She was hand in hand with Bessie, who was shivering in the cool sea breeze. Nurse Anne, her russet woolen gown billowing out around her, stood by with three-year-old Meggie in her arms. The nurse had grown plump in the Yorks’ service, but her devotion to the children and their love for her was worth every flampayne, custard, and sweetmeat the woman consumed, Cecily thought.
Who are you to cast stones, Cis? she asked herself, feeling the swelling belly under her gown. She would have this child in Dublin, and wondered if it would be the first of many born there. She sent a quick prayer heavenward to the Blessed Mother, hoping that this babe would not be taken from her too. Another son of York had entered the world the previous November but had lived only a few weeks into the wicked winter that froze the water in the moat and Cecily’s washbasin every morning and mounded snow so high on the roads and fields that food had been scarce and travel impossible. They had chosen to name their ninth child in honor of John of Bedford, but he had none of his namesake’s strength and had soon withered. Let this one live, Holy Mary, Cecily pleaded, clutching Bessie’s hand so tightly that the child squeaked, “Mama!”
Richard glanced up at the quarterdeck and waved, the pheasant feathers in his cap in danger of being whisked away in the wind. “Papa, papa!” Meg cried. “Do come up here.”
The boys scrambled up the steps to join the women, running to the rail to peer precariously over the stern. “If you fall in, we shall not turn back to rescue you,” Richard warned. “I shall not hesitate to chain you to a mast for the rest of the voyage if you cannot stay out of mischief. Do I make myself clear?”
Stepping back from the gunwale, both boys nodded sheepishly and rejoined their parents. Edmund slipped his right hand unseen into Cecily’s and, as he was wont to do when he felt safe, stuck his left thumb in his mouth.
“Thumbsucker! Mama’s boy,” seven-year-old Ned taunted him, mimicking his brother and making Meggie laugh. Edmund let go of Cecily’s hand and ran full tilt at Edward, knocking him off his feet. A wrestling match ensued, and Richard watched, amused, as the younger, slighter Edmund fought like a scrappy terrier against the stalwart, athletic Edward.
“Do put an end to it, my lord,” Cecily begged, casting her eyes heavenward. “You know it will only end in tears.”
Too late. Edward had used his fist to thwack Edmund in his belly, and Edmund let out a wail, “Nurse Anne, he hit me. Ned hit me,” the predicted tears coming as he kicked and wriggled to get out from under the pummeling. “Get him away from me. He is hurting me,” he sobbed, and as Edward raised his arm, threatening to deal the final blow, Edmund begged, “Stop it, Ned! I give in. You win.”
“Enough!” Richard bellowed, making several mariners stop what they were doing to stare at the noble family. Edward froze, arm still poised above his blubbering brother. “Never hit an adversary when he is down and pleading for mercy,” their father told them. “That is the way of savages. You will learn the civilities of war when you are a little older, but for now, learn this first lesson. Respect your enemy and always follow the rules of chivalry. Now, help your brother to his feet, Ned, and let me see both of you grasp an arm in friendship.”
The boys did as they were told, Edward apologizing and throwing his arm about his brother. Edmund wiped his nose on his sleeve and gave Edward a self-deprecating grin. Cecily smiled over their golden heads at her husband.
“Let us hope they will always be friends, Richard,” she murmured as he joined her. “’Tis a fearful thing to see brother fight against brother.”
Richard grunted. “I was spared any such temptation, my love, but sometimes I wish I had had a brother.” He put his arm around her and murmured. “I am hopeful you are carrying a son, and then Edmund will have a younger playmate to lord over.”
RICHARD WAS BUSILY occupied from the moment he arrived in Ireland. The Yorks were astonished at the welcome they received. Among the many gifts showered on them before they even arrived in Dublin were four hundred head of cattle and two beautiful Irish horses for Cecily.
Richard had been dismayed that John Talbot, the old veteran, who had preceded him as lord lieutenant, had not proved to be as good a governor as he was a soldier. In fact, he had governed by cruel soldiering, which had not helped matters between the native Irish and those Anglo-Irish who had been living around Dublin since Richard’s Plantagenet ancestors had conquered the island almost three hundred years before.
After the first night’s banquet, the old earl of Ormond, the leader of the Anglo-Irish in Ireland, who had greeted the Yorks upon their landing at Howarth, told Richard and Cecily, “We have often begged our sovereign lord Henry to send us a prince of the blood fit to rule us and keep the peace beyond the Pale. No one can gainsay that with your royal blood and family ties you are that man, your grace. You are a prince of England and Ireland, and all will bow down before you with true allegiance.”
“I hope so, my lord,” Richard replied. “I assure you, Ireland is dear to my heart.” As its largest landowner, I am sure it is, Cecily chuckled to herself, but she did not doubt her husband’s sincerity.
Reaching Dublin by boat, the city walls rising from the southern bank of the Liffey reminded Cecily of Rouen’s river approach. Once in the Liffey’s tributary, the Poddle, which formed the moat for the castle, the small skiff reached the wharf below the Powder Tower, and its royal passengers disembarked. Cecily looked up to see men-at-arms leaning precariously from the ramparts to catch their first glimpse of the new lieutenant. You have a good man in my husband, Cecily wanted to assure them.
INDEED, WITHIN A month of their arrival Richard had marched to his earldom of Ulster, and everywhere he went the chieftains gave him fealty, two a little more reluctantly than the others, she recalled. But once those two great chiefs, O’Neill and O’Byrne, had submitted, the rest followed. Henry O’Neill had gone as far as to swear that he would take up arms against anyone who waged war against Duke Richard or his heirs, English or Irish. There was even some civility restored between the two great Anglo-Irish leaders, Ormond and Desmond. Sir William Oldhall had told Cecily that Richard had done in two months what Talbot had failed to do in two years, and Cecily thrilled to his words.
Richard’s successes in Ireland were made sweeter when news reached Dublin in August of Edmund of Somerset’s ignominious defeats in France after he broke the truce by sacking the Breton city of Fougères. King Charles, allied with Brittany, retaliated, and castle after castle in English Normandy fell to the French armies. Richard was deeply saddened by the events and refused to be cheered by Cecily’s point that King Henry had made a mistake in choosing Edmund Beaufort over him to command in Normandy.
“In truth, it is not about an individual—not about me, Cecily. It is about the honor of our country. Somerset has damaged our honorable reputation and lost all that we had gained, and I weep for England,” Richard said. Cecily wondered that he did not add, “And all my hard work was for naught,” because that was what she was thinking.
AT MICHAELMAS, RICHARD hosted scores of lords from Meath, Munster, and Ulster both Gaelic and English at the castle in Dublin. It was the first time in living memory that the Irish chieftains had sat down at table together and with a lord lieutenant in his stronghold at Dublin. Before Richard went down to the great hall to receive them, Cecily, heavily pregnant and confined to her chambers, once again reminded her husband that his accomplishments must surely be noticed at Westminster.
“It seems no one has noticed, my dear,” her husband told her. “I do not believe Henry cares a ratcatcher’s arse about his Irish domain. As long as I keep the peace here, they can forget about Ireland. And once again, the exchequer has failed to send me what I need for next spring’s campaign, and hardly enough to recompense me for this summer’s. Instead, the council gives Somerset aid for his campaign and rewards Suffolk’s favorites with manors and lordships. The king, ’tis said, is bankrupt from all his gifting and the people are taxed out of their homes. Alas, dear lady, they have no th
oughts to spare for me and Ireland.”
“Then they are all whey-faced idiots,” Cecily had remarked as she removed an errant hair from the ermine-trimmed neck of his gown, straightened his heavy jeweled collar, and pecked him on the cheek. “But do not dwell on them today.” She fingered the gold ducal coronet that encircled his dark head. “Remember, here you are king.” Turning him toward the door, she gave him a little push. “I shall have my spies watching you all and reporting back to me. How I wish I could be down there with you.”
“Aye, so do I, my . . . my queen,” Richard murmured, his eyes twinkling.
Later Constance and Gresilde Boyvile took turns to describe the scene in the banquet hall from their vantage point near the musicians’ gallery.
“’Tis hard to know who are the most colorful—the Irishmen in their plaid wool mantles or the ladies,” Gresilde said, one of her many chins wobbling as she spoke. When Richard had retained Sir Richard Boyvile at Fotheringhay a year since, he had asked Cecily if the man’s wife might be a suitable attendant to take the place of Rowena, who had asked to return to her sickly husband’s side. Cecily had found Gresilde’s cheerful henpecking a nice foil for Constance’s sharp intelligence, and so had readily agreed.
“Their manners are also colorful,” Constance said, when her turn came. “The dogs have never been happier—there are bones and scraps for all. And you will be pleased to hear, your grace, that lords Edward and Edmund are behaving themselves impeccablement.” She pulled the footstool closer to her mistress, her eyes shining. “When the White Earl made his toast to the duke, madam, and all those wild men stood quietly and bowed down to Lord Richard . . . Bénit Vierge, I wish you could see. He was like a king.”
Cecily glowed with pride then and later, when Richard opened the first Parliament and within a few hours had waded through a backlog of complaints and grievances brought by landowners and commoners, dealing so fairly with all that his praises were being sung far and wide in the Pale.
But after three days confined to a chair, staring at documents and listening to complaints, he was glad of the chance to get out in the fresh air and ride the thirty miles to Trim to settle a dispute.
Cecily was nearing her time but resisted begging him to stay. Recognizing the plea in her anxious eyes, he kissed her and said, “Never fear, I shall be gone but a day and a half, my love. I defy the child to arrive before my return.”
Cecily was loath to see him go but sent him off with a wave from her window.
AT NOON ON the twenty-first day of October, Cecily gave a final push after only two full hours of labor and was delivered of a healthy boy, distinguished by elegant fingers and long feet.
“Mark my words, he will be a handsome man and win many hearts, your grace,” Constance told Cecily, administering a potion of boneset and dried ewe’s blood to her mistress to help heal her womb. She had known as soon as they were born that neither of the last two boys would survive. They were both too early and both the color of tallow. But she had held her peace and prayed.
Cecily smiled, cradling the sleeping infant in her arms. “You are right, Constance. He has already won this woman’s heart.”
The doctor raised an eyebrow. “Come now, your grace, we all know it will take a paragon to win Edmund’s place in his mother’s eyes.”
Cecily’s eyes twinkled. “Oh, dear, am I that transparent? But, Constance, I truly love them all—certes, for different reasons.”
“Aye, your grace.” She changed the subject. “What is to be his name?”
“I should like to name him after his father, but I should wait, I suppose.” Cecily had been disappointed that her pains had come when Richard had gone that morning to settle a dispute between a chieftain and a member of the Anglo-Irish gentry. She sighed. “I confess this birth was my easiest, and I am only a little tired. He looks like an angel, does he not?” Cecily murmured. “Let us hope he remains thus—for the most part. Angels can be so dull.”
“Your grace!” Constance spluttered. “Have a care. There may be some listening who will take offense—those that frequent Satan’s realm, I mean.”
“Pish,” Cecily retorted. “As long as all was left open, as we instructed, there are no evil spirits here to put a curse on this child.”
Constance chose not to tell her mistress that Dame Boyvile had forgotten to open the door to the garden at the bottom of the staircase when Cecily’s labor had begun. She had already prayed that the omission was not an ill omen.
“Dame Boyvile, I pray you leave word that I would have my husband attend me as soon as he returns. We cannot christen this babe until his father and I agree upon a name,” Cecily said, watching the young wet-nurse on the other side of the room unhook her bodice and prepare to satisfy her charge’s growing hunger. “I think we should name him Richard after his father, but my lord duke has denied my request thus far, he says, to avoid the confusion of two in the family.”
“GEORGE,” RICHARD DECIDED, upon holding his son. “He does not look like me, in truth, and reminds me of your brother Latimer.”
Cecily smiled, remembering the adoration she had as a child for George Neville, now Lord Latimer. “Very well, my love, then George he shall be. But promise me the next shall be Richard.”
“The next, my lady?” Richard swung around, laughing. “How many more do you propose we have?”
“Why, as many as my body will allow,” Cecily retorted. “Are you forgetting that until these children grow up, I am the only one who can build the house of York,” Cecily replied, reluctantly thinking of the infant sons she had lost. “We must ensure our line is strong.”
Richard grunted his assent, making the baby jerk in his sleep. He sat down on the bed, contemplating their child. “He is a fine boy, my dear. We must make plans for him.”
“It occurs to me, Richard, that with the birth of this Irish prince, you have a chance to flatter our Irish hosts and throw two antagonists together where they will not squabble. I have been thinking we should ask the White Earl and Desmond to stand as godparents. What think you?”
She had her answer in his respectful approval before he returned little George to his cradle and came back to her side to recount his actions in Parliament. Cecily rejoiced to see her husband’s face glowing with the confidence he had gained from governing this volatile province, where the English and Irish still had not come to terms with each other after three hundred years.
BABY GEORGE WAS no more than a week old when Rouen was taken by the French. It did not take long for the shock wave to reach even such an outpost as Dublin.
“All is lost in Normandy, my lady,” Richard cried, bursting into Cecily’s private office, where she was dictating routine daily instructions to her steward. Cecily rose at once and went to take her husband’s hands, moved to find they were trembling. “Charles has taken Rouen—or I should say, Somerset has surrendered Rouen. The rest of Normandy will follow, ’tis certain.”
“Taken Rouen?” Cecily whispered. “’Tis not possible. Where was Somerset at the time? Where was the garrison?”
Richard wrenched his hands away and strode to the window, and the steward took the opportunity of slipping away. “He was there, for Christ’s sake! At Bouvreuil. With Talbot, your brother William, and Lord Roos, among others. It seems Somerset tried to defend it, but Roussel—you remember the archbishop—begged him to spare the city, and Somerset agreed to negotiate with Charles.” He let out a harsh laugh. “He negotiated first his own release along with his family’s and Talbot’s, but he was forced to leave behind hostages—and I regret your brother William is one.”
Cecily covered her mouth with her hand and sent up a prayer to St. George to watch over her sibling. She imagined herself back in the great hall of Bouvreuil, where she and Richard had hosted countless banquets, and pictured the three Beauchamp sisters—Margaret Talbot, Eleanor Beaufort, and her own sister-in-law Elizabeth Latimer—surrounded by their children and wondering what would become of them. She shivered. “What
next?” she whispered. “Surely the king—and Suffolk—cannot support Somerset after this?”
“I know not, Cis. I cannot fathom the mind of this king. His opinions and decisions seem to bend like waving wheat—whichever way the wind blows. I have seen him hurry from a discussion clutching his prayer book and muttering that only God can give him guidance. He should have taken orders, in truth, for he cannot give any.” He smiled grimly at his witticism. “A king should not have to ask God how to oust Suffolk from his position and reprimand Somerset for his incompetence. I must write to Salisbury and ask for his side of the story.”
Richard also wrote to the king and again requested payment for his military needs. But once again, his request was ignored.
HOWEVER, RICHARD NEVILLE, earl of Salisbury, wasted no time with his reply.
Richard took the letter from Sir William Oldhall and, looking around at those gathered in one of the cozier rooms at Lacy Castle, their winter retreat in Trim, broke open the seal, glanced through the first page, and decided to read it aloud.
Right worthy brother and most noble duke of York, we greet you well. It is as you had thought. My lord of Suffolk has been reprimanded by Parliament, and charges have been brought to bear against him for disastrous policies and treasonable actions in France. Certes, he appealed to the king, who dismissed the charges forthwith, calling Suffolk his good and loyal servant.
Richard paused. “Misguided Henry bending with the wind again,” he muttered, staring up at the casement, where even in March a cold rain spattered the horned window panes. “Would that Somerset had been charged as well,” he growled.
Cecily sat watching him patiently. Gresilde sat quietly embroidering, Richard’s usher, Roger Ree, occupied the window seat, and Ned and Edmund sat on footstools near their father’s chair and tried to look interested. The two little girls were playing with a poppet on the bed, where Nurse Anne kept an eye on them.
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