Edward - Interactive

by Mike Voyce

  Chapter 8 – Edward and Eadie

  My flat in Peterborough was utterly empty. It was warm enough, and familiar, with the last rays of the afternoon sun streaming through the windows, but it stood so very silent. Not a thing stirred, everything was exactly as I’d left it that morning. After eating I’d determined to channel. The fear given me by van Dusen’s book was now overlaid by my puzzlement over the Marbles and the hawks. There was an excitement at the thought of Edward.

  That Saturday given to researching the kings was less than a week ago. Since then I dreamt of the Marbles and seen those birds, with their opaque message I so failed to catch. It was now only Wednesday, and I had this expectancy.

  It all came to attention as I walked into the stillness of my flat.

  The sound of silence is a rushing noise. Perhaps, in absolute quiet, you hear the flow of blood through your veins, I rather think it’s the flow of events carrying the eternal moment from past into future. It was in this silence I heard the voice of Eadie.

  (Past)

  “I love you.”

  It seemed such an obvious thing to say. She’d practically been my sister for as long as I could remember. Hardly a day went by without us being together, we sometimes slept in the same bed as children; we shared nearly everything. Things would change, of course. Thomas talked about me having to take up my responsibilities.

  That morning Lady Margaret asked me how I would like to go to court. She summoned me to the great hall and I stood before her as she sat, as usual, straight backed in her tall chair.

  “I don’t know that I’ve prepared you properly Edward.

  You know who the great persons of England are; you’ve met some of them here... And they know who you are. It’s very difficult. You’re not interested in governance. You don’t know how things work.

  My son doesn’t know what to do with you.

  We’ve left things too long - look at you - see how you’ve grown, you’re already as tall as a man. You long since learned to be a horseman and Thomas tells me you’re nearly a match for him with a sword.

  My son has decided it is time to present you at court.

  You will have to be introduced to your position, Edward. You may even be knighted before Christmas. How does that sound?”

  It was a prissy speech; Lady Margaret could be like that. She seemed to be twisting her hands in her lap, almost as if she were nervous, it caught my eye.

  “I don’t want to be a knight and I’ve met the King. Does it mean I have to go away, Lady Margaret?”

  “You must see the estates which will be yours.

  I’ve managed them all these years. You don’t know how difficult it’s been… And I may not have done well. It’s been so difficult with your father dead… And its time you took a hand in it yourself.”

  Lady Margaret got up and left the room. She left such portents of impending change hanging in the air.

  I didn’t want to give up hunting and hawking and playing with Eadie. Even the work Thomas made me do.

  Being a great person was dangerous. It killed my father. I didn’t, I didn’t want to run the country. I didn’t want to manage my estates. I didn’t even know what they were.

  I found Eadie and told her the news solemn faced.

  She hung herself round my neck, her body soft and warm against me. I embraced her and she kissed me long and searchingly on the lips. Our bodies moved to fit together and I felt the stirring in my lower body that had lately been happening. It was almost painful almost pleasant and something I didn’t understand. We stood together for a long time like that.

  There was a distant cry from Aletia in the kitchen garden,

  Eadie pulled away from me with a laugh and a blown kiss and ran to find her mother.

  Down at mouth I plodded off to find Thomas.

  The room was untidy. It has been my bedchamber for many years, one of the rooms that let off the landing. Opposite the door there’s a window, of the same design as the one above the stairs. It looks out on the formal garden and beyond that to the river. On either side of the window there is big, heavy furniture, untidily strewn with clothes. As you come in through the door the fireplace is on your left, a big bed, with curtains hanging at the foot posts and a great carved board at the head, stands on your right. There’s a thick rug in between but the floor is otherwise bare, you can get splinters if you run with bare feet; I have, many times.

  The bed is a great luxury; covered by an enormous, sagging mattress, it has fine linen with three embroidered pillows. I used it as a plaything for many happy hours; in its time it has served as a ship sailing down the Thames, a carriage and a castle.

  Although it was not yet dark, it was late. I’d thrown my clothes off and thrown myself face down into the bed. I know I was crying, even if I would be fifteen next birthday.

  Thomas could be cross, you didn’t annoy him on purpose, but he wasn’t often cross even when he had a right to be. Today he shouted for no reason. I could still hear the unjust words as I cried into my pillow.

  “Who do you think you are?!

  I’ll tell you. You’re a traitor’s son.

  How many good men died leaving widows and orphans so you could be brought up here, to be Sir Edward, still a mere boy, so you can go on to the same folly that killed your father?

  Do you think your noble blood allows you to trample on other people’s lives?

  Must I drop everything to squire you around the country, having you mewling at my heels?”

  There was the sound of the door softly closing and the swish of a shift coming round the bed. I didn’t pay attention at first, not until I felt the soft warmth of Eadie’s arm across my shoulders and smelt the sweet scent of her.

  I started and stammered my embarrassment - but she didn’t take her arm away. Instead she slid between the covers, into the bed next to me.

  “I heard you crying.”

  I didn’t know what to say. I turned to her and put my arms around her slim body,

  “Oh. Eadie.”

  “Do you remember the games we used to play? We’d lie on this bed and frighten each other with stories about ghosts who might jump out at us at any time? You used to frighten me, Edward, and then you used to laugh at my fear and say it was only a game and say you would fight all the demons of Hell for me, and you would jump out of bed as if to do it.”

  “Oh Eadie, I do love you.”

  I stroked my hand up and down her back. She felt so soft and warm and delightful to touch. It became a game to caress her.

  We kissed and went on kissing. I think I was clumsy at first: but after each kiss we would kiss again, not wanting to stop. The kisses became longer and Eadie pushed more toward me.

  My right hand was trapped under her. I wanted to enfold all of her with my free hand. Her shift was very short, for summer nights, as my hand ran over her it ran under that shift.

  The thrilling touch of skin on skin and Eadie became the whole World to me. Thought evaporated in a dazzling burst of feelings. Gone were all thought of Thomas or Lady Margaret - there was only Eadie.

  In modesty the narrative should stop here but the images didn’t. I found myself shaken by a five hundred-year-old passion. It took time but, despite their naivety and youth, it consumed the whole consciousness of Edward and Eadie.

  At the end of it they lay, tired, hands touching at their sides, thought scattered. There was no doubt they were lovers.

  Oh, Edward. What have you done!

  For the next few days I wanted to stay with the ordinary, real World. It was partly a matter of circumstances but the truth was I felt like an intruder in a peep show.

  It was at this time I heard from Sarah. She was still in France. Someone was looking after her surgery but not the project. The project needed personal skills, hers and mine.

  Did I mind? she wasn’t going to be back for another couple of weeks. It was an important personal experience for her; she felt she was learning a great deal, gaining new insights, becomi
ng a stronger person, inspired by the same Provencal countryside that inspired van Gogh. She really needed this time to think. She couldn’t talk long, she was phoning on somebody else’s bill.

  It was a breathless conversation. We did talk for longer but what could I say? I could hardly drag her back kicking and screaming. What should I say about my own important personal experience? I hinted at it and maybe it registered in her mind, who could say. I told her it really would be nice to talk to her soon.

  The call shook me a bit. You see Sarah was so very like Eadie. I’d so recently heard and seen and felt Edward’s passion for Eadie and now to talk to Sarah, to have her sound just like Eadie did. It was confusing. I didn’t want such an intimacy with Sarah, nor would she want it with me. Warning bells shrieked at the very thought.

  Edward’s love touched such deep emotions. I needed this isolation to disentangle my own sense of loss for this intense love; lost by nearly five hundred years and closer, by all measures, than my loss of Frances.

  You could feel Edward was courting disaster; there was such risk in the differences between them, such powerful tension in the air, so much desperation in Edward’s need for love. Yet I’d felt such true love between them.

  It was with such thoughts my mind floated back to Edward; having been thinking of something else, I’d recollect memories of him, memories I’d not had before. It was so like that time after Duke Henry’s arrest, when I tried to abandon my channelling then. It’s disconcerting to channel without conscious intent. Channelling put me in mind, as these days it always did, of van Dusen’s schizophrenics. But after that first, irresistible burst of sexual activity I received a whole new set of impressions.

  Edward discovered sexual love like a new toy.

  I don’t know when she left that night, when he awoke in the morning Edward found Eadie gone. He spent most of the day searching for her, constantly prevented by some chore or other. It was early evening when he finally did find her, seated on a log in the woods.

  (Past)

  Sitting at her side he wanted to launch straight into a renewal of their intimacy but he didn’t know how.

  “I love you, Eadie.”

  “Edward, we shouldn’t, it scares me...and it hurt.”

  Guilt entered Edward’s mind for the first time. He put his arm round her in a strangely diffident way. Eadie was the most precious thing he’d ever known and, suddenly, the most delicate. She turned to him, resting her head against his chest.

  “I do love you, Edward…

  and I do want you again.”

  She looked like a faerie, fragile yet so strong, in her true setting, the dappled light of the woodland. The urge to keep and protect her was overwhelming.

  She didn’t come to his room that night, nor did she every night, and it was always his room they used. Eadie’s room was too close to Aletia’s, the risk too great. The first several times they came together it was shyly, clumsily, not always effectually but on a rising tide of confidence and habit; it became a way of life.

  Eadie’s job was to help Aletia run the house. The servants, who did guess, would never dream of telling on the young couple. Eadie’s midnight wanderings went unnoticed in a house full of life but where privacy was still respected.

  A harder problem was their growing used to each other, to having each other there, to being a couple.

  They did grow in each other’s arms, no longer shy or clumsy. Their confidence showed in everything they did. Thomas twice had to drop his sword and cry “Hold!” as Edward’s swordsmanship matured: no longer the gifted pupil; Edward was becoming the master. Eadie was growing too. Aletia was shocked to realise her daughter looked and spoke like a woman, and that the eyes of the men followed her.

  It was Edward’s growing maturity that brought the coming changes all the quicker.

  I did begin again to take deliberate thought. The first time I did was to find a nervous, even an anxious Edward. The tide of his emotions was strong: it was as if his nervousness was my own.

  (Past)

  I’ve been summoned to the great hall. All day there’s been unaccustomed bustle, while I’ve been kept away; sent on foolish errands away from the house. When I returned I was sent to put on my best clothes and receive the violent attentions of the maids who washed and dressed me. I heard the king’s arrived and it’s on my account. I haven’t seen Eadie all day and I’ve a horrid presentiment: has our love been discovered and Lady Margaret, horrified beyond knowing what to do, sent for the King?

  As I presented myself in the hall my heart beat fast and my throat grew tight. I’ve seen the King before; this is silly; whatever he might do.

  Unlike any other day the door is opened for me by Jinney, Lady Margaret’s own woman. There is no excuse, I must walk straight in.

  The King stands in front of the great fireplace, although no fire is lit. Lady Margaret is sat in a chair by his side. There are other people in the room, whom I don’t recognise. I’m formally introduced, yet I don’t remember their names. One man I do know, the Kings chaplain, he has a thin face and he scares me.

  Of course, there’s Thomas Lord Stanley, as Lady Margaret’s husband, my mother, brother and sisters, and the Duke of Bedford with my mother.

 

  The scene faded as I wondered why Edward was so reluctant to acknowledge his family, most of all his mother and brother Henry, he surely knew them very well. It isn’t the first time they’ve been more or less wiped from the scene, nor will it be the last. I can only guess at it and if I ever do give you an explanation it will not be in this book.

  “Well Edward, so there you are.”

  Lady Margaret surprised me by sounding nervous. I heard later there’d been a great quarrel between her and my mother. But it couldn’t have been about me, Lady Katherine would never argue with my guardian except about my brother.

  They both looked at me as if to be sure I was properly washed and dressed. I don’t know if my looks pleased them, before either could say a word more King Henry spoke,

  “Edward de Stafford approach.”

  I moved self-consciously to obey.

  “We knew your father who rendered great service to England and to the Crown. On that account and on account of the several good reports we have of your character and bearing...”

  At this point the King’s stern face broke into a smile,

  “I am pleased to create you Sir Edward, knight of…”

  Here, my senses reeled. I had forgot the talk of knighthood, months before. I’d thought to be summoned over Eadie. I heard the King again, speaking in a kindly voice,

  “Sir Edward.”

  I pinched myself for the relief and strangeness of it and stood straight, on the King’s bidding, to receive a cheer.

  Half the household must have come into the hall behind me. In the press of bodies stood Eadie, a tear in her eye. I wanted to go to her but the King was speaking,

  “Well, Edward, this is a family occasion and that’s why we’re not at court. There’ll be other days, more than one, when it won’t be a matter of past honours. But today, thanks to you, we celebrate in private and I find myself amongst family, your family and mine, eh Edward?”

  Later I saw he meant his uncle and my mother but at the time I didn’t understand him.

  “How the Commons will mix us up, Tudor and Stafford, as if the name Henry were not enough.”

  Did he mean my father or my brother?

  “...Tell me, do you remember your father; I’ve never asked you?”

  All I could do was stammer,

  “Yes your Grace... Yes your Grace.”

  There was a banquet laid out, all unnoticed, food from the kitchen and wine from the cellar and servants were bustling about under Aletia’s eye. I was whisked, as in some dance, to meet one stranger after another.

  Lady Margaret may not have brought me to court but the King brought half the court to me. There were people I’d not noticed in the room, people who smiled and nodded at me.
<
br />   That night there was great celebration, with music and revels.

  The memory is tantalising and almost certainly untrue. I knew from the Dictionary of National Biography, Edward became a knight of the Bath as an infant; and of the Garter when he was seventeen. Unless the story’s incomplete I can’t explain it. I’m no historian, I can’t say if there might be an unofficial ceremony, with no proper record kept, perhaps to confirm an existing honour. Perhaps the memory’s out of order. There are other points too, why did Edward so dislike his family? They all, except his father, survived the rebellion of 1483 and surely shared the same fate.

  I spoke to the consultant hypnotists, the man I told you of from the murder case.

  “You know,” he said, “One of the real problems is confabulation. The subconscious mind can make up stories, put unconnected things together and, in short, tell lies just as easily as the conscious mind.”

  I found this reassuring, why shouldn’t you remember a dream as real? How could I know the truth of domestic details five hundred years ago? Yet, Edward’s discomfort in that celebration was very real. The momentum of his life was moving him on, he was passing out of childhood and I felt for him, but how true were these feelings?

  My hypnotist said something else; something I’d already heard from Sarah,

  “Of course, it’s not just that your subconscious mind tells lies. It remembers what it wants to remember; it conveniently leaves out the uncomfortable things, the things you’d rather forget.”

  Once again I had doubts about what I was doing. What was I missing about Brother Henry and the family? How much trust can anyone put in this channelling? Just because Edward and some of the others really did exist could I trust it? Most of all, this confusion between Eadie and Sarah. Having felt Edward’s passion for Eadie, how could I so much as look at Sarah. The embarrassment! I didn’t have these feelings for her. How could they be so very much the same?

  Sometimes, when you’re left alone too long, your mind can swing like a pendulum between all and any extremes. Last week I feared the force of Edward would drown me, with the weekend confidence returned. Now, as the weekend came back once more, I was ready to doubt everything again.

  ***