A Secret Alchemy (10 page)

Tears clotted my throat until I could not speak but only press my cheek onto Dickon’s head. He had his father’s sturdiness though he had not yet reached his fourth summer, square and stocky with a round head and rough brown hair. He smelled of sun and snot and sugarplums.

My mother was reading my father’s letter again, her mouth
clamped shut. All of a sudden weariness swept over me, and with it came the tears that seemed to stand behind my eyes all day, so easily did they spring forth when I was sad.

“Ow! You squashing me, madam,” Dickon said. I loosed my hold on him and wiped my eyes with one hand. “Will we get back Tom’s lands?”

“I must, or we have nothing to live on. The tenants know that Tom is their landlord, as his father was before him, and Lady Ferrars takes their rent unlawfully. I must write to her yet again.”

Mal came in with a tale of a Grafton tenant on the doorstep, waving a notice of default and threatening the justices in return. My mother gathered herself, and I put Dickon off my knee. “If Tom Wydvil still has your hobby, find Tom Grey. He is your brother; he must help you.”

It was weeks later, well past May Day, but cold and gray in a way that boded ill for the harvest, that my father and Antony came home as the church bell rang Nones. They rode into the yard with a cry and a trampling of hooves and boots that told of a full following of men. At the noise the children came scampering from attics and stables, my mother hastened from the storerooms with her veil awry, and Margaret ran out from the parlor with embroidery threads clinging to her gown. I called Mal and we set to, straightening the children’s jackets and skirts, wiping the worst of the grime off with spit on a cloth, and reminding the little ones of their manners. Then we went forth into the yard.

I had thought that the men would be weary, perhaps wounded, but no. They did not even ride with the stiff backs and wooden visages of men worsted in a fight. They were not defying pity or trying to hide fear and failure. True, Wat Carter had an arm in
a sling that looked like to hinder his milling for a while, and one man’s cheek was slashed so deep I scarcely knew him. John from the smithy had a bandaged leg and sat pillion behind one of the squires. But my father and Antony rode easily, smiling to be home, their harness dusty from the road but clean and well cared for.

My father raised my mother and embraced her, kissing her long and hard. Antony bowed to her, and I saw tears in both their eyes before she held out her arms to kiss him. Then my father spoke to the men of his thanks for their ser vice, and the rewards that would come to them all, and those that were not our own servants departed.

The reward that was to come to us he told of later, sitting in the great chamber with logs piled high on the fire for all it was nearly Whitsun. Neither he nor Antony spoke of the battle but rather of other serious business, yet still he did not send the children away.

He told of the new King’s dispositions of land and gold to secure new allegiances and ensure Henry of Lancaster could get no aid from the French King. And he discussed with my mother the money that must be raised to buy the pardons for himself and Antony. But when his eye fell on Dickon or Eleanor or any of the bigger children, where Mal was keeping them quiet with sweet-meats and scraps of wood and cloth folded into shapes, he seemed to smile, as if he were glad of their presence in the chamber. Then he told us that King Edward was at Stony Stratford. My father had promised good sport, if the King cared to hunt in Salcey Forest, and a good dinner at Grafton afterwards.

For a moment we were too astonished to speak. Then,
“C’est bien, mon seigneur,”
my mother said, inclining her head unsmilingly, as if she accepted a compliment from a man she did not admire. “We shall be ready.”

Later, sitting over the remains of the fire with Antony, I asked him, “Did my father really invite Edward of—the King—did he really invite him in such words?”

“Indeed he did. His Grace is…oh, made of different mettle altogether from Henry of Lancaster.”

“He’s young, of course.”

“Yes. But it’s not simply his lack of years.” His eyes narrowed as if he sought to see him better. “He’s…He takes things lightly, or speaks as if he does. He even spoke of those months at Calais and laughed. We laughed with him, of course, and as a jest he asked my forgiveness for holding us so long, and rating me so, and calling me…oh, all the low names.” He smiled suddenly. “I suppose it
was
absurd. At least, it seems so now, to us who were at Towton…He loves music and drink and jewels and women—scores of women, it’s said.”

“Well, that is most certainly different.”

“No man could work harder by day. And to see him in battle…” He fell silent. I held my peace, for sometimes men speak of these things, and sometimes they keep silent, and I had learned of John that it was not for me to judge which any man should do. “He’s tall, you know. Taller than any of those about him. We could not see—we had the snow in our faces—we could see little, until the battles turned. But always he was there. Wherever it was hardest. Wherever we thought it most likely that we might break them, there he was, holding his men together and cutting down ours as if they were no more than the corn in a field. They said he cried that God had shown his claim was just. He has taken a sun for his badge, a sun with streams…And when…But in his camp there is more wine running than in the whole of Gascony, and the clerks are hardly able to keep count of the gold that’s brought,
and horses and hawks, and feasting every night, though he’s been about his affairs since dawn.”

“Different from K—Henry of Lancaster indeed,” I said. “Is it true that Henry knew so little of women that the Queen’s son is not of his getting?”

“Who knows?” Antony smiled a little thinly, but not, I thought, at the insult to Henry of Lancaster. “It is said that Edward has got children of his own already. What I have seen at York…It would not surprise me.” He shrugged, as if to rid himself of the odor of Edward’s camp, the disgust that still lingered in his nostrils.

That day we all saw each other as if through a different glass, I think. The change of our family’s allegiance seemed also to have changed our eyes. I saw my brother afresh in the firelight: he had thinned and toughened in this campaign, though he still looked like quicksilver, and when he reached forward to toss another log onto the fire I saw that next to his skin he wore a hair shirt. I knew suddenly that he had always disliked excess in bodily matters, whether it be meat or wine or love. If our family’s new allegiance brought us advancement, then he could look high indeed for a wife and a dowry. What would he make of such a one? My brothers for the most part were much as any young man: John had a girl in the village, I knew, and my brother Edward had been beaten till he howled by my mother—my father being away on business—when one of her maids had complained he had tried to force himself on her. But Antony? I knew not. He might read of the great love of Lancelot for Guinevere and hers for him, but his own tale, surely, would be of the Holy Grail. Indeed, though I am not given to blushing, even to think of such matters in his case made me blush and look aside, so that he and I sat in silence for some time, gazing into the fire and thinking our own thoughts.

Antony—Tierce

I thought we might skirt York. In troubled times, in country
of uncertain loyalty, I would cross the Ouse higher up and make for the low, empty reaches of Marston Moor before turning south. But Anderson has no need of such discretion; ahead of us is the Minster, and we turn neither right nor left. It shimmers in the morning light like a vast barque carved of pearl, greater and mightier than its harbor of walls and gate towers.

We jog through Heworth to cross the Fosse and approach Monkgate Bar. The gatekeepers see the white-boar badges when we are still some way off and raise the bar so quickly that we ride straight under the arch, the echo of our hoofbeats clattering back at us in the sudden chill. This is Richard of Gloucester’s city, his fiefdom, and there is none who questions what right the men about me have to do as they do.

The Minster rises to my right. There is holy sanctuary, there, little more than two score yards away: if I had spurs and cared nothing for what or who I trampled, I could be there in a few heartbeats. But the men are close about me. I have no hope of reaching it, and who knows what they might do, even so, to those nearby to prevent me?

In the streets goodwives and shopkeepers stand back; to one or two, Anderson nods as caps are touched and curtsies bobbed. Small boys stare open-mouthed; pretty girls turn away with downcast eyes. Richard has made these people his own now, as Edward, the new King, once wooed and won his sharp-tongued Londoners, while Marguerite tried to hold the rest of the kingdom to Henry’s royal, holy cause.

Now Richard of Gloucester has used his cleverness to turn on his own kin. I know—I pray—that Louis is still free, but such hope as that gives me is a small, weak thing, and on its heels comes always fear for him. But chief of my terrors, waking and sleeping, are those for my boy Ned, who is my son in all but name. When I think of his head stooped under who knows what pain, my heart cramps; my breath is stopped painfully by grief, as if I have been struck a blow in the throat.

I smell the shambles before I see it, the sick-sweet stench of the gutters that no amount of water ordered by the city council can wash away, and then the cleaner smell of fresh-killed carcasses as our horses shoulder through the closer throng. Our hoofbeats are deadened by blood-clotted sawdust; there is a girl ripping her knife up a skinned sheep’s belly, the fleece lying like soiled snow beside her; a wizened old man tossing an ox’s liver and lights into a barrel; a goodwife blowing up a pig’s bladder and giving it to her still-unbreeched son for a football.

Across the far end of the street creeps a procession of priests setting forth from All Saints, and as we approach, the incense carried on the breeze cleans the air we ride through. They are bearing a reliquary shaped as a cross and wrought of ivory and silver gilt. The heart of it is an orb of crystal so clear it shatters the sunlight that touches it, and for some uncountable seconds I cannot make out what holy thing it holds.

We cross ourselves, and one of the men inquires of the tonsured lad that rings the bell what it is. “It is a relic of the True Cross,” says the lad proudly. Within the crystal, I can see, is indeed a shard of wood, of holy cedar wood that bore Christ’s body and was stained by His blood. It is the instrument of Christ’s death that He graciously and godlily accepted even in His most mortal fear. And it is the instrument of our salvation.

I will fix my thoughts on salvation, and pray for it, I vow, as we cross the Ouse bridge. For my salvation, and for Ned’s.

Micklegate Bar is the strongest gate of all. Now I am leaving by it, in the company of my captors. And we entered by it so many years ago, when we rode as the staunchest Lancastrians to join Queen Marguerite and see off the Yorkist rebels for good. Duke Richard of York was already dead, killed almost under the walls of his own castle at Sandal, his second son, Edmund, with him, and King Henry rescued in the second fight at Saint Albans. My father pointed upwards to the men’s heads stuck on pikes, leering down like puppets from the gate tower. They were black, not with age but with tar, the better to preserve their rictus of fear: the threat of death to the traitorous. I was nineteen, and I did not know that the wheel of Fortune would turn again so soon.

“See that one, son? Edward’s father of York, and a very great man, whatever he did. Edward’s brother at least was laid in the ground
unbutchered. But that’s what gives Edward the fire in his belly. He and Edmund were brought up together, so close in age you might call them twins, and no older than you are. He has much to avenge. When he comes north to find us, it will not be an easy fight.”

If Edward had much to avenge, then the fight at Towton was a vengeance I had not thought it possible any mortal could wreak. It was the only time, they said, that Edward gave no order to spare the commons, and forbade his men to take any prisoners for an honorable, profitable ransom. All the enemies of the House of York were to be killed.

At Tadcaster we leave the Roman road that leads to Doncaster, and turn south. The sun is hot and high now, and I pull my cap down to keep the brightness from my eyes. No more than a couple of miles’ ride, and we are in Towton village. Chickens scatter from beneath our hooves and a glimpse of skirts shows how the women whisk themselves indoors. Beyond the huddle of cottages and alehouses the road runs level; on our left hand the heat is beginning to shimmer above the higher ground. Even the larks have fallen silent, and only a sleepy dove, calling from the trees of Carr Wood, is still awake.

How bare and high the road seemed that day, with the sky hanging like lead over the frost-hardened earth, and the becks that we could not see until we stumbled on them, so deep had they cut their way into the land. Old soldiers felt the raw wind that stung our faces and looked to the east and shook their heads. Young ones left off rubbing blisters and asked what they saw. “Snow by the morrow,” someone said.

We were part of the vanguard, south of Towton village. Places were set, tents put up, horses untacked and watered, ale barrels broached, and cannon shot stacked. Squires polished armor and
checked straps and buckles, clerks scratched at lists, and camp women set snares for rabbits. The men piled their fires as high as they could get wood for them and smoke began to rise. By the time I had accounted for my men and seen them settled, I could smell charring meat and fat dripping onto embers. Some was not meat but fowls, no doubt got against the rules of war. But I knew better than to ask or to tell my father. He was in command of the second battle—supporting the new young Duke of Somerset—and might decide he should seek out the felons, though there were far greater matters at stake.

A shout from the London road made us leap to our feet. A straggling handful of men, a few mounted on horses whose heads hung almost to their knees. No threat to us even before we could see their badges in the failing light. A lad with more energy to waste than the rest ran to them, and ran back to bring the tale: this was what remained of our vanguard. York’s men had forced through at Ferrybridge, and were even now but an hour or two away.

It was all but dark already. They would not arrive in time to attack tonight, my father said, coming out of his tent with a list of the musters who had joined us since yesterday. But we must make sure everything was in readiness.

“Edward of York has a name for quick work,” said one of the knights—Sir Nicholas Latimer, I think it was, rest his soul. He tossed another branch onto the fire. “Did you not hear tell, my lord, how he marched the best part of six leagues in one night and won at Mortimer’s Cross on the morrow?”

“And there were three suns rose,” said another, who I saw in the leap of a flame to be William Grimsby, one of the squires. “A showing of divine favor, so he announced, being a sign of the Trinity. And the men say his victory proves it.”

We all knew that tale, but I could see my father wished it unsaid, this night of all nights. “We have by far the greater numbers, and the better position,” was what he said in reply, though. “And right is on our side too. We fight not only for the House of Lancaster but for our anointed King. Edward of York cannot claim that.” Then he sent us about our business, and it was long after dark before harness, horses, and weapons were as ready as we could make them.

When the last report was in and the last order given, my father knelt to his prayers, then rolled himself in his cloak, lay down on his cot, and appeared to be asleep before I had pulled off my boots. I stayed on my knees long, seeking courage, hope, grace, absolution…In the end I had to trust that God in His mercy had granted these things to me, though I felt nothing. Then I dragged my palliasse to the least draughty corner of the tent and lay down also, warm enough but no nearer sleep than I would have been on the village green on Midsummer Day.

I tried to think bravely. I had years of practice with sword and lance behind me, horse-mastery, the jousts of which I had been declared victor, one or two small fights like that at Sandwich. I was a knight; I had taken my vows, and knew my trade. And I knew also that what was waiting for us beyond this night was nothing that I could imagine, nothing that I could prepare for, except in preparing my spirit for hardihood, my soul for a death that might come at any moment and from any quarter.

Outside, small noises continued: horses stamped and blew, the scrabble of a rat, the mutterings of men, the clink of a camp kettle being emptied, the sudden bray of a frightened mule that cut through the dark.

There is one way to bring sleep surely, but I did not loosen my points and slide my hand down. Not for shame, for my fa
ther’s slight, slow breathing told that he slept. But this night, to seek such crude pleasure as mere distraction from thoughts of the morrow seemed as wrong as to do so when…No, to think that was to think a blasphemy.

For the second time in as many hours I needed to piss. I rose as quietly as I might. It was dark and bitter cold, but everywhere I looked there were shadows: soldiers lying, squatting, sitting. I even saw one or two who had crept behind wagons and tents to fuck a woman. It takes some that way, I have since learned, and I felt a stirring in me but no desire to fulfill it. One or two friends turned from their fires to raise a hand in greeting. But my spirit shrank from mortal men even as my flesh shrank from the wind. I wandered away from the fires and the snores with the frost crackling under my feet. The heath was bare, but at last I found a spinney, and pissed the few drops that my wakefulness had made unbearable.

A stick broke beneath me. To my right there was suddenly a man, snatching a knife from his belt as he leaped to his feet. “Who goes there?” he said, his voice sharp but low, as if he yet feared to cause a general alarm.

“Peace, friend,” I said, even as I drew my dagger. “I cry your pardon, sir, if I startled you. My name is Wydvil.” My weight was on my toes, ready.

“Mine is Mallorie,” he said. “Wydvil…Of Grafton? I think your sister is married—was married—to my neighbor in Warwickshire, good Sir John Grey, rest his soul. Come and warm yourself, if you wish.”

I reckoned the Mallories I knew. “Thomas Mallorie? Of Fenny Newbold?
Sir
Thomas?”

“The same. You have nothing to fear from me; I give you my word as a knight.” He turned away deliberately, as if to show that he
knew he had nothing to fear from me either, going back to his fire and calling softly over his shoulder, “I have some excellent sack.”

I followed like a child in search of comfort. Mallorie kicked at the logs so that they flared, and when he sat, his cloak fell open for a moment before he wrapped it round himself again. Warwick’s bear and ragged staff was stitched roughly to his jacket. He was the enemy, yet had said I had nothing to fear, on his word as a knight.

The wine was indeed good, and very strong.

“Aye. I have friends from my days in Gascony,” he said, grinning, the lines and hollows of his face appearing like old, carved wood in the firelight. He was blooded a lifetime ago, I recalled John Grey telling me, at Harfleur under the great King Harry, and had seen much ser vice in France since, and the Levant too. “Have some more.”

“I’ll need a clear head for the morrow,” I said, and wondered that I could speak as if the morrow were no more than a day’s hawking.

“Oh, I fight better when I’m drunk. Just as I write better, and ride better, and make love better. Could you not sleep?” I shook my head. “You’ll grow accustomed. We all do.” He looked across at me. “You find that hard to believe?”

“Perhaps. I know it will not be like anything I’ve known,” I said, and wished I had not, for in speaking of my fear I had re-kindled it.

“After tomorrow, you will know. A man’s knowledge. Have you good men under your command?”

“I think so. But some are from my sister’s Astley lands, and I know them not so well.”

“John Grey was a handy man in a fight, but level-headed with it, and none of his father’s…Well, a good man, anyway, and his men
should know their business. I was sorry to hear that he died at Saint Albans. We have lost too many of his kind.” He shook his head and took a pull at the sack bottle before handing it again to me. “None of this need have happened. Do you realize that? You young ones? Or are you spoiling for a fight, as I was when I was a lad?”

“I—I know not. Not spoiling for a fight, no. At least not I, though I could not answer for some of my fellows. But we must defend the King.”

“So you say, and no doubt believe. But look at who rules your army in truth. You fight for the Queen, and her son who is…shall we say, little short of a miracle?” His face cracked into something like a smile, then hardened again. “And I must fight against the King, though he is the King who made me knight, because a great lord has hailed me out of prison to do it…Time was when it was the French we fought, a proper enemy. What have we come to that the knights of the realm—the great lords of England…that we are hacking away at each other in an English field?”

The fire had sunk to white ash, like snow, and red embers that seemed to have all the world in their hot depths. “I don’t know.”