I, Richard Plantagenet: Book One: Tante le Desiree

by J. P. Reedman

  “God’s looks, woman, you’re near smothering him,” I said to Mistress Collins.

  “Papa,” little Ned said, with a small cough, and he tried to hold out his hand, which was swathed in huge fur mittens.

  “Give him to me.” I took Ned from Mistress Collins and Mistress Cooper, and pushed back the suffocating furs so that he could breathe a bit easier. Ned smiled at me, and then grinned…he had the dimple Anne always said I had in my cheek, but which I fervently denied.

  “Ponies?” he asked. Like his father, Ned loved horses and never tired of watching them or stroking their noses. Soon I would have to find him a sturdy, placid pony and begin teaching him to ride. You really could not start such training too soon. I would ask the monks of Jervaulx to find a suitable beast next time I visited to increase my own stud of horses.

  “No ponies, not tonight, Edward…you will just have to wait and see what I there is to be seen.”

  “Will it be magic?” he asked. Recently he was much entranced by wonder-tales of Merlin and the like.

  “It will seem like it.” I slipped my hand into his furry hood and ruffled his soft curls. “I promise you.”

  Led by a string of servants bearing lanthorns, the feasters exited the frosty bailey and trudged out into the fields behind the castle. I walked first, carrying Edward in my arms, Anne at my side. Everyone was whispering, wondering what merriment the Duke of Gloucester had planned. The ladies sniffled, tripping on their hems in the dark; I could hear them complaining about being cold.

  Facing the open land where the old castle once stood, I halted and a little dais was set up for my family and me. I sat down, little Ned squirming upon my lap, holding fiercely to my cloak but with his small face shining with excitement.

  “What’s this all about, Gloucester?” Lord Scrope was a bit tipsy, clinging to his goblet as if he feared someone would rip it from his fingers. “Dragging us out here, freezing….didn’t even have the time to put on my gloves!” He sniffed the air, suddenly suspicious. “What’s that smell? I’m sure it’s gunpowder!”

  I just smiled mysteriously. “You’ll find out in good time.”

  Out of the shadows marched a band of men with ash-smeared faces. They were uniformly clad in green, with ivies and mistletoe and evergreen boughs curling round feathered hats. These strangers were specialists in an unusual art, and at great cost, I had hired them for this occasion…John Howard had guided me to their master after hiring their company for his own feasts. I heard my guests whispering in consternation once again; they had heard the newcomers talking amongst themselves, and deduced that they were foreign. Not even foreign as in from Devon, but not even native to England.

  Sombrely the green-clad men rolled kegs and other equipment out into the snowy fields, while the revellers craned to see what these unsavoury strangers were up to.

  “Gloucester, this is extraordinary,” huffed Scrope. The tip of his chilled nose glowed fiercely red in the torchlight. “You had better not have dragged me out into the cold just to show off some new canon or other.” Behind him, I spotted Rob and Joyce Percy, laughing.

  One of the Green Men in the field lifted his gloved hand. My servants downed their torches; the flames died hissing in the snow.

  For a moment, there was naught in all the world but darkness and silence, with the great cumbrous bulk of Middleham castle lying at our backs. Then, suddenly, a crackling noise split the silence and there was an explosion…The sky was filled with flames and showering sparkles of light.

  Wyldfire….

  Some of the ladies gave little screams and darted behind their husbands. Little Ned on my knee gave a shriek of utter delight and clapped his hands.

  The firemasters, the Green Men, surged forward again, working their arcane magic. Two more explosions rent the night as two burning columns twisted and danced, melting the snow at their feet. Ash and sparks showered onto the firemasters’ feathered hats and I remembered how very dangerous their chosen profession could be. Often they were injured, even horribly burned, for our entertainment…their pay was well-earned for their lives were often short.

  Another series of explosions rent the shadows, lighting up the night, the snow, the stern walls of the castle. Flaming cartwheels rolled across the meadow, spewing flames that hissed and spat until the wheels tumbled over to be extinguished in the snow. An image of St Catherine upon her Wheel was painted on the last; she went up in smoke just as the tortured Catherine went to heaven.

  Now that they had ceased to be affrighted by the noise and flame, the onlookers were enjoying themselves despite the freezing weather. The servants brought out platters of sweetmeats and baked fruit from the kitchens, and rolled out barrels of wine from the cellars, and the Duke of Gloucester’s Christmas feast was in full swing once more.

  The firemasters worked furiously, dashing through the gunpowder mist that covered the field to complete their display in a grand finale.

  One huge blast sounded and a ball of fire, trailing light like a comet, soared up into the heavens. The fields, the trees lit up, surreal, golden; the night was like day, the clouds burnished, the snow aflame. The Wyldfire soared so high it seemed almost to touch the moon, which peered shyly through a gap in the clouds. Burning, it hung suspended in the sky, glimmering brighter than all the attendant stars…like the one Star long ago that led the Three Wise Men to the birthplace of the Christ-child.

  “Behold!” a voice shouted, and down from the castle sallyport came three of the maskers dressed as Balthazar, Melchoir and Gaspar, the Three Kings who gave homage to Christ on the night of His birth. Tall jagged crowns they wore, and robes that glittered with paste jewels; in their hands they carried wooden caskets meant to contain the gifts for the holy child—frankincense, myrrh and gold.

  Circling and weaving through the crowds, they cried boldly into the winter’s night,

  “I see him, but not now;

  I behold him, but not near;

  A Star shall come out of Jacob;

  A Sceptre shall rise out of Israel,

  And batter the brow of Moab,

  And destroy all the sons of tumult.”

  The crowd began to clap, much pleased by the arts of the firemasters and the mummers, while little Ned was squirming on my lap, trying to get a better view of the Wisemen as they traipsed and cavorted across the winter-bitten landscape.

  In the heavens, the ball of wyldfire went out as swiftly as it had flared to life, and the strange lambent glow that illumed the trees, the snow, the clouds, vanished. Shadows swept over Middleham and blue-black night enfolded castle, hill and town. The moon stared down with its pale eye as the clouds separated and ran eastward like hurrying ghosts.

  “A fair Christmas to all,” I whispered as the crowds departed, seeking warmth…and more food and drink. The response to the wyldfire pleased me, even if Scrope’s nose had suffered frostbite, and I was filled with elation to think that the day of the birth of the Christ Child was upon us. I held my own little child; excitement over, he was growing sleepy, his head on my shoulder. Carefully I handed him over to nurse Jane Collins, and told her to return him forthwith to Anne Idley, the Mistress of the Nursery.

  I took Anne’s arm and slowly processed back toward the castle drawbridge. I knew, just knew, that Christ’s blessings would be upon us this season and in all the days of our lives to come. The hour of Midnight Mass, the Angel’s Mass, was drawing nigh, and all day tomorrow the bells of St Alkelda’s would ring out in joy…

  “My lord! My lord.” Someone was shaking my shoulder. I rolled over, half hanging over the edge of my bed, coverlets twined round my waist and legs. My temples throbbed; the feasting and revelry had continued after the wyldfire display had ended, and although we broke for Mass, we had returned to celebration for a while thereafter. Anne was not with me; weary, for she always tired easily, she had seen Edward back to bed and attended mass, but then retired to her own quarters, while I conducted a drinking contest with Rob Percy and Miles Metcalfe. I was
not sure who won.

  “What is it, Andrew?” I squinted up at a young squire who stood with a taper in his hand. He was huffing and puffing as if he had run a race and his face was all screwed up.

  “My lord…it’s Duchess Anne! You must go to her at once!”

  I was out of bed in an instant. My squires leapt from their sleeping-pallets and tried to dress me; with an oath, I pushed their flailing hands aside, flung on a robe and raced into the hallways of the castle. My mind was full of awful thoughts, as it often was—death could come so suddenly to the great as well as the meek, and it often came in cruel midwinter. I thought of my father, so recently laid in his proper grave, and of Edmund; Christmas had just gone when they perished at Wakefield, and celebration became mourning, and for me and George, bitter exile.

  With selfish guilt, I found myself not thinking of my wife, although it was to her side I was summoned, but of my son. God help me, if anything untoward should happen to him, with his chest was so weak like his mother’s…

  I reached the solar. It seemed dark and cheerless, the Christmas greenery all wilted, the air scented with old smoke. Anne and her mother were locked in an embrace, weeping.

  “Anne, what is it?” I cried. “Where is Edward?”

  She came towards me, head bare, eyes brimming with unshed tears. Her soft hands were on my arms, calming me. “In bed, husband. Asleep. He is fine. It is…it is…”

  She burst into fresh sobs, and I noticed for the first time a messenger standing in the room. Daubed with mud from head to foot, grey with weariness, on his cloak he wore a badge of Clarence’s Black Bull.

  “It is my sister, Isabel,” Anne managed to gasp. “She is dead.”

  Sad for my wife’s loss, I bowed my head. How swift death could come, even to those seemingly young and hale. “What happened?”

  I guessed it before Anne said it. “Isabel was with child again; she bore a son. They named him Richard, but she never recovered her strength after the birth. Three days ago, she cried out that she was in great pain…and then she swiftly died. It must have been the childbed fever….”

  “My daughter, my poor fair daughter…” Anne Beauchamp’s face was sickly, as if she might collapse and die herself.

  “Madam, be seated.” I guided the older woman to a stool for fear she might fall and injure herself.

  I thought of Isabel, who had been around my age. Some claimed she was the prettiest Neville sister, with her winsome face and deep, greenish eyes. I did not know her all that well, save as the wife of my brother, but did remember her at Middleham when we were young; she could sing and dance. I wondered how George would cope with her death; in his own way, I suspected he had loved her, though George’s ‘love’ could have a bitter bite. Certainly, there was never even a rumour that he found pleasure in any bed but hers.

  “Isabel is to be buried in Tewkesbury Abbey.” Anne wiped tears from her face with her sleeve. She looked suddenly older; in one stroke, she had lost her childhood companion and the last vestiges of her youth with her. “She will lie in repose for three weeks before the high altar.”

  I took Anne by the shoulders, turning her to face me. “You would fain go to see her there?”

  She nodded bleakly.

  “Then we will go, despite the weather. But today, my wife, it is Christmas Day and the Nativity of Our Lord. It is nigh dawn—soon we must attend Shepherd’s Mass and later the Mass of the Divine Word. Go, bind up your hair and dress in your best gown, and be the brave Lady of Middleham for your people.”

  She nodded bravely. Above us, the bells pealed out, no longer sounding good tidings but the somber note of the passing bell.

  Inside the abbey of Tewkesbury, we stood in silence before Isabel’s pall. Ahead the high altar gleamed; on either side towered the painted tombs of Anne and Isabel’s Beauchamp ancestors, their graceful vaulted canopies lit by hundreds of candles. Beneath our feet, unmarked, lay the shallow grave of Edward of Westminster, Anne’s first husband, slain in the field at Tewkesbury. I had no qualms at walking atop his bones, wherever he lay, for the harm he had caused her.

  The air was heavy with the scent of burning incense and the tallow of the candles. It masked, though not quite well enough, the scent of decaying flesh that emanated from Isabel’s bier. She had been dead a full month…and in that time her baby, named Richard for my father, had also sickened and died. Around her towered the funeral hearse, banners with the Ragged Staff of Warwick and the Bull of Clarence hanging over it, swaying in chill breezes that crept beneath the abbey doors.

  Isabel lay with her hands folded on her breast like a carven effigy atop a tomb, but not the artist’s effigy of a beautiful, pious woman, but a momento mori corpse, marked by death, showing that as she was so too would all men be. Her face had withered, turned livid, showing the shape of the skull beneath the skin; they had embalmed her but her left cheek was mottled and sunken. Cere linen held her jaw shut to keep it from death’s scream; her lips were purple lines, bloodless. A beautiful girl, once so alive…I had seen her dance at George Neville’s inauguration feast. Now, clay to return to the earth, to know no more until Judgment Day.

  Anne was weeping quietly. I did not touch her, comfort her; what words could I say in the face of such loss? I knelt beside Isabel’s bier and hung my head in silent prayer.

  I could not concentrate, however. Isabel’s death had not been the only one this hard winter. Even as George was made a widower, my sister Margaret in Burgundy was made a widow. Her husband Charles the Bold had fallen whilst besieging the town of Nancy in one of his usual ill-thought out escapades. Deep snow had fallen as the battle raged and many days passed before the body of Charles was found, welded to the ice in the midst of a frozen pool. Stripped naked, his head was cloven in two and his body pierced by Swiss pikes. Wolves had torn his flesh and he was almost unrecognizable; his physician had identified him only by his missing front teeth and long, twisted toenails.

  Charles’s death was a Godsend to Louis the Universal Spider. Immediately he declared that Burgundy had reverted to the Crown. His armies were growing, waiting to invade Burgundian territory. Edward was worried; he had sent a summons to attend a Great Council upon the 13th day of February. He feared that Charles’s death would mean the end of the monetary tribute agreed to at Picquigny, for there would not be the power of Burgundy to enforce payment. The peace Edward had sold his honour for now seemed shaky indeed.

  We left the Abbey; but not before Anne first kissed Isabel’s cold, mottled cheek in farewell. The surrounding sea of candles flickered, sank low, before flaring again; Isabel’s drained lips seemed to smile…or grimace.

  Then we were outside, in the grey afternoon light, a stark sky above, and crows cawing in winter-barren trees. With our entourage, we rode out of Tewkesbury to Malvern, where I was Lord of Malvern Chase through Anne’s Beauchamp inheritance.

  Within the leafless woods, we stayed at the crumbling little castle of Hanley, set upon the banks of the half-frozen river. Anne lay quiet in my arms at night, cold, cold as her dead sister. I tried to bring life to her, to warm her but her heart was shattered, even though she knew Isabel, a good woman who suffered much, was now in the presence of God.

  We went from Hanley to the poor priory of St Giles, which stood in a hilly green region outside the town of Malvern. It was a place known to Anne; after Tewkesbury, a crazed Marguerite had ridden there dragging with her Anne and Lady Katherine Vaux, both of whom were widowed that day. Having lost her only son, Marguerite had collapsed in grief and become unable to ride on toward sanctuary in Wales. Sir William Stanley had found all the women there and taken them prisoner.

  Anne sat on her gentle palfrey, breath white before her lips as she stared at the tall tower of the priory church. Below it, the monks’ dwellings were low and mean, the yard muddy and full of beasts.

  “Come away,” I told her. “We shall ride onto Malvern Magna. There are enough hard memories for you, wife, without adding to them by gazing upon this unw
holesome place.”

  But Anne would make a gift to those uncouth monks, for taking her in and giving her meat and drink all those years ago, and so she went to the prior and handed him money and candles for the altar. He took them with surly bad grace, scowling, and I wished I could punish him for his rudeness, but I merely narrowed my eyes and shot him a look that told him he sailed near the wind. He took Anne’s gift, bowed, and retreated.

  We then fared on to Great Malvern, where Prior Bone of the Priory of St Mary the Virgin and St Michael the Archangel greeted us. Unlike his fellows at St Giles, Bone was a polite and learned man who greeted us with courtesy and feasted us well in the guesthouse. Later, he personally took us to view the priory. Anne tried her best to smile and rubbed her cheeks to give them colour. St Mary the Virgin was known for its tile work and I admired how the tiles were set not just in the floor but in the walls too. Many of the windows were magnificent, but I did notice the northern one was missing many panes. The Blessed Virgin was headless, and the local Saint Werstan missing his feet. I pointed this out to Prior Bone.

  The churchman hung his head in shame. “Alas, your Grace. For all that the location of our House is beautiful, we get many storms that rush down from the nearby hills and shake the abbey windows until the glass cracks. It is a situation that brings us great sorrow, but we are not a rich House to make constant repairs.”

  I stroked my chin. “I think we can do something about the Blessed Virgin’s head…”

  In gratitude for the hospitality shown me by the monks of St Mary and St Michael’s, I told Prior Bone I would replace the battered North Window—a gift from Anne and I. The stained glass would show a Doom scene, with St Michael holding his Scales aloft, and the Virgin there to intercede for sinners and set her hand upon the Scales. High above the Doom would be my arms, to tell all-comers hundreds of years later that Richard Duke of Gloucester had this glorious window made. Anne’s arms would also have a place of prominence, to show the Duchess of Gloucester likewise supported the good house of Malvern. Amidst the scenes of judgment, my Boar would peer forever, along with Anne’s Bear.