The Golden Widows

by Isolde Martyn

  Was he being deliberately dense? By heaven, she must strangle this wretched infatuation before it grew and grew.

  ‘What is it, Grey?’ She tried to sound patient as she drew away and swung round to face him.

  ‘With you at Groby, the other women are like drab chickens beside a swan. You are a swan, Elysabeth. The whole world knows it.’

  ‘Then I had better hide away in the rushes at Astley.’ God pardon her triteness.

  ‘God forbid!’ Hurt flickered in his eyes. More, too. Desire. His hands seized her shoulders. ‘Do you not realise how I feel about you?’

  She unfastened his fingers. ‘It was a mistake to bring me here, Grey. I am too much in grief to think of any man but John. Everything…’ The golden hillside sloping away from where they stood. ‘Everything brings back memories of him.’

  Grey’s jaw was tense with anger. Anger and entitlement. And a young man’s lust-hunger. If he tried to take her here, this would be sacrilege.

  ‘Dickon was conceived at Bradgate, Grey. Almost this very spot.’

  That seemed to impel him more. ‘Imagine John is here in me.’

  Now it was she who was angry. ‘Oh, in God’s name, stop it!’ Palming the air as though to brace against his feelings, she strode away to stand shaking in fury where the bracken lapped the grass.

  ‘Why in hell should I?’ he snarled. ‘I have always loved you, Elysabeth. Ever since John brought you home.’

  She looked round at him coldly. ‘You were nine, Grey. It’s infatuation.’

  ‘Hell, no, it’s not. You’re treating me like a child.’

  ‘No, I’m preventing you from having a broken heart, Grey. Like mine. It’s broken beyond belief at the moment.’ She made pretence of searching her beltpurse and her clever horse instantly left off cropping and trotted over to her for a tidbit. Grabbing the bridle, she swiftly used the nearby rock as a mount and slid onto the sidesaddle. ‘And I’m not weak, Grey. I shall be both sword and buckler for my children, you’ll see.’

  ‘Elysabeth.’ His hand fastened round her ankle. ‘Listen, it’s going to be hard for you. You and I can stand up against Mother. You won’t manage things alone. Marry me, I’ll run Astley for you. It is my birthplace, damn it!’

  Marry?

  Grey?

  Generous, or was it? She was not going to dash into some reckless handfasting. Yes, she should consider another husband when her year of mourning was over, a mature man who could safeguard her children.

  And she did not like the slur that she could not manage Astley. She had done so whenever John was away. By Heaven, she could run a palace if she had to.

  ‘What’s your answer, Elysabeth?’

  ‘Grey,’ she began patiently. ‘I owe you thanks, but your mother would never consent. Nor would she forgive either of us. She wants to match you with Elizabeth Talbot.’

  ‘Who is ten years old! What am I supposed to do, take cold baths for the next six years?’

  ‘No, yes, I don’t know.’

  ‘Elysabeth.’ His fingers slid up her calf and his voice grew silky. ‘I can give love and protection to you and your sons. I want you now, Elysabeth. Lie with me, m’duck. Please. I’m desperate for you.’

  A nineteen-year-old husband like Grey, even if he was her sons’ uncle, would expect her to put his needs first. But she was nearly five years older than him, ten years a wife, with children who needed her full love.

  ‘I cannot betray John. Nor should you. Dear God, he’s only been dead a few months.’

  Grey let go of her, his mouth a sullen arc of disappointment. He had always wanted what John had, she suspected. The title. The lands. Her. Now, she was the only possibility – consolation for losing the rest.

  ‘Tell me, John’s wife,’ he exclaimed, ‘which one of us is his betrayer? The brother who is offering to care for his sons or the foolish wife spurning protection for them? Think about it, Elysabeth. Think hard! You came with no land and you may find yourself leaving with none if Mother has her way.’ He slapped her horse’s rump, knowing it would carry her roughly, and shouted after her, ‘You’ll keep your beloved Astley if you marry me. I’ll make certain of it.’

  And if she did not marry him?

  Elysabeth

  24th April 1461

  Astley Hall, Warwickshire

  ‘My lady!’

  Elysabeth dragged her attention from the lamb carcass in the dewy grass at her feet. Why was Tamsin beckoning her so urgently across the meadow? Nodding to her shepherd to deal with the poor mauled beast, she picked up her skirts and, avoiding the dew-spangled spider webs, started briskly back across the field. She felt sad, angry, vulnerable. After the loss of so many lambs in the snow, she could ill afford losing any of her flock to a village dog pack or a hungry fox; the dark side of the manor ledger bore too few entries.

  Tamsin was urging Dickon over the stile. ‘Men, Mama!’ he was shouting as he ran towards her.

  Visitors! Well, even though her larder was meagre, it would be good to share a flagon of wine with somebody. The neighbours had not come near her since her return and running Astley had left her no moments for any pastime. Her domain was neither large nor remarkable, just a fortified manor house and farm, surrounded by fields and woods, barely close to anywhere save the small town of Nuneaton, but the land was flat and easy for the plough. For Elysabeth, it was heaven after the purgatory of Groby. But this heaven required labour and servants needed wages and…losing a lamb…St Jude, that poor creature did not need to die.

  ‘Now, what’s all this lather, sweetheart?’ Elysabeth sighed, putting an arm around Dickon’s shoulders.

  ‘No lather, see.’ He blinked up at her with his owl’s eyes and lifted his forearms. ‘I always rinse all the soap off when I wash. Every morning. Always.’

  A deeper sigh escaped her. Soap was soon going to be something she could not afford and Dickon seemed to take people’s words at their most basic meaning.

  ‘Mistress Tamsin says hurry!’ he announced, striding ahead.

  She followed him over the stile. For a glorious moment, she wondered if the visitor could be her eldest brother, Anthony, who had vaguely promised a visit on his way home if the new Yorkist king freed him with a pardon.

  ‘Is it one of your uncles who has come?’

  ‘No, men!’ In Dickon’s concise vocabulary that might mean anyone – from knight to itinerant peddler. Times were still hurlyburly; it was not unknown for some swaggering bully of a knight to come pestering a young widow. Hand in hand, she and Dickon scrambled down across the dry moat and up to the postern gate. Tense now, she untied her waistcloth and smoothed her skirts, wishing she were not so plainly arrayed.

  The courtyard was full of horses. No brother of hers could afford an entourage like this.

  ‘Go to your bedchamber, Dickon, and stay there. Go!’

  Pausing beside the hall’s carved screen that hid the entrance to the buttery, her eyes went wide with shock. A dozen or more men-at-arms in kettle helms and brigadines were ranged around her hall. Their commander, a man in his fifties, was seated on John’s chair of estate with her best flagon at his elbow, and her steward seemed to be undergoing an interrogation. The stranger, noting her arrival, flicked her servant away and rose to his feet. He was clad in a long, murrey cote which scarcely met across his dove-grey stomacher, and upon his immense fur collar lay a clanky chain of office. His buttonhole eyes and patrician cheekbones reminded her of the celibate tyrant who had once been her brothers’ tutor. Some men seemed born irritable and this was clearly one of them.

  Tamsin materialised at her elbow from the shadows. ‘The Sheriff of Coventry, John Savage,’ she warned, her hand lifted to mask a false cough. ‘We’ve given him refreshment.’

  What in God’s name did this old cur want at Astley? With a creak of leather boots, a jingle of spurs and an assessing eye, he was sauntering across to inspect her.

  Elysabeth gave him a mid-curtsey and received a lift of peppery eyebrows at her simple
dress. He was having a good stare at her bosom as well.

  ‘Good day to you, my lord.’

  Her visitor was also well practised in disdain. ‘I am seeking the relict of Sir John Grey. Who might you be, mistress?’

  ‘The relict,’ she answered with equal frostiness as she rose to face him.

  His eye slits broadened. At least he removed his liripiped hat and dipped his balding head at her.

  ‘What, pray you, sir, is your business with me?’

  ‘The King’s business, madame. I am the new sheriff. I understand you have Sir John Grey’s sons here with you?’ The inquiry, unexpected, puzzling, drew blood.

  ‘Yes,’ she replied, trying to stay calm while her anxious thoughts were running amok. Christ forbid, the king would take them from her.

  ‘Let them be summoned hither, madame.’ The sheriff looked round at her steward, ‘And you, sirrah, assemble the servants forthwith!’

  ‘My lord, surely—’ she began, but he ignored her.

  ‘Some fine arras you have here.’ The jerk of a sharp chin towards the ‘Hunting of the Hart’ tapestry rang alarm bells in her head.

  ‘A wedding gift from my grandmother, the daughter of the Duke of Andria,’ she informed him, and watched the man’s thumbs waggle behind his back as he stood in front of it.

  ‘Not Flemish then?’

  ‘Italian.’

  ‘Not worth so much then.’ Christ’s Mercy, he was assessing her possessions as though she was not the widow but the deceased. ‘Your family are not born here, then?’

  ‘My mother is Jacquetta, Duchess of Bedford.’ As soon as she said it, she knew she had been set up like a quintain to tilt at. The sheriff’s mouth serifed into a smirk.

  ‘Ah yes, the foreign woman who married her servant.’ The shaft of the insult cut in deeper still as he added: ‘And here I take it is her grace’s grandson.’ He looked past Elysabeth with a sneer. ‘Master Grey, is it?’

  Tom had arrived. There was no mistaking him in the proud tilt of head as he halted in the doorway behind his father’s chair and stared at the sheriff as an equal. After the round-shouldered, keepaway-from-me misery of the last two months, this stance was a surprise to Elysabeth, but to her shame, he was not even wearing a doublet over his gipon. He met her appalled glance with a defiant quirk of mouth as he led his small brother across to salute their visitor. Mind, he made his bow to the sheriff with sufficient grace. Poor Dickon, however, mimicked his older brother to such perfection, even down to the tight smile, that the men-at-arms broke into laughter.

  Embarrassed, Elysabeth gestured the boys across to join her and unhappily watched the last of her household being sheep-dogged into line.

  ‘All here?’ Stretching his neck with the importance of a rooster surveying the henhouse, the sheriff perched his spectacles on his nose and drew a thick parchment from his belt. The servants hushed their muttering. Only Tom stood with his arms defiantly folded and one heel turned nonchalantly in, just like John in a testy humour.

  ‘In the name of the King, by the powers invested in me by his highness, I am here to proclaim that “the property of the attainted traitor, John Grey, Knight, late styling himself Lord Ferrers, is confiscate to the crown.”’

  Christ in Heaven! Elysabeth’s first thought was for Tom. He was still holding his head proudly but she could see his jaw was clenched. God give us strength, she prayed, as the pompous voice droned on:

  ‘“All manors belonging to the said traitor are to be seized and any coin, plate and other moveable are to be yielded to the cro—”’

  ‘Excuse me!’ Tom cut in. The sheriff turned his head so sharply, the spectacles skewed. ‘Your pardon, Sheriff,’ her son persisted haughtily, ignoring the man’s outrage, ‘but there is a part I find confusing.’

  ‘Which part, boy?’ Sarcasm underscored each word. ‘I should have thought it was plain to anyone of intelligence.’

  ‘The part about the king, sir. There are two kings in England. Which one sent you?’

  Two of the young grooms in the back row of servants sniggered. The nearest men-at-arms clapped hands to their sword hilts and, Elysabeth, although she loved Tom for this show of courage, wished he had held his tongue.

  ‘Then maybe this next part will make it clearer since it is addressed to you, boy.’

  ‘And I have no wish to hear it, Master Sheriff. Mother, tell these men to leave Astley at once.’ Oh, he sounded so like his father.

  ‘Seems we have a traitor’s nest of fledglings as well.’ The sheriff opened the second folded parchment and glared at Tom. ‘I hope the following is clear to you, Master Grey.

  ‘“Let the traitor’s sons be held excluded from the inheritance. Let them forever be paupers, and let their father’s infamy attend them always. Let them never attain to any honours nor be permitted to take any oath. Let them be forever in such poverty and squalor that death will be a comfort to them and life a torture.”’ He cast an eye at the shocked faces of the servants. ‘“And we hereby command also that whoever shall be so rash as to intercede with us in their favour shall be infamous and without pardon.”’ He looked across at Tom as though inviting some witty comment but it never came.

  Her son was white with shock.

  ‘Right, back to your work, all of you!’ The sheriff swung round to Elysabeth. ‘I was, of course, merely extemporising on the political treatise by John of Salisbury. Never hurts to put a young gentleman like this in his place.’ He turned back to her sons. ‘You’d have been imprisoned for your father’s sins in ancient times, Thomas Grey. Treachery is the most heinous of sins.’ Directing a stern stare down at the boy, he added, ‘Your father would have had his insides yanked out on Tower Hill if he hadn’t been slain on the battlefield. You do not rebel against the lord’s anointed, ever! I’ll be watching from now on to make sure you behave!

  ‘As for you, madame,’ he declared, handing her the writ, ‘by the end of this day you will remove yourself and your children from this house. You may carry away your clothes and personal items but no bed hangings, coverlets and napery. I am allowing you two sumpters, an ambler, and a pony for the boys, or is there an ass that would suit you better, Master Grey? The rest of the horses remain with the property.’

  ‘You expect us to leave Astley?’ Elysabeth exclaimed, her hand warningly on Tom’s forearm. ‘But this is my dower house, sir.’

  ‘Not any more, Lady Grey.’

  ‘Speak to my brother-in-law, Sir Edward Grey, my lord. He was witness to my husband’s promise at the church door. By law a widow is entitled to a third of her husband’s property and goods.’

  ‘None of my business. Matter for the courts. Begin, lads, take that for a start.’ He pointed his riding crop at the silver salt.

  ‘But that was part of my dowry from my parents,’ Elysabeth protested, barring the soldiers’ way.

  ‘Oh, I’m sure every blessed thing in this house was,’ he countered cynically. ‘Prove it, ma’am. Come and visit me with the evidence and I’ll have your property returned. Now step aside if you please or I’ll order my men to carry you to the courtyard while we finish our business. How about you make haste to your bedchamber and start packing? I’m sure you don’t want my men rifling through your underlinen.’

  ‘This is most unjust!’ Oh God, she felt like a lamb bleating at a pack of wolves. She stared down at the words of the writ, searching for a clause that might exonerate her.

  Tom was slack-jawed in disbelief beside her as the soldiers dragged a trestle across to the wall so they might dislodge the Hart tapestry. ‘Don’t let them do this, Mother! Send someone for Uncle Grey. At once, Mother!’ He tugged hard at her arm but Elysabeth could only shake her head, too choked to find her voice. ‘Then what about Grandfather Woodville? Can he not help us? Mother! Mama!’

  ‘Grandfather is still a prisoner, Tom. There’s nothing we can do. Read it!’ She unhappily handed him the copy of his father’s attainder. He scanned it down to the signature of Richard, Earl of Warwi
ck, and a half-dozen other knights of Parliament.

  ‘If I was a man already, they would not dare.’

  ‘Oh, Tom,’ she whispered, turning to him and holding him by the forearms, ‘you were man enough today, I assure you, but we cannot gainsay the law. I’ll apply to Chancery for my dower rights and, meantime, we shall go straight to Groby.’

  ‘A pox on this bloody Earl of Warwick!’ Tom spat upon Richard Neville’s signature. ‘We all know it’s him who has done this to us. It’s him who rules the kingdom not the—’

  ‘Thomas! Hold your tongue! Shall you make matters worse for us?’ Tears misting her eyes, she stared at her son, so old for his years, with loving sadness. She and John had failed the boy. All his inheritance gone. Yet at least this disaster had jerked Tom out of the dark silence that had dogged him since the day that Dickon had been injured.

  ‘Bad man. Can’t take that!’ Dickon was tugging the back of the sergeant’s surcote as he unloaded the aumery.

  ‘Get away from me you, little runt!’

  ‘Don’t hit him!’ Elysabeth grabbed her son away.

  ‘Ha, bit gormless, is he, mistress?’

  ‘He injured his head in a fall,’ she stated, disliking the fellow’s lewd stare.

  ‘Jesu, your problems don’t come by halves, do they, lady? Listen,’ he drew so close, she could smell garlic and rotting teeth. ‘Seems a shame to take everything from a pretty widow like you. How about you say what you want and we can stow it for you. Come out to the stable for a few minutes and seal the bargain.’ He jutted his hips forward in case she was simple as well.

  ‘You mistake your quarry, sirrah. I’m too proud to beg.’

  Elysabeth

  24th April 1461

  Groby Hall, Leicestershire

  But she was coming close to beggary, she realised, as she rode into the courtyard at Groby at dusk and relinquished the reins of the ambler to one of the grooms.

  ‘Elizabeth? Boys? This is a surprise.’ Was it? Grey’s voice was too cool, too empty of astonishment, as he strode out from the front door and gave her a half-bow. They did not embrace. Clearly, her rejection of him at Bradgate still rankled. He stared at the packhorses. ‘Why are you back here so soon? Mother’s wedding is not until next month. Is there illness at Astley?’