The Lady of the Rivers (53 page)

We snatch a few days together, long enough for Richard to understand that the queen and the duke plan to turn the tables entirely, and accuse Richard of York of treason and throw him and his allies down. We ride to Grafton in thoughtful silence, Richard greets his children, admires the new baby, and tells them he has to return to Calais to keep order at the garrison but that he will come home again.

‘Do you think that they will persuade the Duke of York to beg pardon?’ I ask him as he is saddling his horse in the stable yard. ‘And if he confesses and obeys the king will you be able to come straight home?’

At first the plan goes beautifully. Richard returns to Calais, pays the soldiers, and tells the garrison the king is in his power again, advised by the Duke of Somerset, and the House of Lancaster is in the ascendancy. The Privy Council turn against the man they called on as their saviour and agree to meet without the Duke of York. They choose the safe haven of Leicester for this meeting, the heartlands of the queen’s influence, her favourite county, and the traditional base for the House of Lancaster. Their choosing Leicester makes them feel safe; but it tells me, and anyone else who cares to consider, that they are afraid of what the citizens will think in London, of what they will say in the villages of Sussex, of what they will do in Jack Cade’s home of Kent.

It is hard to get everyone to act: the lords and the gentry have to be summoned, the plan has to be explained, so that everyone understands the Duke of York is to be ill paid for loyal service to the country, his achievements traduced, and he and his allies are to be excluded from the council and the country turned against them.

The king is so slow to leave for Leicester that he comes to bid farewell to the queen, Edmund Beaufort on his right, Henry Stafford, the Duke of Buckingham, on his left, on the very day that he had said he would arrive in Leicester. His nobility behind him are dressed for the road, some wearing light armour, most of them dressed as if riding out for pleasure. I look from one familiar face to another. There is not a man here who is not either kin to the House of Lancaster, or paid by the House of Lancaster. This is no longer the court of England, drawing on the support of many families, of many houses, this is the court of the House of Lancaster, and anyone who is not part of it is an outsider. And anyone who is an outsider is an enemy. The king bows low to Margaret and she formally wishes him a safe journey and prosperous return.

‘I am sure it will be easily done and peacefully concluded,’ he says vaguely. ‘My cousin, the Duke of York, cannot be allowed to defy my authority, my authority, you know. I have told the Yorkist lords that they are to disband their armies. They can keep two hundred men each. Two hundred should be enough, shouldn’t it?’ He looks at the Duke of Somerset. ‘Two hundred is fair, isn’t it?’

‘More than fair,’ replies Edmund, who has about five hundred men in livery, and another thousand tenants that he can call up at a moment’s notice.

‘So I shall bid you farewell, and see you at Windsor when this work is done,’ the king says. He smiles at Beaufort and the Duke of Buckingham. ‘My good kinsmen will take care of me, I know. You can be sure that they will be at my side.’

We go down to the great doorway to wave as they ride by. The king’s standard goes in front, then the royal guard, and the king comes next. He is wearing riding clothes for the journey, he looks thin and pale compared to the two most favoured dukes on either side of him. As they go by, the Duke of Somerset pulls off his hat to Margaret, and holds it to his heart. Hidden by her veil, she puts her fingers to her lips. The lesser noblemen, then the gentry, then the men at arms follow. There mut be about two thousand men riding out with the king and they rumble past us, the great war horses with their mighty hooves, the smaller horses carrying goods and gear, and then the booted tramp of the foot soldiers who march in disciplined ranks, and the stragglers who follow.

The queen is restless at the Palace of Placentia, though the household is confident and busy, waiting for news of the king’s success with his hand-picked council. The gardens that run down to the river are beautiful with the white and pale pink of dancing cherry blossom, and when we walk to the river in a wind the petals whirl about us like snow and make the little prince laugh, and he chases after them, his nursemaid bowed over him as he wobbles on his fat little legs. In the fields at the riverside the late daffodils are still bobbing their butter-yellow heads and the hedges of the meadows are burnished white with flowers, the blackthorn thickly blooming on black spikes, the hawthorn a budding green of promise. At the riverside the willows rustle their boughs together and lean over the clear water, green water below reflecting the green leaves above.

In the chapel we are still saying prayers for the health of the king and giving thanks for his recovery. But nothing cheers the queen. She cannot forget that she was imprisoned by the lords of her own country, forced to wait on a sleeping husband, fearful that she would never be free again. She cannot forgive Richard, Duke of York, for the humiliation. She cannot be happy when the only man who stood by her in those hard months, enduring captivity as she did, has marched away again, to meet their enemy. She does not doubt that he will be victorious; but she cannot be happy without him.

Margaret shudders as she comes into her apartments, though there is a good fire in the grate, bright tapestries on the walls, and the last rays of the sun are warming the pretty rooms. ‘I wish they had not gone,’ she says. ‘I wish they had summoned the Duke of York to London to answer us there.’

I don’t remind her that York is a great favourite in London; the guilds and the merchants trust his calm common sense, and flourished when he established peace and good order in the city and country. While the duke was lord protector the tradesmen could send their goods out along the safe roads, and taxes were reduced with the profligate royal household under his control. ‘They’ll be back soon,’ I say. ‘Perhaps York will plead for forgiveness as he did before, and they will all come back soon.’

Her uneasiness affects everyone. We dine in the queen’s rooms, not in the great hall, where the men at arms and the men of the household grumble that there is no cheer, even though the king has recovered. They say that the court is not how it should be. It is too silent, it is like an enchanted castle under a spell of quietness. The queen ignores the criticism. She summons musicians to play only to her, in her rooms, and the younger ladies dance but they only go through the paces without the handsome young men of the king’s retinue to watch them. Finally, she commands one of the ladies in waiting to read to us from a romance, and we sit and sew and listen to a story about a queen who longed for a child in midwinter, and gave birth to a baby who was made entirely of snow. When the child grew to manhood, her husband took him on crusade, and he melted away into the hot sand, poor boy; and then they had no son, not even one made of ice.

This miserable story makes me ridiculously sentimental and I feel disposed to sit and weep and brood over my boys at Grafton, wis that I will never see again, and my oldest, Anthony, thirteen this year, who must soon have his own armour and go and serve as a squire to his father or another great man. He has grown up in no time, and I wish he were a baby again and I could carry him on my hip. It makes me long to be with Richard again, we have never been so long apart in our lives before. When the Duke of York is thrown down by the king, then Edmund Beaufort will take up his command in Calais and order Richard home, and our lives can get back to normal once more.

Margaret summons me to her bedroom and I go to sit with her as they lift the tight headdress which fits like a cap, low over her ears, uncoil the plaits and brush out her hair. ‘When do you think they will come home?’ she asks.

‘Within the week?’ I guess. ‘If all goes well.’

‘Why should it not all go well?’

I shake my head. I don’t know why she should not be happy and excited, as she was when this plan was first explained to her by the Duke of Somerset. I don’t know why the palace, which is always such a pretty home for the court, should seem so cold and lonely tonight. I don’t know why the girl should have picked a story about a son and heir who melts away before he can inherit.

‘I don’t know,’ I say. I shiver. ‘I expect it will all be well.’

‘I am going to bed,’ she says crossly. ‘And in the morning we can go hunting and be merry. You are poor company, Jacquetta. Go to bed yourself.’

I don’t go to bed as she bids me, though I know I am poor company. I go to my window and I swing open the wooden shutter and I look down over the water meadows in the moonlight and the long silver curve of the river, and I wonder why I feel so very low in my spirits on a warm May night in England, the prettiest month of the year, when my husband is coming home to me after grave danger, and the King of England is riding out in his power and his enemy is to be brought down.

Then, the next day, in the late afternoon, we get news, terrible news, unbelievable news. Nothing is clear to us, as we order messengers to be brought before the queen, as we demand that men scrambling away from some sort of battle are captured and brought to the royal chambers to say what they saw, as we send men speeding out towards St Albans on the road going north, where it seems that the Duke of York, far from riding peaceably to his ordeal, and waiting patiently to be arraigned as a traitor, instead mustered an army and came to plead with the king that his enemies be set aside and that the king be a good lord for all England and not just for Lancaster.

One man tells us that there was some sort of riot in the narrow streets, but that he could not see who had the advantage as he was wounded and was left where he fell. Nobody helped him, a thing most discouraging for a common soldier, he said, one eye on the queen. ‘Makes you wonder whether your lord cares for you at all,’ he grumbles. ‘It’s not good lordship to leave a man down.’

Another man, riding back to us with news, says that it is a war: the king raised his standard, and the Duke of York attacked, and the Duke of York was cut down. The queen is out of her chair, her hand to her heart at this report; but later in the evening, the messenger that we sent to London comes back and says that from what he can gather in the steets, the greatest fighting was between the Duke of Somerset and the Earl of Warwick’s men, and that the Earl of Warwick’s men fought through the gardens and over the little walls, climbed over hen-houses and waded through pigsties to get to the heart of the town, avoiding the barricades and coming from a direction that no-one could have predicted, surprising the Duke of Somerset’s men, and throwing them into confusion.

Margaret strides about her room, furious with waiting, mad with impatience. Her ladies shrink back against the walls and say nothing. I stop the nursemaid in the doorway with the little prince. There will be no playtime for him this afternoon. We have to know what is happening; but we cannot discover what is happening. The queen sends out more messengers to London and three men are commanded to ride on to St Albans with a private note from her to the Duke of Somerset, and then all we can do is wait. Wait and pray for the king.

Finally, as it grows dark and the servants come in with the lights and go quietly round lighting sconces and branches of candles, the guards swing open the doors and announce, ‘King’s messenger.’

The queen rises to her feet, I go to stand beside her. She is trembling slightly, but the face she shows to the world is calm and determined.

‘You may come in and tell me your message,’ she says.

He strides in and drops to his knee, his hat in his hand. ‘From His Grace the king,’ he says, and shows in his clasped fist a ring. Margaret nods to me and I go forwards and take it.

‘What is your message?’

‘His Grace the king wishes you well, and sends his blessing to the prince.’

Margaret nods.

‘He says he is in good company with his fair kinsman the Duke of York this night, and will come in the company of His Grace to London tomorrow.’

Margaret’s long-held breath comes out as a little hiss.