He brightened at the sight of his brother.
‘Richard! Now why would Alfred hold you outside with the rest? You are always welcome here, of course.’
Richard smiled as Edward made a show of shaking his head in rebuke at his servant. He understood his brother better than Edward realized at times. Nothing would change.
‘I am pleased to see you looking so strong, Edward,’ he said. ‘Your maids said you fell again last night.’
A spasm of peevish anger crossed Edward’s face.
‘Well, they should know better than to carry tales! Which ones opened their little beaks?’
‘I won’t tell you, Brother,’ Richard said, his expression still wry. ‘They care for you, that is all.’
In that moment, Richard suddenly understood that his brother could not force him to speak. Their friendship had changed and was still unfolding in a new pattern. He thought he saw the same flash of awareness in Edward, but it came and went.
‘I fell because my balance is poor, that is all,’ Edward said. ‘There is nothing I can do to improve it.’
‘Can you not catch yourself?’ Richard said. His brother looked bleak.
‘No. I have begun to fall before I even know it is
happening. I am black with bruises now. If I could reach out, I would, believe me.’
‘And you are not drinking? The doctors said your great appetite did not help, as it worsens your gout and inflames the liver.’
‘Oh, I have been a good boy, do not fear for me.’ Edward spoke in irritation, then relented. Richard had come to see him almost every day for three months. Even his wife and children had not come as often, though he grew frustrated at times and roared at them, which may have played a part.
He and Richard had known each other before the court, before his wife, before the teeming brood of his children that had come into the world. Edward thought at times that only Richard could look upon him and see him truly. It was not always a comfortable thing.
‘Richard, I have put my seal to some new papers and sent them to Parliament. There, in the satchel, is a copy for you. In case I die.’
His brother snorted.
‘You are, what? Forty? Older men than you recover from these apoplexies, Brother. You have grown somewhat fat about the loins, it is true …’
‘A little …’ Edward admitted.
‘And you were drinking that foul Armagnac like water. A bottle a day? Two?’
‘It is like mother’s milk to me,’ Edward said. ‘I could not deny myself brandy.’
Richard chuckled at the wounded stiffness of his brother’s manner.
‘Edward, you were taking back the realm when I was eight years old. I went into exile with you, when we had nothing. I have fought at your side and I have seen you triumph over all our enemies. I trusted you – and I trust you still.’ He saw
Edward would interrupt and held up his hand, sitting on the edge of the bed. ‘You have been an older brother and a second father to me, you know it. I am
always
on your side. By God, if you don’t know by now! I went on that wild adventure into Scotland, did I not? “Go north, Richard! Put my lad Albany on the throne and we’ll win Scotland!” And I went! Though I knew it was madness.’ Richard began to chuckle and his eyes filled with light as he did so. ‘God, whatever you want, I will do, Edward, because you are the one who asks. Do you understand? I will not talk of your death, that is all.’
Edward reached out with his left hand and held his brother’s fingers awkwardly. It served to remind them both how diminished the king had become and he did not look at Richard as he spoke.
‘There are some things I must say, even so. No, listen to me. The papers are to appoint you Lord Protector. Our father had the title many years ago, when Henry fell ill for the first time. It grants you the authority you will need to stand over the wishes of all others. It makes you king in all but name – and you will need it to keep my son Edward safe.’ Edward held up his hand to forestall any objection. ‘
If
I die, make yourself his regent until he reaches an age where he can rule. I would … I hope you can be kind to him. He has not suffered as you and I have, Brother. Perhaps that is why he is so gentle. I sent him away with Lord Rivers to make a man of him, but it has not worked.’
‘This is madness, but yes, very well,’ Richard said. ‘I will guide your son if the worst comes. You have my word, are you satisfied? Now, your hand is shaking. Can you sleep, do you think? Shall I leave? Your wife is outside, waiting for me to go.’ Edward turned his head to one side on the pillow and waved his hand in the air.
‘She comes when she wants something else from me, some bauble or post or title, some piece of land that will end a dispute and make one of her cousins happy. I think at times … it doesn’t matter. I am tired, Richard. And I am grateful that you come every day. If not for you, I seem to speak only to women. They wear me down with their chatter. You know when to be silent.’
‘And when to leave,’ Richard murmured. He saw his brother’s eyes were drifting closed and he stood slowly. Perhaps he would tell Edward’s wife to wait until morning, though she was a hard woman to refuse and always had been.
Richard left in good spirits and retired to his rooms in Baynard’s Castle on the bank of the Thames. He was woken in the pale light of dawn by his wife, Ann Neville. He looked at her in sleepy confusion as she leaned in and took his hand.
‘I’m so sorry, Richard. Your brother is dead.’
The wind was cold and filled with specks of frost that rattled off armour. The horsemen bore no banners as they might have done on a battlefield. Of the dozen men with Earl Rivers and his charge, three wore the livery of the earl and the remaining nine had gone out from London with the prince. Though the boy was just twelve years old, the prince was tall and slender, a reed among oaks on that road. The news of his father’s death had reached them only a day before and still showed on their expressions. No one had expected that tree to fall. As the oldest son and heir, Edward had become king in that moment. In time, he would be surrounded by the trappings and men of his rise in status. For the moment, it was as if nothing had changed and he was hurrying back to London. He would not be crowned until he stood before the Archbishop of Canterbury and all his lords.
Edward had wept the night before, until Earl Rivers took him aside and had a stern word with him. His father was not yet in the ground and if his shade still hovered close about them, he would certainly not want to see snivelling. Rivers was not at his best when comforting a child, though it had an effect. Edward had rubbed away his tears and worn a stiff expression ever since, so as not to shame his father’s memory.
The prince had been at Ludlow Castle for a little over a year, not counting the previous Christmas when he’d met his sisters and seen his father fall in that great paroxysm. He had seen the king drunk before of course, weeping or singing,
then dropping into slumber like a great bear, snoring where he lay. Young Edward had not thought it was the beginning of a decline, that his giant of a father would not somehow leap up again and laugh at all their fears. It was impossible that such a man was not there, even to scorn his weak arms and tell him to use the sword posts more often.
Edward twitched his head as if a fly had settled on him. He could not afford to weep, Uncle Rivers had made that clear. From that moment, men would no longer look to him to see how he developed into a man, but to see whether he had the strength of will to be a king. It was an entirely different judgement and Edward could only stare back and try to hide the way he quailed from their gaze.
‘Riders ahead,’ one of his uncle’s men said suddenly. The words of warning had the effect of changing their formation on the road. Two of them lurched forward and drew swords, while the rest made a diamond around Edward, pressing so close that even an arrow would hit them before it struck the boy. He could smell their sweat and the oil of their armour and he was afraid, made more so as they reined in slowly and steadily, coming from a trot to a walk, then halting in the road. Edward peered through those ahead, watching as Rivers clicked in his throat and took his great black warhorse a few lengths further.
Beyond their small group, a line of horsemen blocked the road. They too wore armour, painted dark-green or black, it was hard to tell in the fading light. Only one carried a torch aloft and the rest vanished into blurring darkness. Edward craned around the bulk of one of his guards to see Earl Rivers approach two men sent out to meet him.
‘Stand aside,’ Rivers ordered clearly. Edward saw his uncle had drawn a long-handled mace from his saddle loop. Rivers spun it in the air, making a humming sound. It was no idle
threat, though the two knights facing him did not flinch from it. One of them made a half-grab to catch the thing, missing it by some way. The other pointed to where young Edward watched and Rivers leaned forward and bellowed in anger at him. A furious argument began and Edward called out in shock as one of the knights kicked his mount against his uncle’s leg, trapping it. The mace was better used at a distance and Rivers had grown old and slow without realizing. He brought the iron head down on a shoulder plate with a terrible crack, but the young knight shrugged it off. Earl Rivers had his head rocked back by a swinging punch, then another. Blood spattered as his eyes rolled, dazed. Swords were drawn then, as he fell, both by the first pair and all those behind. That grating whisper said more than anything else how many of them waited out of the torchlight.
The captain of Edward’s guards turned in the saddle, leaning as close to the prince as he could.
‘Step down, son. Quickly now. Just walk into the trees and bracken by the road. There’s a chance they won’t even see you go. Go on. We’ll fight to delay them.’
Edward stared, wide-eyed and unable to move as the lines ahead came spurring forward, filling the road. If there had been a moment to escape, it was gone.
‘Don’t fight, Sir Derby, please,’ he said. ‘I do not want to see you killed.’
The knight grimaced, but he was already surrounded. Reluctantly, he bowed his head and held out his sword to one of the dark armoured men, hilt first in surrender. At Derby’s nod, the rest of them dismounted with varying degrees of frustration and dismay showing. They handed over their weapons to those who reached for them, moving with the captain to stand at the side of the road.
Richard of Gloucester came forward then from the
second rank of his men. Unlike the rest of them, he wore polished armour, gleaming like silver moonlight and making a fine show. He wore no helmet and as he looked down on the slim figure of his nephew, he breathed out, pleased.
‘Your Highness, I am so very relieved I was in time. Oh, thank
God
.’
‘I do not understand, Uncle,’ Edward replied. Richard gestured to the knights who had come out from Ludlow with the prince. His gaze rested on Earl Rivers, carried over to lie in the ditch where they stood. Edward’s uncle was still unconscious, though stirring.
‘Some of these men were under orders, Edward, not to let you reach London alive. I thank the saints I was not too late to save you.’
His words were not spoken quietly and the knights in question responded in immediate anger and disbelief. They gestured and shouted, until they were surrounded by a far greater number of knights bearing swords and axes. They quietened down then, under that threat. One or two had not moved at all, understanding that they had heard their own death sentence.
Earl Rivers had risen to one knee and then regained his feet in the middle of the shouting. He stood, a little shaky still. As a man who had fought in tourneys all his life, he was used to coming round from a blow.
‘What is this?’ Rivers called. ‘Gloucester? Is that you, Richard? Let me pass, my lord. I am bringing the prince to London to be crowned. No, by hell, my wits are half knocked out of me. I am bringing the king! King Edward. Get out of our path and I will say nothing more of this madness.’ The earl looked wary as he spoke and Richard tutted at him, making him narrow his eyes further.
‘My lord, it is no good,’ Richard said in reproof. ‘Your plan
has been discovered. Your conspirators have betrayed you – and the foul murder of my nephew that you planned.’
‘You lying bastard,’ Rivers said clearly. Richard shook his head in sadness.
‘I must protect my brother’s son, my lord. You will be taken from here to a place of execution, as a warning to all men who might conspire against the royal line.’
‘You
dare
, Gloucester? Where is my trial? My right to speak before my peers? To even know the accusations made against me? Why should anyone take
your
word, Richard Plantagenet?’
‘These are dark times, Lord Rivers! Dark days. I have discovered this cruel conspiracy before it is too late, or so I hope. I must move as quickly as I can to protect the rightful king of England – my brother’s son – so that he can be crowned.’ He reached out to the twelve-year-old boy watching the exchange in shock and confusion.
‘Come to me, boy,’ Richard said softly. ‘I will keep you safe.’
When she had been very young, Elizabeth Woodville had known a secret cave on her father’s land, a deep pool overhung by mossy cliffs on all sides. It had been a favourite pursuit in the summers to run miles over the Northamptonshire moors with her brothers and sisters, a great laughing troupe of them. They ran until they were hot and sweating and then, without stopping, they would run right over the edge and fall down and down into the green water below. The rest of the afternoon would be spent drying clothes on flat stones or criticizing the young one who had taken the lunch basket into the water with him and ruined the food. It all merged into one memory as Elizabeth looked back, but she could recall that feeling almost perfectly, of rushing up to an edge, of falling, and of fear.
Her stomach clenched in the same way when she heard what Richard of Gloucester had done. The messenger had come on his own initiative, just a young man who had learned something she might want to hear and raced down the London road to deliver it. She had given him two gold angel coins with her husband’s face stamped on the metal. The young lad had been delighted, stumbling as he tried to bow and back away at the same time.
Elizabeth remained sitting, looking out over London from the royal rooms in Westminster. Her husband was laid out in Windsor, dressed in armour and white for the last time. She had been to pray with him and kiss his cold cheek. She had held his hands, though they might have been wax without warm blood running through them. Edward had looked smaller in death than in life, the vital spark clearly absent. Yet he had been so much of her youth and hopes that it broke her heart to see him. He would never age.
She touched a locket at her throat, the gold clasp containing a piece of his hair that she had snipped away with silver scissors. She’d tied the lock in a ribbon and it comforted her to know it was there.
She stood then, clapping her hands loudly. Two of her maids came immediately from the room outside, curtseying before her in neat, pressed skirts and blouses.
‘Now don’t make a fuss,’ Elizabeth said. ‘Just gather up the girls and young Richard. He is somewhere on the grounds here. Bring them back to me and pass word to Jenny that I will need to pack clothes for them all. Very quick it has to be, girls. Quick and silent, as if we are running away from home. Do you understand? Can I trust you to be discreet? I don’t want to rouse the whole palace and half of London.’
‘Of course, ma’am,’ they both said, bobbing down again. Elizabeth nodded to dismiss them and they raced away. She
was twelve years older than the last time she’d run to Sanctuary, though she had not forgotten those five months spent with monks. To her shame, she had hardly thought of them since then. Was Brother Paul still the guardian of the door? Her great bullock of a husband had knocked the monk down for standing in his way when he’d come for her, she remembered, recalling some of that old joy, now always accompanied by grief. How could Edward be gone? How could it be that she would never hear his booming voice again, or hear his arguments, or watch in astonishment as he kicked some item out of the way when he paced around and caught it with his foot? For all his noise and presence and reluctance to bathe, she had loved him. Perhaps not as well as he’d deserved, she did not know. It was a private thing and she’d borne ten children for him, which was love enough for most. She’d seen how their daughter Mary’s death the year before had hurt him, though he’d tried to be cold and careless, telling them all that death was just a part of life.
She found herself weeping suddenly, without warning, so that her children came in to find her clutching a handkerchief and dabbing at her eyes. Young Elizabeth came to her side immediately, embracing her and making her smile through her tears. The rest of them crowded around her, trying to add their strength too so that they formed a great bundle of arms. Five surviving daughters and young Richard. God had blessed her beyond all measure, she realized. If she could only keep them all alive.
The youngest girl, Bridget, was only three and had toddled in with a nurse in tow. Elizabeth smiled at the young woman, pink-cheeked, who brushed a tendril of hair from her face with the back of one hand, while expertly steering the child away from the fireplace.
‘Did Lucy and Margaret say, dear?’ Elizabeth said. ‘I’ll
need clothes and toys for them all, packed up immediately. Within the hour.’
‘Shall I call for carriages, my lady?’
‘No, dear. I will take the children on foot into Sanctuary, across the road by the Abbey. Unfortunately, I do know the way.’
Elizabeth comforted her daughters Cecily and Catherine, sending them to gather their most important dolls and toys, whatever they could not bear to leave behind. They came running back to pile items together where they were packed up by serving men from the kitchens and workshops, coming in by the dozen to take the bags away.
Elizabeth was able to stand to one side and stare once more out of the windows. Her son Edward had been saved by Richard of Gloucester from a plot against his life. That was what she had been told by the messenger. The young rider had been delighted to discover he was first with the news, though it had clutched at her heart like those moments in the air above the water, just falling, falling.
Her brother Anthony Woodville, Earl Rivers, was so steadfast that the very idea of him plotting against his sister’s children almost made her smile. Anthony doted on them all and he had been utterly loyal to Edward, even when Warwick’s Nevilles were entwined about the king like some pale and stinging vine. Elizabeth did not doubt her brother’s loyalty, no matter what was reported. That meant she was in danger – and that her son and her brother might already be lost.
She bit her lip, hard enough to make the tissues swell as if she had been struck.
Richard Plantagenet, Duke of Gloucester, had revealed himself as the danger. Worse, she had not seen it in him. His adoration of his brother had been so completely innocent
and without guile that she had sensed no threat from that quarter at all. The thought of young Edward in Gloucester’s grasp, in his
power
, made her breathe shallowly, struggling to hold back panic.
Her gaze fell to her second son by King Edward, the boy Richard grinning at something his sister Cecily had said or done. As his mother watched him, he nudged Cecily so that she fell over a pile of bags with a squawk, then launched herself after him as he dodged all the servants coming in and out, laughing as he went. Elizabeth feared for them all.