A Princely Knave Read online

  “I heard you,” she said. “Your army waits for you, sir.”

  “Ay,” he cried, and felt a coldness close about his heart, and his legs shivered. In this unexpected submission he could taste no triumph. Almost he felt that she mocked him, or even pitied him, obeying him as one might a dying man, whom it would be wanton to torment. And it was her faith, her trust, he needed; but how could he trust, how be certain of her faith, when her eyes remained riddles and a woman’s tongue is always glib with a lie?

  Helpless, raging, he glared into her blue eyes, wishing that by some means he could strip her soul as with his hands he could have stripped her body, so that he might see her naked heart and know for whom and for what cause it beat. But he could not see her heart. Only that pale face with placid eyes was shown him, showing him nothing beyond beauty’s skin; and he felt lonely, weak and helpless under the cloudless sky in this little ship, mockingly named Cuckoo, that skipped merrily through the waves towards England and his destiny.

  CHAPTER THREE

  ST. MICHAEL’S MOUNT

  FOR the three or four hours when the sea was at the ebb, St. Michael’s Mount became a part of England. Only then, over the narrow, slippery causeway, could men and horses and wagons pass from the mainland, the westernmost point of England, to this fragment, this impregnable island, a shred of Britain advancing into the waves. On the cliff-sided rock stood the fortress, with buildings both religious and secular huddling to its walls. Up the steep steps one trudged from the little port below, up through thickets of evergreens tunnelling one from the light, up amongst shadows to the stone gateway leading to the outer-ward in which stood, not only outhouses and stables and the lodgings of the captain and his guard, but the monastery raised in veneration of St; Michael, the dragon-slayer.

  Once locked inside, had they gathered sufficient supplies, a small garrison could have held at bay the mightiest of armies, and, after the tide had swept over the causeway, would have had the time and the security in which to rest and tend their wounds in happy isolation. Thus had John de Vere, Earl of Oxford, reasoned twenty years before when, during the civil war, he had seized and held the isle for mad Harry of Lancaster and his vixen, Queen Margaret. With ease and without hurt had Oxford thrown back the sheriff of Cornwall and his troops when they had come hunting him. Up the hill at low tide had the sheriff scrambled, only to be tumbled back, down and down, to be caught in the tide and tripped in the sands. Afterwards, John Fortescue, the new sheriff, had come to avenge his predecessor’s defeat; and even with four ships and nine hundred paid archers to hearten the levies drawn from common folk, he had not captured the Mount. Cannon had failed to shoot their balls the two hundred and thirty feet needed to reach the stone bastion. Useless in the cannons’ mouths, the balls had lolled, the men afraid to fire them. Only starvation had finally driven de Vere from his eyrie. No armies, no matter how many the men, could have beaten him. Here could a warrior, if sufficiently resolute, spit on the world and not be harmed for it. Ay, he could live like a pagan, prince with priceless dancing girls and none to curse him from his merriment. Here, of the world yet out of it, could be built a second Eden, a new Babylon, or a hermit’s refuge from earth’s tempting sins. Or it could be made a fox’s hole for the cowardly who wished to hide from action in prayer or blasphemy or in some woman’s arms …

  The month was September, a cold wind crying across the seas and the gulls beating their wings and wailing beyond the walls, crying for food or plummeting for fishes. So cold were the prince’s fingers in that stone chamber within the castle that they stung as though bitten when they touched steel. Only on one previous adventure had he donned armour and he knew little of the mysteries of sword-play, not having been reared a gentleman. Now when cheerful soldiers from the garrison brought pieces of armour for him to wear, he watched them miserably, although forcing a smile.

  His squire, Thomas Astwood, selected from the heap what he thought best while, trying to conceal his ignorance, the prince watched carefully. First, the thick quilted jacket to protect him, not only from the shock of blows against his body, but from the rivets and the pinch of metal plates. Now dressing proceeded in the opposite direction to what one used for clothes. Instead of beginning with the head and drawing down garments over the arms, Astwood began at the feet, working upwards until, piece by piece, the prince was scaled all over. The solerets for the feet, jambs over the lower-legs, knee-cops on the knees, and cuisses for the thighs. Then, for the body, plates on breast and back, the rerebraces for the upper arms, elbow-cops, and pauldrons for the shoulders, the gorget joining over the chest to the neck. Underneath all, yet above the quilted coat, the mailed breech dangled, showing between the tassets under the taces.

  Like some sea-monster he felt, a crayfish crawled to stand upright; and when he walked, he walked stiffly as though he had rheumatics, as though he waded through water. When he lifted his arm, he lifted it jerkily, the unyielding metal, save at the rivets, not giving sufficiently to have struck those doughty blows of which he had heard in many a galloping ballad. Safe from hurt he might more or less have been within that metallic carapace; but safe also, ruefully he thought, would be his enemies when he struck at them. He would have to practise, to learn the tricks of steel. He made tentative sweeps with his arm and felt that he had no strength, as though a witch were squatting on him. When he began to walk, he stumbled, knees unbending, and he had to force himself to take slow, ponderous steps; and he marvelled when he recalled knights he had seen in the lists, men able under the full weight of steel to leap unaided into their saddles, although such powerful knights were few. Most men needed help, not only in dressing, but in climbing on to their horses. Better would it be to fight like a common archer in a doublet of cuirbouilli, that leather dipped in hot oil, which was stout yet yielding, and with a steel-striped cuirbouilli cap to protect his skull. A knight could not run, he could barely walk but, rather, waddled, and certainly he could not dance.

  When Katherine saw him ‘stand, a gleaming figure in dark steel as smooth as glass, trying to squint at himself in a polished metal mirror on the wall, she stood and watched from the doorway. His helmet had not yet been buckled on and the golden hair fell sparkling to the curved pauldrons over his shoulders. Then seeing her, he became bashful like a small boy caught trying on his father’s harness. He flushed and strove to appear stem while with an awkward wave of the arm he dismissed Astwood who was tightening the straps behind the knees.

  Slowly, Astwood tiptoed from the room, turning now and then to admire his master in the bright metal; then he closed the door and the prince was alone with his lady. The prince looked away, pretending to be intent on the correct placing of his sword, whether to have the sheath run beside his left leg or, as he had seen on certain arrogant roisterers, letting it fall aslant, almost, between his legs.

  “My lord,” Katherine said in the voice of a dying woman, “when are we leaving this dreary place?”

  “I go within the hour,” he muttered, still not looking up; and he frowned to hear her take a deep breath, for he knew by that Sound that she was angry as well as surprised.

  “You are going?” she whispered. “And not me?”

  “You will remain here where you are safe,” he told her with false heartiness. “We cannot risk your daintiness on a battlefield. There will be many blows struck and much blood shed before Jong.”

  “The enemy is far away,” she said. “And do you think my country was ever a peaceful land? I was reared, sir, in no safe world and have tended fresh wounds and seen more dead men than I care to count. Why are you leaving me?”

  “I … I can’t take you,” he muttered; then suddenly he looked her in the eyes and said: “I am not taking you because I love you. This is man’s business and loathsome to me if only because it takes me from your side. I have little stomach for killing men. See! there’s proof that I’m the Perkin Warbeck that in your heart you think me.”

  “Will you never f
orget what I said aboard the Cuckoo? I was crazed with fear in the storm and knew not what I said.”

  “Ay,” he continued, not heeding her cry, “if I were gently reared, I’d relish butchery, would I not, like your royal coz and his savage followers dabbling their fingers in the blood of the slain and splashing it upon their cheeks, thinking it sport? They laughed to see me blench. But as I say, never have I liked the sight of blood, even of animals. That was why James decided that I was not gentle. Only a churl, thought he, could shudder from the goodly smell of dead men. And for that, he could not forgive me. For that, he sent me put of his court.”

  “I, too, never liked the sight of blood,” she said, “although I’ve had to steel my spirit against it when I’ve healed the wounded. I have asked you, a dozen times I have asked you, to forget what I said aboard the Cuckoo, yet always you spit it in my face; and that’s not courtesy. Think you that I, with Scottish kings my ancestors, would marry with a base-born fellow? Why must you insult me and torment yourself by continual plucking on that string?”

  Flushing, he shifted aside from the sad yet angry glare in her large eyes. Rarely, and then only after candles and tapers had been blown to darkness, had she unbared her heart to him and revealed herself a woman, passionate and submissive to his passion. But once the lights had been lit again or the sun had risen, back would return her vizard of disdain and she would appear weary, weighted under her scorn for others’, particularly for men’s, fooleries.

  In the gay morning light, parting the curtains that the day should enter the warm, perfumed cavern of creased and twisted pillows, of silken sheets and soft blankets, enclosing the pearl, his bride, he had always felt his joy and strength slide out of his toes, it had seemed, before the cold indifference with which she had looked, brows raised, at him. She had not spoken. Her eyes like glass, the fair damp hair disordered in waves about the white oval of her face that seemed unnaturally long because of the high shaven forehead and shaven temples, she had stared at him as at a stranger peeping on her beauty. Slowly, with not even a gesture of disdain or of disgust, or even of shame, but as a great lady might when she was caught undressed by a servant stumbling on her by chance, slowly had she drawn the blankets up to hide her to the shoulders. And all the while, without a blink, without a blush, she had stared at him, dark lids heavy over the eyes. He had felt as though he were Actaeon, turning cold as marble under the stony eyes of the woman-loving goddess, that Amazonian Diana; and like a schoolboy, he had not known what to say or to do, until, springing quickly away he had swallowed what was left of the muscadine that the revellers of last night had left beside their bed should they need refreshment with their sport.

  For fully eighteen months had they been man and wife, and by this time they should have had no secrets to hold them separate; yet every morning when her ladies opened the bed-curtains and he saw her beside him under the light, bedclothes drawn up as though — the devil damn it- — he were an interloper in a nunnery, he felt that he was intruding in a stranger’s bed, his amorous partner of the night flown, like Eros from Psyche, with the sun’s rising. The slow ritual of her dressing was the putting on of feminine armour that shut him away. Ay, her women shut her from him behind cloths, as now this warrior’s steel shut him from her; and often there had been times when he had tingled to take her into his arms to kiss and fondle her, lovers without disguise, he masterful and she limply happy, being kissed by him and kissing him … but that could never be, he feared. Once the sun rose, she turned to ice, even her voice becoming chilly, her eyes frosted; and graceful though her movements might be, there was an impatience of his admiration shown in her walk while there was defiance in her hooded eyes and in her full lips pressed together, the underlip out-thrust sulkily.

  Today she was different, he being concealed from her. Today she appeared weakly feminine, her shoulders forward and her bosom drooping and her legs slow to move as though weighted by her blue gown, which, flooding out and down in glossy folds from the waist and its enamelled girdle drooping a thirsty tongue almost to between her hidden knees, was tight as skin above, so tight indeed that every detail of her bosom was plain to see as though she were stripped and had changed colour. This gown was cut low in front, dipping into mauvish shadow, and was fur-rimmed; and the tall and bulky headdress had been put aside in favour of a jewel-encrusted golden caul which showed her golden hair in a golden net bunched over the ears, then flowing out to fall around her shoulders carelessly, as though she were still a maid.

  “If you go,” she said, “I go with you.”

  This was more like the Katherine he had known. The unusual, almost timid woman who had looked at him from within her eyes was gone in the ruthless princess. Again, abruptly, she became withdrawn inside her cuirass of soft flesh; and he felt like a child before her. Yet he remained resolute, if afraid; and he would not weaken, he swore. She was not going further with him into England until he was certain that the throne was theirs.

  “No,” he said, clearing his throat. “If I had you with me I’d be thinking all the time of your comfort, of your tender body battered in an uncushioned cart or pummelled raw on a saddle, and I need all my strength and all my mind for the tasks ahead. When I have captured Tydder, I’ll call for you.”

  Long, in silence, she gazed at him, then slowly she sighed, and again the cold defiance fell from her, leaving her a loving woman shaken with inward fears. The blue of her eyes softened, their colour darkening, long lashes almost meeting, while her mouth trembled.

  “They say,” she said, “that certain women of my country can see through time. They can read the future and talk with ghosts. I did not believe the tale, or only half-believed it, yet in my heart I was afraid of it and always gave charity to any hag I thought might he a witch. Now I know the tale was no lie, for the dread gift, God help me, is mine, too”

  “What do you see?” he cried, shivering. “Tell me!”

  “Nothing, … nothing,” she whispered, “but I can feel, I can smell and taste blood. Nay, it is not as you think and as I used to think it must be. Not solid shapes of men and women. It is a feeling under my scalp. Ay, more of a feeling than a vision. If you go, my lord, I question whether we’ll meet again unless you take me with you”

  “You must not say that! A woman must send her lord to battle with high heart and her emprise in his helm. You must not say such things to me!” In his fear and agitation, he sought to seize her but his gauntleted hands slid along her body as though greased until a rivet caught in her gown and tore it. Cursing, he wrenched off the metal glove and sent it clashing to the floor. “God’s Curse on this harness!” he cried. “I am caged alive.”

  “Whatever your destiny might be,” she said, not heeding his furious attempts to unbuckle the steel, “I must share it with you, for that is my destiny in the stars. I am your wife, bone of your bone, and must ride with you.”

  Astonished at such a confession, smiling yet not knowing he smiled, he looked up at her and let fall the buckle of the elbow-cop he had been trying to unlatch. No man at that moment could have called this woman cold and haughty. In her tight blue gown flowing from the waist, she stood, her hands twisted together and with tears in her eyes.

  “God’s glory,” he cried, “I think you love me, after all!”

  “Fool,” she said, trying to speak like a queen but her voice caught on her sobs and broke almost into a squeak. “Why think you that I let you marry me?”

  “I feared … I thought at your king’s command … a wish to escape from Scotland, mayhap, to see brave worlds like France and Burgundy … I know not what I thought.”

  Clumsily, he moved towards her, steel arms outstretched; and as he moved, he clanked.

  “Now,” she said in a child’s voice, “you will take me with you, won’t you?”

  He stood and dropped his arms that clanged on his sides. “I cannot,” he said. “For God’s love, lady, understand. Had I my way, were this a peaceful pro
gress, never would I think to leave you here. But I am going to war, marching with almost naked troops into an armoured country and know not what we’ll meet. Dangers to be encountered there must be, battles in the field and walled cities to be stormed. God knows, I am no lover of fighting and am unskilled at it, but were you with me, I’d have no stomach left for it in terror of your rape or loss. You know what happens after battle, you must have heard men laugh and jest about it when feasting. The wounded killed to stop their groans, save those wealthy enough for ransom, and the women with the baggage taken by those who find them first. They’d not think to meet a lady in the carts with whores and other draggletails. They’d not know you nor heed your cries. They would … God’s nails! I dare not think of it!”

  “They’d not touch Me!”

  “They’d do much and be damned to you, they would not care if you were a nun or Sheba’s daughter. The lust for blood is often sated in a rape. Men boast of it and jest to remember women swooning and shrieking for Jesus to guard them. Relish, they say, the panic gives and there’s strong wine in tears and blood. You know that is the truth.”

  Hands to her face, she swayed and almost fell; and from behind her hands, she whispered: “I know … yet would I go with you, my lord. I have full trust in heaven’s Father and am not afraid of any man.”

  “But I,” he cried, “I am afraid. Would you weaken my arm, put water in my veins? If you care for me, lady, stay here and be safe in Michael’s Mount. Let me know that you are secure behind these walls, and I’ll be so impatient to hurry back that I’ll ride down a hundred armies, thinking it brings me closer to you. Promise me … promise to wait here.”