“Maybe you lack imagination.” I slammed the purse I was carrying—full of coins courtesy of Edward, who had given me a generous allowance—on the counter. “I’ll take myself off now, if that’s the welcome I’m going to get. Here’s some money for Charles. You can wash it before you use it in case it’s too filthy for you.”
“Hal, no!” Joan caught at me. “Don’t get your back up so quickly. I am sorry. I am glad to see you back. But it’s confusing. Don’t you realize that? I’ve been raising Charles as a Lancastrian through and through. He knows that his father’s been fighting for the king and the queen and understands that’s why you haven’t seen him before. And now you’re with the House of York—it’s not something I ever expected. Not after what happened to your father—and you—at St. Albans. I remember how you were when I first saw you afterward, how I just wanted to take you in my arms and comfort you as if you were my boy instead of my lover. And now you’re fighting for these men?”
“Times have changed. King Edward”—I’d had to train myself to add the word king, and as a result I always gave it an odd emphasis—“is a better man than his father.”
“Yes, so they say. But he’s still got Warwick, hasn’t he?”
This was a question best ignored. “It’s best for everyone. For Mother, for my brothers—King Edward’s going to set Edmund free soon, I hope—and even for you and Charles. I can provide for him now, marry him well.”
“But is it the best for you? Love, I don’t want you coming to hate yourself.”
“Why not? Everyone else does—except for King Edward. His men treat me like a leper, and you can just imagine what Henry’s men think of me now. I’d hoped for something different from you.”
“I don’t hate you, Hal. I am very, very glad to see you. And Charles will be glad to see you also. Will you come see him? Please?”
“Joan, I’ve not been around children his age much. How do I act?”
Joan patted my cheek. “You’ll do fine. Let me just get Joe to mind the shop—just as he’s been minding us, I warrant.” A boy bobbed into view, and I wondered how long he had been eavesdropping. “Oh, I should warn you that my mother’s back there; she helps me with Charles. She believes I’ve made it up about you being the father, by the way.”
“Who does she think is the father? The Holy Ghost?”
“More like the innkeeper a few houses down. Come on, Hal.”
In the living area behind Joan’s shop, an older lady sat sewing as a small boy played with cherry stones. “Charles. This is your father. Mother, this is the Duke of Somerset.”
I gazed down at a perfect replica of myself at three years of age. I’d never doubted Joan for an instant when she had told me that I was the father of her coming child, but I had not expected that my son would resemble me so completely. Neither, evidently, had Mrs. Hill, who stared in turn at me, Joan, and Charles before muttering, “Well, I’ll be damned.”
“I told you he’d come back when he could, Ma.”
“And here I am,” I said. “My pleasure, madam.” I hesitated, then crouched beside Charles, who looked at me as one could expect a child to look at a total stranger who has just been announced as his father. “Can I play?”
“Do you know ’ow?”
Look like me this boy might, but his voice was pure London. “I’ll have you know that no one in my family was better than I at bowling stones in my youth,” I said. “Just watch the master in awe and learn, boy.”
“He talks funny,” Charles observed, but obediently watched as I aimed one stone toward the other and set them to colliding with a satisfying click. Soon we were making quite a match of it, though naturally I let Charles win.
Mrs. Hill took the first opportunity to rush home, presumably to tell her neighbors that her daughter had indeed been mistress to a duke. I spent the rest of the afternoon with Joan and Charles, Joan leaving the shop in what I hoped were the competent hands of Joe. We played at stones for a while, and then we walked out into the open fields to play at ball. Joan cooked us supper when we returned (her cooking was even better than I remembered), after which we put our tired son to bed, I carrying him up the stairs. “You’ve worn him out, and I didn’t think that was possible,” Joan said as I laid him in his tiny bed and kissed him good-night on the forehead. “He likes you.”
“And I like him. You’ve done a good job with him, Joan.” I supposed at some point, though, that his education would have to be taken in hand: the letter aitch and Charles, for instance, could certainly stand to become better acquainted. “I’m very proud that he’s my son,” I added lamely, revolving in my mind whether I should stay longer. It had been over three years since we had been together; perhaps Joan had found another man—though, base creature that I was, I had looked around and hadn’t seen any signs of one.
Then Joan answered my unspoken question. “I expect that you’ve had other women, Hal, after all this time, and I can’t blame you. But I’ve never had another man since you left, and I won’t have another. It wouldn’t be right to have Charles thinking he could have been fathered by any gentleman I happened to fancy.”
I stroked her cheek. “I’ve missed you.”
“I’ve missed you too, Hal. Even if you have gone Yorkist on us.”
“A Yorkist takes off his drawers the same way as a Lancastrian,” I told her, leading her into her bedchamber opposite Charles’s tiny chamber. “I’ll prove it.”
Making love to Joan was a world away from making love to Margaret. Physically, the women themselves could not have been less alike—Margaret was petite and fine-boned, whereas Joan was tall and ample—and with Joan there was none of the guilt and fear of being caught that had always lent a certain desperate edge to my couplings with Margaret. Instead, our lovemaking was easy, comfortable, and uncomplicated, and when it was over I felt more at peace with the world than I had in many a day. Only one thing concerned me. “You don’t think Charles heard, do you?”
Joan shook her head. “He sleeps like the dead,” she said contentedly. Draping her arm around me in preparation for sleep, she kissed me. “Welcome back to London, Hal.”
***
I spent every night I could at Joan’s, for as I had told her, people at Edward’s court kept their distance from me, especially when Ralph Percy, who had turned his coat at the same time I had turned mine, went back to Henry and Margaret’s side. I wasn’t that much bothered by the coldness of Warwick and his brothers—they were not people I could envision myself holding a friendly conversation with under any circumstances—but even the urbane and jovial Lord Hastings, Edward’s closest friend, was coolly polite toward me, and others were downright hostile. It made me feel like I imagined a lonely schoolboy must feel.
Only the king treated me with warmth: dining by my side, joking with me, and even doing me the honor of allowing me to share the royal bed—an honor I could have really done without, for not only was half the court jealous of me and the other half convinced that I had plans to assassinate Edward, it turned out that the king snored. Each time my nagging conscience settled down adequately enough for me to fall asleep at night, he would start up, and I would lie tossing and turning until he finally shifted position.
“We’ll have to find you a wife one of these days, Somerset,” Edward mused one evening in April as we settled side by side. I’d been restored to my title and lands by Parliament in March, and I had to admit that it was a pleasure to hear my ducal title on the king’s lips once more.
“Yes, one of these days,” I agreed, trying to put from my memory the image of Margaret sitting on my lap in that barge at Rouen. I would be the Duchess of Somerset, she’d whispered artlessly, so sweetly. “I suppose your grace will be finding a wife soon?” At least then, I thought, I could sleep in my own bed or Joan’s more often.
“Oh, one of these days,” the king said offhandedly. “I’m still young, and Warwick keeps proposing these perfect frights. So far they’ve all been too old, or too homely, or too dull. I know the field is li
mited for a king, but surely he can do better than that. Sometimes I think I’d like to pick for myself, just to see the look on Warwick’s face. But enough of that. You joust, don’t you?”
“It’s been a while,” I said evasively, thinking it impolitic to mention that the last tournament I’d been in was after poor Henry’s ill-fated Loveday.
“Well, you’ll be jousting again. I’m holding a tournament in your honor in May. I won’t be in it myself—I’m not particularly accomplished, and I’m in no hurry to see my brother George land in my throne—but we should be able to attract some fine jousters. Lord Scales, for instance.”
This was Anthony Woodville, who along with his father had switched his allegiance to York after Palm Sunday Field. See? I reminded myself. Other men had changed their loyalties. Surely they didn’t feel as miserable as I did some nights when I walked through the king’s elegantly decorated chambers and pictured poor Henry living in borrowed lodgings in Scotland. “I’m honored. But don’t you think it might irritate people?”
“Oh, sod them. You can even bring Joan Hill,” he added coaxingly. “She can’t sit with my sisters, mind you, but we’ll find her a nice place with the merchant’s wives to sit. You’re too melancholy; some jousting will do you good.”
I blinked, taken aback as usual at his perception. For all Edward seemed to have genuinely loved his father, the men couldn’t have been more different; if York had possessed a shred of sensitivity, I’d never noticed it. “I thought I hid it well.”
“Not at all. You’re still fond of old Henry, aren’t you?”
“Yes,” I admitted, hoping that Edward didn’t ask me if I was fond of Margaret. “When my father came back with us from Rouen back in 1450, Henry was kind to us,” I said, staring up at the bed canopy as the memory came back. “Father was in disgrace at the time, and Henry treated us as if we’d come back full of glory. I was fourteen and feeling ashamed, and being treated that way meant a great deal to me at the time. It could have been so much different.”
Not, my ever-alert if not always effective conscience promptly reminded me, that Henry’s kind treatment of me had stopped me from lying with his queen or deserting him. I sighed.
“Well,” said Edward briskly, “he’s a kind man, no doubt, but his claim to the throne is inferior to mine, and he was a damn bad king when he wore the crown. But when we catch him, we’ll treat him kindly, if that makes you feel better.” He yawned and rolled over. “Good night, Somerset.”
“Good night, your grace.”
In five minutes, the snoring had begun. I lay on my back and waited it out, still staring at the canopy and thinking what a convenient thing it would be if the ceiling caved in upon me.
***
“What in the world are you wearing?” Anthony Woodville asked me as our pages dressed us for the tournament. There had been some murmurs of anger when the other jousters had seen me there, but Edward had made a great show of coaxing me to take my turn in the lists.
“What does it look like?” I preened. “A straw hat.” It was large and floppy brimmed, like a peasant might wear while working in the fields.
“You’ll get killed without a proper helm if you’re unhorsed.”
“But I won’t get unhorsed. I’ve been practicing, I’ll have you know. My son and his mother are here, and I mustn’t disgrace them.”
“Your opponents will be aiming at that damned hat of yours.”
I grinned at Anthony. “Better than at my balls.”
Anthony looked mildly distressed; I’d forgotten that he had a distinctly straitlaced side. Still, I’d been pleased when he arrived in London for the tournament and actually proved willing to converse with me, so I changed the subject. “Tell me, Anthony. When you came over to the king after Palm Sunday Field, how long did it take anyone to say a civil word to you?”
“Not that long, but there were a lot of us who made our peace then, you know. We didn’t stick out the way you do. But Warwick’s still chilly to my father.” Lord Rivers had been admitted to Edward’s council the year before. “But that’s because my father’s not of noble stock, and the same can’t be said of you. They’ll come round after you’ve been here a few more months.” He fingered the brim of my hat and shook his head. “If they don’t put you away as a madman first.”
As I rode out, I saw that Edward’s sisters were sitting in the stands, along with the king’s mother, the Duchess of York, who fixed me with a glare. I wondered what on earth Edward had promised her to get her to this tournament, which after all was unofficially in my honor. I couldn’t imagine her holding out for less than a manor. Elizabeth, the Duchess of Suffolk—married to the son of William de la Pole, Margaret’s murdered friend—merely scowled, while Anne, the Duchess of Exeter, whose estranged husband still served the House of Lancaster, made a point of studying her fingernails. The Lady Margaret, at seventeen the king’s only unmarried sister, was a pretty, gawky girl who even seated towered over the other ladies: she must have been nearly as tall as most men. As she was not glowering at me like her mother, but staring at my straw hat and giggling, I decided to offer my lance to her. “The Knight of the Straw Hat wishes a favor of the Lady Margaret,” I called.
Margaret sneaked a look toward her mother, who gave a clipped nod and heaved a martyred sigh. She tied a ribbon around the lance and I swept my hat off my head in thanks. “My, he’s handsome,” I heard her say as I rode off.
“He’s a turncoat and a murderer,” the good Duchess of York corrected her. “I hope someone breaks that handsome head of his.”
But no one did; I had been practicing. Anthony Woodville carried off the top honor, but I was right behind him. The next day, Mrs. Hill and Charles vied with each other as to who could tell the most people in Eastcheap about my prowess as a jouster, and Joan insisted upon me wearing my straw hat in bed with her the following night. “It’ll fall off,” I protested.
Joan set it firmly upon my head. “Not if you’re on your back,” she explained, and proceeded to prove her point.
***
But an even more pleasant event happened during the early part of that Yorkist summer of mine: Edward ordered my brother Edmund to be set free from the Tower. I was waiting for him when the guards took him out. After a year in the place, my father, who’d been lodged in some comfort, had looked bad enough; Edmund after two years of confinement looked even worse, his face listless as he stepped out to freedom. Then he caught sight of me and his expression brightened so much it hurt to watch. “Hal!”
We embraced each other for a long time; I could feel the bones in his back. “Come along,” I said finally as I released him, both of us close to tears. “There’s a barge waiting for us.”
“What about my things?”
“I’ve arranged with the constable to have them sent.”
“But he might forget.”
“Edmund, no one’s going to forget, I promise.”
He reluctantly let me lead him along before coming to a halt. “Where are you taking me?”
“To my house.” I’d rented one in London for when I wasn’t staying at Westminster or with Joan in Eastcheap, though I hardly ever used it.
“I don’t want to be around Edward.”
“I’m not taking you around Edward. Don’t worry. Now come. I’ve a surprise at my house.”
“Hal, if it’s a woman, don’t even think of it. I’m not up for carousing.”
“Not even a drink at your favorite tavern?”
“I don’t have a favorite tavern in London.”
“Then we’ll go straight to my house. And I promise, no woman.”
Edmund nodded and walked silently beside me, staring at the cobblestones beneath our feet, as I studied him covertly, trying to see if anything of my old prankster brother remained. When we approached the landing, he at last flickered to life. “That’s yours?”
He was indicating the handsome barge awaiting us. “No. The king has let me use it.” I watched as my men helped him in
. “You won’t get seasick on me, will you, having been so long on dry land?”
For the first time, Edmund managed a grin. “I’ll aim for the side if I do.” He pointed to a turret as we glided away from the Tower. “That’s where I was held. But I couldn’t see more than a bit of the river from my window.”
“They must have kept you close,” I said gently.
“Yes. It was your being in favor with the king that got me out, I suppose?”
I nodded. “It helped, you might say. The hope that you’d be set free was one of the reasons I deserted Lancaster.”
“I hated it there. Sometimes I thought I’d never see the outside of the Tower. Thank you.”
He relapsed into silence, though this time he was at least looking with some interest at the structures lining the Thames. Presently, we arrived at my house near Westminster. Compared to some of the grander residences surrounding it, it was a small place (I wasn’t a particularly wealthy duke even at the best of times), but it was a pleasant one, which I hoped would make my jumpy brother a little more relaxed. As we walked up from the river landing and headed toward the entrance, I said, “Edmund, I lied to you. There is a woman here.”
“Hal, I told you—”
My mother stepped forward and took my brother in her arms. “My dear boy,” she whispered, and burst into tears.
***
Mother and her husband, Sir Walter Rokesley, had arrived in London the day before, along with my youngest brother, John, and several of my sisters. Settling on the lawn that sloped down to the Thames, we spent the day eating and talking. I couldn’t remember the last time all of us had been together. “I just wish my Tom were here with the rest of you,” my mother said after a while. “Hal, do you think he’ll ever make his peace with York?”
“I don’t know,” I said, trying to shut out the memory of that day we’d separated at Bamburgh, Tom to rejoin Henry and Margaret, I to betray my allegiance. “If he hasn’t by now, I rather doubt that he ever will.”
My mother fingered the necklace that my father had given to her years ago. “I still mourn your father,” she said softly. “And I hate to see Warwick so powerful. But some days I just wish that Henry and Margaret would just give in, so I could have my boys all here with me in England.”
The Queen of Last Hopes Page 27
