The Rose of York: Crown of Destiny (11 page)

“The word on the Continent is that Edward has sunk into such lethargy he would bear any insult rather than fight,” continued Meg, undaunted by his silence. “That above all else, he is a man who loves his ease and pleasure. Louis jokes that he has had more success driving the English out of France than his father ever did, and his father had to fight, whereas the only weapons he used were venison patties and fine wines.”

Richard heaved an audible sigh. “I advised Edward against the peace.”

“I know. I heard. Louis thinks you are inflexible, unimaginative, humourless, and a warmonger.”

“I care not what Louis thinks. I call my duty as I see it.”

“You were the only one to refuse his gold.”

“Sadly, that’s true.”

Meg heaved a sigh. “Terrible, terrible about George… I cannot understand how Edward could do it. Can you, Dickon?”

Richard lowered his voice and cast a glance over his shoulder before he spoke. “All which has come about, has come about because of the Woodvilles. Anne says George went mad after his first-born son died aboard ship. He blamed Edward and swore vengeance. George said it was Edward’s fault for marrying Bess; that if Edward had done his royal duty and married for the sake of the realm, all would have been well.”

“True enough. That infernal marriage tore the land in two. If only our father hadn’t been killed, how different it might all have been.”

“Have you ever wondered, my fair sister, if there is purpose to such turns of fortune?” ventured Richard. Doubts had come to him of late, since George’s death.

Meg shot him a frowning look. “Ours is not to ask why, but to accept, my brother. All will be revealed in due course. Surely, you don’t doubt that?”

“Of course not… not really.”

“Good.” After a moment, she added, “My son-in-law Maximillian cannot hold out against Louis, Dickon. He is young, vigorous, and a general of talent, but he has no money of his own, and his father, the German Emperor, can spare him no soldiers. Do you think Edward will give me the help I need, if I pay him the fifty thousand crowns that he gets from Louis?”

“War costs money, Meg. Even with your gold, he’d still be the loser. Besides, the Queen dreams of seeing her daughter, Princess Elizabeth, on the French throne. Ever since Picquigny, she’s demanded the child be addressed as Madame le Dauphin, as if she were already married.”

“Such pretension. ’Tis not for nothing the Woodvilles are despised. It is not their low birth as much as their low character.” She fell silent a long moment, then gave a sigh. “If Edward puts his hopes in Louis, he shall pay dearly for them.”

“Louis’s gold has already caused England grief. Since Edward doesn’t support Burgundy, trade suffers. Last winter was severe. Men’s stomachs are empty. There’s much restlessness, much disorder, throughout the land.”

“Even in the North?”

“Even there, though not so much as elsewhere.”

At that moment there was a shout. A ball flew past them and landed in the rose bushes at the edge of the pond. A young boy came tripping out of the hedges, his blue velvet doublet askew, his fair curls bouncing over one eye. “My Lord uncle of Gloucester, and my fair lady aunt, Duchess of Burgundy,” he said with a proper bow, “have you perchance seen my ball?”

A slow smile twisted Meg’s generous mouth. “I have, and perchance I shall tell you where it went, but first let me say how fine I find your manners, Prince Richard of England.”

“Thank you, my gracious lady aunt, Duchess of Burgundy. My tutor makes me memorise two lines of Chaucer each time I forget my courtly manners.”

“Aha, a wise and effective policy that will make a fine knight out of a very handsome boy,” said Meg.

Seven-year-old Richard bowed again. “Thank you for the compliment, my lady duchess Aunt, but I must point out that I am not as handsome as I would like.”

“Indeed?” exclaimed Meg feigning shock.

“One eye is lower than the other. If you look closely, you can see quite clearly.” Pointing to the offending eye, he took a step forward and held his face up for her inspection.

Meg examined him. “Aye, I do believe you are right. ’Tis the mark of the Plantagenets that you carry, and a great honour. Your noble ancestors, Henry the Third and Edward the First, had it, and it absolutely does not detract from your good looks, my young prince. So if I were you, I’d forget all about it and chase my ball, which is right… there!” She pointed to the spot.

With another bow and appropriate ceremony, Prince Richard retrieved his ball and was gone.

“He is a dear child,” said Meg.

“He is a Woodville,” said Richard.

~*^*~

Chapter 11

“O golden hair, with which I used to play

Not knowing!

O imperial-moulded form, And beauty such as never woman wore,

Until it came a kingdom’s curse with thee—”

Richard left for Middleham the same morning Meg departed England. In the ensuing weeks he devoted himself to his duties, but life did not resume its comfortable pattern. The Scots violated their truce again. This time they had crossed into Northumberland and burned Bamborough. It soon became clear that old Louis lurked behind the troubles. Anxious to keep Edward occupied while he took care of Burgundy, he had stirred up James of Scotland with his promises. In September Richard punished the Scots so soundly he ended their incursions, but by wet and blustery October, vexing problems with Henry Percy, Earl of Northumberland, replaced those with the Scots.

Many misunderstandings irked the touchy Earl of Northumberland. Though Richard tried hard to accommodate him, sometimes their conflicts couldn’t be settled as amicably as he wished. Once they each backed different men for the post of Prior of Tynemouth and Richard’s candidate won the position, to Percy’s humiliation. At other times, when the city of York received conflicting commands, one from Percy, the other from Richard, they ignored Percy and did Richard’s bidding—and Richard didn’t always know, while Percy smouldered.

At length, by the exercise of delicate diplomacy, Richard managed to smooth Percy’s hoary bristles long enough to gain his good will, and together they planned the campaign against the Scots that Edward had decided to wage come summer and which he would lead himself.

Lord Howard struck the first blow against the Scots in the early summer of ’81. He won a brilliant sea victory and captured eight of their ships in the Firth of Forth, but Edward failed to follow through with the great land campaign he had promised. When Richard journeyed to Nottingham to confer with him in October, he understood the reason. Edward was not well; he had the bloody flux. Though he had managed to drag himself up to Nottingham and insisted he would be well enough by next summer to lead the war effort himself, it was clear to Richard that Edward’s health was failing. He knew it would be up to him to do what needed to be done.

The New Year of 1482 roared in on a hailstorm. Few celebrated, for it seemed the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse rode loose across the land. All over England and Europe the harvest had been the worst in many years and starvation exacted a heavy toll with the onset of winter. War and taxation compounded England’s suffering. Even Richard had difficulty furnishing his garrisons with enough food. Somehow, against many setbacks, he managed to array an army and as soon as the snows began to thaw he invaded Scotland, burned Dumfries, and assaulted Berwick Castle. Before the end of August, the great fortress on the sea that Marguerite d’Anjou had surrendered to the Scots twenty years before fell back into English hands. Richard sent the news speedily to Edward via a system of relay horses he had set up between Berwick and London. No longer would they have to rely on rumour.

Edward, desperate for good news, was jubilant. As far as Calais, Richard’s victory was celebrated with bonfires and he was ordered to appear before the King at Christmas in order to know his thanks. Later that October, a letter arrived from Meg, which Richard read aloud to Anne as they sat in their solar by the fire. It bore Meg’s good wishes on Richard’s thirtieth birthday and her congratulations on his great victory against the Scots. After expressing her pride in her youngest brother, she included an item of news.

“On the day after the Feast of St. Batholomew,” Richard read, “Marguerite d’Anjou died in France in abject poverty, alone except for a few dispirited Lancastrian exiles. Louis refused to believe that all she possessed of value was a painting of the Lilies and Leopards of England that hung over her bed. ‘Surely she has a dog?’ he demanded. ‘Send me the dog.’”

A silence fell. Into Anne’s mind rose a vision of Louis XI at their first meeting, sitting on the floor of his filthy bedchamber, in dim candlelight, surrounded by the dogs he had favoured and trusted above all men. She might have found humour in Louis’s demand but for its pathos and the memories it stirred; old Percival had died in the spring.

“She was,” Anne murmured, “Queen of sorrows and enmities, yet I am sorry for her.”

Richard put his arm around her. “The past is dead, dear Anne. Look to the future…”

Anne’s gaze went to Richard’s bastard daughter, twelve-year-old Katherine, dozing with her head in Richard’s lap, and moved to her brother, eleven-year-old Johnnie, playing marbles by the hearth. It touched on George Neville and her uncle John’s faithful hound, Roland, stretched out beside him. Then her glance fixed lovingly on Ned, sitting in the window seat, trying to strum a lyre like his father but plucking a host of wrong notes. Percival was no longer curled up at his feet, but death was the way of the world.
In exchange
, Anne thought,
God grants us our young
. She gave a nod, and a smile lifted the corners of her lips.

Early in December Richard journeyed to London to receive his brother’s thanks and to confer on future plans. He didn’t feel well. He had been plagued by a recurrent toothache these past weeks, but he was moved by the acclaim of the cheering Londoners and the lengths to which they had gone to decorate the city with arras, strewn flowers, and boar banners, and by Edward’s near-pathetic gratitude. Court, however, was as foul as always, the air poisoned with suspicions and half-hidden hatreds, and through the glorious pageantry and the varicoloured plumage of tilting knights hissed the endless whispers. Most focused on the King’s new mistress, Jane Shore, the wife of a goldsmith, who was beautiful, bright, light-hearted, and witty. And—the whispers claimed—loved not only by the King, but also by the Marquess of Dorset and Lord Hastings.

Richard crossed paths with Jane Shore in the pleasance at Westminster. He was in a hurry to get from the palace to the Abbey when he came upon her strolling between greying Hastings and gaudy Dorset. They did not see him at first, so he had a moment to observe them unnoticed as she laughed merrily while Dorset and Hastings exchanged dark looks over her lovely head.

Richard realised his disgust showed, for when the trio finally noticed him, their demeanour sobered instantly. Jane Shore’s laughter died in her throat, and she had the decency to blush as she curtsied while Will Hastings bowed and murmured a genial greeting. Dorset, that contemptible, debauched Woodville, grinned nervously and merely inclined his head in a slight nod, although for insolent Dorset, that represented a great deal. Richard acknowledged them with a curt nod of his own and passed on.

Hastings had met Jane Shore first, the whispers said and, struck by her beauty, had arranged for her abduction—his customary practice for dealing with maidens reluctant to bed him. But the servant woman whom he’d bribed to lure Jane from her house in Cheapside failed him at the last moment. Unable to slake his desire for the young beauty, Hastings wooed her, and in due course, fell in love with her. Edward, noticing Hastings’s dejection, inquired as to the cause. Anxious to see the girl with his own eyes, he disguised himself as a merchant and made a trip to her husband’s goldsmith shop. More trips followed. Edward, too, was smitten—so much so, that it was said he had distanced himself from Bess. Soon afterwards, old merchant Shore disappeared, but whether he died or discreetly left town was unknown. The affair then began in earnest. And that, whispered the rumours, was when Dorset fell in love with her and she with him, though they kept their passion secret—it was dangerous to cuckold a king.

Richard clenched a fist. Hastings and Dorset had led Edward by the hand down the path of licentious pleasures. They were to blame for the degeneration of the happy valiant prince he had adored into the corpulent, coarse, grim monarch Edward had become.

From the Abbey, where he spent an hour on his knees in silent prayer, Richard reluctantly returned to the great hall where festivities were in progress and took his seat beside his already-drunk brother. Woodvilles were everywhere, lining the High Table, dancing to lutes and viols, clapping for the actors who performed in the pageant “The Agony of Mankind besieged by World, Flesh, and Devil.” Edward’s five daughters and two sons were present, shining like angels in their brocaded Christmas gowns, but each time Richard looked at the Queen, he saw the half-rotted face of his brother George, now encased behind the altar at Tewkesbury Abbey.

“Louis…” Edward was saying to no one in particular, “has had two attacks of apoplexy… he will soon die! That shall put an end to our worries about Burgundy, indeed it shall.” He put the goblet he had been waving around to his lips and wine splashed over his face. He coughed fitfully. Servants rushed to him with gilt-edged towels.

“Sire!” said Edward Brampton, a trusted retainer, striding up. He made a hasty bow. “Messengers from Burgundy, my Liege!”

“Burgundy… Burgundy…” burped Edward. “I cannot give up fifty thousand crowns… Would you give up fifty thousand crowns, Dickon?”

Richard averted his gaze. Brampton flushed. “My Lord, they are not here to ask for aid. They bear urgent tidings.”

Richard shifted his gaze back to Edward. He had sunk into his chair and was muttering to himself. “Have them brought in,” Richard said. “I will see them.” He rose, took up a position beside Edward’s chair.