by K. E. Martin
“You think yourself so fine and clever, just because the old Duke had the goodness to raise you with his own sons. Yet you are naught but a bastard and not even a noble one, for all your fancy clothes and talk. Well, you are wrong about one thing. I never heard word of your filthy mother again after she cleared out but this I may as well tell you since you are so eager to know it.
“Your mother near died when you were born, so hard were her travails. Slight as she was, her belly was huge and when her time came she laboured well into the second day before you were brought forth. Aye, and then her troubles were not yet over for minutes later another babe appeared.
“Your foolish father was overjoyed that she had given him twins but I and all right-minded folk understood what it meant, that she had lain with another man besides him. Some tried to tell him of it but he would not listen, saying such things were naught but superstitious rubbish. He knew his Fayette was true to him, he insisted, the poor misguided soul. “Who knows, mayhap after all it was a kindness that he thought so for it meant the last days of his life were filled with happiness. It was soon enough that some dirty Lancastrian dog slipped a knife between his ribs and he breathed his last. That was when your precious mother showed the full measure of her love for you! She had two babes, remember, but when she stole your father’s fortune and ran away she took but one of them with her. Ha, how do you like that, boy? How do you like knowing that she cared for you so little she left you unprotected and like to die yet your twin sister she carried with her?”
I had listened closely to Fat Nell’s ale-fuelled ranting, refusing to allow any of it to touch me until the very last when she identified the twin I had never known existed as a girl. Then I left her, found wine and drank myself into oblivion.
Inevitably it was my old adversary Smithkin who discovered me, lying vomit-streaked and insensible on the floor of a latrine in the southwest tower. He sent word to the Duke who arranged for Matthew and another strong lad to carry me to my chamber. There I slept the day through, waking only when an anxious-faced Matthew roused me with the news that my lord of Gloucester was asking for me.
Within Dickon’s intimate circle of friends it was well known that he had little time for drunkards. Abstemious in his own habits, he deplored his brother George’s pronounced partiality for expensive wines, blaming it for the gradual disintegration of Clarence’s character. George was one concern but now, on recent visits to Court he had been pained to witness the King taking too many cups of wine. In fact Dickon had told me privately that his royal brother seemed to be over-indulging all his appetites and as a result his handsome face was filling out and taking on a florid complexion.
For these reasons I fully expected the Duke to chastise me when I came before him but his temper seemed concerned rather than vexed.
“What ails you, Frank?” he asked without preamble when I had shuffled sheepishly into the privy chamber. Anne was not present, unsurprisingly since my lord would wish to spare her the unsavoury details of my recent intoxication.
“Forgive me, Sire,” I said humbly. “Nothing ails me save that I took too much Yuletide cheer and misjudged my capacity for it. It will not happen again, I swear it.”
At this dissembling Dickon gave an exaggerated sigh.
“Don’t ‘Sire’ me, Francis,” he snapped, “for when you do I am forced to wonder to whom you speak before I collect that it is me.
“And don’t lie to me, either. I understand you well enough to know that you would not have made such an inelegant display of yourself without some disturbing matter weighing on your mind. So pray spare me your falsehoods and tell me at once what ails you!”
I felt a warm flush of shame suffuse my cheeks as my dearest friend and master accused me of lying. From our earliest days we had always been open with one another and in all my life the only subject I had concealed from him was my love for Margaret. I held our friendship too dear to risk harming it with another concealment.
“Very well, my lord,” I said in a contrite voice, “I must confess that I find myself sorely troubled by the awful fate the woman Blanche met at Plaincourt Manor. It grieves me more than I can say that I was unable to save her from the flames.”
“I guessed as much,” the Duke replied swiftly. “Now pray listen Francis, I understand right well your feeling of horror that the woman died in such a way, and that you were there yet could not help her. But you know that you tried and surely that is some consolation? She was after all a self-confessed murderess who might well have died later at the order of the King.
“Yes,” he overrode me as I attempted to interject, “I would indeed have begged mercy for her and if Ned had been of a mind to listen he might have been persuaded to spare her life. And what then? You know as well as I that she would never have been allowed her freedom. Without question she would have been confined for life to a nunnery. Yet from what you tell me of this woman I believe she would have thought of that as another kind of death, would she not?”
I was obliged to agree that in this he had the right of it.
“When Blanche was but a small child she already knew that she was not fitted for the religious life,” I admitted. “As a woman grown it would have been slow torture for her.”
“Well then, and yet she must have known that this was the best she could hope for, long years of unrelenting piety and penitence,” Dickon continued carefully. “Do you not see that perhaps death was kinder after all?”
Although I knew the Duke meant well, that as my friend he sought to help me in my grief, I could no longer disguise the depth of my emotions.
“Forgive me, my friend,” he said gently, “I had not seen before how much this business has hurt you. Tell me true, Frank, though you knew her but a day or two, did you lose your heart to this damaged woman? Did you love her?”
I laughed then, a bitter laugh that I snapped off abruptly before it could develop into an unmanly sob.
“No, my lord, you have my word I did not lose my heart to her. But had I had the chance to know her better I may well have grown to love her a little, though not in the way you think. She was my sister, Dickon! Blanche St Honorine du Flers was my twin sister.”
I had rarely seen Dickon as astounded as he was at that moment.
“But that cannot be!” he exclaimed. “You were alone when your mother left you to the care of my father, there was no other babe! We have both heard the story many dozens of times. Had there been another child we would have heard of it.”
“You are right, my lord,” I agreed, “there was no other babe left behind. My damnable mother, for reasons of her own, chose to leave me behind but she took my twin sister when she fled.
“I knew nothing of this until very recently. In fact it was at Plaincourt Manor that I was first given reason to suspect I might have an unknown sibling. It started when I sat with Blanche in the hall there and noticed the ring she wore. At the time I remarked it only because the big, ungainly ornament looked so incongruous on her small hand. Regarding it more closely I was dumbfounded to see that the ring bore a highly unusual crest, that of a one-eared fox.
“Dickon, you have heard as often as I the story of the night my mother absconded with the meagre Cranley fortune. Among the items she took was my father’s ring which carried the family’s device, a one-eared fox. Seeing such a ring on Blanche’s finger I at once entertained the suspicion that she might be in some vague way connected with my mother, although I was also well aware that she might simply have bought it, or indeed stolen it or been given it by a lover.
“Later, when Blanche told me the story of her tavern upbringing I began to speculate that the lovely, mysterious woman called Fayette was my mother though I assumed that Claud, the rough, kindly tavern-keeper, was Blanche’s true father. Thus I thought that she might be my half-sister! The idea that I had possibly found an unknown sibling was enough to send my senses spinning, especially as I was already convinced she was complicit in the murder I had come to investigate.
“Wh
en she told me of Rivers’ involvement in Geoffrey Plaincourt’s murder I saw it as fortuitous that my duty to bring Blanche before you to speak against the Earl coincided with my own desire to rescue her from that ill-omened place. I cannot deny that her terrible death left me distraught yet I was able to cling on to the hope that I had been entirely mistaken, that she had not been my half-sister after all.
“These hopes were crushed yesterday when I visited Fat Nell and she confirmed something I only half recalled hearing once many years ago, when she was exchanging gossip with another goodwife. It was the time that I had fallen from my horse - do your remember Dickon? - and taken such a sickness of the head that I was obliged to lie abed while you, George and the others went a-hunting.
“I was wallowing in self-pity, paying little heed to the chatter of the women, until I heard Nell make a shushing sound. ‘Little pitchers have big ears,’ she said, or some such banality, and at once she had all my attention though I was careful to feign otherwise. That was when I thought I heard the other gossip mention the name Fayette, a name I recall for it was one I had never heard before that day. Nell shushed the woman again, exclaiming angrily that she never wished to have that most unnatural mother’s name spoken in her presence again.
“I had all but forgot this trifling incident until Blanche told me her mother had been called Fayette and then the memory stirred. Fat Nell’s confirmation that Fayette was my mother’s name was bad enough for it seemed all the proof I needed that Blanche was my half-sister. But her grudging revelation that my mother had borne twins was more than I could bear, since it meant that Blanche was my twin sister. I had a sister, Dickon, and I allowed her to die!”
I gazed into the fire, ashamed that there were tears streaming down my face. My tactful friend effected not to notice them as he busied himself pouring us both a cup of wine. Then he spoke.
“In three days’ time it will be the twelfth anniversary of the death of my lord father and my poor brother Edmund. On that day I will pray for their souls as I always do. I would count it a favour, Francis, if you would join me, and afterwards we will pray also for the soul of your sister.”
I dipped my head in assent, still too full of emotion to say more.
“And tomorrow,” Dickon continued, “is the Feast of the Holy Innocents. It strikes me that would be a fitting time for us all to pray for young Geoffrey Plaincourt.
“Now Francis,” he said as he held aloft his cup, “let us drink to happier times.”
Chapter 16
Three Promises
It was into the month of January before James Metcalfe returned to Middleham with a letter for Dickon from the King. He wrote that he was happy to accept his beloved brother’s word that Will Yorke, or rather Fielding, was innocent of the Plaincourt boy’s murder but he could not believe that his wife’s brother was in any way involved in the sordid affair. The blame, he stated, must rest fully with the dead waiting woman who had clearly concocted the ludicrous story in order to blacken Rivers’ name for some malicious intent of her own. Furthermore, he rejected the notion that so honourable a knight as Stephen Plaincourt might have instigated the coldblooded murder of his nephew, and genially advised his youngest brother to dismiss the matter from his mind at once. He himself was more than half-inclined, he declared, to believe that witchcraft had indeed been involved and thus it was as well that the woman had burned.
Though he had been expecting it, all the same Dickon was sorely disappointed by the King’s reluctance to believe ill of Rivers. His spirits were raised, however, by the full pardon that came with the letter for Fielding. Yet even this good news was not without barbs, for in his letter Edward suggested that Fielding would likely find the climate of Flanders more suited to his health for the time being. From this we both read the King’s subtle warning that Plaincourt or Rivers meant to slay Fielding if he remained in England.
At the Duke’s command Matthew and I made haste to York where we retrieved a grateful Will from his hiding place at the Pennicott’s house. Both dreading and longing for a glimpse of Margaret in equal measure, I had taken more than usual care with my appearance but in the event she did not show herself and our business was conducted with Master Pennicott alone. I thanked him fulsomely for the great favour he had done my master and assured him it would not be forgotten, for loyalty lay at the root of my lord of Gloucester’s character. The good merchant swore it had been his pleasure to perform this small service for the Duke but it was plain he felt no small relief to see the back of his clandestine guest.
In the private chamber of a tavern close by the Minster I handed to Will a weighty purse of gold which Dickon had entrusted to me for him, together with a letter of introduction to his sister Margaret, the Duchess of Burgundy. I told him it was my lord’s will that he should take service with Margaret for she was ever in need of doughty, trustworthy fellows like him. What we made sure not to tell him was Dickon’s opinion that working for his sister gave Will his best chance of staying out of his enemies’ vengeful reach.
I greatly feared Fielding’s reaction when the time came to tell him how his lady love had duped him, setting out to win his trust so that she might gain access to Geoffrey, kill him and leave Will to take the blame. To save his feelings I softened the story by saying that Blanche had been threatened with her own death if she disobeyed Plaincourt’s instructions. Even so, it surprised me when the bluff old soldier took the news far better than I had anticipated; he was hurt and angry, yes, but declared he had always known it was too good to be true that one as exquisite as Blanche should feel love for him.
Giving him tidings of her death proved more difficult, particularly as I had yet to find a way to speak of it without experiencing the urge to destroy something. I was therefore thankful when Matthew, sensing my continuing unease over the matter, stepped in and told Fielding that Blanche had died during a scuffle with Plaincourt’s bully boys. I found myself admiring his adroit intervention and the sensitivity he showed in sparing Will the full knowledge of Blanche’s death.
Fielding wept a few salty tears after he heard the news but he recovered himself quickly enough. From this I guessed that during his concealment he had resigned himself to her loss one way or another. Our duties thus fulfilled, all that remained was for me to bid him take the horse we had brought him from Middleham and ride from York without delay.
“Get to the coast and find a ship to take you to Flanders,” I told him. “There is enough gold in that purse both to pay for your passage and buy the captain’s silence. And Will, as soon as you are able, be sure to send word to my lord of Gloucester of your arrival for he will not rest easy until you do.”
With that I left him, trusting that the soldierly instincts that had kept him alive for twice as many years as I had lived would guide him to safety.
Back at Middleham I spent some days showing Matthew about the country, riding out with him over the moors to help him become better acquainted with his new home. At other times, when he was not busy attending to his new duties I sat a while with him, attempting to teach him his letters. I do not pretend he found them easy but he applied himself diligently and that was all I asked. I know not why but it had occurred to me that a lettered servant might prove more useful than an unlettered one and in any case the occupation eased my mind.
As for Dickon, though the vital business of strengthening ties with the local gentry left him little time for aught else, yet he rarely allowed more than a day to pass without seeking me out for a few moments of quiet conversation. Often at these times we discussed matters of little import but now and then he would touch on Blanche and her death, probing gently to discover if my hurts were healing. It was on one of these occasions that he revealed to me the extent of his own anger that Rivers and Plaincourt had escaped punishment for their part in Geoffrey’s murder. He could never bring himself to criticise the King, his loyal code absolutely forbade it, so instead he laid the blame at the Queen’s feet, claiming she had hoodwinked his broth
er into seeing only good in Rivers and all his kin.
Thus the weeks passed until it was February and the Duke was obliged to journey to London to attend Parliament. He would be gone several weeks but fervently hoped to return in time for Anne’s lying-in. I gave him an assurance that I would see she came to no harm in his absence and would endeavour to keep her in good spirits. He thanked me seriously and said he would be relying on me, then begged me to spare her my more ribald jests which she rarely understood but which made her blush when she did.
Soon after he had left I rode again with Matthew to York, this time at the special request of the Duchess. She and her ladies had been working on a heavy damask bed cover, a gift for Master Pennicott to mark her gratitude for the service he had rendered her husband. Now that it was finished she desired me to deliver it to the merchant with her message of thanks. So once again I found myself facing the prospect of an encounter with Margaret, the woman I knew I still loved.
When we arrived at the Pennicott’s door we discovered a household in turmoil. Since we were come from the Duchess of Gloucester the man of business who greeted us was obliged to admit us but he informed us tersely that we could not have arrived at a worse time. The house was newly in mourning, he said, the poor master having succumbed to illness in the night.
It seemed that Master Pennicott had shown the first signs of sickness after dining at a fellow merchant’s house three days gone. From his symptoms of heavy vomiting and loose bowels, the hastily summoned physician decided tainted meat was to blame. Enquiries revealed that other guests who had taken the meat had experienced similar symptoms but all had been younger than Master Pennicott, their stronger bodies better able to withstand the rigours of the sickness.
“Not so our poor, frail old master,” Pennicott’s man lamented. “All that puking and shitting taxed him more’n he could bear and now he’s gone, God save him. And now what’s to become of us I don’t know, with the mistress no more’n a girl and poor master having no childer.”
