Lady of the Roses (27 page)

Over dinner that evening, I learned there was much to celebrate in addition to John’s release from captivity.

Edward of March had lost no time marching on the queen. On Palm Sunday, the nineteenth day of March, Lancaster and York clashed at Towton. Again, Warwick, reversing tradition, ordered his men to slay the lords and spare the commons. Hour after hour, for fourteen hours, in a raging blizzard, the two sides fought one another, wreaking carnage the likes of which England had never seen—and, God willing, would never see again! Tens of thousands of men died fighting, and it looked as though the battle would go to the Lancastrians when—out of the driving snow—the Duke of Norfolk rode up with his army! York emerged triumphant. Somerset escaped, but nearly all the other Lancastrian lords were slain, and the frozen ground on which their butchered bodies were strewn became a field of ice and blood. The queen and her son fled England. King Henry went into hiding. The Yorkists stood triumphant, and Edward of March, the Duke of York’s gloriously handsome son, was now King of England!

Immediately after his victory, leaving Warwick to bury the thousands slain in the battle, Edward lost no time marching to York with one purpose in mind: to take down the agonized heads of his father, brother, uncle, and cousin Thomas from the city gates, and to punish the people of York, who had done nothing to stop Queen Marguerite, just as Lancaster had punished the town of Ludlow for not rising up against the Duke of York. Finding John safe in the castle prison at York, Edward had freed him. Then he had turned to his men and issued the order to destroy the city as if it were a foreign land—to smash it utterly, and with such cruelty that the punishment of York would live forever in men’s minds.

“Edward shook with such fury as he issued his command that no one dared ask mercy for the hapless citizens,” John said quietly. “So I did.” He fell silent for a long moment.

“What did he say?”

Silence again. Then John replied, “He granted my plea.”

I knew there was more to it than John was willing to relate to me, but whatever it was, he couldn’t bear to tell me now, and I didn’t press him.

John lifted his cup. “To peace,” he said softly.

I lifted my cup and met his eyes. “To peace,” I echoed, giddy with happiness. Laying my hand over his, I whispered, “And to love.”

BUT PEACE HAD YET TO COME. SOMERSET HAD
survived Towton. Taking refuge in several Northumbrian castles still loyal to the House of Lancaster, while Marguerite went to Scotland to seek aid against the House of York, he plagued the land. It fell to John, my valiant knight and England’s brilliant military commander, to drive the Lancastrians out for good. I took my leave of him by the mounting block at Burrough Green. On the twenty-sixth of April, the day after our anniversary, he kissed me and our babes farewell and set out for the Scottish border. John gave me a lingering smile of tenderness before he turned Saladin and left the gate, followed by Rufus on his mare. I watched until he disappeared over the horizon. Soon messages arrived to inform me that he had relieved the Lancastrian siege of Carlisle, and his forays into Scotland had met with such success that the country had made a truce with the House of York.

Although I continued to worry for John’s safety, my spirits lightened greatly since he had sent much good news. Our property, confiscated by Marguerite d’Anjou, was now restored to us, and in addition, Edward confirmed the barony of Montagu that the Duke of York’s parliament had bestowed on John. Edward also conferred on John a grant of the gold-producing mine in Devon at a rent of a hundred and ten pounds a year, easing our money woes. Further, the king had evidenced his faith in his Neville relatives by sending his eight-year-old brother, Richard, to be raised at Warwick’s castle of Middleham.

I was touched—but also annoyed—by John’s fondness for the fatherless boy and his many visits to Middleham to supervise the child’s knightly training.

“You have made four trips this month alone, John,” I said as I helped undress him for a bath. “Why do you push yourself so hard? Others can teach Dickon the skills he needs for war. You should rest when given a chance, not undertake the arduous journey from the border to Middleham as often as you do, my sweet lord.”

John had thrown me a sharp look. “Surely you don’t resent the visits I make to the boy?”

I could not deny it. He had struck at the truth. I decided the time had come to speak of what troubled me. “Why don’t you come to see me instead? Is it because I haven’t been able to give you a son?” I asked in a small voice.

John’s expression softened; he took me into his arms. “Isobel, Isobel…’Tis not the reason I go so often to see Dickon…. God gives us all some work to do—if not great deeds, then small ones. A cup of water to one of His children. Nay—even less than that! A word of advice, something lent to another. A vexation patiently borne, or the fault of thoughtlessness by another repaired without their knowledge…Dickon has suffered much. He was born as our troubles with Lancaster began, and has known more violence and grief in his brief life than others many times his age. He has no father to guide him, and no mother to comfort him—” John broke off at the disloyal thought he’d spoken aloud. Yet it was the truth. John’s aunt Cecily had borne a brood of children, but mother she was not. Since her husband’s death, she’d shut herself up at her castle of Berkhamsted, where she prayed and fasted like a nun, as if she bore no responsibility to anyone but herself.

“The boy is in sore need of reassurance,” he continued. “He lacks confidence in himself and is much hampered by his left-handedness, which makes the knightly arts more difficult for him.” He tipped my chin so that I met his eyes. “God will recompense all a thousandfold, my sweet. Surely you see that?”

Swept with shame for my jealousy and for my own perceived failings as a woman, I nodded, recognizing the truth of what he said. How could I begrudge the boy love when by the tender age of eight he’d suffered so much—witnessed the horrors of Ludlow and endured the hardships of captivity, exile, and death? John’s words opened my eyes and my heart, and from that moment forward, I took Dickon to me, as John did—as if he were our own son, in place of the little one we had lost.

Young Dickon’s experiences had left their mark on him, and each time I saw him, the sadness in his gray eyes made me remember Ludlow, and wish to crush him in my arms and kiss away his pain, while his adoration of his brother Edward stirred a nerve deep within me.
All his life long, no matter how hard he strives, or what he achieves, Dickon will walk in his brother’s shadow, just as my John walks in Warwick’s.
I knew it with a certainty I didn’t question, and so I tried, whenever I had the chance, to show him a mother’s tenderness.

One evening, when Ursula’s father, Sir Thomas Malory, visited Burrough Green, we took wine together in the solar.

“How fares the Countess of Salisbury?” he asked.

“Not well,” I replied, an image of Countess Alice as I’d last seen her at Middleham filling my mind. Afflicted in both body and spirit, she lay bedridden, no longer able to speak or to recognize us. “I fear the countess is lost to this world.”

The old knight murmured kind words about John’s mother and fell silent. I poured more wine into his cup and changed the painful subject. “You were present when my lord husband was released from imprisonment in York. How exactly did it come to pass that Edward chose to pardon the citizens of York?”

Sir Thomas gave me his answer in storyteller fashion, as I imagine he wrote his tales.

“A splendid knight he is, my lord of Montagu…the finest…. There we all were, you see, citizens and knights, pressing around King Edward, and he, seated on his black horse, his handsome face pale as the moon as he gazed on the rotting heads of his valiant father and of Edmund, the brother he loved, and of the kindly Earl of Salisbury and his merry son Sir Thomas Neville, all these nailed to the gates, buzzing with flies and covered with maggots. ‘Take them down!’ he commanded. ‘And send them to Pontefract to be reunited with their bodies for decent Christian burial!’ He didn’t say another word for a long time, but sat there still as death itself, staring at Micklegate Bar, and we thought that the end of the matter.

“Then he looked around him with a glittering eye and said, ‘Burn this city, rob it to its bare walls, rape its women, and hang its men so no eyes dare live that did naught to take down my father’s head in these three months since Yuletide!’ And his voice was like the hiss of a snake, and everyone that gathered close around him, friend and foe alike, turned white as the clouds above their heads, and trembled to hear his words. No one dared ask the king to spare the city, lest he turn his black fury on them—none, that is, except my lord of Montagu…. He stepped forward and fell to a knee. He looked up at King Edward and said, ‘Noble king, fair cousin and valiant conqueror, I beseech you to forgive the unkindness of the citizens of York, for they had no power nor might to withstand the bitch of Anjou and her evil hordes, and took no part in this horror, which was committed by a woman without honor or mercy before God or man. These are good people, your people, and given a chance to serve you, they shall not fail you, but shall prove themselves your most devoted subjects.’”

“The king gazed down on Lord Montagu’s bowed head for a long time, and we quivered for Lord Montagu, everyone there who watched, for we were certain he would be smitten down by the king in his rage. Then King Edward lifted his eyes, and the fury had fled from them, and he said, ‘Lord Montagu, if you can ask this of me after seeing the heads of your own father and brother rotting on the gates of this accursed city, then you are a better man than I, my fair cousin…. Your request is granted.’ And so the town of York was spared the horrors that befell Ludlow.”

Silence throbbed in the room. Ursula and her mother wiped tears from their eyes. Neither could I speak, for my heart brimmed with pride that left me mute.

MUCH GOOD NEWS CONTINUED TO ARRIVE FROM
John. He liberated castle after castle for York and subdued the wild hordes of thieves and cutthroat murderers on the border, keeping the Lancastrians on the run. But years of civil strife and lawlessness were reaping a bitter harvest of turmoil that fed the hopes of the Lancastrians, and so he rarely had a chance to return to me and taste life’s sweets. I fretted greatly over his hard lot, so devoid of much else but fighting.

One warm summer day, as John’s birthday approached, a trader on his way to Norwich stopped in Burrough Green to show me his wares. As I looked into his sack, the glitter of bronze, half-hidden by fabric bolts and a load of baubles, caught my eye. The trader fished it out.

“A veiled dancer,” he said, his sharp dark eyes watching me carefully, “from Alexandria, cast in bronze by a Greek sculptor three hundred years before the birth of Christ…”

I traced the lines of her perfect features and the graceful flow of her veils with my finger. An undergarment fell in deep folds around her and trailed heavily; atop, the figure wore a sheer mantle drawn taut over her head and body and across her cheek so that only her eyes and hairline were visible. The sculptor had caught her in the midst of a twirl, and as I gazed on her, she seemed to come to life before my eyes.

I paid the exorbitant sum the trader asked, though it set me behind with my expenses for the entire month. If the merchant had not lied, hundreds of years had passed since an ancient sculptor of the Hellenistic age had lovingly cast her beautiful image into the golden metal. The past seemed alive to my touch.

“I wonder who she was,” I mused to Ursula. “Did she love someone? Was she dancing for him?”

“She was beautiful, that is for certain,” Ursula replied. “You can see it even beneath the folds of her veils…. And she was a fine dancer…like you, m’lady.”

“I wish I had the chance to dance for the man I love…even veiled.”

In one of those rare coincidences of life that can never be explained, a troupe of Gypsy dancers came to Burrough Green the very next day seeking to entertain us. My purse drained by the purchase of the statuette, we reached agreement on a payment I could afford, and they hauled their cart and donkey inside. I invited all the household to watch their entertainment, and our small hall filled with revelry as everyone clapped to the tunes of their gittern, cymbals, and tabors. And as I watched them twirl and beat their tambourines, a curious idea took shape in my mind.

When the entertainment was over, I summoned the dance troupe to the solar. “I wish to surprise my lord husband, who holds camp on the Scots border with his army,” I told them. And I presented my scheme.

Over the next days the dance troupe helped plan my intricate dance steps, and I practiced them to the music of the blindfolded minstrels, for I had no wish that their men see me dance so suggestively until I performed for John. For another full day I experimented with a drape of veil over my form, and after this they pronounced me ready. For my attire I chose a red bodice and a rich skirt of multilayered red and purple veils sewn with tiny beads of colored glass, and a purple mantle embroidered with silver flowers. Now we were ready to leave.

The day dawned cool and bright. I was excited. Even the horses caught the scent of something special in the air; they snorted and neighed, stamping their feet as if to demand that we hurry. How we managed to load up the carts and not forget some vital necessity that would have ruined the entire plan, I shall never know. For I scattered my orders to the groomsmen with only half a mind, in a flutter of nervousness, amidst the incessant giggles and chatter of the dance troupe. At last I climbed into my litter and drew the curtains to protect my identity, and we set our course north for Doncaster.

Now that I was truly on my way, the sheer recklessness of my prank struck me with full force, and I was assailed with doubts. Lancastrians were everywhere. What if they abducted me to use as a pawn against John? I could end up being the means of his destruction. This was mad, complete folly! Even if I managed to surprise him, his reaction could be far from the joy I had anticipated; it could be anger that I had chanced such disaster. Mayhap I should turn back…. Then his face would rise up before me, his Neville blue eyes gazing at me, filled only with me, the way they were on the night of the dance when we had first met, and my body would flame with passion. What if I didn’t go—and God forfend he was taken from me forever in the next battle? Would I ever forgive myself for my cowardice? Could I deny us the ecstasy of a last reunion?

Then courage braced me like a knight’s armor, and my doubts fled for a time.

The trip went by uneventfully. I spent two uncomfortable nights in inns along the way, sleeping with Ursula on hay mattresses filled with bedbugs, but the ale helped us abide them. Late on the third evening, the spire of the town church announced our arrival in Doncaster. Nearby lay John’s camp…and that of the Lancastrians. From this point on, we had to proceed with the greatest caution.

“HALT! WHAT IS YOUR BUSINESS?” DEMANDED THE
man-at-arms fiercely. Around him was gathered a large group of soldiers, and behind him John’s camp stretched out into the distance, a maze of tents beneath the setting sun.

Geoffrey drew out the missive I had written in my own hand and presented it to the guard. I drew my mantle tighter across my face as I watched them. In order not to attract undue attention, I had left my litter and donned a veil just before we arrived at the camp, and now I rode an old mare, which I shared with one of the eight Gypsy dancers. But we could not have more than one veiled woman, or suspicions would be aroused that we might be men in disguise, hoping to gain entry and sabotage the camp. Thus Ursula had been given a gray-haired wig to wear and told to walk with a stoop, so she would not be recognized.

The sergeant took my letter warily but didn’t break the seal to read. I wondered if he was illiterate.

“This is a dance troupe,” Geoffrey explained. “As you can see from the seal, Lady Montagu has dispatched us here to entertain her lord husband and his camp. I myself am well-known to those in His Lordship’s retinue. Send for anyone close to Lord Montagu, and they will vouch for me, as I vouch for this Gypsy troupe.”

The man moved down the line, stopping at the litter. He drew back the curtain and riffled through the costumes that lay strewn there. His gaze then moved over our group and settled firmly on me, though I sat in the midst of the riders. But he could see little, for I took care to bow my head and draw my Saracen veil tighter across my face.