Lucianna (23 page)

Lady Margaret sent the next day to tell the Earl of Lisle that torture had gained no answers. The two bungling conspirators could not tell the king’s mother who had required their services. There was no real treason involved at all, as Lucianna had suspected.

“Now can we go home?” the Countess of Lisle asked her husband.

“We will go home,” he told her.

Luca’s passage was arranged. Her brother would depart London in a week for Florence. The earl and his wife would go home on the morrow.

“It is unlikely we will see each other again,” Lucianna told her twin brother. “It is important that I give Roberto an heir, and I will not leave my child to travel.” They sat together in the hall of her London dwelling the evening before his departure.

He nodded, understanding completely. The safe and loving childhood that they had shared with each other and their siblings had come to an end for them. Only their youngest sister, Serena, remained at home. Luca knew he would marry sooner than later and have his own family. It was the way of the world. Still, he had always hoped that Lucianna would remain near him. Having shared their mother’s womb, and much of their lives together, he was saddened to realize it was very unlikely they would see each other again. “You will write?” he asked, knowing she would but wanting to be certain.

“I will,” she replied. Then she smiled, teasingly. “Will you?”

Luca laughed. “Now and again,” he promised. “You know I am not much of a correspondent, Sister.”

“Now and again will do, Luca,” Lucianna said. Then she said, “There may come a time when our mother can no longer write to me, and I should not like to be entirely cut off from the family of my childhood.”

“Does Francesca write?” he asked her.

“Francesca?” Lucianna sniffed. “She is too busy ruling her son’s duchy to bother with a younger sister. And Giorgio’s ambitions are entirely focused on gaining the red hat of a cardinal. Having been in Rome all these years, he considers little else. Or so our mother writes.”

Luca chuckled. “However, if he gained a cardinal’s biretta, our mother would consider it every bit as prestigious as a good marriage for one of her daughters. She would shout it to any and all who would listen to her. It is not likely, though. Our sister Bianca’s scandalous behavior has touched us all.”

Lucianna said nothing. Her brother did not understand the situation the way she did. Her elder sister’s second union was for love. Love was important, as Lucianna had discovered. While her own first marriage had not been the horror that poor Bianca’s had been, both of them had chosen their own second husbands. It was Bianca’s choice of an Ottoman prince that had caused the scandal that would have harmed her sisters’ chances at marriage, except for their determined mother. Yet her second daughter was a duchess, and now the third was a countess.

Lucianna’s twin brother, however, had always been particularly close to their mother. She had doted upon him, especially after having birthed her last child, another daughter. Lucianna knew that Orianna would be very happy to see Luca come home. As for her twin brother, she knew he would be delighted to be back in Florence, even if he was no longer a military officer.

“I will miss you,” she told him.

“And I, you,” he responded.

“You will take care of our parents, Luca. Marco is more interested in his women, and our youngest sister will eventually be wed. They will need you,” Lucianna told him.

He nodded. “I will remain at home, even if I wed, to see they are cared for, but of course our mother will never admit to any need.”

Lucianna laughed. “No, she will not, nor would I. Our mother is a proud lady, Brother, but you will see she never realizes that you are looking after her welfare when she needs such care.” Lucianna rose to embrace her brother. “We go at first light, which comes early at this time of year. Be safe and be happy always, Luca, my brother.” She kissed his cheek.

“And you be happy as well, sister mine,” he said, returning the kiss. He dared say nothing else, for he realized that he was feeling an actual pain at the knowledge he was unlikely to ever see his twin sister again in his lifetime. He wondered if she felt the pang as well.

In the early light of the predawn, the Earl and Countess of Lisle departed London for their home at Wye Court. While there was less urgency for this trip than their previous one to London, they were both eager to resume their ordinary lives. Once home, they settled back into the pattern of their everyday life. The earl spent his day managing his estates while his countess spent her time overseeing her household and the village, which was her obligation as well.

Lucianna found that this new lifestyle, while vastly different from her previous responsibilities, seemed to suit her very well. If there was one thing missing, it was a child, but Balia assured her the child would come. Especially considering all the time Lucianna and her husband spent together in their bed. “You have been wed but a few weeks, my lady.” Hearing this tart observation, young Mali giggled and then blushed when Balia shot her an outraged look.

The king sent to Robert Minton to tell him that the pretender had been crowned King Edward VI by the Irish in Dublin. There was bound to be war eventually, and it came quickly. The forces of the Yorkist rebels had landed in Lancaster, and they had already begun their march over the Pennines. The Earl of Lisle was summoned to join the king’s forces.

“Why must you go?” Lucianna asked him. “Men of property do not go to war in Florence. That is why Lorenzo keeps an army.”

“In England,” he explained, “it is a man’s duty, be he of high station or low, to support his king in battle. This will be over quickly, and these Yorkist pretensions must be put to rest once and for all. This should end it, although I would have thought the battle we fought at Bosworth several years ago ended it.”

“Is it possible this boy is who he says he is?” Lucianna wondered aloud.

“Nay, he is not. King Edward’s sons disappeared from the Tower and were never again seen.”

“How long will you be gone from Wye?” Lucianna inquired.

“However long it takes to defeat these rebels,
amore mia
. I like it no better than you, but I cannot refuse to go. And I must take with me a small troop of men, most of whom are unlikely to return, for the fighting will be hard, Lucianna. This is a battle for a kingdom.”

Her mother had never had to face her husband going off to a war, Lucianna thought, but then she was not her mother. And she was no longer living in Florence. She was English, and living in a northern land where loyal subjects joined their king in battle.

“You cannot know for how long you will be gone,” she said. “Will Worrell be able to manage in your absence? What should I know that I do not, Roberto? What must I do to help and keep Wye Court safe?”

“Worrell will see to the land and the stock, but you will have to oversee my records, which include the births of beasts. There are at least two more heifers almost ready to calve. Worrell will tell you if they are bull or female, and you must enter that in my books. We grow and make almost all of what we use and need. You will know what you need should a peddler come to the village. I offer hospitality to any who come peaceably, and so must you, even if I am not here,” he explained.

“I understand,” she said. “And hopefully you will not be gone long.” Wars, she knew, could last for months. “But how am I to recognize friend from foe? I would not unknowingly give hospitality to a Yorkist rebel, my lord.”

“The battle will be more north,” he said. “It is unlikely any Yorkists will come this far south, for we are too close to Wales, the stronghold of the Tudor family.”

“Who leads these rebels?” Lucianna asked, curious.

“The Earl of Lincoln, one of the last of the Plantagenets. King Richard made him his heir after his own son died. And I suspect Lord Lovell is involved too.”

The names were familiar but actually meant little to her, as she had not become involved in the court. Lucianna nodded. “Do you think they can win?” she queried her husband.

“In war, no one can be certain who will win,” he replied. “The king has sufficient forces, but so, I suspect, do the rebels.” What she was really asking him was whether she thought he could come home safely, but of course he could not answer her one way or another. He put his arms around her. “This is likely to be quick,
amore mia
. And hopefully it will be the last of it.”

“I hope so,” Lucianna said softly. She didn’t want him to go, but then what woman sent her man off to war willingly? She could not make it more difficult for him by weeping. She wasn’t the only woman in England now with a husband going off to war.

He left the next morning, taking twenty men with him. They were men-at-arms for the estate. He would not risk the lives of the untrained.

The earl noted as they rode that the countryside about them seemed unsettled with this new possibility of war. He reached the king’s forces on the fourteenth of June, going at once to pay his respects to the monarch, noting those others about the king who were given to gossip.

Henry Tudor had been taught almost from the moment of his birth to be wary of others. He gave his trust to few, which, given the men who populated the court, seemed wise to Robert Minton. Everyone came to gain something for himself, for his family. It was the nature of man. Therefore, it was better to be cautious, the king had once told Robert Minton, and the earl agreed.

John de Vere, the Earl of Oxford, nodded to Robert Minton. “How many men did you bring?” he asked in practical tones.

“Twenty, all mounted,” the Earl of Lisle replied. “I am a small estate, de Vere, as you surely know.”

“You came,” was the dry reply.

“I will always come when the king asks it of me,” was the reply.

“Many profess loyalty, but . . .” the Earl of Oxford, replied with a shrug.

Robert Minton nodded, understanding. There had been so much war in England for years that, for some men, being asked to choose a side was difficult. But he knew a man could not always be right, which was why in many families one son would support one side and another son would champion the other side. “We will overcome Lincoln and his band of traitors, my lord,” he said, knowing something positive was expected of him. That simple sentence would be enough.

They marched towards the enemy the following day without encountering them. On the morning of the sixteenth of June, outside of the village of Stoke, they finally came upon them. The rebels were lined up in a straight line upon the edge of a steep hill. They were surrounded on three sides by the river Trent.

Robert Minton swore softly under his breath. It was a virtually impregnable position. Having to fight their way uphill was going to be very difficult, and it was bound to result in a serious number of casualties. But then he heard Oxford exclaim, “
Jesú!
Is Lincoln mad?”

A gasp of shock arose from the men around them. The rebel forces were giving up their position of relative safety on the high ground and charging towards the king’s forces. The battle was enjoined and raged on for the next several hours. The royalists were outnumbered by the rebels, but the royalist troops were better trained and better equipped. No quarter would be given by either side, and when the battle came to an end in the early afternoon, more than four thousand rebels were dead, but only one hundred of the king’s men had perished.

The king did not wait to pass judgment upon the survivors. The rebel leaders not killed in the fighting—and most had been, to their credit—were immediately executed. The Irish lords and their surviving men were pardoned and told to go home to Ireland. Henry Tudor was no fool. He would need these lordlings to keep the peace in the Ireland he ruled. As for the pretender, Lambert Simnel, the king spared him as well.

“He does indeed have the look of York about him,” Henry Tudor said, “but he is innocent of deceit and has been used by ambitious men. God has seen to the right of it, so I will take him into my household as a servant. Give him to the cook as a turnspit.”

The pretender fell to his knees and thanked the king for his clemency. Henry smiled, one of his rare and wintery smiles. He had shown his fairness by punishing only the truly guilty, and pardoning the less guilty. It was just the sort of behavior his clever mother would have exhibited. Some of the king’s lords thought the surviving rebels had gotten off too easily, and murmured about it among themselves. The Earl of Lisle kept his own counsel.

“Will you not remain with me, Rob?” the king asked him later that evening when the others had gone to their own tents.

“You do not need me, Henry,” the earl said, using the king’s Christian name. Although he was permitted to do so, he rarely did. “But Wye Court needs me, and my wife needs me. You have chosen your counselors well. The queen you wed has given you a fine son in Prince Arthur. While I considered Bosworth the end of the conflict between Lancaster and York, this battle two years after will certainly end it for good now.”

“There will always be those who yearn for Edward’s sons. As long as no bodies are found, they will continue to hope,” the king said.

“Can you be certain that they are dead?” the earl asked daringly, which he never had before.

Henry Tudor shrugged. “I honestly do not know, Rob. I did not order such murder, nor would my mother, and Richard loved those lads as much as his own boy. If Edward of York and his younger brother, Richard, are dead, it was not my doing, and certainly not my wish.”

“It is to be hoped then that this pretender will be the last of your troubles,” Robert Minton said. “Will Your Majesty give me permission to depart with my men tomorrow?”

The king sighed. “Is she as amenable as she is fair?” he asked his friend, curious.

“Yes,” the earl told him. “But stubborn too. She wants a child now, and I need an heir. I will not get one remaining with you.”

“Hah!” The king barked a short laugh. “Nay, you will not. Very well, Rob, you have my permission to leave on the morrow.”

“I will always come when you call, my lord,” the earl reassured the king quietly. “If you need me, I will be there.” He arose and bowed.