No, the visit had not been an easy one. Francis had thought of the fatherless Neville children far more than he wanted to in the days that followed, and for a week or so thereafter, it seemed that Richard couldn’t pass a village church without stopping to buy Masses for the dead, for his cousin Johnny.
Francis handed the reins to a groom, found himself lingering there in the September sunshine. It seemed strange to be back at Middleham and stranger still that it should feel strange, for so much of his life had been passed within these massive ashlar walls. He watched Richard’s enormous wolfhound circling about in the inner bailey, seeking out its master. No, it had not been a happy summer.
There’d been that trouble, too, about Richard’s son. The little boy was a week shy of six months, was now securely settled at Sheriff Hutton Castle, the Neville stronghold ten miles north of York. But that had been no simple thing, either; there’d been a time when the child’s future had been to Richard yet another source of concern in this summer of so many.
Richard was not quite so reticent these days as he’d once been, and Francis now had facts enough of Richard’s liaison with the baby’s mother to fill in much of the details, as well. The girl had been young, pretty, and newly widowed; had shared with Richard a passing passion and the bad luck that brought into being the child neither of them wanted. Francis could imagine just how frantic she must have been, to find herself with child and Richard suddenly a fugitive under sentence of death. It was quite another matter now, of course. He knew Richard had at once taken measures to see to her security, and to ensure the future of the little boy christened John and called Johnny.
On their way north that July, Richard had confided to Francis that Nan wanted to wed, laughing at Francis’s startled look and saying, “No, thank God, she has someone other than me in mind!” Francis wasn’t surprised that she’d found a willing husband with such ease, not if she was as fair as Richard said she was, and not if Richard had been as generous as he suspected. For a pretty, well-dowered wife, there’d be no lack of men willing to overlook any damage Richard had done to her name.
To Francis, it seemed to be a fortunate turn of events for all concerned, and he was not shy in saying so. Richard had nodded, but then said rather reluctantly, “It would be, Francis, but for the fact that the man she wants to wed is not willing to take Johnny.”
Nan had assured him, he went on to say somewhat skeptically, that this would pose no problem; it seemed that she had an aunt who’d be happy to take the baby, to raise him as her own. The more Richard thought on that, the less he’d liked it. Too often, he said, such children were passed around as casually as a shared cup around a campfire, sometimes to those who did want them and, oftentimes, to those who did not. And it be enough of a burden for a child to make his way in this world without birthright; to deny him a sense of belonging, too, was a far greater sin than the sin of fornication that had brought him into being. It was only then that Francis realized what Richard meant to do, to take Johnny himself.
Not surprisingly, Nan had readily agreed, and she and Johnny had soon after been conveyed north to Sheriff Hutton, were now comfortably ensconced in what was to be Johnny’s new home. Nan was to stay with him till a competent nurse could be found, and Richard had just that week returned from a brief visit to make sure all was well with them, only to be confronted upon his return to Middleham with indisputable proof of Fauconberg’s renewed treason, this time with the Scots.
Mounting the stairs leading up into the keep, Francis gave one last look at the sky above him, thinking that it ever seemed bluer in Yorkshire than elsewhere, and then moved into the shadows of the great hall. It would, he thought, be good to get back to London. Good for them all.
The late afternoon sun was filtering through the west windows of the solar, pleasantly warming upon Francis’s face. He watched for a time as Richard devoted his attention to the sheaves of correspondence piled upon the writing desk that had once been used by the Earl of Warwick.
Richard’s powers of concentration were not as unscathed as he’d have had them appear, however. More than a few times, Francis had caught him staring into space, thinking of anything but the script before him. Francis knew Richard was feeling the aftereffects of that noonday execution, and why not? For all that he was Lord Constable and Lord Admiral of England, Great Chamberlain, and Warden of the Marches toward Scotland, Francis reminded himself now, Dickon was still ten days from his nineteenth birthday.
He didn’t know what to say, however, so he said nothing, and watched Richard seek to lose himself in surveillance reports sent him from the border. Where had Rob gotten to? Didn’t he realize Dickon would be in need of companionship after the beheading?
As if on cue, Rob appeared in the solar doorway, trailed by Dick Ratcliffe, a friend of their Middleham days.
“I’ve been to the buttery,” he announced. “It did occur to me that there was still begging to be drunk those flagons of brandywine sent by Lord Scrope as a peace offering. Brandywine which some idiot—no names mentioned, Dickon—did order to be stored away untasted!”
He slammed the door, set about filling cups and passing them around. As he sloshed a cup into Francis’s hand, he winked, and Francis felt a prick of guilt for having once again underestimated the discerning power of Rob’s eye, for assuming that Rob was less sensitive than he to the unease of mind that must inevitably follow an execution. No less sensitive and, at times, a great deal more astute, Francis conceded and reached gratefully for the cup.
Francis was feeling sentimental, was finding that the solar was peopled with ghosts for him.
“It be nigh on seven years ago,” he announced to the room at large, “that we were in this very chamber to hear Warwick denounce the King’s marriage. Even Gareth there; it was that same night that Anne did pick his name for you, Dickon….” He started to elaborate further, then wondered if that were truly such a good idea. He looked down at Richard, reclining comfortably against Gareth’s accommodating bulk, decided that might not be a memory Dickon would enjoy reliving.
“Dickon, your letter from the King! It came this morn and you had not the time to read it then….”
“Jesú, it did go completely from my head!” Finding it still tucked away safely within his doublet, Richard smiled at Francis, settled back against Gareth to read it.
“What be the news from London? Good, I hope!”
“As it happens, yes. The Queen is with child again.”
Richard waited as they responded with polite enthusiasm, said, “The babe be due in the spring, Ned says. If it be a girl, he means to name her after my sister Meg, and if a boy, after me.”
Francis thought it was very pleasant to be lounging here before the solar hearth, listening as the King was referred to as “Ned” it wasn’t often that he was given a glimpse of England’s sovereign in the more intimate guise of a brother. He looked to see if Rob, too, shared his thought, saw that it hadn’t even occurred to Rob, who’d managed to lose the dice and was making several half-hearted sweeps of the carpet.
Richard had resumed reading, now drew a surprised breath. “I’ll be damned! He’s given George the estates the Courtenays did hold in Devon and Cornwall!”
They were all equally startled at that, it being the general consensus that Edward wasn’t likely to give George the time of day if it could be avoided. After a moment, Richard laughed, said wryly, “He says he hopes I do appreciate the sacrifice he makes on my behalf!”
He didn’t explain why Edward should be giving George land to please him, but Francis thought he understood; Richard had confided some in him about George’s obsessive hunger for the Neville and Beauchamp lands.
Richard sat up so suddenly that Gareth grunted a muted protest. “Christ! He’s gone and made Thomas Grey an Earl!”
Discretion was one thing; Thomas Grey was quite another. Francis echoed Richard’s disgust. Rob was still hunting the dice, mumbled something unintelligible that, nonetheless, sounded suspiciously
far from congratulatory. Dick Ratcliffe observed placidly in the silence that followed, “Since Grey be the Queen’s son and thus stepson to the King, does that not make him kin of some sort to you, Dickon?”
“It does make him a millstone around my neck, that I do know for certes,” Richard said, somewhat absently; he’d gone back to reading his brother’s letter. Now he laughed again, said, “Here’s news worth hearing. Ned has named Will Hastings as Lieutenant General of Calais!”
“I thought that post was held by Anthony Woodville.”
“It was, Rob. But Ned hasn’t forgotten how helpful Anthony was after Barnet, when he did take it into his head to go off on crusade against the Saracens!”
They all laughed at that; all of London had known Edward’s incredulous reaction to his brother-in-law’s sudden attack of crusading fervor at a time when Marguerite d’Anjou’s army was swelling daily with recruits to the Lancastrian cause.
“Ned says that Will was well pleased and Anthony not at all.” Richard grinned, debated briefly with himself, and then quoted directly from the letter:
“ ‘When Anthony did come to me to make his protests known, I could only profess surprise that he was still in England, that he was not halfway to Damascus by now! I told him I’d assumed that once Tewkesbury’s dead were decently buried, he’d have been eager to hasten toward Jerusalem. And while I’d never be one to deny a man so precious a chance for spiritual salvation, Dickon, I thought it best to look closer than the Kingdom of God for one to govern Calais for me!’ ”
They shouted with laughter, not in the least deterred by the awareness that they, no less than Edward, were being far from fair to Anthony Woodville, whose piety was not open to question, however dubious his sense of timing.
Richard swore suddenly, looked up from the letter in disbelief. “He knows I did fetch Nan and Johnny north! Can you credit that? Is there anything I do that does not find its way back to London?”
“You think they do know in London yet about that inn in Newcastle-upon-Tyne last month and that girl who somehow ended up in your room?” Rob queried innocently, and Francis was quick to chime in, equally blandly,
“Was that the one with the flaming red hair, Rob? It does seem to me, now that I think upon it, that my lord of Gloucester has a decided preference for a hair color most men do hold to be unlucky!”
Richard reached for his wine cup to hide a grin. “As it happens,” he said with a thoroughly unconvincing attempt at indifference, “the first love of my life did have red hair, so bright it did hurt the eye to look upon it….”
“That be right! She’s a redhead, too, isn’t she, Francis?…the lass who bore his Kathryn?”
Richard set his cup down with a thud. He was touchy about Kate, touchier than he liked to admit, even to himself. He had an unease of conscience where she was concerned. He knew she’d never entertained hopes he might marry her. But he knew, too, that she’d been in love with him, was still in love with him, and he was unhappily aware that she was going to be hurt by what he meant to do.
“That be none of your concern, Rob!” he said sharply, more sharply than he’d intended. Rob looked surprised and then hurt, and Richard relented, said with a smile meant to redeem his flare of temper, “If you must know, the first love of my life was a thoroughly bewitching redhead named Joan…and I adored her with all the steadfast devotion you’d expect from a boy of six!”
Rob grinned, and Dick Ratcliffe acted to dispel the last of the tension by confessing to a like fancy for a childhood nurse with the beguiling accents of Dublin in her voice, and they passed the brandywine around again as the hearth burned low and the night sky darkened to ebony in the window above Francis’s head.
“Did I tell you, Dickon,” Francis said suddenly, “that Anna’s father thinks she’s now of an age to make her home with me at Minster Lovell? It’s been decided she’s to come at Martinmas, provided we’re back in the South by then….”
Richard was pillowing his head against Gareth again; he glanced up with a glint of amusement.
“Shall I offer my congratulations or my condolences, Francis?”
“Neither,” Francis said warningly. “Given the tangled coil of your own affairs at present, my lord, you should be the last one to venture out onto such thin ice!”
“The both of you be crazy, you know,” Rob pointed out companionably. “Logically, a man should be congratulated that he’s gaining a wife, Francis, and commiserated with upon losing a mistress, Dickon, and the two of you do turn it around topsy-turvy!”
That won him reluctant laughter from both Richard and Francis, and a quizzical smile from Dick Ratcliffe, who knew very little of Richard’s relationship with Nan, even less about Francis’s marriage with Anna Fitz-Hugh. Another comfortable silence fell; Dick ended it by questioning, “Dickon, if I might ask you what I do know to be none of my concern…. Why did you not choose to have your son brought here to Middleham rather than to Sheriff Hutton? As I understand it, Middleham’s where you do mean to make your home.”
“I did think seriously about doing just that, Dick. That was my first thought, in fact. It took me awhile to realize that I couldn’t, in fairness, bring Johnny to Middleham.” Richard smiled, looked both rueful and regretful. “I’ve not the right to ask so much of Anne. What newly wed wife would be willing to take upon the care of a child conceived in another woman’s bed?”
Francis started obligingly to say that Richard spoke true, when he suddenly realized what Richard had just said.
“Dickon! You and Anne? It gladdens my heart to hear it, in truth it does.”
Rob was belatedly reaching the same conclusion. “Anne? You mean Warwick’s Anne?” he asked, sounding surprised but pleasantly so. “Well, you’re nothing if not constant, Dickon! And Lord knows, the lass did ever look upon you with love.” He bestirred himself to pour out the last of the brandywine into their cups, said with considerable contentment, “It will be rather nice, that…. Having all of us back at Middleham, as in the days under the Earl. Except it won’t be the Earl who does rule the North for the King; it will be you, Dickon!” He laughed, said, “That does give one pause! Who would have thought?…I remember when first you came to join the Earl’s household. Dark as a gypsy you were and thin as a rail slat, with nary a word to say for yourself for the longest time ever!”
“It’s not surprising I had so little to say, Rob, given the way you did like to claim every conversation as your own!”
“Well, it’s just glad I am that I was moved to take you under my wing,” Rob grinned, “back in the days when you were too insignificant for my motives to be suspect!”
Richard roused himself at that, enough to pitch the lost dice neatly into Rob’s wine cup. Unfazed by their laughter, Rob peered down into its depths to complain good-naturedly, “I feel obliged to tell you, my lord, that you just spoilt a right fine salutation I was about to make, one you’d have been sure to like well. I was going to drink your health, Dickon, as the new Lord of the North!”
Richard considered and then grinned. “You be right, Rob, that is to my liking!”
“I can think of one even more to your taste,” Francis offered. “Let’s drink, instead, to Anne of Warwick.”
Richard reached across Gareth to claim his own cup. “You’re half right, Francis,” he said and laughed, raising an arm to ward off the dog’s sudden affectionate lunge. “But I’d rather you made it Anne of Gloucester.”
6
London
September 1471
Life had been sweet that summer at the Herber. For Anne and Véronique, this was due in no small measure to George’s absence. Three days after Richard departed London for the North, George had ridden west to check upon his estates in Wiltshire and, from there, he’d gone north to Tewkesbury. The Abbey of St Mary the Virgin had been closed for a full month to allow Abbot Streynsham to reconsecrate his church in the wake of the Yorkist seizure of the sanctuary-seeking Lancastrians, and George felt it politic to pay a c
onciliatory visit as the new holder of the Lordship and Honour of Tewkesbury.
Those hot summer days were happy ones for Anne. With Isabel’s indulgent blessings, she took it upon herself to show Véronique London, and they went up and down the river on Isabel’s lavishly bedecked barge, were escorted to the Southwark Gardens to watch Véronique’s first bear-baiting, visited the Tower to view the royal menagerie of lions, leopards, tigers, and a huge white snow bear from Norway. In the evenings, they practiced the latest hair styles, rooted through Isabel’s store of velvets and sarcenet silks, and pieced together patterns for gowns with the newly fashionable long tight sleeves and wide flouncing skirts. They played silly pranks upon each other; it was Anne who borrowed madder root-dye from the laundress to turn Véronique’s bathwater a bright blood-red and Véronique who smuggled two newly weaned alaunt puppies upstairs to hide in Anne’s bed. And they shared late-night confidences of increasing intimacy: Véronique confessed to her ill-fated love affair with Ralph Delves, and Anne told Véronique more than she could possibly wish to know about Richard of Gloucester.
But then it was August, and suddenly all joy was gone from their summer. George came back from Tewkesbury and with his arrival, the atmosphere of the Herber went suddenly sour. Somehow, the sight of Anne’s obvious happiness seemed to infuriate him. He at once put a stop to her pleasure excursions about the city, confiscated the coins Isabel had given her as a nameday offering, coins she’d been using to pay couriers to take letters northward to Richard, and when she protested, he emptied out the casket containing what jewels she had, took them away from her as well.
Anne’s anger was as futile as it was intense. She was under George’s roof, subject to his commands, and if he chose to keep her from writing to Richard, there was not much she could do about it. As little as she liked to admit it, she was secretly somewhat afraid of George. His rages were occasionally flavored with cruelty. It was better not to antagonize him needlessly, to keep out of his way as much as possible and await Richard’s return to London.