A Princely Knave Page 5

  Slowly, she lowered her hands, and he was happy yet grieved to see that she had been weeping, her cheeks glossy with tears and the’ lashes glistening. For once, the lady had melted into woman. No longer was there that icy barrier between them, he timid before her greatness, afraid of provoking her displeasure, she faintly contemptuous because of her high birth and the mystery of his.

  He would have taken her in his arms hut he had forgotten the armour. His stiff arms tried and failed to clasp her: the rivets held him inflexibly and he could not feel her warmth. And in that metallic embrace she shivered when he kissed her. Cold, cold he was against her, hidden within the male barrier of hate, of death, of killing lusts. Over the unwrinkling metal her fingers slid and could not reach him; and she felt that the steel was her malicious enemy, the unbending enemy of love, exulting in its power to keep her away.

  “I must get this off, a murrain on it!” he cried, trying with awkward fingers to unlock himself.

  “I will be your page,” she said.

  “No!” he shouted, “no! I’ll not have you kneel to me!”

  Smiling, she kissed him — never, he believed, had she kissed him of her own will before — and, pressed her damp cheek against his, and gave a sigh that ran her body’s length. Then, still sadly smiling, she sank on her knees in her gown of costly velvet, and with deft fingers began to unbuckle the spurs and solerets and jambs, weeping as she did so; and, now and then, suddenly she pressed her cheek against the metal as though to cool her skin.

  He could not help her. He could not even lean down to her. In warrior’s scales, he remained trapped, fidgeting inside the metal with the desire to be free, a man again, and able to hold her in his arms, with naught thicker than cloth between them. And he had to wait while, as though, incredibly, she did him homage, this great lady, cousin of the Scottish king, his lady wife knelt on the dusty stone, impeding him piece after piece — jambs, solerets, knee-cops, cuisses — until she stood again to her feet and with trembling yet quick fingers unpicked the pauldrons from his shoulders, afterwards freeing his arms of rerebraces, elbow-cops and vambraces. Then only remained the gorget under his throat, the breast-plate, the taces and tassets and the mailed breech.

  Piece after piece, clashing to the stone, careless whether they were dented, the metal fell from him under the busy fingers of love; until at last a man again, quit of prison, he took a deep breath of freedom and caught her in his arms.

  “My love,” he whispered, “why are you not always kind to me like this?”

  She did not answer. Eyelids lowered, she lay hack with an air of meekness in his arms, not moving her face from his kisses.

  Around them, gleaming sulkily, lay the steel pieces, with the discarded sword. They were forgotten … for the time, forgotten while love, that enemy of war, which prefers cosseting, silks and satins, velvets and laces, and dalliance on soft beds warm in luxury, made happy for once these two for a brief while, a kissing-space, royal lady and Prince Richard … or young Brampton the Jew … or lowly Perkin Warbeck from Tournay …

  Like the tossed-aside steel, sullen in the shadows, that question remained forgotten, with all else in the world save the sweet urgency of kisses and the wonder of finding themselves no longer man and woman but one creature of bliss transfigured with love, for a time, … alas, only for a time, as dimly they knew and tried not to remember in each other’s arms …

  CHAPTER FOUR

  ON TO ADVENTURE

  SLOWLY into the grey-blue sky the walls of St. Michael’s Mount faded, dissolving there. Or so it seemed to the prince, feeling himself more the prince at every rub-a-dub of his horse’s hoofs carrying him east towards London and Westminster. Leaving the fortress, he had looked back and raised his soft-gloved hand in jaunty farewell to his lady and had seen only her shadowed shape in the stone window, unmoving, no hand raised in reply, no scarf or glove waved to him. Then he had turned and as he slithered between the shrubs to the causeway, branches overhead cutting off sight of Katherine, a chill had stolen about his heart in that damp place reeking sweetly of rottenness.

  When he had reached the causeway and was in the open, he had turned again to look up at the castle. There she had remained, immobile as a statue, as though indifferent to his fate; and he could not even tell whether she had looked towards him. No tears from this wife he was leaving behind him, no wailing, no sign of sorrow. Other women — here they were crowding beside his army, marching with it — wept and kissed their husbands when they left for war; but not his Katherine. Her lips had been cold, cold as though she were his sister, not his wife, and her eyes had been serene, like a painted saint’s; and quietly had she bade him farewell, seeming even relieved to have him go when he had finally refused to permit her travelling with him. And that calm indifference exasperated and frightened him.

  After she had unharnessed him of war’s, carapace that morning, the ice of Scottish royalty had seemed to melt from around her heart and she had been so loving that he had exulted in the pride of mastery, believing that this submission would remain and she would always be his tamed and amorous partner. But, nay! Even in her apparently undissembled and generous love had lurked her guile. When she had believed him conquered, deliciously at peace with heart ceasing to thunder, she had begun to whisper in a small girl’s voice, wheedlingly, saying that she must ride with him to Westminster. While he had congratulated himself on her submission had come that whisper as though, like a harlot, she must be paid for her favours.

  “Take me to London, to Westminster, to wherever you’re going,” she had whispered, Eve on his pillow.

  Finding that pleading and submission had failed to weaken his resolve to leave her at the Mount, she had turned to anger and disdain, and even, to his amazement, to tears when she had clung to him, begging him to take her even into battle. Hating himself for hurting her, again and again had he had to refuse. Had the decision been his alone to take her, he’d not have paused. Like a lover in a ballad, he’d have set her on the pillion behind his saddle to jolt, clinging with one hand to the thong at the back of his girdle, with him to all adventures. But his council of three had said Nay. They would not permit her to ride with them.

  “Other women will be with us,” he had argued. “You can’t stop them following with the baggage. Wives and whores and old trots with knives to kill the wounded for anything they might have in their pouches.”

  “Would you place the Lady Katherine amongst such bonstrops!” Heron had cried, swelling out his frog’s belly.

  “Such a delicately boned lady, never!” had sighed Skelton. “Faugh, my lord. One wants no ladies in the sweat of battle or the dust of a march. It is for afterwards that they are called to sponge the brows of tired warriors. Although, for sure, I have known women stronger than men, some so leathery that never a cannonball would have split them, nor pikes that would not have snapped in the assault; but such were not daintily bred folk like your sweet lady. She has lived on sugar-plums and eringo and spiced wines, a being of luxury and pampered pleasures …”

  “It is her wish,” he had answered, glaring at them. “However gently bred, she has the heart of a man in a woman’s body and is not easily tired or frightened or daunted by discomforts. It is her wish, nay, her command that she ride with us.”

  Heron had groaned, rolling his eyes towards Skelton who had shrugged and sat back on his stool. Then Ashley had spoken, saying quietly:

  “My lord, I doubt not that the princess, being royally bred and of such high lineage, has the heart of a Scottish lion and will not blench from blood or dirt or from any of the discomforts of war. But you are forgetting, my lord, that in all wars there is the possibility of defeat or of loss of baggage. Should she be captured, what ransom could you give except the surrender of your whole enterprise? In war, the price men pay is with their lives, the price that women pay … well, they need not all be Lady Lucreeces to have themselves pricked with a knife to escape their husband’s a
nd their own disparagement. That can be no honourable fate to any woman, high or low; and for husbands it is terrible and cannot be repaired … “

  The blood had left the prince’s cheeks and horror had shone in his eyes as he had turned to the scrivener, seeing his lady helpless in the arms of savage foes. He had not considered that before, nor had she. He did not, he dared not visualize the possibility of defeat, although awareness of it was forever knocking at the back of his mind, waking him suddenly at night or turning him to shivering fits at unexpected moments, even in company. Yea, he might die, he might very easily die, his army a rabble against the usurper’s disciplined and well-armed troops; and should he be killed, his possessions, Katherine included, would become his conquerors’ to share and use.

  Therefore, no matter how she had pleaded or abused him, how she had caressed or belaboured him, he had stayed firm. He could not risk her beauty in the field. Were she to be with him, he would have felt only half-armoured, his heart naked to a blow, his thoughts and fears being always with hen And she had. not forgiven that decision. That morning her goodbye-kiss had been flaccid, lips loose, teeth tight-clenched; and her eyes had remained open, expressionless, as cold as ice in their blue. With caresses and kisses, he had striven to chafe some response from her; and all his tricks had failed.

  With flat voice had she bidden him farewell.

  “It is for your sake,” he had cried against her stony attitude. “O, my hinny, can’t you understand? It is because I love you too dearly.”

  She had not answered, only her eyelids seemed to curl at the corners and her mouth drooped with petulant underlip. Unyielding in his arms she had remained.

  “I want no kingdom for myself,” he had persisted, running his lingers down her spine and exciting himself with the touch, but not her. “Until I met you I looked on fighting as a sport for fools. I was content with idle, sensual pleasures. But when I married you, I swore to make you proud of me and myself worthy of being your husband. I would make you my queen, I swore.”

  Still, she had not answered. Still, her body in his arms, she had remained withdrawn in spirit, neither repulsing nor accepting him as though his touch meant nothing and she was thinking of other matters.

  “It is for you,” he had cried, growing angry and desperate before her silence. “Do you think that I like war? I hate and hate it. If it were possible, I’d stay in heaven here, with you and shut away the world. But we can’t do it, we can’t; nor would my pride permit it. A man must prove his valour for his lady. As King Arthur’s knights hunted the world for the Grail, not because it was the cup of our Lord’s blood but because they wished to find it for their ladies’ sake, so do I strike at Tydder. For your sake.”

  Slowly, she had smiled, a tight-lipped smile, a scornful smile.

  “That is my dream,” he had told her, “and I will pluck it for you. For you. Not for myself, I want no crown. I was happy as a merchant, a commoner, ambitious only for ordinary things. But you must be a queen.”

  Then, at last, had she spoken. Her face so close to his that the tips of their noses touched, her eyes seeming enormous, a giantess’s eyes merging to one Cyclopean eye, and her breath hot and spiced against his lips, she had said:

  “What if I told you that I am weary of greatness, weary of having women always spying about me, dressing me, undressing me, washing me, painting me, combing my hair and pestering me? I want no crown for a cage. If it’s not too late, let us go. We could steal off in the pinnace.”

  “That’s not my lady speaking!” he had cried, aghast. “You a poor man’s wife! wrinkled by the sun, sucked dry by children and poverty, never! You must think my love to be a very little thing if I could do that to you.”

  “Even though I asked it?”

  “You think to try me, to find whether I’d unload ambition for your love. And if I said Yea you would despise me and hate me for it, as I would despise and hate myself.”

  “You do not understand …”

  “You would despise and hate me. You are too great and beautiful to be hidden in the mud of poverty. Never would I forgive myself, watching you grow old and miserable and thinking of the rich days of your youth, the honeyed foods, furred garments and the downy beds. I’ll come back to you King of England or they’ll bring me here in a coffin.”

  “What of me?” she had asked quietly. “You would leave me because of this dream of yours?”

  “You are that dream. Can’t you understand, lady, it’s … , it’s as though I were an old-time knight off to kill dragons in your honour and praise.”

  After that, she had argued no further. Dry-eyed, she had| remained and permitted him to take his amorous farewell, her eyes open and staring, it seemed, over his shoulder at something he could not see. Save for her sighing, she might have been asleep for all the answer she gave to his fondling.

  Heavy-hearted, therefore, was he when he rode from the fortress, through the tunnel of greenery and over the causeway to the mainland; and he groaned when he waved to her where she Stood in the window, and she did not answer. Other women wept at seeing their men leave them; others, hordes of them, trailed after the army, singing as they walked as though this were a pilgrimage to some shrine of Amor.

  And perhaps this was a pilgrimage on which they had set out, for they sought freedom from tyranny and unjust taxes as well as restoration of their rightful kings; and there was also, of course, in most of them, men and women alike, the hope of plunder from cities to be sacked. Yet few of the men were armed. Mostly, the poor devils carried clubs or old bows brown after long resting by the smoke of the fire, or a few had axes or daggers or baselards. There was scarce a true sword amongst them, apart from his troop of men-at-arms. His banners were not many; the sun in splendour, Edward’s standard, shook out its folds; and others sewn for him by ladies at the Mount showed a little hoy escaping from a tomb, and from the mouth of a wolf with a red rose behind its ear. A rabble, not an army, tramped behind him and his small troop of sixty mounted men-at-arms.

  Yet when St. Michael’s Mount was far behind and the memory of his lady’s coldness became but an ache in his heart, the prince began to feel his spirits rise to see so many men prepared to risk their lives in his cause. And as the march continued, continually were men joining him. Not great men, alas. Not one accursed lord had left castle or manor to greet him. They were waiting to learn how the last battle turned before they offered their hand to either side. But the lesser gentlemen, with artisans and farmers and the unhappy poor, came eagerly to follow their champion; and they smiled to note his golden head, as golden as his father’s, said the older men, and then they told again of the beauty and the greatness and the gentle heart of mighty Edward, that dead sun in splendour, and of how he had triumphed over the usurping Lancastrians in battle after battle, a warrior who had never retreated and who had never lost a fight. This Prince Richard, they said, was the very butterprint of that great king, and under such a leader they could not fail, the Welshman being a cowardly rascal. At Westminster, within his hired army — ay, for the first time in history, a King of England had to pay to have men guard him! — he sent out his cormorants, those damned tax-gatherers, to squeeze and trample the people from high to low, as if there were no end in life other than gathering gold, gold, gold, which he would not spend yet desired insatiably.

  Again and again had the English plotted and risen to break the upstart’s yoke, but as yet no great leader had come to weld the malcontents to unity. Few had believed Lambert Simnel’s story that he was the Earl of Warwick, yet when from Ireland he had invaded England, Tydder had almost lost his crown, many cowardly barons unfortunately holding their hands until they could be certain which way the wheel of fortune spun. If they had been prepared to allow Simnel with his poor claim to become their king, eagerly, surely, would they be to welcome this King Richard IV whose right to England was supported by Scotland, Spain, Denmark, Austria and the Netherlands?

  T
hus reasoned the scrivener, Nicolas Ashley, while he jogged on his horse and watched to note how few men straggled from the main army. And should the venture fail, why! it would mean only the loss of his head, a small loss to one who had no longer the taste for living. He was not afraid to die. In his unhappy outlawed existence, there had come suddenly an urge for peace, for rest, if only in the grave. Adventure was for the young to whom the future appears rich and glorious, when men feel that they are immortal and the vanities of a transient world worth fighting for; vanities such as gay garments and crowns and generous ladies seeming sufficient Grael for any privations or dangerous efforts. Once, hundreds of years ago, it seemed, he had felt like that; and he smiled with fond pity to recall the foolish yet lovable youth he had been, forever doting on some big-eyed wench and sighing all night beneath her window. That was God’s subtle trick to sting you alive with longing that could be sated only in one delirious fashion; ay, else the world would end and there would be no more saints born for heaven. Did not the apostle Paul praise marriage because it bred him virgins? But once one grew older, neither God nor the devil had much further use for one’s services. Drained empty, one was left to loiter to the grave, desire at times fiendishly and uselessly returning, the appetite being never fully gorged; but the ability, ay, the virility and, alas, one’s attraction for attractive females went with the hairs on one’s head …

  In angry despair and rage against life had he entered this adventure, finding a certain savage amusement in spurring others to destruction, for he could not believe that this poor deluded youth with his tatterdemalion army could win against the trained, experienced troops of King Henry. Now was he almost sorry that he had started, not because of any fear of his own death, but because he had grown rather to love this-prince whom he was certain was no prince. Not for him the rancours of Heron brooding on loss of money and prestige; nor for him the sly venom of Skelton, an ageing lecher who clung to lechery as if, thereby, he would stay young. Both men lusted after revenge, each in his fashion. Heron’s eyes were on gold and power and the ruining of fellow-merchants who had driven him out of the city; Skelton more on the crude rewards of victory, on women tamed or ravished and on men forced to envy his greatness. Almost at times did Ashley pray that the adventure might fail that these two should taste ashes in the apples of their Gomorrah. Yea, he would smile to see them hanged, even though a rope were about his own neck; but he did not want the prince to hang.