The King’s Sister

by Anne O'Brien

  ‘Do you think I care?’ I asked, when I could, for John was not content until he bore me off to my chamber where a tub of hot water led to much laughter and splashing.

  ‘I’m sure you don’t. You will always be Lancaster’s daughter. But I do.’

  Which confirmed everything I had said to my son about his father. But I loved him. Even when the heat and the insects wearied me beyond bearing I would be nowhere other than with him. The grime of campaigning suitably obliterated, we celebrated John’s homecoming with languid kisses, followed by less than languid embraces as we rediscovered old wounds and abrasions, and many new ones. Which reminded me of the perils of warfare, and I gave thanks for John’s return.

  The lines on my father’s brow deepened like furrows in a ploughed field with the passing of every week. Constanza, sharp and sleepless, devoted herself to prayer. Philippa wore her new robes with anxiety. John ate little and slept less.

  My father’s campaign to Castile, as many had predicted, proved disastrous for his and Constanza’s long cherished ambitions. Philippa might be satisfactorily wed to the King of Portugal, giving us a strong ally, but any diplomatic attempts to enforce Consanza’s claim to Castile died a terrible death, despite the initial success against Galicia. In a show of force our army invaded Leon, a kingdom owned by King John of Castile, only for despair to set in as our troops suffered. It was a time imprinted for ever on my memory, with its horrors of starvation, dysentery and heat that beat us into the ground. Our troops deserted, yet the Duke’s determination committed us to further warfare.

  Until John stalked into my chamber to announce in a tone that did not brook opposition or even discussion: ‘That’s an end to it. We are going home.’

  It shocked me, took me by surprise. It could not be. ‘No!’ The first clash of our married existence.

  ‘I say that we will.’

  ‘We cannot leave. You have a duty here.’ Would we really abandon the campaign? Abandon my father and the whole enterprise? Could the Constable of the army bow out of the whole enterprise with impunity?

  ‘We cannot stay.’ His face was set in even grimmer lines that were harshly delineated through loss of weight in the last weeks. ‘I came here to restore my reputation. I never will. The war is doomed and the Duke’s star is in the descendent. Every blind beggar at the church door can see that.’

  I was not persuaded. Was this cold ambition or rampant realism? Could nothing be resurrected from our present failure?

  Apparently not. ‘It’s over, Elizabeth.’ He prowled from one end of my chamber to the other, the violence of his passing wafting the delicate bed hangings into a shiver of silk embroidery. ‘We do nothing but waste men and money. It is indefensible to continue in what everyone must see as a lost cause.’

  ‘But the Duke …’

  John cast himself into a chair, then abandoned it to walk with increasing restlessness as he explained.

  ‘The Duke is blind to reality. Ask your sister’s royal husband. He sees the truth of it. He’s reluctant to promise more troops to a campaign that can never be won. My only hope is to put myself back in Richard’s eye and hope for a short memory and family loyalty to bring me back into his good books.’ His stare when he halted in front of me was inimical, in case I continued to oppose him. ‘Otherwise I will remain a poor, landless knight, selling his skills around Europe, barely able keep his wife in silk and his son in good horses as he grows.’

  So both ambition and realism, it seemed. I added my own immediate problem to his shoulders for good measure.

  ‘It could be worse than that, John. I am breeding again.’

  Emotion warred in his face as he gripped my hands tightly to drag me to sit beside him on the bed. ‘Even more reason to go.’ And when he still saw doubt in my face. ‘I know your reasons for staying. Your family will not travel back with us, but there is nothing here for me, and my increasing family. There is everything for us in England. That is where we belong. That is where we can make our mark and set down roots for our children.’

  I could see his reasoning, impeccable as ever. Self-serving as ever, many would say. Yet, releasing my hands from his, I went to the intricately traceried window from where I could look out over the parched hills, the pale sky. There was a choice to be made, but was it so momentous as I had first thought? I would leave Philippa to rule Portugal beside her husband, but that I had always known and accepted. If the campaign failed, the Duke would make a settlement to preserve his dignity and he too would return. So I imagined would Constanza if she was denied her birthright. Henry was in England with his wife Mary and a newborn son I had never seen. Then there was Richard, who might have grown into a stable maturity under the influence of capable and loving Anne. I could renew my connection with Dame Katherine in Lincoln, who would be charmed by my son and the forthcoming child. All the family I knew and loved to welcome me home. Everyone I knew at Kenilworth, my favourite home. What was to keep me here?

  Nothing. Nothing but the inevitability of failure. There was no difficult choice for me to make when family beckoned so strongly. Besides, John wanted to go home. He would never agree to leave me here and return alone, so why trouble myself over a decision that was already made in my mind and in reality?

  I returned to stand before him.

  ‘Are you sure about this?’

  ‘Never more sure. I’ve already spoken with the Duke.’

  ‘And he agrees?’

  ‘Reluctantly, but yes.’

  So all was arranged, with or without my blessing. But I could find no strong argument to offset the planning.

  ‘We will go home,’ I agreed, already mentally distancing myself from the silk-clad languid luxury of this Portuguese palace.

  And that is exactly what we did, after a lachrymose farewell with Philippa, a more stringent one with my father, and with safe conduct to travel through Castile to Gascony where we took ship. And home.

  ‘What will await us?’ I asked, my hand tucked in John’s arm as the coast of England came into view, a thin grey line on the horizon.

  ‘Promotion for me,’ John announced. ‘Richard will award my loyalty with land and a title. He’ll make me work hard for it, of course.’ Anticipation had grown stronger in him with each mile we covered towards England.

  And perhaps he was right. Any guilt I felt in what some would have said was a rat abandoning the sinking ship, any regrets at leaving Philippa, were swept away when we set foot on English shores, a bare twelve month since we had left. The Castilian problem would be settled without my presence. Now we had our own family to think of. Richard would welcome us, John would work hard to establish us, and all would be well. Our future unrolled before me, a time of royal approval when Sir John Holland would become one of the foremost men of the land.

  There was nothing to ruffle the waters of my serenity.

  Chapter Ten

  September 1397: Windsor Castle. Ten years later.

  ‘Now what do you suppose he is planning?’

  ‘Probably something not to our liking.’

  John’s sotto voce query was accompanied by an increasingly frequent saturnine expression, his tolerance for his young brother fraying around the edges. Standing in a crowd as we were, I hushed him discreetly. Since the unfriendly affair at Radcot Bridge, ten years ago now, there were changes in our King. It was like waiting for a thunderstorm to break out of a summer sky, without warning.

  John bowed as Richard’s eye fell on him. I curtsied as the royal observation passed to me. A wave of obeisance followed the King’s scrutiny. Richard had acquired heightened notions of his royal superiority.

  ‘He has something in mind,’ John continued, bending his head as if to survey the more restrained toes of his shoes as Richard’s attention moved on.

  ‘I know he has, but who will be the victim?’

  ‘The Lords Appellant?’ John had returned to watching his brother, with cat-like narrowing of his eyes.

  It would have to be. Richard d
etested the group of Lords Appellant, a small but powerful group, with a vicious fury. I sought out Henry’s solid figure in the crowd, since he was one of the five, but my brother appeared insouciant, calmly unaware of any undercurrents. Or, as I presumed, giving a good pretence. We were all tiptoeing round our King, and rightly.

  It had been a time of some anxiety, marking the years since John and I had returned from Castile, when Richard’s infatuation with the charms of Robert de Vere had reached its dangerous height. I remembered De Vere as little more than a youth, charming Richard, flattering him in the courtyard when my father had given me one of my first lessons in the importance of political allegiance. Richard had been well and truly snared, and de Vere, grown into even more charming and ambitious maturity, had been intent on consolidating his power with weasel words in Richard’s ear. And Richard, listening avidly, against all advice, had showered his favourite courtier with land and wealth, unable or unwilling to see the consequences. For as de Vere’s hold over Richard grew, it stirred resentment amongst the lords and magnates who expected the honours for themselves. Including my brother Henry who joined forces with our uncle of Gloucester, as well as the FitzAlan Earl of Arundel, Mowbray of Nottingham and the Beachamp Earl of Warwick. Five influential men, a puissant alliance against the King, the Lords Appellant made their demands to rid England of the King’s evil counsellors.

  Would Richard listen? Would he distance himself from de Vere, now preening as Duke of Ireland, and allow the counsels of his great magnates in the form of a commission instead? He would not.

  The result had been a battle, in the year before we had returned from Castile, where the Lords Appellant had defeated de Vere at Radcot Bridge, driving him into exile and forcing Richard into a bared-teeth compliance. So my brother and his associates had emerged triumphant with their curb on the young King’s powers, but Richard had never forgiven them. Richard might smile and ask advice but he was biding his time. I hoped that his new child bride would take his mind from his woes, but my knowledge of Richard warned that our King would not be compliant for ever.

  Yet in spite of the ripples on this political pond, this was a time of good humour and unity. Perhaps my suspicions were unfounded after all.

  ‘It is my wish to award a prize,’ Richard was announcing, ‘as a token of my esteem and appreciation for those who have graced my festivities.’

  Richard beamed at the assembled masses in the great dancing chamber at Windsor, all resplendent in silks and satins and feathers as was he. It was a celebratory feast, held by Richard to mark the ending of the session of parliament, and I had danced until my feet were sore. In those festive days and nights I sang to the lute and dulcimer and rode to the hunt, my heart tender, so great was my joy. Utter contentment, such as I had never believed would be mine, swaddled my emotions, as a mother would wrap her newborn child, for John was at my side and his satisfaction rubbed against me so that I acquired its glitter, as a silver bowl acquires a sheen from the polishing cloth.

  There was no shortage of partners with whom to hunt or dance, or willing knights to lead me into one of the formal processions. Not that I needed any. Did I not have John whose love remained the brightest star in my heaven, and always would be? And my children. I smiled when I read Philippa’s letters, bemoaning my lack of maternal doting. That was a thing of the past. I loved them dearly, this growing Holland family of ours, for as well as John’s adored heir, born in the heat of Portugal and now an energetic ten-year-old with an energy for the tournament that reminded me of a young Henry, we had three daughters, and a baby son of two years.

  ‘Who would have known that you would prove to be so fertile?’ John had remarked as he held his newest son, another John.

  ‘I’d rather we didn’t prove it again,’ I said, knowing there was no guarantee. Our love was as tight-knit as the day we had stood before my father and John had bargained for my hand.

  What a superb family we were that autumn.

  Richard, bedecked and bejewelled, recovered from the death of his beloved Anne three years previously, now had a child bride Isabella de Valois on whom to lavish glittering rings, and with her the glory of a new alliance with France to his name, which he much desired despite the dark mutterings at court.

  Catching my breath from my exertions, I looked round the room, noting the scattered members of my family.

  My father the Duke, returned from Castile, failing in his bid to snatch the crown for Constanza, who was dead and not greatly missed, for her final years had been sequestered. Free from matrimonial toils, my father had the previous year wed his life-long love at last. The scandal had raged through the court, but they were happy in their newfound respectability. And there she was, Duchess Katherine, utterly serene, until you saw the caustic gleam in her eye. She did not trust Richard either.

  And there, proud and eye-catchingly groomed—when was he ever not? —Henry too was with us, still unwed after the death of Mary in the same year that Richard lost his own wife, but with four fine sons and two daughters, they added to the noisy celebrations at Richard’s court.

  And there was another face familiar to me as my own. My cousin Edward, heir to the York inheritance, now Earl of Rutland and Duke of Aumale and grown into his Castilian inheritance of good looks from his mother Isabella. How confident he was, and ingratiating, slipping neatly into the place in Richard’s life left by the absent and now dead de Vere. Too neatly, some would say. Seeing me watch him, Edward grinned and raised a hand, before turning back to whisper in Richard’s ear.

  It was a golden time. A family united and reconciled. Truly a time for celebration.

  And I? What of proud Elizabeth of Lancaster? Although a wife and matron, I felt as young as I had been when I had first succumbed to the persistence of John Holland. My steps were as light and lithe as those of any virgin looking for her first love. The great ruby, given to me by my father on the occasion of my first marriage as a mark of his approval, flashed on my finger. That marriage was long gone and Jonty of Pembroke dead these nine years after a terrible accident at the Christmas junketings at Woodstock. I mourned the loss of his young life, but intermittently. My vision was centred on the present and the future. How could it not be?

  John was my love, my future and past. Gone were the days when we were showered with disapproval for his preemptive taking me to his bed before the exchange of marriage vows. Earning his reparation in Castile, he was now frequently to be found at his brother’s side, royal patronage his for the asking. When John led me into the dancing, his steps betrayed a confident swagger, for was he not created Earl of Huntingdon and I his Countess? He had been awarded Richard’s recognition with this fine title, with lands and castles in Cornwall and a great house at Pultney in London where we could entertain in sumptuous luxury.

  How foresighted John had proved to be in bringing us home from Portugal. There was nothing there for him, or in the disastrous war against Castile, but here he had been welcomed by Richard and forgiven his past sins. Not without self-interest of course: in the terrible aftermath of Radcot Bridge Richard needed family around him. He had needed support against the Lords Appellant. Wooing John to his side could only be to his advantage.

  John smiled and bowed and flattered, making himself indispensible as a good counsellor should. And thus I was once more a Countess. As for the authority to go with it: Richard had created him Chamberlain of England, an office stripped from Robert de Vere. So it seemed that our star was in the ascendant with Richard’s determination to build a level of personal support that could not easily be displaced. John would be central to that support. Who could not admire the chain of sapphires with its white hart livery badge, the King’s personal gift, that shone on John’s breast, a mirror image of the chain worn by the King himself?

  ‘You look happy, my love,’ John observed as our steps brought us close in the dance.

  ‘I am happier than you could ever imagine,’ I said. ‘And I will show you later, when we are alone …’<
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  My father, worryingly aged since his return from Castile and his reluctant acceptance that the marriage of his daughter Katalina to the Castilian heir was the nearest he would ever get to his dream of this southern kingdom, was pleased to scowl on my new happiness.

  ‘He worries me,’ he announced, watching my husband move from group to group, listening, advising, nodding sagely.

  ‘Have you withdrawn your regard from John?’ I asked, not too concerned. ‘Once you were quick to see his merits.’

  ‘But I was never blind to his deficiencies. Look at him. All he sees is power. He’ll make enemies.’

  ‘He’ll make friends as well. Did you not live with friends and enemies both?’ My certainty that John would survive all vicissitudes could not be shaken. ‘Were you not able to hold the balance between them and enjoy the benefits?’

  The Duke’s frown deepened. ‘Beware, Elizabeth. He’s casting all his eggs into Richard’s basket. If you have any influence, make him see that sometimes moderation is the better policy.’

  There was no moderation. I knew what Richard was doing, and why should we not be part of my cousin’s empire-building? Strengthening his own support against those who would oppose him, as my father had done, as any family that valued its future supremacy would do. Our own children played their own role at Richard’s behest, one of our young daughters already betrothed to the Mowbray heir of Nottingham. I saw no harm in it. We were the premier family in the land below the King. Why not make strong alliances with our daughters?

  I kissed my father’s cheek.

  ‘You should be proud of your daughter and son-in-law.’

  ‘I suppose I should,’ he acknowledged but without much enthusiasm.

  And when John rode in the lists with such éclat that showed no hint of fading, my father could do nothing but applaud and acknowledge the astonishing spectrum of his skills. As I did. Was he not at the height of his prodigious powers?