Lady of the Roses (42 page)

I couldn’t help it—I laughed through tears of joy. “I keep telling you, angels have golden hair, as any painter or colored-glass maker will tell you.”

“My angels have chestnut hair—don’t you know that by now, Isobel?”

“I only know that I am the most fortunate of women, beloved.”

“I have been waiting for you. Come, my love, ’tis time for us to be together.”

“Oh, John…gladly, my dearest love…Oh, so gladly!”

The stones that held down my body lifted, and I rose easily from the bed and glided to him. I put my hand into his, and we smiled at one another, bathed with a light beyond my understanding. Behind me I heard sobbing, louder now, and I looked back.

Tears streaming down her cheeks, the young duchess folded my hands across my chest, while her mother and Ursula sobbed uncontrollably. I wanted to tell them it was all right, that I was happy, that all was well, but I knew they wouldn’t hear me.

So I blew them a gentle kiss farewell and turned back to John.

THIS NOVEL IS THE FIRST FICTIONAL EXPLORATION
of the very troubled period of English history that led up to the change of dynasty in the Wars of the Roses. Of Isobel virtually nothing has survived, while the Kingmaker’s brother, Sir John Neville, flits through the accounts of contemporary chroniclers and the pages of historical texts, making and changing history, but leaving behind few of his thoughts. In his
Memoires
, the great statesman Philippe de Commines, who knew Sir John Neville personally, calls him
“un très vaillant chevalier.”
No biography of him exists as of this date, but his actions are well documented and give us glimpses into the man he was. Handwriting analysis has also provided valuable insights into his character.

Isobel and John’s love story is based on the known facts. Sir John Neville did pay the incredible sum of one thousand pounds to marry sixteen-year-old Lady Isobel Ingoldesthorpe of the Lancastrian camp. As to the ambushes laid by Lancastrians against the Yorkist leaders, these are recorded by several contemporary sources. In each case, the Yorkists were forewarned by an unknown source. Here, I brought my own motivations and interpretation to the story, but I trust they are legitimate and might have happened as I have depicted. I plead dramatic license for the date given for King Henry VI’s “love day,” which took place on March 25, 1458.

The identity of Sir Thomas Malory remains in dispute, and all that is known for certain is what he himself says in his book—namely, that he was a knight and a prisoner who finished his tales of King Arthur’s court between March 1469 and March 1470. I have used P. J. Fields’s identification for the writer of
Morte d’Arthur
as Sir Thomas Malory of Newbold Revel, who spent ten years or more in captivity without trial, but Malory’s identification as a Yorkist who died in Warwick’s cause is entirely mine. For the ease of the modern reader, the quotations attributed to Sir Thomas Malory’s
Morte d’Arthur
come from Alfred, Lord Tennyson’s
Idylls of the King
.

The tombs of John and Isobel at Bisham no longer survive. The abbey was destroyed during the sack of the monasteries in the reign of Henry VIII. That Isobel chose to be buried with John evinces her love and regard for her first husband.

From John and Isobel through their daughter Lucy are descended both President Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Sir Winston Churchill, who, five hundred years later, turned back the dark forces of Nazi tyranny and saved free Europe from Adolf Hitler during World War II.

Please note: The poem attributed to Thomas Neville on page 135 is entitled “The Vision of Viands” by Aniar MacConglinne, Irish, twelfth century.

Sir John Neville’s letter to Isobel on pages 381–82 draws from a letter written by Major Sullivan Ballou to his wife, Sarah, on July 14, 1861, during the American Civil War.

Throughout this novel, the Percy family name has been pluralized to “Percies” so as to be consistent with the version used by all historians in the numerous historical texts and articles on this family and in this period; see, for example, Ralph A. Griffiths, “Local Rivalries and National Politics: The Percies, the Nevilles, and the Duke of Exeter, 1452–55,”
Speculum
43, no. 4, October 1968.

For those readers interested in pursuing further reading, an abbreviated reading list relevant to the portrayal of events in this book is provided below. A more complete bibliography follows.

Field, P. J. C.
The Life and Times of Sir Thomas Malory.
Rochester, NY: Boydell and Brewer Ltd., 1999.

Flenley, Ralph, ed.
Six Town Chronicles of England.
Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1911.

Gairdner, James.
The Historical Collections of a Citizen of London in the Fifteenth Century (Containing William Gregory’s Chronicle of London)
. London: Camden Society Publications, new series 17, 1876.

Griffiths, Ralph A. “Local Rivalries and National Politics: The Percies, the Nevilles, and the Duke of Exeter, 1452–55.”
Speculum
43, no. 4 (1968): 589–632.

———,
The Reign of King Henry VI.
Thrupp, England: Sutton Publishing Ltd., 1998.

Johnson, P. A.
Duke Richard of York 1411–1460
. New York: Oxford University Press, 1988.

MacGibbon, David.
Elizabeth Woodville
. London: Arthur Barker Ltd., 1938.

Maurer, Helen.
Margaret of Anjou
. Rochester, New York: Boydell Press, 2003.

Mitchell, R. J.
John Tiptoft, Earl of Worcester
. London: Longmans, Green and Co., 1938.

Ramsey, James Henry.
Lancaster and York: A Century of English History
. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1892.

Scofield, Cora.
The Life and Reign of Edward IV
. London: Longmans, Green and Co., 1923.

Storey, R. L.
End of the House of Lancaster.
New York: Stein and Day, 1967.

Henry VI:
England’s mad, meek, good-hearted Lancastrian king, content to live a monk’s chaste life of prayer. His marriage to Marguerite d’Anjou seals his fate.

Marguerite d’Anjou:
England’s fiery French queen. Wed at fifteen to mad King Henry VI of Lancaster, lonely in a foreign land. All her love and future hopes dwell in Edward, her only child. For him she will fight to the death.

Somerset:
The king’s cousin of the House of Lancaster. Young, rash, and violent. His charm captures the heart of a queen, but not the heart of the one he loves.

York:
The king’s cousin of the House of York. Prudent, able, and beloved by the people for his compassion and dedication to justice. The queen’s enmity and mismanagement of the realm force him to remember he owns a better title to the throne than do her husband, King Henry, or her son, Edward.

Salisbury:
Cousin to King Henry and brother-in-law to York, he stands with York when no one else dares.

Warwick:
Salisbury’s son. Ambitious, flamboyant, brave, and dashing, he wins the admiration of England and the enmity of two queens.

Edward of March:
York’s golden warrior son, who wrestles the throne from the House of Lancaster. Irresistibly charming, brilliant, and courageous. England’s future seems bright under King Edward IV until he reveals his secret marriage to the lowborn beauty Elizabeth Woodville.

Elizabeth Woodville:
Edward’s ambitious and detested Yorkist queen. Gilt haired, cunning, and vindictive, she has a heart as dark as her face is fair.

John Tiptoft, Earl of Worcester:
Isobel’s uncle. Renowned scholar and man of piety, he leaves England to avoid taking sides and returns a hardened admirer of Vlad Dracula, Prince of Transylvania.

Sir Thomas Malory:
A knight. His experiences color the tales of King Arthur’s court that he writes as he languishes in prison first under Lancaster’s queen, then under York’s.

Ursula:
Malory’s daughter, friend to Isobel.

John:
Warwick’s younger brother. A valiant, true, and honorable Yorkist knight, he falls in love with Isobel, the ward of his father’s mortal foe, Marguerite d’Anjou.

Isobel:
Ward of the Lancastrian queen Marguerite d’Anjou. In love with John, a Yorkist knight.

The following is an addendum to the reading list given in the author’s note.

Nonfiction

Armstrong, C. A. J.
England, France, and Burgundy in the Fifteenth Century
. London: Hambledon Press, 1983.

Barber, Richard.
The Paston Letters
. London: The Folio Society, 1981.

Bennet, H. S.
The Pastons and their England
. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990.

Chrimes, S. B., C. D. Ross, and R. A. Griffiths, eds.
Fifteenth-Century England, 1399–1509: Studies in Politics and Society
, 2nd ed. New York: Alan Sutton Publishing, 1997.

de Commynes, Philippe.
The Universal Spider: The Life of Louis XI.
Trans. and ed. Paul Murray Kendall. London: The Folio Society, 1973.

Hicks, Michael A.
False Fleeting Perjur’d Clarence: George, Duke of Clarence
. London: Alan Sutton Publishing, 1980.

———,
Richard III and His Rivals: Magnates and Their Motives
. London: Hambledon Press, 1991.

———,
Who’s Who in Late Medieval England 1272–1485
. London: Shepheard-Walwyn, 1991.

Kendall, Paul Murray.
Richard the Third
. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1956.

Miller, Michael D.
Wars of the Roses
. http://www.warsoftheroses.co.uk.

Myers, A. R.
England in the Late Middle Ages
. London: Penguin Books, 1952.

———,
English Historical Documents
. London: Eyre & Spottiswoode, 1969.

Rawcliffe, Carole.
The Staffords, Earls of Stafford and Dukes of Buckingham, 1394–1521.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1978.

Richardson, Geoffrey.
The Hollow Crowns
. Shipley, England: Baildon Books, 1996.

———,
The Lordly Ones: A History of the Neville Family
. Shipley, England: Baildon Books, 1998.

———,
The Popinjays: A History of the Woodville Family
. Shipley, England: Baildon Books, 2000.

———,
A Pride of Bastards: A History of the Beaufort Family
. Shipley, England: Baildon Books, 2002.

Storey, R. L.
The Reign of Henry VII
. New York: Walker and Company, 1968.

Stowe’s Survey of London
. Intro. by H. B. Wheatley. New York: Everyman’s Library, 1970.

Woodhouse, R. I.
The Life of John Morton, Archbishop of Canterbury
. London: Longman, 1895.

Nonfiction: Medieval Life

Aldred, David.
Castles and Cathedrals: The Architecture of Power
. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993.

Bayard, Tania.
Sweet Herbs and Sundry Flowers for the Medieval Gardens and the Gardens of the Cloisters
. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1997.

Bishop, Morris.
The Middle Ages
. Boston: American Heritage Library/Houghton Mifflin, 1987.

Black, Maggie.
The Medieval Cookbook
. London: British Museum Press, 1992.

Carey, John, ed.
Eyewitness to History
. New York: Avon Books, 1987.

Coghlan, Ronan.
The Illustrated Encyclopedia of Arthurian Legends
. New York: Barnes & Noble Books, 1993.

Dyer, Christopher.
Standards of Living in the Later Middle Ages
. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989.

Englebert, Omer.
The Lives of the Saints
. New York: Barnes & Noble Books, 1994.

Freeman, Margaret B.
Herbs for the Medieval Household
. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1971.

Gascoigne, Christina.
Castles of Britain
. New York: Thames and Hudson, 1980. Gies, Frances, and Joseph Gies.
Life in a Medieval Castle
. New York: Harper & Row, 1974.

———,
Life in a Medieval City
. New York: HarperCollins, 1981.

———,
Life in a Medieval Village
. New York: Harper & Row, 1990.

———,
Women in the Middle Ages
. New York: HarperCollins, 1980.

Gill, D. M.
Illuminated Manuscripts: The Exquisite Art of the Medieval Manuscript
. New York: Barnes & Noble Books, 1996.

Hanawalt, Barbara A.
Growing Up in Medieval London: The Experience of Childhood in History
. New York: Oxford University Press, 1993.

Harpur, James, and Elizabeth Hallam.
Revelations: The Medieval World
. New York: Henry Holt, 1995.

Heller, Julek, and Deirdre Headon.
Knights
. New York: Schocken Books, 1982.

Herriot, James.
James Herriot’s Yorkshire
. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1979.

Hopkins, Andrea.
Knights: The Complete Story of the Age of Chivalry from Historical Fact to Tales of Romance and Poetry
. London: Quarto Publishing, 1990.

Howarth, Sarah.
The Middle Ages
. New York: Penguin Books, 1993.

Images of Britain
. Stamford, CT: Longmeadow Press, 1990.

Kendall, Paul Murray.
The Yorkist Age: Daily Life During the Wars of the Roses
. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1970.

Maynard, Christopher.
Days of the Knights: A Tale of Castles and Battles
. London: DK Publishing Inc., 1998.

Price, Mary.
Medieval Amusements
. New York: Longman Group Ltd., 1988.

Reader’s Digest.
Everyday Life through the Ages
. London: Reader’s Digest, 1992.

Reeves, A. Compton.
Delights of Life in Fifteenth-Century England
. New Orleans: Richard III Society, Inc., 1989.

Ross, James Bruce, and Mary Martin McLaughlin.
The Portable Medieval Reader
. New York: Penguin Books, 1977. (Includes “The Vision of Viands.”)

Rowling, Marjorie.
Life in Medieval Times
. New York: Berkley Publishing Group, 1979.

Ruby, Jennifer.
Costume in Context: Medieval Times
. London: B. T. Batsford Ltd., 1993.

Swabey, Ffiona.
Medieval Gentlewoman: Life in a Gentry Household in the Later Middle Ages
. New York: Routledge, 1999.

Turnbull, Stephen.
The Book of the Medieval Knight
. London: Arms and Armour Press, 1995.

Ward, Jennifer C.
English Noblewomen in the Later Middle Ages
. London: Longman Publishing Group, 1992.

Willett, C., and Phillis Cunnington.
The History of Underclothes
. New York: Dover Publications, 1992.

Fiction

Bulwer-Lytton, Sir Edward.
Last of the Barons
. New York: R. Worthington, 1884.

Chaucer, Geoffrey.
The Canterbury Tales
. New York: Bantam, 1981.

de Pizan, Christine.
The Book of the Duke of True Lovers
. Trans. Thelmas Fenster. New York: Persea Books, 1991.

Geoffrey of Monmouth.
The History of the Kings of Britain
. Trans. Lewis Thorpe. New York: Penguin Classics, 1977.

Langland, William.
The Visions of Piers Plowman
. Ed. A. V. C. Schmidt. Rutland, VT: Charles E. Tuttle, 1995.

Malory, Sir Thomas.
Le Morte d’Arthur
. Edited by Janet Cowen. 2 vols. New York: Penguin Classics, 1970.

Tennyson, Lord Alfred.
Idylls of the King
. New York: Signet Classics, 2003.