The double meaning of the last was not lost on the old man. His mouth moved as if he was trying to dislodge a pip from a back tooth. In the silence, he bowed his head, looking up from under his brows.
‘Of course, Your Highness. I believe we wish for the same things. The king strong. The destruction of the Neville taint in all those who nurture treason in their breasts. King Henry has my support, on my honour and the honour of my house.’
Margaret sat back. The man might as well have dismissed her. He would follow Henry, not the wishes of his French queen. She inclined her head as if in acceptance of his words, though she seethed inwardly.
Buckingham gave a yawn, wide and long, until Margaret had to smother her own.
‘It’s my feeling the king will rise late today,’ Buckingham said, standing. ‘I’m for a nap, to restore my strength before it fails me.’
Earl Percy rose in turn, both men bowing and excusing themselves from Margaret’s presence. She watched them leave, suspecting that they would continue their conversation somewhere else in the palace, where she could not listen and interfere. Her hands gripped each other as she looked into the fire. She needed Earl Somerset. She needed Derry Brewer. Most of all, she needed her husband and her husband’s lords to listen to her. It was clear enough that they wished to bargain and manoeuvre without her voice. It was infuriating, but she would not step back. Henry was her husband. She was his wife. They would find her in their path, whichever path they took.
Left alone, Margaret rose and passed through the inner doors to her husband’s bedchamber. She found him there, snoring softly under thick blankets, his long dark hair unbound and tousled on the bolster. He looked at peace, with a good colour in his cheeks. Margaret felt the weariness of her long night steal upon her and she unpinned her cloak and lay by him, tugging a single cover over herself and turning her body so that she could feel his warmth. Henry murmured something at her touch, though he did not wake, and she was soon asleep at his side.
9
York rested his hands on a wooden railing, his pride showing as he watched the boy take his position. His eldest son Edward, Earl of March, was thirteen, though taller and far stronger than town lads with three years or more on him. He raised his sword to his father before using the hilt to knock down the visor of his helmet.
‘Watch this,’ York said under his breath.
Salisbury smiled, leaning one shoulder against a stone pillar. He and York had spent the best part of a month in Ludlow Castle, making their plans and adjusting to the sudden reverse in their fortunes. From that massive stone fortress, the two men had sent out riders to all their separate holdings, ordering their captains and best men in until the village and fields around it resembled a military camp. There was little chance of raids from Wales that year, once word had spread across the border to the west. Ludlow had become the largest armed gathering in the country, and still they came in. It gave Salisbury some pleasure to take a step back from the complex business of supplying so many with food, ale and equipment, just to watch a favoured boy fight.
Two men faced Edward on the training yard, overlooked on all sides by cloisters in grey stone. In fine armour, they too raised swords to York, bowing their heads. Jameson was a massive figure, a blacksmith by trade. He stood a head taller than the boy and was about twice as broad and deep in the chest. In deliberate contrast, Sir Robert Dalton was slim and moved with grace and perfect balance, his feet always steady on the ground.
York held up his hand and a drummer boy in the corner of the yard began to tap out a martial rhythm, making the hearts beat faster of anyone who had known that sound on the field of battle.
All three carried shields bound to their left arms and gripped inside the curve. The boy moved lightly with his, though Salisbury saw it was a little too large for him. Earl Edward took slow steps to his right, keeping the shield up and spoiling the chance of both men attacking him at once. His sword was held out straight, an adder’s tongue, waiting.
The larger man moved first. Jameson gave out a great roar that echoed back on all sides, meant to startle and frighten his young opponent. The blacksmith’s sword came swinging fast from Edward’s left, crashing against the shield he held away from his body to soak up the blow. Man and boy produced a storm of cuts and strikes, hammering each other, hitting back at the slightest gap in the defences. It lasted no more than a dozen heartbeats and both painted shields were battered and scratched as the big man backed off.
‘More, Jameson!’ came a taunt from within the boy’s helmet. ‘Has your wind gone already?’
Before the big man could reply, his companion slid in on quick, darting steps. Sir Robert relied on speed and skill far more than the blacksmith. He feinted and turned, his feet always moving to find the best spot to lunge, then ducking away or batting aside a blade with his own when it came too close. This bout was more like a dance, but the watching lords winced as Earl Edward took a hilt into his gut, making him stagger. Sir Robert followed up immediately, pressing Edward and forcing him back, hitting faster and faster until the hand holding the shield would have been numb to the shoulder. With Edward’s father watching coldly, Sir Robert was battering the boy to the ground, his eye on the shield, with his right leg outstretched before him. Almost from a crouch, the boy lashed out at the leg, landing a low blow just above the ankle. Sir Robert shouted in pain. He was fast enough to catch himself before he fell, but still limped as he backed away.
Edward of March rose to his full height, half-blinded by stinging sweat, but as angry by then as only a thirteen-year-old boy can get. With a yell, it was his turn to leap forward, forcing the slim knight to bring his own shield back into play. Edward raised his sword to smash a blow against it and then suddenly darted aside, lunging at the big blacksmith as the man circled around him. The move caught both the older men by surprise and Edward’s sword hammered against the neck joint of Jameson’s armour, stunning him. If he had been full-grown, it would have been a killing blow.
In the moment of shock, the still-limping Sir Robert Dalton took a step forward, resting his own sword on the boy’s neck.
‘Dead,’ he said loudly and clearly.
All three reached to pull their visors up, though the young earl’s had been buckled in the first flurry and he struggled with it. The blacksmith rolled his neck uncomfortably as he came forward and gripped the edge, heaving until it creaked open.
‘What was that, then?’ Jameson said, his voice a deep bass. ‘Going for my neck with a man right in front of you?’
The young earl shrugged, delighted with himself for all to see.
‘I had you cold and you know it, Jameson. And I’ll have men with me to watch my back when I take the field. You, maybe, if you’re not too old by then. You’d have broken Sir Robert’s head for him if I’d given him an opening like that – while I took down another.’
The blacksmith chuckled, his smile creasing his wide, square face.
‘I would, yes. I’ve spent long enough training you. I won’t let someone else make a fool of me, not after all the batterings I’ve taken.’ It was clear enough that he was unharmed by the display, though he made a point of stretching his bruised neck back and forth.
‘Well done!’ York called from the side of the yard. ‘Heed your masters, Edward. You grow stronger and faster every time I see you.’
The swordsmen both bowed deeply at hearing York speak, while Edward flushed with pleasure at his father’s approval, holding up his sword in pride.
‘He is a cool thinker,’ Salisbury said, his own spirits raised at seeing the childlike pleasure in his friend. ‘Good balance, the first signs of speed. He has been well trained.’
York tried to shrug it off, but the joy of seeing his eldest son fight well came off him like heat.
‘Edward has courage – and Jameson and Sir Robert know how to bring it out. He won’t meet many as strong as the blacksmith, and Sir Robert was trained first in France, then England. I have seen few better men with a blade. In just a few years, the boy will be one to watch, I think.’
Both men turned as steps approached from the far end of the cloister. Salisbury saw it was his sister, Duchess Cecily, wife to York and mother to the excited young man now cutting through a host of imaginary opponents in the training yard. It made Salisbury feel old to see such a young life, with its true battles still far ahead.
‘We have been watching Edward practise, Cecily,’ Salisbury called to his sister as she walked closer. ‘He shows great promise – though with his blood, how could he not? I wonder if his namesake, King Edward, was so tall at such an age? The boy grows like wheat, an inch more whenever I look away. He’ll be taller than your husband, I don’t doubt it.’ Salisbury saw that his sister clutched her youngest to her chest, resting in an embroidered cloth sling that she had tied over her shoulder. The child was crying with astonishing volume, a raging, high-pitched sound that was already painful from a few feet away. Salisbury sensed York’s mood darkening as she came up to him.
‘And how is my nephew?’ Salisbury asked, forcing cheerfulness into his voice.
‘He suffers still. I found the doctor trying to stretch him out, but he screamed so terribly I could not let it go on. Was that at your order?’ Her sharp gaze pinned her husband, so that York looked away rather than face her.
‘I suggested he try it, Cecily, that is all. The man seemed to think some sort of wooden brace might help his growth, just for a few years. I have artificers who could design such a thing, if you agreed.’ As the squalling noise rose to new levels, York winced and put a finger in his ear. ‘Good God, listen to him now! The child never sleeps, for crying! I thought if his back could be pulled straight, it might grant him ease.’
‘Or be broken, so that he died!’ Cecily snapped. ‘I’ll have no more talk of braces. You’ll leave Richard’s care to me, from now on. I won’t have him tortured by fools who would wring him like a cloth.’
Faced with the discomfort of witnessing such anger between husband and wife, Salisbury moved away to watch the instruction in the yard, deliberately taking a few steps around a pillar to give them some semblance of privacy. He bit the inside of his lip when York spoke again, mortified to overhear a married couple too angry to care.
‘Cecily,’ York said loudly, to be heard over the child’s yelling, ‘if you would have him shown mercy, you’d put him out on a winter’s night and let the cold take him. He’s two years old and he still screams all night and day! I tell you the Spartans had the right of it. My doctor says his spine is bending, that it will only get worse. He won’t live without pain, and he won’t thank you for sparing him if he grows to be a cripple. Would you shame my house, with a twisted son? Will he be driven mad by it, left in some lonely house to be tended by servants like a mad dog or a simpleton? There is no sin in letting him go, just putting him into the cold. Father Samuel has assured me of that.’
When Cecily replied, her voice was little more than a hiss, making her brother cringe for his friend.
‘You will not touch a
hair
of his head, Richard Plantagenet. Do you understand me? I have lost five children for your house and name. I have borne six alive and I am pregnant once again. I believe I have given enough to York. So if I choose to keep this one safe, if he never walks even, it is not your concern. I have done enough, borne enough. This child needs me more than all the rest, and I will tend him alone if I must. Say you will not whisper to the doctors, Richard. Tell me I do not have to watch to be sure they do not slip him some foul dose.’
‘Of course you don’t,’ he growled at her. ‘I swear this child has unhinged your mind, Cecily. Children die, it’s the natural way of things. Some live to grow strong – and some poor souls suffer like this one, caught between life and death. I wish now I had not given him my own name. If I’d known he’d be this little screaming scrap of –’
‘
Don’t
,’ Cecily replied, her eyes bright with tears.
Her husband took a slow breath.
‘When you’re with child, you are a different woman, Cecily. I don’t understand you at all. Go on. Do as you please with him. I have other sons.’ He turned away then, glaring out at the training yard where his eldest was attacking a wooden post wrapped in cloth and leather, battering the thing in great gashes. York could feel his wife’s furious gaze on him for what seemed an age. He refused to look round at her and, after a time, she walked stiffly away.
Coming back to stand at York’s shoulder, Salisbury let his friend recover his peace, both men staring out into the yard as young Edward hacked the striking post in two, shouting in triumph as it fell. The contrast between the sons could not have been greater at that moment.
‘He will be a terror on the battlefield,’ Salisbury said, hoping to see just a little of the pride and pleasure return.
Instead, York frowned across the yard, his gaze focused much further away.
‘Perhaps he won’t have to be,’ he said, his voice raw. ‘If I can yet make peace with Henry. You saw him, Richard, standing like the man he was
meant
to be, at last. He reminded me of his father for the first time. It was perhaps the strangest moment of my life. The king sent me from his presence like a beaten hound, yet in response, my heart swelled to see such strength in him!’ York shook his head in wonder at the memory. ‘If I can make Henry understand I’m no threat to him, my son may not have to fight in his lifetime. My house and name are my concern, no other – my duty lies in keeping my titles and lands safe for Edward to inherit.’
‘Seeing you reconciled would give me joy,’ Salisbury replied, hiding his dismay. ‘Yet you’ve said yourself the king has too many men with no love of York whispering in his ears – and his French queen too, who is no friend of yours. I take it, then, that you have not yet been called for his grand Council, this Progress?’
‘Have you?’ York asked. ‘I’ve heard nothing. Dukes and earls and lowly barons will ride with the king, but not you and not me. Men I have known for years no longer answer my letters. What about your son, Warwick?’