B008257PJY EBOK (21 page)

Richard stared at the unyielding stone and felt he would strangle on the pain in his throat. In his mind’s eye he saw the child Anne, who had taken him to her little injured owl and run up the grassy slopes of Middleham with him, laughing… Anne, untroubled and teasing, on the cusp of maidenhood, waiting for him beneath the boughs of the old chestnut tree. Anne, the young bride, riding pillion as they tore over the thundering River Tees and made love in the tender grass…

Anne was gone, vanished like the beautiful sparkles of hoar frost he had taken for diamonds in the sun as a child. Into that blackness, she would be sealed forever. Anne, who had shared his dreams and his youth and his beginnings. And so many of his endings.
Oh God, God—

Raw, primitive grief overwhelmed him and the last shreds of his iron will, which had held him together through the batterings of his childhood, through his exiles and the wars, through the loss of all his kin and the death of his only child, ruptured like old silk sliced by a sword. His shoulders trembled and the tremors became heaves; choked sobs assaulted him and scalding tears blinded his eyes. Standing at the foot of Anne’s tomb, surrounded by his nobles and the prelates of his realm, Richard broke at last and, covering his face with his hands, he wept.

~ * ~

Chapter 23

“Accursed, who strikes nor lets the hand be seen!”

In his chamber at Westminster Richard turned away from the window, ready to meet his councillors waiting for him in a council room off the south court. He had shut himself away for a full week since Anne’s death, but the moment he had dreaded could no longer be put off. The time had come to resume his duties, and rule alone. Alone… A line from Malory came to him:
The goodly apples, all these things at once Fell into dust, and I was left alone And thirsting in a land of sand and thorns.

Silence pervaded the halls as he made his way down the stairs, through arches, past pillars, across the court. An icy wind blew from the river, tearing at his mantle and beating him back. He hunched his shoulders and fought his way forward with determined strides. It was quiet in the Palace cloisters. Sombre dress and solemn faces met him everywhere. Even the dogs seemed to have sensed the mood in the castle and lay quietly watching. He turned a corner, pushed open the door, and entered. A tapestry protected the chamber from the draft. He thrust it back. Candles burned in silver sconces on the long gleaming table but failed to pierce the gloom. Silence here, too, and grave faces. He threw his gauntlets on the table.

Ratcliffe came forward, handed him a placard.

Richard’s councillors watched him anxiously as he read. Jewels flashed on his fingers, around his crimson collar, and on the turned-up brim of his hat, but for all the magnificence of his elaborate royal robes, he looked terrible. His face was sickly pale, his mouth tight and pinched, and beneath his bloodshot eyes ran deep black circles. It was clear that he had slept little since his queen’s passing. And there would be no respite. Within days of her death, placards had appeared on St. Paul’s and the rumour had reached the far corners of England that King Richard intended to marry his niece. Against their will, the royal council had no choice but to confront him with it.

Richard looked up. His hand trembled as he laid the placard down.

“Sire, you must deny this, deny that you ever considered such a step,” Ratcliffe said. “Not only is such a marriage impossible—the Pope would never grant a dispensation—but to marry Elizabeth of York would give the lie to your title as King. If she is legitimate, then so are her brothers—” Ratcliffe hesitated. “My lord, there is talk that you poisoned the Queen in order to wed Elizabeth of York. Unless you deny this marriage rumour, even the people of the North will turn against you. Queen Anne was much loved in York.”

Richard stood immobile and it seemed to the men around the council table that he didn’t comprehend. Then without warning, he crashed his fist on the table, nearly toppling the heavy silver scones. “That vile bastard! That lying, scheming Tudor! Is there nothing he’ll not say, nothing he’ll not do, to steal the Crown of England for his bastard head?” His eyes glittered. He seized Ratcliffe by his doublet. “Do you believe Tudor’s lies, Ratcliffe? That I schemed for the throne? That I murdered my brother’s sons? That I poisoned Anne?” He thrust him back. “And you, Catesby? Rob? Conyers?—Aye, and you, Francis?”

Everyone shrank back; once before a man had died in the face of such rage.

“Sire,” said Francis through parched lips, “you cannot doubt us?”

“Why?” Richard swung on him. “Wasn’t Caesar murdered by the one he loved best? Didn’t Buckingham aim to destroy me? Why should you be different? Why should any of you? Treason is in the air. It hangs like ripe fruit, ready for the picking and tempting all! Tell me that lies and betrayal are not the swords and shields of Tudor’s war! Tell me chivalry isn’t dead! Tell me there’s still loyalty in this world—in this stinking, rotten charnel house of a world… Tell me that!”

Silence. The March wind howled outside and rattled the windows.

Richard rammed his fist on the table again. “Lying bastard… Foul, lying bastard!” He kicked chairs over and pounded the table until his knuckles bled. Depleted, he slumped into a chair and let his head drop to his chest.

Everyone watched helplessly, wanting to comfort but finding neither the courage nor the words. It was Francis who finally went to him. “My lord, we are not traitors,” he said softly, dropping to a knee, “none of us—not Rob, Catesby, Ratcliffe and I, nor Brackenbury either, not Conyers nor Scrope of Bolton and many others you know well. They’re all good men and go back a long way with you…
Live pure, speak true, right wrong, follow the King—
”

Richard lifted his head. It was the code of their boyhood dreams. The shape of their lives.

“Not only are you my King, but my friend since earliest boyhood. Together we listened to tales of King Arthur and together we learned to wield the sword… You are my true sovereign and gladly would I give my life for you. I swear this oath before Christ and His Saints, that I have ever been loyal and will remain so unto death.
Loyaulte Me Lie
.”

Richard gave a choked moan. He flung himself from his chair and embraced Francis. An audible sigh of relief swept the room.

“My lord,” said the royal councillor Catesby, “if you marry off your niece, it would blunt Tudor’s hand. Then he could no longer boast of a marriage that would unite the red rose with the white.”

A sudden weariness engulfed Richard. His back ached between his shoulder blades and the old wound from Barnet throbbed. He moved to the window, looked out at the mournful river. “You forget, Catesby, the red rose and the white were united long ago when my mother, the granddaughter of the Duke of Lancaster, married my father, the Duke of York. As for marrying off my niece to spite Tudor—” he swallowed, willed himself to go on. “As for marrying off my niece, I won’t give Tudor the satisfaction of thinking that I care a whit for his plans.”

“But it would be good statecraft.”

“Statecraft has never meant anything to me. You should know that by now. I’ve given my best. If that’s not good enough for England, then she’s welcome to the bastard.” He strode to the sidetable, swept up his gauntlets, and made his way to the door.

Ratcliffe called after him. “My lord, what about Elizabeth of York?”

Richard froze in his steps. His eye went to the tapestry directly in front of him that concealed the door to the chamber. Deer and fern. A knight in golden armour at the feet of a fair-haired maiden. Blazing with the jewel-toned colours of rubies, emeralds and bright blue sapphires, it lit up the grey room like a torch.
Tristan and Iseult.

He shut his eyes.

“Make a proclamation… There never was, and never will be… plans for a marriage between us.” He flung the tapestry aside and stepped out into the bitter March wind.

~ * ~

Chapter 24

“Sir, there be many rumours on this head;

For there be those who hate him in their hearts.”

Within days it became clear that a written proclamation was not enough. Richard would have to denounce the marriage rumour in person. Summoning the mayor, aldermen, and chief citizens of London, his lords temporal and spiritual, and leading the officers of his household, Richard rode to the hospital of the Knights of St. John in Clerkenwell. He had chosen it deliberately. Students were schooled in the law here, and it was a place familiar to him, one he understood. He respected the law, and law was the foundation of his rule. The people needed reminding of that. In a loud, distinct voice, he stood before them and denied the rumour spread by Tudor.

Along the way back from Smithfield, through the Strand and the Fleet to Westminster, Richard rode wearily, his heart heavy as lead, and the crowds who stared at the colourful royal procession seemed to him a swarm of flies come to settle on a wound. Later that night he sat at a table in his candlelit solar, sharing a cup of wine with Francis. Sleep seldom came to him these days and he’d dismissed the servants for the night, seeing no need to deprive them of their rest as well. Behind him a fire crackled in the hearth. He had purposely set his chair so that he sat with his back to it and had no view of the silk cushions strewn about the floor where he used to sit with Anne.

“More wine?” he asked Francis, picking up the ruby-studded flagon.

“Maybe just one.” Somewhere in the garden an owl hooted. Francis smiled apologetically. “’Tis late even for owls, Richard.”

It was past the midnight hour and Richard knew he should let his friend go. Francis had to leave for Southampton at first light, to secure the southern coast against Tudor’s invasion. But memories weighed heavy on him this night and he dreaded the morrow. Come morning, there was something he had to do that he couldn’t bear to think about. He poured wine and set the flask down beside the hourglass. From the corner of the room John Neville’s old hound, Roland, caught Richard’s gaze. Roland gave him a soulful look and wagged his tail.

“I find myself thinking a great deal about my cousin John lately,” Richard said, drawing the hourglass near. Grains of sand drifted down in a fine stream, inexorably marking the passage of time. Nowadays when he looked back, it seemed to him that his path had been paved with graves. Of them all, after Anne and Ned, it was John he mourned most.
Aye, ’tis on a winter’s night, when it is freezing, that we think most of the sun…
“I owe him my life. If it hadn’t been for John, I’d have died at eighteen.”

“Aye,” Francis said softly, “he gave his life for yours.”

“He taught me how to fight with my left hand… showed me how to overcome my handicap.”

“He was a valiant soldier. A true knight.”

“I miss him, Francis. Always have… All these years. It doesn’t get better. It gets worse. Edward shouldn’t have taken away his earldom.”

“A miscalculation. Edward was angry with Warwick. John was his brother. Edward paid for it.”

A single hoot from the owl sounded again in the night, and another more distant owl answered. Richard looked down at his right hand, at the gold griffin ring John had given him that day long ago at Barnard’s Castle when they had sealed their kinship by mingling their blood. “
Brother to Brother, yours in life and death,
” they had vowed as the wind blew and the birds shrieked.

“We’ve all paid for Edward’s miscalculations,” said Richard, with a swallow of wine, “and I fear we are not done yet. John should be here with us now, Francis. Not Percy or Stanley.” He upended his cup and poured himself another. Turning his head, he stared out the window. It was a clear night; a full moon silvered the sky and torches flared along the battlements. Had it looked that way at Pontfract the night John made his decision to trade his life for Richard’s?

Richard glanced at Roland. The hound returned his mournful look. “John didn’t like Stanley, though Stanley was married to his own sister at the time,” Richard murmured. “‘He’s not a man I’d want standing at my back,’ is what he said. His exact words.” Richard licked his lips. “Exact,” he repeated with a slur.

“John was right. You must keep your eye on Stanley.”

“John also said, ‘’Tis not what you are but what you will become that counts.’… What have I become, Francis?”

“King Arthur, my friend.”

Richard mulled his wine. “King Arthur failed.” He downed a gulp. “Once I believed winning or losing made no difference, it was how you fought the fight that mattered. Now I know better, Francis.”

In the morose silence that followed, Richard’s thought churned. Thanks to Tudor’s lies, he was losing the battle for men’s hearts on which he had rested the justification for the crown he wore. He remembered the morning at Clerkenwell, the faces of the crowd watching him as he rode back to Westminster. The crimes of which they accused him! It was in their eyes as he rode past in the streets, and their whispers, which ceased abruptly when he appeared. Every unspeakable crime that could be conjured in the dark corners of their minds—treason, incest. The murder of his brothers, his wife, his nephews. All lies concocted by Tudor. And they believed them. It lifted them up to see another brought low. He was coming to believe that man was a blight on the face of the earth. He slammed down his cup.

“I know what they say about me, Francis. They call me foolish because I pardon my enemies instead of slicing their heads from their shoulders. They say the world I wish to create is impossible because I believe in justice and fight against corruption. They think me mad for it. No doubt I am.”

“Your lunacy is to see life as it ought to be, Richard, instead of as it is.” Francis picked up the flask and poured Richard a full measure of wine. He pushed the cup to him.

Richard drank deeply. “Indeed, until—”
until Ned’s death
— “recently, I believed that virtue always prevailed—” He waved his cup around, sang drunkenly, “
Onward to glory I go
—’Tis a damned bleak world in which we live, Francis. The worst crime of all is to be born. For that, you get punished all your life.”