Rebellion (16 page)

Lady Alice seemed about to curtsy again, but
stopped herself. ‘I will have the maid bring up some water,' she said. When she had
gone, Richard Tunstall opened the doors from his room and the king's, examining the
exits. ‘It's good that this is the back stairway,' he said. ‘It cannot be reached from
the main entrance.' He did not add that it would be good if they needed to escape. ‘You
have a fine view,' he said, indicating the window.

When the maid came with a bowl, Richard
Tunstall helped the king to wash and shaved him himself, but when it came to the king's
hair he hesitated. ‘I think if you keep your cowl up, there will be no need to cut it
–'

The king looked up at him. He wanted to say
that it did not matter, he had no qualms about his appearance, but what he said was, ‘I
can never repay you for everything.'

And Richard Tunstall's face contracted a
little, from pity or shame, but he said there was no need for that, none at all. It was
his duty and his honour to serve his king. ‘It will not be for ever,' he said.

Somewhere he had a wife, and a family, whom
he had not seen for years, perhaps, since Towton. After Towton he'd held the castle at
Bamburgh until Warwick's siege, when he'd joined the king in Berwick. After the Battle
of Hexham he'd accompanied the king into hiding. There had been months of moving about
from one place to another, often sleeping rough, never daring to stay anywhere for more
than a few days at a time. He had looked after the king all that time, urging him on
through
rough weather and rough terrain, disguising the worst effects
of the king's illness from his men, sending his scouts out to look for shelter, food,
disguise. Most of his men had now deserted them; only three or four soldiers and a few
attendants remained. But Richard Tunstall was a plain, dogged man, who had a capacity
for not questioning his duty or his fate. He did not want the king's gratitude. He would
only say, ‘I for one am looking forward to dinner.'

And in fact they dined well, on a variety of
birds such as curlew and plover. The other guests seemed to regard them with no
curiosity. Except for one, who was dressed in a black habit like a Benedictine and who
did not speak either. When the king was eating he could feel a certain intentness of
attention directed towards him, but when he looked up the Black Monk wasn't looking his
way at all. And no one else seemed to notice anything. Sir John's wife, Alice, passed
among them herself, serving wine, and Richard Tunstall thanked her and said that the
wood pigeon was very good. Then a small boy came to the table and began to sing.

The king prevented himself from blessing the
wine. He kept his hood up and did not speak. He chewed his food as well as he could,
because lately his teeth had been hurting, listened to the singing and gave thanks
silently.

This fugitive existence was no life for a
king, yet he felt he had learned from it; that he had been shown, if nothing else, the
fundamental goodness of human nature. So many people had fed and clothed him and given
him shelter despite the risk, and cost, requiring nothing in return other than his
blessing.

The meal was drawing to a close when
something happened, small and insignificant in itself. He forgot to take hold of his
goblet as a young lad poured wine into it because a king would not take hold of his
goblet as wine was poured. He thought for a moment that he could feel the ferocious
intensity of the Black Monk's gaze, but Richard Tunstall took the goblet instead with a
laugh, and the Black Monk lowered his eyes.

That was all, but the king
had lost his appetite. They were able to retire early, however, since no one expected
them to stay, and so the king followed Richard Tunstall from the room, back up the
narrow stair. Richard Tunstall shut the door between their rooms but would not lock it,
in case he was needed. The king said he did not require any help getting ready for bed
and knelt down by it to say his prayers. The four saints stood like sentinels around him
as he prayed.

They told him nothing this time, and he was
glad of that. He was not up to deciphering any more messages. He said his prayers
without interruption then pulled back the sheets, curling up in the bed and closing his
eyes to shut them out. Still no one disturbed him, not even John the Baptist with his
apocalyptic messages.

At one point he could feel St Dunstan moving
forward to sit on his bed, but the saint said nothing and the king did not ask.

It was only later that he remembered the
connection between St Dunstan and the Benedictine monks.

When he woke, in the darkness before dawn,
they had all disappeared.

He lay for a while as the room lightened
slowly, then rose and said his prayers again, aware of an uneven pressure, a bruised
feeling in his knees and a stiffness in his neck.

Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee …

Nothing; except as always during prayer he
felt a strong pull away from the world, as if the saints were tugging him out of it. And
yet he had to live in it; he was still king. Awkwardly, he rose and went to the
window.

Colour was returning to the world by
imperceptible degrees, leaving blocks and corners of shade. Two horses on the far side
of the courtyard became steadily more distinct; their necks bent forward, one brown and
the other a dappled grey. Behind them the stone wall took on muted hues; behind that the
field was stippled by pale dots of sheep.

Night changed so subtly
into day that however long he gazed into the sky he could not discern the moment when
the darkness left.

He thought, as he had thought before, how
strange it was that light, which had no colour itself, should bring colour to the
world.

As he watched, a stable boy crossed the yard
towards the horses. The king wondered what it must be like to lead an ordinary life like
that of a stable boy, who could walk across a yard towards two horses, apparently
unaware of anything else. It seemed to the king that of all the mysteries in the world
the strangest was that he should be here, in this moment, in this place. He and the
stable boy both imprisoned in a small space of time yet somehow linked to all things
before or since. The king thought he could have been happy as a stable boy, without the
burdens and terrors of kingship, the freight of history. He would live and love, labour
and die, have children and love them perhaps, and love his wife, and have many
experiences, many encounters that were, in the end, like particles of dust that blew
together and away.

And he too would be like a particle of dust,
a form tumbling slowly through darkness.

He knew nothing about the stable boy's life,
its complications and desires, but he longed so keenly to be him that his mouth was dry.
He would be anyone, he thought, anyone else at all; his heart was beating more rapidly
with this yearning. He pressed his fingers to the pane and prayed to God, who had
ordered all the particles of dust in the universe and who could surely perform the
simple exchange. Almost he felt as though the solid substance of the window was becoming
insubstantial beneath his fingertips, but it did not disappear or yield.

When he turned finally away from the window
he was unsurprised to find the Virgin sitting beneath the crucifix on the wall.

She was like an icon of
herself; robes of vivid blue on gold, Jesus like a tiny man on her knee, holding her
hands.

It will not be long now
, she said,
but he didn't know what she meant, and in any case he knew that time did not operate in
her world as it did in his.

Behind her he could see a river with stones
in it. Great wet black stones such as were used for crossing. And on the other side of
it he could see the Black Monk, who had sat at his table last night.

So he knew then, of course, that something
was wrong, and later when it all became plain to him he wondered what, if anything, he
could have done about it. He could perhaps have summoned Richard Tunstall and said that
they must leave early, leave now. Yet he was hampered by a sense of not knowing whether
these glimpses into the future were real, and by not knowing how to explain them to
anyone else. Richard Tunstall was already troubled by the things he said.

He was like an actor, allowed to read the
script before performing the play that had to be performed. He put on his monkish robes
and went to join his men.

And breakfast passed without incident. But
afterwards they went back to their rooms and the drama began to unfold.

There was a disturbance outside; voices
speaking rapidly, then angrily, then rapidly again. Sir John's wife came to their door
and spoke to Richard Tunstall, telling him he was not to worry, it was only Sir John's
brother, and his son-in-law Thomas Talbot. They lived nearby and frequently visited.

The king looked down at the plate of bread
she'd brought with her. It seemed to him it was full of locusts.

The noise intensified and Lady Alice's look
altered and she said she would just go to see, and hurried from their room. There was
the sound of footsteps pounding up the main stairs. Richard Tunstall grabbed his sword.
‘We must leave,' he said.

Then all was pandemonium.

They could hear the sound
of fighting and shouting on the stairs. Richard Tunstall's men were already engaged in
combat, trying to force Thomas Talbot's men back down. Richard Tunstall grabbed him by
the hand and dragged him from the room, down the narrow stairs that seemed too steep and
winding for speed. At the bottom he had to slash his way through two men who tried to
block their path. They ran across the courtyard to the horses, then rode out across the
field to the wood and to the river that ran through the wood. They rode up and down the
river, looking for a place to cross. The king was bewildered, not knowing which world he
was in, for the four saints had reappeared. St Anselm was holding his fingers to his
lips, St John the Baptist had a great jagged line round his neck, while the Virgin with
a tear on her cheek pointed towards the stepping stones, big and black and wet, leading
across the river. On the other side stood St Dunstan with the Black Monk. And it was
there that Sir Thomas Talbot's men caught up with them at last.

[In 1465] King Harry was taken
… in Lancashire, by means of a black monk of Abingdon, in a wood called
Clitherwood, near Bungerly Hipping stones, by Thomas Talbot, son and heir to Sir
Edmund Talbot of Bashall, and John Talbot his cousin of Colebury … and was
carried to London on horseback, with his legs bound to the stirrups, and so brought
through London to the Tower, where he was kept a long time by two squires and two
yeomen of the crown and their men; and every man was suffered to come and speak with
him, by licence of the keepers …

Warkworth's Chronicle

The Duke of Bourbon … persuaded
the Duke of Burgundy to consent to raise an army in his land … to remonstrate
with the King of France over his disorderly and unjust government. The Count of
Charolais [son of the Duke of Burgundy] immediately put his troops into the field
and the Count of Saint-Pol accompanied him … Then the Count of Charolais
camped at Monthléry. The king held council with [the Count of] Maine, Pierre de
Brézé, Grand Seneschal of Normandy, the Admiral of France and others … He was
suspicious of the Grand Seneschal of Normandy and demanded that he should tell him
if he had given his seal to the princes who were opposed to him. To this the Grand
Seneschal replied jokingly in his customary manner, ‘Yes, but if his seal belonged
to them his body belonged to the king.' The king was satisfied by this and put him
in charge of the vanguard and the scouts … The Grand Seneschal, wanting his
own way, said then to some of his confidants, ‘I'll bring the armies so close to one
another today that it will be an able man who can separate them.' And so he did; the
first man to die was himself and his men with him.

Philippe de Commines

The last time the queen had seen Pierre de
Brézé was shortly before he had left to fight for King Louis. The night had been so warm
that she was unable to sleep. Finally she got up, left her chamber and walked
towards the lake in the grip of feverish and restless thoughts. And
there she had seen him, standing on the shore.

Despite herself, despite everything, her
heart had lifted to see him there.

He did not turn, even when she stood behind
him; he remained gazing out over the water. He appeared to be in a kind of reflective
absorption. After a while she said, ‘What are you looking for, Chevalier?'

And still without turning, he replied,
‘Where does the starlight go when it touches the water? I have wondered that all my
life.'