The Golden Widows

by Isolde Martyn

  There had been a reprimand, not in front of anyone – just her and Grandmother Bonville. It had been degrading to be scolded like some wilful child who had deliberately upended an inkpot on the best coverlet. And so unreasonable. It made Kate defiantly announce she was taking Cecily to visit her widowed mother at Fotheringay.

  ‘Go and comfort Lady Salisbury, if you must, Katherine, but you’ll do so alone. Cecily stays here.’

  ‘She’s my mother’s grandchild, too,’ Kate protested, but Grandmother Bonville was unmoved.

  ‘I repeat, the child stays here. If you or your high-strutting brothers cannot keep her safe yet, then by Heaven, I plaguey well shall.’

  Hmm, some backbone was definitely needed here.

  ‘Then, speaking on my daughter’s behalf, madame, since she is actually the owner of this house and we are her dependents, I am requesting you to come with us as well. You can ride at the front with a primed crossbow and we’ll take French cannon and other babies to defend our progress.’

  The old lady’s tawny eyebrows arched at her boldness but there was a wicked smile on her thin lips as if the provocation had been deliberate. ‘You know very well I haven’t the faintest understanding of what you’re blethering about, Katherine Neville.’

  ‘I’m relieved to hear it! But you’ll come, madame?’

  ‘Yes,’ exclaimed Cecily’s great-grandmother. ‘And since you are all puffed-up feathers and a-cackling like some hen that’s just laid its first egg, perhaps you’d tell our tiny noble lady that I was only waiting for her to ask.’

  Elysabeth

  1st April 1461

  Groby Hall, Leicestershire

  Grey skies, Grey family, a lonely bed and two children who would barely talk to her. And it was weeks now since John’s death and she was still at Groby with little choice in the matter. March had been cruel. The Fosse Way had been smothered with snow, stranding travellers unless they were desperate enough to wade through thigh-high drifts. Although she yearned to return to Astley, she dared not risk her sons’ lives to make the journey south, and the promise to finish John’s tower felt like a curse, a manacle chaining her in misery to Groby.

  The unkind weather also changed England’s fortunes. A carrier pigeon belonging to the Mayor of Leicester fluttered home with tidings of a great and bloody victory for Edward of York somewhere in the north. Fought in a snowstorm with hundreds slain. No one knew yet what had become of Queen Margaret but Elysabeth did not care. A woman who could not spare a horse no longer deserved a kingdom.

  It was finally a week into April before the black, gritty ice caking the courtyard turned to slush. Elysabeth’s bailiff rode up from Astley with sad news of flock losses all over the shires – ewes buried in the snow and newborn lambs dying in the freezing air. She should ride back to oversee matters but the roofless tower waited, mocking her. John Cowper, the master builder, returned with his workmen but several days of rain hindered their labour and the mirey lanes around Groby were pronounced too soft for carts bearing slate. Another week limped by but then the spring winds began to harden the ground.

  Sewing, stitching, grieving and too much thinking! She would go crazed if she stayed at Groby any longer.

  ‘I am going to ride over to the slate pits tomorrow morning,’ she announced at the supper table and watched several pairs of Grey eyebrows rise.

  ‘Is that not a man’s task?’ snorted her mother-in-law.

  ‘I shall take Tom with me.’

  ‘Much good that will do,’ Lady Ferrers muttered, directing a sniffy glare down the table. Tom was sullenly picking at his salted herring, while Dickon, who had a runny cold, had arranged his fishbones in a line according to size and was counting them.

  ‘See what the weather’s like first, eh?’ Elysabeth’s brother-inlaw, nineteen-year-old Edward Grey, gave her foot a supportive nudge. It sounded like Grey might accompany her. He had been dogging her heels ever since he had recovered from his wounds. Fortunate for him, he’d never returned to the queen’s army.

  Lady Ferrers patted his hand. ‘Elysabeth is quite capable of making her own decisions.’

  ‘Yes, truly, Tom and I shall manage well enough.’

  If they could be saddled up before her brother-in-law was stirring.

  But Grey was booted and spurred to accompany her next morning. At least he had put Greek fire under Tom’s reluctant arse; the boy was waiting for her in the stable yard already astride his pony. Her son’s expression might be indifferent and his ‘good morning’ was only a grunt but he was out of bed.

  Beside him was a laden pack ass. A pack ass she recognised. For an instant, her blood ran cold, and then she saw the strange antennae tethered to the sides of the panniers.

  ‘What’s this, then?’ It was an effort to speak brightly but she must for his sake.

  ‘Uncle Grey is taking me trout fishing in the Lin, Mother.’

  Seeing her surprise, Grey slapped a brotherly arm about her. ‘Nowt wrong with that, I hope?’

  ‘Nowt at all,’ mimicked Tom, challenging her to argue.

  ‘Aye,’ exclaimed his uncle, ‘I thought we’d make a day of it as the sun is out at last and ride on to Bradgate. An’ stop looking in the dumps, Elysabeth, we’ll call at the quarries first. Hurry up with the horses!’ he shouted to the grooms. There was a briskness about him this morning as though he, too, needed to escape Groby. ‘And, aye, we need to talk.’

  Ah, the matter of her dower and Tom’s inheritance, Elysabeth guessed, with an inward groan. There were scuffles and skirmishes ahead. Land tenure was so complicated. With his grandfather and father dead, Tom was now Baron Ferrers but he could not fully assert his rights as joint owner of the Grey-Ferrers lands until he came of age. Until then, Lady Ferrers, assisted by Grey, was in full charge, and in any quarrel, Grey, who had no income of his own, would side with his mother.

  Well, better to deal with Grey than Lady Ferrers, except his fingers, bereft of gloves, lingered a fraction longer than was brotherly as he helped Elysabeth onto her horse.

  ‘Thank the Lord, it isn’t puttering down any more,’ he exclaimed, swinging into his own saddle and then he added sheepishly, ‘We’ve ordered the sun to paint some roses on your cheeks, Elysabeth, haven’t we, Tom lad?’

  She groaned inwardly. Not roses, men.

  And the sunlight was a suitor, too. Tardy, but gallant, its warmth like a lover’s hand between her shoulder blades as she settled into the saddle.

  Around her horse’s hooves, morning light blazed upon the ebbing puddles and sheened the winter moss that embroidered the flagstones to a vivid silken green. Even the silver cord edging the cuffs and collar of her dark mourning gown gleamed. Life was opening the doors and casements again.

  Along the street, laundered sheets and linen optimistically festooned the brush fences and palings of the wealthier cottagers, but beyond the village, winter still held a relentless grip. Elysabeth swallowed her tears. Last summer when she had ridden this way with John, the trees of Charnwood had been lush with foliage and the warm air drowsy with insects. Today the limbs of the hawthorn hedgerows were bare and the meadow grasses, arched by the months of cold, glittered with melting frost. By now the white blossoms of blackthorn should have been blessing the hedgerows.

  But it will happen. She knew that. It was inevitable and maybe things would get better, must get better.

  All this land would be Tom’s. No, is Tom’s, she thought with pride. Charnwood Forest, with its coppiced woods, villages and deer park, was all part of the Groby demesne. Yet, if Tom realised that, it did not show in his face. His shoulders were still a defensive curl of defiance.

  Her stratagem to let him speak with the master slater at Swithlands proved a failure, too. Grey could not resist taking charge and Tom wandered around the deep pitholes like a lost soul teetering on the chasm of Hell. Well, not quite that, but the slatemen’s banter fell on indifferent ears. Oh, by the saints, how was she going to heal him?

  Mind, by the time they
crossed the planks straddling the ditch that encircled Bradgate deer park, there was colour in Tom’s face and enthusiasm in his countenance. Wondrous what the constant talk of fishing could achieve.

  ‘I cannot bring back Tom’s father for him but I can give some time to the lad,’ Grey told her, behind his glove, as he reined back to ride beside her, their stirrups almost touching.

  ‘That’s very good of you, Grey.’

  ‘I’m right glad it pleases you.’ His smile – blue eyes like John’s – swept over more than her face before he called out loudly: ‘Race you, nephew!’

  Tossing a grin over his shoulder at her, Tom gave spur.

  Elysabeth followed with the grooms and dogs. Above the hill, a lonely kestrel hovered. Below his wings, upon a sweet-smelling bower of summer grass, Dickon had been conceived. She remembered other times, too. John riding through the winter buckled bracken with a fine hawk upon his gauntlet, but today there was no horseman in green to gladden her heart, only a herd of deer, heads down, neatly feeding. Stoking the embers of memory hurt so much but the future looked even bleaker, no strong male hand clasping hers, no laughter with the wine. Oh, St Valentine, St Valentine.

  When she joined them at the fishing hole, she tried to busy herself but the grooms did not need help or supervision in the unpacking of the cheeses, pastes and bread or the worms and the maggots. Tom was stamping and laughing. The ground at Bradgate always had a hollow sound. John had taught him that. She stamped too but she could not laugh or smile. ‘Go and unpot the worms,’ she said. ‘Your grandmother is expecting trout for supper.’

  ‘Elysabeth,’ Grey called to her across the rim of his alejack, ‘I’ll fish with Tom awhile and then after our repast, happen you’d like to ride to the top of the hill?’

  She nodded, hiding her reluctance. Now the remembrances of John’s embrace would be overlain with Grey’s talk of money.

  Defended by a palisade of grass from the fishes’ view, and with a trout already flapping in the basket, Tom was happily lobbing his line upstream as his uncle set aside his tackle and cleansed his fingers in the water. Now would come the bargaining.

  Grey dried his hands on his thighs, whistled the dogs away from the water and they left Bart to keep an eye on Tom and the younger grooms and rode past the young oaks and up the deer-cropped turf towards the jagged, dark grey crags that surveyed the land like ancient creatures. The dogs, with rabbit scent in their nostrils, crashed delightedly through the dead bracken.

  Halfway to the summit, a lone stag, mayhap dreaming about rutting, sprang up in panic. Grey thrust out a hand to control Elysabeth’s horse but she was a skilled horsewoman. His concern was pleasing but…Oh Devil take it! Stockier, darker, like his mother, yet so like John when he did that – John when they were first wed. It was the small mannerisms as well, just a toss of head or the way he blew on his soup before he supped that pricked her to fresh sorrow.

  ‘Your arm’s healed well, Elysabeth. I noticed you didn’t favour it at all as we rode here, or is it you’re just puttin’ up with it?’

  ‘It still aches.’ Like her heart.

  ‘I’ve been thinkin’ about you and the boys a great deal,’ he added as the steep hillside compelled them to ride more cautiously. ‘It can’t be very easy for you at Groby now.’

  ‘Nor for you either, with two brothers to mourn,’ she replied carefully, guessing where this was leading.

  ‘If you and Mother dealt better together…’

  ‘If! It is a decade now, Grey, and nothing has changed.’

  ‘Fire ’n’ water, that’s what you two are. What I wanted to tell you, Elysabeth, is—’ He hesitated, chewing his lower lip. ‘Thing is, see—’

  ‘Spit it out, Grey. That’s the best way.’

  ‘Ay up, then – Mother is about to marry again.’

  ‘What!’ Her horse jerked up its head with a rattle of bridle at her sudden grip on the rein. This was the last thing she had expected to hear. ‘When was this decided?’

  ‘Aye, well, it’s not exactly writ in stone yet, but she received a letter yesterday from my lord of Warwick. Seems he’s found a husband for her.’

  Ah, so the reward giving had begun. She could wager the queue of Yorkist supporters for heiresses and wealthy widows was a mile long. If Tom’s inheritance had been a clean issue, she might have been one of the prizes. Warwick was a man who left no stone unturned.

  ‘And who is the fortunate man, Grey? Did the letter say?’

  ‘One of the Earl of Essex’s younger sons.’ Another revelation.

  ‘I didn’t know there was an “Earl of Essex”.’

  ‘Well, there is now, m’duck – Sir Henry Bourchier, husband to one of King Edward’s aunts. And it seems our shiny new sovereign, or should I say, Warwick, is handing out favours to those who fought for him. Chose the wrong side, didn’ I? Ah well, nowt I can do about that ’cept lick hands and grovel to the new boots at Westminster like everyone else.’

  Elysabeth sighed. ‘And which fortunate Bourchier has drawn your mother?’

  He chuckled at her tone, relaxing more now his news was out of the way. ‘John Bourchier. Third or fourth son. About your age.’

  Elysabeth blew another gasp of amazement and began to laugh. ‘And what says your mother? A husband almost half her years! I knew there was something different about her last night. A fizz through the blood perhaps.’

  ‘Don’t be unkind now. Mother’s still capable of bearing even if she is getting a mite croffly at times.’

  Capable of bearing! This had implications. Her merriment ebbed instantly. ‘But if she marries, Tom will not get the baronetcy. Oh Heavens, this John Bourchier will become Baron Ferrers, won’t he?’

  His mother had kept that hushed, and more besides, judging from Grey’s shadowed expression. ‘Aye, that’s the truth of it. Always see straight to the crux, don’t you, Elysabeth, an’ I’ve always admired you for that. Anyhow, I’m also warning you that Tom will most like be given to him as a ward.’

  ‘I see,’ she answered gravely. It was as if the reins of life were falling from her fingers leaving her without direction, powerless, and she did not like it

  Grey was in full flow now. ‘I’d hoped maybe I’d have the guardianship of him. I haven’t spoken of this to you before but I promise you I’m not without ambition. I’ve abandoned the old king’s cause. That was why I never fought at Towton. We need to move with the times. I’m right glad we now have Englishmen at the helm, instead of that old French bitch.’ When she did not answer, he blustered on. ‘I daresay my brother would turn in his grave to hear me speak so, but I see no future otherwise. Promise me, you understand.’

  She stared at him sadly. ‘You want absolution from me, Grey. Here.’ She drew a cross in the air and let her mare move ahead. Yes, she understood. As long as it is not Warwick’s boot caps that you will lick.

  A promise followed her. ‘If I can gain the new king’s trust, Elysabeth, I’ll help you get John’s attainder reversed. I’m hoping the Bourchiers will give me a leg-up once I’ve gained their trust.

  An’ we’ve already had word that John Bourchier is arriving here the day after morrow.’

  ‘Jesu! That soon?’ She felt so betrayed.

  Grey was saying no more, letting her ride ahead and chew the matter over. But as they reached the top of the hill, she sensed there was another reason for this private conversation and dismounted swiftly before he could help her.

  ‘Is there more you wanted to tell me?’ she asked.

  ‘Aye, if you are wanting to return to Astley, Elysabeth, I’ll take over your promise to John and oversee the rest of the roofing. The tower shall be finished, I promise you.’

  His kindness was another surprise.

  ‘Why, Grey, I should be more than happy to hand that responsibility to you, really grateful, but why have you not made this offer before, since you know that I have been anxious to go home? What else does your mother want me to hear?’

  ‘By Jesu, you we
ren’t born yesterday!’ Relief mingled with embarrassment lit his eyes. Now would come the unwelcome ifs and buts about her dower. ‘To be blunt, Elysabeth, my mother thinks it might be a good thing if you left for Astley before Bourchier arrives. He is coming to look her over, so to speak, and if he sees you, he’ll be so dazzled, he won’t see her.’ When she did not answer straightaway, he blurted out, ‘You do not realise how wondrously beautiful you are.’ She felt his gaze sliding down her body, tearing open her dark kirtle. ‘Compared to you, all other women are—’

  ‘Enough,’ she said with deliberate lightness. Frustrating his hot stare, she moved apart, making pretence of staring out over the valley. Other women might revel in their beauty but she could not. It was a curse. Men became so stupid in her presence. Was coming here a stratagem – the bronze hillside, the shadows of the soaring clouds caressing the fields, a place for confidences that should never be uttered?

  ‘Elysabeth.’ There was a lot a man could put into just one word.

  The winter grass crunched beneath his boots as he stepped closer. Oh Lord, must she deal with this when the memory of John was still so raw?

  Whisper John’s name over and over like an incantation. Toeing the tufts of grass, she searched for a portcullis of words to keep Edward at bay without giving offence. ‘John and I loved this place. We could be private here, escape from Groby. Your mother could be so difficult. Perhaps you don’t remember, but she always opposed our marriage because I brought no land in my dowry. I think she might have been jealous because we were so much in love.’

  John, a young esquire in the queen’s household, she, a maid-ofhonour. By Heaven, she realised sadly, she had shared him with the queen even back then.

  Grey’s arm wrapped awkwardly about her shoulders. He drew her against his side. ‘I do understand.’ Except his fingers against her defensive body were splayed, adventurous, anxious to offer more than comfort. ‘With you, I…’ he began.