THE DRAGON
AND
THE ROSE
Roberta Gellis
and
Lyle Kenyon Engel
THE DRAGON AND THE ROSE
Copyright © 1977 by Roberta Gellis and Lyle Kenyon Engel
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form by an electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording means or otherwise without prior written permission of the author.
ISBN: 0-872-16776-3
To Charles because . . .
" . . . to prevent or heal full many a strife
How oft, how long must man have patience with his wife."
ROBERT DODSLEY To Patience (1745)
INTRODUCTION
When Baen approached my agent about the possibility of republishing some of my work in e-format, I was delighted. Although at the moment I do not own an e-reader (I use a netbook for its ability to deal with many formats), I am one of the early addicts of that form of personal library. I owned and used with great pleasure a RocketeBook, and I would still be using it if the company were still in business to make repairs.
Thus I gave considerable thought to which of my out of print works I wanted to be available and I decided that my earliest work, because it held my own fresh wonder of creation, should get precedence.
Early work or late work, all my historical novels are medieval. I have no idea why I was enchanted by the history of the middle ages, but when I was a little girl there was no television. (Yes, I am that old.) What one did for entertainment– at least what my family did for entertainment–was read. My father used to say that Christians went to church on Sunday; Jewish people went to temple on Saturday; and the Jacobs family went to the library on Friday night (which was the night the library was open late).
No one told me what to read, and I sampled everything, I suppose, but it was the books of High Romance that caught my attention. I never cared for the books about my contemporaries. Nancy Drew (even driving her car) or the visiting nurse (who’s name I’m afraid I’ve forgotten) could hold my attention only briefly and I never remembered their stories. It was the tales of knights in shining armor that I read and reread.
The fascination scarcely ebbed as I grew older, although I soon realized Howard Pyle’s books were equivalent to fairy tales (if not so grim). I moved on to more adult versions of medieval myth. But then I began to wonder if, like other myths, there was some basis to the stories. The histories were dry bones, but further research into the period brought me to the chronicles written at the time.
I soon discovered that, although there were indeed knights, their armor didn’t shine and the knights themselves stank to high heaven. But I also learned that the men inside that stinking armor were fascinating individuals and that their real adventures in real history were far more exciting than Howard Pyle’s or other novelists’ stories.
So I hope these books will transmit to their readers my personal delight in the true events of one of the most exciting centuries in history and my new found creative joy in peopling those events with characters that are true to the time in which they lived.
CHAPTER 1
A thin, high shriek, like that of a small animal being torn apart, pierced the heavy walls and thick oak doors of Pembroke Castle. Jasper Tudor, earl of Pembroke, winced almost imperceptibly. He had heard and seen many small animals, both wild and human, torn apart, but this was no Welsh poacher nor marauding weasel. The shriek was repeated, higher, thinner, more desperate. Pembroke clasped his hands together in a brief, nervous gesture, then let them drop. It was a shame that his sister-in-law, the young countess of Richmond, should die this way. He shook his head at the impenetrability of life and the inexplicable quirks of fate.
That his brother Edmund should have married little Margaret Beaufort at twelve—as soon as she reached the legal age of consent—was reasonable. Margaret was the only daughter and the sole heiress of John, duke of Somerset, and her dowry and immense inheritance were reason enough. Personally, however, he had been much surprised when Edmund consummated the marriage. True, twelve was the legal age of consent, and it was true, too, that Margaret's male children would have a close, if irregular, claim to the throne, but still Jasper himself would have waited until the child had become a girl of at least fourteen or fifteen.
Who would have thought that the seed would take root in so raw a field? Yet it had. Who would have expected that Edmund, so young, so strong, would be dead seven months later? Yet he was. And now little Margaret would die, also.
Jasper became aware that the cries had stopped. Growing impatient of waiting for news, he pushed open the door into the room in which his sister-in-law lay. His ears perceived the thinner, fainter wail of a newborn babe, but he did not look in that direction. He turned his head toward the bed. Jasper was fond of little Margaret, little indomitable Margaret, who, when her husband died, had simply patted her swollen belly and said that there would soon be another earl of Richmond. Now her face had that transparent pallor associated with finality, but her eyes were glowingly alive.
"I told you," she whispered. "It is a man-child. I told you Richmond would live again. He shall have Somerset, too. He shall have everything."
"He will have everything that is his by right." Jasper bent over her. "I swear it upon my life and my honor."
"Henry—I want him to be named Henry." Margaret's whisper was becoming fainter. "For the king …"
For a moment Jasper was surprised. He had expected to name the child Edmund if it lived and was a male—Edmund John—but he would not argue with Margaret, whose limit of endurance had been reached. He murmured assurance and took her hand, watching her eyes close. If that was what she wanted, the child would be named Henry—but for the king? Jasper thought for a moment despairingly of his half brother the king, feeble, weak-willed Henry, who could only obey the last order given to him. Then he realized that Margaret meant Henry V, whose wife had been Jasper's own mother, the babe's grandmother. Pembroke went to look at the infant, glanced back at the bed and shook his head. Great Henry! Poor little thing. He could not remember ever having seen so puny a child. Richmond lived again, but, he feared, not for long.
The days crawled past. Margaret ceased to bleed, and her lips regained a faint rosiness. Henry Tudor, earl of Richmond, breathed; not much more could be said for him. Sometimes he had strength enough to suck, but usually his wet nurse squeezed her milk drop by drop into his little mouth while his mother watched with anxious eyes.
Days grouped together and became weeks. Margaret could sit up, and her cheeks began to bloom. Henry Tudor, first coddled into life, now signaled his desires with a lusty wail and an increasingly greedy mouth. As weeks grew into months, Margaret, gowned and kerchiefed in the highest fashion, smiled over her red-faced, screaming son, unswaddled so that his napkin could be changed. He was thin; he would always be thin, but he struck out powerfully with his little arms and legs.
Margaret's anxieties calmed with the passage of years, but to Jasper young Henry always appeared frail. It was true that he seemed to contract sickness readily, but he fought off the ills with his mother's stubbornness, recovered and clung tenaciously to life.
Mother and child grew and were content. Yet Jasper could not keep Margaret under his protection always. Pressure was being exerted upon the weak king and, through him, upon Jasper. So great a dower must not go unattached. Perhaps Jasper would have resisted the king, cajoling and uttering veiled threats until Henry VI's feeble mind shifted again, but the country was buzzing with a discontent directed against Henry's advisers. The leader of the discontents was Richard, duke of York, and his supporters traded unhealthy tales regarding Marga
ret's relationship with her husband's brother.
Those tales were not far from wrong, Jasper admitted secretly as he came into the chamber where Margaret was teaching the three-year-old Henry to count. When Edmund married her, Jasper had not cared, but now that she was grown into a woman. . . .
It was incest to take a brother's wife; Margaret had better marry. He stood, uncertain of how to introduce a topic distasteful to them both, while Henry, seeing the bestower of many honeyed tidbits and marvelous toys, leaped up to embrace his legs.
"Come and play, Uncle Jasper."
"No, today I am the wicked uncle." Jasper delighted in telling Henry the most bloodcurdling tales of wicked uncles to see the little boy shudder in delicious terror while he begged for more. "I have come to steal your mother away."
"No, no! Mama will never leave me."
"Oh, yes. That is how it must be, but you know how wise the Lady Margaret is. She will trick the wicked uncle, run away and come back to you."
Henry gurgled with laughter. It was a game they often played, and since Margaret had always returned, it was one he loved. Jasper swept him off his feet to throw him in the air. As ever, when he roughhoused with his nephew, he was startled by the fragility of the little body under the clothes. He caught Henry in a tight embrace and kissed him tenderly, then set the child on his feet and patted him as he told him to run away and play.
"You should not tease him, Jasper. What if an accident befell me? He might in truth blame you."
"Ay, but it was in my mind. Today I am the wicked uncle and I have come, indeed, to separate mother and child. You must marry again, Margaret."
It was not the first time he had said this, but Margaret sensed a difference in his manner. "I suppose I must," she said slowly, "but I cannot see why Henry and I should part."
"I cannot let him out of my hands. You know that. His blood is close in line to the throne. Besides that, unless you have other children, Henry is heir to your estate, in which your husband would have an interest only while you lived."
"And you are his heir to your brother's estate."
"Margaret! You cannot believe that I would harm a hair on Henry's head even for the assurance of heaven. You would not lose him if you married Buckingham's younger brother. He has agreed for you to stay here at Pembroke as I told you before."
"I refused the elder and now must take the younger?" she flashed.
"Margaret, my Margaret, you do not know how ill things sit. That French she-wolf the king married has turned the whole country against the king. There will be open war soon—not one small battle here and there, but war. This marriage will give you Buckingham's ear, and Buckingham's ear will be of value if I am killed in battle. I tell you, I cannot let Henry out of Wales, and in Wales there is not one of blood or station fit to wed with you."
Margaret's flush of anger faded from her face. "Killed? Not you, Jasper!"
"Others die so. I would be assured of the boy's safety and of yours."
"I—I will think of it."
It did not take long for Margaret to admit that Jasper was right. Stafford would be a gentle and considerate husband, and union with Buckingham would certainly be of value in the present state of the nation. The marriage was simple and quiet; in a few days the bridegroom departed and life went on as before in Pembroke.
In the nation at large, however, matters went from bad to worse. All too soon there was civil war. Jasper dutifully went out to support the king and his hated queen, yet Buckingham was able to remain neutral. He favored the king but saw his deficiencies. As long as Henry VI ruled, even nominally, there would be trouble. The king was growing more imbecilic and more dependent upon his wife every day, and the queen was hated by the people and nobility alike with a ferocity seldom exhibited against a royal consort.
York prevailed at last: Edward, the heir of Henry's old enemy, Richard, proclaimed himself king in 1461, and, after the disaster of the battle of Townton, there could be no doubt that he was king indeed. Margaret held her breath. For weeks she kept herself and Henry in readiness to flee to Jasper, who had taken refuge overseas. Buckingham, however, made peace with the new king, and under his sheltering wing Margaret and Henry lived quietly at Pembroke. Henry was now technically penniless, since Edward IV had confiscated the estates and titles of Richmond for his younger brother, but Margaret never let the boy forget that he was the true earl of Richmond.
She taught him the dignity of manner and the distance she felt necessary to a great position. Yet she laughed to see the six-year-old draw that dignity about him like a cloak with guests or formal introductions, for Henry was a merry-minded and affectionate child. He had learned that unnatural manner quickly—he learned everything quickly—and he did not forget.
Nor did Henry forget people. Hardly a day passed without his asking for Jasper. Finally, growing impatient with his mother's lame answers, Henry's grey eyes flashed a danger signal.
"Then, tell him to return. He has been on his business long enough. I want him."
"The business is very important," Margaret hedged, too frightened and tired to deal with one of Henry's tantrums. She knew that no one else could manage him in a temper. He would scream himself sick, and then she would have the burden of nursing him—to add to all her other burdens.
"It is not true. He has gone away because he does not love us any longer."
"No, my son. Uncle Jasper will always love you."
"Then, tell him to come back. Tell him I am sick."
The grey eyes shone shrewd in the little face. He remembered well how even his slightest indisposition had brought a worried Jasper to his side, how he could win any concession from his uncle when he was ill. Margaret had a strong suspicion that Henry had often made himself ill, crying himself into a fever to play Jasper against her and to win some coveted trifle from his softhearted uncle. It was too much. Her iron control broke.
"He cannot come." Margaret wept. "There has been a war, and the new king has taken away your estates and says you are no longer Richmond. He has taken away Uncle Jasper's estates, too, and would kill him if he returned home."
She did not know how much this would mean to the child, but if it prevented him from plaguing her and making himself ill, it would mean enough. The dangerous sparkle died out of Henry's eyes; they resumed a more normal, speculative glow.
"Uncle Henry is no longer the king?"
"He is the true king, just as you are the true earl of Richmond. But evil men can deprive kings, and earls, of their birthright."
"Then, the new king is an evil man?"
This was dangerous talk, even for a seven-year-old. "No, no," she hastened to amend. "It is hard for a little boy to understand. You see, Uncle Henry was not really a good king. A good king must be clever, and Uncle Henry, alas, is not clever at all. He did things that were unwise, which hurt all the people in this country. Perhaps King Edward did a bad thing when he took Uncle Henry's crown away, but he did it for a good reason—to make the country safer. Sometimes it is necessary to do a bad thing so that good may come of it. Now, Henry, we must not talk of this anymore, and you must never speak of it to anyone. To no one, ever." She looked into the child's puzzled face. "You know there are things that children must not do that grown-up people may. To speak of kings is one of these things."
As Edward IV's grip on the kingdom grew more secure, he grew less fearful of Buckingham and of the rebelliousness of the Welsh. He wanted Henry as a weapon to bring Jasper to heel. Then again, with his claim to the throne, Henry might even become a danger to himself. With this in mind, the king sent letters to Margaret offering her a place at court among his queen's ladies-in-waiting and a place for Henry among his henchmen. Margaret replied that she was grateful but that she did not love the life at court. Moreover, Henry was a frail child of delicate health and could not bear the heavy air of the city. Then, secretly one night, they fled Pembroke to the remote vastness of Harlech.
This move kept them free for some years more, but in t
he end Edward's man took Harlech and Henry became Lord Herbert's prisoner. But Lord Herbert was no fool. He knew the value of the pawn he held and allowed the boy every freedom he could, seeing to it that little Henry had the finest instructors in every branch of learning, in archery, swordsmanship, and jousting. He gave him rich gifts of arms and books. Margaret's fears ebbed under Herbert's mild wardenship, only to rise up with renewed strength when he was killed in one of the innumerable skirmishes that plagued the unsettled times.
Who would come to take his place? No one came. Margaret was not greatly surprised. She had heard that Edward's strongest ally, the earl of Warwick, had turned against him. His throne was again in danger, and he had neither time nor men to spare. But the winds of rumor blew into a gale, reaching even to Harlech. Margaret rejoiced when Warwick, now a sworn upholder of the Lancastrian cause, landed in Devonshire.
Wales welcomed Jasper as England welcomed Warwick. Now it was Edward's turn to flee, and Jasper returned to his beloved Margaret and Henry, bearing news of the restoration of Henry VI. Would the nephew he had not seen for almost ten years remember him? His fears fell away as the young man embraced him with a child's abandon.
"Uncle Jasper! Uncle Jasper!"
"Harry! Let me go. Let me look at you." Jasper laughed, returning the embrace as warmly as it was given. How could he be formal with this impetuous boy?
They stood with clasped hands, gazing at each other, only to embrace again.
"Am I to have no share in this welcoming?"
"Margaret. How beautiful you've grown!"
"Listen to your uncle, Henry. See how he knows just the balm to apply to a wounded woman?"
Henry flushed slightly. Margaret had been teaching him courtly speeches, but for once he did not learn readily. He was graceful and could bow and kiss a hand with the best, but to offer flowery compliments to his mother seemed unnatural, and he had little opportunity to talk to other women. Margaret kept gentlewomen in her service, but none of sufficient rank to marry her son. She was truly pious, and her sense of duty kept Henry's contact with these women to a minimum. Had her son turned his eyes to the serving maids, she might have looked aside—or she might not. The question never arose; they were too coarse, too unclean, too stupid or uneducated for Henry's taste.
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