The Tintern Treasure Read Online Free PDF Page A

well between us and in any case, I was anxious to start for home as the weather again seemed to be deteriorating. We were a little later setting forth than we had intended, and I noticed anxiously that the whole of the eastern sky appeared to be on fire, banks of grey cloud against the red which burned and smouldered as the sun rose. ‘Red sky in the morning, shepherd’s warning,’ my mother had often quoted to me when I was young, and frequently it had proved to be true. My companion appeared undeterred by these signs and portents, declaring himself firm in his resolve to get as far south as Bristol if he could.
    As we approached the marketplace, wrapped warmly in our cloaks and hoods, we could hear the town crier’s stentorian voice demanding our attention. We paused on the edge of the crowd that had gathered about him and so heard the first official confirmation of the rebellions that had broken out in the south-west and in Wales. But the news that sent me rocking back on my heels, that set my senses reeling, was the information that the Welsh uprising was being led by no less a person than the Duke of Buckingham himself.
    Buckingham!
    Henry Stafford, the one man who had done more than any other person to set the crown on his cousin Richard’s head had turned against him, was even now raising his tenantry in rebellion against their lawfully crowned king.
    As we left the town behind us and began to walk southwards, Oliver Tockney could barely contain his anger and bewilderment. What could possibly have provoked this act of betrayal and treachery from one on whom King Richard had heaped reward after reward for his loyalty and friendship? And when, on the second day, an itinerant ladies’ tailor, whom we encountered sheltering in a barn during a heavy rainstorm, suggested that the duke’s defection was because he had learned of the young princes’ murder and was horrified by it, it took all my strength to prevent my travelling companion from attacking him with his knife.
    â€˜Never,’ Oliver panted, picking himself up from the pile of hay where I had flung him and addressing the cowering tailor, ‘say that to a Yorkshireman again! You may not be so fortunate next time to have someone to defend you. You’ll be cut down like the lying bastard you are.’
    â€˜Well, it stands to reason –’ the tailor was beginning hotly, but I signalled to him not to push his luck, so he subsided, muttering defiantly to himself, and took himself off as soon as the rain had eased.
    â€˜And good riddance to bad rubbish,’ Oliver growled as we, too, made preparations to resume our journey. He eyed me severely as I humped my pack on to my back and took hold of my cudgel. ‘You haven’t passed an opinion, chapman. So what do you make of that idiot’s slanderous theory?’
    I grinned at him. ‘If I said I thought there might be some truth in it, would you try to murder me, as well?’
    He returned grin for grin. ‘No, because I shouldn’t believe you.’ He followed me out into the rain and sleet, carefully closing the barn door behind him. ‘Would I be right?’
    I staggered a little as a heavy gust of wind buffeted me and almost swept me off my feet.
    â€˜I think I’ve always distrusted Buckingham,’ I said, raising my voice slightly to make myself heard above the storm. ‘I saw him back in the summer, riding along the Strand in King Richard’s coronation procession, and he looked . . .’ How had he looked? I struggled to recall the expression that had worried me. ‘He looked,’ I continued after a moment, ‘sullen. Resentful. Not like a man triumphing in the elevation of his kinsman and friend, knowing that he will be his right-hand man. I don’t believe he ever envisaged Richard taking the crown. I think . . . I think he thought of the two of them, equal in importance, governing the young king. You see, he,