Death Be Pardoner To Me: The Life of George, Duke of Clarence (24 page)

“No, it is in the hands, if not the body, of my lady wife who is not always willing and I will not take her against her will. When she comes to me, she comes with tenderness and willingness and it is in that a child will be conceived, not taken by force if it is not her wish.”

“Others would not agree with you, sire.”

“My brother of Gloucester would, of that I am sure. How I know this I cannot say, it is just a feeling.”

“A rightful one. I would agree with you about your brother of Gloucester. I was thinking of your other brother.”

“Edward? He has no need of force, he can and has charmed so many women I wonder there is one left in the land who has not succumbed to his inducements by now, apart from my sister-in-law and my wife!”

“There is your lady mother and your mother-in-law,” observed Durian with a wry smile. “You’re right, sire, there are so many women who have fallen for the king’s charms. It is said he earns much money for his coffers by merely kissing a woman and then asking for her hard earned coins!”

George smiled at the thought and then the smile vanished. “Apart from that, Durian, I am content enough with my life.”

“That is the first lie you have uttered in my presence when we have been alone, sire. I would hope that it will be the last!”

Rebuked, George stared at his Fool, at the knowing eyes and the even more knowing smile.

“I give in. I surrender. Is there anything you do not know about me?”

“No, sire, nothing at all. Any more than there is anything you do not know about me.”

“I am content with this life, on the surface. Beneath the surface there are emotions which few know of and even fewer understand.” He stopped, pressing one hand to the side of his head. Durian looked concerned and asked a silent question with raised eyebrows. “Nothing. A pain that comes and goes. I will ask for a draught later, to help dull it if it does not subside by itself.”

“How long have you had this pain?”

“Oh, I don’t know, it has come and gone for some time, a year? Maybe more. I do not recall now when it began. It is there, like a bad headache, then it goes and I am not troubled by it for some time.”

“Today it troubles you?”

“Indeed it does. But it will go. Worry not, Durian, I am here for some time yet, or so the astrologer tells me.”

“Ah, the faith you have in these people, sire, is a wonderment to me.”

“They speak true of many things. I am told there is a child to come to me before the next year is out.”

“That is something many could predict!”

George laughed. “Of a surety they could, but that was not their sole prediction. They spoke of my brothers’ exile and of the king resuming his throne long before it happened.”

“I cannot believe in such things myself, sire, forgive me for that. I believe in that which I can see, touch and smell for myself.”

George raised an eyebrow. “What of your feyness, Durian, your farseeing?”

“Ah yes, but that is my own intuition. I rely not on the movement of stars and zodiacal calculations and the like.”

“The Lord God works in mysterious ways and sometimes His will is not always shown clearly but through the workings of others.”

Durian shrugged. “I prefer my own simple faith, sire. I say my prayers, He answers as best He can and together we do what we can for you.”

George laughed again. “I can see there is no dissuading you from your position, so I will not try. Now, shall we go to dine? I am sure I heard a summons to eat.”

“Now I know you are all right, Your Grace. Food is ever something you enjoy. Let us see what the kitchen has prepared for us this night.”

As he walked down the stairs to the hall, George turned a thought around in his mind. If Durian knew he was unhappy with this life, did his cousin know? If so, would that colour the way he perceived George and his part in the life of the Nevilles? It was something to watch out for, everything could be changed with a wrong word, a wrong expression.

I really do need to stop drinking, he told himself as he walked toward the dais and saw Isobel, pretty, smiling, welcoming, waiting for him. I could not bear to lose everything through a wrong move on my part, even if that which I have is not entirely that which I would wish to have. There are others far worse off than I; my brother of Gloucester has no wife at all. Briefly George wondered if his brother would find anyone to marry, now that the woman he loved had been forcibly married to someone else. Damn Warwick, he thought fiercely. In many ways he has been responsible for a lot of unhappiness. If God is righteous, surely He will rectify this situation, one way or another. I just wish I could see how it could be done.

There was a full mazer of malmsey wine waiting for him at his place on the dais. He raised it to his lips, sipped it and put it down again. Isobel looked puzzled, as if the wine did not please him but he smiled reassuringly at her and she resumed her conversation with the lady sitting beside her, one invited to the table that evening.

It will be hard to pretend I am drinking, he thought and harder to tell people I am not drinking so much. If it means losing the pain in my head, it is worth doing. If it means keeping a strict curb on my tongue, my expression and my thoughts, I will definitely do it. Of a surety there are greater problems to be faced than the fact of not drinking! He gazed at the mazer again, longing for the oblivion that the wine would bring him. It may be worth doing, he thought bitterly, but it is going to be hard. God’s teeth, it is!

Chapter 26

At what point was the decision made to leave my cousin of Warwick and rejoin my brother the king? I am not certain. I know only this, disillusionment makes a mockery of dreams, failure makes a mockery of plans and ambitions and I am never one – oh listen to yourself, Clarence – I was never one for such debilitating thoughts. Ever did I seek to prove myself to be worthy of respect and attention and so, in the extremity of disillusionment, I went to my cousin and told him, quietly and carefully, I no longer wished to be part of his plans.

Of course he blustered and blundered and shouted and raged and drank heavily, as was his wont, but he could not argue with the fact most of my lands and estates, including my much loved home at Tutbury, had been taken from me and I was left with far less than I had before the whole sorry affair began. He had no family being pressured: for my part, my two brothers were in exile, my sisters were having difficulties because their husbands were not with them, my lady mother was pressuring me in the way only she could over various matters and in all the circumstances it seemed right and favourable to seek reconciliation with my family to restore my honour and my income. Both were important, for different reasons. Without honour a knight cannot survive. Without income a knight is an unwelcome burden on others. I would not be a beggar in my own land. I made my peace with Ned, my brother and my king – it mattered little at that point that another king occupied the throne of England and wore a crown, to me the crown and the throne belonged only to my brother – and I did the honourable thing and told Warwick myself that I was returning to the Yorks.

Of a surety he had suffered too; loss of land, loss of face, loss of ambition and I knew his bluster and ravings were as much a manifestation of his disappointment as it was anger that I was turning my back on him and taking with me any chance of his being able to control the king. Not that he would have had that chance; my brother was not a person you controlled. Every woman he bedded sought to control him in one way or another but few if any achieved it. I would dare, in the sanctity of this prison cell, state to the arras and the still burning but insensate fire that Elizabeth Wydeville – in view of what I learned of the pre-marriage contract I will not call her Queen – tried to control her wayward husband but despite all her wiles and her ways and her cunning and her resorting to witchcraft, of a surety she did, she had little influence on Edward of March. I believe, because it suits me to believe, that she had some influence in my trial and my sentence, but that is possibly my own black thoughts, for the dispute between my brother and myself at that time was bitter enough without a woman interfering. Especially a woman like her.

I did wonder if my cousin of Warwick would speak with me again after that conversation, he did but it was stilted and very difficult. He wrote to me occasionally but that too was not the Warwick I knew and had fought alongside. I wonder now, looking back down the years – few though they are – whether my withdrawal from him hastened his disastrous decision to commence hostilities against Burgundy.

Not that it matters, what happened was inevitable, in a way. The Readeption parliament was not as strong or as good as it should have been. My brother the king saw a chance to make a triumphant return to his country and what was rightfully his crown, in his eyes and, I freely admit, in mine, too, but then my family loyalty was at its peak and I would of a surety think that way, would I not?

It was easily done. Commissioned to array troops, I put them to my own cause and that of my brother of March, not that of the King who ordered it. When my brother the king landed on English soil again and began his march toward London, he drew in more and more men. I urged Warwick not to fight until he could concentrate his forces and then set out with my own force, ostensibly to fight my own family. I remember I rode with a mind as blank as the face I turned to the world, for it was hard to feel anything. My wife was waiting for me at our home, having whispered to me before I set out that she thought she was with child again. I took that with me, held close to my chest and my heart and told no one, for fear of it being a false alarm. I wished so much that it would not be false, that it was a true pregnancy, that a child of my own might be born at long last. I rode with my army toward two people who were family, my cousin and my brother. The first one thought I was coming to aid him, the other knew I would fight for him.

I saw my brother the king riding toward my group, my brother of Gloucester just a little further back. In that moment I decided on something outrageously extravagant to make him take real notice of me and my intentions. I dismounted and fell to my knees in the dust before him, bare headed and contrite. There was a long silent moment and then Ned came and helped me up, we hugged, we spoke, Richard came and we embraced and we spoke. Before everyone, Gloucester, March and Clarence stood together, embraced, shook hands, spoke words of conciliation. In that moment I knew where I wanted to be, back with the Yorks.

I can say no more on this for it is still a moment of deep emotion for me. I know not how my brothers really felt but we stood and we smiled and we spoke kind words to one another. What my brother the king really thought was concealed behind a smiling face and his usual bonhomie. My brother of Gloucester seemed genuinely pleased to see me, his smile was warm, his hand-clasp firm and strong.

I sought to bring reconciliation to all, appealing to my brother the king to be benevolent toward Warwick and he agreed but Warwick refused to talk so all the work I had done to negotiate new terms was as nothing in the eyes of the man who felt spurned by me. Oh, he never said so, but it was there in his look, in his manner, in his words and in his actions.

So we marched on together, the Yorks as one. Spies reported to us what Warwick had in mind, to trap us between London and his own forces.

He made a large mistake. In the past Warwick had under-estimated Edward’s power with the populace and he did so at this time, that and Ned’s ability as a soldier and tactician. This was Warwick’s downfall. The plans were made, discussed, put into action. London was reached, breached; we turned and went straight back, launching our attack on his army before first light.

I hear; I see, I smell and I sense the roar of battle even as I think these thoughts. I hear metal on metal, metal on flesh, the defiant, the dying, the wounded and the terrified. I see the flash of metal on metal, I see the metal on flesh, I see the blood gouting, I see the defiant standing firm and I see the dying falling, tumbling charging men and horses to the ground. I see the terrified making a bad job of standing up to the onslaught. I smell the blood, the faeces from the gutted horses and men, the sickness that battle provokes in some men. I sense the blood lust that takes over as man attacks man, no matter who they are. I am aware in my heart of my own fear and bravado, I know well that my body was hard put not to betray me, for no matter how many times a man fights in battle, the fear remains the same –this time might be my last.

And in this turmoil and chaos and confusion, amid this noise of crashing clashing armed men, my cousin of Warwick was felled.

I could not believe it. The man who had dominated my life, changed my loyalties, led me into exile and back into what should have been glory, was no more than just another corpse on the battlefield. Barnet: a simple word but one that would bring its own pang to my heart and mind for a long time after the event. I felt such shock I doubted I would be aware of anything for some time.

When it was over, and it seemed to be over in such a short time, my brothers were together, tall in their blood-splashed suits of armour astride their destriers, faces agleam with the satisfaction of victory. My brother the king was free with his praise for those who fought so valiantly, myself included. If my shock at the loss of Warwick showed at all, he ignored it, as did my brother of Gloucester. The loyal knights who fought with us also said nothing so mayhap my ability to wear the blank face of one who gives nothing away was in place, despite the inner turmoil. Apart from my own feelings, I had a terrible task ahead of me; I had to return to my home and tell my lady wife that her father was dead.