Queen by Right (53 page)

Cecily clutched his arm. “I am afraid. You do not think the king would harm you, Richard, do you?” she asked, breathing hard. She had woken with a toothache, and her whole head was throbbing.

Richard smiled grimly. “With an army at my back? I seriously doubt it. But again, I shall make it known I am his grace’s obedient liegeman, so why would he harm me? You worry too much, my dear. Now let us make our farewells.”

He knelt and kissed her hand, then rose and mounted his courser, which was fully caparisoned. Richard was magnificent in his murrey and blue tabard, a simple gold coronet upon his dark head. He wanted the finery to inspire the citizens of Ludlow to cheer their lord as he rode out of the city.

Waving to Cecily and his children, he turned and trotted through the gatehouse archway and into the outer bailey. As soon as he was gone, Cecily’s hand went to her aching jaw and her face distorted in pain. She climbed the few steps to the children and saw tears streaming down Meggie’s face. Ignoring her own distress, she bent down and embraced the little girl.

“He will be home again soon, I promise,” she whispered. “Say a prayer for him, sweeting, and the Virgin will protect him. Now dry your tears. You must learn to control your emotions in public, Meggie.” She straightened and, grim-faced, walked ahead of them into the hall and went in search of Constance, her own tears forced back into her heart.

R
ICHARD HAD INSTRUCTED
Cecily that he wished Edward and Edmund to witness their first ritual slaughter of a hog at Martinmas. The ceremony marked the beginning of the long process of butchering the livestock and storing food for the winter.

“Not Edmund, Richard,” Cecily begged. “He is still so young.”

“Stuff and nonsense, Cis,” Richard retorted. “Do not protect him so or he will truly grow up to be afraid. He is but a year younger than Ned, and I was even younger when Sir Robert made me watch. It was not practical in Dublin, but here at home we know the butchers. ’Tis something the boys should witness. I regret I cannot be here for it, but I will ask Piers to attend the boys. They trust him, and besides, he is a farmer’s son, so he can explain the ritual and prepare them. You need not be present, my dear.”

But Cecily could not allow her sons to watch the butchering without her, and since her own father had made her at an early age break a chicken’s neck, she knew in her heart that it was considered, at least by men, a necessary part of growing up.

Cecily walked with the boys to the animal pen in a corner of the castle green. The ground was a quagmire from the rain and the many animals penned there, and she was glad of her wooden clogs. Piers had taken both boys by the hand, though Edward soon pulled his away, deeming himself too old for such childishness. Still, he listened carefully as Piers explained what they would see. Edmund stiffened and pulled back, but when he saw that Edward was ready to mock him, the younger boy lifted his chin and walked grimly on. Cecily’s heart went out to him.

When they were seated on haycocks outside the small pen, Piers gave the swineherd the signal to send in the first of the hogs. The unsuspecting animal, now fattened from a month of foraging for acorns, waddled in, and giving a few grunts, snuffled at the ground for something to eat. From behind, a farmhand took the beast by surprise and pulled its legs out from under it, and the pig fell over with a squeal of annoyance. Its protests grew louder when the sturdy yeoman knelt upon its bristly brown back and grasped a handful of belly flesh. Edward laughed heartily at the hog’s frantic and noisy attempts to unseat the heavy man and dug Edmund in the ribs. But Edmund had seen the second man come forward with a knife in one hand and a long-handled pan in the other, and he began to panic. He looked around desperately for Cecily, who guiltily avoided his terrified eyes. She had no intention of allowing the many yeomen watching to see any weakness in either of her sons.

Piers gently talked Edmund into focusing on what was happening, and Cecily was grateful that the big man put his arm on the little boy’s shoulder just as the second man slit the pig’s throat. Its hideous death scream still made Cecily, who had heard it many times before, emit a gasp of horror, squeeze her
eyes tight, and put her hands over her ears. The pan, positioned to catch the blood, filled rapidly, but the noise, which should have subsided, endured for too long. It was only when Cecily opened her eyes that she realized the scream was coming from Edmund. Jumping from her perch, she unhooked her cloak and flung it over Edmund’s shaking body, pulling his head to her bosom and muffling his sobs. She felt all eyes upon them.

“Hush, my child,” she soothed him. “You have been a brave boy and your father will be proud of you.” She felt his arms fumble for her waist through the mantle, and she tightened hers around him.

At a loss, Edward looked on in dismay, but Piers took charge of him and led him away through the knot of castle workers who had gathered to ogle the initiation. Edward held his head high, and as though he were already a leader of men, he nodded graciously right and left as men twice his size touched their forelocks to him.

Between them, Gresilde and Cecily half carried Edmund back to the castle, Cecily’s aloof and inscrutable expression stalling any unkind murmurs that might have arisen to embarrass her son. Inside, her heart was breaking.

That night Edmund had a nightmare, and although the nursery was far from the ducal chambers, his cries awoke Cecily from a sound sleep. Hurrying through the cold passageway that connected the lodgings, Cecily was led by a guard and followed closely by Gresilde.

“’Twas but a bad dream, my son, my sweetheart,” Cecily told him as she held his shivering body close. “Mama is here to keep you safe, never fear.”

His light blue eyes looked up into his mother’s familiar face, and Cecily was dismayed to see the terror in them. “What is it, Edmund? What did you dream?”

“That I . . . I was the h . . . hog an . . . an . . . and a soldier cut my throat and h . . . held his helmet to catch my blood.” And he buried his face in her chest.

It was all Cecily could do not to swoon at the image. She lifted Edmund off the bed and onto his knees next to her, crossed herself, and began to calmly recite the
pater noster.
The soft Latin words seemed to comfort the boy, and soon he had joined in, his eyes closed and his hands clasped devoutly before him.

Baynard’s Castle, London
FEBRUARY 9, 1461

M
other of God!” Cecily cried aloud from her bed, aghast at her own realization. “My sweet Edmund. He foresaw his own death.”

She ran to the window and flung the shutters wide, hoping the light would chase away the awful darkness of the nursery scene. I told you he was too young to witness the hog slaughter, Richard, she raged now. Her fists balled as her anger grew for her husband, who had left her a widow and the grieving mother of a most beloved son. I told you, but you did not listen. And I also told you he was too young to fight. But you did not heed me about that, either, did you? Poor little Edmund, I can still see the terror in his face when he told me of his dream. She beat her fists on the wooden shutter and sobbed. “Ah, sweet Jesu, he was too young to die.”

She heard a knock on the door and brushed her sleeve over her wet face. Come, Cecily, she chided herself, you must pull yourself together for Margaret, George, and Richard. Besides, how many times had she heard Joan Beaufort tell her never to cry or appear weak in front of the servants. In fact, Cecily’s mother had often admonished her never to cry at all. But although she was passing on this wisdom to Meggie, Cecily secretly believed a good weep salved the soul—in moderation, she told herself sternly. One should not burble like a fountain.

“Come,” she called, and nodded to the page who slipped in carrying a tray of food. She watched as the boy stoked the fire before thanking him and waving him away. “I pray you leave me and tell Dame Boyvile to attend me in an hour.” She yawned and went to inspect the food. She picked up a piece of cheese and nibbled at it.

“Now, where was I?” she muttered.

Wrapping the bedrobe tightly around her, she pulled a chair closer to the hearth. Ah, yes, the end of the twenty-ninth year of the reign of King Henry.
She sighed and shook her head. Poor simple, saintly Henry, who should never have sat upon a throne. It should have been Richard, she mused sadly, and how close he came. He would have been the people’s choice had not Queen Margaret and her favorite, Somerset, fought so hard to keep the throne. She frowned, remembering how the queen had accomplished Somerset’s swift release from the Tower after Richard had convinced Parliament that the duke and certain others should be removed from the court. The Anjou woman was hell-bent on destroying Richard even then, Cecily mused, but then why did she send me gifts? And kind missives. How puzzling. It was as though she imagined I was married to a different man.

It was during that sitting of Parliament, when Richard’s popularity was at its height, that Sir William Oldhall was elected Speaker of the Commons. But the crowing had not lasted long. Somerset was soon at Henry’s right hand again, and Oldhall was accused of plotting to kill the king and was forced to seek sanctuary. Absurd, Cecily thought. Even more absurd were the honors heaped on Somerset despite his having managed to lose not only Normandy but Gascony as well by then. The only English stronghold left in France was Calais, and befuddled Henry had given his favorite the prized captaincy of that valuable staple town. What magic had the man woven around the king and queen? Cecily wondered. Had he been a younger man, Cecily might have believed the rumors that Somerset and Margaret were lovers, so many were the favors Henry lavished on the favorite.

“I fear the king will make Somerset his heir presumptive, Cecily, and I cannot stand by and see it happen,” Cecily remembered Richard telling her. “He is still a bastard Beaufort and so excluded from the inheritance. If he were a better man, I might accept Henry’s choice. But as he is not, it would spell more disaster for England.”

Cecily sighed. If only Henry and Margaret had produced a son sooner, the conflict over the heir presumptive would have been avoided.

That was the year, too, when citizens had whispered of Henry’s uncharacteristic forcefulness against Jack Cade’s rebels of Kent and Sussex, Cecily recalled. “A harvest of heads,” she muttered, wincing at the memory of twenty-three gruesome heads atop the drawbridge tower of London Bridge that summer. What had come over Henry, Cecily had asked her brother at the time. Salisbury had shrugged and suggested that perhaps Richard had precipitated the reprisals. “I was present at the council meeting—as was your husband—when a report from the Commons told of a motion made by a member from
Bristol to name York heir presumptive. I have never seen Henry white with anger before.” And she could imagine now, as her brother had described, that Richard went equally white—whether from fear or anger she knew not. But apparently he had knelt then and sworn his allegiance to the king with all sincerity.

But had that incident sparked the fire that made Henry finally turn against Richard? Nay, it was probably what happened at Dartford.

“Dartford.” Cecily groaned the word as though that village in Kent were the most desolate spot in all the world. “Disastrous Dartford.”

She poured herself some ale, cursing when she spilled some on the tapestried cloth. So many memories, she thought, with so many threads and so many twists. Ah, the fickle wheel of fortune! How she wished Constance were with her now to read the charts for her. But she refused to add to her heartache by thinking of Constance.

Instead she forced herself to think on happier times. She remembered Christmas at Ludlow that year. The night after celebrating Christ’s birth, she had drunk a little too heartily of her favorite hippocras. Richard had carried her up to their room, and that night she had conceived their twelfth child, named—finally—after his father. How she ached for her husband now. It was hard to believe she would never again feel his body next to hers, never feel his caresses, never hear him gasp with pleasure. Stop it, Cis, she reprimanded herself. This is not helping.

The news of her conception was the only thing that made Richard smile that January of 1452, she thought grimly, as the road to Dartford had begun on Twelfth Night. Dear Piers was the clumsiest Lord of Misrule I have ever seen, Cecily reminded herself sadly, with his cavorting and hopeless juggling. But he did make us laugh, did he not, Richard?

“Richard! Why are you not here with me and laughing?” she cried, yearning to hear that infectious neigh just one more time.

It was during the festivities that the message from Sir William in sanctuary in London had arrived. “The king made a public statement of his displeasure toward your grace,” Oldhall had written to Richard. Sir William! She shook her head when she remembered him now, conjuring up his bewhiskered face and familiar gouty limp. He had stood by Richard no matter what the consequences. I warrant he would have rather died at Wakefield alongside Richard than of apoplexy at his town house a mere month before the battle. What a dear old friend he was to us, she mused.

I suppose Richard had no alternative but to sign yet another declaration of allegiance to Henry, she admitted grudgingly, for surely he had more than once demonstrated his fealty. If only Henry had known how much Richard had wanted to avoid civil strife, she mused. But the king’s insecurity could not accommodate Richard’s growing pride of place, and Richard’s determination to follow his path would not allow him to watch while his perfectly valid claim to the throne was continually pushed aside. Ah, how stubborn men can be, Cecily sighed, and how foolish.

She made herself think back again to that winter of ’Fifty-two. By now, she knew, Richard feared for his own safety and that is why he had decided to take action by writing to the king again to reiterate his other vows of loyalty. Granted, ’twas in a less conciliatory tone this time, she remembered, although he had prefaced the missive by swearing that all he had desired since returning from Ireland was to show his fealty to the crown and “to restore good government.” Aye, I am certain he used the phrase “good government” or was it “good governance.” No matter, Cecily ruefully admitted, for it was then Richard had made a mistake. He should not have written about his personal animosity for Somerset. He had dictated the words with such venom that Cecily had found herself looking at him with a mixture of admiration and fear. What was it he had said? “Somerset laboureth continually about the king’s highness for my undoing, and to corrupt my blood, and to disinherit me and my heirs, and such persons as be about me.” Aye, my love, those must have been the phrases that turned Henry away from you. Queen Margaret and her Somerset had succeeded, and battle lines between Lancaster and York had been finally drawn.