Red Rose, White Rose (51 page)

Partly that was due to our accommodation. Maxstoke was not so much a castle as a fortified mansion but our hostess, or gaoler to describe her more accurately, refused to allow us to set foot in her home and so we were confined to the gatehouse. This was a large, square structure with two stories above the gate arch and a pair of taller, battlemented towers flanking it. Like the rest of the castle, it was built of red sandstone. There were guardhouses on either side of the gateway and the constable’s quarters were on the first floor of the main building. Our accommodation was above this, consisting of one great chamber and the two smaller chambers at the top of each of the towers. Good enough for prisoners of war, it had to be acknowledged, but hardly comfortable living for the sister, nieces and nephews of the castle’s chatelaine, especially as there were no guarderobes or latrines available. We were supplied with two close-stools which were not emptied nearly enough and only the fact that the rooms were bone-achingly cold prevented the smell of human excrement becoming unbearable. These conditions caused me to worry dreadfully about the children’s health and for the first week I asked constantly to speak to my sister but she did not come.

Sir Henry Stafford had barely addressed a word to me during the journey and, having shown us to our quarters, never put in another appearance. Our communication was done through the castle constable, a pleasant enough young knight called Sir Christopher Deyne, who had an irritating habit of meeting every request with the ambiguous comment ‘I will do my best’. His best, it seemed, was never good enough.

Then after a sennight, suddenly and unannounced, there she was at the door of our chamber, my sister Anne, Duchess of Buckingham. I was shocked at her appearance because she was clad all in black, the only relief being a wimple of unbleached linen which all but matched the hue of her complexion. From its frame her eyes stared, swollen and bloodshot but with piercing grey Neville irises, almost the only feature that told me it was definitely her.

‘Anne, you have come. Thank you.’ I went to kiss her cheek but she put a hand up to ward me off and moved past me into the room.

‘I have not come to speak to you, who are married to the man who cost me my son. I have come to see the children.’ She strode across the bare flagstones to the west window which overlooked the house and courtyard, where Margaret, George and Dickon were playing a game, but she did not greet them. ‘I demand that you keep these shutters closed,’ she said, reaching over their heads and firmly pulling the heavy wooden shutters together. ‘I do not want York children spying on our activities.’

Having no idea who this lady was and indignant at her suggestion, Margaret protested, ‘We were not spying. We were playing spot the object.’

‘Well play something else!’ snapped the duchess.

‘There is nothing else to do,’ Margaret pointed out reasonably. ‘My brothers have no books or toys and I have no needles or threads.’

I thought Anne might hit her, so angry did she look, and I hurried over to protect my daughter. But after frowning fiercely, my sister gave a loud sniff and turned on me. ‘Quite the little madam, is she not? Just like her mother. Did no one teach her manners?’

I shrugged. ‘Margaret spoke nothing but the truth. They are bored. Children need stimulation, as I am sure you know.’

‘Margaret,’ echoed Anne. ‘That is a very Lancastrian name for a daughter of York.’

‘Margaret is thirteen. She is named after the queen. But boredom is not their only problem. There is the matter of their health.’

Anne sniffed even louder and raised her sleeve to her nose. ‘There is a bad smell. You should keep the place clean. I am sure Margaret can scrub the floor, even if she is named after the queen.’

‘We can keep the place clean, Sister, but we cannot empty the close-stools because we are not allowed out. They have only been cleared once since we have been here. Also we need to wash our underclothes but there is not enough water and we have nothing else to wear. And it is cold. We have no heat. That is why I am worried for their health.’ I dropped to my knees at her feet and clasped my hands. ‘I beg you not to visit the sins of the father on the children.’

Anne turned her back. ‘Do not be melodramatic, Cicely,’ she snapped. ‘I will see what I can do.’

I remained kneeling, determined to drive my message home. ‘That is what your constable says every day. I know we are your prisoners but I am still your sister. Do you want your niece to die, Anne?’

She swung round and her face was twisted in a snarl. ‘It is only months since my son – your nephew – died of the wounds he received at St Albans. He lived in pain and humiliation for three years. Do you remember how he was injured, Cicely?’

I felt my eyes fill with tears. ‘Of course I remember how he was injured. It was appalling.’ Her brief and contentious visit to Baynard’s Castle with Alice de la Pole still rankled but I was not going to let her know that at this stage. ‘But I did not know he had died and I am very sorry for your loss. All this conflict is not of my making or yours, yet it has torn our family apart and put our men at each other’s throats. Must we also be enemies?’

She looked down at me as if I was simple-minded. ‘Yes, we must. That is how the world works. Do not hope for sympathy from me.’

I watched the hem of her fine black worsted skirts stir the dust on the floor as she swept across the room and out of the door. The sound of the key turning evoked vivid memories of my detention in Brancepeth Castle and the grim realization that I had been imprisoned three times in my life and each time it had been at the hands of a member of my own family. Later that day a workman came to nail the shutters closed on the window that overlooked my sister’s living quarters. That meant our large gatehouse chamber was lit by only one window in the east wall, leaving much of the room in deep shadow even in the middle of the day. We were given no candles, only smoky tapers and as winter closed in I had to ration the use of our two lamps in order to preserve enough oil to keep one burning constantly for Ursula because the little girl was terrified of the dark.

However, during the next few weeks, as a result of Anne’s visit there were a few small improvements in our living conditions. The gongfermour came every second day to clear the close stools, a brazier was supplied though not always enough charcoal to burn in it and, to Margaret’s delight, paper, pens and ink came in a parcel specifically addressed to her from her aunt, who also sent books and sewing materials from time to time. Although Anne had seemed disapproving when they came face to face, Margaret had obviously made a favourable impression on her.

At the beginning of December, Sir Henry Stafford came to escort me the twelve miles to Coventry to appear before a special Parliament, which had been summoned by the king to arraign Richard, Hal and Dick for high treason. ‘You have the right to appeal for your husband’s pardon,’ Sir Henry told me as we rode. ‘Not that I imagine there is any hope of it being granted. A Bill of Attainder has already been passed against York and all his supporters, which demands forfeit of all their estates in perpetuity and of their lives if they should return to England.’

It was no more than I had expected but hearing the words spoken made my heart sink. In the event, whether by error or design I arrived too late to make the plea for a pardon because there had been an eight-day deadline for appeals and the Bill had been passed twelve days before. However I did make a suitably humble appearance before the lords gathered in the chapter house of St Mary’s Priory in Coventry, who magnanimously granted me a maintenance sum of one hundred crowns from the ten thousand crowns per year of revenue the royal exchequer had seized from the combined York, Salisbury and Warwick estates. As I rode back to prison, I reflected glumly that the queen would certainly not lack the wherewithal to fund a royal army to confront any force that my husband, son, brother and nephew might manage to raise to make their return. Of my children only Anne and Elizabeth now appeared to have a future and I learned later that Elizabeth had written letters to us from Wingfield, letters which my sister had confiscated and burned. For the rest of us life stretched ahead looking bleak and impoverished and not a day went by that I did not question whether Richard had thrown away his considerable assets for nothing and with them the prospects of all his children. But especially I bitterly regretted what I believed could have been the brilliant future of my golden boy Edward and longed for news from Calais.

Christmas went almost unnoticed in the Maxstoke gatehouse. Anne had departed to join her husband at the court celebrations in Coventry and left no instructions for any cheer to be delivered to her prisoners but the constable made arrangements for us to be escorted to the nearby Augustinian priory to make our confessions and hear the Christmas mass. On our return journey in the gathering dusk it began to snow and when we awoke the following day the world was covered in a blanket of white. For the next month we spent our time huddled around the brazier and even our regular exercise was curtailed because the castle wall-walk was treacherous with ice. Understandably the children, especially the two boys, became fractious and moody and George, in particular, flew into pointless rages in which he screamed abuse against his father and older brothers, blaming them for being free when he was not. Margaret tried pointing out to him that being in exile and under sentence of death could hardly be counted as freedom but he was not mollified.

‘I would rather be dead than bored to death,’ he yelled back at her. ‘Why are you not bored too?’

‘Because I read every book that comes through the door,’ she countered. ‘You are merely getting a taste of what it is like to be a noblewoman, confined to the solar and the lying-in chamber. For me, knowledge is power and I will use it.’

‘That is stupid,’ said George scornfully. ‘Power is rank and land, and we have lost all ours.’

I listened to them arguing and sighed. Both were right in their own way but I feared that unless our fortunes changed for the better, Margaret might never make the kind of marriage that would utilise her emerging intellect. I recalled that at one time there had been correspondence between Richard and the Duchess of Burgundy regarding a marriage to her son and heir but it seemed unlikely now that there would ever be such an exalted union for either of my dowerless daughters. It occurred to me that the veil might tempt the studious Margaret, if there was a convent that would take her. In these troubled times the veil began to seem increasingly attractive to me.

When the snow melted, Anne returned and came to bring us news, little of which was good from our point of view. Most of our Welsh manors had been granted to Jasper Tudor, Earl of Pembroke, and those nearest to Anglesey to his father Owen Tudor. In return they had been given the duty of ensuring that Richard would never be able to return to England through Wales. From what I knew of Jasper Tudor, he would approach that task with military thoroughness. Meanwhile the young Duke of Somerset had been given Dick of Warwick’s command of Calais; but first of all he had to get there and Dick was making it extremely difficult for him. There had been a battle in the Pale around Calais and Somerset had been beaten back.

When Anne told me this, I could not completely hide a smile, causing her to snap at me. ‘You will not smile when you hear that your precious son Edward was in the thick of the fighting.’

I tried not to show alarm. ‘But you are not telling me he was injured.’

She shrugged. ‘Not as far as I know. He took some prisoners but Somerset took Guisnes Castle, the land-gate to the Pale, so it will not be long before he is hurling Warwick and March into the Channel.’

‘Time will tell,’ I said, crossing my fingers in the folds of my skirt.

It was only later that I learned what she was not telling me; that, far from being ejected from Calais, Hal, Dick and Edward had left my brother Will Fauconberg to hold the outpost and sailed to a meeting with Richard in Waterford in the south of Ireland. There they made plans to launch a two pronged invasion of England in the summer, Richard from the north and Hal, Dick and Edward from the south. On their way back, the Calais contingent had sailed freely past Dartmouth where a new and vastly expensive English fleet commissioned under its High Admiral, Harry of Exeter, did not sail out to intercept them because not enough men could be found prepared to crew the ships and fight under Harry’s erratic command – this news when I heard it induced a rare smile.

It was high summer before I received another visit from my sister and this time she seemed distinctly anxious. ‘Humphrey has gone to Northampton with the king,’ she said. ‘Warwick and your precocious son have to be stopped from marching north.’

I could hardly catch my breath to speak. ‘They are in the country? Since when?’

Anne scowled. ‘They landed in Kent in June and have been causing trouble ever since. Warwick seems to have the Londoners under some kind of spell. The guilds opened the gates to him and all the Lancastrian nobility who were in the city at the time had to take refuge in the Tower. I believe the Duchess of Exeter is among them. Now your brother Salisbury has them under siege.’

‘Anne is besieged in the Tower?’ My mind, stale from incarceration, was unable to take it all in. I had to resist a terrible urge physically to shake more information out of my sister. ‘Where is Edward?’

‘Marching north with Warwick.’ Suddenly, and without warning, Anne’s stern expression crumpled and tears began to flow down her cheeks. ‘It is dreadful, Cicely! Your brother has your daughter under siege in London and your nephew and son are marching to confront my husband somewhere outside Northampton. How has our family come to this?’

She was distraught and for the life of me I could not stop myself taking her in my arms. I held her as she broke down in gasping sobs of distress on my shoulder. It was as if a dam had burst and all the emotion of months and years was pouring from her. Across the room I saw Margaret put down her book and rise from her chair in surprise.