A Princely Knave Read online

  “Or thought you did, by God!”

  “I thought you a prince, saw myself Queen Katherine of England. Bonny, I thought, to be a queen. Queen Katherine and King Richard the Fourth. Two kingdoms made one in our flesh, in our sons. Women are always dreamers. That’s why they love. That is why men make nidgets of them so easily.”

  “You don’t love me? you lied!”

  “O, I loved you. I think I loved you. Bothwell warned me you were the jape of Europe, a dunghill cock, he said, set crowing by Maximilian and Margaret to frighten England. I’d not believe it then. I told him so; he laughed. When others whispered, I thought them jealous — girls of my pretty prince and men of you for winning such a queen. Love or ambition? which? or both? or vanity?”

  “I am Prince Richard. On God’s bones, I swear it!”

  “Hush! lest God hear you. It was King James himself who told me what I feared. After you’d crawled back from the war, your war, pished at … a coward … ”

  “Mother of God,” he howled, “I was no coward. How could I have them murder my own people? That was no way to come back to my kingdom, slaughtering, burning houses, robbing poor folk, killing, not only men, but children, too, and women after they’d been used. I told your coz. I told him to his face. I would not have it, I said, I would not have my people afflicted in that way, I said.”

  “Your people!” She laughed, and so close to him did he hold her that he could feel her hot breath on his mouth and nostrils. “O, such noble mercy fit for ladies!” she jeered. “Yet you call yourself a king!”

  “I will be king!” he shouted.

  “Yet not one Englishman took down his sword or bow when you rode down from the north. Not one man came to stand beside you.”

  “With a Scottish army of murderers leading the way, how could they welcome me? That accursed foray of King James did more disaster to my cause than even defeat in battle could have done. I killed my own people without their offending me.”

  “The man you call your father, that dead giant, King Edward: he was never afraid to kill,” she said. “When he thought even his own brother dangerous, he slew him. Edward was a man, a man! as half the wives of England knew and many a damsel innocent until she met him. And you pretend to me that that lusty loving rogue was your sire! You have the mouse-soul of a commoner. Kings do not shudder from blood.”

  In the bitter ring of her voice, he heard a sob, as though these insults, meant to wound him, wounded her equally. And he had believed hex incapable of any feeling beyond pride and vanity! The storm with its abrupt violence had not only knocked her off her feet, it had upset her brain-pan and she was confessing things she had never confessed before. Until now, he had not thought that she doubted his claim to be. King of England; yet all the while, behind that mask of scorn, she had been smouldering with anger, seeing herself a good woman tricked by a rogue. The storm had forced the truth from her. Because she was afraid, she struck at phantoms and abused him, woman-fashion, as though he were the cause of this wind’s roaring and the sea’s rising.

  He, too, was angry and had no pity for her distress, his own doubts lashing at him in her voice. He needed the day, the sunlight in his eyes, the sound of friends’ talk and laughter, to become bold again. Here, between decks of a rolling ship, he could not blink from the terrors he strove to smother by chatter or action. If Kate, his own wife, did not believe him, how could he uncover the truth for himself?

  “Then why did you come to England with me?” he shouted.

  “I tried to believe it,” she said. “But already I knew it a lie. James had winked, sly James, not trusting even his own babble. He hates King Henry. He’d call his own fool King if it would spite King Henry. I was his kinswoman, certes, but not so close in kinship to trouble him with my disparagement. What did it matter to James if he had tethered me to a lie? He said that wives had sure ways of consoling their disappointment should marriage prove a failure.”

  “Mother of God, not that!”

  “I have my pride,” she said. “I am a Gordon. Let that console you, if it can”

  Difficult was it for him to maintain his hold, one hand on her wrist, the other on the rope, hut he was young and anger gave him strength. O, that the seas would calm and the winds would drop that he might beat this woman in the darkness. He was Prince Richard Plantagenet, the second son of King Edward the Fourth, who had fled the Tower, and now he was King Richard the Fourth of England. If that were not so, if the true prince remained a prisoner somewhere, why did not the usurper, Henry Tudor, bring him out into the light and thereby confound the conspirators against his stolen rule? He could not do it. He could not do it because Prince Richard lived; he was Prince Richard. Whatever the questions which until then had kept him, tossing and wakeful, through long nights, they now were gone, gone utterly. Katherine’s confession of her doubts removed his own doubts. He was Prince Richard, heir to England.

  “I am Prince Richard of England,” he shouted into the dark; and the bilge below him gurgled mockery, the waves slapped outside contemptuously, and the wind loudly jeered, whistling, while in his vehemence he almost tumbled forward on to his face. “I was smuggled abroad, hidden; … I was only nine, I think I was nine, a boy … the murderers came to the Tower to kill … poor Edward, my poor brother … but one took me abroad, hidden … Years I wandered abroad, I came back to England … at least eight yean, or more … ”

  “Ay, you’ve been abroad,” she said, pulling himself up to face him. “Your father was controller of Tournay. Bothwell told me. Or, as some say, he was the Jew whom King Edward baptized, Sir Edward Brampton. That does not matter. You are not Prince Richard.”

  “I am Prince Richard! I am, I tell you, I am!” He screamed and felt the tears hot on his lashes. Had he been able to look into this accursed woman’s eyes, he’d have made her believe him by the force of his own belief; but in darkness, amidst the artillery of the elements, he was like a boy whistling against a tempest. And beyond all possible questioning, he was certain now that he was Richard.

  “I’ll make you queen,” he shouted. “You’ll see! I’ll make you queen.”

  “A dunghill queen,” she scoffed. “Would God I were in Scotland!”

  “You’ll see Scotland again. Have no fear. You will go back in purple robes with a crown on your head; you will go back in a scarlet litter powdered with leopards and lilies. See then what bloody Bothwell says!”

  “To die at sea … a dreadful doom. Unhouselled, graveless … ”

  “Pah, this is a fairy’s puff of wind, a merry nothing, a feather in the sails. You’ll not die here, my lady, without penance. Soon, any hour, and we’ll be seeing England. Then, not now, will be. your time for praying, when I ride at the head of my army and end the work my uncle started. He’d have cleft the Tydder’s sconce at Bosworth had traitors not turned behind him. Then would it have been merry England, by God’s blood!”

  She laughed, then choked on her laughter, and gasped and shook and moaned; and for a time, neither spoke, their thoughts swaying between hopes and fears. Soon, England … He saw huge armies of steel flashing in the light; he saw men running, cheering, to welcome their prince home again. Cowardly Tydder would be skulking at Westminster, not knowing whither to fly in a country that hated him, while the triumphant people of England under the banner of the White Rose rode or strode to London for justice and for peace. His cheeks burned at the thought and he stiffened, holding himself more erect. He was King Richard the Fourth, not little Perkin Warbeck. That was a lie, a name given him that he might hide from Tydder’s spies. No longer was this return to England an adventure only. He was the disinherited returning to claim his own.

  “I think … I think you really do believe it,” she said suddenly.

  “Of course! It is the truth,” he cried. “Must I falter now because my wife’s frightened of a sea-storm and forgets my name? Are her young eyes clearer than the eyes of the Duchess Margaret of Burgund
y, my own dear father's sister? She called me Richard, nephew, and kissed my hand and said she loved me for her brother’s sake. And the King of France, would he have embraced an upstart? He named me cousin and cherished me. The King of the Romans, too, wise Maximilian, and his son, Austria’s archduke, with the Kings of Denmark and Scotland and the Earl of Desmond in Ireland. They knew me as Richard, true King of England, robbed of his birthright by a traitor Welshman, damned Henry Tydder, a very upstart who holds down the country in an iron gauntlet, ruling by terror only. When I land — you will see — the people will welcome me as their deliverer. Then, you will not doubt me, lady.”

  “Poor Dickon,” she sighed. “Your head will stand for the crows on London Bridge with a paper crown nailed to it; and I will be made the mocking-stock of the world.”

  “Then why did you sail with me?”

  “I had dreams … I am a woman, and I dreamed …”

  “I’ll have those dreams come true. Have no fear of that. Why, should they remain only dreams? By God’s bones, I’ll make them true! I’ll have you on your knees to me for these damned doubts; ashamed, you’ll come to me, lady, calling yourself ungrateful and a blind wife … You will see, I tell you, you will see … ”

  In his excitement, he let go the rope and caught her in his arms, and was then flung with such force to the deck that she fell with him. Semi-stunned, they lay, rolling and gasping, while furiously, feeling as yet no bruises from his fall, he pulled her to him, wanting both to love and to hurt her. Out of the darkness beneath him he saw her face in a pool of hair, and he gripped her tighter while he kissed her mouth.

  “I am the prince,” he gasped. “Tell me I am the prince.”

  She moaned and did not answer, her mouth loose under his. Then she twisted aside and, still in his cruel arms, said jerkily:

  “There is time, time, God willing … Tell the helmsman … steer to France, France, Burgundy … anywhere not England …”

  She felt him draw away and heard the quick intake of his breath, and his arms relaxed about her. The more tightly then did she cling to him on the rolling deck, babbling:

  “The duchess swears you are her nephew. God knows, I care not what your name may be so long as we are but of this … There’s an omen in this storm, no good can come of it … Turn the ship back, my lord, anywhere, away from England … ”

  “Go where you wish,” he said, trying to break from her; but he could not break from her, so great was her panic in that storm with the thought of a hostile country soon to be fought.

  Over the deck they rolled, clasped as though in love, her skirts entangling his legs and her yellow hair whipping him and stinging his eyeballs.

  “You speak to England’s future king,” he snarled, “and not to Perkin Warbeck. Perkin mayhap would turn back now, for he’s no gentleman; but a royal prince like me, bred from the loins of mighty Edward, does not turn back though swords be at his throat. But you can go. I’ll send you off with the ships when I’m landed. Ay, let me face my destiny alone, like a man. I want only loyal comrades with me, no cowards, no nesh-hearted women frightened of a little storm.”

  “I am not afraid!”

  “Yet you would have me turn back, have me the mock of the world, shamed forever, because you’re not afraid! Is that it? You’d show your womanly courage by running off before an arrow’s flighted. You say that I am Warbeck, base-born Warbeck, and you of king’s blood. I did not know that kings were cowards, even in their daughters.”

  "I am not!”

  “Then come with me.”

  She sighed. "What else?” she murmured. “James would mock and Bothwell would look at me with sly eyes, and the women would laugh … What else can I do?”

  “I do not want you,” he shouted, fists clenched, "I want no woman who wants not me. Get you back to Scotland, damn you!”

  “I have chosen my destiny, she said. “It was the wind, the sea, the unknown elements … I’ll not fail you again.”

  “I do not want you now. No more, no more!”

  “But I am your wife. For good or ill, that at least is true.”

  “I’ll have no wife that does not trust me, not I, by St. Denis! I was fool enough to love you once. I’ll love you no more.”

  She would not let him go. Tightly her arms held him as in silence they struggled, hot face against hot face, while the seas rolled them in the whirl of her skirts and the rush of her golden hair.

  “Say that you want me,” she hissed. “Say that you know I am a king’s grandchild. Say it.”

  “Say that I am Richard of England,” he shouted, glaring at the black caverns that were her eyes.

  “You … you are King Richard,” she gasped, the words seeming jerked out of her in pain.

  “Say now that you love me,” he demanded in triumph.

  But that she could not say. She was of royal blood and her pride was Scottish. She was a woman who could not speak love to a man. But furiously she kissed him; then smiled and lolled blissfully in his arms when her kisses, had roused him to passion. She whispered to him, but there were no words in her whispering, a sibilance of love that had no admission of words …

  As suddenly as it had risen, the sea became calm, the winds blown to a whisper; or so it seemed to Katherine. Taking deep breaths, as if she rose from drowning into air, she was startled to feel the roll of the deck grow slighter.

  “There is someone coming,” she hissed. “Someone at the door.”

  Her husband raised his head and listened.

  “It is Captain Barton wants you,” cried a seaman, rapping on the wood. “You told him to call you at first sight of land.”

  “Why! are we there?” He felt Katherine’s hand creep up his back, and he held his breath until the man answered.

  “Off the larboard; my lord. You can see the line of surf. Wales, I make it, but the mists are high.”

  Wales! at last Wales, Tydder’s country … He shuddered like a man waking from happy slumber into nightmare, reality flooding back with dreams of murder, of armies charging and of blood in his mouth. From now, there could be no turning back.

  Trying to keep his hands from shaking, he sought to unclasp Katherine’s fingers.

  “No,” she whimpered, “not yet …”

  “I am coming, fellow!” he shouted. “One moment and I’ll be with you.”

  No longer did Katherine attempt to hold him. Sighing, she let him go and sank hack amongst her hair on to the deck, eyes open on the darkness that was no darker than her thoughts. As though he were far from her, she heard him open the door and speak to the sailor, then close the door behind him; and she sank back into fears that were beyond misery.

  On the deck above, she heard silly men shouting, greeting with cheers the land that would bring them only disaster and, most likely, death. Poor fools, blinded by dreams of conquest and honour and by lust for booty, now they huzzaed and laughed and danced. But she was a woman whom such dreams could not bubble. And she knew, as though she were a witch who could read the future in a cobweb, she knew that before very long her yellow-headed, long-legged husband would lie dead; and should he die, she did not think that she would want to live.

  CHAPTER TWO

  COAST TO DESTINY

  NEARER flowed the coast of England, dart-cliffed, with, here and there, sandy coves and splinters of rock in feathery foam, and hills of dark greenery. They were near Land’s End, the master, Andrew Barton, said. A tip of England running into the ocean as though it were a spear about to lunge at France. High spray and mists concealed much of the coast, save for an occasional break in the white curtain where, mists slowly unfolding or breaking open suddenly, a cliff was glimpsed with water frothing over rocks, flinging high great tentacles to drip like pearls to ebb, retreat, then roll forward again to break in showers of diamonds, spouting high.

  This was no hospitable coast for an invader. Here, England was strongly shielded, and the ear
th, what could be seen of it, looked barren under a watery blue sky. The sudden squall, common enough off such a coast, had died to a mutter which spat delicate rain to dribble from the painted sails. Against the lazily moving whipstaff, the steersman lounged, while in the prow, under the armoured beak hammered to shape a cuckoo, a sailor crouched to take soundings. Smoothly, with merely a gentle sway, the Cuckoo moved, rolling gently, forward, sails arched, towards England, while on the aftercastle the soldiers gathered about their Prince Richard to peer towards this land, to some of them as yet unknown, from which they might slash fortunes or dig a grave. No fear showed on their smiling faces.

  Close to the prince stood his three principal advisers and his squire, and in their eyes he could detect neither excitement nor doubt. With an air of indifference, they watched the coast of their destiny take shape out of mist and sea-spume. First amongst them stood John Heron, a Londoner, a bankrupt merchant, his wealth, he swore, having been poured out to speed the cause of England’s rightful kings. No longer a merchant, he had been forced to become a soldier with the fat of idleness sweated from his belly. Even he who usually fretted for action, ever brooding on revenge, showed now no excitement that action soon would be forced on them, So, too, was it with Nicolas Ashley, the scrivener, one who always saw over His opponents’ shoulders into a possible future, ever one mental leap ahead of his fellows’. He also watched the approaching coastline as though he were an alien to whom this land in the mists meant nothing.

  “Whitesand Bay must be close,” muttered the prince, gripping the bulwark and leaning out as though with his impatience to force the ship forward, “You say that that would be the safest landing-place?”

  “I follow Captain Barton,” said Ashley. “He has chosen it.”

  “A devil’s foot of land,” growled Heron, plucking his fat under-lip. “Nothing grows under this salt wind. A land of savages; the toe of England and the grave of seamen. This is no propitious spot to open our adventure on.”