‘No!’ Harry spun him round completely so that their faces were level. ‘How many more times must I drum it into that stubborn skull of yours? Win all or lose all! I am the last lawful heir of Lancaster. The Yorkists are usurpers. They stole the crown from Henry VI’s anointed head and murdered him in the Tower.’ Dear God, it was so pat now, as if Harry had learnt it by rote at Morton’s knee. ‘God damn you, Miles, will you cry craven at this late hour with but a week to the rebellion?’
Avoiding an answer, Miles glared down at the flecks of saliva budding his cote’s velvet nap. Harry mistook his silence for humility and let go, calmer now. ‘God is on our side, Miles. He must be or we could not have come this far. It is justice that I should take the throne at last and set matters right.’ The thin lips were a slash of defiance. ‘I will not change my mind!’
And if I change mine, thought Miles, what price friendship? ‘As you will, my lord,’ he answered with dignity, disliking Harry’s smug triumph.
‘We are like this, you and I.’ Brandishing crossed fingers, Harry blocked Miles’s path. ‘Is it your soothsayer wife who is making you doubt me?’
Studying the wall above the duke’s head, Miles answered haughtily: ‘The matter of her sister still is a running sore between us, but, of course,’ his gaze slid down to examine Harry’s face, ‘if it would please your grace to set her mind at rest?’
‘Oh, but surely she trusts your judgment in the matter.’ The duke’s knuckles playfully buffeted the looped knops of Miles’s doublet. ‘Friend, if you cannot keep this new bride in rein, you will never have a quiet house. I hear you share her favours.’
Miles had wrestled Harry, but never in anger. Cold as an alabaster monument, he let his breath slowly out. ‘Your meaning, my lord?’
‘Oh, I jest. I hear she keeps a familiar.’ The claws within the silky banter drew blood this time. It was so undeserved, so insane to threaten a loyal friend’s innocent wife! Godsakes, Harry had better not aim any other shafts at Heloise’s feyness!
With a control of temper that would have frightened servants, he managed an answer. ‘While we have mice disturbing our sleep, I think her wise. Is there some meaning I am missing?’
‘No, I think you miss nothing and that is why I value you.’ Harry took a pace on and then swung back to face him. ‘Let her question Nandik.’
‘Nandik? I do not want that lecher anywhere near my wife.’ No, nor his table of planets and celestial concurrences!
The duke lifted up the simple gold cross he had taken to wearing of late, clouded the gold with his breath and polished it against his stomacher. ‘Ah, but it was Nandik who provided the testimony that the whore I loved was spying on me, and it was Nandik I ordered to make the arrangements for her escort to Bletchingley.’
‘Why him?’ Miles blurted out. ‘I could have handled matters for you.’
‘With a broken leg and married to the girl’s sister! You think I ordered her death? Yes, I probably did kill her, for I gave Nandik a letter for the escort to give to her when she was too far from London to return easily. I cannot remember what I wrote, but it is a wonder the words did not blister the parchment. I loved her, Miles. Perhaps my bitterness drove her to take her own life.’
The entire truth? ‘And where is the letter now?’
‘Ho, so the lawyer in you wants evidence? Burned, I am afraid. It was returned to me and I held it to the nearest candle. She had torn a scrap off the end to write her message.’ The red-lashed eyes watched him with feline inscrutability. ‘Now you may answer me. How did you know where to find her body? What, has the cat got your tongue?’ His grace’s tone had grown wondrous smooth: ‘God’s Rood, Miles, do not tell me you already knew of Dionysia’s treachery and that it was you who arranged matters!’
Miles had only one answer. ‘I would have done it properly.’ A careful bow and he walked away.
*
‘Not speaking to me?’ Miles asked, shaking the full sleeves of his shirt into compliance so he might lean upon his elbow. His servant had removed his master’s boots and outer garments and, drawing the bedcurtains discreetly about his knight and lady, retired to his creaking trundle bed. Miles was not ready to enter the sheets nor blow out the candle in the horn-paned lamp that hung above them. Within the honey-coloured fabric cage that concealed them from their servants, Heloise, slender limbs folded beneath her, sat atop the sprawl of coverlet, protected in chemise and Holland petticoats.
‘Is there anything worth saying?’ she whispered. ‘Marrying a turnip would have made more sense. To think I actually wanted you to acknowledge me.’
‘Not now.’ His voice was heavy with warning and she complied sadly, watching him waiflike with an appetite that matched his hunger to seduce her. Protagonists in different corners, they fought a war with glances. He knew the lady slid her gaze across the loose laces of his shirt and coyly down, down to estimate his passion for her. And he wanted her, burned for her. Unclothing her with his eyes, he willed her across the samite fantasy of leaves and flowers, and when she leaned back in enticing resistance, he reached across, revelling in his masculine strength that might tow her into the harbour of his arms.
It was needful to smooth back the tumbled elfin hair, plunder the sweet, surrendering mouth and melt her to forgetfulness of all save him. His caresses, his kisses, were now her kingdom. With a quiver and sigh, his beautiful Heloise succumbed to the passion he could summon forth in her at will. Her fingers tangled in his hair and slid down to conquer, wantonly coaxing him to a transcendent slavery in which he strove to drive her to unsurpassed pleasure. He became fire, aching to steep himself in her delicious softness so that he might forget the terror that racked him, that pulled reason from action by each slow grinding hour. In love he took possession of her, each stroking thrust carrying them beyond the gates of Heaven itself until male and female, they both lay sated and defeated in each other’s arms.
And when he lay asleep, his arms a protective fortress about her, Heloise’s tears silently trickled into the feather pillow. Trusting his judgment exacted a heavy price. Unless she could change his mind, he was going to ride with Buckingham to rebellion and a terrible death.
Chapter 26
Miles looked on with loathing as Bishop Morton heaved his huge bulk down the steps from Brecknock keep. Treasonously liberated against King Richard’s orders, Harry’s newest counsellor halted in the bailey and stared about him with smug satisfaction. Harry’s rebel army was about to leave Brecknock.
Fifty mounted soldiers were saddling up, and beyond the castle walls, untidying the priory fields, four hundred foot soldiers, mostly Welsh, sweaty-shirted in their quilted jacks, were waiting morosely. Eleven wagons, bulging beneath roped canvas with breech-loading iron guns, cooking pots, weapons, ladles, tents and oatmeal, waited behind thick-limbed horses, while their shafts and wheels were checked again for damage. Sumpters, slung with armour, shifted their plumy hooves uncertainly beside the caparisoned destriers, their flanks already moist with sweat and drizzle.
Oh, to be sure, the rebellion looked well on parchment: two hundred English soldiers, coerced from cider making and carting sheaves, were appointed to meet the duke at Hereford. Breton mercenaries and Lancastrian exiles – the channel winds permitting – were under sail with Henry Tudor. Their exorbitant professionalism had been purchased by the stolen treasury money, courtesy of Sir Edward Woodville. And it was hoped that when King Richard, yelling treason, came thudding out of his heartland, Margaret Beaufort and Lord Stanley’s Cheshire retainers would close in. With God’s good grace, the rebels hoped the king would be caught on the east coast between the claws of the two armies and scooped to oblivion, or a beggarly exile. That was if the south-eastern rebels battled successfully against the new Duke of Norfolk, who was guarding London and the reaches of the Thames.
With a heavy heart, Miles hastened up the steps to the battlements, casting an anxious gaze towards the south. Incandescent shafts of light were dappling the nearby hillsides gr
eenish-gold but over Pen-y-Fan the clouds were purple, and to the east the Black Mountains were a sinister breaker frozen against a seething sky. The odds were that it would start raining before sundown and the road to Hereford would be churned into a mire.
‘Miles.’
His despairing lady was waiting, her lily cheeks veined with tears. If only … Oh, he had a cupboardful of those!
‘My love.’
Poor Heloise. She had used every persuasion short of destroying his kneecaps with a mallet to make him turn traitor, cursing his sense of duty and misdirected honour. But she had spent hours of loving labour stitching him a battle surcote. ‘To keep you safer from arrows.’ Had she sewn charms and spells between the silk layers? Miles glanced down at the family of roused sable snakes, with their golden flick of tongues, festooning his ribcase, and smiled at his seamstress.
What did you give a fey wife as a parting gift? He lifted the folded parchment from his leather purse and held it out to her. She must have felt the magic within for she opened it as though it hid a fragile crystal. Her pleasure filled him with a delight beyond all price.
‘Upon my soul, oh, Miles!’
A four-leaf clover, kept through boyhood. ‘Three leaves for the Trinity, see. And the fourth, changeling?’
The sweet, sad smile Heloise beamed at him nearly destroyed his courage. ‘For Our Lady or …’ She watched the husbandly indulgence crinkle his eyes.
‘Or your tylwyth teg? Who knows? But this is special, never wished on since its finding fourteen years ago.’
‘If you found it, then it is your right to do the wishing.’
‘Which I surrender to the mistress of my heart.’
‘Oh,’ exclaimed Heloise, love shining in her eyes, ‘Then I wish—’
‘No,’ he kissed her, ‘’tis ill luck to speak it. Close your eyes now.’ With his right hand holding hers, he watched her turn her heart-shaped face with reverence to the distant hills, drew breath and held it. It was the image he would take with him, the charm that would help him withstand the executioner’s fire and the heated irons. Imagination, the pressure of her fingers, might have accounted for the tingle of reassurance, hope – God knows how else to describe it – that suffused his veins until it found his mind. Was this how a blessing felt?
‘I love you,’ he whispered, raising his left hand to furl her cheek with tenderness, ‘I love you more than I can ever show you and whatever happens, remember that.’ Then he drew back from her and lifted a chain from about his neck. ‘This is the key to the coffer in our bedchamber. Within it is my will and sufficient money to keep you through the winter. Sell the other things if you need to.’ He still wore his rings. They might buy him a passage to Brittany or Ireland, or a last chance to speak with her before they hauled him out to the gibbet.
As if Heloise received that image from his mind, her beloved face went grey as ashes. Someone whistled at them urgently from the courtyard and suddenly her fingers were unpinning a brooch from her collar. He had not seen it before. A little unicorn.
‘Would you wear this for me all the time, whatever happens?’
‘Close to my heart, hmm.’ Not to his taste. But how could he deny her? It was a struggle to fasten it to his shirt beneath his hauberk. His fingers trembled, his gaze misted and it was she who finished the task. By the time she looked up, he had control again but his voice was ravaged. ‘I must go.’ He set a gloved finger beneath her chin.
Her eyes blazed defiantly now, as if willing him one last time to turn his cote. ‘King Richard speaks of justice. What does Harry Buckingham speak of, but Harry Buckingham?’
It was true, except the harsh trumpets brayed and his esquire had started up the steps to fetch him. ‘Heloise, I beg you,’ he protested, gathering her against the freshly stitched Rushden serpents. ‘Sing a more loving song, my nightingale. Would you have me ride to war with your anger in my ears?’
She drew her head back, her lovely eyes shimmering like sunlight on water. ‘Promise you will come back to me, Miles, even if it is a hundred years hence, even if it takes all eternity. For I shall still be waiting for you, and all my love is yours and yours alone.’
With the unstudied grace that was so much part of him, he raised her hand to his lips. ‘If only in your dreams, my love. Whatever is within my power, I promise,’ and was gone. Disabled by stinging tears, she listened helplessly to the ring of his spurs on each stone step.
‘Miles!’ Her strong, wonderful man turned. ‘Check the wheels of the third cart.’
The raven eyebrows arched. ‘A premonition?’
‘No.’ Her smile was watery, ‘I saw a fellow lurking by it last night.’
Laughter creased the corners of his eyes. She would remember him thus. Even if they never met again, she would live out her life knowing that he had believed in her, loved her for what she was. The rope and the fire could not take that from her.
He is not coming back, is he? Risking the anger of tylwyth teg, she opened her mind, pleading desperately to see the future so she might arm herself against it. Her back braced against the battlement, she closed her eyes and waited for the unsteadying vision. Nothing.
Nothing looked down on her but the darkening sky. She had broken their rule and hers. Guiltily, shakily, she left the wall. The bailey was still full of soldiers and Miles was sitting astride Traveller. He saluted her, and pointed; the third cart had been pulled to the side and its load was being spread amongst the rest. Yes, this was where she needed to be, where he could see her, not trying to use her sight for her own selfish purposes. Biting her lip, she stood stoically; garnering his image, reaching out her arms through the air, telling him she understood, telling him of her pride in him.
Buckingham’s speech was brief; so were the tepid cheers that followed, before the sarsynett pennons and the fringed banners bearing the golden loops of cord, the flaring Catherine wheels, the swans collared with golden coronets, finally dipped like lances beneath the jagged teeth of the portcullis and were gone into the void. The courtyard slowly wasted its manhood out into the precarious world. The women, dabs of colour against the sombre doorways, withdrew, but Heloise, mute against the battlemented parapet, stayed, a drooping silken flag with nothing to move her until a small, sugar-sticky palm, crept into hers
‘Do not cry, my lady,’ said Ned responsibly, adding with a perfect imitation of Sir William. ‘It sets a bad example, you know.’
*
Not until Heloise crept between the sheets miserably that night did she discover a letter of love from Miles tucked beneath her pillow; but before she had leisure to read it twice, her bedroom door opened and a disgruntled Dafydd landed, paws braced. The door shut abruptly and the cat, glaring daggers at her, attempted to remove his furry head from the inconvenient ribbon burdening his neck. Though he clearly blamed her, he permitted her to assist and at last she carried the ribbon to the candlelight. The tiny parcel which belled it contained a piece of thin rag with an ink message signed with ‘E’. Emrys?
‘Leave Wales, lady of Y Cysgod, arianlais, as you value your virtue and your life, your devoted servant, “E”.’
She sent for Martin next morning and, as a contingency, gave him a little of the money from the coffer and bade him discreetly take Cloud and his hackney for stabling at the priory, and then see if he might find Emrys. The news Martin brought back later from the town was disturbing. The able-bodied men who had been lying low to avoid recruitment had not yet returned. Why?
*
It was raining steadily by the time the duke’s company reached Bronllys, but already there had been several suspicious incidents. Someone was deliberately slowing them, and today was Monday and they needed to be across the Severn well before Saturday 18th October, the day decreed for the common rising.
When Harry’s destrier stumbled and the Llanddew blacksmith’s lad muttered that it was a portent, the duke ordered the poor wretch to be hanged from the nearest oak. Miles protested, but the double mischief was done. Th
e Welshmen were all at it then, cursing their betters and babbling of misfortune. One man swore by his very soul that he had glimpsed an ugly gwyllian astride a forked branch. Not a hanging offence, thank Heaven, but the men started to scan the roadside for St John’s wort to keep the dwarfs away, and a whole sheath of prayers went flying off to Saints Alud, Brychan and Cynog. Then a Newport halberdier made a sign against the evil eye at Nandik and the scholar edged his horse closer to the duke. Miles uncharitably wished that they would pull the fellow from his horse and dispatch him quietly behind the hedgerow, for yesterday, to please Harry, Nandik had seen a king’s death in his astral charts.
Matters could not be worse, Miles thought. The rain ran relentlessly down the sloping nape of his helm, trickling onto his lower back. Grey fog swallowed up the hills, the trees along the road were ghostly shadows and the sky ahead was bleak. Ditches overflowed, horses stumbled in the hidden holes; wheels jammed in the squelching furrows and the complaining drivers had to cut sodden brushwood to wad the ruts so the horses could haul the carts onto solid ground. Staybraces broke; a sweep-bar jammed. The first of the food wagons unaccountably fell sideways, blocking the road, and the oatmeal became a porridge far too soon. A wheel came off a weapons cart.
Miles, whose soldiers had inspected each cart before they had left Brecknock, rode down the columns with his carpenters plunging after him to check again. Past Glasbury, the wagon with the mended wheel had not caught up.
And the straggling column was growing thinner.
*
It was not the thud of a stone cannonball against Brecknock castle’s wall at first light next day which woke the sentry, but the unperfected weapon’s explosion as it killed its gunners.
Heloise, roused by the alarum bell, held a large square of cered leather over the disbelieving duchess to keep the rain off as they stood above the gatehouse watching the trebuchet being hauled up Castle Lane. A mounted knight was bawling orders at the enemy archers and billmen assembling along the banks of the Honddu.
The Silver Bride Page 43
