“Nor will her former husband,” said Francis. “She claimed their marriage was unconsummated because he ah, could not rise to the occasion. Hence, she got a divorce. He on the other hand got eternal embarrassment.”
“Well, I have learned she has eyes on a new husband!” I spat. “Thomas Lynom!”
“Lynom!” yelped Rob. “Surely this is a mistake!”
“No mistake, Rob. He’s been visiting her in Ludgate prison, having had an eyeful of her charms when she did her penance in the streets. He believes he is in love with her and has asked for my permission to marry the wench! Christ Almighty, love is indeed blind. Jane’s fair enough to gaze upon, if you like that sort of blowzy creature, but she…she’s a harlot! Ah, what am I going to do in regards to this matter?”
“Say ‘no’?” said Francis quietly.
I groaned. “I want to say no, but do I have that right?”
“You are the king. You do.” Frank gazed up at me with solemn eyes.
“But would it be morally right for me to refuse? I remember what it was like to have the woman I wanted to marry hidden away from me, beyond my reach. I burned with anger and frustration every day. You surely remember my moods, Rob, Francis; I was peevish and disagreeable! Lynom is my Solicitor General; if he grows to hate me because I am obstinate over Jane Shore, I may lose his love and then his good service, and I do not want that to happen.”
“But the woman was a traitor, my Lord King,” murmured Catesby. “It was not just her harlotry that was the problem. It was that she ran messages between Hastings and the Queen; effectively, she was involved in their plots against your person.”
“I know, I know…but she is but a woman, and a woman of a certain kind at that. Surely she has learned her lesson in Ludgate by now.” I slammed my hand against the wall, wretched and frustrated, still dismayed and unbelieving at Lynom’s folly. “Ah, what the devil, I will give my consent, but I will try to get the Bishop of Lincoln to persuade Lynom not to do this ridiculous deed.”
Turning on my heel, I motioned to John Kendall who was tying bundles of documents ready for dispatch. “Kendall, I want a letter to go to John Russell, our Chancellor. At once. Listen carefully and miss nothing…”
Furiously I began to pace the chamber, dictating: It is shown unto us that our servant and solicitor, Thomas Lynom, marvellously blinded and abused with the late wife of William Shore, now being in Ludgate by our commandment, has made contract of matrimony with her, and intends, to our full great marvel, to proceed to effect the same. We, for many reasons, would be very sorry that he should be so disposed, and pray you send for him, to exhort and stir him to the contrary. And if you find him set utterly upon marrying her, then, if it stands within the law of the church, we will be content…
Once the ink on the parchment was dry, and it was rolled and sealed and on its way to John Russell, Francis glanced over at me with a querulous expression. “Do you truly think Chancellor Russell will manage to dissuade Lynom from his folly?”
“No,” I said, “I do not. But if the marriage all goes ill, no one can claim I did not try to stop him!”
A happier wedding was arranged in the following days. All winter I had been thinking of my daughter Katherine, who was now fourteen years old and ripe for marriage. In York, I saw she had acquired much beauty, and that men looked at her not as a child but as a woman. It was time to find a fitting husband for her, worthy of her Plantagenet blood.
William Herbert, the Earl of Huntingdon, was a possible candidate. He had proved himself loyal during Buckingham’s rebellion, and in gratitude I had made him chief Justice of Wales. William was a year younger than me, and a widower, having been married to one of the Woodville brood, Mary. In personal appearance, he appeared pleasant enough to me, and hoped Katherine would find him so too.
An indulgent father, I would not force Kytte if she objected to the match, but would remind her of her duties as a daughter and hope for the best.
Herbert was most pleased with the suggestion, for not only would it make him close to the King through marriage but also because I offered to grant him lands worth a thousand marks and at the same time double his rather meagre income. Despite holding the handsome fortress of Raglan, he was the poorest of England’s earls.
“If Katherine will have you, you will want for naught,” I told the Earl, looking him up and down. Decent teeth, adequate skin, clean features…and, more important, no rumours of immorality or of cruelty to his first wife. He had one daughter from Mary, named Elizabeth; I hoped she might be a biddable girl and be friends with Kytte should she wed the child’s father.
“You cede unto me a great honour. I am grateful, my Lord King.”
“You had better be. If this marriage goes ahead, and I hear my daughter is distressed in any way by any aspect of your behaviour…Well, make her weep at your peril!”
Huntingdon swallowed nervously. “If she will accept me, your Grace, I swear she will be as a precious jewel, admired and never harmed.”
“Hmmm,” I said. “I will take that as a sworn oath and will not forget it.”
Missives were then sent out to Katherine at Sheriff Hutton, informing her that I proposed a marriage between her and the Earl of Huntingdon no later than Michaelmas. Oddly distressed, I watched the couriers ride away, and went to find Anne in the Queen’s chamber.
“Have I done wrong?” I inquired, flinging myself into a chair and fumbling with my rings in the awful manner I have, almost enjoying the pain as the bands cut my skin.
“In what way?” Anne asked, taking my hands in hers and stilling them between her own. “You are making a good match for your only daughter; what harm in that?”
“She’s not seen Herbert. She might hate him! She’s only fourteen!” The words burst from me in a troubled rush.
“Many girls wed at that age or little older. I was wed for the first time at fourteen,” Anne murmured, her eyes downcast.
“Yes, exactly, and how did you feel?”
“My feelings did not matter. I did my duty, as my father asked!”
“Aye and that turned out well, did it not?”
She jumped as if I had hit her, and I cursed myself as a clumsy fool. “Anne, forgive my rash words; I should not have brought up such a subject. It is just…” My mouth twisted in a wry smile. “It is just…Kytte is my little poppet and I want her to be happy.”
“And happy she shall be, I am sure. Any sensible girl would be pleased to make a match with the Earl, and if Katherine truly is not agreeable to it…her father the King is a kind and gracious lord and father and will surely find her another noble husband to suit both your tastes.”
“You speak sense, as ever, Anne.” I kissed the palm of her hand, while in my mind recalling my little daughter as a babe in the cradle I had ordered for her, when I was scarcely more than a boy. So tiny, with her dark curls and flushed cheeks and her minute fingers that curled round just one finger of mine. To this very day, Kytte still wore the pendant I had brought for her as a baby.
Jesu, it was terrifying to think that if she accepted Huntingdon’s suit and they were wed later this year, I might be a grandfather by the next!
The enemy was out! At last! And I was glad, so glad! Finally, at the beginning of March Elizabeth Woodville decided to emerge from sanctuary. What prompted her I know not; maybe being cooped up with a gaggle of bored, restive young girls had driven the former queen to distraction.
Still, it surprised me. She would bear me no love for the execution of Anthony and her son Richard; or for revealing her sham marriage and the bastardy of her children. If she had truly made an agreement with Margaret Beaufort that her eldest daughter should marry Henry Tydder, she must then also believe her sons were dead. Why would she trust me if that was the case? But it seemed she did.
I made certain that all of London knew that Dame Grey’s daughters had naught to fear from the King. The Lords Spiritual and Temporal gathered at my request, and I came before them and the city’s Mayor
and Aldermen, wearing my ermine cloak and other regal garments, and before them all, I said in a bold voice, as I gazed into their faces so that they could read the truth in my eyes:
“I, Richard, swear that if the daughters of Elizabeth Grey, late calling herself Queen of England, will come out of the sanctuary at Westminster, and be guided and ruled by me, then I shall see that they shall be in the surety of their lives and not suffer any hurt, but I shall put them into honest places of good name, where they will have all things requisite and necessary as my kinswomen, and I shall arrange their marriages to gentlemen born, and give them in marriage lands and tenements to the value of two hundred marks. And such gentlemen as might marry them I shall charge to love and entreat them, as wives and as my kin, and if they do so they shall avoid and eschew my displeasure.”
And so the girls came out of the sanctuary, bouncing like lambs in the spring sunshine, and were guided into the palace of Westminster to be bathed and dressed according to their status, while Elizabeth emerged in their aftermath, still proud and fair, though deathly pale, like a frosted lily. She did not join her daughters but was carried away by carriage to a humble manor house on the edge of London, where she would stay, under close watch, living on a small pension I agreed to bestow upon her.
Over the years, I had little chance to get to know these daughters of my brother; they were just a sea of bobbing golden heads to me. Now that they were taken into my care, I would endeavour to know them better and make good matches for them to benefit us all.
It would give me something to do, now that parliament was over and I had finished setting up the College of Arms in Cold Harbour, once the home of Lord Mayor John de Pulteney.
London had grown stale and flat since the heady day at the beginning of March when I presented the Heralds, whose cause I had espoused in my tenure as Duke of Gloucester, with their official Royal Charter, Literæ de incorporatione heraldorum. I was missing little Edward too—having attended his first parliament, he had travelled north again to Middleham. Upon his return home, he had written to me of his boredom and I knew he was growing far too old now to be kept away from the world.
I wrote back to little Ned and told him to be patient, that I should ride north soon with his lady-mother, and that I would send John Brown, master of the bears and apes in the Royal Bestiary, with some trained animals to entertain him while he waited for us. Martin the Jester would also be sent for his amusement.
My reason for heading north that spring was not for another progress, however, or even to see my beloved son. With gentler weather taming the tides, I assumed Henry Tydder might take the opportunity to mount his planned invasion, especially now that his with numbers were swelled by Buckingham’s rebels.
I decided the best place to await such an event would be Nottingham castle, one of the most stalwart fortresses in the realm and neither too far north nor too far south. But there was no hurry, not yet…our cavalcade moved east instead, towards the university town of Cambridge.
Even before I became King, I had always had close relations with the University of Cambridge. Twenty marks for the rebuilding of the college church I had given the college masters when I was Duke, and they had returned my generosity with kindness of their own, asking their learned doctors and bachelors of theology to commend me to their followers and pray for my soul. Once when I was in London they even sent a contingent to speak with me, despite floods and danger upon the wintertime roads, and when news of my victory over the Scots reached them, they held great celebrations in Cambridge’s streets.
Men were celebrating now, as Anne and I walked in grand procession amidst the golden buildings of the town. Radiant in red cloth of gold, my wife bestowed rents upon Queen’s College, while I gave unto the same a seal bearing a silver Boar. To King’s College I granted a sum of money to go towards completion of the unfinished building. Old Mad Henry VI had founded King’s and although Edward contributed a princely sum towards its upkeep and expansion, it seemed little work had taken place during his reign; the money had been squandered elsewhere by errant builders.
Such a situation was deeply unsatisfactory to me, so I instructed that building should resume in all haste, with severe penalties upon any who delayed the completion further. Already beautiful fan-vaulting had replaced more simple earlier designs, but I envisioned a further heightening of the roof, which would be made of finest oak, and more glorious decoration and painted glass windows of highest quality. My personal glazier would be summoned from London to see to it.
The visit to Cambridge was, to my mind, even more successful than that of last July to Oxford, and by the time our entourage left the town, wending its way toward the Bishop of Lincoln’s red brick palace at Buckden, I truly felt as if the tide had turned for me. The college had promised to say masses in perpetuity for my soul and Anne’s upon May 2, and to sing a requiem upon news of my demise.
If I had won the hearts and the respect of these serious, learned men, I could surely win those of the common people, and maybe, eventually, even the lords of the land, though they were always the hardest to please. Men of highest blood are, as I myself will admit, often consumed by our own pride …
Stern as death, Nottingham Castle rose like a fist into the sky. Pennants fluttered, the Boar and the Lions and Leopards leaping through the blue; wind shrieked and snickered over high masonry and around eroded gargoyles crouched on the seven bridges and seven gates crossing the inner bailey. The river sucked the foot of the hill, slow, sludgy, forming another barricade against any invaders. A place to shut out the world, and the threat of Henry Tydder.
The Old Keep, four square and frowning, rising high above all the other buildings inside the bailey, was still useful for meetings and banquets with its great hall and many chambers, but its apartments were no longer comfortable for modern living, and the stench from the ancient dungeons buried deep within the rock could grow unbearable in the heat.
So, seeking comfort, Anne and I sequestered ourselves in the Tower Edward had raised on the perimeter of the wall, making it the most beautiful of all towers in the castle. An octagonal structure of warm Gedling stone, the new tower projected beyond the curtain wall and overlooked the teeming town and the Queen’s private garden on a shallow plateau below.
After my accession, I had sent money to Nottingham architects in order to finish Ned’s work, building a half-timbered level on top of the existing stonework, complete with round wooden windows to match those wrought in stone below. With my additional level the tower now stood an immense hundred feet high, the most eminent building in the castle, its modern glory overshadowing even the imposing block of the Old Keep.
When I travelled, I always had troupes of minstrels with me, for Anne and I both enjoyed music, and after I had finished my work for the day, we dined together in our apartments, listening to the minstrels play, which drowned out the wind sobbing around such a high place.
I was tired. After the success of my first parliament, founding the Herald’s College and renewing work on King’s College, a relentless fire was kindled within me, igniting an almost manic eagerness to create, build, and change. I was stretching both mind and body to the limits of my endurance as I strove to be a masterful king.
One of my ongoing projects was to move the bones of Harry Six from Chertsey Abbey to Windsor. The reinterment would not take place until August but preparations had to begin now. People were beginning to venerate Henry as a saint and to claim miracles at his burial site. Whether this was true or not, I was taking no chances. If he was truly a saint, by obeying Ned’s orders, I had been witness to his martyrdom.
Another plan was to build a chapel on the field of Towton. Being but a child, I had not fought there, but I knew that in the aftermath of Edward’s greatest victory, the dead of both sides had been left to rot upon the field, piles and piles of men, heads and bodies split like ripe fruit, food for ever-hungry carrion birds. The people of the local villages suffered even twenty years later; summer brought
the sickly sweet stench and evil humours—green glowing lights hovered above the battlefield at dusk. Edward had not much cared for the dead but rather for the living, but I was different. I would build those slain warriors a chapel and have as many bodies and bones moved from their shallow graves to a more respectful resting place. Then they, and the villagers, could both find peace….
“You look deep in thought, weary...” Anne’s voice drifted to my ears, cutting through the soothing strains of a lyre.
I glanced over at her, suddenly uneasy. She was wearing a gown of deep blue; it made her fair skin glow like the alabaster the frequently decorated Nottinghamshire churches. Her headdress was likewise deep blue, as was the glittering veil that fell from it, and around her neck she wore the lozenge-shaped gold necklace given to her by my mother, Cecily, many years ago when they had studied the texts of the holy mystics together. The necklace was studded with a great dark sapphire and graven with the magic word Ananizapta, a charm against the falling sickness, and there were other words, in Hebrew and in Latin, for protection in childbirth.
But there was no sign of any quickening in my wife’s womb that would bring about the need for the latter spells, and Anne did not suffer the former malady, which my mother had on rare, frightening occasions that she said brought her ‘closer to God.’ However, it was not the fear of illness that gripped me. For some reason, the vast amount of deep blue she wore filled mean unnatural apprehension; it was considered a mourning colour amongst royalty.
“Anne, can you not change into garments that are more cheerful?” I asked in a low voice.
“If my Lord wishes,” she said, startled. “Do I not please your eye?”
“You please my eye, but you dress as for a funeral. Blue, Anne. Too much blue.”
“Oh fie, Richard,” she snapped, petulant as a little girl. “Blue suits me and such rules for dress are, well, old now. But if my lord king desires it, I will change my attire. What is your colour preference, husband? Sea-green? Orange? Yellow as a canary’s feathers?”
I, Richard Plantagenet: Book Two: Loyaulte Me Lie Page 21
