The Devil in Ermine Page 6

  I could not resist hurling a discreet smirk in Uncle Knyvett’s direction, but seeing Grey being prodded along behind us, I have to admit that he was not a worthy Goliath to our David. Elizabeth’s mistake. She should have sent the Archbishop of York, a prince of the Church, not her commoner son. You do not fight eagles with a jackdaw.

  ONCE inside the inn, Richard abruptly held out his arms to his nephew. Time for an embrace and thump of each other’s shoulders in mutual grief.

  ‘I cannot tell you how sorry I am about your father, lad.’ I could hear the Yorkshire dialect in my cousin’s voice as he let genuine emotion overcome him. Droplets glistened on his lashes, and, for his part, the Prince could be heard gulping back his tears. ‘I loved him so much, Ned. England has lost a great king.’ Uncle Gloucester drew back, swallowing. ‘But look at you.’ He buffeted the boy’s chest. ‘Almost a man.’

  They were both sniffling and the grief was epidemic. Someone behind me blew his nose loudly and there was a little patter of applause. All eye-wipingly moving unless you had no future except four walls and a pail to piss in and Grey looked as though he needed a pail.

  My belly was rumbling but Richard decided some sort of formal speech was due. I would have been happy with a five minute eulogy on the late king, and, besides, Stony Stratford’s Rose and Crown was hardly the hall of Parliament, but my cousin’s endorsement of our common grief rapidly turned into a sermon.

  Heaven help us! It was as if his control, dammed up while he thought himself in peril, suddenly broke. All his resentment at bearing the weight of administration in the north and campaigning against the Scots, while down in the south his brother tweaked Mistress Shore’s duckies and grew fat with indulgence, spewed out.

  I am paraphrasing somewhat. Richard’s phrases were somewhat dryer, but the meaning was the same—the exclamation of the Labouring Brother against the Prodigal Son. Bitter as gall! And he openly blamed the Queen’s kinsmen, especially Rivers and the Grey boys for encouraging King Edward in orgies of lewd carnality and wine bibbling.

  God’s truth, I thought, here’s a different side to my cousin’s coin. Just last night I had called him a ‘whoreson’ in play. I knew better from now on. I must cut my cloth to suit the times.

  Richard had reached his peroration.

  ‘Arrest them!’ he commanded, pointing at Grey, Vaughan and Haute in turn.

  ‘Ned!’ shrieked Grey, flinging himself on his knees before his half-brother. ‘Forbid it! You are the King!’ He clutched the Prince’s hose so tight that it was a wonder the boy’s points did not snap.

  ‘Uncle Gloucester,’ intervened the boy, confused and frightened by Grey’s vehemence. ‘I do not understand.’

  ‘You are the King, not him!’ Grey repeated, shaking the royal legs. ‘In God’s Name, save us!’

  The boy drew himself together. His voice wobbled but he managed to argue.

  ‘Your pardon, Uncle Gloucester, but if the king my father appointed these lords to administer my household and the Welsh Marches, I do not see why anyone should doubt his judgment, for they have committed no offence against me. And they were certainly not in London giving my father any evil counsel but with me at Ludlow. If my Uncle Rivers were here, he would tell you so.’ What a clever lad. Heaven help us if he was crowned too soon. The selfish note in his voice irked me, too. He sounded more put out by the threat to his household arrangements, than concerned for Grey.

  I stepped forward clearing my throat. ‘Your highness and your grace, will you hear me, please?’ I asked, bowing deeply, and most of those present thought I was going to speak on Grey’s behalf.

  The Prince nodded, looking relived at my intervention.

  ‘Do stand up, nephew,’ I said to Grey, drawing him to his feet and wrapping my arm about him. ‘Wait over here, if you please.’ I left him beside Ratcliffe and turned to face the boy. ‘Your highness, I wish to say two things. Firstly, that your household officers at Ludlow were people appointed as teachers to educate you; they were not appointed to counsel you as king.’ I waited for Bishop Alcock to twitch or interrupt but his mouth was clamped shut. A pity!

  ‘Indeed,’ I continued, ‘I believe no one in this place would doubt that it should be the greatest and wisest lords of this realm who should attend your royal person and sit on the Royal Council.’ I ignored Vaughan’s furious countenance. After all, once being treasurer to Dead Ned did not mean he had a right to be so again.

  ‘The other matter is this. Your father, God rest his soul, appointed his grace of Gloucester as Lord Protector but there has been a conspiracy to thwart your father’s wishes and these gentlemen here are at the heart of it. So, I regret to say, is your Uncle Rivers.’ That drew a protest from Grey. I turned. ‘Until these matters are investigated, sirs, I ask you to give yourselves into custody. If you are innocent, you have nothing to fear.’ I swung back to the Prince. ‘They need to answer questions, your highness. It is a formality, nothing sinister.’

  ‘My loyalty is to my brother the King,’ exclaimed Grey, but he was not coming up with any arguments to defend himself. If he had had his wits about him, he and the boy should have been ten miles along the road by now.

  Now perhaps we could get on with breakfast.

  ‘But I am still confused!’ muttered Prince Edward. ‘What conspiracy?’

  Your turn, I indicated to Richard.

  The tempest that had rocked him was gone and he was calm as any earnest magistrate.

  ‘We have evidence that these knights and Lord Rivers planned to arrest your Uncle Buckingham and myself on the way to London in order to prevent me becoming Lord Protector.’ His tone grew stentorian again. ‘I did not come with an army but Rivers did. So did Grey here. Do you need two thousand men against my three hundred? What other possible motive could they have had?’

  ‘To honour me, perhaps, Uncle Gloucester,’ the boy replied and swallowed, but he had been well-schooled in speech-making. Encouraged by Grey’s desperate look, he flexed his wings again. ‘My lords and gentlemen, let us all journey to London together and you may air this matter before my lady mother and the royal coun—’

  Over my dead body!

  ‘Your pardon, your highness,’ I interrupted. ‘It is not the business of women but of men to rule this kingdom. Your father left no such authority to your mother.’

  ‘Edward,’ said Richard gently, wrapping his arm about the boy’s shoulders. ‘I never failed to obey your father’s wishes and out of the great love I have for him, I would not fail him now. Shall you be content with your father’s wishes or not?’

  The Prince looked wretchedly towards his half-brother and then back to his Uncle Richard and again to the watching faces, then his shoulders sank. Ha!

  ‘I am content with the government my father wanted.’ His expression begrudged his words but it was enough. The air seemed to rush back into the chamber as though we had all been holding our breath in unison.

  ‘His grace of Buckingham and I shall breakfast with his highness upstairs,’ my cousin declared and with that he swept the tearful boy to his chamber, while I made sure the rest of the Prince’s officers were herded together in the taproom with our soldiers on all the entrances. I gave orders to feed all of them. Men are more open to change on a full stomach.

  Alcock was the only bishop among them, or so I thought until I recognised the small man beside him. Ah, yes, Robert Stillington, Bishop of Bath and Wells. I remembered Stillington from the time of George’s trial. Dead Ned had booted him off to the Tower for ‘utterances’—though our jury never heard what they were. Why he was lurking in this company of Woodville supporters was a puzzlement that I would leave to another time.

  Upstairs, it was clear that the new King of England had indulged in a good blub, for the boy’s nose and ears were red, and Richard, sitting next to him on a settle, had damp blotches on his mantle.

  ‘It looks like it is clearing up be a fine afternoon,’ I observed, falling back on our English habit of commenting on the
weather when there is nothing else to say. I leaned out over the sunny sill of the jutting gable, rejoicing that I was not bleeding across a doorstep. Down below the townsfolk were still loitering, waiting for another glimpse of the Prince. A young woman blew me a kiss and I smiled back, and then I drew a tight breath.

  Across the street a monkey tail of cheerful Woodville retainers was stretching down the street and one of Richard’s bannerets was riding up and down directing more to join it. Curious, I leaned out further and saw that it led to the back of a cart flanked by pikemen in my cousin’s murrey and blue. A chest was open in the back and some sort of largesse was being handed out. Devil take it! The whoresons were being paid off! Some were disappearing into The Cock and The Crossed Keys or eyeing up the cluster of young townswomen, who should have known better. Others were saying farewells, preparing to leave. Sweet Mother of God, my cousin had the cunning of Ulysses.

  Oh, I had a lot to learn, I could see that. I closed the window, feeling as useless as teats on a ram, and turned. Somehow I would have to find a way to tip the balance of our alliance so he owed me a thing or two.

  My cousin raised a complacent eyebrow at me but I shook my head and took off my hat and mantle, and then I unbuckled my purse.

  ‘Did I hear something about your highness having a nagging tooth?’ I asked kindly, going down on my haunches before the Prince.

  ‘I’m not a three year old, Uncle Buckingham.’

  ‘No, of course not.’ But I was justly reprimanded. It was not my little lad Ned I was dealing with. ‘This,’ I said, holding a shiny bezoar stone cabuchoned in my fingers, ‘came from the belly of a creature that has a neck like a spire and lives beyond the boundaries of Christendom. It was given to me by Lord Hastings when I was your age. I assure you it works. You sleep with it under your pillow.’

  It was clear he did not want a gift from me but he muttered his thanks and kept it.

  ‘You might enjoy a rest later, Edward,’ murmured Uncle Gloucester. ‘What time did they make you rise?’

  ‘Six. I was waiting saddled up outside for hours.’

  ‘So much for sleeping in,’ I remarked. ‘Ah, here at last is breakfast. I am starving.’

  A procession of servants carried in pottage, newly baked bread and local cheeses.

  ‘I’m not hungry,’ our new sovereign said sullenly. My cousin pulled a face at me behind the boy’s head and I shrugged.

  ‘What do you intend to do now, make for London?’ I asked as he washed his hands thoroughly in the ewer.

  ‘No, not until I have word from Lord Hastings that it is safe. I am not going to walk into a charge of treason.’

  ‘Lord Hastings, uncle?’ The royal pitcher had ears. We had found the magic word to open his mind.

  ‘Yes, Edward, it was Lord Hastings who warned your Uncle Buckingham and myself that your kinsmen would try to prevent me becoming Lord Protector.’

  ‘I do not understand any of this.’ Well, Edward, welcome to Westminster, where we smile like the crocodilus and never say what we really think.

  When our sulky fledgling fled to the privy, Richard shook his fingers as though burned and grinned at me.

  It was a poxy breakfast. The pottage was oversalted, the heart of the bread was undercooked and the cheeses lacked flavour.

  Afterwards, Richard sent for a writing board and began busily scratching out a letter in his own hand to let Hastings know what had happened. Meanwhile I fidgeted, unwilling to stay cooped up with a petulant Plantagenet. Then Inspiration pinched me.

  ‘I suggest we ride back to Northampton.’

  Prince Edward looked up from his book and rolled his eyes as though I were a lunatic. But journeying back at a leisurely pace would give everyone something to occupy us and The Bear’s food was better. ‘I expect the people will go a-maying tomorrow. You could join them, your highness.’

  ‘I cannot contain myself, uncle,’ he retorted arrogantly. ‘I am supposed to be riding to London to be crowned not watching some foolish apprentice in a wig with apples up his doublet.’ Brat! He aped his Uncle Rivers’ mannerisms.

  ‘My apologies,’ I retorted dryly, receiving an encouraging nod from Richard. ‘But if it is Maid Marion in Northampton or a foul dinner here. I know which I would choose.’

  ‘NORTHAMPTON, full of love, beneath the girdle but not above.’

  Back along the road we went but the rain had gone and April was fleeing with the frisk of a lamb’s tail. I remember the fleecy clouds like bulging pillows and the air’s gentle warm embrace like a lover’s arms.

  The evening proved mellower than the morning and in the warm parlour where we had feasted the uncle we now honoured the nephew. I fetched out a fine pair of gloves that my little Bess had spent a week embroidering with white roses and tiny sunnes-in-splendour. Richard had a painstakingly-written letter of sympathy from his ten year old son, and the Prince received both graciously.

  To humour him, Richard ordered food from our table to be sent across to Rivers. That pleased our colt and he grew more trusting as the wine brought a flush to his cheeks. We obviously could not be that cruel to think so considerately about our prisoner. But Rivers haughtily rejected the supper, suggesting it might be sent to Grey instead. The latter lacked the full Woodville sulkiness; the platter was returned clean.

  ‘I must write to the Royal Council as well and explain matters,’ declared Richard, as our trenchers were removed. ‘It might be wise if you wrote to them too, Edward, to reassure them that we shall be in London as soon as possible.’ He sent a page out once more for writing materials. ‘Being king, you will discover, is not all crown-wearings and royal progresses but signing orders and dispatches and keeping yourself informed as to what is happening in every corner of your kingdom. Can you read swiftly?’

  I could see he had missed his calling as a schoolmaster.

  ‘Of course.’ The Prince looked insulted. ‘I can read Latin, French and Greek and Uncle Rivers taught me some Spanish as well.’

  His uncle ignored the boasting. ‘You might also like to consider whether there is anyone at Ludlow you wish to reward for their service to you. No haste. Think it over for a few days. Ah, here comes the parchment, let us both write to the Royal Council.’

  Oh, it was so homely. The pair of them sat together at the board, like a pair of scriveners, noisy as mice with their quills, while Lovell and I played chess.

  ‘I have finished, uncle.’

  Richard scanned the boy’s letter. ‘Excellent! Your first dispatch as king. Show me your signature. No, not on the letter.’ He pushed a virgin parchment in front of him.

  Tongue pressed between his teeth, our new king wrote, ‘Edwardus’.

  ‘Finish it,’ coaxed Richard. The boy glanced at him, then nodded and added ‘Quintus’.

  ‘Let me see,’ I remarked, strolling over to join in leaving Lovell to decide whether to take my bishop. I glanced over Prince Edward’s head at the large, spindly letters. Before long, his signature would take up half the paper. ‘There’s uncertainty there but a growing sense of worth. You can judge a great deal from a person’s script, their emotions as they write and so forth.’

  ‘Can you so?’ The lad shrugged. ‘Go on, Uncle Gloucester.’ He dipped the quill into the inkwell and handed it across. My cousin smiled, thought for a moment, and then in Italianate hand, wrote: Loyaulté me lie.

  ‘French,’ crowed the boy. ‘Loyalty binds me.’

  ‘And much more, Edward.’ He wet the shaft again and wrote R. Gloucestre underneath and bracketed the lines together. ‘My pledge to your father renewed in your service.’

  So endearing. I bit my tongue to stop myself uttering, ‘Ahhhhh.’

  ‘My turn,’ I declared, holding out my hand for the quill. I glimpsed the Woodville glint in the boy’s eye as he handed it to me. It reminded me of Cat’s expression when I asked for one of her women to mend a tear in my hose.

  It was easy to follow my cousin’s example. I wrote my device: Souvente me souven
e and beneath it, Harre Bokingham. My script cantered flamboyantly in comparison to Richard’s dainty trot.

  ‘“Often remember me”,’ translated the Prince. ‘That’s an odd one to have, Uncle Buckingham.’

  ‘It certainly is. I inherited it along with a Welsh castle and cobwebs.’

  ‘Your move, my lord,’ Lovell called out.

  He had left his king vulnerable. ‘Checkmate,’ I said, moving my bishop down its oblique road. I buffeted his defeated lordship and turned to the royal letter writers. ‘Will your royal highness grant me leave to go to bed?’ I bowed with a flourish and looked beyond him to the potential ruler of England.

  ‘Goodnight, Harry.’ Richard’s expression thanked me for my support that day. Mind, we were not through the perilous mire yet. We still had the Queen and London ahead of us.

  THE walk back to my inn washed sleep from my mind. My henchmen were laughing at some jest but I was replaying the morning’s triumph over and over and my Plantagenet blood was fizzing with the firecracker we had loosed among the Woodvilles.

  Revenge, such a sweet word! News of this day would reach Elizabeth and she would rage in her chambers, screaming with fury. The cold wind from Northampton would ripple up her fur and she would know her summer was over.

  I needed a woman that night, a long-legged, local wench. The trouble was if word reached my righteous cousin across the way, it would lower his opinion of me and I could not afford the risk. Not yet. In London it would be different. Our gables would not be grinning at one another across the gutters, and Pershall would be able to find me a girl without the whole world knowing. Still the itch was there; even Cat would have been worth nuzzling.

  ‘My lord duke, good evening to you.’ The Cambridge scholar, Nandik, was waiting for me at the foot of the stairs. A human cat ready to rub against my bootcuffs. He had already bought himself a better doublet and new boots and his dark hair was several inches shorter.