Under the Hog: A Novel of Richard III

by Patrick Carleton

  His first act was to send a messenger to the Lord Chancellor, the doddering old Archbishop of York, who was certain to fly into a feeble panic and do something stupid. “Wake him if he is asleep,” he told the man, “and say to him that there’s no fear. All will be well, I assure him.” Even whilst he spoke, a cold, heavy feeling began to come on him, drugging his lungs and bowels and making his heart go heavily. All would not be well. Somewhere in the involved thicket of his soul an infernal horn was blowing, winding the mort for his honesty. He was sure already that the part he would play in this changed world was not the clean part that he wanted, the cleaning of England, from the damage of the Wydvylles. Fate gave two gifts at once, cleverly, so that they annulled each other. When Jane Shore waited on him early that morning with a message from the Queen, her friend, he had known before she spoke what she would ask him to do and what price she would offer; and that he would close with the bargain.

  *

  Crosby Place in Bishopsgate had been bought by Duke Richard in the year King Edward drove his bad bargain with the Christian King. It was the tallest house in London, a great pile of gables and carved ornament. Sir John Crosby had been rich. Duchess Anne sat in an upper room, waiting for her husband to come home and thinking about her son. He was seven years old now, as high as his small father’s waist, and was beginning his Latin. She thought of his small, frank forehead and the seriousness of his eyes under it. They were grey, like Richard’s. He would be like Richard; never shouted or chattered and very seldom cried. He could say sensible things, too. When his father told him the story of St. Nicholas and the two children whom the wicked innkeeper killed and hid away in his powdering-tub, he amazed them both by saying: “I suppose God let him kill them so that St. Nicholas could work the miracle.” They repeated the tale to Dr. Beverley, who said that the child had a better wit for theology than some whom he could name that wore mitres.

  If he were here now, thought Duchess Anne, if we had him here with us in this London, things would be pleasanter; but Richard was right. The air of this place makes sickness: so many crowded together, sweating and hating each other, brawl and din and no clean winds coming over the place to freshen it. She remembered the Sign of the Silver Pack with dust swept into corners and pigs guzzling offal by the doorstep and the Widow Wrangwysh throwing fishtails on the solar floor for Gib the cat. The cottages of Middleham village were dirty, but the wind scoured them. Here fog sat above the town like a devil sitting on the lid of a creelful of the damned to squeeze them into small compass. Below her, as far below as though she were on the leads of the Drum Tower at Middleham, people jostled each other in the narrow jarnock of a street and the voices of hawkers came up, small and shrill, crying wine and rosaries and salves against disease. Lepers were forbidden, under forfeit, to come inside the gates, but she had seen several since she arrived a month ago: bladder-like faces, silvery-grey with criss-cross of red lines that might be veins, lips rotten, frogs’ hands, sometimes short of a finger.

  There had been no peace since she set foot in Crosby Place. The day after her arrival Richard had been all morning at a Council meeting; came back to dinner with more lines in his face than ever; said nothing except that Queen Elizabeth, who was still in Broad Sanctuary and refused to come out of it, was more trouble to the realm than France and Scotland together. He had been in Council almost every day since. Writs were issued for a new Parliament; ships commissioned to chase and catch Sir Edward Wydvylle, who had fled from the Tower only to steal one of the royal vessels and turn pirate; new appointments made. The Duke of Buckingham, who seemed never to be away from Duke Richard’s side now, was made Chief Justice and Chamberlain of North and South Wales, Captain of all their castles and keeper of all their chases for life, with other powers during the King’s minority.

  “He’s a rash creature, God knows,” Richard had said to her, “but I owe him something, and I must have the affairs of Wales out of my hands. As I see it, I shall have trouble enough in England.”

  That looked likely. He had broken Lord Rivers — now a captive at Middleham, in rooms Anne had got ready for him before she left — and all his pack between finger and thumb as though they had been rushes, not ambitious men. London mobs had cheered him for it when he rode into the city in his black clothes with the boy King beside him. The watchword of the taverns had been that it would be as good a deed as almsgiving to hang the traitors: and so it would, God make better men of them, thought Duchess Anne resentfully. My father was in the right about that pack, rest his soul. Though they were broken, the Marquis Dorset and his uncle Sir Edward were still loose, and the Queen was squatting in Broad Sanctuary like a witch (perhaps thought Anne, she is a witch?), clutching her younger son to her and doing all that her power reached to discredit the Protector’s government. She was a poor lorn widow and mother of orphans, and her unnatural brother-in-law was after her life; had privately murdered her brother Anthony and her dear son Sir Richard in some horrible dungeon in the black North; was aiming at the crown. Torrents of her malevolent hysteria gushed out of Westminster like dirty water and trickled down the obscurest gutters. When her son, Edward V, at his own wish, had been moved from the Bishop of London’s Palace to the State Apartments in the Tower, the unbalanced harpy had cried out that the Protector was imprisoning him in the place where, all the world knew, he had piteously murdered Harry of Windsor, and that she should never see her darling again.

  Edward V, his mother’s son: when she thought of him Anne put down Sir Thomas Malory’s book of King Arthur she had been pretending to read, and walked about the room. She had heard things that made some part of her, deep down in her body, go heavy with fear. What had they taught the boy at Ludlow to make him hate and dread his uncle so much beyond reason? There was more than Lord Anthony’s arrest behind it. That was certain. She knew some of the silly tales told of her husband in the South: how he was a hunchback born feet-first into the world with teeth in his mouth, how he worked magic. Had they frightened the boy out of such wits as he had with market-clack of that sort? If so, what kind of a King of England would he make who believed fairy tales when he was twelve years old? The child was a menace. There were times when he reminded her, for a horrible second, of her first husband, Marguerite’s son who had been cut down squealing for quarter at Tewkesbury. Another lie had grown from that, propagated, she would take her oath, by the ingenious Wydvylles. It was said Duke Richard had stabbed the Prince in cold blood after the battle so that he might marry her. I should not blame him if he had, she thought with a shiver, but it’s a common slander. Clarence and his men-at-arms killed him whilst he was trying to cross the ford. All these lies were being stirred up, like mud settled at the bottom of a pond, since the Rose of Rouen had died and Duke Richard had the Protectorship. That did not matter now. The Wydvylles might spin what tales they pleased: let them make one move toward armed trouble and Lord Anthony and Sir Richard Grey should kiss the block. But in four years Edward of Westminster would be of age to rule. Protectors seldom prospered in England after they left office. Five had miscarried in the past two centuries: Thomas of Lancaster, leader of the Lords Ordainers, headed without trial by Edward of Caernarvon; Roger Mortimer, murderer of Edward of Caernarvon, headed by Edward of Windsor; Thomas of Gloucester, imprisoned and murdered by Richard of Bordeaux; Humphrey of Gloucester imprisoned and, they said, poisoned by the Beauforts; Richard of York, her husband’s father, surprised and overcome at Wakefield. Two Dukes of Gloucester: it was a common byword that that title brought no luck with it. We can count on just four years, she thought: four years in which to put some honesty into England again; and Dickon’s reward at the end of it will be a King who hates him.

  There was a sound on the stairs. The door opened and a voice said:

  “My Lord of Gloucester.”

  Duke Richard still wore his mourning, and for the hundredth time it pinched Anne’s heart to see how deathly the black cloth made his face.

  “Alone, Anne?”

&n
bsp; “Yes, Dickon.”

  “Loved be God.” He dropped into a chair and drew the palms of his hands over his face. “I am so tired; and there’s the Bishop coming to see me before supper.”

  “Bishop — what Bishop?”

  “Stillington of Bath: wants an audience on something secret and vital; won’t tell me what.”

  “Lord, more trouble?”

  “I fear so. Stillington isn’t a fool, that I’ve noticed. My guess is he’s stumbled on some new device of the Queen and wants to warn me.”

  “That woman: I could scratch her eyes out.”

  “I’d rather you cut her tongue out. D’you know her latest drift?”

  “No.”

  “That I am only waiting for her to give up the little Duke to have him and his brother murdered.”

  Anne had perched on the arm of the big chair her husband sat in. She got up, stiff on her legs, her hands shut.

  “Now may God punish the lying old viper as she deserves.”

  “He will. What’s Purgatory for? But I can’t send her there.”

  “You could send her brother there, and he deserves it.”

  Duke Richard bent his head until his chin pressed the low collar of his doublet. The dagger at his side clicked regularly like a clock marking off seconds of silence. After a long while he said:

  “Anne, do you remember what I told you years ago in St. Martin’s Sanctuary when I asked you to marry me: that I let nothing stand between me and what I see clearly ought to be done?”

  “Yes, Dickon.”

  “Bird, I’d give the health of my soul to punish Anthony Rivers. He is the only man in the world I hate. He murdered one of my brothers and corrupted the other. But I must not do it. Alive he’s my hostage against the Queen, my pledge that there’ll be no civil war, no new field of St. Albans. Dead, he’s a martyr, something the Wydvylle scum can make their reason for taking arms against me and putting poor England back where she was when my father died.”

  “You’re right, Dickon. You’re always right. But I wish the whole pack could be brought to heel, the Queen and all of them.”

  “The Queen is creating an abominable scandal, keeping the little Duke in Sanctuary; and that I’ll stop. By St. Paul, I will. If he’s not in my hands before the next Council, I’ll ask the opinion of the Lords Spiritual on taking him out of the Sanctuary by force.”

  “Isn’t that sacrilege?”

  “I don’t know. Sanctuary is for grown men who are in danger of the law. The Duke’s a child and in no danger. I can’t see for the life of me that the right of Sanctuary extends to him at all. Buckingham is going to argue the matter to the Lords Spiritual for me. He’s got more eloquence than I have.”

  “He’s got an unmercifully long tongue, if that’s your meaning. I don’t think I like that young nobleman very much.”

  “I owe my life to him, or next door to it, but I know what your drift is. He’s very raw, very hot and ambitious, perhaps even a little odd in his mind. But he has his uses; takes work off my hands that I can trust him with and leaves me free for what I have to do myself: and God knows there’s a great deal of that. Anne, you wouldn’t conceive the state the government is in. It’s frightening. I’ve been taking a view of the Exchequer and its workings to-day. Small wonder my brother needed those damned benevolences to raise money; there are debts outstanding to the Crown over the last five years. Officers in the Exchequer are holding places in the Receipt and tother way on. The accounts seem to be audited when and how God pleases — accounts of the Crown estates aren’t audited at all, that I can discover. Crown lands are farmed out to men who can’t sign their own names — friends of the Wydvylles mostly. Any fool with ten marks to spare can buy himself a place in the Exchequer over the heads of the under-clerks, which is a sweet encouragement to them to do their work honestly. It’s the confusion of hell. I see a year’s work for myself straightening it.”

  “Ah, Dickon, do you see anything at all ahead of us but work and trouble?”

  “No.”

  “Shall we never see Yorkshire any more?”

  “That, yes: as soon as Parliament’s sat. I will not stay an hour longer than I need in this pestilent London: this place of fogs and stinks and quarrels. I hate it. After Yorkshire it’s like a Purgatory, as full of wickedness as we suppose Purgatory is. I tell you I trust nobody in London. There isn’t a Cockney born who wouldn’t cut your throat for a rotten apple. Anne, I’ve made another ugly find, or I think I have.”

  “Oh God, what now?”

  “I believe on my soul there are still Lancastrians in the world. I’ve caught looks out of the corner of my eye; heard whispers. If the Wydvylle woman were to succeed in her plans and start an armed rising against my Protectorship, d’you know what I think would happen? I seriously believe there are some men about the Court who’d try to bring over the Welch bastard from Brittany.”

  “It can’t be. I can’t conceive it. Lancaster was dead and buried at Tewkesbury.”

  “I pray you’re right, Anne. But I can’t be sure. I can’t be sure. Morton — you know as well as I — was Marguerite’s right hand. Has he so utterly changed colour as we thought? I don’t know. I wish he might not have been made Bishop of Ely. It’s too high a place for a doubtful man. Then there’s Stanley. I believe he was a faithful friend to my brother. I won’t question his loyalty. But he’s married Margaret of Richmond, Henry Tydder’s mother, and all I hope is she does not talk politics to him.”

  “I’d swear to Stanley’s honesty. He’s too gross a fat fellow to be anything but open.”

  “He’s not without wits for all that. But I don’t doubt him: only his wife. What does he want with a woman that age, a widow twice over?”

  “God knows.”

  “He knows. I’m being foolish, seeing shadows in corners. By St. Paul, Anne, but I shall be doubting myself soon, I think. Will you believe that I’ve even caught myself wondering whether Hastings had not a secret of some kind? He’s taken the strumpet Jane Shore to bed with him, you know, almost before Edward was in his coffin: something less than decent, that. These women: you and my mother and yours are the only three I ever trusted. Why are men such fools? Why must they play the comedy of the apple over again each time they see a pair of plucked eyebrows? I’ve no charity for that kind of weakness. Once let a woman get her teeth in a man and she’ll suck his honesty like a stoat. My brother and the Wydvylle bitch, Stanley and Henry Tydder’s mother, Will Hastings and Shore: I wish I could have a Court of eunuchs round me. Lord, I’m tired … My heart aches: work without end, and no satisfaction if there were an end.”

  “Except the work itself.”

  He looked sharply up at her and held both hands out.

  “Anne, come here to me. Kiss me. Oh, bird, you’re the only one with any wits of them all. You know. You do know. The work pays itself. Enough if we’re allowed to do it, build up England: we’ll build such an England, Anne. What does it matter if we get hurt a little? We’ve the stomach for it.”

  She was on the arm of his chair again now, her hand on his shoulder. He leaned his head on her thigh and looked straight in front of him.

  “Reforms everywhere: they’re wanted. The useless mouths put out of office, benevolences abolished — that must be done — the Exchequer reformed: God, we shall make enemies. There are complaints in the shires of corrupt juries, sheriffs selling injustice for what it will fetch. We can amend that: and there are towns, Anne, honest old towns all over England, like our own York, that owe dues to the Crown that they can hardly pay. I wonder does my authority extend far enough to remit those? It’s a wan-chancy thing, a Protectorship. No one seems fairly to know what I may do and what I mayn’t: sovereign power without sovereignty. But there’s room for plenty. We can break many extortioners and restore many impoverished people in four years, bird. We can make a happier England of it.”

  “For that brat.”

  “Don’t think of him, Anne. We don’t do it for him. We do it for the
people of England, all of them, and for …”

  He waited a moment and went on:

  “ … for Edward, God rest his soul in peace. Work he ought to have done and didn’t do: so we do it for him. Masses aren’t enough — God forgive me if I’m talking heresy — I have the belief that it will go better with him where he is now if I can undo some of the errors that woman led him into. Whether it’s sound doctrine or not, the saints know: but I believe it.”

  Anne felt her eyes pricking. Her right hand went round to Richard’s hair and began to stroke it. But I must say what I believe, she thought, for all that. That’s what he taught me himself.

  “And if that boy destroys it all when he comes to his own?”

  She felt him move slightly under her hands.

  “That’s with God. We can do nothing for that. Whatever happens, I have four years. I can build high in that time. He may kill me at the end of it. To tell the truth, I think he will …”

  “Dickon, don’t!”

  “We’re better to see it plainly, love. The child hates me beyond anything I would have thought possible. I’ve seen him turn haggard with fright and malice when I came near him. He may serve me as Richard of Bordeaux served Thomas of Gloucester. He would to-day if wishes were horses. No, bird, I don’t think I shall live to make old bones.”