Rebellion (21 page)

No one could defeat him at the banqueting
table; all acknowledged themselves vanquished or fell unconscious on to their plates.
Yet the king himself apparently suffered no ill effects. Only his groom of the stool who
cleaned his chamber pot, the physicians who medicated his gut and all the squires of the
body who shared his bedchamber could attest to the intestinal gripings and rectal
explosions that followed these mighty feasts; the way he woke frequently in the night in
a foetor of sweat that even to his own nostrils had a rank and carnivorous odour.

Still the word spread, as he intended it
should, about the splendour of his hospitality, and soon several nations were competing
for trade and alliance with England, and for the hand of his sister, Margaret of York.
And while this presented certain diplomatic
challenges (the Earl of
Warwick favouring France while Edward himself preferred Burgundy), still it was a
triumph. A few years ago no one would have had anything to do with this impoverished,
battle-torn island that had lost all its territories in France.

And so the king continued to do his utmost
to impress, and to shift the balance of power away from the lords towards the merchants
and banks. For while there might be glory in warfare, there was no money in it. And he
wanted peace and profit.

And most of all he wanted to indulge
himself.

The king's greedy appetite was
insatiable and everywhere all over the country intolerable, for no woman was there
anywhere, young or old, rich or poor … but … he would importunately
pursue his appetite and have her …

Thomas More

They pursued him too, of course,
elbowing their way through the pressing crowds to kiss the hem of his cloak, or
attempting in other bold and diverse ways to make him glance their way. And if they
could not distract his majesty's attention, they would try at least to capture the
attention of one of his close companions, such as Lord Hastings, who would select from
the boldest of them for the king, bearing in mind both the catholic nature of his
majesty's tastes and also the fact that he was likely to be given a free trial
afterwards.

It was easier to look outside the court, for
commoners were less likely to take exception to that kind of thing, and less likely to
make any claim on the king. If married, they would swear any child that ensued was their
husband's. And their husbands in turn were less likely to make a fuss, whereas it would
not do to provoke any dissension among the lords.

But he did not neglect the ladies of the
court; indeed it would have been hard to ignore them entirely. When he entered a room
they circled him like so many gaudy moons and formed a gaggle
around
him, pressing close; giving off their disturbed animal scents. They loved him because he
was young and there was still a kind of naivety about his lust. They loved him for the
omnivorous nature of his appetite that showed such a generous appreciation of different
ages, shapes, sizes, colourations and classes of women. They loved him because it gave
them permission to vent their own appetites, for who could refuse the king? And they
loved him because the combination of power and potency was the most irresistible of all.
No one had ever resisted it except for his own wife, the queen, and she was known to be
a very cold woman, playing a very particular game.

She looked beautiful, dressed as richly as
he dressed. They were without question the handsomest royal couple in Europe. No scandal
was attached to her. She fulfilled her part of the marital contract, including the
unwritten part that said she must not question the king her husband, nor contradict him
in public, nor refuse him access to her at his will. And he, according to the terms of
this same contract, treated her with respect in public, did not flaunt his affairs
before her or speak of her in private to any of his women. When he came to her still
reeking of other women he said nothing and she said nothing either; there was nothing to
be said.

For the queen had struck her own kind of
bargain. She said nothing about his other women; he said nothing about her fierce drive
to enrich herself and all her relatives. And when in that year of 1467 she gave birth to
a second daughter, he did not rebuke her but behaved as though he was glad, though the
child was dispatched quickly to Greenwich Palace to be brought up with her sister by
their governess.

There were times when the king wondered what
he had done to the queen by transplanting her from her original estate. Sometimes he saw
the young woman he had loved in the curve of her cheek or a sudden alteration of
expression, and then he wanted to reach out to her. And if he did reach out to her she
would be
acquiescent, of course, but it was as if she unconsciously or
deliberately chose to misinterpret him, and what he wanted. And afterwards he would
reflect that he was no closer to her than when he had visited her at her father's house.
Further away, in fact; it was as if he had married someone he thought he knew and now
they were strangers. It was the usual way for royal couples to begin as strangers and
become familiar; yet for them the process was reversed.

He had these thoughts usually just before he
fell asleep. But sometimes he would lie awake on the bed tested for him by two squires,
two grooms, one yeoman and one gentleman, and reflect that the quality and nature of
love available to him had changed irrevocably with kingship. For the king belongs to
everyone and no one, and the love granted to him is impersonal rather than intimate; a
kind of universal lust. On certain occasions, kept awake through the hostile hours by
intestinal pain, he would ponder this transformation and feel all that had come to him
was sorrow, or the loss of some earlier unblemished state, when he had loved certain
people open-heartedly and without reserve. His father, for instance, or his brother
Edmund, both killed in the same battle. And, of course, the great traitor, Henry
Beaufort.

The extent of his feeling for this kinsman
who had betrayed him surprised him, for he'd had him beheaded, which should have been
vengeance enough. Yet it was not unknown for him to wake in the night with tears on his
face, feeling the full force of the betrayal all over again. In such moments he knew
that there was no compensation for everything he'd lost; that life takes the most when
it appears to be giving. And as he toured the grooves of pain in his mind it would come
to him that he was like the place in which he lay: for the Tower was visible and
accessible to all, but also a hidden and impregnable world.

Yet he continued to live there, as the
former king continued to live there, both of them attracting attention in singular ways.
Once he'd had a dream that a great light shone from King Henry's
cell
in the outer ward of the Tower, and people streamed towards it, bearing gifts and
offerings, while he, King Edward, was abandoned in his rich apartments, and everything
he owned had turned to dust.

Obviously such dreams were the product of
indigestion. He had rescued his nation from utter ruin. He had done everything he could
to win the love of his people, and they did love him. He had made the day of his most
famous battle, Towton, a day of national holiday and celebration.

And he continued to court the former
supporters of King Henry to ensure any divisions that remained in the land did not
undermine the structure of everything he had built.

So when Margaret Beaufort wrote to him to
thank him for the gift of Woking Old Hall and to express her hope that he would visit
them in it, and that she might also, one day, have her son to visit her there, he
responded by writing to her that nothing was more likely; and that there was nothing at
all to prevent her from visiting her son, in Lord Herbert's household, in Raglan Castle,
South Wales.

Late that summer the letter for which she
seemed to have been waiting all her life finally arrived. She read it quickly and let it
drop to the table.

‘What is it?' her husband asked, in some
alarm, because she had turned very pale. She picked the letter up again and wordlessly
held it out to him.

He read it slowly, comprehension
dawning.

‘We are invited to visit my son,' she
said.

He came and stood behind her then, placing
one hand tentatively on her shoulder. ‘That's a good thing, is it not?'

She pressed the tips of her fingers to her
face.

‘We must write back to them,' her husband
said.

He was ten years old now; he would be eleven
in January. She hadn't seen him since he was a tiny child, at Pembroke Castle. She'd
held his hand as he'd walked along a stone wall.

‘There will be many things to arrange,' her
husband said.

What would he look like now? What would he
wear? What would she wear? What present could she give him?

‘We could take a boat from Bristol,' her
husband said doubtfully.

She stood suddenly and went to the window.
Raglan Castle. South Wales. It would take several days to get there.

There had been four nights of storms, which
had done considerable damage. A tree had fallen on one of the stable roofs, and
more had fallen in the orchard. Fences were down and a barn door hung
from its hinges. Then it had rained so comprehensively that it was hard to imagine when
it had not been raining, or that it would ever stop. All the crops stood ruined in the
fields.

Her husband stood behind her. ‘I will speak
to our steward,' he said. ‘He is a capable man. I'm sure he can manage things in our
absence.'

The wind was still strong, blowing shoals of
clouds across the sky. Even as she watched she could see small birds blown about by it;
attempting to fly one way, being blown another.

‘What are you thinking?' her husband said.
She didn't want to say that they might not get there in this weather. Instead she said,
‘I was thinking about Lord Herbert.'

Black William, they called him;
a cruel
man, prepared for any crime.
He had been responsible for the deaths of her
son's father and grandfather. And she would have to sit and eat with him.

‘Perhaps he will not be there,' her husband
said gently. ‘He is often with the king.'

Margaret did not respond. She was still
gazing through the window at the birds. That winter, she knew, many of them would fall
frozen to the earth.

Sometimes she felt that it was a great
fallacy, the greatest in all of human imagining, to think that life was of any concern
to whatever deity there was.

Her husband put his hand on her shoulder
again. ‘It's not winter yet,' he said.

The visit was arranged for the third week in
September, and Margaret spent the time in a flurry of agitation in case the weather
worsened again. Or that her husband would suffer an outbreak of the virulent illness
that afflicted him, and their journey would have to be delayed. She had a new gown made
of crimson and tawny, and spent many hours deciding on a present for her son. Eventually
she chose a small jewelled dagger that had belonged to Edmund.

‘Will he like it, do you
think?'

Her husband said he could not help but like
it.

‘He is not too young?'

Her husband said it was quite usual for boys
of his age to have their own dagger and, besides, he should have something of his
father's.

She wrapped the dagger in an embroidered
cloth and tucked it among her clothes.

That night she dreamed of Edmund. He was
lying on a straw pallet in his cell. She hurried towards him in delighted surprise. He
had not died after all; he had been there all the time. Now at last she could tell him
about their son.

But as she reached him she saw there was a
beetle crawling from his mouth, and she knew, of course, that he had died.

She woke from this dream feeling stricken,
weighted down. And the rest of that day she was so distracted that her husband suggested
they should set off early, before the weather broke. If necessary they could spend some
time in Bristol.

And so they left the business of their
estate in the capable hands of her husband's steward, and set off for Wales.

Bands of shade alternated with a sunshine
that was almost white, streaming down between leaden clouds. It shone brilliantly on the
sloping roofs of Bristol, where they spent two days before a boatman would consent to
ferry them across the Severn, for the exorbitant price of ten shillings. Then they
travelled the rest of the way in the Herberts' carriage.

Raglan Castle had been a lowly manor house,
but
William Herbert and his father had rebuilt and extended it into a
castle so fine that poets sang of it:
its hundred rooms filled with festive fare,
its towers, parlours and doors, its heaped-up fires of long-dried fuel.
And
Lord Herbert now owned so much land in Wales that he was thought of almost as a king in
those parts; king of South Wales.