The King's Grey Mare (26 page)

Warwick shook his head, his mouth tightly drawn.
Edward went on pleasantly: ‘I’m glad to see you, cousin.
We must discuss my sister’s wedding.
I have commissioned the
New Ellen
; a fine ship, a beautiful vessel, to protect Margaret even against the assaults of the Hanse traders’ craft.
You shall accompany her to Burgundy.’

The sick feeling in Warwick’s belly grew.
He said:

‘Your Grace knows that this will alienate Louis for ever?’

‘Bah!’
replied Edward.
‘King Spider is all mumblings and threats.
Together we can woo him, eh, my lord?’

‘It is not only Louis who has ceased to love us,’ said Warwick distantly.
‘Ferdinand of Spain is still angry.’

More than angry, he added to himself.
His emissaries had reported Isabella’s curses.
Spurned by the English King!

‘I have made my match,’ said Edward.
The smile had left him, and his eyes were stormy.
They held Warwick’s, a warning.
Say no more, my lord.
Speak not of my Queen!
None the less, the Earl’s pride, seething like an ill-digested dinner, rose and fermented.
He said: ‘By the Rood, Ned!
Never did I think you would deal thus with me and mine!’

‘How so?’
Edward watched Warwick’s pacing, strongly irritated.
These Nevilles made their own orders of chivalry.
Elizabeth’s kin would never address him whilst walking about.
They, unlike this strutting, choleric minister, revered his kingship.

‘Be still, sir,’ he cried.
‘Address your sovereign.’

Warwick turned on his heel, rich robes lifting like a banner.

‘I count it loss,’ he said, ‘that George, my nephew, should forfeit such estates as belong to the Duke of Exeter’s daughter.
Can you deny …’

Icily, Edward cut him short.
‘I deny nothing.
The Queen’s son, Thomas Grey, weds Exeter’s maid.
Her estates are his by my decree.
Concern yourself no more with it.’

‘The lady was promised to my nephew.
And that’s not all.
Why was my kinsman Mountjoy asked to resign as Treasurer of England?’

Colder still, Edward said: ‘My Queen’s father, Earl Rivers, is Treasurer.
And he carries the position right well.’

Be gone, Warwick told the violent griping pain in his belly.
He stared at the King, who took a pear from a dish and bit into it.
Warwick felt his control slipping away under the look from those careless eyes.
Pride forbade that he should mention past fellowship, old debts, but these were implicit in his voice.

‘I sometimes wonder,’ he said slowly, ‘how best I may serve your Grace.
It seems there are new rules of obedience to the Crown: those who serve it least are best rewarded.’

The King leaped up, throwing the pear away.
Sober and furious, he faced the Earl squarely.

‘You speak against my Queen’s family?’

Warwick, shuddering with the past hour’s repressed rage, said thickly: ‘Why!
I speak against all my mortal enemies, who lie about the King’s person.
Earl Rivers and his knavish son, Anthony – and John, whom you saw fit to marry to my aged aunt – and Herbert, Devon, scoundrels both!
I watch them fawning like curs, draining your strength and treasure.
While my own folk go in the shadow, robbed of your Grace’s favour through no fault but loyalty …’

‘Enough!
God’s Blessed Lady!’
cried Edward.
‘My lord, you strain my mercy to a thread.
Never would I have thought you ingrate, traitor … what of
your
brother, then?
Didn’t I make him Archbishop of York?
Translated from lowly Exeter to please you?’

‘To placate me,’ said Warwick sullenly.

‘And John, your other brother – is he not Earl of Northumberland?’

‘Yes, Sire,’ said Warwick insolently.
‘For a season, mayhap!’

They stared at one another.
The Earl had gone further than any dared, gambling on the respect once won in bloody, footsore days.
But Edward had other, later memories, and they rankled.

‘All know–’ fury gathered – ‘that after my royal banquet for the Bohemian knights, when fifty courses were eaten, there was one who essayed himself more wealthy than the King.
Have you forgotten that?’

Warwick’s face reddened darkly.
He had been unable to resist temptation, not so much to insult Edward but as a thrust at the flaunting Woodvilles.
At his house, the Bohemians, marvelling, had dined on sixty courses.
He flew to counter-attack, saying the first thing in his mind.

‘Has your Grace forgotten the time and care spent by me in nurturing the Duke of Gloucester?’

He hated saying it.
Dickon had been happy at Middleham, confused and shattered to find his time there ending so suddenly.
Dickon, the precious pawn!

Coldly the king replied: ‘Yes!
Well, my brother no longer usurps a place in your house, or eats you out of livelode …’ and wanted to bite back his words.
Yet in that instant he recalled a rumour; Warwick had invited Richard and George to a great festival, making much of them, perchance pouring sedition in their ear.
George, for one, was very susceptible … He tore his thoughts back to Warwick’s reply.

‘Gloucester ate little,’ said the Earl.
‘It was joy and privilege to have him under my roof.’

The two lordly glances met again, both shadowed with heavy regret.
The moment passed.

‘We have said enough,’ said the King.
Warwick bowed; when he straightened Edward was seated again, and the afternoon sun had moved to gild his head.
Memory, pride and loss mingled to choke Warwick.

‘I would have your Grace’s permission to retire to my estates,’ he said.
‘I have affairs to see to, and the court wearies me.’

‘You have my permission,’ said Edward stonily.
The door closed softly, and he was alone.
Had he not been King, he would have rushed after Warwick, crying: ‘My lord, come back!’
conjuring the old times, sharing laughter, planning fresh feats.
But Warwick had slighted Bess’s family, and the Devil could have him.
I care not, he thought, if he is gone for a twelve-month.
Yet some unfinished business lingered with him, stirred by the recent conversation.
He summoned a page.

‘Bring me the Duke of Gloucester.’

Richard Plantagenet, the King’s youngest brother, entered shortly.
Young, dark, slender, with an unobtrusive sadness that hung about him like chains.
His clothes were shabby and unfashionable; his doeskin thighboots were rubbed to a sheen.
His face betrayed little of the joy he felt at being summoned to the presence.
The court had already taught him to conceal emotion.

He had one friend in the household; Francis Lovell, a youth of about his own age.
But Francis was away for an indefinite time, at Minster Lovell in Oxfordshire.
There was no one, nothing.
Only Earl Warwick, adored Warwick, who had cherished him at Middleham; Warwick, who had changed so horrifyingly.
Richard kissed his brother’s hand and rose, and in the moments before Edward spoke, his thoughts returned to Middleham.
The North, the clean, beloved North, with its days of hunting and hawking and prayer amid the sweeping winds.
The days of mastery; the French and Latin, the dialectics and the courtly skills.
And Anne.
Even now she would be waiting for her dancing lesson in the little round turret room.
Whom would she dance with now?
She would be growing womanly, out of the sight of his loving eyes.
There was no one, nothing.
The days were gone, and the nights, when he and Warwick would sit man to man before the Hall’s bright fire.
There they would discuss war and philosophy, strategy and myth, and Warwick had never sneered or patronized Richard’s halting theories, being swift to compliment him on any mark of wit or understanding.
That Warwick had ceased to exist, the night of the banquet.

He remembered it well; how could he ever forget it?
The feast had been in celebration of the enthronement of Warwick’s brother as Archbishop of York.
Anne and her sister Isabel had been present; their eyes had admired Richard, resplendent in new velvet with the proud order of the Garter shining at his knee and breast.
There was a thunderous crowd present and food enough to serve the whole City.
Sixty-two cooks had laboured over a hundred roast oxen, six wild bulls, four thousand sheep, pigs and calves, five hundred stags, four thousand swans, and countless sweets and subtleties.
Marchpane saints sported upon silver dishes, and Samson in spun-sugar pulled down a honeycomb temple.
Richard realized later how this effigy had symbolized Warwick’s own desires: the Earl the Samson and the temple Edward’s court.

He had drunk a quantity of wine; Warwick had kept his hanap filled.
This was a departure, as the Earl, at Middleham, had lectured him upon the perils of drunkenness.
Coupled with the noise, the heat, and Anne’s presence by his side, the wine had sent his head spinning.
He had smiled at all that Warwick said, until that dreadful, shattering conversation had turned his brain ice-cold.

‘Look you, Dickon!
The King your brother has no time for us these days.
That woman makes him wanton, careless.
It’s meet you turn your back upon him now and follow me.
I’ll give you high estates, and more …’

Then Warwick’s piercing, reckless eyes had rested upon Anne, so sweet and unknowing in her green gown.

‘It’s no secret, Richard, how you love!’
said the Earl, laughing.

Then Richard had risen from the board, swaying a little, to say stiffly:

‘I must have mistaken you, sir.
I thought you to say I should betray the King.’
And had sat down again, feeling sick.

Warwick, clasping him about the shoulder, had whispered terrible things, about a new day dawning, and the danger to England through the King’s mad policies.
That it was left to the Nevilles and their adherents to set the kingdom straight.
Plantagenet was fast being disgraced by these Woodville commoners, this machinating Queen.
Richard must set spurs and ride after righteousness.
He must put off the King.
The evening had ended in despair.
Writhing, Richard could have taken his dagger gladly and slain Warwick, but chivalry forbade it; he had taken the Earl’s meat and drink.
Dimly he heard Anne’s voice, felt her hand on his.

‘Why, Dickon?
What ails you, sweet Dickon?’

She was too young; he could not tell her that her father, the man he trusted most, had made nonsense of that trust.
Warwick, his god, now gloated on treason.
He dragged himself out of these black thoughts; Edward was asking him questions.

‘… and have you seen the new babe?
Little Bess, the pretty poppet!
Have you not a sweet and comely niece?’

He answered with difficulty, thinking of the child, who looked like any other child, and the Queen her mother, whose eyes burned him with contempt.
Francis Lovell had said this was purely fancy, but Richard knew otherwise.

Edward looked his brother over carefully.
His heart mellowed.
He should pass more time with him; the boy looked downcast and his clothes were disgracefully dull.
Unlike Tom Grey, Bessy’s son, whom he had seen that day arrayed in saffron silk.

‘How do you spend your time?
In the tiltyard?
Shooting?
I trust you pay attention to your letters.’

Tilting.
Shooting.
Yes.
In the thrust of the longbow, the thrum of the axe, there was comfort.
The other young knights were wary of the skills that Warwick had taught him.
Richard fought like the Boar, his own blazon.

‘You must have new garments,’ said Edward.
The boy was the image of their dead father – it made his heart ache briefly, and he wandered among memories.

‘Do you remember the gloves I brought you?
When you and George were lodging in London with the Pastons?’

‘Green,’ said Richard.
‘With the White Rose on the cuffs.
I have them still.’

‘How you hated that tutor!’
mused the King.
‘Blotting your Latin with tears, both you and George …’