From the personal account books of King Henry VII of England
‘A whole bloody army, boy,’ said the King to Slovo. ‘Vanished off the
face of the Earth, so it did! By my leg of St George, it can’t go on!’
The Admiral had heard of this most prized of the King’s possessions and
treated the oath with appropriate gravity.
‘Ahem!’ coughed De Peubla. ‘Your Majesty …’
King Henry VII and Admiral Slovo returned their attention to the little
tot who had been dancing before them. Now disregarded by dint of their
serious talk, she had stopped and was tottering on the precipice of
tears. Henry, though slight of build, proved he could shift when he
wanted and was instantly up and away across the table like a nobleman
offered a crown.
‘There, there,’ he hissed, crouching down to the little girl. ‘Never you
mind the silly big-people and their problems. There’s nice dancing it
was, wasn’t it lads?’
A ragged chorus of oh yes and absolutely sprang from the assembled
aristocracy and courtiers.
‘Off you go to your mumsy,’ suggested the King of England, ‘whilst we
are so daft and preoccupied. And here’s a shiny farthing for you.’
The three-year-old, now on the up-stroke of her emotional see-saw, took
the gift with a smile and retreated from the room, face front as she had
been taught.
‘It’s funny,’ said Henry to Slovo as he returned to his seat by the
slower but more dignified route. ‘I don’t mind the odd execution, not if
it’s strictly necessary, it’s hurting people’s feelings I don’t like.’
‘Quite so,’ agreed the Admiral politely, recognizing that Kings must be
allowed their eccentricities.
‘It’s in my pockets my feelings are, you see,’ Henry went on. ‘Not the
best place for them to be, the Church would say – but rather there than
in my pride or lustful impulses like some I know, that’s what I say.’
‘Indeed,’ answered Slovo.
‘And it’s in my pocket I’m being hurt, boy!’ said Henry, with real
feeling. ‘Taxes, dues, levies, they’re all being lost – along with the
taxmen in some cases.’
‘And now an army,’ offered the Admiral.
‘Ah yes. Ruinous expense: prepaid mercenaries, German landsknechtes,
Venetian stradiots and English bowmen, all with my – their – advance
wages in their nasty little purses. Horses, cannons, silk banners, all
gone! Disgraceful, I tell you it is!’
Admiral Slovo covertly studied Henry’s jewel-encrusted doublet and
reflected that times were not perhaps as bad as all that. Most
impressively, the King didn’t miss a thing.
‘Oh yes,’ he said, patting the brooches and emblems covering his chest,
‘there’s still enough for the occasional treat. I risked my head for
this country and if I should like a bit of shine and sparkle about my
person, why shouldn’t I indulge myself? I deserve it!’
Slovo’s taste in princely attire ran more to the plain black of the
fighting Borgias but he had long ago embraced the endless variety of
mankind. He smiled and nodded tolerantly.
Meanwhile, his shot-across-the-bows delivered, Henry lapsed back into
his previous lilt. ‘I’m an easy-going sort of King,’ he said, leaning
back and surveying the window-view of the Tower through narrowed eyes,
‘just what this land needs. There’s been too much Civil War. A little is
good for getting rid of bad blood but too much breeds poverty and other
such nastiness. The English need a spot of peace and prosperity and I’m
the boyo to give it ’em. It’s true I’m a Celt but I’m a desiccated
Celt and that’s an important difference. All the nonsense has been wrung
out of me by life. That means I can pass for English – at a distance –
and makes me tolerable to them: for they’re a dry bunch of bastards,
Admiral, I tell you that in confidence.’
‘Dry’ was not the term that would have surged into Slovo’s mind to
describe the jolly-brutal, cudgel-wielding race he’d encountered en
route from Pevensey Port to the Tower of London. From his fastidious
perspective, the whole culture needed at least another five hundred
years of development and suffering before polite judgement could be
passed.
‘Mind you,’ Henry pressed on, ‘for bowmen and pragmatic traders, you
couldn’t want for better – and there’s precious little tax to be had out
of a Kingdom of poets. No, England’s what I always wanted and it’s what
I got.’
‘The ancient prophecies, Your Majesty,’ mused de Peubla from beside
them. ‘It was all the preordained will of God.’
Henry grunted dismissively. ‘Didn’t seem that way when the clothyard was
flying down at Bosworth, boy,’ he said grimly, ‘and that big bastard
Richard was hacking his way ever closer. “The Armes Prydain” sounded
pretty damn thin then, I can tell you – not many!’
‘A versified Celtic vision, Admiral,’ explained de Peubla helpfully,
‘predicting the union of the scattered Celtic peoples to defeat their
Saxon enemy.’
‘“The warriors will scatter the foreigners as far as Durham …”’
recited Henry. ‘“For the English there will be no returning … The Welsh
will arise in a mighty fellowship … The English race will be called
warriors no more …” and so on and on. A load of old bardic guff, if you
ask me. It’s the same as all the King Arthur stuff …’
‘Ah yes,’ interrupted Admiral Slovo – who had only a passing, say,
one-night-stand, relationship with modern literature, ‘your lost King
and his Holy groin …’
‘Er … yes, in a manner of speaking,’ confirmed Henry, only momentarily
disconcerted. ‘Well, I’ll use all this, you see; like I named my first
born Arthur just to get the Cymru vote, but don’t expect me to believe
in it, man – that or the “Prydain”. It’s for footsoldiers only, like
all this national-consciousness business.’
Slovo signalled his agreement. This was getting pleasantly cynical.
‘I mean, you’ll hear it recited five times a day,’ Henry went on, ‘from
the tribe of Cymru and Cornish nobles who have somehow ensconced
themselves at court in my victorious wake. And all because their
mother’s cousin’s friend lifted a blade on my behalf – or would have
done if it hadn’t been so rainy that day. Ah! I’ve not much time for
them, Admiral; they rub me up the wrong way, so they do. Besides, I know
the English are mostly either ambitious or a bit slow, but if these
idiots taunt them too much they’ll wake up! There’s six times as many of
them as there are of us, even if every man-jack Celt combined – and who
ever heard of that? We’d all get our throats slit that day and no
mistake. No, as to these boasting Welsh boyos, I’ll disabuse them of
their great expectations before too long, you wait and see.’
Admiral Slovo smiled in concurrence.
King Henry returned the favour with an appraising glance. ‘Come with
me,’ he said eventually, as if some inner debate had been resolved.
‘I’ll show you what this is really all about.’
Admiral Slovo allowed himself to be guided around the table and to the
nearby window.
‘There!’ said Henry triumphantly, indicating the courtyard bustle below.
‘The Tower of London! It has a ring to it, don’t you think? It means
something in the counsels of the mighty. Now, that could not be said of,
for instance, the “Tower of Llandaff” or the “Tower of Bangor”, could
it?’
