Derry endured a thorough search of his person. When the guards were satisfied he bore no weapon, or at least had found none, they announced him and opened the door to the inner chambers.
He swept through, taking in the sight of the queen at dinner with her husband. At first glance, King Henry looked as if he sat normally, nodding over a bowl of soup. Derry spotted the ropes binding him to his chair so he could not fall, as well as the servant who looked up as he entered, holding a soup spoon to feed his master. As Derry came closer, he saw Henry wore a bib that had collected as much soup as went inside him. Rich broth dribbled down the king’s slack lips and as Derry knelt and bowed his head, he could hear soft, choking sounds coming from him.
Captain Hobbs had not stepped beyond the threshold. The door closed at Derry’s back and he saw the young queen rise from her seat, an expression of horror on her face.
‘Oh your
head
, Derry! What have you done to yourself?’
‘Your Highness, I preferred to come to you without my movements being noted and reported at every step. Please, it is nothing. It will surely grow back, or so I am told.’ He noticed in exasperation that the queen seemed to be struggling with laughter.
‘It’s like an egg, Derry! They’ve left you hardly any hair at all.’
‘Yes, Your Highness, the Franciscan who wielded the razor was unusually thorough.’ As he rose from kneeling, he felt himself stagger slightly, the combination of the room’s warmth and hunger bringing a wave of weakness.
The queen saw his frailty and her smile vanished.
‘Humphrey! Help Master Brewer to a seat before he falls down. Quickly now, he is close to fainting.’
Derry looked around dazedly for the man whom she addressed, feeling himself taken under the arms and dropped into a wide, wooden chair. He blinked, trying to summon his wits from where they had suddenly scattered. Such weakness was embarrassing, especially considering he knew Brother Peter was still out in the rain, heading for his barn and a place to sleep.
‘I’ll be all right in a moment, Your Highness,’ Derry said. ‘I’ve been on the road a long time.’ He did not say that he’d been hunted, stretching his wits and his contacts to their limits just to stay ahead of the men searching for him. He’d been spotted and chased three times in the previous month, twice in the week before he’d joined the monks. He knew there would come a time when his legs failed or he couldn’t reach a safe spot to hide. The Duke of York’s men were closing a net all around him. He could almost feel the rough twine on his throat.
Derry looked up to thank the man who had helped him, his eyes widening as he recognized the Duke of Buckingham. Humphrey Stafford was red-faced and large, a man of enormous appetites. He’d handled Derry as easily as a child, and the spymaster could only wonder how much weight he’d lost on the road.
The duke leaned in to peer at him, the man’s swollen great nose wrinkling in distaste.
‘Dead on his feet, almost,’ Buckingham announced. To Derry’s discomfort, the man leaned even closer and sniffed at him. ‘His breath is sweet, Your Highness, like rot. Whatever he has to say, I’d get him to talk now, before he ups and dies on us.’
Derry squinted back at the face looming over him.
‘I’ll survive, my lord. I usually do.’
At no time had any of the three looked directly at King Henry. He sat mute at the table, unseeing and unfeeling. Derry risked a glance from under lowered brows and wished he hadn’t. The king was thin and pale, but that was not so strange. The eyes were open and utterly empty. Derry might have believed him a corpse if he hadn’t breathed, his head bobbing slightly at every inhalation.
‘Hot broth for Master Brewer,’ Derry heard Queen Margaret say. ‘And bread, butter, more of the cold beef with garlic, anything you can find.’ He closed his eyes in thanks, letting the aches and pains become distant as the room’s heat settled into his bones. He hadn’t been close to a good fire for a long time. Relief and exhaustion stole over him and he was almost asleep by the time plates were placed under his nose. The smell roused him and he fell to with a sudden surge of appetite that brought a sparkle of amusement back to Margaret’s eyes. He could feel the hot soup bringing him to life, as if its goodness reached right down his limbs and seeped along the marrow of his bones. Derry smacked his lips and tore at bread so fresh he did not even have to dip it in the soup to soften it.
‘I think he’ll live,’ Buckingham said wryly from across the table. ‘I’d watch the tablecloth, if I were you, Your Highness. He might eat it, the way he’s forcing food down his throat.’
Derry looked coldly at the man, biting his tongue rather than make another enemy. One duke seeking to bring him down was probably enough, at least for the moment.
He settled back in his chair, knowing the queen indulged him more than most of those who served her. He was grateful for it. Derry used the cloth to mop the corners of his mouth and smiled at Buckingham as he did so.
‘Your Highness, thank you for your patience. I am revived enough to report what news I have.’
‘You have been gone for two months, Derry! What kept you away from the king for such a time?’
Derry sat up straight, pushing aside his plate just in time for it to be whisked away by a servant.
‘Your Highness, I have been strengthening the ranks of those reporting to me. I have men and women in every noble house, loyal to King Henry. Some of them have gone, either found and taken, or forced to run. Others have moved to positions of greater authority, which they seem to believe means higher pay from me. I took the time to explain how loyalty to the king cannot be measured in silver, though some would ask thirty pieces at a time.’
Queen Margaret was a beautiful young woman, still in her twenties, with clear skin and a slender neck. She narrowed her eyes as Derry spoke, flickering a glance at her husband as if he might respond after all the months of silence. Derry’s heart went out to her, wife to a man who knew her not at all.
‘What of York, Derry? Tell me of him.’
Derry looked up at the ornate ceiling for the length of a breath, deciding how best to describe the Protectorate without dashing her hopes. The simple truth was that York had not botched the work of running the country. Of all the accusations Derry might have levelled at Richard Plantagenet, incompetence was not one. In his heart of hearts, he knew the duke was managing the vast and complex business of state with rather more skill and understanding than King Henry ever had. It was not the sort of thing he could say to the king’s young wife, desperate for good news.
‘He makes no secret of his support for the Nevilles, Your Highness. Between York and Earl Salisbury, they are gaining estates and manors all over the country. I heard of a dozen cases brought to court, where a Neville seizure of land is at the heart.’
Lines appeared on the queen’s brow and she waved a hand in a gesture of impatience.
‘Tell me of unrest, Derry! Of his failures! Tell me the people of England are withholding their support for this man.’
Derry hesitated for a beat, before going on.
‘The garrison in Calais has refused orders, Your Highness. That is a thorn in York’s side he must overcome. They are the largest army available to the Crown and they claim not to have had any pay since the fall of Maine and Anjou. The last I heard was that they had seized the season’s wool and are threatening to sell it for their own coffers.’
‘Better, Derry, much better. He could send Earl Somerset to treat with them, if he had not lost that good man’s support by his attacks on my husband. They would listen to Somerset, I am certain. You know York has reduced the king’s own household? His men came with their writs and seals, dismissing loyal staff without even a pension, taking horses from the stables here, to be distributed among their master’s supporters. Bloodlines that can never again be collected in one place. All in the name of his mean silver pennies, Derry!’
‘I did hear that, Your Highness,’ Derry said uncomfortably. He wondered when York slept, to have accomplished so many things in a single year. The problems with the Calais garrison were one of only half a dozen minor black marks against the York Protectorate. The country was running well enough and though some spoke out against the reductions in the royal household, York had been ruthless in his collection of state funds, then spent the income wisely to gather even more support. Derry could see a time coming when the country would prefer King Henry never to wake, if things went on as they were. He and Margaret needed York to suffer a disaster, or the king to recover his senses. They needed that, most of all, before it was too late. Derry looked again at the blank-faced monarch nodding in his chair, feeling a shudder race through him and goose pimples rise on his arms. For a living man to be reduced to such a state was an evil thing.
‘Has there been no improvement in the king’s illness?’ he said.
Margaret sat a little straighter, armouring herself against pain as she replied.
‘There are two new doctors to tend him, now that fool Allworthy is gone. I have endured all manner of pious men come to prod and poke and pray over my husband. He has suffered much worse, such sickening practices as I will not describe to you. None of them have brought his spirit back to the flesh. Buckingham has been a great comfort to me, but even he despairs at times, don’t you, Humphrey?’
The duke made a non-committal sound, choosing to sup from the bowl of broth set before him.
‘Your son, though, Your Highness?’ Derry asked, as gently as he could. ‘When you showed him to King Henry, was there no response at all?’
Margaret’s mouth tightened.
‘You sound like that Abbot Whethamstede, with his probing questions. Henry looked up when I showed him the babe. He raised his eyes for a moment and I am
certain
he knew what he was being told.’ Her eyes gleamed with tears, daring him to contradict her.
Derry cleared his throat, beginning to wish he had not come.
‘The council of lords will meet next month, Your Highness, to name your son Edward as both royal heir and Prince of Wales. If York interferes with that, his ambition to rule will be revealed. Though it would be a cruel blow, I almost hope for it, that others may know the true face of his Protectorate and what he intends. Those noblemen who still bluster and refuse to see the truth will not be able to deny it then.’
Margaret looked to her husband, anguish written clearly on her face.
‘I cannot hope for that, Derry. My son
is
the heir. For little Edward, I suffered the humiliation of York and Salisbury present at the birth, creeping around my bed and peeping under the covers to be sure the babe was my own! Lord Somerset almost came to blows to protect my honour then, Derry. There are times when I wish he
had
put a sword through the Plantagenet then and there, for his impudence and his insults. No, Master Brewer. No! I must not even think of those cowards denying my son his birthright.’
Derry flushed at what she had endured, though he had heard the tale before, more than once. A part of him could admire York’s twisted mind for even thinking the pregnancy could have been faked and another child brought in. At least that had been laid to rest, though there were still rumours of a different father. Somerset’s name was whispered there, dutifully reported back to Derry’s twitching ears. Knowing Somerset’s prickly honour, Derry doubted it was more than a scurrilous lie, if a clever one.
As he sat and thought, Derry found himself nodding almost in time with the king, exhaustion overwhelming him once again. He could have blessed Margaret when she saw he was flagging and sent him away to be tended and to rest. He knelt to her and bowed to the Duke of Buckingham as he left, looking back once more at the king in his stupor, blind and deaf to all that went on around him. Derry stumbled along behind a servant until he was shown to a room that smelled of damp and dust. Without even bothering to remove his wet robe, he fell full-length on to the bed and slept.
3
The mood was light as the wedding party awoke. Those with sore heads from the night before stood patiently in line for bowls of beef stew and dumplings, rich and greasy fare that would soak up strong ale and settle uneasy stomachs. As it wasn’t a Wednesday, Friday or Saturday, there was no reason not to eat meat, though few among them would usually have filled their stomachs so early in the morning. Yet a wedding was a time for excess, where guests and retainers alike would be able to say they had been feasted until their senses swam and their belts creaked.
As head of the Neville family, Richard, Earl of Salisbury, was in an expansive mood as he emptied his bladder into a bush, watching steam rise with something like contentment. The wedding had gone well, his son John cutting a fine figure and acquitting himself with dignity. Salisbury smiled as he tucked himself away and knotted a drawstring, yawning until his jaw cracked. He’d drunk more than was surely good for a man of his age, so that he sweated even in the dawn cool, but if a father couldn’t celebrate his son’s wedding, there was something wrong with the world. It didn’t hurt that Maud was a rare beauty, wide-hipped and strong, with round crinkled marks on her right cheek that showed she had survived that particular scourge and would not bring the smallpox into his family. The earl had enjoyed himself setting up a marriage tent on the mossy ground, hooting and calling out instructions with the rest as the new couple blushed crimson and the tent shook with amorous struggle and her fit of nervous giggles. His own wife, Alice, had dragged him away in the end, shooing the men clear to give the couple some shred of privacy.
The Neville retainers had gone on drinking after that, emptying skins of ale and white sherris sack they’d brought on carts for the journey across country. Only a few were awake to cheer the following morning when young John hung out a cloth spotted with virgin’s blood. The young man himself had emerged some time later, to walk proudly among the crowd, clapped on the back as he went. His mother had spoiled it slightly by stopping him to wipe smudges from his face in front of them all.