“Oh?”
“That tiresome fellow, John Helton, who posted those bills claiming that the Prince of Wales was a changeling. I do not know if he was one of your creatures, or Warwick’s, but if he was yours, I hope you shall refrain from inciting any more of them to such deeds. Henry ordered him to be drawn, hanged, and quartered, and he hates commanding such things. Please spare him the further necessity of it.”
The Duke of Buckingham hauled Hal Beaufort into my chamber at Kenilworth Castle and shoved him upon the floor, where he rested unsteadily upon his knees, his hands tied. “Good lord, what has happened?” I sniffed. “Is he drunk?”
“He’s drunk, and he’s an utter fool,” snapped Buckingham. “He and his men decided it would be amusing to attack the Duke of York and his men at Coventry.”
“I heard just now that there had been a disturbance there. Was that the trouble?”
“Aye, all owing to this fellow. And there was trouble indeed. In the fracas two of the city watchmen were killed.”
“Hal!”
Hal hiccupped and mumbled, “Forgive me, your grace.”
“The city officials would have arrested the young fool, and some of the townspeople might have done worse to him, but I prevented it,” Buckingham continued. “No, don’t thank me, your grace. ’Tis only because his sister Meg is married to my son, and she frets herself to death over her favorite brother, and then Humphrey frets himself to death over her. I did it for their sake. If it weren’t for that I’d have told them to keep him.”
“But you should have seen the Duke of York,” Hal interjected, attempting to stand until Buckingham, who was not a particularly imposing-looking man but who could rise to an occasion, stopped him with a mere glare. “He was riding at the head of all of his men, looking so damned smug. We were coming out of the tavern and saw him, and we just couldn’t stand it. Or at least I couldn’t stand it,” Hal added sullenly. He looked up at me. “I’m sorry about the watchmen, your grace. We only wanted to fight with York, and they got in the middle of it.”
“And what else did you expect them to do? Tomorrow you will make reparations to their families. It is the least you can do.”
“It is the only thing he can do, unless he can raise the dead,” snapped Buckingham. “For God’s sake, your grace, keep him here until the council finishes meeting. He’s only likely to cause more troub—”
“Hal, what is this?” Henry, who had entered the room noiselessly, bent beside Hal and touched him gently. “They tell me your men were in a great affray.”
“I beg your forgiveness, your grace.” Hal’s eyes were filling with tears; either he was genuinely contrite by now or he was the lachrymose breed of drunk. “I saw him and I thought of Father; I miss him, your grace. And it drives me mad to see the Duke of York living, and not having suffered at all, and—” He took a breath. “I didn’t mean for anyone else to die, your grace.”
“I know, I know.” Henry patted Hal on the shoulder. “But you must forgive the Duke of York, haven’t we discussed that? Come. Let me take you to your chamber so you can rest. Tomorrow we can speak of these things more in depth.”
He raised an unprotesting Hal to his feet, untied his hands, and led him from the room, murmuring soothing words to him as I stared at my feet.
The court had for all purposes moved itself to Coventry and its environs earlier that year. That had been chiefly my doing; my estates mostly lay in the surrounding area, and I had realized that here, instead of in volatile London, I could find support against any mischief York might care to do to the king and to me—and to our son. It was also a chance for the people to meet their Prince of Wales. Taking him around was of course a task I delighted in anyway, for Edward at three was sturdy and bright and well worth showing off. Henry, strained from a summer of unrest in London that arose from long-simmering tensions between the locals and the Italian merchants who resided there, had joined me in September.
It was to Coventry, then, that Henry had summoned his council, and it was at Coventry, again mostly due to my efforts, that the Bourchier brothers, who had ties to York, had been removed from their positions as treasurer and chancellor and replaced with men I could trust. Yet the Bourchiers were Buckingham’s half brothers, to whom he was close, and I knew their removals had vexed him. He wasn’t a man I wanted to vex. I liked him, and I indeed wanted him to like me. I had never forgotten his kindness to me at the time of Henry’s madness.
I would have to find some way to get back on good terms with Buckingham. “Thank you, my lord, for intervening on Hal’s behalf.”
“He must learn to govern himself, your grace. Antics like this do nothing to help him or those who favor him.”
I flushed at this reference to myself, for it was true that Hal had been much about me since the court had moved to Coventry. I found his company pleasant, especially with Henry so tense and fretful, and I had believed—up until now—that my company had a softening effect on Hal, who otherwise was greatly inclined to dwell on the prospect of avenging his father’s murder. “I will use what influence I can, and Lord Ros may be able to reason with him. Of course, the king may work a good influence upon him. You saw him listening to him just now.”
“Listening; yes, well, that’s one thing. Whether young Beaufort actually acts upon what he hears is another matter. If he won’t heed your grace’s advice, I doubt he’ll heed anyone’s.”
I decided that a subject change was in order. “You spoke of your son and daughter-in-law, my lord. How does your grandson fare?”
“Harry does well,” Buckingham said, visibly softening, though with obvious reluctance, at his mention of his year-old grandson, born the September after St. Albans. “At present he looks more like a Beaufort than a Stafford; poor Somerset, God assoil him, would have been pleased by that, no doubt. He would have doted on the boy, as do I.” He sighed. “I know young Hal genuinely mourns the man, and I understand he wants retribution. I saw his father’s body, and trust me, even a saint, not to mention our hot-blooded Hal, would have difficulty not lusting for revenge after such a sight. But he needn’t drag all of Coventry into his grief and grievance either. I had best go back there and see that order has been restored.”
“I don’t know what we would do without you, my lord.” I was sincere, and I hoped Buckingham realized it.
Evidently he did, for he smiled faintly. “Me neither, your grace.”
***
“I have paid for the watchmen’s burials, offered prayers for their souls, and provided compensation for their families,” a hung-over Hal informed me the next afternoon.
“Hal, that’s commendable, but you cannot involve innocent people in your quarrels like this. Not only have men doing their duties died because of this, your actions put the whole court in a bad light.”
“I know, your grace.”
“You must do better in the future.”
“Yes, your grace.” Hal bowed his head. “I have also thanked Buckingham; he went with me this morning on my rounds, and I sorely needed his presence as a mediator or I might have found myself in a spot of trouble. Now that I have made what amends I could in Coventry, the king has given me leave to depart from here. My servants are packing. I’ll be gone within an hour.”
“That is best, I think.”
Hal raised his head and fixed his dark brown eyes on me. All of a sudden, I felt as if I had kicked a puppy. “Do you hate me that much, your grace, after what happened?”
“Hate you? Goodness, no. Come sit with me a while before you leave.”
Hal obediently sat on the stool I indicated, and my ladies flocked into a corner to give us privacy, though I had not requested that they do so. I took his hand, which like the rest of Hal was lean and strong. “I only want you to keep the peace. It is something the king wants so much.”
“I know. I try, I truly do, but it’s harder than you might think. When I’m not thinking of my father running out of that inn, then getting slaughtered by those whoreson
s, I’m dreaming of it. It makes me wake up screaming sometimes. Only Joan and my pages and now you know that.” He managed a smile. “I hope your grace is conscious of the honor.”
I squeezed Hal’s hand, which I had neglected to release. “I am glad you can confide in me.”
“And then I see York swanning around Coventry as if he’s the Messiah come back to earth, and my blood boils, especially when he looked at me the way he did last night, as if we Beauforts were dirt beneath his feet. He seems to have forgotten that his duchess’s mother was one of us.” Hal snorted. “What does that make his own children? An eighth Beaufort? My head aches too much to cipher it.”
I sighed. “The king seems to be on good terms with York. He believes that he has the good of the realm at heart.”
“And you, your grace? Do you believe that?”
“Not for a moment.”
We smiled at each other, and then Hal brought my hand to his lips and kissed it. “I should be off, your grace. I think Kenilworth will be more than glad to see the back of me, and Mother will be glad to see me home.”
“You are staying with her, then?”
“Yes, for a few days, but naturally, it is Joan I shall be staying with most of the time. But that’s not what I told the king. That will be our own secret, won’t it, your grace?”
“Yes,” I said a little coldly, not caring to analyze the odd pang I felt in my heart or the even odder sensation I had felt when Hal’s lips brushed my hand. But that night when I lay in my bed, unvisited by Henry, I found myself imagining, as I had begun to do on these lonely nights, myself in the ardent grasp of a man. A man, I realized with a start, who looked a great deal like Hal.
I blushed with shame and turned over on my side.
There was sad news a few weeks later: Edmund Tudor, the Earl of Richmond, Henry’s younger half brother, was dead, leaving behind a very young widow, Margaret Beaufort, who was great with child despite having just turned thirteen. Her father, long deceased, had been the older brother of the late Duke of Somerset. There were doubts as to whether the poor girl, who was really too young and small to safely bear a child, would survive her forthcoming ordeal, but she gave birth to a healthy son, named after the king, in late January, and lived through the experience herself. In a matter of months, the Duke of Buckingham and Edmund’s brother, Jasper—with my blessing—were negotiating a new marriage for the young widow, with Buckingham’s second son, Henry. This, I was pleased to see, improved my relations with Buckingham.
Meanwhile, in March 1457, Hal Beaufort returned to Coventry to take formal possession of his father’s dukedom and his lands, and to explain his latest escapade, this one over Christmas. “I was riding in London from Joan’s place, and who did I see riding toward me but John Neville?” John was a younger brother of Warwick. His feuding with the younger Percy sons, which had started years before for reasons no one outside of the families involved had quite figured out, had caused Henry much irritation before St. Albans. “So he started giving me hard looks, and naturally I started giving him hard looks, and before we knew it, we were trading insults.”
“Fancy that.”
“I would say on the whole that I did better with mine,” Hal said reflectively. “Anyway, we decided to have it out once and for all, but neither one of us was properly armed, so we rode off to gather our men to fight in Cheapside.”
I groaned. “How many lives were lost this time?”
“Oh, none. The mayor sent the watch out and kept us from fighting.”
“You promised me at Coventry you would not do this sort of thing again.”
“This was different. It wouldn’t have been an attack, but an honest fight. No need for outsiders to be involved.”
“An honest fight between dozens of men on either side? Hal, you are not even of age yet! Try not to get yourself killed before you turn one-and-twenty. Joan would miss you, for one. And your mother and the rest of your family.”
“And you, your grace?”
“And me.” I dropped my eyes. “And the king would miss you as well,” I added firmly.
***
In August, the quiet we had enjoyed in England was broken abruptly when Pierre de Brézé, the seneschal of Normandy, attacked the town of Sandwich. I knew Brézé from my father’s court—in those innocent days when I was preparing for my marriage, he and Suffolk had arranged an archery contest during the festivities at Tours—and he was to be one of the best friends I ever had later. But to say, as some did even then, that I had encouraged the attack was nonsensical.
“No sensible person would believe that,” Henry said mildly one evening at Coventry after I had held forth on this topic for a time.
“Well, these are not always such sensible people,” I muttered.
Henry’s long stay in the Midlands had improved his mental state greatly—so greatly, in fact, that he had resumed marital relations with me, though without resulting in the second pregnancy for which I so longed. “This incident makes me realize how important it is that England be as one again,” he said, stroking my hair one night after we had loved each other. “I must return to London, and I must exert myself to bring the lords together.” They had not been causing trouble lately, but their quietude in itself was somehow ominous and had more of a sullen quality than a peaceful one.
“If there is a man who can do it, I am sure it is you. You have the patience.”
Henry tapped me on the nose. “I hear the emphasis you put on if, my dear skeptic. But I am determined to do so.”
And somehow he did, although the situation could have hardly looked less promising when a great council convened in January 1458. Every lord arrived with a small army at his back: the old Earl of Salisbury with five hundred men; the Duke of York with four hundred, the Percies and Lord Clifford with fifteen hundred. How in the world Somerset and Exeter managed to raise eight hundred men between them baffled me, for neither was very rich for a duke. Warwick, who had been appointed Captain of Calais and who had been residing there, arrived with six hundred followers, each wearing a red jacket bearing his symbol of the ragged staff.
The poor mayor of London! He could scarcely wait to see the backs of all of the lords. Somerset, Exeter, the Percies, and Clifford had to be lodged outside the city for fear that their men would attack those of York, Salisbury, and Warwick, who lodged inside the city. The mayor had to set a watch of five thousand men around the area just to keep the groups from fighting, and I am constrained to say that given the chance, Somerset would have gladly done so.
Henry, having begged the lords to work for peace, left the appointed arbitrators to do their work without royal interference and retired with me to Berkhamsted. When in mid-March, matters seemed to be a standstill, we traveled back to London, Henry to pray for peace at the forefront of a great procession, me to pray in the privacy of my chapel at Westminster that God grant Henry’s wish. “It is the least you could do,” I told the Lord after having exhausted my formal prayers. “Grant this good man what he wishes for the most.”
The Lord did. York and his allies were to endow a chantry at St. Albans for the souls of those who had died there; they were to pay compensation to the families of Somerset, Clifford, and Northumberland. To demonstrate the newfound harmony between the lords and Henry and myself, we all—Henry, me, the lords spiritual and temporal, the arbitrators—were all to process to St. Paul’s on March 25. Our public showing of mutual goodwill and of the formal resolution of our differences would be known, in accordance with tradition, as Loveday.
Poor Henry’s day of love has since been mocked. But who could prophesy the future? For Henry’s sake, I for one was willing enough to make a new beginning when I took my assigned place beside the Duke of York and put my hand in his. Before us, Somerset joined hands with Salisbury, the father of the man who had killed his father, and Exeter sulkily gripped the hand of Warwick, who had been made keeper of the seas despite Exeter’s hereditary position as admiral. Henry, wearing his crown, walked hap
pily behind the two pairs of men, while York and I brought up the rear. “You must walk a little slower, my lord,” I hissed graciously to York. “I cannot keep up with you.”
York flashed a smile to the onlookers and amended his pace to mine.
***
To cap the Loveday celebrations, Henry ordered that over Whitsuntide, jousts be held at the Tower and at Greenwich—an unusual thing for his court, as Henry had never had much interest in jousting, either as a spectator or as a participant. Somerset, however, turned out to be an avid jouster, as was one of his friends, eighteen-year-old Anthony Woodville, the eldest son of the scandalous match the Duchess of Bedford had made with the late duke’s chamberlain.
“A fine family you have,” I said to the Duchess of Bedford as she and her husband took their places alongside the dowager Duchess of Somerset, the Duke and Duchess of Buckingham, and the Duke and Duchess of York in the stand erected at the Tower. The seats around us overflowed with Beaufort, Stafford, and York offspring, but the Woodvilles put them to shame in sheer numerosity. I indicated Elizabeth, the eldest and the prettiest of the Woodville girls sitting below me, who wore a sky-blue gown that matched her eyes and complimented her golden hair and fair complexion. “Lady Grey in particular is quite the beauty.”
“So the Duke of Somerset has noticed.” Hal was resplendent in shining Italian armor and a surcoat bearing the Beaufort symbol of a portcullis. (“Not a humble gate,” he had informed me once when I used that simpler English term for it. “A portcullis.”) He handed his lance up toward Lady Grey for her to deck with a favor, amid a general sighing from the ladies, the majority of whom were in some degree pining for handsome Hal. Only his sisters were indifferent, reserving their own longing looks for Elizabeth’s handsome brother Anthony.
Elizabeth dimpled as she fastened a ribbon onto Hal’s lance. “I do hope he realizes that she is married,” I said, wondering if a young woman married to a mere knight could withstand Hal’s ducal charm if he cared to exert it.
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