The King’s Sister (13 page)

‘I’ll let you have John Holland,’ I said.

‘I don’t want him,’ she sniffed. ‘He’s a born troublemaker.’

‘Then you can share Jonty.’ Philippa sniffed again, but her tears were ending. ‘A new audience for his enthusiasms is just what he wants. If you talk to him about anything that yaps or cheeps he will love you more than he loves me.’

At last she smiled, but it had put my faults into stark relief. I was too self-absorbed. I always had been. Maturity demanded that I make amends. In the following days, I devoted myself to her entertainment, until Philippa smiled
and played her lute again without descending into lachrymose melodies, and I did not mention Jonty or John Holland even once.

The news of the cataclysm, the whole unbelievable order of events, kept company with us, dominating our thoughts, throughout every mile of that endless journey from Hertford. In the heat of the summer of 1384 Philippa and I were riding for Richard’s court at Sheen on the Thames, as if a storm wind harried our heels. Not Constanza—it would take a major tremor of the earth to move Constanza from Hertford—but Philippa and I discovered a need to be where events were unfolding.

Or at least I did, and persuaded my sister who was not averse to accompanying me, even if we were silent for most of the journey, the potential horror of what might have occurred cramming our thoughts without mercy. Philippa had the angel of death riding beside her to expel her anxiety over her unmarried state.

It had all begun at Salisbury where Richard, summoning a meeting of parliament, was staying at a house belonging to Robert de Vere. Was Richard ever so uncontrolled, so lacking in good common sense? Richard’s political acumen barely matched that of a tadpole. After an early Mass, a Carmelite friar had found his way to whisper in the ear of our puissant King that our father, the Duke of Lancaster, was knee deep in a plot against Richard’s life. The Duke, the friar said with monastic certainty, had the death of Richard in mind. On what evidence? The friar did not know, but he had been told. No, he could not recall who had told him …

What would I have done in the circumstances? The question beat at my mind in time with my mare’s hooves.

Thrown the accusation out, along with the mischief-making friar.

What did Richard do?

I hissed a breath as my mare, under pressure, stumbled.

Richard flew into a fury, ordering that the Duke be put to death for so foul a treason.

‘Why would Richard do so ill-considered a thing?’ I demanded of Philippa. ‘To execute our father without trial. To even believe it in the first place.’

‘Because he is afraid.’ All Philippa’s anxiety over her virginal state had vanished under her disgust. ‘Richard is afraid of any man with royal blood who wields power more adeptly than he can.’

‘Surely he cannot believe the Duke’s guilt. I would not.’

‘Richard does not have your confidence, Elizabeth. Or your loyalty to family.’

No, he did not. Fortunately the more reasoning of the lords around him persuaded our King of the unwisdom of so precipitate a reaction. So the Duke was safe, that much we knew, but in the brooding atmosphere at court, who knew what might transpire? We needed to be there to see for ourselves. Nothing would have kept me at Hertford.

Yet for me there was another gnawing anxiety, far more urgent now that the Duke was safe.

What was John Holland’s role in this? I was unsure, and I disliked what I had heard. The friar, taken into custody for his lies, had been seized by men who proceeded to apply unmentionable torture to extract information over the origins
of the plot, until the friar died a horrific death. Which might, as I was forced to admit, have passed my attention except for the name of one of the royal household involved. The hands of John Holland, the same hands that chose and sent me gifts and fairings, were now coated in blood in this unpleasant episode.

Why was the friar dead? To close his mouth forever, stopping any incriminating evidence against those who paid him to perjure the Duke, the court gossips opined. For who was to blame? The men who had done him to death, perhaps?

I needed to see John Holland. This man who touched my heart in some manner, had by this unsavoury incident shattered my confidence in my own judgement.

Before we left Hertford, I handed a bound coffer to one of our escort to strap to his saddle.

‘Come on, Elizabeth! Do we need the extra burden?’

‘Yes,’ I replied to Philippa who was hovering.

‘What is that?’

‘Don’t ask.’

When I handed the little wicker cage containing two singing finches to one of my women, Philippa made no attempt to disguise her impatience.

‘Do you really need to take those? You can buy them two a penny in the street in London.’

‘They travel with me,’ I said.

‘If you want to be rid of them, why not just open the cage door?’ My sister had the uncomfortable ability to read my mind.

‘That would rob me of a chance to drive my opinion home,’ I replied.

‘I’ll remind you of that when the birds drive you demented by their tweeting.’

But I was already mounted, my mind already in London. What would I say to him when I met him again? Was ever a woman thrown into disarray by the actions of a man who should have meant nothing to her?

You love him, don’t you?

I was not entirely certain that I knew what love was. And how could I love a man who might be embroiled in foul murder?

‘What do you think?’ Philippa asked as we approached the gateway to the royal palace at Sheen, and were forced by untoward circumstances to draw rein.

I looked aghast at what we saw. As did my sister.

‘I think there’s a storm about to break on our heads,’ I replied. ‘I don’t like it. And I don’t understand why our own Sergeant at Arms looks as if he would turn us away.’

There were guards at the gate, forbidding us entry, and the guards were in Lancaster colours. I recognised the Sergeant at Arms; I could even name him. I could not imagine what was afoot. All the personal anxieties, the difficulties of choices when violent death had taken a role, were swept aside by the sight of the Lancaster retinue equipped for war.

‘Has something happened we don’t know of?’ I asked.

Philippa merely shook her head.

All was not right with Richard, that much we knew. For the past months his court had exuded the noxious stench of a festering sore, the atmosphere tense, strained with rifts
within and without. Dangers had rumbled, from a Scottish invasion of Northumberland, to Richard’s unpopular policy of negotiating a peace with France. As for the cost of Richard’s household and entertainments, parliamentary voices were raised in dismay, and aimed at the royal favourites of Burley, de la Pole and de Vere. Over it all had hung the uncompromising heat with no rain to assuage heated tempers. Drought had threatened. Famine and death.

But this was quite different, enough to touch my nape with fear. Lancaster guards on the gates of Sheen?

At least they recognised us, the Sergeant at Arms offering a smart salute.

‘What’s going on, Master Selby?’

‘Some trouble, my lady.’ A laconic enough reply but his face was set in grim lines.

‘Is the Duke here?’ Philippa asked.

‘He is, mistress.’ He helped me to dismount. ‘If you go in, you’ll hear his voice. He’s not best pleased—and who can blame him, I’d say.’

‘Is Sir John Holland here?’ I asked.

‘He is. And doubtless deciding which way to hop.’ And when I looked puzzled, he added: ‘Which side of the fire will scorch him least, if you take my meaning.’

Which made not much sense, until we stepped into the Great Hall which was awash with uncontrolled emotion. It all but blistered us so that we halted in the doorway.

‘Your father would call down shame on your head if he saw the counsellors you choose to give ear to.’ The Duke, in the centre of the chamber, raised his voice well above normal pitch as he addressed Richard.

‘I am King. I choose my own counsellors.’ Supreme on his dais was the King, his pointed nose quivering with fury, fists clenched.

The heated heart of a conflagration the like of which I had never seen. And there were Richard’s courtiers, including John Holland, awaiting the outcome.

‘And bad counsellors at that.’ The Duke was in no mood to retreat. He might not name de Vere, but there was no doubting the sleek object of the Duke’s disgust.

‘I do not have to answer to you, Uncle. By what right do you take me to task?’

‘As for shame …’ My father continued, jaw rigid with a pure reflection of the royal fury. ‘How shameful is it for a King to stoop to murder one of his own family? His own blood. You would have me done to death?’

Was this some monstrous joke? Some ill thought out masque?

It was beyond belief, but my heart began to throb with a heavy beat as I allowed myself to observe the faces of those present. There was no laughter. Nor was there shock. No one questioned the accusation, despite Richard’s face becoming perfectly white. The Duke was fearless in his attack, but I could see the lines of a breastplate beneath his robe. He had come here in fear of his life. John Holland, eyes alert, lips close set, standing a little apart from both, kept his gaze close-trained on his brother. What he was thinking I could not imagine. If he saw my entrance, he gave no reaction. Nor would he, for all was balanced on a dagger edge and any dalliance would be far from his mind. This was a catastrophic expression of power with the outcome undecided,
and with a crucial decision for John Holland to make. Lancaster or King? How mask-like his face, a face I had come to know with its range of vivid expression. John Holland’s decision today might deny any need for me to be here, effectively ending any future communication between us.

This was politics in the raw and my stomach lurched.

‘Why would you see a need for revenge on me, sire?’ the Duke demanded. ‘I am your man. I have always been your man.’

‘You humiliate me by your lectures, sir.’

‘So you would plot my murder with the likes of de Vere?’

The gathering was still, motionless in anticipation, de Vere as frozen in time as the carved doorpost on my left. John Holland took one step forward.

‘Sire …’

But Richard commanded his brother’s silence with a crude gesture. ‘How dare you so accuse me?’ Richard said to the Duke.

‘Because it is the truth. I will no longer attend you at court. I fear for my life at your hands. Should a man have to wear armour in the presence of his nephew? By God, he should not.’

And on that, the Duke bowed and stalked out, brushing past Philippa and me without any sign of recognition. The expression on his face smote at my heart.

‘You will not walk away from me!’ Richard’s words exploded, high-pitched, his hand clenched on the sword at his side, and he would have leapt from the dais if John Holland had not stepped forward.

‘No, sire.’ His hand closed on Richard’s sleeve. ‘Would you strike your uncle?’

‘Don’t touch me!’

‘Richard!’ I saw it, the tightening hand of a brother on the King’s sword-arm as Sir John strove to draw the poison from the deadly situation. I took note as Sir John’s hand moved to close round the King’s wrist. And Richard paused. ‘You need to consider, sire.’

‘Why would I need to consider?’ Still Richard’s features were livid. ‘I am King here and I demand honour, even from my uncle.’

‘Lancaster does indeed honour you. Has he not always been the most loyal of your subjects?’

He might release the sword, but Richard wrenched his arm away and stormed from the room. With a shrug and a glance at his brother Thomas, John Holland followed the King.

Thus the audience stuttered into an uneasy end.

Oh, I admired the stance John Holland had taken, his calming words, his attempt to deflect Richard’s wrath. Here was a man who was more than a skilled courtier, all outward glamour with sword and tongue. Here was a depth of understanding that surprised me, a skill to diffuse a potentially unpleasant situation, and a concern for my father that touched my senses.

But in pursuing Richard, to whose side had John Holland, as Master Selby had so aptly put it, ultimately hopped?

I sat on the edge of my bed, hands clasped tightly in my lap, and thought through the mass of uncontrolled passion
and dark threats I had just witnessed. So much anger. So much potential violence. And then, because it was not in my nature to sit, I prowled round the room. A royal plot to murder my father? How could I believe that? Yet there had been no hiss of disbelief, no intake of breath. Richard had denied so heinous a crime, but he would hardly admit to it in public.

And where was John Holland now?

He had followed Richard. If he had given his loyalty to his brother, what need for me to be here? Suddenly the death of the Carmelite friar was shadowed into insignificance, the events of the past hour stirring my thoughts into a new pattern, but one equally disquieting. The choice I had come to Sheen to make might not be mine to make after all. Richard’s perfidy might have driven a sword into the very heart of his family, creating new alliances, dividing irrevocably friend from foe.

If I was of a cynical mind, this was a ploy in the game John Holland had instigated, bringing me back to court, where his influence could once more hold sway. But this was no game. This was a royal challenge for power, Richard throwing down his gage. The whole affair stank of blood and betrayal.

‘Stop it!’ Philippa said at last after another track across the room.

‘I can’t.’

‘Is this the man you have a …’ she struggled for words—’… an
affection
for? For shame. Do you not see what sort of man he is?’

Affection? It was no light affection. I wanted him.
I formed the words in my head. Then out loud. ‘I want him.’

‘Then that is the sin of lust!’

I pondered. No—I did not think it was. There was something deeper in the way this man encroached on my thoughts as well as my emotions. But my sister was right, I was in need of some answers.

‘If you want my advice,’ she chivvied, ‘go and return all those silly trinkets to him and make an end to it.’