Lady of the Roses (36 page)

“Forgive me, Isobel…. Forgive me…. My dear love, the fault is not yours. ’Tis mine alone….” His voice held a tone I’d never heard before. He turned his face to the sea, a faraway look in his eyes.

I held my breath, startled.

“I have lived with a secret I can no longer bear to keep, but you must hear it now, for it may help you to understand….” He seemed to brace himself before he continued, and my mind reeled with dread. “I am a soldier, and killing is a soldier’s work, yet I have loathed it to my core. All these years, I did it because I had to. To survive, to earn glory…I always told myself it would end one day. But it never did. When your uncle butchered those men, it made me realize how much I hated the killing. How much I hated myself for the killing…” He gave me a look of agony. “Forgive me, Isobel. I have been thoughtless and selfish. All my concern has been for myself.”

I closed my eyes on an indrawn breath.
All these years, and I never knew…. This—this is what I had sensed…what he kept from me. All these years.

“I thought I’d lost your love,” I whispered.

“You have my love, Isobel…. You have it to my dying day. There is cruelty, and there is wickedness, but there is also love. We have been blessed, haven’t we?”

“We have, my dearest lord.”

A gust of wind tore at me, lifting my wool blanket and loosening the braiding from my hair. I shivered.

“Aye, ’tis bitter cold even for a March night, Isobel.” He rearranged my blanket around me with a gentle touch. “Best we seek shelter. Let us hope tomorrow is a better day.”

Together we rode back to the fortress on the sea, and though the mighty wind blinded us with eddies of sand and blew us backward for much of the way, I felt safe and protected, for love encircled me as I rode behind my husband, my arms wrapped around his strong chest, my head cradled in the hollow of his back.

Whatever the future brings,
I thought,
I have had this
.

BEWARE THE IDES OF MARCH,
THE SOOTHSAYER
had said.

The ides, on the fifteenth of March, had come and gone, but they were not done with us yet, I thought as I read John’s letter.
Robin of Redesdale has mounted another rebellion,
he wrote,
and I must decide what to do. Yet I fear I have no choice but to give battle.
John had dealt swiftly and firmly with Robin of Holderness, but Holderness had not been kin. The rebellion led by our cousin Robin of Redesdale was a different matter. John had struggled with his guilt over the loss of relatives and friends who’d died fighting against him, but hard as it had been for him with the first rebellion, this time was worse. Robin of Redesdale’s second uprising was far more serious and widespread, and more lives stood at risk.

The letter shook in my hand, so tightly did I clutch it as I read.
Edward has no idea at what cost John delivers his victories!
I sank into a chair by the window and looked up at the dreary sky. How could John kill his own kin? He had never been one to give voice to what lay in his heart, but reading between the lines of his missive, I felt his hesitation, his depth of misery at the predicament he found himself in. I felt his agony. He hated killing. Now—once again—he faced having to kill those he held dear.

I rose and left my chamber, desperate for the laughter of my children, who played in the nursery. I had just passed the great hall, with its rows of marvelous pillars, and stepped through the arched door when Agnes came rushing up to me from the tower stairs. She was half out of breath but smiling broadly. There was news!
Good news!
I drew her into a small, empty anteroom.

“There are fresh doings at York, me lady! My husband’s cousin rode in just before I left for the castle this morning. He was in York with my lord of Northumberland until last night. My lord persuaded Robin of Redesdale to turn himself in! He brought Lord Scrope of Bolton, Robin of Redesdale himself, and many others to King Edward at Pontefract to beg a royal pardon for them. And the king, generous as always, has granted it!”

Euphoria swept me! I broke out in a smile that didn’t leave me all day, and in the nursery, I danced with my children and played silly games, laughing as ridiculously loudly as three-year-old Lucy. I dined well and went to bed much happier than I had been in many weeks, and this night my heart did not keep me awake with its restless, uneven beat. In the end John had done what he had to do—and did it so well that further bloodshed had been avoided.

It was late that night, well past matins on the twenty-fifth day of March, and the castle lay sleeping, when a great noise came from the courtyard. I rose from bed and went to the window. Rubbing my bleary eyes, I saw John by torchlight. He had only Tom Gower and Rufus at his side. I watched as he handed Saladin’s reins over to Tom.

Grabbing a chamber robe and a candle, I slipped my feet into my slippers and ran down the tower steps, seized with foreboding. Why had he come home without warning? What could have possessed him to risk such a dangerous journey in the dead of night?

With his head bowed, he was mounting the steps toward the keep when I reached him. A drizzle fell and the night was fearsome cold, but it wasn’t the rain that chilled me: It was the way John carried himself, as if he had been mortally wounded in some terrible battle. I pulled up sharply before him and caught at the damp stone archway for support. He halted in his steps and looked at me. The candle I held in my hand sizzled in the rain and threw a flickering, uneven light around us, and what I saw in his eyes made me gasp: It was the same disoriented, disbelieving look I’d seen on that dread day when the news of Wakefield was brought to us.
Dear God, what has happened?
He opened his mouth to speak, but no words came. Silently I took his arm and, draping it around my shoulder, I helped him inside and up the tower stairs to our bedchamber. He fell into the chair by the window and dropped his head into both his hands. My heart broke to see him this way, but I did not speak. Instead I knelt at his feet and laid my cheek against his leg.

The candle burned out; the darkness thickened. Church bells tolled the hour, first twelve, then one, two…four. An owl hooted. On the mantelpiece, grains of sand hissed in the hourglass, marking the steady, inexorable passage of time. The moon crossed the dark sky and faded away; a cock crowed and was answered by another; bleak morning light strayed into the chamber. Still John sat. I wanted to cry out, but I did not. I waited. Waited as I’d waited all my life…waited, as if for death itself.

Finally I heard John inhale a deep breath and stir. I lifted my head. He dropped his hands and I saw his face again. I swallowed with difficulty and found my voice. “My beloved,” I managed, “what ails thee?”

His mouth worked with emotion. He rose from his chair, turned his back to me, and stood looking out the window at the wintry scene. When he spoke, the words fell from his lips like one long sigh. “The River Aln is beautiful….” he said. “I never rode past or crossed the three old bridges without thinking how beautiful it was, whether spring, summer, fall, or winter. How much it all meant to me…the meadows, the river, the castle…the earldom…”

I inhaled a sharp, burning breath.
“The earldom?”

He turned to face me. He encircled my shoulders and drew me close. “I fear we have looked our last on this place that has been our home for six years, Isobel.”

“The earldom?” I whispered in disbelief, a faint thread of hysteria in my voice. I knew what his earldom meant to him. He had poured his blood into the winning and keeping of it, this earldom that had come with long and brutal service on the field of battle. He had fought on when few would have found the strength to keep going; he had stood erect through the wildest storms and against the cruelest winds Fortune can send a man in this life.

“The earldom is gone. Edward took it from me the day after I brought Conyers in for pardon. He gave it to Percy, whom he has released from the Tower.”

I covered my mouth with both my hands to stifle my sobs, but to no avail. Through my choking sounds, my mind thundered on:
It isn’t possible! It’s not possible….

Then I buried my head on his shoulder and gave vent to a fit of weeping. I wept not for myself, but for John, for all the hopes that had been snatched from him and for the future that had been taken away. Every step on his harsh journey of life had been trodden stalwartly, with loyalty and courage, by an honorable knight who had not counted the cost to him, who had remained singularly faithful, who had striven with his every breath to prove his loyalty to his king when the temptation to treachery had never been greater for any man.

All his life he’s endured for York, sacrificed for York, killed for York. Now, at the end of the long, hard, twisted road, this is what it comes to—Edward sacrifices him like a buck before a feast and flings him aside.

“John, oh, John!” I cried, weeping for him the tears he could not weep.

EDWARD HAD TOLD JOHN NOT ONCE BUT MANY
times that he loved him entirely.
God help those that Edward “loves entirely,”
I thought with a loathing I had never known before. He’d stripped John of his earldom and elevated him in rank to Marquess of Montagu, but it was a hollow title, which came with the paltry sum of forty pounds a year from the county of Southampton. He had promised to wed our son, Georgie, to his firstborn daughter, Elizabeth, and had raised Georgie to the noble dukedom of Bedford, but again the title was barren, for it came with no estates. The settlement rang hollow; I don’t think either of us ever believed that Edward intended to go through with the marriage—or that Elizabeth Woodville would permit it.

In our reduced circumstances, we could no longer afford more than a handful of servants, and so we chose carefully from among them. Ursula would come with us, of course, and so would Geoffrey. John’s squire, Tom Gower, would also remain in attendance, as would Agnes. We bid the others a tearful farewell on a cold, foggy morning and moved out of Warkworth, taking the children and our few possessions back with us to Seaton Delaval in two carts. As we rumbled down the hill, I looked behind me. Mist swirled around the splendid castle, bestowing an unreal quality, as if it stood in a dream. And in the dream, aware of how well it had been loved, it magically waved its turrets, bidding me a sorrowful farewell of its own. A drift of fog floated across the main gate. It cleared the wall and the nearest tower, and I remembered how John, counting the cost of repair, had chosen to build the tower square instead of round like the others during that joyous first year of his earldom. Money had always been a problem, even with the earldom; the good years had not lasted long enough to make a difference in the end.

I glanced at him, riding beside me on Saladin. He didn’t permit himself a backward glance but rode stiffly erect.
In last year’s nest, there are no eggs.
Had he not always reminded me that looking back did no good? I turned my own face forward, so I would not look back to the place where I had left behind so many of my happiest memories.

Life at Seaton Delaval proved more difficult than ever before, burdened as we were by grief. We were enemies living among enemies, with no kin at our side, our friends blown away by evil winds. While the Percies rejoiced and feasted, we counted our meager income and drowned ourselves in work as best we could. It was hard on the servants, too, for they had to relearn their duties. One day I caught Agnes replacing the rushes, and I had to tell her to never do that again unless I gave her the order. I kept careful tally of the candles, watching to make sure they didn’t burn needlessly. And I helped the seamstress darn clothes and make new gowns for our girls, who, with the exception of little Lucy, too small to make much difference, outgrew their dresses every few months. But expenses were always high and income short, and John had to find ways to borrow. Every night I went to bed weary but never without a fervent prayer for his safety. For as hard as it was for me, it was worse for him: humiliated, derided, doing the work he hated, living the soldier’s barren life with little warmth or comfort, his life and limb dependent on the outcome of the next skirmish.

As if to underscore our losses, a soggy spring damaged crops and reminded us that a poor harvest loomed ahead and many would die of starvation come the winter. We could help but little, for we no longer had the gold mines of Devon to draw from, and my own battles in these days lay with the household accounts. I went over them minutely with the bailiff, examining carefully the daily purchases of victuals and consumption, the number of meals served, the cost of the youths we kept for running errands and carrying messages. I questioned expenses and found ways to cut back on the number of scribes and clerks to deal with the correspondence and keep the records connected with the management of the estate. When the wages came due, I paid them myself, taking a moment to have a private word with each servant, to offer congratulations on a name day or the birth of a child or praise for good work done, or a suggestion as to where improvements could be made.

I saw little of John, who had been obliged to borrow money from his dear friend Lord Scrope of Masham, now that he could no longer go to Warwick. And Scrope had given it to him most generously, without requesting collateral.
Lord Scrope, who sided with Robin of Redesdale and Warwick in the feud against Edward.
This time, however, I understood John’s need to be alone, for I myself felt the same.

There’s so much to mourn,
I thought, helping the chandler pour hot wax into the molds for the candles. Beads of perspiration formed on my forehead but, as my hands were not free, I wiped at them with my sleeve. We still received the poor and gave shelter to itinerants, but for one night at a time, for our means did not provide for greater generosity. The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, delivered to us at the New Year of 1470, were now rampaging through the land, and with an ever-growing sense of dread I listened to the tidings that were brought me. What I came to fear more than the pilgrims and mercers who stopped for a night were John’s missives. More often than not, they imparted grievous tidings. Since I could not doubt their truth, it left me no room to hope the tidings might prove false.

In June, Edward followed up his brutal blow by taking from John the wardenship of the East Marches, which he gave to Percy, leaving John only the command of the West Marches, which bordered Scotland. John’s visits grew few in number, since Seaton Delaval lay a great distance away. But now when he came home and felt an urge to ride the moors, I galloped at his side, and sometimes we made love in an old abandoned sheep shelter with the wind howling around us. Alone, surrounded by the vast landscape, we felt nature’s healing touch, and the ancient Roman forts and burial sites that marked the scenery seemed to draw the thread of time around us and assign us a place in God’s great plan. We always returned to Seaton Delaval tired but somehow fortified to meet the morrow.

That autumn John finally came home for a visit again. Rufus was no longer at his side, for he had died on my birthday, Lammas Day, the first of August, at the venerable age of fifteen, and John had acquired another pup, named Roland. My delight to see John vanished at the sight of his face, lined by inclement weather and ravaged by sleeplessness and mental anguish. I had to turn away for a moment and dig my nails into my palms to steady myself before giving him welcome. He had aged terribly this summer.

In our bedchamber, I bathed him in a wooden tub filled with warm water. The young pup watched us quietly from the hearth.

I fingered John’s scars more gently than usual as I lathered him. He seemed fragile to me now, this strong man I had loved with all my heart, all my life, but never was he more precious. I sensed him slipping away from me, and so I fought harder to keep him close.

I offered him a loaf of the fresh, hot rye bread he loved, and a sampling of the finest aged cheese I could find in our meager pantry.