INDIFFERENT HEROES

by MARY HOCKING

  ‘I am my acts.’ It was a concept Ben had no difficulty in understanding. The problem came with the acts themselves – in the case of the MO, the tireless giving of time and strength, the sharing of food, the patient care of the sick, even those who abused him and tried to trick him. Still, he was in a special position, wasn’t he? Ben sat up in bed and said to the man next to him, ‘It is his profession, after all.’

  ‘What profession, chum?’

  ‘Any profession. It’s all the same thing.’

  ‘If you say so.’

  Men in the act of their profession – that was it! The great violinist, with nothing on his mind but the music; the surgeon operating; counsel pleading; the farmer delivering a calf; all the energy and intellectual drive poured into the one performance. Was that what was happening with the MO? Only, with him, it went further because he was sustaining the performance. It was not a case of a man trying to be good, but of a man living totally in his acts, draining everything out of himself so that there was no ‘afterwards’, no time for sloth, envy, greed, covetousness . . . All forgone, not out of prudish choice, but because the man had become the act and there is nothing of him left over.

  The man next to Ben said, ‘Take it easy, soldier.’

  ‘But he’s not even an interesting man, not amusing or particularly intelligent.’

  How is it done? Let go of yourself, is that it? Ben’s mind zoomed obligingly so that he had the sensation he was floating somewhere up above the tent. Decide against self-preservation. But that was offensive. The MO is offensive. With Tandy, one may feel a superiority in oneself; his lack of dignity increases one’s own. But goodness is abrasive, implacable; it leaves other people very little room in which to manoeuvre. It was surprising, when you came to think of it, that Christ found as many as twelve men who were willing to follow him and that only one betrayed him. He must have been more than just good. He must have had some of Tandy’s artistry, even his effrontery? Or are we back with the man being his acts again?

  He was climbing higher and higher, up stairs in a narrow old house, so rickety you wouldn’t have thought it could have borne so many stairs. And now here he was in a room with a dizzying view over roof tops with pointed spires thrusting between them, and all far, far below. He was up in a brilliant blue sky. It was too high for him. The whole edifice was shaking; better get down before the gimcrack house collapsed. It should never have been built so high.

  ‘Here!’ The man next to Ben had produced a dish containing a concoction of rice and limes which had been devised by the cook in a rare moment of inspiration. ‘I saved this for you.’ It was not true, of course; he had taken it for himself, only to be moved by Ben’s plight. Ben could not get the food down, but afterwards he remembered with surprise the generosity of this man; a man to whom he had hitherto paid little attention, not an intelligent man.

  The next day he went into hospital. As his temperature came down, he began to sort out his thoughts. These two men, Tandy and the MO, were the poles between which some delicate balance must be maintained.

  Other men, such as Geoffrey, seemed instinctively to keep that balance: men who sometimes got out of doing a duty, who grumbled and cried with pain; but who did not cheat their comrades, or seek special favours; who could give comfort to those worse off than themselves; who kept some compassion, a little cheer, and who, when their time came, made a good end.

  He could not add to the drawings, but he decided that from now on he would keep a diary.

  2

  An April shower, rain heavy against the window, great globular tears running fast.

  ‘Get you to London,’ Hastings had said to Gloucester. His message bore all the signs of panic. The second messenger brought even more urgent demands, advising Richard to come in strength and to make sure he secured the person of the young King. It was a time to think clearly.

  Richard had sent to Earl Rivers in Ludlow, a reasonably worded request for information as to the route which the young King would follow on his journey to London. No answer had been received. He shivered and crossed himself, not an act of piety for his dead brother, but an instinctive wish to preserve himself from the evil which now distorted the natural world. He could hear his secretary pacing about in the corridor. He had told him that no one was to disturb him. No doubt the man considered, as did all the others who now waited on his word, that he was planning his future course of action.

  A great gust of wind and rain buffeted the window and for a moment everything beyond broke up into unrecognizable fragments; it seemed impossible that walls, tower and barbican gate should ever assemble themselves again in any meaningful pattern.

  Pattern was destroyed anyway, the centrepiece had gone. He had waited in here for a sign and had been vouchsafed a vision of chaos. The chaos was tangible. Some of it was trickling down the wall beneath the window and forming a puddle on the floor. He crossed himself again, lest the chaos should invade his own person. Already it had made a preliminary foray. He could not think clearly. His mind insisted on relating to a higher authority by which his actions would be judged and eventually rewarded. He was deeply religious, but it was secular authority which he sought. He accepted the death of a brother, but not the demise of ultimate authority.

  He stood, one hand fingering the brooch on his doublet. His face betrayed no dramatic signs of strain; a slight frown drew his brows together, his eyes were bemused. He might have been trying to remember something recently related to him, the elusiveness of which irritated and disturbed him because it indicated a failing in his powers of concentration. To those who knew him as a man of sharp wit and formidable energy, resolute if sometimes rash in action, it would have seemed that he was bewitched. If this was so his wife, now entering the room, did something to break that spell.

  ‘I said no one was to enter!’ He was angry at being caught at a moment when he was so little able to command himself

  ‘You have delayed too long,’ she replied. ‘Edward has been dead for over a week.’ She imagined that excessive grief had paralysed his will to act. She had never thought that Edward’s influence was a good one, and that he should continue to exert it after death was not to be borne. ‘When I am dead I hope you will not linger over me like this.’

  She made these references to her death from time to time as though she was rehearsing it. She tried not to play on Richard’s emotions because she loved him, but sometimes it gave her a pleasure which she could not resist. Today, however, she had good reason to be cruel. Someone must goad him to act.

  ‘You should be in London by now,’ she said. ‘You are the Protector. If you do not go, then someone must represent you there. I shall go. I do not like London, it will kill me one day; but I shall go. I should not dream of staying here when there is such need to be in London.’

  In spite of the frailty of her appearance, which was enhanced by the sombre clothes which mourning necessitated, the ferocious strength of her determination demanded she be taken seriously. As a child she had frightened her nurse, not by anything she actually did but by her ability to suggest that nothing would be beyond her should she set her will to do it. Her husband was dazed by her. He put his hands over his face, cupping them over nose and eyes like a mask; he drew a long, deep breath. Something tingled at the back of his nose. He sneezed violently. All things considered, something of an anti-climax. He sneezed again. When he opened his eyes tiny spots of light danced before him as though a fire¬cracker had gone off in his brain. The terrible inertia was over. His mind was sharp and clear; and beyond the window he could see that a great blue wedge had been cut in the grey sky.

  He made his preparations quickly. Those who had grumbled at his delay had little cause to grumble on that account now. Hastings had warned him that Earl Rivers was travelling with a large escort. ‘I shall travel faster with a few men,’ Richard said.

  There was no more irresolution. Yet during that strange upheaval which followed the news of Edward’s death, something had happen
ed. The world had settled down after the tremor much as before, but something was missing. It would take him by surprise sometimes and he would look round, trying to think what it could be.

  Events crowded upon him. On the day that he set out from Middleham a messenger arrived. ‘What ill news does Hastings send this time?’ he commented, grimly amused as he saw the rider from a distance. But the colours were not those of Lord Hastings. The messenger was from the Duke of Buckingham, who offered his loyal service and hoped to join the Protector on the route to London.

  The rain had ceased by the time Richard set out with his party, but it was still misty and the hills and sky ran together like the landscape in a badly smudged painting. Richard rode frowning, as though displeased by the messiness of Nature. There was a lot to think about and most of it unpleasant. Earl Rivers had sent word that he would be leaving Ludlow with the young King on April 24th and it had been agreed that Richard would join them at Northampton so that they could make the progress to London together. Reports had come in since then that Rivers was making some speed on his journey, and that he was travelling with a considerably larger force than was necessary merely to convey the young King to London. Whatever Rivers’ intentions, they could hardly be construed as friendly. As Richard urged his horse up a steep, stony path an old resentment throbbed and seemed to communicate itself to the animal who thrashed about, his hooves dislodging the stones. Richard listened to the clatter of the stones, one striking another until it seemed that to his left, somewhere in that misty territory, the whole hillside was on the move. He slowed his pace. It would mightily please those in London who awaited the arrival of Rivers and the young King were the Protector to make a false move in this precipitous place.

  The path led to high moorland. Below, the mist still hung thick and yellow in the valley, and it seemed to Richard that it smelt foul as the breath of an unclean spirit. But ahead, the swathes of mist grew gossamer thin and finally dissolved; the air was cleansed of all impurity and they could see their path clear and straight as an arrow pointing them towards the south. Richard, riding along the spine of England, felt free of the dark spirit which had invaded and impeded him during the past days. He recalled that he was shortly to join forces with Buckingham. How good it was that there were still loyal men who offered their service immediately and without question! Buckingham’s gesture was the more splendid for being unexpected; the people from whom much is expected so often fail. This gesture was all gold. It was timely, too. The Dukes of Gloucester and Buckingham would be a formidable combination. As he rode across the wild, soaring moorland, Richard experienced a surge of hope. But years in the service of Edward had made him a lonely man and a wary one, and soon he became suspicious of his own hopes and cautiously reminded himself that the Duke of Buckingham was descended from Edward the Third, and men of such lineage tend to ambition. Even so, when the next day he arrived at Northampton and Buckingham was not there, his disappointment was sharp. Worse was to come, for he soon learnt that Rivers and the young King had already passed through Northampton and were reported to be encamped at Stony Stratford.

  ‘So?’ Richard appeared to take the news quietly, and repaired to the inn where it had been arranged that he and Buckingham would spend the night. But to his secretary, John Kendall, he voiced his unease. ‘The Lord Rivers is in great haste; the Duke of Buckingham delays. What think you of this?’

  ‘I think that the Duke of Buckingham has had far to travel,’ Kendall replied soberly.

  ‘And Lord Rivers must as easily be excused in that he had not so far to travel?’

  Kendall, who was standing by the window, said, ‘He comes in person to make his excuses, if I mistake not the colours of these men.’

  Richard joined him by the window and saw that he was right. Rivers, however, had arrived too late. The time for excuses was past. There was in Richard’s character an element of rashness which led him to favour attack when diplomacy might have served him better. Now he was ready for a clash with Rivers, and it was irksome to find that instead he must listen to the man’s explanations about the difficulty of quartering troops in Northampton and the great advantage, which he was unable to specify, of quartering them in Stony Stratford.

  ‘You must be hungry after so much exertion,’ Richard cut him short and sent a servant to bring food and wine. When they sat down to dine together, he picked up his flask of wine and leant forward; he was laughing and seemed to have shed all the restraint which had been apparent in his manner when he first greeted Rivers. Torchlight flickered across his face, making something extravagant, and a little grotesque of its impish gaiety, a gaiety which the bright eyes invited Rivers to share. Rivers raised his flask to return Richard’s salute. He seemed bemused by this unexpected vivacity in a man he had deemed unduly sober.

  ‘This is well met indeed, for I must confess I was afraid you intended to press on to London without me. Yes, yes! I assure you!’ He treated Rivers’ protest with amusement as though they both knew it to be an empty gesture. ‘I know that the Queen, your sister, has no liking for me and I had it in mind that she had exhorted you to make all haste without me.’

  ‘As you see, this was not so,’ Rivers answered uneasily.

  ‘I see at least that you have not complied.’ Richard flung himself back, tilting his chair; he was restless but still seemed in a good humour. ‘I am very glad to find you here; because I shall need to examine your stewardship and, I am sure, to compliment you upon it.’

  ‘My stewardship?’

  ‘You have for some time been in charge of my nephew. He must have learnt much from you.’

  Richard’s face was in shadow now. Rivers, a natural actor, began to assert himself. ‘I take no credit.’ He made a light movement of one hand as though bidding credit stand aside. ‘He is a studious boy.’

  ‘Studious? Oh, I feel you should take some credit for that.’

  ‘And pious.’

  ‘Studious and pious! The realm will indeed be well-served by this youth. He has learnt something of the affairs of the state, no doubt?’

  ‘As much as befits a boy . . .’

  ‘Who at any time may find himself a king?’

  ‘It was very sudden. We none of us . . .’

  ‘As long as there is nothing to be unlearnt.’ Richard swung forward into the light, elbows on the table, chin propped on clenched fists. He smiled at Rivers, one eyebrow raised. ‘What, for example, have you taught him about me?’

  ‘You are his uncle . . .’

  ‘He would have known that without your teaching.’

  The eyes were extraordinarily compelling. They convinced Rivers that he was indeed guilty of something, though he knew not what. He protested, ‘I assumed that, as the boy’s uncle, you would have had the opportunity to teach him anything you wished.’

  For some seconds the two men sat staring at each other; then Richard laughed and, leaning forward, shook Rivers’ shoulder. ‘I have had no such opportunity, as well you know!’ He sat back, seemingly in good humour again. ‘But this will now be remedied so we will talk about it no more. Come, the food gets cold. I am hungry, if you are not! Tell me, while we eat, what news you have from London, for I am sure you are better informed than I.’

  Rivers favoured him with a long, melancholy dissertation on his weariness with London and the intrigues of the court; all of which he expressed so fastidiously that Richard, who might well have agreed with some of his sentiments, found himself wondering what place could possibly satisfy a man of such exquisite sensibilities. As Rivers talked of the wonders he had seen on his pilgrimages and how they had made him dissatisfied with the life of a courtier, the door behind him opened. Richard raised his eyes to meet those of the man who stood there. Rivers, imagining that a servant had come with more wine, continued to extol the glories of St John of Compostella while Richard, Duke of Gloucester, and Henry, Duke of Buckingham, looked into each other’s eyes and understood one another a deal better than they would have done had words
been demanded of either at that moment. By the time Buckingham and Rivers had greeted each other, and the three men were seated at table, it was as though Buckingham was a player in a scene long- rehearsed between himself and Gloucester. The stage was now his and he filled it magnificently.

  ‘They tell me you were unable to accommodate your party here,’ he jested with Rivers. ‘You must travel in great splendour.’

  ‘These are uneasy times.’ Rivers’ thoughts were now much with St John of Compostella, else he would surely have minded his words more. ‘There must be many who are not pleased at the prospect of another long minority. We must look to the safety of the young King.’

  ‘Indeed,’ Richard acknowledged with mock gravity, ‘this will ever be my purpose.’

  ‘And those who have long memories will surely recall how during the minority of our late but little lamented Henry the Sixth the country was bedevilled by the weakness of those in power; and none weaker than the man then named as Protector.’ Buckingham looked at Rivers. ‘We are more fortunate because the affairs of the state will be in firm hands. Do you not agree with me?’

  While Buckingham behaved in a lively and provocative manner which made it obvious that he enjoyed challenging Rivers, he also made it apparent that in his view the authority of Gloucester was beyond challenge, a thing as little subject to chance or change as the rising of the sun in the east. His broad, fair face glowed as though, sitting here opposite Gloucester, he felt the touch of that same sun.

  Rivers did not seem to find the prospect of a long protectorship any more pleasing than a long minority. Perhaps to make up for his lack of fervour, or perhaps because he was singularly unable to assess his situation, he said, ‘I have no liking for these matters, and shall be glad to relinquish my authority over the young King.’

  ‘I may be able to assist you in this,’ Richard murmured. In the flickering light Buckingham’s eyes glinted merrily.

  ‘I had thought I might go on a pilgrimage to the Holy Land.’