Warwick, too, had been forced grudgingly to concede her astonishing beauty, and lovely women were no novelty to Warwick. He’d had his share of liaisons, and his wife Nan, whom he’d married when he was six and she eight, was not only one of England’s greatest heiresses but a pretty hazel-eyed blonde as well. But he had to admit, if only to himself, that he’d never seen a woman as beautiful as Elizabeth Woodville.
He’d been prepared to dislike her at first sight. It had taken little time, however, for him to learn to hate her, to hate her with the embittered enmity he’d previously reserved for Marguerite d’Anjou. He’d always thought her to be a totally unsuitable Queen for his cousin. Once he came to know her, he thought her to be a bitch as well.
In this, he was not alone. Elizabeth awed with her beauty, but alienated with her arrogance. Warwick doubted there had ever been a Queen as little liked as the woman Edward had taken as his wife.
He would have preferred to believe Edward regretted the marriage; unfortunately, he could find no such indications. As much as it irked him to acknowledge it, his cousin seemed quite content with the beautiful haughty wife he’d chosen for himself. He was not faithful to her, but none who knew Edward would have expected fidelity, and if Elizabeth objected to her husband’s adulteries, only she and Edward ever knew.
As yet, though, she’d not given Edward a son; a daughter had been born the previous year. That pleased Warwick, although he’d never stopped to analyze why it should, for a son was essential to safeguard the Yorkist dynasty. But he didn’t doubt that Edward’s unpopular Queen would eventually give him a male heir. Edward clearly found enough pleasure in her bed, even after three years of marriage, to spend considerable time there, and she came from an extremely fertile family.
The very thought of that fertile family of Woodvilles was enough to sour Warwick’s day. He found it impossible to resign himself to the rapid rise of Elizabeth’s relatives. She’d brought no dowry to her marriage, Warwick thought grimly, but by God, she suffered no lack of blood kin!
She had six unwed sisters for whom titled husbands were needed, and in short order, the heirs of the Earls of Arundel, Essex, and Kent had Woodville wives and the twelve-year-old Duke of Buckingham was unwillingly wed to Elizabeth’s young sister, Katherine.
Five brothers there were, too, to claim their share of their sister’s sudden glory. Her favorite brother, Anthony Woodville, was named Governor of the Isle of Wight. Another brother had been knighted. And citizen and courtier alike had been scandalized by the marriage made between twenty-year-old John Woodville and the wealthy dowager Duchess of Norfolk, who was nearly fifty years his elder.
Elizabeth’s father had been titled as Earl Rivers, and Warwick was acutely aware of the rumors that Edward meant to name his father-in-law as Lord Constable of England, an office of immense power and prestige. But most galling of all for Warwick was the matter of the Exeter marriage.
The Duke of Exeter was an avowed Lancastrian, but he’d consented, nonetheless, to wed Edward’s eldest sister Anne in 1447 when he was seventeen and she a child of eight years. The marriage had not won him over to York, however. He’d fought against Edward at Towton and was now in exile in Burgundy. During a rather troubled marriage, he and Anne had produced a daughter, who was, as the heiress of the Exeter estates, a much sought-after marital prize. The girl had been promised to John Neville’s young son. But that past October, Elizabeth had paid her sister-in-law of Exeter the sum of four thousand marks to secure the young heiress for Thomas Grey, Elizabeth’s twelve-year-old son by her first marriage.
Edward professed to be somewhat uncomfortable with this transaction. He had privately apologized to John and promised to see that John’s son would be given a bride no less wealthy. But he refused Warwick’s demands that he forbid the match, and disclaimed responsibility with the rather disingenuous argument that it was a matter between his wife and sister only. Edward ever preferred to dispose of unpleasantness by evading or ignoring it, and while he was too intelligent not to realize a day of reckoning could be deferred but not denied, it never seemed to trouble him unduly.
John understood this; he saw his cousin Ned with affection but without illusions, and so he accepted the Exeter-Grey marriage with such good grace as he could muster. Only to his wife did he voice his resentment at the way Elizabeth had pirated the Exeter heiress from his own son.
Warwick, not being of so stoic a temperament as John, had raged with a dangerous lack of discretion at what he saw as Woodville perfidy. He never doubted that Elizabeth Woodville had more in mind than gaining a rich wife for her son; he knew she took gleeful satisfaction at taking away from the Nevilles.
But on this evening in late June, Warwick’s mood was not darkened with any thoughts of the despised Woodvilles. He had just returned from a triumphant tour of France, a tour that had exceeded all expectations and strengthened his conviction that his future, England’s future, must lie with France. Surely now, his cousin the King would see he was right.
He’d been gone for a month’s time, was now returning with a French embassy headed by no less a personage than the Archbishop of Narbonne. Arriving at the Herber, he left his distinguished guests in the great hall while he went to advise his wife of his return. He was looking forward to her surprise; he knew she hadn’t expected him back so soon.
The scene in the solar was very much a family one. Nan had a satin gown spread out on the trestle table and was showing John’s wife Isabella how a steeping in verjuice had removed a stain from the skirt. John lounged nearby on the settle, cracking walnuts for his six-year-old son. Across the solar, his cousin George sat with Warwick’s daughter Isabel, and by the hearth, Anne, his youngest, was playing chess with Richard.
Warwick stayed motionless and unnoticed for a moment in the doorway. Isabel was two months shy of her sixteenth birthday, and each time Warwick looked at her, he felt a throb of paternal pride. Isabel had flowered in the past year, had begun to turn male heads. And much to Warwick’s satisfaction, none seemed more captivated than George.
He’d always meant, of course, that George should one day wed Isabel, and had, without undue difficulty, conditioned them to view such a marriage as quite the most natural thing in the world. That spring, he’d instructed his brother, now the Archbishop of York, to open secret negotiations with the Vatican, and he was already setting aside the gold it would take to secure the papal dispensation that would enable George and Isabel to wed. Such a dispensation was required by the laws of consanguinity, George and Isabel being first cousins once removed. And the negotiations were being conducted in secrecy to circumvent Edward’s anticipated opposition to the marriage; so strained had the relationship between the two men become that Edward now looked with disfavor upon any alliance between his brothers and Warwick’s daughters.
Warwick had no intention, however, of having his cherished plans thwarted by his cousin, King or not. He felt quite confident that the papal dispensation would be forthcoming, for Edward’s own agent in Rome was secretly sworn to act on his behalf, having been won over with lavish offerings of Neville gold.
Isabel was holding George’s hand between her own; she now made an elaborate show of tracing his lifeline for him. That was not an activity Warwick’s wife would normally have sanctioned, for it was too close to soothsaying. But she made no objection, even smiled, knowing full well that it was only an excuse for touching. Warwick smiled, too, and then looked toward Anne.
That winter, Anne had taken it into her head that she wanted to learn to play chess. At last he’d yielded to her importunings and agreed to teach her, but with no expectation of success. Warwick did not think women were capable of the intellectual concentration needed for so demanding a discipline as chess, and felt himself vindicated when the second chess lesson ended with Anne in tears and the board on the floor where he’d flung it in disgust. When Richard had then volunteered to teach her, Warwick wryly wished him well. But secretly, he’d been pleased, for he’d sensed a ch
ange in Richard; the boy had been drawing away from his Neville kin.
No, that wasn’t strictly true, he conceded. Dickon was still on the best of terms with Johnny. He was as friendly as ever with Isabel. And with Anne, nothing had changed; he teased her and kept her secrets and was as protective of her as any brother could have been. No, it was not his Neville kin he’d begun to avoid. As little as Warwick liked to admit it, he was the one Dickon no longer seemed comfortable with.
Warwick knew why, of course, and mentally heaped more curses upon the head of his cousin, the King. The chess lessons pleased him, therefore. While it was true that Dickon’s blind loyalty to Ned was proving to be irksome, Warwick was far from ready to give up on the boy. He knew Dickon’s heart was at Middleham; knew, too, that Dickon had no liking for his brother’s Woodville in-laws. He did not imagine life could be very pleasant for the boy at the Woodville court. For that was how Warwick now saw his cousin’s court, as infested by Woodvilles.
Apparently, Richard had proven to be a more ’adept tutor than Warwick anticipated; both youngsters seemed thoroughly engrossed in the chessboard. Warwick moved into the room, and his wife looked up, cried, “Dick!” Warwick laughed, came forward into the warmth of their welcome.
The French King had honored Warwick with a magnificent golden goblet studded with emeralds, rubies, and diamonds, and the family passed it around with murmurs of admiration. But it was the gifts Warwick himself had brought back that elicited real excitement. King Louis had opened the famed textile shops of Rouen to the English. Now Nan and John’s Isabella and Warwick’s daughters exclaimed with delight over the bolts of crimson velvet, patterned damask, and cloth of gold.
George was equally delighted with what Warwick had brought back for him, a small rhesus monkey imported to Rouen from the Holy Land. George had never shown much interest in pets, but he found such a novelty to be irresistible, and announced at once that he would call his new possession Anthony. As that happened to be the name of Anthony Woodville, best-loved brother of the Woodville Queen, it seemed likely that the monkey would attract more than its share of attention when he flaunted it at Westminster. But George seemed to thrive upon such borderline insolences, and here in the House of Neville, his choice evoked only laughter.
For John, Warwick had a magnificent leather-bound edition of Froissart’s Chronicles, that renowned work of the fourteenth-century French historian. He knew, of course, that John was far from an avid reader, but the ownership of books was becoming as much a status symbol as was the possession of cut window glass or Flemish carpets.
He deliberately saved his gift for Richard till the last, knowing the boy expected nothing, and then presented his young cousin with proof positive of the superior skill of French craftsmen, a slender-bladed dagger that shone like silver as Richard unwrapped it.
Warwick leaned over to point out the unique carving upon the hilt, the Whyte Boar of Gloucester, a remarkably accurate depiction of the cognizance Richard had in the past year chosen for his own, as an anagram for York. Richard said little, merely mumbled his thanks. But Warwick had been close enough to the boy to see the sudden tears that had blurred his first sight of the Whyte Boar, tears that had been blinked back so hastily none but Warwick had noticed, and that involuntary response told Warwick all he wanted to know, showed him that his young cousin’s loyalties were painfully divided, and he was content.
Settling down with some of the Bordeaux wine he’d been given by the King of France, he began to relate a tale of triumph. With that flair for the theatric which was peculiarly his, he described the lavish welcome he’d been given by King Louis, described his spectacular entry into Rouen, with the citizens bearing flowers and banners of Neville crimson, and the priests holding aloft flaming torches, holy water, and crosses of beaten gold. He told them of the avowals of friendship made by the French King. He told them that Louis had made a most handsome offer for the hand of Ned’s sister Meg, a marriage with the son of the Duke of Savoy. Meg was, at twenty-one, overly ripe for marriage; after all, most girls were wed by age fifteen or thereabouts.
He did not tell them, however, of the secret talks conducted in a Dominican friary. He said nothing of the planned destruction of France’s hated enemy of Burgundy, or that Louis had suggested that the provinces of Holland and Zeeland, now held by the Duke of Burgundy, should then pass to his friend, the Earl of Warwick. Why should not his dear friend hold both an English earldom and a principality in what had once been Burgundy? Warwick agreed; why not, indeed?
Instead, he related to them a lurid tale told him by King Louis, of the mysterious winter disappearance of a rural woodcutter’s family, believed to have been trapped and eaten by a pack of starving wolves.
For the first time since his brother’s return, John allowed himself to relax, felt some of his tension ebb, for it now seemed as if the reckoning would be put off until morning. He listened with amusement as his cousins and nieces discussed the killer wolves with considerable animation. No wolves had been seen in England for years; the few surviving animals had long since retreated into the mountains of Wales. But the youngsters at once accepted Warwick’s account as true. It was only to be expected, they agreed, that wolves should still roam French roads!
Warwick frowned at that, and John hid a smile. The English dislike of the French ran deep. If it surfaced in Warwick’s own household, John thought, it must flow like a river through the streets of London. He did not understand how his brother could so easily discount so ancient a bias. France was England’s traditional enemy; since the middle of the last century, the English Kings had claimed the French throne. John understood that the English did not want a treaty with France; they wanted another Agincourt. His cousin Ned also understood this very well. John wondered why his brother did not.
He grinned, for Richard was now assuring Anne and Isabel that their father’s cherished alaunt hounds were blood kin to the wolf, so closely interbred that it was too dangerous to use alaunts for hunting wolves. Greyhounds and mastiffs had to be used, instead, Richard explained; the risk was too great that the alaunts would revert back to the wild and turn upon their masters.
Both girls were now casting suspicious looks at the alaunt bitch stretched out by the hearth, seeing in her slanted amber eyes and twitching wolflike ears confirmation of Richard’s tale. It was only when Richard could contain his laughter no longer that they realized they’d been hoodwinked. They were threatening dire recriminations in soft ladylike tones that would escape their mother’s hearing when George said suddenly, “The wolves have been on the prowl here, too, Cousin, while you’ve been away. But here they do go by the name Woodville.”
Only iron control and the fact that George was not within range kept John from backhanding his cousin across the mouth. George saw his anger, but it didn’t faze him; he was not that attached to John. He leaned forward, facing the cousin who did matter.
“It seems Johnny and Dickon are shy of telling you, Cousin. But you must know what was done in your absence.”
Warwick glanced over at his brother, back at George. He was fond of the boy, but he did wish George didn’t derive such relish from bearing bad tidings.
“If you refer to the visit of the Burgundian delegation, I am well informed on that matter, George. The visit was planned ere I left England, after all. Moreover, it was my understanding that the Burgundian envoys have departed back to their country upon learning of the Duke of Burgundy’s death a fortnight ago.”
“Not all of them, Cousin. Louis de la Gruuthuse has remained behind…to resolve the final points of the marriage contract.”
Warwick had been aware, of course, that Charles, Count of Charolais, son and heir of the recently deceased Duke of Burgundy, had evidenced an interest in a marital alliance with England. Edward had seemed rather intrigued by the prospect, much to Warwick’s annoyance. Quite apart from his political preference for France, Warwick had a personal aversion to the Count of Charolais, now the new Duke of Burgundy; they�
��d met the year before at Boulogne and had taken an instant and hearty dislike to one another.
But Warwick had not taken the Burgundian proposal that seriously. He knew Charles of Burgundy liked nothing so much as baiting his avowed enemy and nominal liege lord, the King of France. He knew, too, that Charles was sympathetic to the House of Lancaster, was sheltering both Edmund Beaufort, Duke of Somerset, and Edward’s Lancastrian brother-in-law, the Duke of Exeter, at his court.
Most importantly, he did not think his cousin Ned would pay so little heed to his counsel. The Woodville marriage…well, that was an act of lust, inexcusable yet understandable. Politics was quite another matter. He did not think Ned would dare choose an alliance he so firmly opposed.
“Marriage?” he now said slowly. “You don’t mean…”
George nodded. “Yes, I do. Ned has agreed to wed my sister Meg to Charles of Burgundy. Nothing has been put to paper as yet, but he has consulted Meg, to make sure she is willing.” He paused. “It seems, Cousin, that she is.”
Warwick was staring at him incredulously. “He would so dare…” he said softly, but with such intensity that George found himself hesitating before telling his cousin the rest, the worst.
“There’s more, Cousin. Ned did invite the Burgundians to attend the opening session of parliament. Your brother George, as Chancellor, was to make the opening address. But at the last moment, he sent word he was ill. Ned…well, Ned seemed to think our cousin wasn’t ill at all, that he was showing his displeasure that the Burgundian envoys had been accorded so much favor.
“On Monday last, Ned did ride himself to your brother’s manor in Charing Cross and demand that he relinquish to him the Great Seal of the chancellorship. He then gave the chancellorship to the Bishop of Bath and Wells, Robert Stillington, Keeper of the Privy Seal….”
George trailed off. Even though his loyalties were undivided, were given gladly to his cousin of Warwick, he was vaguely disturbed by the fury he saw in the Earl’s face. Men who looked like that most generally had murder in mind, he thought uneasily.
The Sunne in Splendour Page 16
