by Sandra Worth
~*~
“It’s Cousin Warwick, Dickon!” exclaimed the older boy.
Richard choked back a cry. Their cousin, Richard Neville, Earl of Warwick, had fled London months ago. If the Lancastrians caught him, he’d lose his head. No doubt he’d be chopped into pieces first, as traitors always were unless their sentences were commuted. She would never commute Warwick’s sentence. She was England’s Queen, the savage Marguerite d’Anjou, and she was very angry with their cousin Warwick, maybe because he had called her the Bitch of Anjou. He wasn’t sure what a bitch was, but Nurse had scolded him when he’d asked and told him he must never use the word himself.
“Isn’t London dangerous for him?” he asked breathlessly. “Father said that London’s for Queen Marguerite—even if she is away in the North. Do you think Cousin Warwick lost the battle, George?”
“Worse than that, Dickon, or he wouldn’t have come himself,” his brother replied.
Richard took tight hold of George’s hand as they cracked the door open. With his ten-year-old brother leading the way, he stole along the corridor that was decorated with greenery for Yuletide, tip-toeing carefully on the creaky floor. Voices drifted up from the hall downstairs: a man’s nasal tone, sounding alarmed, insistent; and a woman’s softer cadence, anxious and pleading. His mother? But that wasn’t possible! His mother was a Neville, proud and fearless—she never raised her voice, never implored anyone for anything. She gave commands calmly, like the queen she would be when his father won the throne from Marguerite’s husband, mad Henry of Lancaster.
They halted at the staircase. The man’s voice had risen in volume and grown heated.
“No one would do such a thing, I assure you—’tis preposterous. My gracious aunt Cecily, even this wretched queen wouldn’t harm young children!” A pause. “In any case, I came only to bring you the news, sore tidings though they be. Now time grows short and I myself must leave with all haste.”
“You cannot go without them!”
“I must. They’ll slow us down.”
“You didn’t see Marguerite at Ludlow—she’s capable of anything! In God’s name, has she not proven it to you with this dreadful deed? Oh, my beloved lord husband… my sweet Edmund…” Her voice broke.
Richard and George exchanged glances. What could have happened? They descended the steps. Richard gasped and grabbed the pillar for support. He had never seen his mother this way. Not even at Ludlow when they’d been captured by Queen Marguerite’s troops. She stood in the centre of the torch-lit room, surrounded by Warwick’s men, clinging to his velvet doublet. Her blue eyes held a wild expression and her golden hair hung dishevelled around her shoulders.
“You must take them, fair nephew. You must. They may be babes, but they’re brave—they’ll ride hard. They won’t slow you down, I swear it! They’ll die unless you take them with you. She’ll murder them as she did their father and Edmund at York.”
Now Richard and George understood the awful truth. Richard let out a wail. George ran down the stairs. “Let me at her!” he yelled. “I’ll burn her at the stake, the stinking witch. I’ll rip her entrails out. Let me at her. I’ll send her to Hell!”
For a moment, everyone stared at them. Then George, kicking furiously, was restrained by Warwick’s henchmen. Eyes turned to little Richard on the staircase, gripping the pillar mutely with both hands, ashen pale and vibrating like a plucked harp string.
“Richard,” said his mother softly.
From somewhere in the shadows, his nurse materialised. She sank down on the step beside him and gathered him to her. “Come, my sweet little lord… Come, my dear one…”
Richard didn’t hear. He didn’t feel her arms around him. He felt only the cold, and the fear, and the only thought he had was that he mustn’t cry. Nurse had said that men didn’t cry, and he knew his father had expected him to be a man.
“Ludlow,” Cecily breathed. “That’s how he was at Ludlow.” She turned desperate eyes on her nephew. “You weren’t at Ludlow, nephew. What Marguerite did there was Devil’s work. And what she has done at York has changed the world forever.” She lowered herself to her knees, clasped her hands together and looked up at him beseechingly. “I humble myself to you, my Lord of Warwick.”
A shocked gasp went around the room to see England’s true queen kneel at Warwick’s feet. Even Warwick seemed stunned. He stared at her a long moment. Then he gave a tense nod.
“Make haste, then. We’ve no time to lose. She’s closing in on London even as we speak.”
~*~
Richard stood in the courtyard, unable to stop his teeth from chattering. He didn’t know what was happening. Men were shouting, running to and fro, bringing horses from the stables and swords from the armoury. Torches flared in the blackness, and the courtyard smelled of smoke and manure. Some of the horses were frightened, too, for they neighed wildly and reared up on their haunches.
Richard shivered. He was so cold. He felt Galahad’s soft head nuzzle him from behind, as if to tell him it would be all right. All at once strong arms lifted him up high in the air and dropped him roughly into the saddle. He wanted to cry.
“What’s the matter with you?” Warwick’s harsh voice pierced his consciousness. “Be a man, you snivelling coward!” Galahad’s reins were forced into his hands.
Richard didn’t want to be a coward. He wanted to be like his brothers, brave and bold and strong. Especially his oldest brother, Edward, to whom Galahad belonged. He bit back his tears.
“Can you ride like a man, or must we carry you like a babe?” demanded his cousin.
“I can ride,” Richard managed, hugging Galahad’s belly closer with his trembling knees and forcing himself to meet his cousin’s eyes. Galahad was his friend. Galahad would help him ride. A groom hastily adjusted the stirrups and placed his feet into them.
“But I need my lute,” Richard said, trying not to whimper. “I can’t ride without my lute.” He chewed his lip to make it stop quivering.
“God’s Blood, someone get him his damned lute!” Warwick yelled.
His nurse disappeared into the amber light flowing through the open doorway and ran out with his instrument. One of Warwick’s men strapped it tightly to his saddle.
“There!” said Warwick, and gave Galahad a smack on the rump.
Galahad leapt forward.
~*~
My father is dead.
Panic gripped Richard anew, sending his heart pounding with terror. He bent low in the saddle and spurred Galahad with desperate urgency. The black night reverberated with the thunder of fleeing horse hoofs, all pounding the same message: His father was dead. His brother, Edmund, too. Now they were coming for him.
It isn’t fair, he thought, choking back a sob. They were the ones who had stolen the throne. They were the ones killing people and burning the land. His father was the rightful heir to the crown, not Henry of Lancaster! His father would have set things right. But his father was dead, and his brother Edmund slain as he made for Sanctuary. The Lancastrians had won.
It isn’t fair!
The frigid December wind whistled past, drying his tears, stinging his cheeks, whipping his hair. He could feel Galahad’s lathered belly burning and heaving for breath. Richard bent low in the saddle to make it easier on him and caught a wave of spume in his eyes. Poor Galahad. He released the pressure of his spurs on his flank and pulled on the bit to ease their pace. The road glistened in the light snow. They twisted around a corner and galloped between two dark hedgerows. He thought of his mother and gave a shiver. He wore no hat or gloves and his ear lobes were numb, his knuckles raw, near frozen. But it wasn’t the cold that chilled him. It was his mother’s loss of composure. He didn’t really understand the struggles between York and Lancaster for the throne of England, but he knew that the way his father had died had changed the rules.
“Make haste, Dickon,” Warwick shouted, his voice ringing out of the darkness ahead. “She’s not far behind, I warrant.”
&nbs
p; Richard didn’t want to hurt Galahad by digging in his spurs, but it wouldn’t be good for Galahad, either, if the Queen caught him. Nurse had said that the queen would chop him up and feed him to her hounds because he was a Yorkist horse.
Galahad plunged ahead. Richard whipped his head around to steal a terrified glance behind him. There was no sign of the queen, only a sea of bobbing torches and his cousin’s bodyguard of eighty strong in their jackets of Neville scarlet bearing Warwick’s badge of the Bear and Ragged Staff, their taut faces illuminated in the flames, their breath frosting the night.
Only when he was neck-to-neck with George did Richard dare slow Galahad again. He always felt better with George. George had all the answers and knew no fear.
“Will we make it, George?” Richard rasped, nearly choking on splatters of frozen mud kicked up by the horse’s galloping hoofs.
“To Sandwich, aye…”
“And Burgundy?”
“Depends,” George panted, “on our cousin Warwick.”
~ * * * ~
Chapter 2
“Descending thro’ the dismal night—a night
In which the bounds of Heaven and earth were lost…”
The storm struck without warning.
In the bow below the high deck and still higher forecastle of Warwick’s Grace a Dieu, where he and George had been ordered to stay, Richard huddled between a chest nailed to the floor and a barrel of wine lashed to the wall. No one had told him, but he knew with sudden clarity, that dragons lived in the sea, and they’d all risen at once, thousands of them, to churn the waters up from the depths and drown the sky. He clutched the iron latch tight and dug his fingernails into his palm to keep himself from screaming. His stomach heaved one way and his head another, and terror pumped his heart so hard it banged in his chest like a wild bird caged. Nor did it help that the air was foul and smelled of tar, sewage and sweat. He wanted to retch. He wanted Nurse to hold him and comfort him. He wanted to shriek and kick the walls as Galahad was doing in his corner stall nearby, and like the other horses at the stern of the vessel. But if he did, George would never let him hear the end of it. He held his breath and bit down until his teeth hurt. How he admired George! Even storms and dragons couldn’t frighten him. He had tied himself to the port railing with a strong hemp rope, which let him move around without danger of being swept overboard, so that he could watch the churning sea. Gripping a timber post, he peered out through slits in the gilded trelliswork that decorated the bowsprit on the port and starboard sides.
“Holy Saint Michael and the Angels!” cried George, throwing Richard a glance as he cowered in the shadow of the lantern that swayed from a beam in the ceiling. “The seas are white, Dickon—white! White as the milk Nurse makes us drink.” Even in the dim light, Richard could see the wonder in his eyes. He couldn’t be sure, but he didn’t think a white sea was a good sign. Seas were not supposed to be white.
“Are we going to sink, George?”
“The Grace a Dieu can’t sink, you dullard! Look at all the decks it has, and all the carvings.”
“Really?”
“Dickon, don’t you know anything? Cousin Warwick never takes half measures. This is the best ship in the world—and the biggest. A hundred feet long, for Christ sake, with three masts instead of two, and sides five feet thick, and sails of the most costly Genoa linen gold can…”
A great wave cut George off. Water crashed over the poop with the sound of a cannon shot and the main mast almost drove into the sea. Barrels and ballast down in the hold slammed into one another and everything not secured above the hatches— barrels, ropes, pulleys, canvas, and chests—was swept overboard. Galahad tried to escape, shrieking and snorting, rearing and plunging against the chest board of his stall. Water spouted down through the floor planks of the bowsprit above Richard’s head like dozens of fountains. He sputtered for breath and dug deeper between the barrel and the coffer. Men were shouting, slipping and sliding, saved from the sea only by the ropes tied around their waists. Slowly, the ship righted itself.
“All hands on deck!” shouted Warwick, his voice faint above the roar of the water. “Shorten topsail! Lower the main yard! Haul up buntlines!” He stood on the poop, leaning against the wind, his cloak flapping in the squall.
As men at the clew lines battled to drop the thundering canvas to the yards, one wrestled with the rope ladder, fighting for every step. The sudden tempest had given them no time to prepare the ship, and now the wind battered the sails with ear-shattering force, threatening to shred the sails of Neville scarlet. Every man’s gaze, like Richard’s own, was fixed on the man climbing the ladder. Up, up he went, the small unsteady figure, inching his way along the weaving ratlines like an ant on a too-slender reed.
He lost his foothold. A gasp went around the ship. For an agonising moment he dangled by one hand. Then he plunged to his death with a bone-chilling scream. His body thudded on the deck.
A silence fell that even the storm seemed to respect, for the winds quieted and the ship steadied. A second man appeared on the ratlines. With the same heart-stopping anguish, Richard and the ship’s crew watched his every laboured move. Smiles eased their taut faces when he reached the topsail, but as he struggled with a stay, a corner of the canvas came loose and struck his chest. He lost his balance, then fell headlong into the black void, his shriek of terror reverberating in the night.
Another wave submerged the ship. The stern rose with a queer lurch and the bow plunged into a chasm, sending men sprawling. Richard saw the white sea looming above them high as a castle wall, then the tip curled like some monstrous tongue and hung there as if to savour the taste before devouring them. It broke over the ship. A hideous groan rumbled through the vessel and it shuddered. The mizzenmast crashed down.
Warwick’s frantic orders to the helmsman drifted through the roar. “Helm hard a’ port! More hands! He cannot put up the helm!”
No one answered his call. “It’s no use!” someone cried. “We’re going to die!” Voices rose in prayer. “God the Father of all mercies…”
Warwick ran down the poop ladder, grabbed a kneeling man by his collar and pulled him from the rail to which he clung. “Is that what you want? To die?” he shouted. “By the fiend, you will, unless you do as I say!” He flung him back, grasped another by a fistful of shirt. “You have a wife and children, Summers. They’ll starve without you! Do you not care?” He thrust him aside and seized the next. Richard’s heart gave a twist. The lanky fair-haired boy reminded him of his dead brother, Edmund. “And you, Bankston, what about that bonnie lass you claim to love? Is she not worth living for?” He looked around at the eyes fixed on him. “Where’s your courage, you gutless milksops? Do you see me wailing and sobbing? We’ve survived worse! Follow my orders and live! Each man to his place. We haven’t failed until we give up.”
“But two are dead!” a mate cried. “Unless we shorten sail, we’ll sink, sure as fish swim!”
“I’ll not ask you to do what I won’t do myself!” yelled Warwick, tearing off his cloak.
Before men could stop him, he was climbing the ratlines. The wind whipped him. He lost his footing once, but he recovered. Lightning flashed, thunder shook the skies, and still he climbed. Some crossed themselves and said prayers while clutching rope lines and cables; others stood hugging the rails, slack-jawed with awe as he undid the stays, first one, then another. He gathered up the wildly beating scarlet canvas and furled it tightly together.
It was done.
A mad cheer went up. The men ran to their stations; buckets were passed down into the hold, filled, brought up, and emptied. Another struggling line of men tripped and stumbled as they secured the rope, staggering across the rolling deck, but now smiles lit their gaunt, hollow-eyed faces.
Richard left his wedge, crawled to Galahad, and received a welcoming whinny for his troubles. Now that the ship had eased its savage lurching and it was steadier below, Galahad’s belly wasn’t heaving as much. Richard reached betwe
en the wood fencing of the stall and stroked his neck.
“We’re going to be all right, Galahad,” he whispered, scratching the white blaze around his forehead that gave him a look of wonderment before moving to one of his honey brown ears in the way Galahad loved. “You don’t have to be afraid anymore. Cousin Warwick has saved us.” Galahad batted long gold eyelashes and nuzzled him. Richard could smell the steamy warmth of his body. He rested his head on Galahad’s cheek, remembering the many times he’d stolen into the castle stables seeking his friend’s companionship during the civil war between his father and the wicked queen. He was glad now to give Galahad back some of the comfort Galahad had so often given him. “You’re a brave horse,” Richard said, “and if Edward wins the throne, I promise I’ll have his archbishop bless you.”
“What good will that do?” demanded George, who had sat down to rest now that the great excitement was over.
Richard flushed. He had forgotten to keep his voice down. “He’ll be a better horse. And he’ll get into Heaven when he dies.” He hoped that was a good reason. The truth was, he didn’t really have one. He just thought it would be nice for Galahad to be blessed by an archbishop.
“You witless dunce, a horse can’t…”
The seas broke over the ship again and the vessel gave a violent roll. Frantic with fright, Galahad reared. He kicked at the wood of his stall. A sharp snapping sound ripped through the small cabin as it cracked. He charged again and it gave way. He bolted out. The long leather strap that leashed him to a timber post yanked him back momentarily, but he reared again and the strap unravelled. He plunged out across the gangway onto the main deck.
