We Speak No Treason White Rose: Book 2

Part Three

The Man of Keen Sight

It standeth so: a deed is do

Whereof great harm shall grow;

My destiny is for to die

A shameful death, I trow.

Or else to flee, the t’one must be,

None other way I know

But to withdraw as an outlaw

And take me to my bow.

Wherefore adieu, my own heart true!

None other rede I can;

For I must to the greenwood go,

Alone, a banished man.

The Nut-Brown Maid

The King of England is dead, and they have taken him away, I know not where. He will have no magnificent funeral rites, no sumptuous weeping or solemn obsequies, as did his brother, whose death I also witnessed. King Edward died with tears in his eyes, begging his ministers to embrace one another, and it is only today that I fully comprehend the reason for this. For King Edward, upon whom I have thought almost with hate, bestowed a fine legacy of sorrow and confusion upon us all, and especially upon one whom I loved better than any brother. King Edward was tall and sheen, and he died in his bed. It was his lust for a fair woman that helped bring about this day of death. There was another king, a youngling, uncrowned. Bastard slips shall take no root. He did not die; not even of shame. All the fat whispers in the world cannot render the living dead. Death is brought by the axe, the cudgel, a swordthrust. Or by an arrow in the face, as died yet another king of England defending his realm, long ago.

The King is dead, and I am well-disposed to follow him, for I loved him, and never more than this week lately gone and on the day of his fall. They have shed his blood, they have used his body more shamefully than any man’s, let alone a King anointed with the Chrism. They have despoiled him of his life, his flesh, but his honour and his fame they cannot touch. This makes them angry. The wrath on their faces is like a mask hiding fear-sweat, for Death has nudged them, and the passing breeze of something greater...

Richard is gone from us, yet his name fascinates every tongue. A thorn bush received his crown, and on a humble beast his corpse was carried, yet a beast as lowly bore Our Saviour into Jerusalem. Did they not think on this? When they flung my liege lord over his poor mount?

There are a half dozen of us, knights and yeomen, a few from distant shires whose tongue I cannot understand. Close beside me, standing patiently in this foul cell, are Master William Brecher and his son Thomas. Brave warriors despite their simple stock. I fought beside them in the battle and marked the honour of young Thomas. He is afraid now, but has himself in hand. We are to be executed for our treason. Outside I can hear them erecting the gallows, with steady knocking blows, and my own heart echoes each rap. The roll has been read, the indictment signed, and in great haste, for the Dragon would be on his way to London to take up the reins of the kingdom into his long pale hands. We are traitors. And the cognizance of our treason? We fought too well in the King’s service. We bore too high the standard of Blanc Sanglier. His raison was ours. Loyaulte me lie.

I am shriven. For the past hour I have made my devotions. I am thirty-three years old, and I have served three reigns and seen the separate and singular manner of their ending. A fourth reign I shall not see, nor would I wish it. There is no King, save the King of Heaven, other than the third Richard. Across my knuckles I have a scar. It was not got in battle, but in friendship. Dead white, it is shaped like an arrow-head, and pricks and burns at the most unlikely moments. Looking at this talisman, my mind is full of days stretching back like a long rolling road; without seeking my saddle I can ride that road again to its beginning. I will close my ears to the hammerings that build my doom and, in love, remember Richard. Then he was Duke of Gloucester, and seventeen. Now he is but ‘the traitor Plantagenet’ and he is dead.

I shall think of the day when, for the first time, he asked: ‘Will you ride with me?’

1469

It was a fair, hot June when I rode to Hellesden to visit the Pastons, they being my guardian’s distant kin by marriage. I had ridden alone from Kent, leaving my lord’s chaplain muttering into his beard at the unwisdom of it, and I had turned to salute him with an edge of mockery in my farewell. I had seventeen years behind me, silver spurs, and the right to wear my sword without the belt. I was so gay as I journeyed through the cherry orchards that I returned the obeisance of the villeins with long bows, as if I were the Earl of Warwick. They gaped at me, standing like stricken fowls in their tunics of coarse-weave and their wide straw hats. One of the wenches threw me a bunch of fruit. They looked like rubies and tasted of wine. The people seemed happiest when they were in the fields; it was only the confinement of the manor court which appeared to bring about an increase in choler. I had sat for hours listening to their arguments. Of course they had their rights, but some tenants were cunning in their abuse and I had seen many a slow-witted farmer protesting to our stewards against a new title he had had no notion existed. I tried to take an interest in these matters. For the past year or so there had been talk from my guardian’s tongue of sending me to study law at Cambridge so as to equip myself with better understanding of such affairs; as for my own half-stifled ambitions, they seeped through all the forecastings of my mentors. For the sport of gentlemen, the serious subject of the Statute of Winchester, had become, to me, an addiction. O, you pagan god or devil, I know not, O Toxophilus, you had me by the throat. My friends dreamed of maidens, and other sinful joys. I dreamed of a sweet bow easy in the hand, one that does not kick: a bow fashioned of the finest Spanish yew, with its demoniacal paradox of sapwood and heartwood, the one resistant as an unschooled colt, the other pliant and gracious as Our Lady’s smile. And as I grew in length, so did my bow become tall and strong as I; and on my seventeenth birthday, my Saint’s day, I became the owner of the finest, the real taxus baccata, whose tip exactly matched the crown of my own yellow head.

In an indiscreet moment, I had mentioned my longing to become an archer de maison, for was I not the champion of three shires? My guardian’s lady had shrieked out loud and feigned to swoon, vowing that I should look upward, and that to labour thus would be but to demean myself. For did not common yeomen so employ themselves, and had I forgotten my lineage? Which in itself was foolishness, for having seen my father once, and marked his blazon and his heritage, I should have been want-wit to be heedless of it. I should of course see my father no more, and his terrible death did not haunt me, even when I burnt his Month’s Mind candle. As for my mother, why she was something fairer than motherly—proudly glad to wear the barbe and wimple of Lady Abbess. For these reasons, and for the thongs of kindliness and fair dealing, the Kentish castle was the only home I knew. But at seventeen the blood is hot, and the long struggle for independence begins. The trumpets have sounded, but the battle is yet to be joined. I did not think to find one in Norwich, for the Pastons’ quarrel with the Dukes of Norfolk and Suffolk was none of my affair. It had been going on for too long, and there was little to be done. None the less, I felt sad for young John Paston, and a little guilty besides, for not long after my arrival at Hellesden I had bested him at the butts and I took his money, three shillings and eight pence. Young John (I called him so to distinguish him from his brother John, a knight older but more frivolous) would have been deeply dishonoured otherwise. And he was full of misery. With the two Dukes biting great pieces out of the Paston estates, he said he had had no time to write to me, and with equally gloomy sympathy I replied that it mattered little, for I had no army yet to raise on his behalf, and most of my money was in trust until I came of age. The Pastons were always writing letters. Every day one or other of them would be pacing a room, feeding a yawning clerk with phrases, while trouble chased hope across their brows like a fox pursues a weasel.

And in the pleasant garden at Hellesden, with a great hole in the wall through which one of Suffolk’s cannon balls had plunged, I cast Young John further into despair. Through a faultless hold and a draw that perchance Pandarus himself might have admired, I beat him at the pricks, and above his little wistful murmur heard someone say: ‘What a beautiful loose he has,’ and smiled to myself.

I smiled, not just through boastful pride. For none watching knew of the struggle I had waged with my own recalcitrant body, over the years, to perfect the sport I loved the best. Because I am cursed with long-sightedness, the archer’s enemy.

The physicians had studied my eyes. As a tiny knave I remember how they pried with their bright round circles of polished brass. They hummed sadly together over my strange sight, for they too realized it could jeopardize my skill. How can an archer study the nock and the unwavering hold when already the fat white clout dangles close to his nose? If I looked closely at the image for a moment it would come rushing up to me. At first I had been a little afraid of how to construe this magic. I could mark the strike of a hawk far away over a plain or high above a thicket. I could see what prey dangled from its talons, down to the glazing eye. I could scan the face of friend or foe long before they knew who approached them. The charges on their shields, the powderings on their garments and the emblems on their horses’ housings were known to me outside the fifth part of a league. Once my keen sight had saved a child being swept away by the mill race. Others had thought it to be a cat in the water, but my eyes saw her black hair and clothing, and I had crossed a meadow to seize her from the flood. That day, I had even mused that I might, through this trick of nature, do some great person a service.

But archery, my leman! For that only, I battled with this useful fault. To ignore the abusing nearness of the target, to fix only upon the precious nock, to feel the urgent hemp pulled low to the right pap with a hand that wags neither up nor down, as Homer instructs us: the swift glance, the straight back and out-thrust chest—best for profit and seemliness—the yell of ‘Fast!’ and the unspoken command to those wilful eyes—thus did I conquer. It was a struggle, and at times I almost succumbed in the Castle of Perseverance. But it was the hand, the hand and the mind, and never the butt, wooed too soon by so many, which I bent to my will.

Enough of me. I would to my friend, the future King of Care.

Young John sighed, delving in his purse.

‘By troth,’ he said, ‘I would you lived nearer to help preserve us from our enemies.’

This made me laugh.

‘You would have me stand upon the keep and pick off Norfolk’s men? With Master Calle to fill my cocker with arrows plucked from the slain?’

‘Aye, Norfolk, or cursed de la Pole,’ muttered Young John. ‘And Suffolk married to the King’s sister...’

‘With Suffolk wed to Lady Bess,’ I said, ‘I would have thought an appeal might bear more force. Now that John your brother is at court.’

‘He wrote lately,’ said Young John bitterly. ‘Of tourneys at Eltham, folderols, fat horseflesh and fair ladies. I would liefer see him here, or at our poor Caister, than at the joust even against Lord Rivers. He had become betrothed to Mistress Haute,’ he added. ‘A Woodville kinswoman. He thinks to gain favour. Meantime we sit awaiting the place burned about our ears.’

Master Gloys came hurrying over the green towards us.

‘Sir, more trouble?’ asked Young John warily.

The Chaplain shook his head. ‘Not in these parts. But the King rides near, waging men to quell the northern rising.’

I had no intention of riding to war that day. So when the King’s train rode by it was only through curiosity that I mounted and followed them. They split into two bunches of knights and esquires, one of which passed through the orchard and down to the remains of a lodge, ruined by Suffolk’s men. It was then I first set eyes on Lord Rivers, marking his blazon; Young John was anxiously talking with him. Rivers wore white velvet over harness, and a sympathetic smile. Where the Woodvilles were, I thought, there would the King be also, so I rode off down the path and under the trees towards the lodge, hoping to spy out his Grace.

The lodge was a sad sight. Suffolk’s men had burst doors with battering-rams, and had planted a few accurate cannon-shots through roof and windows. They had then tried to start a fire, for the gaping doorway revealed blackened floorboards and a crumbling pit down to the cellar. Green weeds and grass sprouted from the masonry, like hairs in an old man’s ears.

There was someone standing a little inside the entrance, very still. A dark youth, of about my age, in demi-armour. There was not much to him, or of him, for that matter. He stood in shadow. He was alone. And that was my first ever impression of him; his utter loneliness. His horse cropped grass outside. I dismounted and went to join him. He appeared to be talking to himself. This was a habit I, too, enjoyed, when I needed to straighten something out in my mind.

‘Brutal,’ he was saying.

I was in agreement. ‘Yea, is it not?’ I said. I kicked the doorpost and a piece of it disintegrated and fell clashing through the floor with a great choke of filth. My companion stepped back a length.

‘This is not the way,’ he said. ‘Unnecessary violence. It is wrong.’

‘Violence is well, if the cause be good,’ I remarked.

He said sharply: ‘This cause is ill. For centuries the philosophers have argued over what constitutes a good cause, and cheating, tyranny, never were such, and never shall be.’

‘It was a fine place once,’ I said, looking about me.

‘And now despoiled,’ he said softly. ‘Doesn’t it sadden you? Thinking that masons and craftsmen once laboured to the glory of God for something of beauty?’

‘And now the vainglory of man has plucked it down,’ I murmured. He gave me a quick, peculiar smile, no sooner born than dead.

‘You renew my faith,’ he said. ‘I shall speak to the King about this.’

I thought him to be like John Paston, assaying to make his mark in Edward’s household.

‘How do you pleasure yourselves at court?’ I asked. His face darkened.

‘Well enough,’ he said shortly.

‘Let us go outside,’ I said. A huge bat dived out of the darkness and round our heads. My companion remained inside, picking up a piece of oak and weighing it in his hand. He had very slender hands, with fine jewels.

‘Sir, what’s your name?’ I asked.

‘Richard,’ he said, musing.

‘Richard... what?’

He turned and came into the sunlight.

‘Gloucester,’ he said, and his lips twitched. I saw everything at once, too late. I saw the Silver Boar on his mail, the unmistakable Plantagenet face. I saw that I had been talking to the King’s brother with no more respect than I would have shown Young John Paston. I saw myself a fool, and knelt.

‘Gracious lordship...’ I began, and heard him laughing softly. He struck my shoulder with his gauntlet, mocking me with knighthood.

‘Arise, sir,’ he said. ‘I have the advantage of you.’ He touched the arms upon my mantle, laughing again. ‘It is a pleasant sensation.’ We were then both merry together, when Sir Thomas Wingfield, of the King’s household, rode up to remind us that the King awaited his brother’s witness to the breaking-down of the lodge by Suffolk’s men.

‘A moment,’ Richard said, and faced me fully. ‘There’s rebellion in the north country. I need men. All who can draw a bow, wield an axe. Will you fight under my standard? Will you ride with me?’

Something, the name of which I shall never know, took possession of my soul. I had no intention of going to war, but before his last word was out I was again upon my knee, and in the presence of Sir Thomas Wingfield and others I do not remember, I became Richard of Gloucester’s sworn man.

We were a diverse company, that day we went forth on our first campaign. Four friends of John Paston rode by me: Bernard and Barney, Will Calthorp and Broom: my brothers under the Blanc Sanglier. As for that, there was just enough of a fair wind to make it fly, among the host of other banners dwarfed by the great arms of England. In the fields, men set down their tools and donned jacks and sallets to march with us. The wagons with their barrels of harness grumbled along the pitted ways, and the King’s falconers with the priceless gerfalcons and peregrines; the sovereign’s dogs; the coffer with the royal book collection guarded by the slavering, swaying deerhound atop of it. Up ahead rode the King. I could count the petals of the fleur-de-lys and the leopard’s claws on the royal standard.

Gloucester rode in the middle of the train, his squire bearing his shield and accoutrements. He talked to his henchmen in snatches—the ragged wind blew back his voice. Even in his harness he was very thin. Yet he could never have passed unnoticed. He was sober and gracious, and I spurred to ride near him, past the elegant back of Lord Rivers. The richly attired Lord Anthony, his father and young brother, were flamboyant and gay, tossing Latin quips and fragments of wit to one another, marvellously regal; hard to believe that their lineage was baser than my own.

Young John had no such doubts. The words he used about them were strong for such a gentle fellow.

‘Rivers came again,’ he said finally. ‘He spoke me fair, and said he could do naught for us. Then he would have me ride with him—I have no stomach for it.’ And Young John, looking old, had called for his clerk and started a rush of dictation, all about life’s hardship, begging his brother to succour them in their accursed hour.

My sorrel laid back her ears, and nipped at Gloucester’s horse. I gave her a swift stroke with the flat of my sword, and she flaunted forward jostling the line. Sir John Woodville, scarcely two years older than I, half-turned to his esquire with a little sneer. ‘Green as grass, I vow, some of my lord’s waged men,’ and I would lief have asked him what he knew of fighting, or how his aged bride did. Then I saw Richard of Gloucester smiling at me, a little sadly.

‘The Pastons are friends of yours,’ he said, and I had the notion he knew everything about me. ‘I am truly sorry I could not help there,’ he continued. ‘His Highness said that they should have put the case before the oyer and terminer a month after it happened. And now he has this rebellion astir in his mind.’ His gaze went ahead to royal Edward, who sat tall and gleaming on his black horse. I saw that Richard’s face wore the same guise as when I had observed him at Mass that morning, mingled with that of my maiden-haunted friends. I said, truthfully: ‘What a glorious prince he is.’ Richard turned to me, shining like the sun.

‘Yes, and he has a great heart,’ he murmured. He started to tell me what I already knew: that during the commencement of the war with Lancaster he himself—a little boy of seven or eight—had been lodged in London with the Pastons.

‘He came every day to visit us, my brother Clarence and me,’ he said. ‘Every single day, mark you, full of affairs as he was; though he was striving to put this land to rights. I shall never forget how eagerly I looked for him. He would ride through the gate like... Phoebus, or blessed St Michael. He brought us gifts and clasped us in his arms. Strong arms,’ he said a shade wistfully; and I noticed a slight unevenness about his own body. The right pauldron of his mail was fashioned larger than the left. He caught me glancing at it.

‘I have suffered much ill-health,’ he said, and he seemed rather amused. ‘So, to counteract my frailty, I wielded arms so lustily that it left me with more in the right, less in the left. It was a battle of my own; a battle with the battle-axe, and made me doubly puissant thus,’ and he rapped his shoulder with his mailed fist, making it ring.

‘And I have unnatural sight,’ I said, rather softly in case I should be put off by any as a wizard. ‘Long eyes—and I love archery.’

‘But you conquered,’ he said, looking ahead as he rode.

‘I did, my lord,’ I said, and saw his little satisfied nod.

He was so easy with me. He looked gratified, then vexed, then tortured, his face hiding no thought. He talked of Yorkshire, and ere long I was passing eager to see this land which, according to Richard, was Paradise on earth and, sadly, as unattainable to him as the hidden Grail which all men strive to find. So I kept an acute silence, sorry to think that Elizabeth Woodville had marred his future by marrying the King and alienating Warwick.

Our progress was slow. We passed through cornfields and apple orchards; and when we finally rode up the incline to Castle Rising and saw its hundred steep steps, the King took it in his head to go hunting, and went off accompanied by the Woodvilles. I was left with Richard, and Robert Percy, and other engaged in overseeing the provisions and armour and marshalling of the troops. In the ward, knots of men muttered together. One song was in every mouth: ‘When is the paymaster coming?’

The faces of the gently born wore little sneers; the rough soldiery shuffled their feet and jangled the groats in their purses as if to turn them into marks by necromancy. In front of the treasurer’s tent they formed a line; the men of Sir John Woodville and his father, and those of Lord Anthony and the King; the archers doffing their metal helmets, rubbing their sweated palms on the breast of their deerskins. The close line merged forward, swaying like wheat, and the lightness on those faces as they came away was like a ripple of sun on corn. Money chinked in their hands. But Lord Richard of Gloucester’s men, his precious men whom he had asked to ride with him, stood jostling their feet in the long meadow-grass, and whispering of niggardly masters. Bernard, Barney, Broom and Calthorp murmured that there would be no dicing that night. Robert Percy and Thomas Parr conferred with Gloucester.

‘This has gone beyond jesting,’ said Sir Thomas.

Robert Percy had a mouth that looked as if it always smiled. Though he was a good friend to Richard, I do not like faces which smile without cease. Yet Robert smiled, saying: ‘They are full of rancour surely; they foresee victuals neither for their horses nor for themselves, I vow.’

‘They will be fed,’ said Sir Thomas roughly.

‘I spoke of other needs,’ said Robert Percy. ‘Ale and cards and gowns for their womenfolk.’

I heard my lord of Gloucester’s voice.

‘By Christ’s Passion,’ he said, ‘they will be deserting!’ This cast the others into silence. Richard looked in my direction. I bowed slightly. Suddenly I wished I had money for him.

‘Where is my clerk?’ he asked suddenly, still gazing towards me. I moved forward as a young man carried pens and inkhorn into the tent.

‘Would that I could aid you, my lord,’ I said.

‘There may yet be time for that.’ He started to pace about the tent. ‘Right trusty and well-beloved,’ he began, and we all listened to the rasp of quill on parchment, while outside a lark sang madly. A little haltingly he dictated, and when he came to the part explaining how the King had summoned him to attend his highness in the north parties, and yet had left him so ill-purveyed of money as to need beg a loan from this old lord and trusty follower, I marvelled still more at Edward’s forgetfulness. Yet verily, he was always a marvellous creature, King Edward the Fourth.

Still unfinished, Richard turned to Sir Thomas Parr.

‘How much will I need?’ he asked.

‘Say an hundred pounds, Richard my lord,’ suggested the knight.

‘Until Easter next coming,’ murmured Richard. ‘Tell him I will repay in full—and will serve him the same if ever he needs it.’

The clerk set it down. Suddenly Richard snatched up a pen. ‘Sir, I pray you that you fail me not...’ and I saw that his hand matched his voice, and trembled.

His esquires withdrew, but I stayed. I wanted to offer him some word of good cheering counsel, out of all my seventeen winters. Half-jesting I said:

‘Sir, it seems his Grace would rather chase the stag than see his brother and his brother’s army satisfied. It would seem ill-considered...’ And then I all but cut off my tongue with my teeth, for he swung round upon me like a true boar, with lowered tusks, and the first fireflash I had yet seen in his eyes.

‘You speak against the King?’ he said softly.

I should have knelt, but I was fixed. His face came very near. There was sweat-dew on it.

‘No treason, my lord,’ I said, clearing my gullet.

He gave a deep shudder, and his body lost its tension and became pliant again, like the heartwood—sapwood in a fine bow.

‘Words...’ he muttered.

‘My words were fool’s words,’ I continued. ‘For his Grace...’

‘His Grace is supreme,’ he said, without violence. ‘My brother his highness is omnipotent. Yea, my friend’—and all his swift powerful anger was vanished in the joy of speaking of King Edward—‘he can do no wrong. I am but his humblest servant—we are all his liege men, bound till death.’

‘Noblest prince, give me leave to excuse myself,’ I said, affected by his own fervour. ‘May Our Lord empower him with great glory and a thousand blessings. Always.’

‘Amen,’ he said, as the constraint between us lifted. He then made a retreat into his own mind, for the line between his smooth brows came hard and then faded—I watched him. He was saying something about it being a full day’s ride, and I leaped into the breach, mad to make atonement. ‘Sir, my horse is...‘

‘Strong? Fleet?’ He turned, anxious and amused, guessing my desires.

I looked in his eyes. ‘I am no royal herald, my lord,’ I said. ‘But I will have the money in your hands by day’s beginning.’

He smiled. ‘You would go through the night, with an hundred pounds in gold across your saddle-horn?’

‘I will take armed men, if it please you.’

A rich laugh he had; you could warm your hands at it.

‘That you will... the stoutest!’

He would trust me with his money. Fleetingly, it came to me how willingly he trusted. The esquires were ready, and I marked with some dismay how weighty with harness they were. I determined not to let them impede my progress.

‘My friend will house you overnight,’ said Richard. ‘Guard well my wages.’

‘With my blood,’ I answered.

‘Or we shall have a rebellion of our own here,’ he said, and added, a little mockingly: ‘I will have prayers said for your safe passage.’ Then he grasped my forearm and I his, and I turned into the southwest wind, glad to feel it, for the morning sun looked on me with fierce eyes. And I thought, riding, of the gesture of good-fellowship from a sovereign prince, and set my spurs in sorrel hide the faster to do his bidding.

That was a good mare of mine. She lived long, and was well tempered and puissant, and was speared under me finally by a dozen shafts. (So, also, died White Surrey...)

I slept ill that night, though the bed in the old lord’s castle was soft enough to please the noblest lady. My host asked with great love after Richard and the King, but when in all innocence I mentioned some doing of Anthony Woodville he could scarce contain his apoplexy, and swore oaths, ill-fitting such a great knight of ancient line. Thereafter I took a secret vow of silence, and fancied as I lay to hear a voice grumbling, night-long. Again, I had touched anathema, and lashed myself with penitent prayers.

I went straight from Mass into the June morning. There was a waist-high white veil, spreading over the fields, gilded to cloth of silver by the sun, hiding the boles of trees and changing the forest into a place enchanted. The spiders had woven night-long, and their tapestries brushed dew on my cheek as we rode. Through wild country I glimpsed thick clustering bluebells, and delicate damp buds of thorn unfurling. Waywardly I pushed my mount; her feet seemed to leave the ground; my half-armour was weightless, the money-pouch across my mare’s withers light as air. My tongue gave gold to a summer song, while behind me I heard the thud of the pursuing squires. I had to rein in and wait for them. They pounded up, their helms shiny with dew.

‘You ride fast, my lord,’ one said, gasping.

‘I’m no sluggard,’ I answered gaily.

‘There are thieves about...’

‘Stay by me, then!’ I cried. ‘My lord of Gloucester waits!’ I felt like one who had drunk deep. ‘Sweet life!’ I shouted, and was off again, a creature possessed, hearing the grunts of my followers, and the rattle of their mail. I left them a bows-length behind, then the gap stretched into a quarter-league. I felt the sun hot upon my parted lips, the breeze warm in my teeth. I dreamed of the archery. I was champion of all England—I was master bowman of Burgundy. I was my lord of Gloucester’s trusted fellow, and wild with delight; so full of virtue, in fact, that I omitted to watch for the foul wounded roads, downfall of better than I. The sorrel was dainty of foot for so big a mare, but I had driven her cruelly. She fell, her nose between her forelegs, and rolled, and for me it was a starless night, a sense of buffeting blows on my skull and a sun bright with pain.

I lay near a gateway, and the light flickered down through foliage on to my face. I had a great dint in my breastplate but was otherwise whole, save for the deathly fear when I thought of Richard’s wages. When I saw the mare, standing shamed but still gold-laden, near to me, I knelt and gave thanks to the blessed St Anthony for saving what was deemed lost. As I prayed, I heard a faint chuckling and looked up warily to see a figure mounted on a gate, a man who laughed at me with a sound too high-pitched for beauty. He must have come from the field, likewise the black-garbed, weeping woman who sat on a mule the other side of the hedge. He had a longish beard, dung-coloured, though he was about five-and-thirty; he was dressed in a hermit’s robe, and looked unclean.

‘Too fast, fair sir, too fast.’ He wagged his head, and his beard swung, like an old goat chewing hay.

‘Why does she weep?’ I asked, still dazed.

Again he chuckled. ‘She weeps ever. To good cause.’ I felt a pain in my nose, and tasted blood. My head seemed invaded by a hive of bees.

‘A sorry fall,’ said the stranger. ‘Where, so hastily?’

I gathered my fuddled wits. ‘My affairs are not yours, fellow,’ I replied.

‘Your speech is that of Kent,’ he said, as if he had been on earth for hundreds of years.

‘How are you called?’ I asked. My hands were still shaking.

He was laughing quietly. ‘My name is Hogan.’

I looked at the woman. She quivered with sobs, sitting her mule under a hawthorn tree.

‘Your wife?’ I was curious.

‘Her tears are for the doom of man, not because she is wed to me,’ he answered. He slipped down from the gate and came close. He had a sideways gait, and I felt. strangely chill, as if the sun were less bright.

‘So,’ he said. ‘A Kentishman. They have fought and died, in fury and despair.’

I reckoned him struck by the moon.

‘Many have died,’ I said.

His laughter ceased. ‘As will many more. This England will be a stew of red life. Yours also. You have few years left. Pleasure yourself, my fair young sir.’

I was not afraid, only angry. I wiped the blood from my nose and glowered, hating this Hogan, who had cooled my day. ‘By the Rood, you lie!’

He laughed again, knowingly, pointing to the weeping woman, then at the tree under which her mule stood patiently,

‘The Thorn of Joseph,’ he said. ‘In a dream, I saw it—crowns rolling, wondrous death, and the end of the House of Plantagenet.’

I crossed myself, rage bubbling.

‘False harlot!’ I said, trembling. ‘You shall be whipped to the stocks an the King hears of your heresy!’ I cast round for my esquires, separated from me by the forest.

Hogan smiled.

‘You...’ he said. ‘And your King... the foot that strikes the stone shall turn into a head, and the bones tossed on a dunghill, to stink for ever.’

He was raving mad. He should be exorcized. My guardian’s chaplain would have soon drawn out his devils—he was ever rebuking me, mostly for swearing on the Wounds of Our Lord. He would say: ‘Think, my son! Think on His Pain!’ I searched my soul for compassion towards this poor wight.

‘Are you hungered?’ I asked, feeling in my pouch.

His beard wagged to and fro. ‘Never, for I live on my wits,’ he said. And then I heard the scudding of hooves in the distance. They were catching me up. I mounted, feeling the warm nobbly sacks of money at my saddle-bow, feeling sober and shamed, turning my back upon the madman Hogan. When I faced the gateway again, astride my horse, he was gone. And the woman. There was only the wind wavering the grasses. The men-at-arms came up at a gallop, hot with relief.

‘Come!’ I cried, all my gaiety gone. ‘The King’s army awaits us!’

After Lynn, and our brief sojourn at Croyland, we cooled our heels for a week at Fotheringhay, where Richard conferred with the captains: which was the best place to flank the archers if we should encounter rebels on a plain, or a hillock, or in wooded country. All the strategies of war were meat for his keen mind. He asked questions, gave opinions: even the seasoned warriors Louis de Bretaylle and Edward Brampton seemed moved by his sense. It was upon reaching Newark that I first had speech with King Edward. I had been shooting with Richard. I was his master here, but only just. He had paid me. I had received his wager