The Stolen Crown: The Secret Marriage That Forever Changed the Fate of England (12 page)

Much as I had sulked when I could not accompany Margaret of York to Burgundy, Harry outdid me when he found that he was not to go on pilgrimage with the king, for he was a great admirer of the Duke of Gloucester and had also hoped to see a touch of battle up north. The king, however, was adamant. Harry was to stay with the queen, who herself was traveling to Fotheringhay Castle. In the king’s absence, he reminded Harry, who better to escort the queen on her travels than a duke?

“Richard could get to fight. And I must travel with the queen and her mites!”

Needless to say, this speech was directed to me and not to the king.

“They surely wouldn’t let you fight yet. You’re still only thirteen.”

“But I could watch and learn, and help the men get into their armor.

Instead, I’m stuck with a bunch of women!”

I tried to look sympathetic, but in truth I was delighted about our trip, and also pleased that Harry would be coming along. He had spent so much time at Westminster lately that I had not seen much of him. And when I did see him, all I heard about was Richard, Richard, Richard. Maybe a separation would mean that I wouldn’t have to hear so much about the wonderful Duke of Gloucester, who, if Harry could be believed, combined the best qualities of Richard the Lionhearted, the Black Prince, and Henry V.

So to Fotheringhay Castle we went, with the queen’s two oldest girls forming part of the company. It was pretty country, but somewhat dull compared to Greenwich with its proximity to London, so I was duly grateful when, at the end of June, the king and his entourage joined us. Papa was not with them, being off in our manor of Middleton raising troops, but John and Anthony were there. I greeted them with delight, but my joy was as nothing compared to the greeting Harry gave Richard.

“Have you seen the castle?” Richard asked later, when the royal party was all settled in and we were relaxing in a solar.

Seated beside Harry in a window seat, I assumed that I was included in

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the question. “Why, of course. It’s been so quiet here, there’s been nothing to do but explore.”

Richard looked at me as if it were the castle laundress who had dared to join in on this conversation. “Well, I suppose that’s true. Still, I was born here, you know. Harry, I’ve a fancy to see the chamber. Would you like to come along?”

Harry did not wait to answer, but got up straightaway, leaving me forlorn and alone in my window seat until John took Harry’s place. “Where’s our young buck off to?”

“The chamber where Richard was born,” I muttered.

John laughed and patted me on the knee. “The holy shrine! That will have to do unless Harry can get to Bethlehem one day, I suppose.”

“I don’t understand what Harry sees in him,” I said sulkily, after some snickering. “He’s not nearly as fine as the king, I think.”

“Hero worship. Common enough in lads his age; he’ll grow out of it.

Why, there’s the one I worshipped when I was Buckingham’s age,” he added as our oldest brother walked over to lounge at our side.

I had always been rather in awe of Anthony myself. He was much more handsome than the rest of my brothers (though John’s looks were the type that grew on one), and people still talked of the great joust Anthony had had with the Bastard of Burgundy not that long after Bessie married the king. Yet he was not merely a comely man and a splendid jouster. He was much more learned than anyone in our family, though Lionel, who was in his teens now and had entered the Church, showed some promise in that direction. Although all of us Woodvilles spoke excellent French thanks to Mama, Anthony could write and translate from it also, as easily as if it were his first language. He even wrote verses, though only his wife, Elizabeth Scales, saw most of them.

Perhaps because of all of these accomplishments, I had never been as close to Anthony as I was to John, or even as I was to my youngest and wildest brother, Edward. I looked up at him almost shyly as he stood beside us. “What’s this?”

“We were discussing idol worship. Oh, not that kind, Anthony, don’t

7 2 s u s a n h i g g i n b o t h a m look so perturbed! Harry Buckingham’s for Gloucester, and mine for you, to be more exact.”

“Yours for me? Why?”

“Merely because you do everything so well, and so much better than the rest of us.”

“Oh? I seem to recall you distinguishing yourself in Burgundy. Prince of the Tournament, wasn’t it? You put me quite to shame. I was proud of you. Still am.”

For the first time in my life, I saw John at a loss for words. “Well, thank you,” he muttered at last. “A lot of it was luck, I believe.”

“Luck, against some of the finest jousters in Europe? I think skill was more likely.”

With the king seeing some petitioners in the castle’s great hall, and Gloucester reliving his youth with Harry in tow, there was none but us Woodvilles in the solar now. Perhaps eager to change the subject, John said so that my sister could hear, “Well, we’ve news of George. The wedding that he’s not supposed to be making is proceeding along apace.”

“Don’t speak of that in front of Edward, John. It’s one of the few subjects that turns him ill-tempered.”

The Earl of Warwick had long wanted to marry his daughters to George and Richard (Harry having been taken), and George, now nineteen, had been eager to oblige with seventeen-year-old Isabel. The king, however, had forbidden the match, partly out of irritation at the earl’s high-handedness in demanding it, partly because he wanted to give George to a foreign bride. Undeterred, the earl and George had pressed on with their plans (Isabel’s point of view in all of this was unknown, of course), and rumor had it that the Pope had granted his dispensation a few months back.

“I won’t, Bessie, trust me. But you have to admire the sheer gall of the man. It’s to take place in Calais, they say, and Warwick’s been inviting all and sundry to the wedding. No secret marriage here! Er, sorry, Bessie.”

“Apology taken,” my sister said sweetly.

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“Why doesn’t the king just lock up George?” I asked. “And Warwick?”

“It’s an awkward situation,” said Anthony. “Warwick’s very popular with the people. At his house in London, they say, anyone who comes by at mealtime can walk away with all of the meat he can carry, which always wins friends. Same at his other residences. Up north, he’s a positive hero.”

“He can well afford all that largesse,” said John. “For all that he complains about our marriages, he did well in that area himself, through a couple of lucky deaths that made his countess a great heiress. Of course, it helps that he’s taken to piracy on occasion.” John was quiet for a moment, then pulled a dreadful face.

“John! What’s wrong?”

“My invitation! I’ve lost my invitation to the wedding!”

“Really?” I asked, for John looked so mournful.

“Of course not, poppet, I’m only being foolish. Do you think we Woodvilles would be invited to the marriage? Not even my wife has been invited, thanks to her folly in marrying me. So I’m deeply affected—though not as bad as Anthony. Just look at him. He’s in a brown study.”

“I had something else on my mind, actually. This rising by this Robin Mend-All—”

“Robin of Redesdale in formal company,” added John.

“This rising by whatever you call the man. Sometimes I wonder if there’s not a stronger hand behind it. A strong hand like Warwick’s.”

“What gives you that idea?”

“Nothing I can put my finger on. But coming at the same time of this marriage, which is such a blatant act of defiance of the king, something in it seems suspicious.”

“Have you told the king of your suspicions?” asked Bessie.

“No. They’re too vague as of yet. To tell the king without good grounds to support them would be to have him think that we are trying to estrange him further from Warwick. If this marriage takes place, all will likely become clear soon enough.”

The king tarried at Fotheringhay for several days, awaiting men and

7 4 s u s a n h i g g i n b o t h a m supplies. We in the queen’s household were rather busy, for we were preparing to go to Norwich, where the king had been received warmly in early June. So pleased had he been by the city’s welcome, which appeared all the more gracious in contrast with the northern troubles, that he had pledged that his queen would visit.

We set out on our journey the same day that the king’s party set out on its own way northward. “Do be careful,” Bessie warned the men, having embraced her brothers and then been kissed goodbye by the king in a manner that made me sigh romantically and Harry roll his eyes.

“Don’t worry,” said Edward. “We’ll take care of the wretches—if there are any of the churls left by the time we get there.” He grinned and locked my sister into another long embrace.

Harry parted from Richard with such reluctance that I, having parted affectionately but calmly from my brother Anthony, rolled my own eyes.

Then came time for me to embrace John, and I found that I could hardly bear to let him go. “There could be a battle!” I wailed, holding onto him stubbornly.

“The king is right, sweetheart. Don’t worry.” John pried me loose and smiled at me. “The king has many men. They’ll make short work of our cocky friend Robin.” I giggled at the pun, on which John had laid a great deal of emphasis so I would not miss it. “That’s a good girl! Frankly, I think you’re in for a rougher time than we are.”

“How?”

“You’ll have to listen to every man of any importance in Norwich giving a long-winded speech of welcome, that’s why.”

“Oh,” I said gloomily.

John laughed and mounted his horse. “Picture them in their drawers, sweetheart. That’s what I always do.”

Despite a few speeches, which fortunately were not long enough for me to have to utilize John’s advice, the citizens of Norwich put on a wonderful

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spectacle—even Harry was impressed, I think, although he wouldn’t admit to it. The angel Gabriel himself greeted us, along with all twelve apostles, two patriarchs, and sixteen virgins. There were pageants, and singing by boys with voices so sweet they might have been angels themselves. All would have gone wonderfully had it not been for the drenching rain that started with barely a warning cloud, forcing the citizens to hustle Bessie and the rest of us to our lodgings at the Friars Preachers while the city fathers and the performers tried frantically to salvage the materials upon which they had bestowed so much time and effort.

We had been in Norwich for a day or so, and the rain had yet to let up, when one of Edward’s messengers, grim-faced, came to see the queen in her modest lodgings. He and she conferred in low tones while her ladies stitched and Harry tried to teach me to play chess.

Even I could see that my sister was badly shaken when at last the messenger left. She waved us all over to her—even Harry and me.

“The Duke of Clarence and Isabel Neville have married,” she said. “But that was expected, and is not the worst of it. The day after the wedding, Clarence and the Earl of Warwick issued a proclamation. They claim that England has fallen into a dreadful state, and they blame it all upon our family and the king’s other friends. They name Papa, Anthony, and John. Even Mama. And the Earl of Pembroke, the Earl of Devon, and Lord Audley.

They plan to cross to England, and then take an armed force to Canterbury to seek a remedy and reformation.”

“Remedy?” asked Anne. “What type of remedy?”

“They do not say. But they compare the king to Edward II, Richard II, and the last Henry.”

All three of them, deposed. And even I knew of the fates of the first two.

I shuddered, and Harry in one of his bursts of protectiveness put his arm around me. “Maybe Kate should lea—”

“No!”

“There’s not much more to tell anyway,” said Bessie. “The king has sent Papa and Anthony and John away for their own safety. I do not want to

7 6 s u s a n h i g g i n b o t h a m frighten any of you, least of all Kate, but the king wished us to be aware of the situation. He still seems quite confident that all will be well, and he wishes us to stay in Norwich until we next hear from him. He is raising more men, and the Earls of Pembroke and Devon will be dealing with Robin of Redesdale.”

“Robin of Redesdale?” Anthony’s wife, Elizabeth Scales, one of my sister’s ladies, asked. “Why not with Warwick and his followers?”

Bessie’s hands trembled, and I wondered if she entirely shared the king’s confidence.

“Because Anthony was right about Robin of Redesdale,” she replied.

“His real name is John Conyers. And he is Warwick’s man.”

In early August, another messenger rode to us at Norwich, this time from William Hastings, the king’s closest friend. He knelt before Bessie and said, “I can do no better than to put this plainly to you, your grace, and then explain. The king is Warwick’s captive.”

My sister has been called many things, most of them untrue, but none have ever dared to call her a weakling. She took this news and remained standing upright. “Explain.”

“Has your grace heard the news from Edgecote?” Bessie shook her head.

“Several days ago, Pembroke’s and Devon’s Welshmen engaged with the men of that Robin of Redesdale. There had been some sort of quarrel between Pembroke and Devon, and Devon’s forces were slow to arrive.

By the time they did, it was too late. Our men were outnumbered, and they were slaughtered. Devon escaped, but Pembroke and his brother were taken and beheaded on Warwick’s orders the next day.”

The Earl of Pembroke, William Herbert, was father-in-law to my sister Mary. I gasped as Bessie said, “For supporting their lawful king?”