The Rose of York (20 page)

~*~

In the late June dusk, a week after the Bastard’s departure on St. Swithin’s day, Warwick, flush with the triumph of his successful visit to Louis, stood at the bow of his ship as the
Grace a Dieu
sailed into London harbour. Not only had the King of France received him in a stately procession and showered him with gifts, but, wishing to prevent a Burgundian alliance at all costs, he had offered exceedingly generous terms to secure England’s alliance with France.

Warwick’s glance moved across the imposing array of French ambassadors crowding the ship’s deck. “The King will be amazed when he hears what Louis is willing to offer, is that not so, Wenlock?”

Lord Wenlock rested his hands on his silver girdle and arched his grizzled eyebrows. “Indeed he will, my lord!”

“There’s only one thing puzzling me, Wenlock—something Louis said; something strange which makes no sense.”

“My lord?”

Warwick knew that most men in his own position would guard their tongue on such a delicate matter as the confidence of a king, but he had no doubts about Wenlock’s loyalty. Wenlock was utterly his man. It was he, Warwick, who had raised him up to lord from his low origins, and because of those origins, Wenlock had no friends at court. They held his low birth against him.

Birth
, Warwick scoffed inwardly. Birth had made a king of a madman and a lecherous youth. So much for birth! It was merit that mattered. He turned his back on the Frenchmen gathered across the deck, leaned close, lowered his voice to a whisper. “Louis said that if perchance I ever decided to restore Henry of Lancaster to the throne, he, Louis, my most devoted friend and admirer, would do all in his power to help. Strange, isn’t it?”

“Indeed, my lord, ’tis the most curious thing I ever heard. To restore Henry is to restore Marguerite, the murderess of your most noble father and brother, God assoil their souls. Besides, you’ve been staunchly Yorkist from the first. Not like the others—bah!” He turned, spat. “How could King Louis entertain such a notion?”

“I know not, Wenlock. I mention it only because it has puzzled me throughout the voyage, for it makes no sense, and I know him to be a very clever man.”

“That he is, my lord. Very clever.”

The two stared out to sea thoughtfully. Moments later, as they drew near the wharf at Billingsgate, Warwick spied a familiar figure.

“Look, Wenlock, the Archbishop has come to greet us…” He broke off, frowned. “’Tis unusual that he should come himself. I wonder what news he bears.”

~ * * * ~

“Speak, Lancelot, thou art silent; is it well?”

At Middleham, in the month of July of 1467, the mood was tense and a strange silence pervaded the castle. In the kitchens and cellars the servants went about their tasks wordlessly while the chapel priests murmured their prayers and the chancery clerks buried their heads in their paper. The knights, squires, and men-at-arms of the great Earl of Warwick’s retinue sat around the halls and on the staircases, polishing their armour and sharpening their weapons. Soon they might need them. The Kingmaker had summoned his brothers to a meeting.

“As you may have heard, John,” Warwick said, “when I reached London from my triumphant embassy to France, my first discovery was that our brother had been deprived of the chancellorship, and the next, that Edward had concluded an alliance with Castile against France!” Warwick stood with his back to a window in the antechamber of his high-vaulted private suite and John, across from him, by a table where a jug of blood-red roses had been placed.

“Though the French ambassadors stayed six weeks, all they took back with them were empty promises, a few hunting horns, and some leather bottles…”

As his brother spoke, John’s glance kept stealing to the jug of red roses, an unnatural sight in a Yorkist household.

“The Burgundian envoys, meanwhile, were drawing up the marriage treaty as I arrived. They left loaded like mules with gold and precious gifts. Such is Edward’s answer to us.” Warwick’s voice trembled. He fell silent, clenched and unclenched a fist. “For that we can blame the Woodville witch he married. Therefore, John, I plan to fight Edward and purge the realm of Woodvilles.”

John’s breath froze in his lungs. The sky darkened and across the court the stone tower grew irregular and wavered like a reflection in water.

“John! Did you hear me? John…”

His brother’s voice came to John like an echo across a far distance. He felt Warwick’s touch on his sleeve. He turned his head, looked at his face. It was strangely blurred. He swallowed painfully. “You’ve gone mad!” He heard his own voice, stifled, hoarse.

Warwick crashed a fist on the table. “’Tis Edward who’s gone mad, brother! Mad with lust for the greedy witch he married. He pays with lands and earldoms each time he impales her. I didn’t put him on the throne for this.”

John leaned both hands on the table in an effort to steady himself but the roses gave off a sickly sweet smell that quickened the churning of his stomach. He drew himself up. With stiff lips, he said, “You put him on the throne, and he is
king
.”

“I put him up, and I can bring him down!”

“What then?” John demanded, loudly, over the roaring in his head. “Who would you raise in his place? Yourself? Surely you can’t believe the people would accept you?”

“Not me. One other. Edward’s own brother, George, who has cast his lot with us.”

“George is a fool!”

“Fools are easy to control.”

“So you think now. What if George turns against you as Edward has?”

“He won’t. He’s agreed to marry Bella.”

“How? They’re cousins and there’s no dispensation—Edward has expressly forbidden it.”

Warwick exchanged a glance with the Archbishop. “George has bribed his brother’s own papal representative. The dispensation is being readied.”

“What you speak is treason!” John breathed.

“Only if Edward remains king,” Warwick said roughly. “And if he remains king, we Nevilles are done for in any case.”

“Aye,” agreed the Archbishop. “Dick is right. The Woodvilles are like rats gnawing on the ship of state. They’ll sink us unless we destroy them first. We Nevilles must stand firmly united— we rise or fall together.”

John swung on his younger brother. “Easy for you to say! You’ve always backed Dick blindly in everything. You’ve no convictions of your own, George, only ambition!” He fought for composure. The roaring in his head was ferocious now, like a clashing of cymbals mingled with shouts. “But I’ll have none of it.”

Stunned, Warwick stared at him. “You’re a Neville!”

“And have always done what you wished, Dick…” John managed. “Except in this. I cannot—I will not. My duty is to the King.”

“What about your duty to your kin?” Warwick stormed.

“Tear down Edward and you tear down order with him, return us to anarchy—to the days when anyone with a sword and a few men at his back thought himself fit to be king. What will become of England then?” He felt drained, depleted. A vast weariness engulfed him, as if he’d been on the march for days.

The Archbishop scraped his chair back and rose. “You can’t go against us, John. You’d be fighting your own flesh and blood.”

“Like our cousin George?” demanded John. A silence fell. “I beg you to reconsider, my brothers! Don’t plunge the realm into civil war. Think of the good men who’ll die. Think of the suffering of widows and children dispossessed. Surely the cost can’t be worth the gains, a few more lands here or there…”

“Cost? I know all about cost!” Warwick roared. “It was I who fought at Towton to put Edward on the throne, not you. I fought in that howling snowstorm, that hellish fourteen-hour battle! It was my men whose blood froze in the snow and melted with the spring to dye the rivers red while you were safe in your dungeon!”

John tilted his brows, looked at him uncertainly. He had the feeling they were all fools playing in some absurd, cruel farce. He wanted to laugh aloud but his insides hurt as if he’d been gutted by hot coals. “Then why… when you know the cost?”

“Because we can’t live in peace with Woodvilles devouring the realm!” Warwick shouted. “Are you so blinded by your damned loyalty you can’t see that?”

“All I’ve ever wanted is to serve. All you’ve wanted is to rule.”

“I must be rid of this curse of service to Edward! ’Tis a question of being master or varlet.”

“Have you ever given a thought to anyone else? Your ambition will destroy us all!” John shouted.

The brothers fell suddenly silent, glaring at each other. Then Warwick’s shoulders slumped. “It must be done,” he said wearily. “For the Neville honour.”

“By Christ’s sweet blood,” John said in a strangled voice, “I beg of you, Dick…”

“We’ve gone too far to turn back now,” replied Warwick.

John could no longer see his brother’s face. Warwick was just a black shadow against the bright window and the light hurt his eyes. He looked down at the table and his own reflection stared back at him, ghost-like, blurred, distanced.
We’re naught but shadows and phantoms in a world gone mad
, he thought, knowing he made no sense. He dragged his eyes back to his brother’s face. “Then it must be done without me.” He picked up his gauntlets, made for the door. He felt as if he walked in water, so strangely slow did his movements seem.

The Archbishop pursued him. “John—John—you will regret this!”

John hesitated, his hand on the door latch. Doves flitted at the windowsill and cooed from the velvet turf. Through the open windows, the warm summer wind wafted through the room, bearing the scent of flowers. From other regions of the castle came the tinkling of bells and the sound of children laughing. In a dark world, the sun still shone.

John gave a choked, desperate laugh. “I daresay, my good brothers, we all will.” He thrust the door open and strode from the room.

~ * * * ~

“And each foresaw the dolorous day to be; And all talk died, as in a grove all song Beneath the shadow of some bird of prey.”

The August sun beat down. Richard loosened his collar and mopped his face, his eyes on his sister Meg. To keep up appearances, Edward had offered—and Warwick had accepted— the honour of escorting Meg on the first stage of her wedding journey to Burgundy. She rode pillion behind Warwick through the streets of London. Richard took in the faces of the people waving banners and throwing flowers. They had feared the Kingmaker’s reaction to the King’s duplicity, but to everyone’s surprise, Warwick had accepted Meg’s betrothal to Charles of Burgundy without animosity. Or so it seemed. Richard was deeply troubled by the graciousness the Kingmaker had shown. It was unlike him, and as unsettling as rain from a summer sky. But there had been little time to dwell on the matter, for yet another crisis created by the queen swept their way soon after Warwick’s return from France. This scandal had pitted Warwick against the queen’s blood and given the land fresh cause for concern.

Sir Thomas Cook, the rich merchant who had refused to sell his tapestry to the queen’s mother, was implicated in a treasonous plot against Edward, along with Warwick’s loyal retainer, Lord Wenlock. Meg had interceded for Cook, who was her friend, and Edward, suspecting Bess had something to do with the convenient charge of treason, and anxious to appease Warwick, took no action against Wenlock. He even appointed the queen’s enemies, George and Warwick, to the commission investigating the case. The charges were dismissed. The realm breathed a deep sigh of relief.

A faint smile touched Richard’s mouth as he remembered the light moment when the lumpish Mayor of London’s snoring had disturbed the proceedings. “Speak softly, sirs, for the Mayor is asleep,” George had warned a witness, grinning amiably. George could be endearing when he wished. Richard’s smile faded. The crisis had passed and no doubt another would come along soon enough, but Meg, the sister he had loved like a mother, was departing his life. And there was no comfort, for this marriage promised little happiness. Her future husband, Charles of Burgundy, a long-nosed, wild-eyed man, was by all accounts so rash and unpredictable that—as Warwick had claimed—he could rightly be hailed as half-mad.

But Meg would do her duty, no matter what the personal cost. If that duty became too onerous a burden, for Meg, as for him, there was always prayer.

~*~

At the monastery of Stratford Langthorne in Essex, Richard shifted miserably in his chair at the banquet table. The three-day marriage celebration had been a nightmare. He looked to one side of the hall. There sat George and Warwick, whom he loved, but who would not speak to him because he couldn’t turn against Edward. He looked to the other side. There sat the queen and the Woodvilles, whispering and throwing him burning, hateful glances. He looked to the middle. There sat his beloved Meg. When he’d see her again, only God knew.