Lady of the Roses (15 page)

“Raby Castle,” John said, “where I was born.”

“And where we shall wed,” I murmured softly. “Its gifts to me are boundless, my love.”

He took my hand to his lips and implanted a kiss of such tenderness, my breath caught in my throat. With my white palfrey by his golden stallion’s side, we clambered together over the meadows into the mist toward beckoning Raby, and our destiny.

AS WE DREW NEAR, RABY CASTLE CHANGED ITS
demeanor and showed its true face: a stronghold of soaring towers and impregnable walls daring foes to attack at their peril. Nearly a hundred years old and built by the powerful Nevilles on the site of a fortified manor of King Canute, from whom they were descended, it stood tall and defiant, its history rolling back nearly six centuries. Even the intricately carved figures on the battlements seemed to cast a fierce eye on us as we cantered through the stone gatehouse that guarded the drawbridge over the castle moat.

The castle servants and household, gathered in the court, welcomed us with loud cheers. Many fell to their knees. Clasping their hands, they called out prayers of thanks to the Almighty for our safe arrival. Even the dogs barked greeting, running up to Rufus’s mare with great excitement. He jumped down from his horse’s back with an aplomb that brought surprise and laughter to many a face around us, for he had newly learned this trick. Though I had witnessed his acrobatics several times by now, I couldn’t suppress my own amusement.

Taking my hand, the earl introduced me to the household and announced our betrothal. Cheers and dancing erupted at the news. His son Thomas embraced me warmly and called me “sister,” while Thomas’s blue-eyed wife, Maude, locked arms with me and took me from John, saying, “She will be yours soon enough. Till then you shall have to share her with us.”

That evening at dinner I noted, with a softening of my heart, that John had acquired his love of hounds from his father, for the earl showed great tenderness for them.

“Come, Joselyn,” he said to one of the dogs, “here’s a fine bit of rabbit for you…. Now, now, Bridget, no need to get jealous, there’s chicken for you….”

As the days passed, I learned even more that pleased me. Every day John’s father distributed five gold nobles in small coins as alms at his gate.

“I much admire your kindness, my lord,” I said to him one evening.

“The poor are our neighbors,” he replied. “When the mouths are many, and the money scarce, a farthing’s worth of mussels is a feast for such folk. It gladdens my heart that we can help with their burdens.”

Aye, Raby Castle was a merry place, filled with music, song, and many guests, for the earl’s generosity extended to everyone. The hall was always full with knights and squires, and no one who asked for lodgings was ever turned away. The earl also much enjoyed new and fanciful dishes, but not for himself. Whenever these were served up to him, he immediately sent them to the tables of his knights and squires, and his guests.

I once read that you can tell more about a man by the way he treats those below him than those above him. By this measure, John’s father was a man of impeccable character, and I felt supremely fortunate to be marrying into such a splendid family. During the three weeks I spent at Raby before my marriage, I never witnessed him using harsh words or mistreating a servant, and no guest ever left him without a gift. In all these ways the earl lived up to his family motto,
Ne Vile Velis
—“Wish Nothing Base”—and Raby was, I thought, a house of honor.

If the Earl of Salisbury had a fault, it was in the care he took with his accounts, to ensure that every pence due him was paid and none stolen by his receivers. I did not blame him for the stern eye he placed on his finances. The king owed him tens of thousands of pounds for the wages of the troops whom he had paid in the French wars, and the Crown had never made good this debt, placing an onerous burden on his finances.

In this house of merriment, laughter, and charity, the earl’s second son, merry-eyed Thomas, John’s favorite and closest brother in age, reigned the star, for he had a playful and jesting nature despite his mature twenty-seven years, and his perpetual merriment lit up the castle. I learned that first night that it was his wont to never let a song pass at dinner without his banging his tankard on the table and crying out that the song needed drink, which never failed to elicit laughter. Nor did he miss an opportunity to charm us with his wit. One evening, an aging knight-errant passing through described a feast, given by Duke Albert in Rottenburg-on-the-Neckar, that he had attended with Somerset.

“Duke Albert was most gracious,” the old knight said. “He presented the Duke of Somerset with the princely Order of the Salamander.”

Thomas leaned over to me and whispered, “The princely Order of the Flea would have been more fitting, for the man is a pest!” He pretended to scratch himself, and I bowed my head to stifle the giggles that choked my throat.

He also had a way with children, though he had none of his own. Each time he arrived home after being away for a few days, they rushed to greet him from all ends of the castle, and it mattered not whether they were of noble or peasant birth, for Thomas always twirled them around the same. Once I caught him bent double in the midst of giggling children, a hand protruding from his head, braying noisily, pretending to be an ass. At other times he’d amuse them with a sleight-of-hand trick, taking coins from their ears or finding roses in their sleeves. Often, with one voice, they’d beg, “A story—a story!” and after setting a little one on his knee, he would regale them with tall tales of knights and feats of arms. On one such occasion, I found myself listening behind the chamber door as he charmed them with a rhyme about a sea of milk:

In a slumber visional,

Swam a sweet milk sea.

With high hearts heroical,

We stepped in it, stoical,

And rode the billows so dashingly,

Smote the sea so splashingly,

That the surge sent, washingly,

Honey up for ground.

“More, more!” they called, giggling with delight, and off he went about a castle with ramparts of custard, where butter formed the bridge, and bread the floor, and dry beef the door. This castle had cheese for columns, a roof of curd, and cream for beams. “More!” they insisted, and he complied without hesitation:

Wine in well rose sparkingly,

Beer was rolling darkeningly,

And merry malt moved wavily,

Through the floor beyond.

“Well done, Thomas!” I announced, applauding as I revealed myself. Startled to learn he had a secret audience, he blushed like the root of a beet.

“And the rhyme maker smiled sheepishly,” I said, inventing a line of my own. Tom blew me a kiss.

I never laughed so much in my life as I did in those early days at Raby.

Thomas and his youngest brother, George Neville, differed like wool from silk, for George was bookish and found more enjoyment in scholarly pursuits than in people. At the tender age of twenty-three, he had already been made bishop, and he came to call the banns on the three Sabbaths preceding our wedding. One night, while the earl and his family were away taking care of matters at their castle of Sheriff Hutton, and Warwick was in Calais, I sat embroidering in a lower chamber, listening as John and two of his brothers discoursed on the vices and virtues. Empty flasks of wine lolled about at their feet, and the heads of St. Margaret and the Four Evangelists looked on from the painted murals on the walls. At length, Thomas, growing weary, lifted a flask and toasted the wall. “Hail to the virtues and St. Margaret, good brothers!” he cried, draining the last remaining drops.

“Sobriety is one of the virtues, brother,” Bishop George reminded him gravely. “Look how many dead soldiers lie here, thanks in main to you.”

“And not one of them died without a priest, did they, brother?” John replied merrily, slurring his words.

Thomas gave John a slap on the back in approval, and Bishop George shrugged in surrender.

Of John’s mother I knew little, save that she came from the noble line of the Montagu Earls of Salisbury, and as her father’s only child, had inherited his title, which had passed to her husband. Though unfailing in her courtesy, she did not exchange more than pleasantries with me, and indeed, had not much time for idle chatter and tapestry work. The affairs of running the castle kept her occupied during the day, and at dinner she devoted her full attention to her lord. Since we each sat facing the hall on opposite sides of the earl, lengthy discourse was difficult between us, and if the truth be known, with John beside me, I had little mind for it myself. After Vespers, it was the custom of the household to retire to the chapel to attend nocturnals from the psalter, and prayers from the ritual to the Virgin and the Holy Ghost before Compline sent us to bed.

So was life arranged during those blessed early days of my betrothal.

ON THE TWENTY-SECOND OF APRIL, THE EVE OF
the great Feast of St. George, Warwick himself arrived with his family in tow, bringing Ursula’s father, Sir Thomas Malory, with him. Ursula fled into her father’s arms, beside herself with joy, and Malory himself did not stop beaming all that day.

“What a knight my lord of Warwick is, m’lady!” Ursula cried when she prepared me for bed later that night, her eyes alight. “So handsome, such a princely bearing! They say he alone has turned Calais into a force to be reckoned with, by his courage, hard work, and the power of his personality alone—” My silence must have given her pause, for she interrupted her praise to frown at me. “Do you not agree that he is the most amazing knight alive?”

The question she posed was an easy one. “No, I don’t, Ursula,” I replied. “John is.” Then we both broke out in laughter anew.

Two days after the Feast of St. George, happiness kept me from sleep as church bells chimed the strokes of midnight that ushered in my wedding day, the twenty-fifth of April.

I sat at my window facing the lake, hugging my knees. The spring night was tender, laden with the sweet fragrance of roses, lilies, narcissus, dianthus, and cherry blossoms, and my head grew light with their perfume. As night vanished with the cock’s crow, dawn burst over the earth in an explosion of ruby and gold.

A knock sounded at the oaken door, and Ursula beamed at me. “Oh, dear Isobel! Oh, I can’t believe this day is finally here! Oh, what joy, what fortune, how wondrous it is!” Since our arrival at Raby, we had not shared the same room, for she had the antechamber to mine. But tonight this would change again. I would move into a spacious apartment with John, and Ursula would reside in her very own chamber. I left the window seat and clasped her to me in a close embrace. “What’s this?” she said. “Do you weep on such a day?”

“I shall miss you.”

“Dearie, ’tis no cause for tears. I’m just down the hall. And you shall be with your husband from this day forth.”

I burst into fresh tears.

“What’s the trouble now?” Ursula clucked.

“I’m…so happy…Ursula,” I managed, and hugged her again. “Why should Heaven grant me such joy?”

“You are hopeless!” she laughed, pulling away. “Only Heaven knows why it’s chosen to grant you your heart’s desire. Maybe your descendants will save the world one day, who knows? Now, enough of this foolishness. You have much to do to prepare for your wedding! Come, let us begin with the bath.” She collected towels from one coffer, a fresh linen shift from another, and a comb from among my casket of rouges and unguents, and carted me downstairs to a low-vaulted, steamy bath chamber adjoining the passageway to the kitchen.

I stepped into the wood tub she had lined with linen towels and filled with warm water, and took my seat on the stool. As I soaked, she soaped me down with a sponge steeped in herbs, and then rinsed me off. When the bath was done, she dried my long hair vigorously with a host of linens and bundled me up in a camlet cloak. With my face upturned to the sun, I lay drowsy in the walled garden of the bath chamber, and sleep nearly found me there, but Ursula had every moment assigned, and soon she reappeared to pronounce my hair dry enough to proceed to the next task.

As we made our way back to my room, it became evident that the pace of activity at the castle had reached frenzied proportions. The shrill voice of the chaplet maker could be heard down the hall, screaming at her boy helpers as they fashioned the flower garlands of cherry blossom and white roses. “God’s Knuckles, little fool, you’ll break the blooms that way—Oliver, you do it right, but we don’t have all day—make haste, haste!” In the kitchen, cook maids carried steaming pots hither and thither, and scullions chopped vegetables at a frenetic pace. Their knives pounded the long wood tables as streams of buckets of beans and onions were delivered to the chief cook, who bustled about, shouting urgent orders to his minions. “More salt—no, less! Set it here—no, there! Smaller slices—so, not so—what, did they collect all the village idiots and send them here to me?”

Climbing the three flights of tower stairs back up to our floor, we passed breathless chambermaids carrying linens stacked high in their arms, and panting servants carting firewood and supplies. We wove our way around pages sweeping rushes, and varlets polishing windows and dusting corners and crevices. Outside, there was also much noise and commotion as carpenters erected benches and tables for the procession. Their hammering mingled with a jarring scraping sound as gardeners dragged stone flowerpots along the pebbly ground. “Careful!” someone cried, and this was followed in swift succession by the shattering sound of breakage, and an oath.

In the distance, clarions announced approaching wedding guests, while in the courtyard the neighing of horses and a medley of voices proclaimed the arrival of others. Groomsmen hurried to and fro, leading away the steeds amid joyous greetings exchanged between the guests as they welcomed one another.

I recognized some faces, for I had met many of John’s relatives and close friends during my three weeks at Raby, and my own excitement reached feverish pitch. “Look, Ursula, there’s the Duke of York and his duchess, and there’s their son Edward, whom I met at Westminster, and that fair lanky boy who is their second-eldest, Edmund…and, oh, those small children with them are so precious…. Look how that littlest one hangs back behind his sister’s skirts—he must be Dickon…. And there’s Lord Bolton, and his lady…and there are the Conyers…. I so like the Conyers, Ursula!”