The Rose of York (7 page)

Richard shrugged without looking up.

John sat down and clasped his knees like Richard, while Rufus stretched out to watch them. “’Tis a fierce wind that blows, isn’t it?”
A damn fierce wind
, he thought.

No response. The silence lengthened. “We younger sons have much in common,” said John. “’Tis not easy being a younger son.” Indeed, it wasn’t.

Richard lifted his head.

John threw a pebble into the angry river below. “Younger sons have nothing given to them. They must earn by care and pains what comes to first-borns without effort.” Richard’s dark grey eyes were fixed on him.
Such intelligent eyes—so wise, so old
, John thought. The boy might be only nine, but he knew much of life, and he was gifted beyond his years. “Younger sons must be inured to self-denial and dependence, for they shall not inherit. They can’t have their will in weighty matters…” John broke off. Damn Dick’s pride! Why was he always so certain he was right?

“They can’t have their will,” prompted Richard.

“In matters such as marriage,” John resumed, dragging his thoughts back to Richard. The boy’s obvious affection for Anne had led Warwick to hope for a royal marriage alliance but Warwick had been unable to get Edward to discuss the matter. Poor child. Much heartache lay in store for him. How well he remembered his own misery! The girl who’d won his heart had been the orphaned daughter of a Lancastrian knight, a ward of the Bitch of Anjou, and the Bitch had demanded almost a queen’s ransom to give her hand in marriage to the son of a Yorkist lord. Never had a year seemed so long, or life so pointless and irrelevant. Then his father met the Bitch’s price, though he was a younger son and not entitled to the consideration. No such impediment faced Dickon, but his case did not look hopeful. It was becoming apparent that Edward might not care for his brother’s happiness in the way John’s own father had cared for his.

He realised the boy was staring at him, waiting for him to continue.

“Younger sons tread a harder path in life and so they become reflective. ’Tis the younger sons who dream of righting the world, of riding the path of great knights of yore, of making their mark by deeds of chivalry… The world denies us much, but not the chance to do good with our lives. To win honour.”

“Like Sir Galahad, who went in search of the Holy Grail?” Richard offered.

In spite of his heaviness, John smiled. In some ways the little lord who thought himself a man still retained the innocence of childhood. “Aye, like Sir Galahad, and all King Arthur’s men who burned to right the wrongs in their path.” He picked up another pebble and threw it over the cliff, noting that Richard copied him. “Sometimes I think first-borns are like gaudy peacocks, and we younger sons like dowdy wrens. No matter what they do, the world will applaud and admire, and no matter what we do, the world will as likely forget us.”

“So we’re useless?” demanded Richard. In his royal blue tunic, with his sun-bronzed face and tawny-gold hair, John looked anything but a dowdy wren.

“Nay, fair cousin. No man is useless who betters the lot of others. We can never turn our feathers to flame and jewel colour like our older brothers. But if we’re true knights, and let honour and conscience guide our lives, we’ll face God without shame when the time comes, and that is the best any man can do.”

Richard burst out passionately, “But what if you can’t be a knight?”

“You’re a knight already. A Knight of the Bath, knighted by the King himself on his coronation day.”

Richard averted his face. Hungering for a win, he’d trained hard for his first mock tournament, rising long before the castle stirred and stealing away to the woods to practise his tiltyard routine in rain and cold. Winning would have helped him shoulder the memory that had haunted him since Ludlow: that, scared witless, he had wet himself like a babe. A year later, Edward had dubbed him knight and had handed him his golden spurs. The solemn pride of the ceremony had made him dream of redemption, of erasing his shame. The old archbishop’s words
still echoed in his heart:
A knight must throw down his gauntlet to the Devil and fight for right against the servants of sin. Whether you win or lose matters not, only whether you follow the quest. Remember that virtue always prevails.

“I’m not a real knight,” said Richard. “’Tis hopeless.”

John rested a hand on Richard’s shoulder. “Nothing is ever hopeless, Dickon. You fought well. An accident threw you— you tripped on a rock and fell, is all. ’Tis only your first year in training. Power comes from speed and leverage, and can be taught. It’s heart that makes the difference. And that you have.”

Richard knitted his brows together. “‘Heart’?”

“Resolve, Dickon. Have you never seen a mother wren defend her nest against a cat? Or a wounded boar attack a man in armour? It’s will that gives them strength to drive off the enemy.” John gave him an irresistible smile. “You’re as fierce and determined as a boar. Before you’re through, you’ll throw a man twice your size.”

“Do you really think so, Cousin John?”

“I do. Never look back on your failures, Dickon. It matters little how we begin, provided we are resolved to go on well— and end well. ’Tis not what you were that matters. ’Tis what you will become.”

Richard had a wonderful thought. Maybe courage was contagious and he would be like John one day! “You’re as a brother to me,” he blurted.

“Aye, we’re much alike, we four Nevilles and you four Plantagenets,” John laughed. “We’ve two Georges and two Richards among us, and all are fair except for you and Thomas…” Again his dead brother Thomas had slipped into his speech as if he still lived, and suddenly all joy left him. “Much alike… We share the same blood and our lives seem to take the same turns. Four brothers are made three, and our fathers dead on the same day, struck down by the same accursed hand: the Frenchwoman who calls herself our queen.”

Gone was John’s smile. His eyes were dark with emotion and a muscle quivered at his jaw.
Aye
, Richard thought,
blood and loss unites us
.

“Knights of yore exchanged rings and mingled blood to seal their bond,” Richard said. “My fair cousin of Montagu, I should like to do the same with you.”

John’s mouth curved at the corners. Removing a heavy gold band shaped into his emblem of the golden griffin, he offered it to Richard. “My lady gave me this. Had our babe lived, it would have gone to him. You’re not only as a brother to me, but also a son, Dickon.”

Richard took the ring and gave him a sapphire from his own hand. With his dagger, he cut John’s palm, then his own. They clasped hands, mingling their blood. “Brother to brother, yours in life and death,” they intoned solemnly. John rose from the ledge, and said with a smile, “Now I have two brothers named Richard.”

But Richard didn’t hear. The talk of death and family had turned his thoughts to his father as he had looked the last time ever he saw his face; and to Edmund, tall, slender, and seventeen. He saw them in his mind’s eye, mounting their horses in the courtyard of their London house. Pigeons were cooing, the sun was shining, the bells on their reins were jingling softly. They rode out through the gates with a smile and a wave, and never returned.

“Remember, Dickon,” John said gently, “you can’t go forward if you keep looking back. In last year’s nest, there are no eggs.”

Framed against the sky, John stood looking down at him with twilight-blue eyes, a hand extended in help. The sun had gone behind a bank of clouds and the wind had risen, whipping his hair and sweeping the trees with a fierce rustling. Richard knew that he’d never forget this moment, that in some strange way it marked his life forever. He accepted John’s hand and pulled himself to his feet. There was truth in what John said. No use looking back. The future lay ahead, beckoning brightly, and could be whatever shape he willed. He eyed the birds shrieking across the hills.
In last year’s nest, there are no eggs.

~ * * * ~

“The teeth of Hell flay bare and gnash thee flat!”

Anne couldn’t sleep. She shared a bed with Bella, who always caught cold at the change of seasons and was snoring heavily. Bells from nearby Jervaulx Abbey clanged periodically, owls hooted, and through the open window the October sky glittered with stars. Her thoughts turned to Richard.

Eighteen months had passed since he’d come to Middleham and so much had changed. Life was exciting now. Before Richard she had been so afraid. Messengers always brought bad news, villages pretty in the spring were charred ruins when she returned in the fall, and young men who left the castle to fight returned wounded and drenched in blood, if they returned at all.

Voices murmured and hushed footsteps fell in the stone passageway. She tensed. Bella stirred. For a moment, light fell through the crack under the door, then it was dark again. Anne exhaled with relief.

“What is it?” Bella demanded, still half asleep.

“Only Mother, going to the village to help a woman give birth.”

Bella sat up on an elbow and rubbed her eyes. “Why are you still up?”

“Because you’re snoring.”

“I don’t know what you see in Dickon,” Bella replied, guessing the truth. She fluffed her pillow. “He’s so glum.”

“He’s… different…” Anne replied dreamily. “Like the knights the troubadours sing about.”

“Pooh. He doesn’t laugh or like to dance.” Bella pulled up her covers.

“He likes music and books.”

“I hate books,” Bella retorted. “They make me sneeze—except for the one with the pictures of the nude statues in Padua.” She giggled. “I dusted that one carefully.”

Anne’s eyes flew open. “Where did you see such a thing?”

“In Father’s chamber. Cousin Tiptoft brought it back for him. Father hasn‘t any idea he has it. He never reads, unless it’s a treaty or something. Do you want to see it?”

Anne blushed a furious red. “No.”

“You’re well suited to Dickon, sister. You’re no fun either. They say his brother George is handsome and witty and loves to dance. I think I shall like him much better than Dickon.” She turned her back on Anne and soon began to snore again.

Church bells tolled for matins. Anne wiped her nose and closed her eyes. A cool breeze stirred in the room. She snuggled under the cozy feather comforter and heard Merlin, her pet raven, flutter on his perch.
I’m glad Richard was able to heal the injured baby owl I found in the woods
, she thought. Richard was clever, and kind. She supposed he took after his father, the Duke of York, who had been much loved and respected. The noble duke had died bravely, but cruelly, and his head had been nailed to the gates of York. That much was common knowledge, but the manner of his death remained a secret. Adults spoke of it in whispers and fell silent whenever she approached. She only knew that he died at Wakefield Castle, with her uncle Thomas, who had been so much fun, always making playful faces and twirling her around.

She shut her eyes tight to banish the image that suddenly came to her: Thomas’s rotting head, caked with dried blood and buzzing with flies, nailed to the gates of York beside the good Duke of York’s. She tossed in bed. Poor Richard. It must be horrid to lose a father. She would be so sad if she lost hers.

She was always so glad to see her father after he’d been away that she couldn’t stop herself from shrieking with joy and running to him with open arms, though her nurse said it wasn’t ladylike. But her father didn’t mind. He always smiled and swept her up to him. Poor Richard had no father to run to.

Anne saw him again, wielding his sword and shield in the rain. In her mind, he turned and smiled at her.
Richard, Richard…

She saw him dreamily as she floated through the woods like a leaf in the breeze under the branches of the chestnut in the woods she and Richard had made their own, past the gentle River Ure with its banks of lilies. The breeze lifted her over Yorkminster’s ornamented towers and deposited her in the nave. She gazed up in wonder at the stained glass glittering around her like jewels. The jewels enlarged, fractured into pieces, and she laughed as they twirled around her. It was then she realised something was wrong.

She was no longer in the nave but in a dark space outside. Demonic gargoyles danced around her as her father struggled to balance on a steeple. He stretched out a hand for help but they reared up between them, snatched him away, and sent him hurtling to earth. She heard weeping and thought it was her father, but when she looked down, there were no tears, just blood. It was sticky and it smelled sour, and it rose like a river, tearing at her skirts. She opened her mouth and started screaming. The demons laughed. She covered her ears. They yanked up her head to cut it off. She saw their faces and let out one last, shattering scream. They were all Marguerite d’Anjou.