Wars of the Roses: Bloodline: Book 3 (The Wars of the Roses) (31 page)

‘King Edward of England and Wales and France, Lord of Ireland, Earl of March, Duke of York. Open this gate.’

Edward saw flickers of movement as men leaned over the high wall. He did not look up and merely waited impassively. Bolts and chains began to sound on the other side, then the rattle of an iron lattice being raised. Edward looked back to the sea of faces waiting around him.

‘I was held, but now I am free. It was your loyalty that freed me. Take heart from that.’

As soon as there was enough room under the rising spikes, Edward ducked under it, pulling away from the trailing touches of the crowd on his back. He strode across the stone yard within, towards the White Tower and his wife, Elizabeth.

Edward watched his children play, his oldest daughter waving a piece of apple out of reach of another. Elizabeth’s two boys by her first marriage were competing to carry the girls through half a dozen rooms at Windsor, charging in and out of open doors with hoots like hunting calls. Edward felt no particular affection for the boys. He had appointed swordmasters and tutors to instruct them, of course, so they would not embarrass him. After that, he took no more interest than he would in the get of any other stranger.

As for his three girls, Edward had discovered he adored them when they were not actually in his presence, as if the idea of them was somehow more of a joy than the reality of their shrieks and constant demands on his attention. He loved them best in their absence.

Elizabeth looked sidelong at her husband, smiling as she read his thoughts about as easily as her own. As soon as Edward began to frown, she shooed all the whooping, neighing children out of his presence, closing a door on their noise.

As the clamour died away, Edward blinked in relief, looking up and understanding when he caught her smile. Elizabeth was solicitous in her care of him, though not in a way that made him weak, or so he hoped. Edward smiled back at the thought, though her own expression had grown serious. As he looked at her, she bit her lower lip, halfway along its length.

‘I have not troubled you with this, just as you asked,’ she said. ‘Not for a month now.’

He groaned at the words, understanding on the instant. Though his wife claimed to have remained silent on the subject, he had seen it in her eyes every day, a silent reproof.

‘And I give thanks for that!’ he said. ‘Be
ruled
in this, Elizabeth. It will become a sourness between us if you cannot turn away from it. I have granted pardons, for all crimes. Amnesty for treasons. There will be no attainder, no executions, no punishment, no reprisals.’

‘
So
,’ Elizabeth said, her mouth a thin pale line, ‘you will let the weeds grow again. You will do nothing as the vines thrive to strangle your own children!’

As she spoke, she ran a hand over her womb, protectively. There was not yet a true swelling there, though she knew the signs. The vomiting had already begun in the mornings, so violent this time that it had left her with broken veins on her cheeks. It gave her hope of a son.

Edward shook his head, unaware of her thoughts and showing only a stubborn anger as she pressed him.

‘I have made my ruling, Elizabeth. I have told you. Now
be
told. This will come between us if you don’t let it go. I cannot change what is in the past. My brother is married to Isabel Neville and they are expecting their first child. Can I unplant that seed? Your father and your brother John are dead.’ He pursed his mouth. ‘I cannot bring them back, Elizabeth! Your brother Anthony is Earl Rivers now. Would you have me take his title away from him? That is a path to madness. Let it be enough that I have forbidden the royal court to the Neville men. You do not have to see them, in your grief. The rest … the rest is in the past and I will not pick and pick and
pick
at it until the blood flows again!’

He heard how far his voice had risen in volume and anger and he looked away, red-faced and abashed.

‘I think you have spent too long moping and sighing about the palaces of London, Edward,’ his wife said, gentling her voice and touching him on the arm. ‘You need to ride out, perhaps to bring the king’s justice where the sheriff and bailiffs have not yet been replaced. There are many villages wanting those now. My brother Anthony was telling me of one place not twenty miles to the north. Three men are accused of murder, caught with the red knives on them – and the jewels they stole from a great house. They left a dead father and daughter behind. Yet they sleep well in their cells and laugh at the local militia. The people there have no king’s officers. There were bloody riots a few months back and they are afraid. They dare not try the scoundrels without a judge in attendance.’

‘What is this to me?’ Edward retorted. ‘You’d have me pass judgment on every thief and brigand in the land? Why, then, do I even have judges and sheriffs and bailiffs? Is this some comment on my treatment of the Nevilles, Elizabeth? If it is, you are too subtle for me. I do not see your point.’

His wife looked up at him, standing as tall as she could, with both palms pressed against his chest. She spoke slowly and with an intensity he found chilling.

‘Perhaps you need to blow the froth off your maunderings, to ride hard and tear through the webs that have made you so slow and thoughtful. You will
see
, Edward, when you speak to the men and deliver judgment upon them as their feudal lord. You will see in the way those villagers look to you, as a king. Anthony knows where the place lies. He will show you.’

‘No,’ Edward said. ‘I don’t understand this, but I will not go rushing off just because you have something planned with your brother. I have had enough of plots and whispers, Elizabeth. Tell me what it is or I will not move from this place, and those men can rot in a cell until new judges are appointed and they are brought to trial.’

Elizabeth hesitated, her eyes wide. He could feel the tremble of her hands through his shirt.

‘The murders were just two weeks past,’ she said. ‘Those men claim Richard Neville as their lord: Earl Warwick, in treason against your offices.’

‘Christ, Beth! Did you not hear me before? I have
pardoned
them.’

‘They accuse Warwick – and Clarence too, Edward! My brother Anthony put them to the question, with fire and iron. There is no doubt. They name Warwick in conspiracy: to murder you and put Clarence on the throne! These are
new
crimes, Edward, not covered by the amnesty, nor the pardons. Do you understand? My father knows no rest, has had no vengeance. Do you understand, Edward?’

The king looked at his wife, seeing the way hatred and grief had added lines to her, stealing away the last of her youthful bloom. She had never seemed too old for him before, but she did then.

‘Oh, Elizabeth, what have you done?’ he said softly.

‘Nothing at all. These men named two of your foremost lords as traitors, conspiring against you. Anthony had them questioned and, in fire and iron, the truth was given. They do not lie.’

‘You will not tell me the truth, even now?’

Elizabeth clenched her jaw, her gaze fierce.

‘These are
new
crimes, Edward,’ she said. ‘You are not
forsworn. Your precious amnesty was for all that had gone before. It is unbroken.’

Edward looked away, saddened.

‘Very well. I
will
ride to them, Elizabeth. I will hear their accusations, against Warwick and my own
brother
.’ He took a slow breath and she recoiled from his anger, stepping back. ‘I promise nothing beyond that.’

‘That is enough,’ she said, suddenly desperate to heal the rift that had sprung up between them. She pressed kisses and tears against his mouth. ‘When you hear what they have to say, you can arrest the traitors. Perhaps then we will see such an ending as they deserve.’

Edward bore the kisses, feeling a coldness between them. She had not trusted him and he could not quite recall the way he had looked at her before his imprisonment. It reminded him of the times he had left a dog behind and returned months later. The animal had looked the same but somehow slightly off, in its scent and the touch of its fur. It took time to find the old easy comfort, and until it came back, it always felt like a different hound. It was, perhaps, not the sort of thing he could discuss with Elizabeth, though it felt very much the same. Her father’s death had hardened her, or drawn some softness out that he had taken for granted before.

He left her with tears shining in her eyes, though he did not know if they were from relief or sadness. Edward went down to the stables and scowled to find her brother Anthony waiting with Edward’s warhorse, ready to be ridden. The man’s broken wrist had healed many months before. As with Elizabeth, Edward had not recovered his ease of manner with the Woodville knight, though he thought the cause might have been the same. He had lost
his mind for a time when his father had been killed. Perhaps it was not so surprising that the Woodvilles had grown harder and more bitter at the loss of their own.

Edward stepped up on to the mounting block and swung into the saddle, feeling the old strength coil and gather. He held out his hand for his sword, strapping it on over the jacket tails at his waist. The last time he had ridden from that place had been to his own capture. He shook his head at the memory, as if a wasp had brushed his skin. He would not be afraid. He would not allow it.

‘Show me this village,’ he called to Anthony Woodville, as the man crossed the yard and mounted his own horse.

Elizabeth’s brother dipped his head, then cantered out with Edward into the sun, the gates opening before them.

Warwick was outside, working up a sweat with sword exercise at Middleham Castle, enjoying the sun and the thought of fruit pies and jams all autumn, with every sticky treat from apples, plums, greengages, strawberries, a host of fat fruits. It was never possible to preserve them all in chutneys, brine or vinegar, and so the local villagers would gorge on them until they could not face another mouthful, then put the rest in cool cellars or send them away to command high prices at the markets. It was, perhaps, his favourite time of year and he thought again of the London court he had left behind as a sort of fever dream. In his forties, Warwick could consider the years of intrigue and war safely behind him. He hoped as much. There would not be another Towton in his lifetime, though he touched a wooden window frame and made the sign of the cross just at the thought. Men older than him had
fought in battles. He could still remember the first Earl Percy, well into his sixties when he had fallen at St Albans.

Warwick found himself shuddering, as if a cloud’s shadow had crossed the sun. His uncle Fauconberg was gone, found cold in his bed just a few days after Warwick had last spoken to him. It had surprised him how hard that loss had been. Warwick had spent so long finding his father’s brother an irritation that he had not realized how close they had become by the end. Or perhaps it was just that his father’s death had hollowed him out.

He saw two riders coming along the main drive, seeing the dust they raised. It blurred the air behind them and caught his eye, so that he fixed his gaze on them, watching the dark figures racing closer with a feeling of tension. Such speed and urgency had never been the harbinger of good news. He almost wanted to go back inside and shut the doors. It could be the axe falling at last, the blow at his neck he had been dreading and expecting ever since Edward had returned to London.

An entire month had passed without a word of any unrest, though Warwick had servants and listeners all over the houses of the capital to warn him if the king took to the road with an armed force.

He swallowed uncomfortably. At his back, he could hear men and women calling out in alarm as they spotted the riders. His guards would already be gathering kit and horses, braced to protect him or to ride out at his command. Warwick stood alone before the great house, his eyes narrowed. He had an old short sword on his hip, though it was a tool more than a weapon, a cleaver on a leather thong, hanging from his belt. He used it in the gardens to hack at old wood, but its hilt was a comfort. On
impulse, he tugged it free and laid it against a bench close by, ready to be snatched up.

His worry swelled to panic when he saw that one of the riders was his brother George, the other Richard of Gloucester, already a much better horseman than the archbishop. Warwick’s brother bounced and hung on for dear life, lucky not to have been thrown.

Warwick could feel his heart thumping as George Neville and the king’s brother came to a halt, bringing a cloud of ochre dust that bloomed around and past them as they dismounted. Warwick coughed into his hand, his stomach clenching as he read their expressions.

‘Is it the king?’ he demanded.

Bishop George Neville nodded.

‘Or his wife. Either way, they have found men willing to accuse you of treason. I believe we are ahead of the warrant for your arrest, but it cannot be more than a few hours behind us. I’m sorry, Richard.’

‘George of Clarence is named as well,’ Gloucester blurted out, his voice cracking. ‘My brother. Will you take word to him?’

Warwick glanced at the young man who had been his ward. No longer a boy, Richard of Gloucester was grim-faced and pale, in a dusty shirt.

‘How can I trust you, Richard,’ Warwick said softly, ‘with your brother’s hand turned against me?’

‘He brought the news to me,’ the bishop said in reply. ‘If not for him, the king’s men would have reached you first.’

Warwick rubbed sweat from his face, making a quick decision. He had planned for disaster, even before releasing King Edward from his captivity. Ships and chests of
coins had been taken to lands he owned in France, unknown to a soul on this side of the Channel and all ready for him to bolt if the word came. He had not expected his daughter’s husband to be included in the accusation.

With his brother and Richard of Gloucester staring and waiting, Warwick forced himself to breathe and think, standing still. The coast was a two-day ride, to a fine sixty-foot boat he had waiting there, crewed by four men and ready at all hours. His daughter and her husband were at a beautiful estate house thirty miles to the south, waiting for Isabel’s confinement to end and their first child to be born.

‘Clarence has not been told?’ he asked. His brother shook his head. ‘Right. We can fetch him here, with Isabel. She will want her mother to be there as well, with the baby so close. It is not too far and there is more than one road. If the king has sent an army, they’ll be slow. If he has sent just a few, we’ll fight our way past them.’ He held up a palm as the bishop began to reply. ‘No, I won’t leave my wife or my daughter to the mercy of Elizabeth Woodville. Have you sent a message to John?’