We Speak No Treason Vol 2 by Rosemary Hawley Jarman Read Free Book Online Page A

it to his other palm, saying: ‘This will not redress the lack of my livelode.’
    The King was taking off his cloak, the purple cloak lined with ermine into which I had eased him what seemed years before, thought it was but a matter of some hours.
    ‘When we return,’ he said gallantly, ‘I will give you a far richer garment. Meanwhile, keep the King’s cloak warm for him. Pray for him.’ This, with a smile to charm the blood.
    Behind me, Richard of Gloucester was talking.
    ‘He has him,’ he said softly. ‘Would Jesu that men followed me, like they do his Grace.’
    I all but turned, but checked myself, for I fain would have told him: Ah, they do, Richard, my lord! You may not have the bright glory of Edward; your countenance may be sober and over-anxious, yet, there was one once that dropped his dreams and took horse at your bidding. Even the Welsh respect you—you need have no fear. And I looked at Anthony Woodville, with his calm fairness and devotion to the King, and I thought: we may be fugitives now, but I am proud to sail into exile with such great men. So clever, charming and devout. All thoughts of Earl Rivers’s base lineage and past Lancastrian loyalties had long been chased from my mind.
    As I leaped over the vessel’s side and dropped down on deck, an aiding hand caught mine. A familiar, tense grip.
    ‘How does the man of keen sight?’ Richard asked, before I could beg his pardon for having used him as I would a page, then: ‘Exiles—equal in exile. But mark me, we shall return in glory.’
    And when they raised anchor, in a wave of fish-stinking sea, I marvelled at Gloucester’s confidence, for London was swamped now by the adherents of Warwick and Clarence and the fearsome Frenchwoman, the French Bitch, Queen Margaret, who men said was half-mad with ambition and love for her whelp Edward.
    I walked behind Richard on the deck, looking the last on England. The quay swung away and a high-calling flock of seabirds lifted around our vessel. And then my mind brought back Margetta, for her breast was verily the colour of those crying gulls, and her eyes... why, gazing at the whipping grey water, sucked black in pools by the wind... surely, she could see me! Margetta my betrothed, whom by now I had met, and loved.
    I sat down upon a sarpler of wool, hatefully wet from an early squall, and cursed Northumberland, he that was, well—I cursed Montagu then, the Neville who had turned through rancour to treason. King Edward stood by the masthead, under the sail which waxed as a woman but newly with child; and I thought on Margetta and, for an instant, spitefully, upon the King. For the
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was surely his; he had traded an earldom for a kingdom, and had lost. John Neville had been crazed with spleen. I had heard his very words from Earl Rivers, reading a letter borne in after the event.
    ‘My lord vows,’ he said, laughing on each word, ‘that the King has robbed him unjustly. Is this how he rewards loyalty (asks my lord)? For here is a rich Earldom forfeit to Lord Percy, and for what? A Paltry Marquisate—and a pie’s nest to maintain it with!’ He and Thomas Grey had laughed, loud and long. Rich, warm laughter. Until their gay humour was shortened by the avenging pursuit of six thousand men.
    I was ocean-soaked again already, my clothes only just having dried from our earlier crossing of the Wash. I walked upon the deck beside Richard. The sails of our little craft fattened now, like a woman well-ripened with love’s fruit. Richard was saying: ‘They should fly England aloft,’ looking up at the mainsail; and I had need gently to remind him that we had only the garments we stood up in, let alone the Royal standard, or pennoncelles.
    It had been so easy—Margetta and me. She had been like a flower in the meadow-grass, yet whiter than the daisies, her eyes changing from grey to black and back to grey; her smile clearer than sunlight. And her sweet body—once a little nook, now a door open only