenty defeats.”

  Lord Hastings blinked. He had never conceived that the quick-spoken boy sitting beside him had the eyes of a soldier, or that he cared more for the outcome of the campaign than any of the other decorative young noblemen about the Court.

  “You speak very roundly, my Lord.”

  “I was never so shamed in my life as I am now.”

  “We should do well to keep our shame to ourselves. Remember this armistice you complain of is sanctioned by the King’s Grace because Burgundy has failed his promises to us.”

  “Ride ahead,” the Viscount said to his two squires. “We’ll follow. When you get to camp say that any man of mine who goes up to Amiens to-day will get twelve hours in the stocks.”

  The men spurred their big horses and trotted on. Lord Lovel turned in his saddle and looked straight at Lord Hastings.

  “Sir, I am sure you are a nobleman to whom I can speak my mind. Duke Richard loves you, and that makes you my friend also.”

  Duke Richard, thought William Hastings: there’s the key. It is Duke Richard has turned this silken boy into a soldier; made him use eyes and wits.

  “Thank you, Lord Lovel. Whatever you say to me you say in the confessional.”

  “I’m glad of that; and here’s what I say. You are King Edward’s intimate friend. You know better than I do that it is not because Charles the Hardy and the Count of St. Pol have failed us that this truce is proclaimed. You know that four years ago the King would have marched straight on Paris if he had only had five thousand men. He had less than that when he landed at Ravenspur and marched on London.”

  I had better go very carefully here, thought William Hastings. He looked straight between his horse’s ears and murmured:

  “That is true, perhaps.”

  “Then what in the name of the devil has happened to the Rose of Rouen in the last four years? There’s some plague on him and half the Court, I think. Stanley and that sweet-spoken Master of the Rolls we have now, and St. Leger and even my old friend Jockey Howard are stuffed as full of French bribes as a sausage with meat. This treaty’s been bought. That would not have been a thing even to think of in the old days.”

  I must forget a purse dropped in my sleeve, thought Hastings.

  “What of it, my Lord? These things happen infinitely more often than you suppose, and above all in France. Consider. We may not like the manner in which peace is being concluded, you and T. We may think it does less good than it might to the King’s honour in the eyes of Christendom. But peace itself is no ill thing. Harry of Monmouth beggared England with his French wars. Peace will be a blessing, and the money — call it tribute — we have from Louis of Valois will enrich England.”

  “Will one farthing of it go to pay back the benevolences the King has twisted out of his subjects for a conquest of France?”

  “God knows.”

  “Do you yourself believe King Louis will keep his word touching the marriage of Princess Elizabeth with the Dauphin?”

  “God knows. My Lord Lovel, I am going to ask you a question now. I have known you as a nobleman who smiled at everything that came his way; was easy. Tell me why you are so hot in this matter. Yes, we saw some ugly things in the town this morning; but Christ defend you, you’ve seen uglier. Why has this business of the French treaty knocked the smile off your mouth?”

  Viscount Lovel looked hard at him. Under the blue-velvet cap he wore in place of a basnet his face was utterly serious and old.

  “Because it is breaking the heart of the one man in the world I love.”

  “Duke Richard takes it as unkindly as that?”

  “Lord William Hastings,” said Lord Lovel deliberately, “you have known Duke Richard of Gloucester almost all his life. You know that he has never complained of any pain or unhappiness he has suffered. You know he has never looked for any advantage or enrichment of his own. You know his one single and only care from the day he was knighted has been to serve his brother the King, who is his god and his idol. He is not twenty-three years old, but he has won battles, headed and hanged traitors, ruled and pacified the most dangerous province of England, all for the honour of his brother: and now you ask me whether he takes it unkindly that his brother wantonly dishonours himself, sells his subjects, betrays his allies and disgraces his kingdom.”

  “I see,” said Lord Hastings thoughtfully. “At least he can have the comfort that he possesses one loyal friend.”

  “He possesses a dozen: everyone with wits enough to see through the vizor he wears. I had hoped you were one of them.”

  “As God sees me, my Lord Lovel, I am. You’ve spoken very openly: a hundred times more openly than I would counsel you to do to anyone else about the Court. I will be open with you then. You asked me the name of the plague that has afflicted our Lord Edward. I’ll tell you. Its name is Wydvylle.”

  *

  The room in Dean’s Yard was better furnished than it had been three years ago. The walls were hung with a very costly Flemish arras which was among the fine things Dr. Morton had brought back from France. Wax candles burned instead of rushlights and there was a Venice carpet on the floor. Dr. Morton had not altered, though. He still wore robes of black and grey, very carefully tended, and still slid his hands gently over one another as he talked. He sat now on one side of a large perfumed fire and looked mildly and intently at Mr. Colyngbourne on the other. This time, there was a third person in the room: a short, stiff woman, not in her first youth, who sat bolt upright, like a statue of tough wood, in a chair midway between their two. The flames gave her face more colour than it would have shown by daylight and touched up s
trongly her thin lips and black, sulking eyebrows. This was the Lady Margaret Beaufort, Countess of Richmond by her first marriage and Lady Stafford by her second, last survivor of the elder branch of her wrecked house, a woman who had been mother and widow before she was fourteen.

  Dr. Morton was speaking in his deliberate voice.

  “… and so I say that on all counts this French journey of the usurper has been fortunate for us. Your particular task in the matter I shall touch on presently, my good Colyngbourne. Let us consider larger matters first. Our unhappy Queen Marguerite, after much suffering, long imprisonment, is at her ease in France again. That insatiable Edward was glad enough to ransom her to the Christian King, and the Christian King, after I had talked with him, was glad enough to pay her price.”

  “That was blessed work of yours, Dr. Morton,” said Mr. Colyngbourne: “our true good Queen in prison all these cruel years.”

  “I was glad to accomplish it, very glad, you may believe. That is one great stone laid in the tower we are building. Another is that Charles the Hardy hates Edward now as he should hate sin. When our time comes — I say when it comes — there will be no more help for York from Burgundy.

  They say the Duke was so angry at our composition with France that he secretly offered to the Christian King to fall on us on our way back to the coast.”

  “Aye, maybe, but Edward has the Christian King himself for an ally now.”

  “Only for seven years, my good Colyngbourne: you are not so simple as to believe King Louis really intends the marriage of his Dauphin to a daughter of Edward the adulterer and Elizabeth Wydvylle? Make very sure he does not. If I had for an instant suspected that he did, I would have used my best endeavours to see that no question of marriage entered into the treaty at all.”

  “It was a piece of everlasting good fortune that you were named in the commission for settling the treaty. You have done more work for us than a thousand men-at-arms could.”