Red Rose, White Rose

by Joanna Hickson

  Predictably Richard had nothing favourable to say about them. ‘Since he was created Duke of Somerset in March, Edmund Beaufort prowls the streets like a wolf surrounded by his pack.’ As he spoke I frowned at a new and very obvious tic in Richard’s left eyelid, worrying that it might be a symptom of some developing ailment. ‘He lords it over hundreds of retainers at his inn and always has a mass of them around him every time he ventures out. The streets between his inn and Suffolk’s are worn hollow by their horses’ feet.’

  ‘Perhaps it is vainglory,’ I remarked. ‘He must have come into a considerable inheritance since the deaths of his brother and his uncle, the cardinal, and so he can now afford to make a grand impression.’

  Richard shook his head. ‘I wish it were mere vainglory but he did not inherit. Mindful of his transgressions on earth, wily old Cardinal Beaufort willed most of his vast wealth to good causes and the Somerset estates went to the late duke’s daughter, Margaret. She must be the richest five-year-old in England and the king has predictably granted her marriage to Suffolk, who of course instantly betrothed her to his infant son. The new Duke of Somerset would be virtually penniless if he had not wormed his way into the king’s favour and set about milking the royal coffers. While the queen keeps the king out of London, only Somerset and Suffolk attend council meetings, along with the Chancellor and Treasurer who are both their men and you will be appalled to hear, my lady, that this cabal has now appointed Somerset the king’s lieutenant in France and paid him twenty thousand crowns in advance. Twenty thousand! I, on the other hand, am appointed Henry’s royal lieutenant in Ireland without any advance; an office which, if I do not die of plague like my uncle of March, they doubtless hope will beggar me whilst keeping me well away from power and influence.’

  I could see now why Richard looked so angry and stressed. This was the accumulation of all his worst nightmares. Ireland! My heart sank. My last venture across the Irish Sea had resulted in a miscarriage on the storm-tossed ship, followed by a miserable tour of Richard’s estates which had been undertaken in what had seemed like a constant deluge. I had never been back and had no wish to, but any discussion of this would have to wait until we were away from listening ears. Fortunately the duty chamberlain announced some new arrivals, which instantly put a smile on Richard’s face.

  ‘Edward, Earl of March, Lord Edmund, and the Ladies Anne, Elizabeth and Margaret, your graces.’

  Wearing clean tunics and hose and with brushed hair and scrubbed faces, Edward and Edmund marched into the solar together, followed by their solemn elder sister Anne, holding the hand of three-year-old Elizabeth who had been born in Rouen soon after Queen Margaret’s visit, while little Meg, only just two and born at Fotheringhay, was carried in by their motherly head nurse Anicia. Ten months ago, within weeks of his birth, we had tragically lost another son, baptized William, and I had not yet told Richard that I was once again expecting a child, due in the autumn. After a shaky start, fertility was proving the least of our problems and the thought now struck me that this next expectation would at least give me an excuse not to travel to Ireland this year.

  As always Edward managed to be just a step ahead of Edmund in kneeling for his father’s acknowledgement. ‘I give you good evening and welcome, my lord father,’ he said looking up with the dazzling smile that always made my heart lurch. Surely there was no more promising son than this tall six-year-old who seemed so quickly to master every new skill he tried.

  ‘Thank you, Edward,’ Richard said, bending to lay his hand on the gleaming head of his son and heir. ‘May God bless you – and you also, Edmund,’ he added, moving his hand across to his younger son’s wiry mouse-brown mop. ‘It gives me great joy to see you both so bright and healthy.’ He turned to greet Anne and Elizabeth, who made careful curtsies, and to stroke little Meg’s rosy cheek. ‘And my beautiful brood of girls – you are all the pride of York.’ He smiled across at me. ‘Are they not, Cicely?’

  ‘Indeed, my lord.’ I nodded agreement but could not help knitting my brows disapprovingly at Anne, who had sauce stains on the front of her blue kirtle; at nearly nine, I considered her old enough to take more care of her appearance. ‘I am glad you think they do you credit.’ With Richard being so tired and burdened with his political setbacks, I did not consider it necessary to mention the boys’ escapade in the bailey and I had forbidden anyone to make any mention outside the nursery of Anne’s recent relapse into bed-wetting. Anicia had told me there was gossip among the maids that she would marry Harry Holland and it was this that had tipped her back into infantile incontinence.

  Being a man and unaware of Anne’s sensitivity, Richard baldly launched into an announcement which soon had her eyes widening in alarm. ‘This would seem a good moment to tell you, my friends and family, that I did not stay long in London but travelled to visit the king and queen at Berkhamstead Castle. You would like it there, Cicely. The rose gardens are beautiful and Queen Margaret likes to hunt in the nearby Forest of Ashridge. It is not unlike Fotheringhay.

  ‘But my main purpose in going was to approach the king regarding the marriage of the Duke of Exeter. Ah, there you are, Harry.’ Richard had been scanning the room and spotted the sulky squire who, having missed his dinner was lurking in a shadowy corner consuming the contents of a dish of comfits. ‘I am sure you will be pleased to hear that King Henry has agreed to a union between you and our daughter Anne. It is an excellent match, one that will join two great and noble houses and has been approved by the Vatican without objection.’

  I could have shaken Richard for not letting me prepare Anne for this momentous news. Did he not realize that the arrangement of her marriage was the most important matter in a young girl’s life? Not something to be announced in front of a score of people, some of whom were relative strangers. However, before I could reach out to her, Harry scurried between us to launch a violent protest.

  ‘No, no, no! I do not give a tinker’s fart for the Vatican but I have objections. I have no wish to live in the House of York, let alone marry into it. I shall inform the king that I refuse the match. What man would want to marry this snivelling brat?’ He almost, but not quite, poked his extended forefinger into Anne’s gravy-stained chest. ‘She dribbles when she eats and pees the bed. I refuse to marry a moron, particularly a York moron!’

  I was scandalized. How dared he call Anne a moron? And how did Harry know about Anne’s night-time lapses? I leaped up to put an arm around her and lead her away from him. I could feel her violent trembling.

  ‘Silence, knave!’ Richard’s voice thundered into the vaulted ceiling of the solar making everyone jump. ‘How dare you defy the king and disparage the House of York?’ He shouted an order at the chamberlain who stood goggle-eyed at the door. ‘Summon the guard! I want this braggart locked away.’

  Two guards who had been on duty at the entrance to the privy apartments quickly arrived and the sight of their sharp-edged halberds aimed at his throat drained the blood from Harry’s hitherto flushed face. ‘Jesu, do not kill me!’ he cried, turning terrified eyes to Richard. ‘I am your ward.’

  Richard gestured impatiently to the over-eager guards to back off a little. ‘A fact you would do well to remember, Harry,’ he said grimly. ‘The king has placed you in my care and I am responsible for your future, which I have arranged with the king’s consent. Your betrothal to Anne will take place tomorrow.’

  ‘No!’ Harry’s fierce anger boiled up again, despite the proximity of the guards. ‘I told you, I do not agree to this union. It is unsuitable. My father would never have consented to it and I will not be forced into it.’

  It was with obvious difficulty that Richard maintained a level tone. ‘It is not a matter of force and your agreement is unnecessary. The king has agreed, the pope has agreed and as your guardian I have agreed; so it will be accomplished whatever adolescent objections you think you may have.’

  Harry had not finished, however. ‘I am of the blood royal,’ he hissed, glaring around the
room as if to challenge anyone to deny this. ‘My father was a grandson of the great John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster. He would never have permitted me to ally myself to York!’

  ‘Harry, Harry!’ Richard assumed a benign expression and approached me where I stood comforting Anne, lifting my free hand and kissing it in a courtly fashion, smiling at me briefly. ‘Surely you are aware that York is already allied to Lancaster. My wife is also a grandchild of John of Gaunt. Your marriage will reinforce that bond. Now calm down, my fiery young lord, and have done with this madness.’ He released me and moved to place a fatherly hand on his ward’s shoulder.

  Harry was still not finished, however. He shrugged off Richard’s conciliatory gesture with an oath and pointed a juddering finger at me. ‘Christ’s blood! Her mother was a Beaufort. Beaufort is not true-born Lancaster. Only King Henry and I are of the true royal line, descended from Edmund the Crusader, bringer of the red rose. We are pledged to trample the white rose into the dust! We shall not rest until it is wiped from the heraldry of England.’

  Now he was spitting venom, apparently heedless of the consequences of his words. Alarmed at his spiralling aggression, Cuthbert had moved silently up behind him, unobserved. I pulled Anne further away. Richard also stepped back, signalling to the guards. ‘Lock him up,’ he ordered bluntly. ‘Let him cool off.’

  The squire’s hand went for the dagger he wore at his belt but Cuthbert was too quick for him and had the weapon out of its sheath before Harry could touch it. Alerted by the duty chamberlain, more guards arrived at the solar door and within seconds the squire was surrounded. ‘You cannot do this!’ he screamed, fear and fury sending his voice soaring high. ‘I am the king’s cousin. No man may lay hands on me except by his order.’

  ‘It is by the king’s order that you are in my care, Harry,’ Richard said, pushing through the guards, anger glinting from narrowed eyes. Advancing his fist to within inches of his ward’s face, he raised his thumb and two fingers one after another and spoke slowly and clearly, as if to an idiot. ‘Soon you will be eighteen … nineteen, twenty, twenty-one … three years. Three more years before you come of age and in the meantime I am master of all that you do and all that you own. Mark me well, Harry Holland. Three more years!’

  The duke lowered his hand and stepped back. Harry was being held by two sturdy men. ‘I have decided there will now be no betrothal. Rather, you will be guarded night and day until the time of your wedding, which will take place and which will be soon.’

  Harry yelled as the guards manhandled him through the door. ‘York will regret this. The red rose will prevail!’ Then the door closed and his voice was muffled by thick stone walls.

  I wanted to give Anne reassurance, but in view of Richard’s emphatic assertion that the marriage would take place I could find no words to soothe her shuddering sobs; meanwhile he was reaffirming his intention, while apologizing to the occupants of the solar.

  ‘I regret that this unpleasant scene should have taken place before you all. I particularly regret that Anne has witnessed such uncontrolled behaviour on the part of her future husband and trust that he will find some way to redeem himself in her eyes.’

  ‘Jesu, I fear the boy is mad,’ I muttered under my breath, desperately wondering how I might manage to talk Richard out of pursuing this dreadful marriage.

  At that moment, however, he appeared adamant. ‘Harry will calm down and meanwhile he is still the Duke of Exeter and, as he so vehemently points out, one of the last full-blooded Lancastrians. We cannot afford to allow that connection to be exploited by others. We need to keep him in the family. The marriage must take place.’

  Clinging to my neck, little Anne burst into a new paroxysm of weeping. Edward approached us and stood gazing at her, puzzled. ‘There is no need to cry, Anne,’ he said. ‘It is only a marriage.’

  19

  Fotheringhay, June 1448

  Cicely

  Situated a short distance from the castle, the Collegiate Church and Chantry of St Mary and All Saints at Fotheringhay was the most spectacular evidence of Richard’s firm belief that his own personal faith in Christ, together with divine mercy reinforced by a generous financial outlay, would minimize his soul’s sojourn in purgatory. A dozen masons still worked on the magnificent vaulting of the choir, while in the cloistered hall alongside the church lived thirteen canons and thirteen choristers dedicated to chanting near-continuous masses and prayers of intercession for the souls of the Lancastrian kings and the dukes of York. In the windows, instead of the usual stained-glass images of saints and bible stories, coloured glass medallions showed the arms and emblems of the House of York and the families which had married into it. The tragic little bodies of our two dead baby sons, Henry and William, occupied a corner of the Lady Chapel, in the sanctuary were the tombs of Richard’s uncle and grandfather, the first two Dukes of York, and he intended that we would lie there ourselves when the time came.

  The morning after Richard’s return and Harry Holland’s outburst and detention, I had gone to the church to pray at the tomb of my sons. Richard and I had argued about the marriage the previous night after retiring to our chamber. I knew it could mean nothing but a life of misery for Anne, but Richard did not see this mattered in the least. ‘Marriage is not about happiness, Cicely,’ he had insisted. ‘I am doing the very best I can do for her. You are looking at the short term, while we should both be considering the future of our dynasty. In a few years Harry will not be the foolish, insecure hothead he is now.’

  I could not contain my anger. ‘No, he might be even more dangerous, considering his antipathy now. Anne carries your blood, Richard, just like Edward. How can you throw her away on a lunatic like Harry Holland?’

  Predictably Richard exploded. ‘Throw her away? This marriage has cost me six thousand marks! As for blood, it is for blood ties that I made it, so that the Exeter line to the throne will be joined to ours. That is the reason it is important and that is why I will listen to no more of your objections. I expect you to defer to my wishes, Cicely. The marriage will take place.’

  At least when we had simmered down, the news that I was once more safely into a new pregnancy gave Richard hope that our departure for Ireland might be postponed. In fact I received the distinct impression that, angry though he was at me for defying him over the marriage, he was grateful to be provided with an excuse for delay over the Irish appointment.

  I returned from the chapel for a meeting with Richard and the Master of the College to discuss the marriage of Anne and Harry. When a lay brother arrived to say that the nurse Anicia urgently wished to see me I was, to be frank, relieved to excuse myself. Anicia was waiting for me, her plump round face a mask of anxiety framed in a blue wimple. ‘The Lady Anne is not to be found, your grace. She would not eat her breakfast and asked to be permitted to go the chapel. I thought prayer and a talk with the chaplain would be a good thing, so I sent one of the nursery servants with her and he left her in the charge of the priest but when Lord Willoughby came seeking confession Lady Anne must have slipped out of the chapel. Now she has disappeared and I do not know where she can be. She is not normally disobedient, as you know, but she is very upset about the marriage.’

  Being only too aware of Anne’s fragile state of mind, I felt a pang of guilt that I had not paid a visit to the nursery that morning but I had an inkling as to where she might be so I tried to reassure the nurse. ‘I am sure Anne will not have gone far and I will find her, Anicia. Instruct the rest of your staff to say nothing about this. I do not want the news reaching the duke’s ears and adding to his worries unnecessarily. Now go back to the nursery – I will bring Anne back there shortly.’

  During the fine summer weather I made it my habit to walk daily in the garden I had caused to be planted in the castle’s outer ward, among the orchards which grew along the river. When I visited all the York castles during the course of my wedding trip fifteen years before, I listed Fotheringhay as my favourite. It lay in a beautiful setting
beside the River Nene as it flowed from Northampton to Peterborough on its way to the great drains and fleets of the fens. It was also located in the centre of England and convenient for Richard both in attending his vast and scattered estates and keeping well informed about court business through the spies he kept in the king’s nearby residences and London. During our years away in Rouen, Richard had spent a considerable sum having the ducal apartments made more comfortable and spacious but it remained a reassuringly impregnable fortress, defended by a deep moat, three solid towers, a gatehouse and a massive keep perched high on a steep motte much like the one at the royal stronghold of Windsor. Perhaps coincidentally or perhaps by design, the keep was built in the shape of the York fetterlock symbol, with a stout barbican defending the entrance to an unusual oblong tower where I knew I would always be safe with the children when Richard and his entourage were away.

  I had had a ‘mount’ built, a man-made hill like those I had noticed in many French seigneurial gardens. It formed a viewpoint lifted above the noise and bustle of castle life, offering a panorama of the river and surrounding countryside and boasted a turf seat within a leafy arbour where I knew little Anne loved to play her games of knights and ladies.

  In the rose-garden at the base of the mount, Richard had expressed a wish that all the blooms should be white but when I planted one deep-red damask rose in the middle in memory of my mother, he could hardly object. It was just coming into flower, poignantly reminding me of the girl I had once been – the young and vivacious red ‘Rose of Raby’. The path up to the arbour wound through a planted ‘wilderness’, where honeysuckle and wild roses clambered over rustic trellises, and evergreens and foxgloves and wild campion flourished. Perched on the turf seat, under a cascade of flowering elder, was Anne, hugging not a doll as might have been expected of a girl of her age, but a pair of golden slippers. She must have heard me coming for she was sitting bolt upright, her face a picture of misery.