THE DEVIL IN ERMINE

By Isolde Martyn

Copyright 2013 Isolde Martyn

 

If you would like to find out more about this author’s other books, please call in at www.isoldemartyn.com

 

THE DEVIL IN ERMINE

 

Isolde Martyn

 

 

ISBN: 978-0-9873846-5-2

 

For my dear Ricardian friends, Angela, Babs, Jenny and Julia,
and in memory of Harold Cadell

 

LIST OF HISTORICAL CHARACTERS

APPEARING OR MENTIONED IN THE BOOK

Henry (Harry) Stafford, Duke of Buckingham

twenty-eight years old; the last legal heir of the House of Lancaster

 

Catherine (Cat) Woodville, Duchess of Buckingham

Harry’s wife and the mother of his two sons and two daughters; twenty-seven years old; younger sister of Queen Elizabeth Woodville

 

Lord Stafford (Ned)

Bess

Harry’s two eldest children

 

Pershall

Bodyservant to Harry; bastard son of one of Harry’s Staffordshire retainers

 

Ralph Bannaster

Servant to Harry, with a farm holding at Lacom, in Shropshire

 

Sir William Knyvett

One of Harry’s councillors, married to Joanna, Harry’s aunt

 

Sir Nicholas Latimer

Harry’s chamberlain

 

Sir Thomas Limerick

Harry’s steward

 

Sir Richard Delabere

Harry’s henchman

 

Dr Thomas Nandik

Cambridge scholar and necromancer

 

Edward IV, King of England

Yorkist king since 1461, save for a brief exile in 1470-71

 

Richard, Duke of Gloucester

King Edward’s youngest brother and Harry’s cousin; thirty-one years old

 

Anthony Woodville, Lord Rivers

Harry’s brother-in-law; eldest brother of Queen Elizabeth Woodville; and tutor to the Prince of Wales at Ludlow

 

Elizabeth Woodville, Queen of England

Harry’s sister-in-law; King Edward is her second husband. She has two grown-up sons by her first marriage

 

Edward, Prince of Wales

Son of King Edward and Elizabeth Woodville; twelve years old; and has his own household at Ludlow

 

Prince Richard

Youngest son of King Edward and Elizabeth Woodville; Duke of Norfolk. Nine years old and lives with his mother at Westminster

 

Thomas Grey, Marquis of Dorset

Sir Richard Grey

Sons of Queen Elizabeth Woodville by her first marriage

 

William, Lord Hastings

Lord Chamberlain and close friend of King Edward IV

 

Francis, Lord Lovell

Sir Richard Ratcliffe

Sir James Tyrrell

Henchmen of Richard, Duke of Gloucester

 

Sir William Catesby

Legal advisor and councillor to several noble lords

 

John, Lord Howard

Heir to the Duchy of Norfolk in the event of Prince Richard’s death

 

Margaret (Meg) Woodville

Bastard daughter of Anthony Woodville and Gwentlian Stradling; married to Robert Poyntz

 

Robert Stillington, Bishop of Bath and Wells

Former Lord Chancellor; friend of George, Duke of Clarence

 

Anne Neville, Duchess of Gloucester

Wife to Richard, Duke of Gloucester and daughter of the late Earl of Warwick (“the Kingmaker”)

 

Lady Margaret Beaufort, Countess of Richmond

Mother of Henry Tudor, pretender to the throne; married to Harry’s uncle before her third marriage to Thomas, Lord Stanley

 

Thomas, Lord Stanley

Steward to King Edward IV; royal councillor; and married to Margaret Beaufort

 

John Morton, Bishop of Ely

Royal councillor; formerly a supporter of the House of Lancaster

 

George, Duke of Clarence

King Edward’s younger brother; executed in the Tower of London in 1478

 

Cicely, Duchess of York

Harry’s great aunt; mother of King Edward, George, Duke of Clarence and Richard, Duke of Gloucester

 

Sir Ralph Assheton

Supporter of Richard, Duke of Gloucester

 

Henry Tudor, Earl of Richmond

Son of Margaret Beaufort; twenty-six years old; fugitive in Brittany; has an illegitimate claim to throne but his Beaufort bloodline is banned from succession by Act of Parliament

 

The Vaughan Family

A rumbustious family, living at Tretower, south of Brecknock (Brecon). Wales

 

Elizabeth Lambard, Mistress Shore

Former mistress to King Edward; friend to Lord Hastings

 

Anne Neville. Dowager Duchess of Buckingham

Harry’s late grandmother, who gave him in wardship to King Edward in return for the restitution of her husband’s lands

 

Warwick the Kingmaker

father-in-law to King Edward’s brothers, George and Richard; made Edward king in 1461, later switched his allegiance to the House of Lancaster. Slain at Barnet in 1471

 

William Herbert, Earl of Pembroke

Loyal to King Edward; slain in 1469. Harry was briefly in his household

 

Sir Henry Stafford

Harry’s uncle, second husband of Margaret Beaufort; died in 1471

 

King Henry VI

Former King of England of the House of Lancaster; reigned 1422-61 and briefly 1470-71; mentally unstable; ‘died’ in the Tower of London in 1471

 

Sir Humphrey Stafford

Nobleman loyal to Richard, Duke of Gloucester

 

Walter, Lord Ferrers

Yorkist nobleman with a house at Weobley, Herefordshire

 

 

PROLOGUE

October 1483

 

I am to be charged with high treason.

They are taking me to Salisbury and King Richard will be there. The last time we met I was dressed so richly that whole families could have lived for years upon the cost of that day’s clothes. Now where am I? Riding with my wrists bound to the saddle pommel, and a borrowed, shabby mantle straining across my back.

God’s mercy! Has someone ridden ahead? Every village we pass through spews up its flea-bitten inhabitants and they all ooze out to stare at me as though I am a captive monster.

Enough, I must value each hour on this road. When I see Richard, I shall have to speak skilfully, swiftly. I need to marshal my thoughts like soldiers in my defence, be clear on what has happened, make some straight skeins out of the tangle of events.

Richard will listen: the stars that presided over his birth gave him a strong sense of justice so he cannot help but listen.

May Almighty God give me eloquence and may the King forgive me.

 

CHAPTER 1

Six months earlier

 

Before the strange messenger arrived, I could have been struck by a lightning bolt and made no difference to England’s history. But in April 1483, the planets that favoured my birthsign moved into unparalleled amity. In one day, one hour almost, my fortune changed.

Instead of attending King Edward at Westminster Palace, I had taken leave and returned to my castle above the town of Brecknock – Aberhonddu as the local Welsh call it. I was weary of hanging about the royal heels like an idle dog. Being Duke of Buckingham and the last legal heir of the House of Lancaster might engender envy in some but they would be misguided. I hungered for the respect that comes with high office, the respect that had been accorded to my grandsire, the first duke, but Edward gave me no opportunity to prove myself. At twenty-eight years old, it was little wonder I was so discontent.

On the afternoon of the day the messenger rode into Wales, I admit to frolicking. My servants had done their best to alleviate my tedium by finding me two pert wenches in a hamlet south of the town. These twin girls were pretty as briar roses, fragrant, black-haired, blue-eyed, mischievous and, mercifully, clean. I was welcomed into their dwelling, where they blindfolded me and tormented me so exquisitely that I could not tell who nuzzled me or which one of them sat astride me first.

When I was sated, their sweet whispers and girlish laughter lapped around me – as gentle as perfumed bathwater after a day in the saddle. One of them slid from the bed to stoke the cottage fire. The other girl fetched sweetmeats and, while her sister fed me, she teased me to hardness once again. I might have stayed longer in their company but Sir William Knyvett, my uncle by marriage, rapped upon the cottage door and straightaway let himself in.

‘Harry, are you going to be much longer?’

‘You wish to join us?’ I asked, but something in his face made me toss aside my delightful rider and reach for my shirt.

‘And have your aunt strangle me with one of her garters? No, Harry, it’s John Shenmore – the bailiff you sent to Abergavenny, remember. He has just has been carted in with broken ribs. He was attacked down by Tretower on his way back this morning.’

‘The Vaughans?’ I asked. It had to be the Vaughans, the greediest marauding whoresons this side of the Black Mountains.

‘Aye, who else?’

‘Excellent.’ I turned and gestured for my clothes. ‘We can ride down tomorrow and whack the hell out of them. It may not be as satisfying as sitting on the Royal Council, invading France or—’

‘Or risking the pox,’ Uncle Knyvett cut in. He moved aside to let the girl bring me my gipon and underdrawers. ‘Good, were they?’ His stare was appreciative

‘Very good, eh, cariad?’ I smiled down at the girl as she knelt to slide my feet into my woollen stockings. I thanked her in Welsh and carried her sister’s hand to my lips. ‘So, is Shenmore badly hurt?’ I asked Uncle Knyvett. No doubt extra payment would ease the fellow’s pain.

‘He’ll mend.’

‘Come, then, I am done here.’

I teased the wenches by striding to the door without giving them payment. But as I grabbed the latch, I turned, laughing, and paid them double their worth, amused to see their dismayed mouths tilt into merriment again.

It was a shock to leave the warm stew of the wenches’ abode. The chill wind scourged our backs. April still had the breath of winter. Last night’s toss of snow garlanded the hedgerows and the road was hard with frost beneath our horses’ hooves. As we neared the river, I glanced over my shoulder. The clouds above the ebbing sun had parted over the mountains in a splendour of gold and vermilion as if Christ’s return was due. Was it an omen?

I gave spur to my horse and hastened across the drawbridge of my castle with new heart. The murrey sandstone walls were blushed a deeper hue beneath that glorious light and the grisailled windows of the great hall were conjured into a hundred tiny, shining mirrors. I do not exaggerate. I had never beheld such an immodest configuration of clouds and I tossed my ambler’s reins to a stableboy, hurtled up the stone steps and stood gasping on the battlements. But already the beauty of that sky was fading. So soon? Did it mean nothing? Oh God, surely there had to be some worth to life instead of the constant yearning that obsessed my soul.

‘Your grace?’

Pershall, my bodyservant, had come to find me. His dark blue eyes were concerned. He had reason; I do not usually behave as though stung by a gadfly.

‘Observing me for signs of fever, Pershall? I came to see the sky.’

‘Not like you, my lord.’ Impertinent, disbelieving, he stared across the rooftops of the town to where the hills reared like an angry sea, and instantly dismissed the fading clouds. ‘Were the girls not to your liking, your grace?’

‘Most satisfactory, Pershall. Quite imaginative.’ I guessed the blindfold had been his suggestion.

‘Thank the saints for that. Well, I should stay up here a bit longer if I were you, my lord. Your youngest is bawling fit to wake the dead.’

I narrowed my eyes against the rising wind as I looked towards the great ridge of Pen-y-Fan, the inevitable horizon of Brecknock. It was dark and brooding now, its green-gold collar lost in the half-light. Maybe I believed in far too gracious a god. No gentle hand had clawed out those valleys and slapped those crags against the sky.

‘Should be good fishing on Llyn Safaddan soon, my lord.’

I shrugged sourly.

‘What about the Myddffai girl for you tonight? You remember, my lord, the red-haired wench with duckies to die for.’

Was that my reputation? Naught but a horny Plantagenet? Sweet Christ, any lord can have a warm-thighed woman who by night willingly creases the sheets she has so lovingly laundered by day. I would have given my soul to be useful instead of rutting in Wales.

Pershall would have earned a terse answer had not the barking of dogs and the trumpeting from the river gatehouse proclaimed the monthly arrival of the messenger from the Queen, my sister-in-law.

‘Shall you go down, my lord?’ Pershall looked hopeful.

‘What for, Pershall? News of the latest royal runny nose can wait until suppertime. Go and make ready my bath.’ I kept walking, the black dog of despair following behind my spurred heels like a shadow.

‘Harry! Harry, where in Hell are you?’

Uncle Knyvett emerged from the upper floor of the nearest tower. For a man in his forties he was very fit but the stairs had made him breathless. ‘Th…the messenger that has just come from Westminster, Harry, he’s a strange one. I think you should go down. He’s not from the Queen and he will speak only with you.’ I shrugged, but Uncle Knvyett had the bit between his teeth. ‘He’s poorly clad and yet he rode in on one of the King’s post-horses. Something’s up, lad.’

‘Then I’d better come.’ Uncle Knyvett’s common sense was always reliable, he was the most trustworthy of my retainers and I loved him dearly. If the messenger had a commission to change horses at the inns where the royal letter carriers swung from one saddle straight into another, then the fellow’s news was urgent and official. God willing, one of my Woodville in-laws might actually have died.

I did not stride in by the great doors. I halted instead in the shadows of the minstrel gallery, wishing to observe this messenger before I questioned him. Catherine, my wife, had just come from her viols and hautboys in the solar and was standing on the dais with two of her women and my chamberlain, Sir Thomas Latimer.

A spindly, ill-clad fellow was on one knee before her, his head dutifully bent. The hall was unusually silent save for the spitting of the logs. Straining to catch any morsel that might break their tedious diet of Welsh happenings, my servants were working softly

Cat asked the stranger’s name and he raised his head and looked at her not a little astonished. Maybe he could see she was behind Westminster in her garments. That was ever a quarrel between us. Cat spent her allowance on her musicians but was constantly complaining to her family that she lacked French silks and jewelled collars. Mind, if we had been summoned to court more often, I should have seen her adorned appropriately.

‘I am called Thomas Nandik, gracious lady.’ His Essex voice had an oily timbre to it.

‘The Queen has not sent you before, has she?’ Cat sounded coaxing. The man was clearly not a courtier, and one of her ladies tittered at his gaucheness. But when my duchess tried to question him as to affairs in London, the fellow hedged his answers in such an uneasy manner that my curiosity could bear it no longer.

‘Who is this?’ I demanded brusquely. My wife raised her blue glaze eyes to me at the gallery rail with a faint shrug. The messenger waited while my chamberlain introduced him, then he eagerly scrambled to his feet, stretching from a question mark into a thin slash of a man. This was no courtier nor courier for his daily bread. He wore no livery and his amber rosary and clerical robe hung limply over a frame that was almost as fleshless as a scarecrow’s. But there was a brooding mischief in his face that hinted not at malevolence but rather that he carried some good news. I was intrigued; he had broken the monotony and for that deserved an audience.

‘Well, man, what is your purpose here?’

‘So please your grace, a letter for you and a spoken message to be delivered privily.’

I was tantalized. ‘Bring him up!’

 

‘YOUR bath’s getting cold,’ Pershall grumbled as I shrugged my riding jacket into his arms and went past him into my inner sanctum, where the yeomen of my bedchamber were waiting to unknot my points.

Master Nandik was shown in. He faltered, lanky and round-shouldered, betraying himself as uncomfortable as a Jew in a Christian chapel.

‘Is there to be a new parliament, then?’ I asked him while my people removed my gipon and hose.

‘Yes, your grace.’

I scowled in disappointment at the paucity of his news and wrapped my dressing robe of yellow silk and coney fur about me. What message was so vital that it needed to be delivered alone? Besides, my bath was waiting.

I idly dipped my knuckles into the rosemary-perfumed water. ‘You have leave, all of you.’ I watched my people shuffle out past the stranger casting their annoyance at him in swift furtive glances. He was still hanging by the door like some ragged coat upon a nail.

‘What is your calling, sirrah?’ I asked him.

His gaze fell before mine. ‘A poor doctor of Cambridge, your grace. That is, until a few days ago, when I was asked to become a messenger.’

‘How very unusual. Is King Edward trying to save expenditure?’

‘Not any more.’ As he came forward, he drew a letter from beneath his mantle, his face suddenly wicked as any goblin’s. ‘Lord Hastings did not wish to send one of his known envoys, your grace.’

‘Why not?’ I demanded, annoyed to discover that it was only Hastings, the Lord Chamberlain, behind the mystery. Being high in the King’s favour, he never needed help from me so it was perhaps a friendly alert that some of my manors were at risk – probably a warning of another Woodville scheme to acquire other people’s property. Certainly, not the restoration of the Bohun lands that King Edward had always withheld from me. Or the chance to govern Wales. That privilege had gone to a Woodville, the Queen’s eldest brother.

‘Another fund-raising expedition into France?’ I muttered. I had been left out of the last one.

He dropped to one knee and proffered the letter. ‘My lord, if it pleases you.’

I dabbed my hand dry on a napkin, and took the missive from him. It was warm and sweaty from its nest of clothing. Hastings’ seal was genuine. I scowled and broke it.

‘Trusty and well-beloved, I greet you well etc....

Give credence to what the bringer of this letter shall relate and collect as many men as you may in all haste.’ The half-smile on Nandik’s lips was that of a jouster before he delivers the bloody coup de grâce.

‘The King is dead, my lord.’

In shock I dropped the letter in the plaguey bathwater. The ink had run by the time I retrieved it but the date was still legible – written at Westminster three days before on the Feast of St Guthlac.

‘How?’ I whispered. Forty was a fair age for a battle-scarred prince, but England without old Ned was almost inconceivable. ‘Was it canker of the belly? He was complaining of his digestion when I was last at court.’

‘I am told he went fishing for perch and took a cold.’

‘God save his immortal soul,’ I murmured, drawing reverent fingers across my hypocritical heart. Sweet Christ! The best tidings I had ever heard. Edward of York’s great hulk coffined at last! May all Thames perch be canonized!

I could imagine the scene around the royal deathbed: Edward’s queen, Elizabeth Woodville, and his life-long friend, Hastings, each desperate to hold onto high fortune, staring at each other across the coverlet, both thinking about the twelve-year-old heir to the throne far off in Ludlow. Their eyes must have met in mutual enmity; the Queen’s shadow, steeple-like upon the wall, threatened by the solid shape of the King’s friend. Was their hatred already streaking out across the kingdom like black lightning splitting the realm?

I am getting away from reality. It must have been more mundane than that: air heavy with incense, the chaplain’s whispered prayers as he gave Edward the last rites, the perfect tears on Elizabeth’s perfect cheeks and Hastings supervising bowls of steaming water to ease the kingly breath.

And earlier this week, we had not sensed a plaguey thing in Brecknock. No comets. No prophecies from some old slattern. One would think that a king's death....

‘Your grace?’

My thoughts were so full, I had forgotten Nandik. Now I waited, tense as a virgin bride, for Hastings’ message.

‘My lord bid me speak plainly. The Queen’s grace is sending several thousand retainers to bring his highness the Prince of Wales from Ludlow to be crowned straightway. Lord Hastings bids me tell you it was King Edward’s will that my lord of Gloucester should become the Lord Protector, but that the Queen is determined he shall not. She desires to become Regent and rule the realm. It is Lord Hasting’s wish and his humble suggestion that you, my lord, and his grace of Gloucester should intercept the Prince and escort him to London. My lord has written to my lord of Gloucester in like vein.’

Hastings had his wits about him, by Jesu. Ha, despite the prostrating grief he must feel for his dearest friend’s demise, he was damned well out to save his own skin and hang on to his rung of power.

So it was a matter of choosing between the Queen and Gloucester.

I smiled but, by Heaven, I could have whooped so loud they would have heard me in Hereford. After all these years of impotence, I was invited to play the powerbroker.

‘Get off your knees, Master Scholar. You shall be well rewarded.’ I gestured him to leave but he grabbed my damp fingers to his lips.

‘The holy saints preserve your grace.’

‘Aye, if they’ve a mind to.’ I retrieved my hand, my mind aflame with possibilities: if Richard of Gloucester, King Edward’s brother, did not reach the south in time to intercept the Prince then I might manage it for him, but I needed to be swift and silver-tongued. Whoever held the new king would win this game. And, oh God, how I hated the Queen.

I dispatched Pershall to find Cat and I summoned my most trustworthy household knights, Knyvett, Latimer, Limerick and Delabere. When I told them the tidings, they could see the chance of fat rewards from Gloucester. Cat would be a different matter. She would not like me opposing her sister so I purposed to tell her very little of my intentions.

I wrote a swift message to Richard of Gloucester in my own hand suggesting that I could meet him on the road, somewhere we could greet the Prince together and then proceed with the boy to London. Lest the words could convict me of treason (if this horseshoe of luck swivelled upside down), I ordered the knight, who was spurred up to carry my missive, to privily assure Gloucester of my loyalty and to tell him I was acting on Hastings’ advice.

I also sent a messenger to Cat’s brother, Anthony Woodville, Lord Rivers, who was the Prince’s tutor and in charge of his household at Ludlow, to kiss hands and assure him I should like to join their retinue on way to London. Could he advise me of their plans?

I have to say I loved Lord Rivers as much as I enjoyed a slap in the face. Posturing upstart! And because he was in charge at Ludlow, he virtually ruled Wales. A duty that should have rightfully fallen to me!

…collect as many men as you may in all haste.

Hell take it, I would have to dispatch urgent commissions of array and send out messengers at daybreak. I needed the numbers quickly.

‘Fetch me every man who can write a fair hand and bring more candles!’ I ordered my pages, and soon my outer chamber was like a rookery.

With writing boards slung about their necks, my erstwhile scribes perched on chests, stools and bedsteps or propped themselves against the walls. The air smelled of ink and the scratching of their quills was like the labour of busy insects. As each man finished a letter, I sank my seal ring into the soft orange wax.

My advantage was that Ludlow lay in the Welsh Marches, whereas poor old Richard of Gloucester had many more miles to cover. Even if he came posthaste down from Yorkshire, there was a good chance the Prince’s escort could evade him.

It would demand cunning. I would need to keep my cards close to my chest. Given a choice, I saw myself in Gloucester’s camp. My grandmother and his mother were sisters so he was my second cousin. But, more to the point, I knew, like me, he thought that the Woodvilles were jackdaws masquerading as peacocks and that they needed plucking.

‘My lord?’

Knee deep in secretaries, I swiftly halted in mid-sentence and smiled at my wife. Cat is twenty-six years old. She is not as beautiful as the other Woodville siblings, but passing fair. Like her royal sister, she has gilt hair, eyes the hue of aquamarines and a dimpled chin. She is taller than Elizabeth, so she does not need to wear the wire-and-gauze edifices that the Queen favours.

Cat – Catherine Woodville – was yoked to me when she was eight and I was but ten. Her family, the progeny of a foreigner and a steward, is the millstone about her neck as far as I am concerned. She brought me nothing. No dowry even. And every time I look upon her, I am reminded of her sister, the Queen, whom I loathe. Unreasonable, I agree. Had she and I liked each other, we might have shared the shaft of marriage like two carthorses in step. Yet she has borne me children and, thanks to the diligent snuffing of candles in our bedchamber and silent fantasies in our minds, we now have four healthy infants. However, our verbal intercourse, performed in the light of day or under reasonable illumination, is unquestionably dull and lacking in passion.

‘Well, Cat?’ She was standing beneath the lintel of my inner chamber, still as a saint in a niche, watching me with the air of a Patient Griselda. A stance she has sculpted to perfection.

‘Sir Nicholas has just informed me the entire household is to go into mourning but then he rushed off without telling me more and Pershall said it was better I should ask you directly. Whose funeral is it?’

I did not answer her straightway but led her into the privacy of my inner chamber.

‘It could be Elizabeth’s.’ I crossed myself mockingly and then leaned against the end of the bed, folding my arms.

She closed the outer door and stood with her back against it. ‘Indeed?’ she challenged dryly. ‘The messenger told me she was in good health when he left Westminster.’

‘Certainly he spoke the truth, she being departed from the cares of this world, the pomp and....’

‘Just the truth!’ she cut in. ‘Who is dead?’

‘King Edward, dearest.’

‘Sweet Mother of God! Harry! That is horrific news. Oh, my poor sister!’

Poor! Elizabeth was the greediest bitch in England.

My wife sank onto the nearest settle, her fingers to her lips, her mind already whirring, Woodville-like, with a thousand consequences.

‘You do not need to worry about what you shall wear, Cat. I should imagine the obsequies at Windsor are over by now.’ Edward had spent a lot of money on St George’s Chapel as his shrine for posterity.

‘Well, I shall still come with you to Westminster. Elizabeth will need—’

‘Elizabeth will have the rest of your kinsmen for support.’ I cut in, and strode across to stand in front of her, unable to resist drawing her to her feet and framing the fine bones of her face within my fingers. ‘Much as we treasure each other’s company, light of my bedchamber, I wish you to remain here and have masses said for the King’s grace. I intend to join Prince Edward’s retinue before he reaches London and I shall have to ride hard.’ It was tempting to tell her I was throwing my cap into the ring with Gloucester. I should have liked to see her Woodville lips go slack in shock and imagine they were Elizabeth’s. ‘Now if you will forgive me, dearest…’ I swept her towards the door. ‘I have a multitude of preparations to make.’

‘Damn you, Harry Stafford!’ she cursed beneath her breath as I urged her through.

With so many crowding the antechamber, she could not very well argue further but she took hold of one of their writing boards, perused it, and, frowning, stared about her. ‘Why are you sending for so many men?’

I wrapped a husbandly arm around her shoulders and moved her out into the passageway.

‘I cannot very well arrive like a pauper, and – whether your family cares to remember it or not, my sweet duchess – I am the second duke of the realm and a Plantagenet.’

‘Are you? Why I had quite forgotten.’ Then her fingers tightened around the golden cross upon her bosom. ‘I need to write to the Queen and… and Anthony. You will be seeing him as well.’

Yes, I hoped to see Rivers – preferably wearing a noose! His neck, not mine.

‘Of course, you must send your sympathies to them.’

I swung round and beckoned one of the secretaries. ‘Attend her grace.’

‘You will need mourning tabards for everyone, my lord, and…’ She paused, realising the enormity of what must be done to array my entourage.

‘Yes, plenty to do and I should appreciate your…’ I forgot what I was saying as our eldest son, five years old and spoiled, hurtled in.

‘I want to come with you, sir!’

Bess, his young broomstick of a nursemaid was at his heels, twisting her hands in her waistcloth, her face apologetic.

‘Ned!’ Cat’s arm whipped out and she held the child to her skirts, although he deserved chastisement. Aware that everyone was listening, she decided to use this to her advantage. ‘Let us accompany you, my lord, or perhaps we could take the road to Oxford and meet you at Westminster? Ned has seen so little of the world.’ She ruffled our son’s hair and the boy looked at me with her eyes.

‘No! Especially since he lacks the manners of a duke’s son.’

‘You never take me,’ he howled petulantly. ‘You never take us anywhere. I’m sick of living in Wales. Why can I not go to Westminster and be a page like you were?’

‘I have said no!’ And let the Woodvilles destroy my son as they had tried to destroy me?

Jesu! I had been nine years old when I had blurted out that marrying a Woodville was beneath me, and they had never forgiven that. Whether it was being made to look a fool when I served in the Queen’s household as a page or denying me an heiress for my bride, they had made me pay for my childish insult a thousandfold. Cat was given to me with no lands, no titles and no dowry. I, a duke with the blood of kings in my veins.

‘My lord,’ she began again. Perhaps something had shown in my face. ‘Truly, I long to see my family again and they will think little of me for staying back here at such a time.’

‘Out of the question, my dear. Your women will slow our company.’ And Cat’s loyalty to Elizabeth was as predictable as the sunrise. I did not need a female Judas at my elbow. ‘Let us discuss this no further! To bed with you, Ned!’

If a man is not seen as ruling his wife and children, how may he rule a dukedom? I was angry with her for letting our son question my authority. Even when I went to say goodnight to my children after all the letters had been sealed, Ned was not there. I was tempted to march straight to my wife’s demesne and quarrel further, but the nursery was a warm haven. The wetnurse was singing softly as she fed my baby son and my little daughters were kneeling in their night kirtles before the fire, waiting to be put to bed.

This was my precious time each day. Tonight I would tell them about a little dragon who lived on Pen-y-Fan. I loved having their soft arms around my neck as they cuddled into me before the hearth.

But the story was soon over. ‘I have work to do, Princess,’ I told Bess, my eldest poppet.

‘I’m not a real princess, Papa,’ she told me solemnly. ‘But I should like to be one when I am grown.’

‘So you shall,’ I agreed. My thoughts, too. If a steward’s daughter could marry a king, surely my daughter could wed a prince? ‘God willing, my darling.’ I carried her small hand to my lips. I should make sure she would have a husband who would love her. ‘Now even pretend princesses must go to bed.’

I wondered then if I should ever see my beloved little maidens again after I left Brecknock. The enterprise I was resolved upon would be seen by my enemy, the Queen, as treason. Gloucester and I could have our heads chopped off if we acted against her and failed.

Ned still did not come to bed. Sure enough, I found him in Cat’s bedchamber, twanging the strings of a lute. Sufficient to grate my nerves. I try to be a father to him but, God knows, I am not sure how, for I had no fathering. By the time I was Ned’s age, my grandsires had been slain in the wars between Lancaster and York and my father had died of the plague.

‘Be quiet!’ I admonished my son and turned to my wife. ‘Did you have to make that bother in front of my secretaries, madame? It is bad enough that our son is running amok without you trying to undermine my authority too.’

‘Our son spoke the truth,’ Cat muttered, setting down her wine cup. ‘I have a right as your duchess to attend the coronation. Why are you being so difficult?’

‘Well, Cat,’ I murmured picking up the crystal bottle of Hungary water that stood beside the ewer on her wash table. ‘Maybe it is because you are a Woodville, think like a Woodville and use the same cloying scent your sister uses, so you even smell like a Woodville.’ I tossed the phial at her. ‘As for you, my tiny rebel.’ I caught my son by the waist. ‘Bedtime and a story.’

‘Truly, my lord father?’ His little face was alight with pleasure.

‘On my honour.’ I lifted him into my arms. ‘Rascal.’

‘The story about how you slew the white boar.’

‘No, not that one,’ I said wearily. ‘We’ll save that one for another day.’

 

CHAPTER 2

Tinker, tailor, peacemaker, kingmaker?

Collared swans and flaming cartwheels, stitched in metal thread, glinted on the sarsynett pennons above my retinue as we left Brecknock. The three hundred Welshmen, who were jingling in harness behind me, were all wearing Stafford knots, freshly embroidered, on their scarlet and black tunics, thanks to Cat and her women doing their duty.

Lord Rivers had suggested that Gloucester and I might meet the Prince at Northampton since it was on their route from Ludlow and then we could all travel to London together. So be it! I would throw my support behind Gloucester as Lord Protector but if matters went awry, I might end up on the scaffold instead of a cushioned bench at Westminster.

‘I could wish a thousand men at our backs,’ muttered Uncle Knyvett. ‘What if Gloucester doesn’t trust you?’

It was certainly a possibility. Gloucester had sent me back a polite, curt message: no army! He was bringing no more than three hundred retainers. He suggested I do the same.

In his shoes, I would have arrived at Northampton with half of Yorkshire to protect me. For all he knew, I could have been secretly in league with the Woodvilles to trap him. It would have been easy. With my three hundred added to the retinues marching from London and Ludlow, we could have had him bound, gagged and on his way to the Tower of London in no time.

‘All I know, uncle,’ I replied, ‘is that it will require some deft footwork on my part.’

‘Gloucester has always kept his nose out of trouble, Harry. Happen he’ll just go along with the Queen’s plans.’

‘Not if I can help it. And the trick will be not to arrive before Gloucester, or his fur will be on end with suspicion. God willing, I’ll have a chance to talk with him before the Woodvilles descend on us.’

I had already sent one of my henchmen to reserve lodging in the town but now, as we neared Northampton, I dispatched outriders ahead to sniff out the situation. If Richard had already arrived and there had been trouble between him and the Woodvilles, I might be riding in for his funeral and would need to hide my disappointment.

As we reached the crossroads with the Great North Road outside Daventry, we found a weary knight with Gloucester’s boar bristling upon his surcote sitting upon a milestone awaiting us. The young man’s Yorkshire dialect was thick and hard to follow after the lilt of Brecknock. He gave us to understand that his master was close to arriving at Northampton. The good feeling returned: Gloucester trusted me.

‘How many men are in his Grace’s retinue?’ I asked his messenger.

The fellow looked down the column behind me before he offered an unintelligible answer.

‘I think he said it was about the same as ours,’ Latimer interpreted.

‘What about the Prince’s retinue, sirrah?’

A shake of head. So the Prince had not yet arrived.

‘Return to his Grace and tell him…’ I drummed the words slowly out. ‘Tell-him-I-greet-him-and-we-shall-make-haste. Understand?’

Something must have sunk into his northern pate. The idiot saluted and gave spur.

So where were the sodding Woodvilles, behind us or already down the road to London? If the Ludlow retinue had already met up with the army of retainers that the Queen was sending from London to safeguard her son, Gloucester and I might be done for already.

It was beginning to rain, our pennons were starting to droop and I have to be honest and admit my stomach was churning with such unease that I had to go and relieve myself behind a hedge before I ordered my retinue forwards.

‘Well, your grace, you can always order a pair of boots in Northampton, if nothing else,’ chirped Pershall, ready with a flask of water. ‘Either that or a roast beef repast. Ah, listen, it sounds as though one of the lads is back. Shall I brush the blackthorn blossom from your grace or is your grace happy to look like a May Day damsel?’

I swore at him good humouredly and clambered back onto the road, brushing my shoulders. Ralph Bannaster awaited me, spattered and scarlet, his horse all lathered.

‘My lord, the Prince and Lord Rivers have already passed through Northampton!’

‘Christ Almighty!’ I exclaimed, swiftly setting foot in my horse’s stirrup. My angry fingers jerked on the bridle and my poor stallion protested. Maybe this chess game of power was already lost. I could imagine my head on the block. Yes, and the Queen and Rivers would be selling Cat to a new husband, faster than it takes to spit.

‘It isn’t Doomsday yet,’ my steward, Sir Thomas Limerick, pointed out. ‘We can still keep our noses out of this.’

True, I thought, but sometimes you have to grasp Fortune with your fist and squeeze the juice out of her. Aloud, I said, ‘What, Tom, go all the way back to lousy Brecknock with our tails curled around our arses?’ I kneed my horse round to face the road ahead. ‘No, lads, let’s meet with Gloucester as promised.’

Once we reached the great street from the west, it was clear that a mighty retinue was ahead of us. The way was much troughed and that slowed us mightily.

Some half-dozen of Gloucester’s knights met us a mile outside the town. Sir Richard Ratcliffe of Derwentwater was their leader, bidden to show me to my inn. I was soon to learn that he was Gloucester’s intermediary. Wherever there was trouble affecting his master, dour Ratcliffe was there to fix it. For sure, he had come to inspect me, not only my demeanour but to see if my following exceeded the specified number and whether my men were fully armoured. The grey eyes on either side the hawk nose missed nothing. Unlike his companions, he was hard to charm but at least he was able to tell me that the Prince and my brother-in-law Rivers were putting up for the night at Stony Stratford, a town which lay fourteen miles beyond us on the road to London. What in Hell did that mean? Why had they not waited for us?

Ratcliffe’s companion knights and esquires were full of cheer and banter but by the time we sighted Northampton’s walls, I realised they had completely surrounded me, isolating me from my affinity. Ratcliffe himself was riding knee to knee beside me, within a hand’s grasp of my horse’s reins and a blade distance from my throat. Uncle Knyvett made an attempt to force his horse up beside me before we reached the town gate but the Yorkists subtly kneed their amblers to block him. I glanced round at him and shook my head imperceptibly.

Clearly, my cousin Gloucester was as edgy as a boar who hears the snarl of hunting dogs. The guards holding the gate wore the White Boar badge and everywhere along the street, his men-at-arms stood outside the inns and hostelries. I was unnerved and angered by my cousin’s suspicion; this place was where my mighty grandfather had been slain fighting for the House of Lancaster. Maybe I would not leave here either.

‘You can tell that tanning is the local livelihood,’ observed young Strangways, one of the White Boar esquires, wrinkling his nose.

Yes, Northampton did smell and the cobbles, dappled with horse turds from the Prince’s retinue, added to the stink. The townsfolk, still shovelling the dung into hand barrows and wooden pails, had to be shooed out of our path despite the trumpets.

‘Ah but I hear they breed good oxen in these parts,’ I remarked, determined to appear at ease. ‘I daresay we can expect beef for dinner, Ratcliffe, unless your lord has any other plans for me this evening.’ I met his stare evenly. He smiled.

‘You’ll be wanting to change into clean apparel when you reach the inn, my lord. I’ll inform his Grace that you shall be joining him as soon as you are refreshed.’ It was a command not a statement.

‘I suppose he is putting up at the castle?’

‘No, my lord, it lacks comfort. He prefers The Bear. My lord of Warwick always stayed there.’ And Richard, as page and then esquire to Warwick the Kingmaker, would have known it well.

The inn awaiting me was clean and the servants efficient. The town knew its duty to travellers. However, by the time I had dealt with bowing and grovelling from the mayor and aldermen who had turned up in their official chains and houpelandes to honour me, it was almost past the supper hour.

‘Pray ask my lord of Gloucester to start supper without me,’ I ordered Ratcliffe, who had remained like an unwanted shadow, and I hastened up the stairs and strode along the gallery above the courtyard, unbuttoning my riding doublet as I went. A hungry man kept waiting for his food is more easily annoyed, and I needed Gloucester open to persuasion. For an instant I thought Ratcliffe had ignored my order but then he nodded in his rather sour way, doffed his cap and loped back to his master.

Pitchers of hot water and fresh towels were waiting in my chamber, thank Heaven; it would be hard to negotiate my future smelling of sweat and horseflesh. Pershall had already lain out fresh apparel for me and seen that my coffers had been brought up. I flung out my arms to my servants to disrobe me and then I dismissed them except for Pershall. As he went to work lathering my stubble, I told him to cease his chatter. I needed time to gather my thoughts. Tonight I had to make sure that Gloucester would trust me and convince him how badly he needed my support.

I could not use wine to soften my cousin’s wits. He was known to be a man of great sobriety so I would have to rope him in with the right arguments – no easy matter when the execution of his brother George, Duke of Clarence’s still lay between us like a swollen river. That was the only office King Edward ever gave me, and a filthy, defiling one it was too, compelling me to head the jury of peers that sentenced the Duke to death for treason. Gloucester had rarely come to court after that. He had made no secret that he blamed the Queen for poisoning King Edward’s mind and had openly said that one day he would avenge his brother’s death. Maybe that was the other reason why the Woodvilles were hurrying the boy to London. They sensed revenge was in the wind. Well, as long Gloucester did not rattle his hackles in my direction.

‘Your grace!’ Bannaster’s voice came from outside the door, interrupting my thoughts. Pershall let him in. I twisted round to curse the pair of them but then I saw who was with them. Francis, Lord Lovell, another loyal friend of Gloucester’s. I knew him already. He was about the same age as I and, like the dog on his badge, a tail-wagging, amiable man.

We shared a common grievance. Neither us had been happy with the wives forced upon us. I remember one night in London when he had come down from the north in Warwick’s entourage. We happily coincided at a tavern in Thames Street and drank ourselves under the board in mutual commiseration.

‘Lovell!’ Thrusting aside the hot towel, I rose to shake his hand warmly. ‘Viscount Lovell now, I hear. Congratulations! Come to hurry me up, have you? Is the duke growing hungry and too polite to begin without me?’

‘You are looking well, your grace, albeit half-shaved.’ His voice still had the burr of Oxfordshire despite his upbringing in Yorkshire.

I grinned and submitted once more to Pershall’s razor.

‘How is the Lady Catherine?’ he asked.

‘How is Lady Nan?’ I countered.

He smiled wryly, his glance taking in the sparse furnishings and white-washed walls around us. ‘This is bearable. Any bed lice?’

‘I gather they've moved on to Stony Stratford,’ muttered Pershall beneath his breath.

Lovell laughed and then his attention returned to me. ‘I am sent to warn your grace that the Duke has an unexpected guest for supper.’ I raised an enquiring eyebrow, unprepared for what came next. ‘No less than your fine brother-in-law, Lord Rivers. He rode in about the same time as you did, so my lord of Gloucester apologises that he did not come out to meet you.’

‘God’s Truth, what is going on?’ I grabbed the towel and began hurriedly dabbing away the soap. Pershall quickly filled a bowl with the hot water set ready for me and Lovell frowned as he watched me frantically sluicing my neck and armpits.

‘We wondered that too, your grace.’ He was eyeing me now as though I might be harbouring secrets. ‘Imagine, Lord Rivers has ridden back all the way from Stony Stratford this afternoon to pay his respects to the Lord Protector.’ The title had not been used in England for a long time. But that thought was pushed aside. It was what Gloucester might be thinking about me that had me concerned. Was he suspecting that Rivers and I had planned some kind of ambush?

‘How is Lord Rivers then? Full of wit? As friendly as a starving whore?’ Was I trying too hard? Tumbling over my shoe beaks trying to sound innocent?

Lovell did not answer. The turret of the nearby Grey Friars was ringing out the hour.

‘I think you had better summon your tiring men, your grace. Supper grows cold.’

My servants rushed back in and swarmed about me to tie my points, loop the knopfs of my doublet and urge my boots to slide on. Arms folded, Lovell waited, lolled against the side of casement. It did not escape me that he kept glancing sideways to the courtyard below. What was he expecting? Rivers to arrive with a spare dagger in case I had forgotten mine?

‘Is the Pope coming as well?’ I jested, checking my dress in a silver hand mirror.

‘If he does, he’ll have to sleep in a stable.’ Some of Lovell’s friendliness was seeping back.

‘Do him good then,’ I chuckled. Grabbing my hat, I made for the door, with Lovell following.

‘My lord!’ One of my bodyservants held my dagger scabbard across his palms. This might be my Last Supper if aught went wrong but I needed to convince Gloucester I was trustworthy.

‘Go to supper!’ I ordered them, ignoring the fool.

‘But you will need this, my lord! ’ Pershall, smiling, tossed my mantle to me.

Knyvett and my household knights fell in behind us. I was still straightening my hat brim as we reached Richard’s inn. Lovell abandoned us at the door to the fulsome welcome of the landlord while he went to announce my arrival to his master. To my astonishment, Gloucester came in person to greet me, pulling aside the gaudy arras of the passage to the private dining chamber and stepping down with arms held out.

‘Cousin of Buckingham, a thousand welcomes.’

Hell, he looked the worst I have ever seen him. He had been grieving, of course, and he was not a man who looked well in black; more a rust, moss and amber fellow. Instead of embracing him, I plucked off my hat and dropped to one knee, thankful the flagstones were clean. My henchmen did the same.

‘My Lord Protector,’ I murmured reverently, touching my lips to his ring.

‘I thank you, Harry.’ His voice was soft, moved with gratitude. He gripped my hand, drawing me to my feet. Then he stepped forward to greet Uncle Knyvett, Latimer and Delabere, and asked one of his pages to lead them out to join his household knights. Returning to me, he flung an arm about my shoulders. ‘Come, cousin! You must be famished, and the beef is tender…’ he glanced round to make sure mine host had been hustled out of earshot and added, ‘for Northampton.’

‘I thought to find you in poor spirits, your grace,’ I said, and saw his long chestnut lashes flicker down defensively.

‘I have done my mourning, cousin, and now must do my duty.’

I endeavoured not to freeze at as a voice behind me said, ‘Which you will do magnificently as usual, Dickon.’

Sweet Mother of God! Rivers!

‘Well, now here’s a surprise,’ I boomed. ‘I thought you ahead of us on the road.’

Cat’s big brother left the brass rings of the dividing curtain rattling as he emerged out of the inner chamber like a peacock butterfly from its chrysalis. The ash blonde hair and the expensive silver embroidery panels on his doublet made him look like a Burgundian courtier rather than a man in grief. His hanging sleeve rustled as he held out a hand to me. A plethora of gems, including a lodesterre as large as a sword pommel glittered on the long, thin fingers that reached out to clasp mine. Imagine a torch held in your face! That is what I felt as his aquamarine eyes studied me with a penetrating brilliance that reminded me sharply of the Queen.

Mind, I saw now that there were plentiful silver threads in his hair and the flesh above his feline eyes was looser. He still had an athlete’s body and could best my inches. Damn him! It irritated me that I could still feel vulnerable. Just standing before him was like having his fingernails claw my scars.

Not visible scars, though. He was too clever for that. It was he who had made my journey to manhood a torment, encouraging his younger brothers and the Grey boys, the Queen’s sons by her earlier marriage, to discomfort me in front of the court. The sudden elbow knock that would make me stumble, or an ankle hooked about my foot so that I tipped a ewer of hot lavender water into the lap of King Louis XI’s envoy. These may sound like pinpricks but a regime of maliciousness and loathing corrodes the soul. There were so many Woodvilles and there was only one of me.

I was not alone in feeling soft and fragile within my shell. I sensed discomfort ripple through Gloucester as he stood beside me, and so I turned my face reassuringly. My cousin’s skin glimmered moon-white beneath his mourning brim as he glanced from Rivers’ countenance to mine.

‘Is the Prince here as well?’ I asked, glancing towards the arras.

‘No,’ Rivers replied, sounding surprised by my question. ‘His highness is lodging in Stony Stratford. Did no one tell you?’ Belittling me, making me feel like an outsider, had always been his game.

Gloucester took breath to correct him but Rivers breezed on: ‘Yes, Harry, I know we had promised to meet with you here but any fool could see that Northampton was not going to be able accommodate everyone. I decided it was better for us all to be comfortable.’

You silver-tongued liar! I silently screamed at him. You must have planned this the moment you heard that we were coming to meet you.

‘That was thoughtful,’ I replied.

‘Shall we dine?’ Gloucester said curtly and left us to follow him along the passage while Lovell and Ratcliffe closed in behind myself and Rivers, ready to catch any snatch of words which might pass between us.

The trouble is when you expect slurs and sneers, you read them everywhere. Rivers gestured for me to precede him but even his acknowledgment that I had that right was like an insult.

‘How is our Catherine?’ he asked.

‘In good health and our latest babe is thriving,’ I replied, over my shoulder. Both of his wives had been infertile but he did have a lovechild by some slut of a noblewoman south of Bristol. ‘Cat would have liked to come with me.’ Yes, it was petty of me to remind him I had power over ‘Our Catherine’ but to resist that temptation would have been like holding back the tide.

‘How miserable of you not to bring her, Harry. The Queen would have been overjoyed to see her again. You must promise us you will let her come to London in sufficient time to have a new gown made for the coronation.’ That was a return jab, a reminder of my wife’s lament that I kept her in rags; a reminder, too, of the intent to crown the prince as soon as possible so as to dispense with Gloucester’s protectorship.

I smiled and took my seat at the board. It was set for just the three of us. Hunger was making me irritable but my capacity to put up with Rivers increased at the appearance of a platter of perch swimming in hot spiced sauce. My winecup with filled with an excellent claret – hard to come by since we had lost hold of Bordeaux.

My cousin was watching my face as I tried it. He knew I had a more sensitive taste for wine than most Englishmen. Along with hawks and hounds, wine had always been a safe choice of talk between us.

‘It has travelled passing well, would you not say?’ he asked and this gave Rivers a chance to sound forth on wines he remembered from his pilgrimage to Compostela. The man shoved his knowledge down other men’s throats like a scullion stuffing a capon’s arse. I had heard it all before from him but it helped loosen Gloucester’s reserve. By the time the local roast beef coffyred in pastry with a glaze of egg and saffron arrived, the conversation was flowing like the River Honddu after a summer thunderstorm.

My cousin let us have our heads, making little comment on our opinions. He skilfully kept the conversation light; perhaps he wanted to forget his fears for a little space, to pretend that his brother Edward still lusted in London and that we three noblemen were met together like chance travellers. Three unwise men seeking a king?

The servants removed the dishes from the board and the cloth, sullied with gravy, was whipped away exposing the naked oak shining like a Carthaginian’s well-oiled skin in the firelight. Lovell returned, sent for his lute and curled himself in the window seat, and as we began to give our attention to his music, Ratcliffe prowled in and sat down beside him.

Was Lovell’s song a warning? I do not think so. Judging by his expression as he sang and his nimble fingers on the strings, it was one he knew well.

There is none so wise a man

But he may wisdom know;

And there is none so strong a man

But he finds equal foe;

Nor there is none so false a man

But some man will him heed;

And there is none so weak a man

But some man shall him grieve.

Rivers lolled in his chair as he listened, stretching out his long legs, but Gloucester sat tight-lipped and concise in his mourning clothes, staring into his winecup like a man who bore the sorrows of all Christendom upon his shoulders. He sat so still, as if a heart no longer beat beneath his sable mantle; his face as pale as the pearls upon the brooch on his hat. I looked away, knowing he mourned where I did not, that he had travelled far longer than I to this time and this place.

‘Pox take it, Lovell, that’s far too sad,’ exclaimed Rivers, his voice fisting into our reverie. ‘Play something to liven us up! Ned would not want us to be in the dumps and I swear he would say as much, were he to be looking at us now.’

Rivers was probably right. ‘Ned’ would have slapped his puny brother around the shoulders and clashed his wine goblet into ours, but I saw Gloucester flinch – the telltale twitch of muscle beneath his left eye – as though on Rivers’ lips, the shaping of his beloved brother’s familiar name was a blasphemy.

‘Your grace?’ Lovell leaned forward.

Gloucester stirred. ‘I daresay Lord Rivers is right.’ Only the corners of his mouth lifted. ‘After all, you shared more leisure time with him than I did, my lord.’ And I swear Rivers did not note the ambiguity, for his Woodville sense of self was higher than any spire.

‘Know The Cricket and the Grasshopper, Lovell? Play that.’ Rivers straightened and raised his cup. ‘To Ned! May God take him to his bosom.’ The Devil morelike, I thought, but I touched my goblet rim to theirs.

‘Now this is supposed to be a true story’, began my brother in law, ‘save it was told to me by an Irishman. There was an English bagpiper went over to Ireland with the army of Richard of Bordeaux and one day he decided to slip off on his own for a bit and travel about the country. Anyway, off he went with his pipes slung on his shoulder and just as he was sitting down to have his dinner in a wood, three wolves began to accost him. He threw some meat to one and some cheese to another, hoping they would go away but still they slunk nearer and nearer. He was so afraid that he grabbed his bagpipes and began to play to give himself courage. The moment they heard the noise, the wolves ran away. “A pox on you!” he shouted after them. “If I had known you loved music so well, you should have had it before dinner.”’

‘Hmm,’ I applauded dryly. ‘An’ if I had been one of the wolves I should have made off too for I cannot abide such pig squeal either.’

‘No, you never did have much feel for music, did you,’ Rivers observed. I hoped he was not going to dredge out the story of how he and his brothers had slipped a mouse in the lute that my mother had sent me, when I had been summoned to play before the Queen and her ladies. Elizabeth and Cat had been in the jest as well.

‘I did not think they ever had wolves in Ireland,’ said Gloucester with an innocence unlikely to offend. He could do that skilfully and before Rivers had time to argue or even weigh up whether it was a slur, my cousin turned to me. ‘I am surprised at you saying that about the pipes, Harry. I am sure it is because you cannot have heard them played really well. Holy Paul, a good piper can almost draw the soul out of your body.’

‘You’ll not convince me,’ I insisted. ‘I have not your ear for music.’

‘Harry would not know the difference between a thrush and a crow,’ muttered Rivers silkily but Gloucester ignored the interruption.

‘Lord Howard poached a wondrous piper off Lady Margaret Beaufort. I’ll have a word with him when we reach London and see if he can arrange some entertainment for us.’

Well that would be something to look forward to. I changed the subject. ‘Well now,’ I asked with innocuous cheerfulness. ‘What are the arrangements for tomorrow?’

‘We talked about it before you arrived,’ replied Cat’s brother. ‘We can all leave together tomorrow morning. There’ll be no need for an early start. His highness was not feeling well and I should like him to sleep in. One of his teeth is nagging him and, of course, this has all been a huge blow to him.’ He crossed himself. ‘As to us all.’

My heart to testicles and shoulder-to-shoulder gesture was perfunctory. ‘And tomorrow he will be surrounded by uncles he hardly knows,’ I murmured.

‘Hardly that, Harry. I have told him all about you.’ It was a pinprick deftly given. ‘Would you be offended if I leave you now, dear brothers?’ Without our agreement, he pushed his chair back and towered over us. ‘I am – if you will pardon the crassness – as sore-thighed as one of the Bishop of Winchester’s pretty geese after a busy night.’ Gloucester’s lips tightened disapprovingly but Rivers did not appear to notice. ‘May you sleep well, Dickon.’ Dickon! Even I had never spoken to my cousin so familiarly.

Gloucester escorted Rivers to the door where, the one so tall, the other so slight, they said good night with a shake of hands.

‘Goodnight, Harry,’ my brother-in-law called out to me. Not bothering to rise, I raised my winecup to him in valediction. To your damnation, Rivers!

‘What o’clock is it?’ asked Gloucester, stretching and wearily drawing his fingers down his cheeks to his chin.

‘Nine has not yet struck,’ replied Ratcliffe. He picked up the wine jug, offering to refill our cups. My cousin shook his head.

‘I should let you find your bed.’ I scraped my chair back, ready to rise.

‘No, no,’ answered Gloucester, gesturing me to remain. ‘Cast your eye over this.’ He stooped and fetched out a wooden box from beneath the table. I guessed what it contained and sure enough, he lifted out a book swathed in soft cloth. As soon as he unwrapped it, I could see instantly that it was one of Caxton’s, for I recognised his device with its lozenge borders exquisitely tooled upon the cover. Gloucester set it before me and I unfastened the gilt clasp with reverence and turned to the first page. It was Rivers’ translation of The Dictes and Sayings of Philosophers, printed at Westminster twelve years ago. It was impossible to get such a book now; no one parted with them. I fingered it in awe.

‘A priceless gift.’

‘He brought it with him,’ sighed my cousin, with the tone of a man who had just accepted a bribe against his conscience. ‘I already have a copy. Would you like it, Harry?’ Indeed, I would, but such generosity made me hesitate. ‘No, truly, take it,’ he said, waving aside my thanks.

I turned over the first leaf that boasted more lozenged artistry, and read Caxton’s introduction.

‘See, even William Caxton does not know what to make of Rivers,’ I snorted and looked up to see if Gloucester agreed. ‘He is a very learned fellow and yet…’ I let the silence speak before I added, ‘There was little sign of the hair shirt tonight.’

My cousin grinned. ‘Not on the outside, but if Purgatory is waiting for him then his underclothes should manage to strike a few years off the punishment.’

‘Like a night of adultery and a good flail in the morning?’ I suggested.

‘Some people do both at once,’ cut in Ratcliffe, and we all laughed.

‘My masters, it is getting late,’ yawned Lovell, leaning his fair head against the neck of the lute. I swaddled the book and pensively slid it back into its case. What was truly going on in Gloucester’s mind? Did he suspect Rivers and I were in league, ready to crush him like a flea, between our thumbnails? Had he believed that supper had been but a mummers’ entertainment and reality would be a cold breakfast of daggers?

I had had enough of side-stepping.

‘Before you retire, Richard, I should like to talk with you about tomorrow.’

The hammer had struck the anvil. It sparked a sharp look from him.

‘Yes, I suppose you would.’ He touched Lovell’s shoulder. ‘Thank you for the music, Francis. Get you to bed.’ Then he raised a questioning eyebrow at Ratcliffe.

‘I’ll be within call,’ growled his human hound and, with a curt inclination of his head to each of us, Ratcliffe followed Lovell out. At last there was just Gloucester, standing before the hearth, and myself at the table.

I stayed seated. My cousin was the runt of the Yorkist brothers. I was a nearly a head taller than him and I wanted him to feel comfortable and superior as he listened to me. I scrubbed my finger across the moist circle left by my cup upon the wood, wondering where to begin.

‘So, tomorrow?’ Gloucester sighed and once more put his hands in the small of his back and stretched. Since puberty, his spine has become curved and I know it pains him greatly at times.

‘I am not sure what is going on in this place,’ I declared honestly. ‘I do not know what you believe of me either, Richard.’ I had not called him that since boyhood, but I was the second duke in England after him and I needed him to remember and respect that.

He looked round at me, his thoughts a locked door. ‘What would you like me to believe?’

I took a deep breath. How do you convince a man you had no hand in his brother’s execution when it was your mouth that sentenced him to death?

‘I should like you to know that although I sat as steward at George’s trial – the only office I was ever given, I might add – I did not support the death sentence. Unfortunately, we were given no choice. The King and Queen wanted him dead.’ Edward and Elizabeth had made that clear.

Gloucester’s mouth was a tight line. He came back to the table and poured us both another drink. It was some moments before he spoke.

‘He was a risk to the succession, Harry. If Edward had died earlier, George would have tried to take the crown.’

His opinion surprised me. Not just his stern conclusion but his calm in discussing it. At the time of his brother’s imprisonment, he had been vehement in George’s defence even though the man had been a ranting drunkard.

‘Your brother was his own worst enemy.’ I leaned my head upon my hand remembering the bitterness that had raged. Condemning a fellow duke to death had made me feel vulnerable. I felt vulnerable now.

‘Yes,’ said Richard of Gloucester. ‘A taste of blood is dangerous. Once there is a failure to respect the value of human life…’ He drew a downward spiral in the air.

‘Especially a duke’s,’ I added. ‘We are supposed to be inviolate. I think we should close ranks.’

‘Do you indeed? And you think me at risk, I presume?’

‘I know I am,’ I replied gloomily, dropping my gaze. ‘I have had a bellyful of the Queen and her kin and they know it. I have been kept standing in the corner of the schoolroom for far too long, cousin.’

He smiled. ‘St Paul has the truth of it: “When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things.” I do not think Edward treated you decently either, Harry.’

Oh, he was kind, so kind that I wondered if he was going to be able to sidestep the grave the Queen was digging for him in London.

I cleared my throat. ‘To speak plainly, I was wondering if you would consider betrothing your son to my little Bess.’ Looking up to see his reaction, I found nothing in his face to reassure me.

‘Ah, so it seems I have to purchase your loyalty, after all.’

Damnation on my frank words! I should not have rushed the matter.

‘No,’ I said irritably, showing him that he had bruised my honour. ‘It is just something I have been thinking of for a long time. I want the best for her.’ This was not going the way I wanted. The catlike way he was watching me, I felt I was already arraigned for treason. ‘Clearly, you believe I am in league with the Woodvilles and this is a trap,’ I muttered unhappily.

Then to my astonishment, he laughed. ‘Get off your high horse, man. No, I can guess why you are here although I have not completely fathomed Rivers.’

‘I should think—’

‘No, not yet,’ he hushed me. ‘We are talking about you, Harry. Why are you here? Revenge?’

I stared evenly back at him. ‘Partly.’

‘No, do better than that. Revenge is not enough. I want other reasons.’

‘Very well, then.’ I stood up, warming to my purpose. ‘It is time the old nobility reasserted itself. There are others like me with ancient titles yet we have been denied our rightful place at the royal council table by the Queen’s creatures. I want my rights, cousin. I have waited long enough.’ I paced to the shuttered casement and back. ‘Besides, you need me tomorrow.’

‘Do I?’

‘If you imagine Rivers came back to—’

‘Kiss my hand? You are doing a tailored job as well, I might say.’ He was leaning against the table watching me. The candles lit his face from below. Cynicism had its tendrils into him like lichen on granite.

‘So, Harry? The Prince’s company could have reached St Alban’s by now thinking me lullabied into sleep by Rivers and your worthy self.’ Well, he would have been a fool not to suspect me. ‘For all I know,’ he continued, ‘the Queen may have offered you Wales and the chancellorship of England.’

‘Yes, she could have, Richard, but she didn’t. God’s truth, cousin, do you want my loyalty or not?’ The room was silent save for my fractured breath. ‘Hastings asked me to support you and here I am!’

He came across to the table and ran a hand across the case that held River’s book, his expression pained.

‘Forgive me for saying this, Harry, and do not take offence, but you’ve never fought in a battle, have you?’

‘No, cousin, I have not. Do you doubt my combat skills?’

‘Not at all. That’s not what I’m trying to say.’ I watched his fingers slide wearily across his cheek bones before he spoke again. ‘Battles are a savage waste and I never want to fight another one.’

Was he suddenly lily-livered?

‘Look,’ I said, ‘if the Prince should reach London ahead of us and be crowned before you are sworn in as Lord Protector, Elizabeth will become Regent. Once that happens, she will find some way of arraigning us for treason. You and I shall be hauled to the Tower to have our heads chopped off and she will make sure our sons shall be kept as powerless as I was.’

‘You forget the Royal Council, Harry.’

‘The Royal Council is already stacked, cousin. You know that Hastings is having a hard time of it. I tell you they will make Elizabeth Regent. And if you think England will be better for it….’ I shrugged, fuming.

He sucked in his cheeks. ‘You think I could make a better task of ruling England?’

‘By Heaven, yes!’ With me to help you. ‘You could arrest Rivers tonight to be sure.’ There, it was spoken at last.

He made no answer. The room was growing cold. I crouched to poke the dying embers and set two small logs across them but maybe I had left it too late.

‘There has to be evidence.’ The words came from behind my shoulder. ‘If one acts without evidence, it is tyranny. I need the Royal Council’s approval not their disgust.’

‘I can see that.’ I straightened, brushing my hands, certain now that he and I would be arrested tomorrow like a pair of hapless poachers. I had thought him a strong man but I was wrong. His inopportune sense of justice was making a eunuch of him.

He crossed to the casement and glanced out behind the oiled cloth that hid the street.

I was angry. Was there any use in arguing further? Looking at him now with shadows of weariness cradling his eyes and his lank hair, dull as tarnished copper, I glimpsed how the Londoners would see him after the glorious, towering Edward, and my soul began to ache. I had thought that my change of fortune lay with Gloucester, but God had been mocking me.

I drew breath to take my leave when there was a loud rattle of an outside latch, the growl of voices and the clank of armour in the passageway.

‘What the—’ My stomach panicked. Was it Rivers’ men come for us? But Gloucester was watching me, his gaze narrow.

Christ’s mercy! So he had suspected me to throw in my lot with Rivers. I was to be arrested.

Jesu! I had not even a dagger to defend myself. I eyed the poker but Gloucester stood once more before the hearth. There was nothing I could seize to hold my enemies at bay except the book box.

Ratcliffe burst into the room. Two armed men in white boar surcotes were behind him, escorting a fellow in a servant’s tabard. It was stitched with the Woodville magpie device.

Gloucester seemed hardly surprised. Was the man being brought in to make false witness against me? I hugged the box against my breast and tried to stay calm.

‘Your grace.’ The fellow tumbled to his knees, clearly exhausted. Had he tried to outrun Gloucester’s dogs? Would he grovel for mercy? No, something else was going on here.

Gloucester was smiling. ‘Be seated, drink first and then speak freely. This gentleman with the bookbox is his grace of Buckingham.’

Feeling stupid, I put the damned thing down and waited, albeit still tense as a loaded crossbow.

The man drank almost to the dregs and knuckled his lips. ‘It is like this, your grace. The Prince’s retinue have orders to leave early tomorrow morning without you, and Lord Rivers is here to delay you. It is certain they intend to crown the Prince the moment they reach London and prevent you becoming Lord Protector.’

‘How many of them are there? Have the Queen’s men from London arrived yet?’

‘Aye, they came in this evening under Sir Richard Grey’s command.’

My cousin’s eyebrows had risen. ‘Grey, eh.’

‘An’ I can’t swear to numbers, my lord, but it looked like close to a thousand, and every jack of ’em decently armed. I’d estimate they have over two thousand altogether. It will be nigh impossible to reach the Prince.’

My breathing had returned to normal. So I was not a suspect but an ally still.

I cleared my throat. ‘And we have only six hundred between us, cousin.’

My tone told him that we were already dead men. Rivers probably had a force waiting to ambush us before we reached Stony Stratford. My only consolation was that it was Sir Richard Grey in charge. I had been expecting Dorset, the Queen’s oldest son, to head the escort.

Gloucester made no answer and the messenger took a last swig.

‘How can you be so certain of their intention, sirrah?’ I demanded. ‘Are you privy to their council?’

The fellow glanced to my cousin for permission before he spoke. ‘Because, my lord, I have been a bodyservant in the Prince’s household this last year.’

Gloucester’s cheeks were twin concaves and there was a sheepish glint to his eyes as he watched me.

‘Have you agents in my household, too, my lord of Gloucester?’ I asked rather huffily.

‘I do not think so,’ he laughed, and clapped a hand on his spy’s shoulders. ‘My thanks, loyal friend. To bed with you and sleep well.’

‘So!’ He clasped his hands gleefully and turned to Ratcliffe. ‘Dick, set your men stealthily about Lord Rivers’ inn. We mustn’t panic him. The moment there is any stirring, wake me, whatever the hour. Tell Huddleston and Scope to post guards on all the town gates and posterns. None of Rivers’ men must have a chance to warn Grey.’

I stared at my cousin, feeling as though my sails had gone slack.

‘To bed, Harry,’ he exclaimed, grasping me by the forearms. ‘I suspect we shall have to rise early, very early.’ I gazed at him in delight. I was no longer in Brecknock but at the throat of history.

‘You played me like a fish, you whoreson,’ I said affectionately.

His hazel eyes gleamed. ‘I remembered there was another Duke of Gloucester, Humphrey, Hal of Agincourt’s brother, and he was Lord Protector—’

‘–and his nephew’s queen had him poisoned,’ I finished.

‘It is not going to happen to me, cousin, be sure of that.’ For an instant, I saw the glitter of tears about his eyes but it could have been my imagination.

 

CHAPTER 3

‘Your grace! Wake up!’ Bannaster was shaking me. It was still dark, Hell take it!

‘My lord, his grace of Gloucester’s man is below.’ That was Pershall. The wet cloth he scoured across my stubble was unnecessary; danger can wake a man as fast as smoke in the nostrils. A piss and a mouth of ale later, I stumbled down the outer stairs. Knyvett and Limerick were already rousing up our retainers. I bade a dozen to accompany me and the rest to make ready to depart.

I met with my cousin outside in the courtyard in the drizzling gloom of pre-dawn. His broad collar was up like a dragon’s ruff around his neck and he looked even more haggard than he had last night. Dwarfing him was a plump citizen, fidgety as a hen about to lay and looking exceedingly uncomfortable in the torchlight. I recognised Master Lynde.

‘Why is the mayor here?’ I whispered, plucking my cousin’s sleeve, as I followed him out beneath the lane archway into the street.

‘To bear witness that justice is being meted out. Rivers tried to leave. I have no qualms now in arresting him.’

My heart leapt. ‘Where is he now?’

‘Confined to his inn. Come, there’s little time.’

He walked fast. I kept up with him, determined that the world would see I was in this with him. Lynde and a score of his armed men fell in behind us. Our footsteps echoed ominously in the silent street. I had never felt so alive in my life.

 

ARMS folded in a sulk, Rivers was leaning against a trestle in the candlelight of the inn’s main chamber, where the air hung heavy with last night’s ale. Although a night’s growth silvered his chin, he still looked very much the courtier and his emerald dressing robe, which swirled with embroideries of golden pilgrim shells, looked to be of heavy Syrian silk. Of course, his hair was suitably unkempt as if he had been awakened by our knocking and no doubt his travelling clothes had been swiftly tidied away as proof of his innocence.

‘Dickon,’ he exclaimed, letting irritation and puzzlement swathe his features. ‘What is going on?’ Then he recognised the mayor and I swear the blood ebbed from his face even though he continued with an air of nonchalance. ‘Is there some felon gone to ground? My servants tell me you have the inn surrounded.’

‘Yes.’ There was an unpleasant silence

The Queen’s brother gasped like a landed fish. ‘Why, I went out myself to see what was going on and two men in your livery thrust me back with pikes.’

‘In your dressing gown or was it your riding gear?’ I asked. At that, he looked from my cousin’s face to mine and discovering how much I hated him, turned back to my cousin’s brooding countenance. There was no more ‘Dickon’ in his address.

‘What is amiss here, Gloucester? I cannot be under suspicion. I came back all the way from Stony Stratford especially to sup with you.’ He swung round angrily on me and anger was unusual for Rivers. ‘Is this your interference, Buckingham? What poison have you been putting about?’

I moved so that the trestle was between us and leaned across at him.
‘You were fully clad earlier, my lord, and we know you gave orders to your men last night that you would be leaving Northampton before we were astir.’

‘No, that’s a lie. I swear to you I have only this instant been awakened.’ He threw that at Gloucester and swung round to face Lynde. ‘Master Mayor, as the Lord God is my witness, these are false accusations.’

But the Mayor of Northampton stood silent. At a nod from his master, Ratcliffe stepped forward with two soldiers at his elbows

‘Raise your arms, my lord!’

Rivers stood seething as they searched him for weapons.

‘Enough!’ Thrusting aside his robe, he unfastened his beltpurse and plucked out a folded square of parchment with dags of sealing wax clinging to it. ‘This is a letter that King Edward, your brother, signed on his deathbed giving me full powers to escort Prince Edward to London with as many men as I choose. Master Mayor, witness that I have done naught but my duty.’ Ratcliffe handed it across to Richard, who carried it to the candle.

‘I have no quarrel with this, Lord Rivers.’ He passed the parchment to the mayor. ‘However, as uncles of the blood royal, his grace of Buckingham and I see it as our duty to escort our nephew to London, yet you sought to prevent us.’ He took the letter back from Lynde and whisked it into the candle flame.

‘Christ Almighty, Gloucester! The King loved us both. You cannot do this.’

But Rivers, who had beguiled many princes of the world with his verses, his jousting and his handsome looks, had overplayed his hand.

‘You will remain here under arrest, my lord, until this matter is fully investigated. Master Lynde, I pray you command my men as your own in this matter.’

Gloucester nodded to the mayor and strode sternly out through the line of soldiers. Lynde bustled after him as though the instructions had not been enough.

I lingered at the door and turned.

Cat’s brother was standing dazed among the ugly scrubbed trestles like a battered tree after a tempest. He had underestimated Richard and he had underestimated me.

‘Adieu, Rivers, I’ll carry your love to Elizabeth.’

He made no reply to me, no pithy answer worthy of the philosopher or pilgrim, but just stared expressionless at me. It would be the first time I could leave his company not feeling like a fool.

‘Harry.’

I turned.

And then he spat.

 

MY cousin was already mounted, his mouth a grim line of impatience. On horseback, with his collared mantle lending him more substance and the long crocodilus of our retinues tailing out behind him, he looked what I hoped he was, a man about to take possession of a kingdom.

‘Is aught wrong, my lord of Buckingham?’ he asked. The torches must have lit the raw wound of emotion in my face as I slid into the saddle and took my horse’s reins.

‘No,’ I answered hoarsely, unclenching my jaw. ‘Let us be quit of here.’

He twisted round and gave the order to move off. As swiftly as any army might, we rode down Watling Street.

Darkness and drizzle are poor companions and we made little speed until the dawn. It was about half-past the hour of eight when Richard waved a halt and signalled to one of his captains. The man instantly rode back along the column.

Uncle Knyvett urged his horse up alongside mine. ‘How is this going to be played out, Harry? We are nearly at the causeway to Stony Stratford.’ He was jumpy and with good reason. I was wondering the same myself. It was a few years since I had passed through the town but I remembered the causeway being narrow, a good place for an ambush.

Richard heard us and turned in his saddle. ‘If they are expecting Lord Rivers at any instant, they’ll have lookouts. We do not want to disappoint them, do we?’ One of his knights claimed his attention and he turned away with a tight smile.

‘Clear as Yorkshire mud,’ muttered Uncle Knyvett. ‘Am I missing someth—’

I laughed. ‘Look!’

A horseman bearing River’s scallop shell banner galloped up from behind us and foot soldiers, wearing the stolen liveries of his company, swarmed past us to halt panting, ahead of our horses. They regrouped themselves tightly behind the banner, glancing back over their shoulders. It was fair-haired Lovell that they were waiting for. Garbed in Rivers’ hat and riding cloak, he spurred past us to head the procession.

‘Well, it might work,’ muttered Uncle Knyvett grudgingly. ‘Morelike, the Woodvilles have the child halfway to London by now.’

‘And leave Lord Rivers to our loving kindness? No, I do not think so.’

‘Mother of God, Harry, the Queen’s grace has sent over a thousand men to safeguard her fledgling. Are you sure my lord of Gloucester knows what he’s up against?’

‘I trust his judgment, uncle.’ Then I added an honest addendum. ‘God’s truth, but sometimes it is hard to tell betwixt what is thought out and what is improvised.’

Uncle Knyvett’s answer was an exasperated sigh as he checked that his sword could slide freely. Then he took off his cloak so if need be he might wind it round his left forearm as a buckler. I felt like doing the same but with Richard a few paces away and the rest of our retinue needing confidence, I resisted the temptation.

We gave Lovell about a hundred paces start and the ruse worked, for we heard a horn sound ahead of us. Nevertheless, my mouth was dry as I sighted the causeway chapel and the first inn of the town. My spurs almost tangled with Richard’s as we led the way across the narrow causeway.

Well, no one attacked us but any fool could realise Stony Stratford was a confounded death trap. All I could see, once we passed the Eleanor Cross, was the narrow, unbroken strip of taverns and merchants’ houses, with Lovell’s men heading towards a huge plug of people, stoppering any escape.

Sweet Christ! I had not seen as many people since the Queen’s coronation when I was scarce out of infant skirts. I swallowed, my hand longing to clamp round my sword handle. Would I die this morning as I had feared in my dreams last night? Had it been like this for my grandsire at St Albans, forced up against somebody’s front door or cornered in a yard, hacked to death between a rainwater barrel and a housewife’s washing?

‘Christ ha’ mercy!’ I must have said it aloud for Richard turned his face to me. The whoreson did not have a twitch of fear in his entire body.

‘Time to send our heralds, I believe.’ He lifted his arm and immediately the captain behind us set a horn to his lips. Our trumpeters blared and Lovell’s men split rank, fluidly swerving aside to let our heralds through. We followed.

I could see now that scores of townsfolk stood at the edge of a huge pack of liveried retainers and in their midst, beneath the drooping pennons and damp banners, were a thicket of horsemen, who were reining round to face us in some concern as they saw our banners. Our heralds rode straight in, looking to neither right nor left and hubbub ensued as the townsfolk gave way, tearing like a threadbare cloth before their horses.

My stallion threw up his head. He must have felt my fear running down the taut rein. Sweet Jesu, I had never been so afraid in my life. Either side my stirrups, the Woodville men-at-arms stared, their mouths roundels of confusion beneath their brimmed sallets, but a yell, that’s all it would take, and they could drive their baselards into our horses’ breasts and drag us down. I was praying hard. The stretching crowd seemed endless. To my right a great ganglion of retainers was bulging out into a marketplace. Beyond that was the river. Nowhere to run.

We drew close enough to see that our young quarry was astride his horse. Judging by their gestures, several nobles about the Prince were in fierce argument and a young man with long blond hair was staring at us in consternation—Sir Richard Grey, Cat’s nephew, the Queen’s son from an earlier marriage.

Richard dismounted and I did so, too. The way before us was insufficient to walk abreast and I followed him dry-mouthed, feeling like Moses walking the bed of the Red Sea while God held back its might. But not for an instant did my cousin hesitate. He might be a runt in stature but he was cursed tall in courage.

‘God save your grace’ whispered like a litany as we passed, and word that Gloucester was come hissed out through the crowd like wind through reeds. The townsfolk began huzzahing.

The twelve year old Prince was staring at us and then he recognised his uncle and inclined his head. A pretty young stripling he was, too, with the leggy look of a young colt. The cap and mantle of the mourning blue, reserved for kings, favoured his complexion and the Woodville ash-blond hair. As Richard reached his stirrup, the boy, with genuine pleasure, extended his hand for his uncle to kiss.

Then it was my turn.

‘God bless your highness.’ Since he did not dismount, I did not kneel.

Golden lashes twitched above eyes that were a chillier blue than his father’s. There was no cheer for me, only puzzlement. I had not seen him since his little brother’s wedding to the Mowbray heiress five years ago, just before George’s trial. He must have been only seven years old; now he was almost thirteen.

‘My lord,’ he said politely, but with little warmth in his greeting. Such a Woodville already! I discreetly lowered my stare to his little cross of pearls and rubies. By Heaven, he clearly had no notion of who I was or if he did, it was a studied insult. I was not at all pleased.

‘This is his grace the Duke of Buckingham, your highness,’ intervened a man wearing a the broad-brimmed hat of a churchman. I lifted my head and received a placatory smile. It was Alcock, Bishop of Worcester, President of the Council of the Welsh Marches, wondering which side of his bread to butter.

‘Yes, another uncle, your highness.’ I nodded, with my teeth showing. ‘It has been a long while since we met.’

‘You are welcome, Uncle Buckingham,’ Prince Edward said, a spark of memory flaring. But he was frowning beyond me at the noblemen from his entourage who were rapidly dismounting to greet his Uncle Gloucester. ‘I though we were leaving now,’ he said loudly. The irritation edging the choirboy voice seemed to be directed at his half-brother, Grey.

Richard heard the complaint and swung round to face him. ‘Have you been waiting long, your highness?’ he asked cheerfully.

‘An hour at least. Where is my Uncle Rivers? You said he was here, brother.’ Another verbal cannonball hurled at Grey, whose mouth was still catching flies. Rivers’ banner had disappeared but Grey was staring northwards across the crowd in utter puzzlement. His pallor matched his name.

‘Dear me,’ said Richard smoothly. ‘I thought it was my lord of Buckingham and I who had delayed you, your highness.’

‘No, Uncle Gloucester. It is my Uncle Rivers. He should be here by now. You must have seen him on the road. Did he not sup with you last evening?’

My cousin glanced northwards without concern. ‘He is delayed, I fear. Shall we go to your inn and take refreshment?’

‘But we have to leave now, Uncle Gloucester.’ There was a stamp of foot in his tone.

‘Do we, your highness?’

‘Why, yes, madame my mother expects us in London. I am to be crowned.’

‘And has your highness had breakfast?’ Richard asked and glanced round in friendly fashion at the royal followers.

‘No, uncle.’

‘Then let us have breakfast,’ I interrupted, making it a song for three voices.

What could our little uncrowned colt reply? Would his stepbrother, Grey, or his hoary treasurer, Vaughan, assert we must hurry? Not Grey, who had many a time smuggled spiders into my winecup when I lived at Westminster. He suddenly discovered his bootcaps of immense interest as I stared along the unhappy cluster of officers from Ludlow who had usurped my rightful dominance in Wales. ‘Sir Richard Vaughan,’ I exclaimed, singling out the man who had been given my duties in Western Wales. ‘Maybe you think otherwise?’

Pale as a newly hewn tombstone, he looked round at me, and saw Richard studying him, too.

‘No, not at all, your gra…, your graces.’

Those around him shuffled and murmured. Not one of them was prepared to stick his neck out. Had Rivers been in command there, history could have been written differently and I might already have an obituary.

Ah, it was a sweet hour. I was hard put not to grin with satisfaction as I watched the Queen’s knights stiffly consign their horses’ bridles to their servants and follow us. The crowd parted, cooing. An uncle at each elbow, the future King Edward V walked between us back in the gentle drizzle to The Rose and Crown. Most appropriate. A blushing rose; you could see where the white paint was fading and the old Lancastrian red was showing through.

At first, I thought Richard was handling the business like a master, steering everyone into privacy away from a public quarrel. Without even a bloody nose, he had outfaced and outmanoeuvred the entire Woodville retinue. It was checkmate with a soaring, illuminated capital ‘C’. There was no question now that I should throw in my lot with his.

I could not resist hurling a discreet smirk in Uncle Knyvett’s direction, but seeing Grey being prodded along behind us, I have to admit that he was not a worthy Goliath to our David. Elizabeth’s mistake. She should have sent the Archbishop of York, a prince of the Church, not her commoner son. You do not fight eagles with a jackdaw.

 

ONCE inside the inn, Richard abruptly held out his arms to his nephew. Time for an embrace and thump of each other’s shoulders in mutual grief.

‘I cannot tell you how sorry I am about your father, lad.’ I could hear the Yorkshire dialect in my cousin’s voice as he let genuine emotion overcome him. Droplets glistened on his lashes, and, for his part, the Prince could be heard gulping back his tears. ‘I loved him so much, Ned. England has lost a great king.’ Uncle Gloucester drew back, swallowing. ‘But look at you.’ He buffeted the boy’s chest. ‘Almost a man.’

They were both sniffling and the grief was epidemic. Someone behind me blew his nose loudly and there was a little patter of applause. All eye-wipingly moving unless you had no future except four walls and a pail to piss in and Grey looked as though he needed a pail.

My belly was rumbling but Richard decided some sort of formal speech was due. I would have been happy with a five minute eulogy on the late king, and, besides, Stony Stratford’s Rose and Crown was hardly the hall of Parliament, but my cousin’s endorsement of our common grief rapidly turned into a sermon.

Heaven help us! It was as if his control, dammed up while he thought himself in peril, suddenly broke. All his resentment at bearing the weight of administration in the north and campaigning against the Scots, while down in the south his brother tweaked Mistress Shore’s duckies and grew fat with indulgence, spewed out.

I am paraphrasing somewhat. Richard’s phrases were somewhat dryer, but the meaning was the same—the exclamation of the Labouring Brother against the Prodigal Son. Bitter as gall! And he openly blamed the Queen’s kinsmen, especially Rivers and the Grey boys for encouraging King Edward in orgies of lewd carnality and wine bibbling.

God’s truth, I thought, here’s a different side to my cousin’s coin. Just last night I had called him a ‘whoreson’ in play. I knew better from now on. I must cut my cloth to suit the times.

Richard had reached his peroration.

‘Arrest them!’ he commanded, pointing at Grey, Vaughan and Haute in turn.

‘Ned!’ shrieked Grey, flinging himself on his knees before his half-brother. ‘Forbid it! You are the King!’ He clutched the Prince’s hose so tight that it was a wonder the boy’s points did not snap.

‘Uncle Gloucester,’ intervened the boy, confused and frightened by Grey’s vehemence. ‘I do not understand.’

‘You are the King, not him!’ Grey repeated, shaking the royal legs. ‘In God’s Name, save us!’

The boy drew himself together. His voice wobbled but he managed to argue.

‘Your pardon, Uncle Gloucester, but if the king my father appointed these lords to administer my household and the Welsh Marches, I do not see why anyone should doubt his judgment, for they have committed no offence against me. And they were certainly not in London giving my father any evil counsel but with me at Ludlow. If my Uncle Rivers were here, he would tell you so.’ What a clever lad. Heaven help us if he was crowned too soon. The selfish note in his voice irked me, too. He sounded more put out by the threat to his household arrangements, than concerned for Grey.

I stepped forward clearing my throat. ‘Your highness and your grace, will you hear me, please?’ I asked, bowing deeply, and most of those present thought I was going to speak on Grey’s behalf.

The Prince nodded, looking relived at my intervention.

‘Do stand up, nephew,’ I said to Grey, drawing him to his feet and wrapping my arm about him. ‘Wait over here, if you please.’ I left him beside Ratcliffe and turned to face the boy. ‘Your highness, I wish to say two things. Firstly, that your household officers at Ludlow were people appointed as teachers to educate you; they were not appointed to counsel you as king.’ I waited for Bishop Alcock to twitch or interrupt but his mouth was clamped shut. A pity!

‘Indeed,’ I continued, ‘I believe no one in this place would doubt that it should be the greatest and wisest lords of this realm who should attend your royal person and sit on the Royal Council.’ I ignored Vaughan’s furious countenance. After all, once being treasurer to Dead Ned did not mean he had a right to be so again.

‘The other matter is this. Your father, God rest his soul, appointed his grace of Gloucester as Lord Protector but there has been a conspiracy to thwart your father’s wishes and these gentlemen here are at the heart of it. So, I regret to say, is your Uncle Rivers.’ That drew a protest from Grey. I turned. ‘Until these matters are investigated, sirs, I ask you to give yourselves into custody. If you are innocent, you have nothing to fear.’ I swung back to the Prince. ‘They need to answer questions, your highness. It is a formality, nothing sinister.’

‘My loyalty is to my brother the King,’ exclaimed Grey, but he was not coming up with any arguments to defend himself. If he had had his wits about him, he and the boy should have been ten miles along the road by now.

Now perhaps we could get on with breakfast.

‘But I am still confused!’ muttered Prince Edward. ‘What conspiracy?’

Your turn, I indicated to Richard.

The tempest that had rocked him was gone and he was calm as any earnest magistrate.

‘We have evidence that these knights and Lord Rivers planned to arrest your Uncle Buckingham and myself on the way to London in order to prevent me becoming Lord Protector.’ His tone grew stentorian again. ‘I did not come with an army but Rivers did. So did Grey here. Do you need two thousand men against my three hundred? What other possible motive could they have had?’

‘To honour me, perhaps, Uncle Gloucester,’ the boy replied and swallowed, but he had been well-schooled in speech-making. Encouraged by Grey’s desperate look, he flexed his wings again. ‘My lords and gentlemen, let us all journey to London together and you may air this matter before my lady mother and the royal coun—’

Over my dead body!

‘Your pardon, your highness,’ I interrupted. ‘It is not the business of women but of men to rule this kingdom. Your father left no such authority to your mother.’

‘Edward,’ said Richard gently, wrapping his arm about the boy’s shoulders. ‘I never failed to obey your father’s wishes and out of the great love I have for him, I would not fail him now. Shall you be content with your father’s wishes or not?’

The Prince looked wretchedly towards his half-brother and then back to his Uncle Richard and again to the watching faces, then his shoulders sank. Ha!

‘I am content with the government my father wanted.’ His expression begrudged his words but it was enough. The air seemed to rush back into the chamber as though we had all been holding our breath in unison.

‘His grace of Buckingham and I shall breakfast with his highness upstairs,’ my cousin declared and with that he swept the tearful boy to his chamber, while I made sure the rest of the Prince’s officers were herded together in the taproom with our soldiers on all the entrances. I gave orders to feed all of them. Men are more open to change on a full stomach.

Alcock was the only bishop among them, or so I thought until I recognised the small man beside him. Ah, yes, Robert Stillington, Bishop of Bath and Wells. I remembered Stillington from the time of George’s trial. Dead Ned had booted him off to the Tower for ‘utterances’—though our jury never heard what they were. Why he was lurking in this company of Woodville supporters was a puzzlement that I would leave to another time.

Upstairs, it was clear that the new King of England had indulged in a good blub, for the boy’s nose and ears were red, and Richard, sitting next to him on a settle, had damp blotches on his mantle.

‘It looks like it is clearing up be a fine afternoon,’ I observed, falling back on our English habit of commenting on the weather when there is nothing else to say. I leaned out over the sunny sill of the jutting gable, rejoicing that I was not bleeding across a doorstep. Down below the townsfolk were still loitering, waiting for another glimpse of the Prince. A young woman blew me a kiss and I smiled back, and then I drew a tight breath.

Across the street a monkey tail of cheerful Woodville retainers was stretching down the street and one of Richard’s bannerets was riding up and down directing more to join it. Curious, I leaned out further and saw that it led to the back of a cart flanked by pikemen in my cousin’s murrey and blue. A chest was open in the back and some sort of largesse was being handed out. Devil take it! The whoresons were being paid off! Some were disappearing into The Cock and The Crossed Keys or eyeing up the cluster of young townswomen, who should have known better. Others were saying farewells, preparing to leave. Sweet Mother of God, my cousin had the cunning of Ulysses.

Oh, I had a lot to learn, I could see that. I closed the window, feeling as useless as teats on a ram, and turned. Somehow I would have to find a way to tip the balance of our alliance so he owed me a thing or two.

My cousin raised a complacent eyebrow at me but I shook my head and took off my hat and mantle, and then I unbuckled my purse.

‘Did I hear something about your highness having a nagging tooth?’ I asked kindly, going down on my haunches before the Prince.

‘I’m not a three year old, Uncle Buckingham.’

‘No, of course not.’ But I was justly reprimanded. It was not my little lad Ned I was dealing with. ‘This,’ I said, holding a shiny bezoar stone cabuchoned in my fingers, ‘came from the belly of a creature that has a neck like a spire and lives beyond the boundaries of Christendom. It was given to me by Lord Hastings when I was your age. I assure you it works. You sleep with it under your pillow.’

It was clear he did not want a gift from me but he muttered his thanks and kept it.

‘You might enjoy a rest later, Edward,’ murmured Uncle Gloucester. ‘What time did they make you rise?’

‘Six. I was waiting saddled up outside for hours.’

‘So much for sleeping in,’ I remarked. ‘Ah, here at last is breakfast. I am starving.’

A procession of servants carried in pottage, newly baked bread and local cheeses.

‘I’m not hungry,’ our new sovereign said sullenly. My cousin pulled a face at me behind the boy’s head and I shrugged.

‘What do you intend to do now, make for London?’ I asked as he washed his hands thoroughly in the ewer.

‘No, not until I have word from Lord Hastings that it is safe. I am not going to walk into a charge of treason.’

‘Lord Hastings, uncle?’ The royal pitcher had ears. We had found the magic word to open his mind.

‘Yes, Edward, it was Lord Hastings who warned your Uncle Buckingham and myself that your kinsmen would try to prevent me becoming Lord Protector.’

‘I do not understand any of this.’ Well, Edward, welcome to Westminster, where we smile like the crocodilus and never say what we really think.

When our sulky fledgling fled to the privy, Richard shook his fingers as though burned and grinned at me.

It was a poxy breakfast. The pottage was oversalted, the heart of the bread was undercooked and the cheeses lacked flavour.

Afterwards, Richard sent for a writing board and began busily scratching out a letter in his own hand to let Hastings know what had happened. Meanwhile I fidgeted, unwilling to stay cooped up with a petulant Plantagenet. Then Inspiration pinched me.

‘I suggest we ride back to Northampton.’

Prince Edward looked up from his book and rolled his eyes as though I were a lunatic. But journeying back at a leisurely pace would give everyone something to occupy us and The Bear’s food was better. ‘I expect the people will go a-maying tomorrow. You could join them, your highness.’

‘I cannot contain myself, uncle,’ he retorted arrogantly. ‘I am supposed to be riding to London to be crowned not watching some foolish apprentice in a wig with apples up his doublet.’ Brat! He aped his Uncle Rivers’ mannerisms.

‘My apologies,’ I retorted dryly, receiving an encouraging nod from Richard. ‘But if it is Maid Marion in Northampton or a foul dinner here. I know which I would choose.’

 

‘NORTHAMPTON, full of love, beneath the girdle but not above.’

Back along the road we went but the rain had gone and April was fleeing with the frisk of a lamb’s tail. I remember the fleecy clouds like bulging pillows and the air’s gentle warm embrace like a lover’s arms.

The evening proved mellower than the morning and in the warm parlour where we had feasted the uncle we now honoured the nephew. I fetched out a fine pair of gloves that my little Bess had spent a week embroidering with white roses and tiny sunnes-in-splendour. Richard had a painstakingly-written letter of sympathy from his ten year old son, and the Prince received both graciously.

To humour him, Richard ordered food from our table to be sent across to Rivers. That pleased our colt and he grew more trusting as the wine brought a flush to his cheeks. We obviously could not be that cruel to think so considerately about our prisoner. But Rivers haughtily rejected the supper, suggesting it might be sent to Grey instead. The latter lacked the full Woodville sulkiness; the platter was returned clean.

‘I must write to the Royal Council as well and explain matters,’ declared Richard, as our trenchers were removed. ‘It might be wise if you wrote to them too, Edward, to reassure them that we shall be in London as soon as possible.’ He sent a page out once more for writing materials. ‘Being king, you will discover, is not all crown-wearings and royal progresses but signing orders and dispatches and keeping yourself informed as to what is happening in every corner of your kingdom. Can you read swiftly?’

I could see he had missed his calling as a schoolmaster.

‘Of course.’ The Prince looked insulted. ‘I can read Latin, French and Greek and Uncle Rivers taught me some Spanish as well.’

His uncle ignored the boasting. ‘You might also like to consider whether there is anyone at Ludlow you wish to reward for their service to you. No haste. Think it over for a few days. Ah, here comes the parchment, let us both write to the Royal Council.’

Oh, it was so homely. The pair of them sat together at the board, like a pair of scriveners, noisy as mice with their quills, while Lovell and I played chess.

‘I have finished, uncle.’

Richard scanned the boy’s letter. ‘Excellent! Your first dispatch as king. Show me your signature. No, not on the letter.’ He pushed a virgin parchment in front of him.

Tongue pressed between his teeth, our new king wrote, ‘Edwardus’.

‘Finish it,’ coaxed Richard. The boy glanced at him, then nodded and added ‘Quintus’.

‘Let me see,’ I remarked, strolling over to join in leaving Lovell to decide whether to take my bishop. I glanced over Prince Edward’s head at the large, spindly letters. Before long, his signature would take up half the paper. ‘There’s uncertainty there but a growing sense of worth. You can judge a great deal from a person’s script, their emotions as they write and so forth.’

‘Can you so?’ The lad shrugged. ‘Go on, Uncle Gloucester.’ He dipped the quill into the inkwell and handed it across. My cousin smiled, thought for a moment, and then in Italianate hand, wrote: Loyaulté me lie.

‘French,’ crowed the boy. ‘Loyalty binds me.’

‘And much more, Edward.’ He wet the shaft again and wrote R. Gloucestre underneath and bracketed the lines together. ‘My pledge to your father renewed in your service.’

So endearing. I bit my tongue to stop myself uttering, ‘Ahhhhh.’

‘My turn,’ I declared, holding out my hand for the quill. I glimpsed the Woodville glint in the boy’s eye as he handed it to me. It reminded me of Cat’s expression when I asked for one of her women to mend a tear in my hose.

It was easy to follow my cousin’s example. I wrote my device: Souvente me souvene and beneath it, Harre Bokingham. My script cantered flamboyantly in comparison to Richard’s dainty trot.

‘“Often remember me”,’ translated the Prince. ‘That’s an odd one to have, Uncle Buckingham.’

‘It certainly is. I inherited it along with a Welsh castle and cobwebs.’

‘Your move, my lord,’ Lovell called out.

He had left his king vulnerable. ‘Checkmate,’ I said, moving my bishop down its oblique road. I buffeted his defeated lordship and turned to the royal letter writers. ‘Will your royal highness grant me leave to go to bed?’ I bowed with a flourish and looked beyond him to the potential ruler of England.

‘Goodnight, Harry.’ Richard’s expression thanked me for my support that day. Mind, we were not through the perilous mire yet. We still had the Queen and London ahead of us.

 

THE walk back to my inn washed sleep from my mind. My henchmen were laughing at some jest but I was replaying the morning’s triumph over and over and my Plantagenet blood was fizzing with the firecracker we had loosed among the Woodvilles.

Revenge, such a sweet word! News of this day would reach Elizabeth and she would rage in her chambers, screaming with fury. The cold wind from Northampton would ripple up her fur and she would know her summer was over.

I needed a woman that night, a long-legged, local wench. The trouble was if word reached my righteous cousin across the way, it would lower his opinion of me and I could not afford the risk. Not yet. In London it would be different. Our gables would not be grinning at one another across the gutters, and Pershall would be able to find me a girl without the whole world knowing. Still the itch was there; even Cat would have been worth nuzzling.

‘My lord duke, good evening to you.’ The Cambridge scholar, Nandik, was waiting for me at the foot of the stairs. A human cat ready to rub against my bootcuffs. He had already bought himself a better doublet and new boots and his dark hair was several inches shorter.

‘My lord, I write a fair hand. Do you need letters prepared or is there some other way I may serve you?’ Poor wretch, I had forgotten I had asked him to wait up for me. I nodded to him to follow us up to my bedchamber.

As we drank on, he proved quite a wit, pumping out scurrilous tales of pompous Cambridge deans.

‘Do you know it’s the Devil’s Eve?’ he asked as the Grey Friars’ bell struck midnight. We all crossed ourselves.

‘Ah well, I am sure all the Northampton housewives will be flying on their broomsticks to the nearest common,’ I quipped. The thought of the tapster wench at The Bear naked astride a broomstick was definitely appealing. Imagination would have to be my solace when I climbed into bed.

‘Have any of you ever met a witch, a true witch?’ asked Limerick.

‘I met the Queen’s mother,’ I chuckled. ‘Oh come, do you not remember the old besom was investigated for wi…’ I hiccoughed, ‘witchcraft back in ‘69, but, beshrew me, I have had it to here with Woodvilles for today.’ I sliced a wobbly finger across my throat. ‘To Fortune, the comely wench!’ We soon emptied the jug.

I turned my inebriated attention to Nandik. ‘Did you study ast…ast—’

‘Astrology, my lord? Aye, it was part of my studies.’

‘Then c-can you…? No, no, uncle, let me finish! Can…can you cast a horoscope for me, Nan…Nan-dik?’

‘Given the correct information, your grace.’

‘Wh-wh-en we reach London, cast mine for me, Nan-hic-dik, good man. He’s a good man, isn’t he, eh?’

‘Without accurate co-ordinates, my lord, it may mean nothing but, pray you, see this.’ The fellow took a folded paper from his bosom. My horoscope?

‘Christ forbid!’ snarled Uncle Knyvett, but I snatched it before he could.

‘What does it s-say?’ I asked, blinking at the hurly-burly of spheres and Latin. ‘I think I need spectacles.’

‘At twenty-eight, my lord?’ That was Delabere chiming in. ‘You’re in your cups.’

‘Am I? No wonder I c-cannot read the poxy thing. Interpret, if you please, M-Master Scholar. You have terrible handwriting.’

‘Fame shall exceed your wealth. ’

‘Pah! F-Fame! Half of England has…has never heard of me.’

‘What about the other half?’ quipped Latimer.

I laughed. ‘Well, they haven’t either. You’re a p-poxy flatterer, Nandik.’

‘No, your grace, it is true. You will go down in the chronicles.’ Then he mumbled something about being careful of Rivers, and that therein lay my fate. Well, I’d already dealt with that danger.

To be honest, I am not certain that was the entire gist of our conversation, for in the morning I had a sore head and a poor memory. Nor did I resurrect the matter with Nandik that day but secretly I resolved to give him the correct hour of my birth and let him draw the chart anew when we reached London.

Any man could have made the same prediction as Nandik. However, that night in Northampton was Satan’s Eve. I wonder now if the Devil did crawl out of Hell to listen to our idle words.

 

CHAPTER 4

Our new monarch endured the penance of watching Northampton’s May Day celebrations. Together with Mayor Lynde, it was my chore to attend Prince Edward, who proved quite amenable until afterwards when I laughingly refused his request to see our Woodville hostages. He threw a tantrum and retired to his room to sulk so I took myself off on a local pilgrimage. First to my grandsire’s grave in the Church of the Grey Friars, and then to the guildhall where Lynde dredged up two elderly aldermen, who had witnessed the battle of 1460 and agreed to show me the actual place where my grandfather was slain. To be honest, I am not sure that they even knew but they pointed out some laneway flagstones where I could say a prayer and leave my flowers of remembrance. Still high on yesterday’s bloodless victory, I was no longer as mindful as I should have been of Grandfather Buckingham’s bloody end—how Fate can strike the seemingly inviolate. My lesson from his demise? Choose the most likely victor!

As the sombre afternoon dimmed, Richard, with the typical Plantagenet impatience that all of us possess, tired of dictating letters to the individual members of the Royal Council assuring them of his honesty. He called his officers and mine together and we began feverishly to plan our action if London chose to support the Woodvilles.

Our main strength was that we held the boy. However, with only a few hundred men between us, and both of us far from our eyries and unable to drum up more soldiers in the blink of an eye, we were still very vulnerable. Richard had already dished out all the coin he had brought with him to pay off the Queen’s men and I was reserving mine for London.

Hasting’s sweaty messenger arrived just after nightfall.

Although hardly recognizable beneath an outer covering of dust, this ambitious grub was known to me. Sir William Catesby of Northamptonshire was one of the new generation of gentry who had taken the law as a career and were making it slightly more respectable. He had inched his way onto many a noble’s estate council, including mine (maybe he thought I had potential) but he was Hastings’ protégé. Now, despite the hard riding, his slate eyes were alert as those of a shrinekeeper glimpsing a pair of wealthy pilgrims.

‘My lord of Buckingham.’

‘Catesby, it’s good to see you again,’ I exclaimed, offering my hand. His smile was even more toothy for Richard, as he dropped to one knee before him.

‘Your graces, Lord Hastings thought it best to send someone well known to you, so that you shall know I speak the truth.’ I thought a lawyer only spoke what his fee dictated but I was not going to argue that one.

‘You must be exhausted, man,’ said Gloucester, gesturing him to rise. If he was panting to hear the news, he hid it well.

‘Your graces, we advise…’ he began. ‘Your pardon, I mean Lord Hastings advises that London is now safe for you to enter. The good news is that the Queen’s grace and the Marquis of Dorset have been trying to rally support from all the lords and prelates in the city for the coronation, and the bad—’

‘That is good news?’ I interrupted.

‘Indeed, yes, my lord of Buckingham, for not one of the noble lords wanted to have any truck with her.’

‘Numbers are not everything, Catesby,’ answered Richard. In view of his cunning and timing yesterday, I had to agree. ‘Tell us the bad news!’

‘The Queen has sent half the treasury to sea with her brother, Sir Edward Woodville.’ Richard swore, but he let Catesby continue. ‘That is why she could not hire an army or bribe anyone and, of course, two thousand of her most reliable supporters are already here with you, your graces.'

‘Were,’ I corrected, but my thoughts flickering with dismay.

‘What about the other half of the treasury?’ exclaimed my cousin, outracing me to the next question.

Catesby’s Adam’s apple shifted nervously. ‘I regret to say my lord of Dorset and the Bishop of Salisbury’s men carted it to Westminster Sanctuary.’ The whoresons!

‘Hell take it, that’s not possible, Catesby,’ I protested, imagining how many chests of gold plate and coin were involved. ‘You can hardly get a bench through the door let alone a great coffer. It would take them days.’ The sanctuary was little better than an old keep, a couple of upper storeys, that was all. I had winkled Cat out of there to consummate our marriage.

‘No, I swear it’s true, your grace. The Queen demanded a wall be hewn down so they could stow it as swiftly as possible. She has claimed sanctuary and the Marquis of Dorset, my lord bishop and other friends are there as well.’

‘Very cosy. They must be wading thigh high in goblets,’ I snorted.

We had been outwitted. No government could rule without money.

Richard looked fit to strangle someone. ‘What about the royal children?’ he asked.

‘She has Prince Richard and all your royal nieces with her. I am informed the little maidens were none too pleased. Princess Elizabeth was heard to argue when the Queen was saying how much she feared you.’

My cousin’s face softened for an instant but then he lifted his head again, his voice like a dagger sheathed in pretty velvet. ‘And where, pray, were Lord Hastings and yourself while Dorset was looting England’s treasury?’

Catesby’s face reddened beneath the dust. ‘They outwitted us, your grace. You must understand that Lord Hastings has been utterly distraught over the death of your royal brother. What happened was the Queen bade my lord come to her at the palace and declared that he should serve Prince Edward best by serving her, and while my lord was distracted by her arguments, Dorset was meddling at the Tower.’

‘And where were you, sirrah?’ I asked.

‘I was disputing with Archbishop Rotherham, your grace.’

‘About what, Catesby?’ cut in Richard. ‘The price of wafers?’

‘About the Great Seal, your graces. I should explain that Archbishop Rotherham had given the Great Seal to the Queen and Lord Hastings ordered me to find the Archbishop and persuade him to fetch it back from her.’

So not only would Richard as Lord Protector lack funds to rule the country but the seal of authority to do so. It was a mess.

My cousin turned his back on us. ‘You have leave, Catesby!’ he said in a choked voice.

‘Your grace,’ Catesby protested, almost grovelling. ‘Lord Hastings acted against my advice and you must understand—‘

‘Oh, we do understand,’ I answered for both of us.

‘No, I must explain, my lord of Buckingham. The Bishop of Salisbury came to see Lord Hastings early yesterday asking him to negotiate a peace between the Queen and his grace of Gloucester.’ He glanced respectfully at my cousin. ‘He kept Lord Hastings talking for over an hour before the Queen sent for him and by then Dorset had organised the carts and had his men positioned. We had no cause to distrust them at that point, you see.’

We saw alright. Dorset had the brains his brother Grey lacked, and the Queen’s sweet-talking brother, Bishop Lionel, possessed as much cunning as the serpent in the Garden of Eden. Lord Hastings should have been on his guard.

‘Very well, Catesby.’ I saw him to the door. ‘Thank you for your loyalty. You shall be well recompensed when we reach London.’ He bowed low over my hand and had barely closed the door behind him when my cousin whirled round.

‘Holy Paul!’ His fists struck his sides. ‘Hastings is plaguey well in charge of the Mint. He should never have let them within spitting distance of the Tower.’ He paced the floor, fidgeting angrily with his rings. ‘The fool! He should have foreseen that Rotherham would give the Great Seal to Elizabeth. The old wretch is a Woodville creature, always has been.’

‘Calm yourself, cousin,’ I soothed. ‘I am sure Lord Hastings will have sorted everything out by the time we enter London. A pity he fell for the ruse, though.’

Yes, we both owed Hastings a debt for alerting us to the Queen’s animosity but one has to be practical. ‘Maybe he’s getting too long in the tooth,’ I added, stirring the pot further. ‘All sentiment aside, Richard, that’s something you should bear in mind when we reach London. We cannot afford such errors.’

Richard stopped his pacing. ‘Well, we should be in London within two days and God willing, things can’t get worse. I’ll write to the Archbishop of Canterbury tonight requesting him to get the Great Seal off Rotherham, and he can organise the Royal Council to take care of any remaining valuables my sister-in-law couldn’t squeeze in.’

You’re an optimist, I thought, but I held my tongue.

‘What are you going to do with our prisoners, cousin?’

‘Keep them hostage out of Elizabeth’s reach. She’ll lose a brother and a son if she wreaks any more mischief. Rivers can go to Sheriff Hutton, Grey to Middleham and Vaughan to Pontefract.’ All his northern strongholds, and since the Woodvilles’ supporters were mainly southerners, it seemed a sensible solution. ‘Do not look so disappointed, Harry. I’ll keep them salted for the winter.’

I smiled. ‘Crated was what I had in mind.’

 

I BADE Northampton farewell next morning right cheerfully beneath a sky as blue as the Our Lady’s robe and we rode off at an ambling pace with the Prince in our midst like a young queen bee carried to begin a new hive. When we arrived at St Albans, the townsfolk were waiting beneath the clock tower with an address of loyalty which much pleased young Edward. After the dinner generously provided by the Abbot of St Albans, Richard took the boy on a ride around the town for a lesson in military strategy.

St Albans had seen two battles fought between York and Lancaster and I needed no reminding that my grandsire Somerset had been wounded at the first and then slain at the second. In fact, this royal progress was becoming a pilgrimage of my family’s defeats.

Our future king silkily raised the matter after supper had been cleared.

‘Yes, it is true both my grandfathers fought for Lancaster,’ I admitted. ‘We all pray that under your wise and just rule, England will never again suffer such civil strife.’

‘But Henry VI was a lunatic, my lord of Buckingham. Why did your family stay loyal to him when he did not know his left hand from his right?’ A good question. The obnoxious brat.

‘Many reasons, I suppose, sire. He was anointed king and son to the illustrious Hal of Agincourt, and I believe my grandsire was quite fond of him.’ Did Uncle Richard tell you that your father had him murdered? I longed to add.

‘Did you murder him, Uncle Gloucester?’

Richard choked on his wine. ‘No, I did not. Why would you think that?’ he spluttered, when he could speak again.

‘I cannot remember where I heard that,’ murmured the Prince with studied candour. ‘But Uncle Rivers told me that sometimes kings say things, you know, like King Henry II wishing aloud that Thomas Becket was dead, and then his knights murdered the archbishop in order to please him.’

‘I hope you are not going to wish us to murder anyone on your behalf, your highness,’ I said dryly.

‘No, of course not, but I wondered if my father wished King Henry of Lancaster dead and—’ He looked at his uncle.

‘No,’ protested Richard, crossing himself. ‘Much as I loved your father and honoured him as king, there is a moral limit to loyalty.’

The boy nodded and turned to me. ‘So there are limits to an oath of fealty.’

It was a foul way of trying to win an argument.

‘There are limits to the day too and it is high time your highness turned in for the night,’ I told him and Richard looked relieved. It was tempting to put my foot on the royal backside as the child rose from the board.

‘Holy Paul, Harry,’ my cousin said softly, as the latch fell, ‘who has taught him so?’

‘Someone who wanted to blacken your good name, Richard.’

He paced, twisting the ring on his little finger. ‘I was at the Tower of London the night that the old king died. I cannot deny it.’

‘Cousin, forget the matter. A few dogs bark but does the moon care?’

‘The House of York has blood on its hands, I know that.’

‘The House of Lancaster does too. Forget what the boy said. It is the future that matters.’

‘I should like to see King Henry’s body reburied as befits a king.’

‘Then make it a resolution, Richard. Tomorrow you will be Lord Protector.’ I opened my hands as though our world sat within my palms.

‘Aye, and with no money to rule and a royal council wondering the truth of what happened at Stony Stratford.’

‘Indeed, it will not be easy but we have come this far with God’s blessing.’ Jesu! I was beginning to sound like the Pope! I patted his shoulder reassuringly

He placed his hand over mine. ‘Thank you, Harry. Without you—’

‘You would have done the same.’

 

NEXT day we rode past the common at Barnet where Richard, King Edward and Hastings had defeated the mighty Warwick. My cousin had led the vanguard of the army at eighteen years old so he was well able to reconstruct the battle for his fascinated nephew. We heard all about the struggle through the bog and how King Edward’s sunne-in-splendour was confused with the Earl of Oxford’s star. Richard even took us to the very place where the mighty Kingmaker and his brother had been slain.

I could add nothing. I had been about sixteen and safe in Brecknock – probably tupping Cat – while eighteen year old Richard stumbled up the foggy rise in his heavy armour.

The Prince listened attentively, occasionally including me with an arched look that reminded me more and more of his accursed mother. It was clear that Rivers had daubed plenty of muck on my honour at Ludlow and I was not able to compensate for imprisoning his Woodville relations by being a great soldier like my cousin.

‘My Uncle Rivers told me that you are good at the dance, Uncle Buckingham,’ the boy said slyly. ‘You shall have to show us when we reach London.’

‘That was when I was your age,’ I countered waspishly. ‘I shall have more important things to do than caper with the ladies.’ Or so I hoped.