Queen By Right

by Anne Easter Smith

  Nor were we enemies when I named our sweet girl after the beautiful young queen and received a gift from her grace in acknowledgment. Nay, not then. But we certainly are now, she thought grimly, and I hate her even more than I hate Jacquetta of Bedford. But that is another story.

  Margaret of Anjou had been feted on her arrival in England in some of the most lavish celebrations London had ever seen. Cecily frowned. All that money spent needlessly on a few days of spectacle with no sign of the thirty-eight thousand pounds owed Richard. Henry had received papal dispensation for the proxy betrothal during Lent, so the formal marriage and coronation went ahead immediately.

  And in all the pageants mounted for Margaret’s delight she was depicted as a dove. Ha! thought Cecily, what irony. Peace is not a word in Queen Margaret’s vocabulary.

  The truce brought about by her betrothal to Henry expired the following April, and peace-loving Henry, aching for a final treaty with the French, sent embassy after embassy and received envoy after envoy in the hope of terminating the war. It was not to be. Even when Suffolk proposed to King Charles that England might give up its claim to the French crown in exchange for keeping only Normandy and Gascony, the French balked. Henry offered to meet with Charles in France, expecting Richard, who was still lieutenant and governor, to make the arrangements and accompany him later that year. But ’twas all for naught, Cecily thought. Henry never went, and the war dragged on. Ah, yes, the war that Henry, Suffolk, and Uncle Beaufort wanted to end. What hypocrisy, she scoffed.

  But her memories returned to Richard and that first Christmas back in England. Fotheringhay had been decked with holly and trailing ivy, and Anne and Edward had helped bring in the Yule log. At six, Anne was already betrothed to Henry Holland, fifteen-year-old heir of the duke of Exeter and close cousin to the king.

  Comfortable in her fourth month of another pregnancy, Cecily looked forward to welcoming Richard home from attending Parliament at Westminster. He had been promised one more year in France, and although Cecily had decided that she would be delivered in England, she was quite prepared to follow him after the birth. Instead, Richard had ridden home through sleet and muddied roads to tell her that he had been accused of mismanagement in Normandy—of rewarding his retainers, men such as Oldhall, with landholdings in France that had not been cleared with the crown.

  “I shouted at them then, Cis,” Richard had told her, when he burst into her chamber. I don’t blame him for being angry, she reasoned now. What else could he pay them with? The council had not sent him money. Cecily shook her head as she remembered the scene, furious that her husband, who had spent vast sums of his own money to pay the king’s army, was being falsely accused because of the councillors’ own failures. It was intolerable.

  Cecily had asked him, “Did you favor your men, Richard?” and he had shrugged and admitted, “Perhaps, but they deserved it. They were hard-working and loyal.”

  The charges of mismanagement could not be proved, even though the public fashion in which they were brought must have damaged poor Richard’s reputation. However, after many months the issue was dropped, and York was promised a large sum of money to compensate him for his previous lack of income. Cecily snorted again. Aye, we never saw much of that amount either, she recalled. And to add to Richard’s frustrations, when he knew he would not be sent back as lieutenant of Normandy, he was incensed by the council’s choice of successor. She scowled. It was none other than her cousin Edmund Beaufort.

  “Somerset!” she said out loud. How did he worm his way into the queen’s affections?

  “Your grace.” The voice of her attendant Beatrice Metcalf penetrated the heavy curtains and her thoughts. “Do you wish to sleep further? I thought I heard you calling.”

  “I heard the cock crow, Beatrice, but I have not closed my eyes all night,” Cecily called. “I pray you make my excuses to Father Lessey. I would rest another hour.”

  She heard Beatrice and Gresilde whispering as they stoked the fire and gathered up the wine cups from the night before. Soon there was silence in the chamber.

  The only good thing that occurred in the whole of that year, Cecily thought, was the birth of Meggie, their seventh child. Whether because Meggie was born in Richard’s favorite country residence, Hunsdon, or because the baby had chosen Cecily’s own birthday to arrive, when she looked upon Margaret of York, Cecily felt something special touch her heart. She remembered the day clearly.

  She had gone into labor on the way to Fotheringhay. “I do not think I can keep this child from being born another hour, let alone another two days or more,” she had told Richard, and she had been amused to see his pallor. Sweeping Cecily up into his arms and leaving the rest of the retinue to follow, they left the Ermine Road a few miles north of Hertford in a safe but serious hurry. By the time the midwife arrived at Hunsdon House, the babe was well on her way. Margaret was born with a wise look about her, Cecily recalled, and she had immediately seemed aware of her surroundings. I told Richard that day that Meg would be the most intelligent of our children, and I was right, Cecily thought smugly.

  Then she smiled. How Richard had loved this child! The memory of Richard holding Meg moved Cecily to discover that she had still a few more tears to spill. She sniffled into her pillow as she made a promise to make sure this child had an extra share of her love to make up for Richard’s absence. He would bounce Margaret on his knee and call her his darling, and she would make him laugh, because she loved the funny way he laughed.

  Cecily wiped away the tears and chuckled at that memory. Oh, that laugh of his, she thought. How sweet it was when they discovered Bessie had inherited it. The first time Elizabeth had neighed, Cecily believed the child had simply been imitating her father and had chastised her for her disrespect. But when it became apparent the girl could not laugh in any other way, Cecily had adored her for it.

  Her children! How much joy they had given her over the years—and she could even now think equably, though tinged with sadness, on those who did not live to enjoy their childhood. But with the inevitable stab of pain, she had to think of her beloved Edmund, who did survive to be an adult. But to what end, she mourned, cruelly killed at seventeen. Of all her boys, he had been her favorite, if she had been forced to choose under torture. His sense of adventure had reminded her of her own, and when Richard had occasionally punished him for it, she had secretly cheered him on. He had not been big and strong, like Edward, and although he had learned to use a sword with adequate skill, he did not live to fight, as his older brother did. There was a vulnerability about him—dare she say delicacy—that brought out her lioness instincts whenever the other children teased him for being a mother’s boy.

  And then there was Edward, who had grown daily, it seemed, until he had outstripped his father, and Richard had to make him kneel so that he could box his ears when the rascal had been caught in yet another escapade. How he adores the opposite sex, Cecily said to herself, and made a note to speak to him about his indiscretions. She regretted now that after the Anjou marriage, the king of France had refused the betrothal between his daughter and Ned, and Richard had not had time to find another suitable match for his heir. Perhaps he would now have been married and more circumspect had the match been achieved. Ah, well, Edward would no doubt land on his feet in matrimony, too, just as he did in anything he undertook, she thought. He was born when the stars were perfectly aligned, she believed.

  Aye, she and Richard had been blessed indeed with their growing brood, and she tried not to dwell on those she had lost as infants.

  After Margaret had come George. She well remembered the cold, damp October day when he had first come into the world and charmed not only his mother but everyone else who knew him. Perhaps because he was born in Ireland, he seemed to Cecily to be an elfin child, frail and pale, with enormous blue eyes and hair the color of moonglow. Ah, yes, Ireland! Those gentle emerald hills that concealed a savage wildness just beyond the Pale. Was that where Richard finally discovered his ow
n power and with that power dared to desire his destiny?

  PART FOUR

  He knows that of two roads each must take one,

  Shunning the second, or the other choosing.

  Yet not so absolutely but that things

  Might not end otherwise, conceivably,

  If by free will a man should choose to act.

  ROMAN DE LA ROSE

  19

  Ireland, 1449 to 1450

  Exile, more like!” Richard thundered.

  He swung around and stared out of the topmost window in the round tower of Wigmore Castle, perched high upon a forested hill a few miles from Ludlow, where the Yorks had come for the harvesting. It was here, where the hawthorn trees and wild rose bushes grew heavy with their red fruits, the Welsh hills rose like dark clouds upon the horizon to the west, and the fertile valley of the Teme and its tributaries stretched to the north, that Richard’s ancestor Lionel of Clarence had been laid to rest. Twelve hundred feet below where Richard was standing, the bull badge of Clarence was carved over the castle gate and indeed above every doorway that led to yet more stairs that seemed to climb into the sky. Cecily had remarked on Wigmore’s perfect aspect the first time Richard had taken her there. Now it was falling into disrepair, a victim of Richard’s financial distress and his decision that nearby Ludlow Castle had to be maintained as the Yorks’ primary residence in the Welsh marches, where he had inherited vast estates.

  They had ridden out with Piers and another groom, intent on hawking that golden afternoon, when Richard had suggested they visit Wigmore to ascertain whether money should be spent on it. The castle was deserted, and any items of furniture left from Richard’s uncle’s time were either rotten, broken, or had been stolen.

  “Richard, do be reasonable,” Cecily cajoled. “I know you wanted to return to France, but that is not to be. Lord lieutenant of Ireland is a most suitable position for you.” She did not need to remind him that, as a descendant of the de Clares, he owned the greatest expanse of Anglo-Irish land. “You are a natural choice. And since the events of February, you must know why they do not want you close.”

  Richard nodded and said nothing. They were both thinking of Humphrey of Gloucester, the heir presumptive and the king’s loyal if somewhat irascible and headstrong uncle. Relations between him and the king, and especially with the king’s right arm, Suffolk, had deteriorated little by little and month by month while the Yorks were holding court at Rouen, until the king became unnecessarily afraid for his safety at his uncle’s hand. Of all the nobles who had surrounded the king since his soldier father had died, Gloucester had tried hardest to hold on to what his brother Harry had won for England at Agincourt. It was this, Richard believed, and nothing else that had set Gloucester against Suffolk and the Beauforts. Besides, his loyalty to his nephew was steadfast. Richard himself was philosophically aligned with Gloucester, although never part of his circle. Even so, Cecily had been frightened to learn of the sixty-year-old duke’s ill-fortune and sudden death last February while she was at Fotheringhay, sickly with another pregnancy.

  “Poor man was unaware of the danger he was in when summoned to Parliament at Bury St. Edmund’s,” Richard had told Cecily then, shaking his head. “He was accused of crimes against the crown. Suffolk charged that his adherents were fomenting a revolt to put him on the throne. I regret now that Salisbury and I believed Suffolk’s accusations. When I saw Gloucester later, he was in a state of apoplexy, Cis, with veins standing out on his face and neck.”

  Cecily now stared at Richard’s back, his silver-streaked hair curling under at his shoulder, and let out a long breath. Poor Gloucester, he was found dead a few days later, from what cause, no one had yet discovered. Some said it was poison. Some, Richard among them, thought his old heart gave out after such a fit of anger. But Cecily thought it was from a broken heart. All he had worked for on behalf of his brother and then his nephew had been lost. Whatever the reason, the last brother of the great King Harry was gone.

  “This means you are next in line for the Plantagenet crown, Richard, and should be named heir presumptive,” Cecily had whispered. “This means you could be king—if anything happens to Henry.”

  “But nothing will happen to Henry, and he and the queen will have an heir soon, no doubt.”

  In the space of two months that year of 1447, King Henry lost two of his kin who had helped raise and counsel him. As though life was not worth living after his nemesis Gloucester was no longer there to oppose, Henry Beaufort, cardinal, bishop, and councillor, expired on the eleventh day of April and was buried in the marble tomb he had built for himself in his cathedral at Winchester. Cecily had shed no tears for her stern uncle.

  “Shall we take the children to Ireland?” Cecily asked after a long pause, the resignation and reasonableness in her voice easing Richard’s tension.

  He nodded, fidgeting with his dagger hilt. “We shall set up court just as we did in Rouen, I suppose.”

  “How long this time, Richard?” she murmured, dreading leaving her homeland again, not to mention her favorite castles of Fotheringhay and Ludlow. She went to him and kneaded the knotted muscles in his shoulders.

  “You will not like it, Cis. Ten years from December,” he answered, relaxing under her fingers. He patted her hand when she gasped in dismay. “But I will take my time about going, I can assure you.”

  Richard had set some conditions for the appointment and was able to assure Cecily that the king and Suffolk would allow him to recover some of his lost lands from the Irish chieftains and that, should he manage the royal exchequer well, any surpluses would be his. He grunted. “I suppose it was an attempt to make up for the monstrous Rouen debt. But—damn Suffolk all to hell!” he swore, rising abruptly. “’Tis nothing more than banishment. And soon Maine will be back in French hands and, God help them, Somerset will be in charge at Rouen. I was aghast in May to hear Parliament exonerate Suffolk for ceding Maine and Anjou. Christ’s nails! He sold us out for the younger daughter of a paltry poet prince.” He slammed his fist into his other hand. “It all makes me sick unto death.”

  Cecily swung Richard round to her and threw her arms about him. “Do not talk of death, my love. What would I do without you, in truth? What would the children do without you? We shall make the best of things in Ireland, and perhaps we shall be touched by the magic of those ancient Gaels.”

  It was astonishing to Richard how the curve of her body, the silkiness of her skin still aroused him after all these years. She had lost yet another boy child not a month since and named him William for her brother, but it seemed to Richard that she had expended all her grief upon her other losses and had accepted God’s will this time with a certain degree of equanimity. He had promised himself not to pressure her back into his arms too soon, but now he could not resist her mouth so close to his and so kissed her passionately. Thoughts of Ireland, Gloucester, and Suffolk were forgotten as Richard reached under her skirt to fondle the most private parts of her, exulting in her moans of passion. Not seeing anywhere to lay her down, Richard moved Cecily back to the waist-high window embrasure and sat her upon it. Still kissing her, he managed to untie his points, drop his hose, push up her skirts, and thrust himself into her. Cecily spread her legs for him, gripping the edge of the windowsill for leverage. Both found the new position titillating, and not long after finding a rhythm, they climaxed together in a single cry of shared pleasure.

  Her legs locked about his waist to hold him in her as long as she could, Cecily whispered, “Such wantonness in an old married pair. ’Tis shameful. But it is as well we left Piers at the bottom of the hill or he might have come to our rescue upon hearing such a cry.”

  Richard could not bear to let her go. Life always seemed better when Cecily was with him, he mused. And like this, we are as one. Who cares about king, country, or banishment when I have a love such as this and the fruits of that love ever waiting to welcome me home. More pragmatically, he thought, at least in Dublin he would be king of
the castle.

  Looking over Cecily’s shoulder, he saw a pair of magpies fly past the window.

  “Two for joy,” he murmured, nuzzling her. “They must have heard us.”

  TWO YEARS LATER, looking back from the stern of their carrack at the dark Welsh hills tumbling into the sea, Cecily took with her images of their journey from Ludlow through the high mountains of Wales, over the treacherous straits of Menai, to Beaumaris on the voyage to Ireland. She had waited the last two years at the rosy-stoned castle of Ludlow, situated on the edge of the seemingly impenetrable land of dragons and Owen Glendower, as Richard prepared for his lieutenancy.

  They set off in the middle of June with a mile-long train of carts, pack-horses, riders, and litters that snaked like a gaily colored ribbon along the primitive roads into Wales. They stopped at Richard’s castles of Montgomery and Denbigh before inching their way through the forested valleys until suddenly confronted by the barren Snowdon mountains. There the nights were cold, and servants harvested armfuls of heather and bracken to burn, gathering around to sleep on the ground in their cloaks. The green plants made more smoke than fire, Cecily complained one night after a fit of coughing. Richard chided her and reached out to touch her ruby betrothal ring.

  “Remember our pact that day of your attack? We must never forget how fortunate we are. We have a tent and fur blankets to keep us warm, Cis. Why begrudge those less fortunate a little comfort—if that is how they see it.”

  On the gently rocking deck of the two-masted carrack, Cecily smiled at the memory. Richard was a good man and preferred to look for the best in his fellow man. She wished more people knew that side of him, for he showed the world a stiffer bearing. No matter, she decided, because what was most pleasing to her was his kindness to his children. Aye, he had occasionally given both boys a thrashing, but the next day he would take them hawking or fishing. She watched him walking up and down, explaining to the eager Edward and Edmund how the sails worked.