Under the Hog: A Novel of Richard III

by Patrick Carleton

  “Dickon, my own sweet, I can’t bear this; indeed I can’t. It’s too pitiful: Edward’s son, your own nephew.”

  “I never think of him as Edward’s son. He’s Wydvylle, Wydvylle all through, and the worst of the crew of them: nothing of Edward but his looks, and those corrupted with his mother’s abominable cunning. Blessed St. Paul, that that should be all the Rose of Rouen’s left us to remember him by.”

  “He’s left us you.”

  “Aye, he’s done that. He didn’t send me to join George, though his son may yet. Well, we shall do what God lets us: straighten a few tangles; punish a few extortioners; fight a few battles, perhaps.”

  “Battles?”

  “The Scots are certain to create some garboyle, now Edward’s gone. I half wish they would. A Scots journey would at least take us North out of this miserable London. I could enjoy to have an axe in my hand and get my legs over White Surrey’s back again.”

  “Dickon, did you mean what you said when you talked about Henry Tydder?”

  “The Saints know, Anne. There are Lancastrians in this country yet. But I can’t believe that Welch milksop who never saw an army in his life would dare to come over. Intrigue he may. Fight I’ll take my oath on the sacrament he won’t. No, I think we’ve greater dangers nearer home than Henry Tydder.”

  There was a light tap at the door. Duke Richard smoothed his hair, calling:

  “Come in.”

  John Nesfield, one of the Duke’s favourite personal gentlemen, opened and bowed.

  “Yes, John?”

  “The Bishop of Bath and Wells asks audience of your Grace.”

  “Let him come up here.”

  “Your Grace.”

  “I’ll go,” said Anne.

  “That you’ll not. You’ll stay with your liege husband. I need you more than many Bishops, bird.”

  Dr. Robert Stillington, Bishop of Bath and Wells, was an old man. He had a priest’s brown, watchful eyes in a thin face, the colour of standing cream. There were lines from his nostrils to the corners of his lips, which were as sensitive as a girl’s. It was a good face, an attractive face: not at all a strong one. He moved slowly, but more as though from nervousness than from infirmity, and Anne noticed that his long, exquisite hands were continually wandering toward his gold cross, twiddling it as Richard twiddled his rings or his dagger. The man’s frightened out of his hide of something, she thought. Oh Lord Jesus, what bad news do we hear now?

  “You are very welcome, indeed, my Lord.”

  “Your Grace, my Lady, good day. You are kind to receive me: very kind. I give you good day.”

  “You’re tired, my Lord. John, a chair for his Lordship, Burgundy, wafers, fruit, quickly,”

  “Oh no, your Grace, I’ll drink nothing. I thank you. Your Grace is kind, but …”

  “My Grace is obstinate. You’re tired and you shall follow the precept of St. Paul as touching wine on pain of my displeasure. Be seated. Your business will wait till you’re refreshed.”

  He’s putting the old man at his ease, thought Anne: but he’s wondering himself what fresh trouble’s beginning now. Oh, Edward of Rouen, you fool, why did you marry that harpy and leave such a coil for us to straighten? Did you once in your life consider anything but yourself?

  John Nesfield brought the wine and served it; went out. The three formally pledged each other. Anne noticed that the cup wobbled in the old Bishop’s hand and that the cross on his chest winked as though he were breathing quickly. Duke Richard sat in his chair again like a boy, one leg pulled up and his hands round the knee. His chin was sunk and his eyelids pursed tightly.

  “Well, my Lord, what do you wish to say to me?”

  The Bishop locked his fingers together.

  “Your Grace, I have come to purge my soul.”

  Duke Richard gave no answer whatever; did not move. “Your Grace, I am a priest; but I have sinned against my priesthood. From the weakness of the flesh I have taken God’s holy name in vain. I have told lies.”

  There was still no answer. Bishop Stillington’s pale tongue explored his lips. His eyes were pitiable. Anne would have liked to stroke his hand.

  “I have come now to beg your forgiveness; beg all England’s pardon for the wrong I did. I cannot keep silence any more. Your Grace, in the teaching of Solomon I have found it written: Vae tibi, terra, quod rex tuus puer et principes tui in mane comedent. Beatitudines tuae, terra, quod rex tuus filius heroum. Woe to thee, oh realm, that thy King is a child and thy nobles feast in the morning. Blessed art thou, oh realm, when thy King is a son of champions.”

  “Where are you leading to?”

  The Duke’s voice was unencouraging.

  “Your Grace knows that at the time of the pitiful death of your brother Duke George, Lord Jesus have mercy on his soul, I was made a prisoner and put in the Tower? Your Grace remembers that?”

  Duke Richard took his hands from about his knee and said: “Yes.” He leaned forward a little.

  “And that I was afterwards released because I took oath — mea culpa, mea maxima culpa! — that I neither knew nor had spoken anything contrary to the dignity of his late Grace, King Edward?”

  “Yes.”

  With an oddly touching little gesture, the Bishop stretched out both hands towards the Duke.

  “Your Grace, I was lying.”

  “All men are liars,” said Duke Richard inexpressively. “What did you know or do against my brother, God rest him?”

  “This: that the marriage between our Lord and master King Edward and the woman Elizabeth Grey, calling herself Queen Elizabeth of England, was no marriage, and that the children born of it are bastards begotten in adultery.”

  “What?”

  Anne heard herself almost shriek the word. It was as though gunpowder had exploded around her heart. She felt an atrocious pain in her hand where she had banged it down on the carved arm of the chair. The room was tilting like the cabin of a ship all round her and there was a thin devilish humming in her ears. Richard was on his feet. She saw his face as a blob of whitewash above the black of his clothes. The Bishop’s voice, big and sure now, rode in over the private clamour of her surprise.

  “It is true, your Grace. I denied like Peter, and may I be forgiven like Peter, but it is true. I swear this to you on my priesthood. The marriage was bigamous, if indeed there ever was a marriage, for there were no witnesses. But a hundred witnesses could not have made Elizabeth Grey the wife of Edward of England.”

  “Why?”

  “Because, your Grace, two years before he ever set eyes on the Widow Elizabeth I myself solemnly betrothed your brother to the Lady Elenor Butler, daughter of the old Earl of Shrewsbury.”

  Richard had his back to both of them now. His voice was his own again: soft and explaining none of his feelings.

  “I knew that my brother dishonoured Lady Elenor. Lord Sudeley married her afterwards out of charity. There was a child.”

  “The child is dead.” The Bishop’s words seemed to be coming from a distance. “So is she. So is her husband. They are all in God’s hands now; but she was not dishonoured. I hallowed her conjunction with your brother by all proper rites. While she lived, she was his only wife to God, if she was never his Queen. Afterwards, Lord have mercy upon me, a sinner, I was silent because he commanded me. I was afraid: and she herself would never bear witness against him, poor Lady. She loved him. Lord Sudeley himself never knew she was an honest woman.”

  “Who knows it now?”

  “I do, your Grace, and I believe the woman who has been called Queen knows. There were no witnesses at that betrothal either. I consented to it, because your brother swore that he would make it known in time and crown the Lady Elenor in the sight of England. God forgive him, and me.”

  “You say that Queen Elizabeth herself knows this: that her children are bastards?”

  “Your brother, God have pity on his soul, when I protested — oh, I did that much of my duty, your Grace — when I protested in the nam
e of God against this pretended second marriage: he told me he had warned her. He said she would rather be a Queen and his concubine than an honest woman and a plain widow; and he told me that if I ever spoke of the matter to one living soul he would cut my tongue out of my mouth.”

  There was a quick scuffle of Duke Richard’s feet as he whipped round and stooped over the Bishop’s chair like a stooping hawk. The Bishop shrank back on himself and half lifted an arm as though he meant instinctively to hide his face behind it.

  “Bishop Stillington, why was my brother George killed?”

  “Your Grace, your Grace, I could not have saved him. Stand away from me, your Grace. I’m an old man. He had found it all out for himself; knew it already. I implored him to say nothing. For the mercy of God, your Grace, don’t look at me like that. I swear to you he found it all without me, the Saints know how. I’ve sinned, I know I’ve sinned, but I’m doing what I can to make restitution. Oh, take your eyes off me. Take your eyes off me.”

  “Dickon!”

  Anne had his arm and was pulling at it. The Bishop was moaning and whimpering like a child with night-fears.

  “Christ!”

  It was Richard’s voice, but raised for the first time that she had ever heard it raised: a shout going up to the rafters. He was off down the room, tearing his arm out of her hand; got to the wall and came back again. She saw, as though she were poring over the delicate complications of an initial in a manuscript, that there was blood on his lower lip where he had bitten. If he had shouted again she could have borne it; but he had come back to himself.

  “I beg your pardon, my Lord. I have distressed you. It was not meant.”

  “Your Grace, I begged him to do nothing rash. I went on my knees.”

  “I do not blame you in any way, my Lord.”

  “I swear I—”

  “I do not blame you. My Lord, swear this. Do you believe that my brother George of Clarence was put to death, with my brother the King’s consent, because he knew this secret?”

  Bishop Stillington got his gold cross in his hand. It slipped between his fingers, which were jumping like mice, and he grabbed after it; brought it to his lips as he stood up.

  “As I believe that our Lord God died on this cross to save me, I believe that the most noble prince, George of Clarence, on whose soul, Jesus, mercy, was condemned and killed because he could have told the world that the marriage of King Edward and the Widow Elizabeth was a false marriage: so help me God and his hallows.”

  “I believe you.”

  Duke Richard crossed himself: began to speak under his breath. The Bishop stared at him for a second; then, as though remembering what he was, prayed too. Anne knew that she was crying because she could feel the wet on her cheeks. Her mind formed words that did not get as far as her mouth. Blessed Mary, Mother of God, intercede with your Son for them: Edward and George. Let him have mercy on their foolishness and forgive them their sins. They were very wicked men, but they did not mean it all: and let him have mercy on Richard my husband and help him out of this trouble, amen.

  Twilight had got into the room. The high, fretted, roof-beams were almost out of sight, and the leaded window-panes were blue. It was the Bishop who spoke first, gently and gravely, as though for the moment it were he who commanded the business.

  “Your Grace realises fully what this brings about?”

  Duke Richard sat in his chair again.

  “I realise that my nephew, Edward of Westminster, cannot be crowned King.”

  Thank God, thought Anne. Thank God. He will take it as he must take it. He will see it as work to be done, not as a betrayal of his big brother. She listened for what he would say next.

  “The child of that unhappy Lady who should have been Queen Elenor of England is dead: so that the heir of the Plantagenets of York is my other nephew, Edward Earl of Warwick, son of my brother George.”

  “Oh, God, no!” Anne called out. He’s never going to let it slip from him now, she thought: now, after it’s come so near.

  “Attainted, your Grace: the children of Duke George are attainted in blood.”

  “Yes and you know best with how much justice they were attainted. Parliament passed the attainder. Parliament can annul it; and shall. Make your market for that. If I have any authority in this realm, my brother George shall be cleared of what those cruel devils blackened him with. As for themselves: I needed Anthony Wydvylle as a hostage before. I do not need him now. Remember him in your prayers, my Lord.”

  “Your Grace, I will speak and will not be silent.”

  “Well then, speak. You’ve brought me good news so far. I shall listen cordially to you, my Lord Bishop. You’ve told me my brother Edward was — there’s no name for what he was — but you’ve told me I can save England from being ruled by his son. That’s much. What have you to say, now?”

  “George of Clarence’s son cannot be King of England. Only Parliament can release him from the ban Parliament put on him; and Parliament can only be summoned by a King. Your Grace, you are a better Christian than I am. I, a Bishop of God’s Church, say that. You have the blessing of humility, as I, who hoped I had always gone humbly in the sight of God, have not. But I am a man of law as well as a priest, and I tell you that I have burned my wick down to the oil these last nights weighing the law of this question: and I have a plain answer.”

  “Then what is this plain answer?”

  “The true King of England and France, descended without any defiling in law from King Harry II, is Richard Plantagenet of Gloucester. We have no other King in England. The laws allow us no other King: and I, who speak for many of us, say that we want no other King. When will it please your Royal Grace to declare yourself and be crowned?”

  “You speak for many of you?”

  If a whip talked, thought Anne, it would talk like that. Oh, Richard, Richard, take it. Don’t ride your high horse now. The Bishop was brave again. Anne had to remind herself that he had been wincing and crying out in his chair not long ago.

  “Yes, your Grace, I foresaw your scruples, which do credit to a Christian prince but harm to this kingdom. I guarded against them. It was my duty, your Grace. I have let terrible sins be done because I kept silence. Before I came here I told the most trustworthy noblemen I could find that you were King.”

  “Who were they?”

  “The Lords Lovel and Howard, the Duke of Buckingham.”

  In the increasing dark, holding the chair-arms with both hands, Anne heard her husband’s dagger click and click in its sheath. Eventually he said:

  “My Lord, I shall ask you a question of theology.”

  “Theology, your Grace?”

  “Can there be true repentance without restitution?”

  “No.”

  “And without repentance we are not saved?”

  “No, we are not. That is certain.”

  “Even in Purgatory, as souls, after we are dead?”

  “Your Grace, I don’t understand: and the question’s too deep for me. How can a soul make restitution from Purgatory? It can repent, but …”

  “If restitution were made for it, for its express benefit, on earth?”

  “God’s mercy is infinite. Whatever is done on earth with a sincere intention will be so received by him, or why do we offer the sacrifice for the dead as well as for the living?” There was a long emptiness, no one moving. Then Duke Richard got on his feet again. He dragged the back of one hand over his forehead very slowly, as though he were tired out.

  “Anne.”

  She was beside him at once, close to him, getting her fingers round his that were as cold as iron and as dead as his voice when he told her:

  “Anne, you know what I must do.”

  “I know what you’ve said to me twice, Dickon. You’ll let nothing stand between you and what ought to be done.” She pressed herself against him hard; got her arms round him. I can warm him; with my body and heart warm him; can make him remember that the work’s happiness as well as du
ty. It was from her arms that he spoke to the Bishop, saying flatly and formally:

  “My Lord, we your King command you, on your allegiance, to tell no one of our right and title to the crown until the time when we shall require you to declare it publicly to our subjects.”

  *

  But it is mortal sin, Jane Shore repeated to herself over and over. It is mortal sin. We could be hanged and damned for it. When I tell it in confession, the priest will look white and cross himself, and if I die before I’ve confessed it, I shall be in hell.

  The cellar would have been a place of smells and shadows even by daytime. Now, at midnight, with the brazier glowing inside the triangle and circle that had been traced with ashes on the dirt of the floor, it choked her. Even in her fright, it was odd to her that Queen Elizabeth of England, who had walked for so long on Byzantine carpets spread over dried flowers, should be here to-night in a filthy kennel of Broad Sanctuary, trysting with a dubious Friar and her late husband’s mistress to ask help from the Devil.

  But it is all needless, thought Jane: a crime we don’t need to be guilty of. Will Hastings has given me his promise and will keep it. That’s more of a weapon against Duke Richard than any secret wickedness in a cellar. She remembered his unhappy face with greying hair round it and his final assurance.

  “I’ll do it for you, Jane. I can’t help myself. But I hate the business.”

  “Will you even kill him if nothing else works?”

  “God help me. If there’s no other means to make him release Lord Anthony and accept a Council of Regency I’ll do that.”

  They had it well planned: William Gatesby, Lord Hastings’ intimate friend, to be a spy on the Protector; Dr. Morton, Bishop of Ely, to forge them legal arguments against the Protectorship; Writs of Supersedeas to be sent down to all the shires in the Queen’s name so that no Parliament should meet to approve Duke Richard’s title. It was all smooth and sound; held water. They did not need the Devil. It was the Queen who brought him into it. Jane looked sideways at her, trembling a little. She was dressed in black with a black hood. A little tent of flame grew up suddenly over the mottled charcoal in the brazier; lighted her long neck, the forward thrust of the small jaw and the pursed, painted lips. Her face had altered since King Edward died; taken on purpose. Under the careful fard the muscles round mouth and nostrils were stiff with decision, and the green eyes were hard as pebbles. It was as though a goose had turned into a cockatrice.