“They have Lacon Farm at Wem. Let that suffice, Miles. I will hear no more of the matter.” He struck his fist against the wall. “By the saints, I have had enow of being cooped up here. I need to hunt. Tomorrow! Arrange it!”
Miles inclined his head obediently. He too felt the lack of exercise after the week of rain but for him it never evoked the black despondency that plagued the duke.
“I daresay it is time the realm had another rebellion, your grace,” he remarked dryly. “Shall I arrange that too? Although there is the possibility you might end arse up in a butt of malmsey.” As had the king’s jealous brother George, Duke of Clarence, five years before.
The duke’s ill humor fell from him like a loosened mantle and he pulled the casement half to and turned. “Whoreson!” he exclaimed affectionately. “Some wine, if you please.”
His friend complied with a lazy grin. Miles was a fine judge of when to let matters rest. The southern Welsh had given him the name of y Cysgod—the duke’s shadow—but his strength lay in keeping a pace ahead. He knew the Scorpio in Harry Stafford’s nature; it was a matter of keeping to the front of the man.
“By the by,” the duke exclaimed, “you still have not told me what your father wrote concerning your betrothal with Lady Myfannwy.”
Miles frowned as he passed across a cup of muscadelle. He was willing to marry Rhys ap Thomas’s ward as part of Harry’s political maneuvering for alliances in Wales but at twenty-seven he did not feel it was any longer his father’s business, nor was he contemplating this second marriage with particular enthusiasm. His girl-wife, Sioned, and their child lay buried in the cold ground these two years. Besides, his mirror showed how the world saw him and a pitted face would not please a young bride.
“He gives his blessing, and thanks your grace for your care of my fortunes. The other news is my younger brother now has a son. Thank Heaven! Perhaps my parents will give up parading neighboring maidens every time I return home.” One of the chestnuts shot across the hearth like a cannonball and Miles coaxed the rest out.
“I shall suggest Rhys bring Myfannwy here in April.” Harry juggled a hot chestnut from palm to palm. “A tasty little piece, she is.”
And she would bring him considerable lands, Miles conceded. As the heir of a family that had fought for the House of Lancaster against the victorious Yorkists, he needed to improve his fortunes and the alliance with Rhys would be advantageous. He pensively divested a chestnut of its shell; so be it, in April he would take Myfannwy to his bed.
“What is this doing in here?”
With thumb and forefinger held as though it were a rat’s tail, Harry plucked a tapestried cushion from the settle and swung it with distaste. The Woodville cockleshells, the arms of his wife’s detestable family, sprawled across its puffed-up innards. Since King Edward IV had become so infatuated with Elizabeth Woodville that he had married her, the Woodvilles had crept into all the nooks and crannies of power. Marrying an heiress here, an heir there, they had stretched their tentacles across the entire kingdom. Even Wales, where Harry should by rights have had great lordship, was not free of their interference. Nor was the duke’s marital bed free either, though Catherine Woodville avoided it as much as Harry did. But she was still a Woodville, the queen’s youngest sister.
Estimating distances, Harry dropped the cushion in line with the window and kicked it at the casement. It hit the wall instead and fell with a soft plop onto the oaken chest. The duke shrugged.
“So, what have you in mind to waste the day? Shall we send a bailiff down to Tretower to annoy the Vaughans? Or I could tell my wife I want another son.”
Friendship was all very well—Miles ran a hand wearily through black hair that might have passed for a Welshman’s—but sometimes he felt centuries older than Harry, instead of two years younger. He raised his brow at the pinioned parchments hopefully but the duke shook his head.
“There is that sloe-eyed treasure Pershall found for you over at Llantrynach, my lord.” Retrieving the cushion, he replaced it before the ducal foot. “Marged? Lives in the lane behind St. Brynach’s?” He glanced up and recognized the kindling of interest. “Shall Pershall fetch her over?” At least the girl was eager.
“Yes, why not?” muttered his grace. “And I pray God she will be amusing.” He thumbed the Stafford knot upon the goblet. “The seed head of a dent-de-lion has more wit than the last one I bedded.”
“And your grace has not forgotten that I leave on Monday.”
“My grace has not forgotten, no. But can you not delay? It will be so tiresome without you.”
Miles cursed; his leave time was precious. It might take a week to reach Somerset with the roads so miry. “But, my lord, I thought we agreed that I should meet with you at Thornbury.” Yes, he should be able to help his father take possession of Bramley and then skirt Bristol and make speed to Thornbury.
“Oh yes . . . well, I suppose you must go.” The remark was tepid; the following silence deliberate. Harry’s confidence was seesawing again. “I wish I might rip Thornbury apart and build anew. A pox on the king! If only he would grant me the Bohun inheritance, I would have the funds.”
Oh, they had ploughed this ground so many times before, groaned Miles inwardly as he perched himself on the edge of the table, nonetheless prepared to listen with his usual patience. If only Harry had not fallen out with the queen, high offices might have come their way and they would both be busy at court, instead of peeling chestnuts in this godforsaken apology for a castle. Mayhap the opportunity would come one day with God’s good grace, but meantime he would not be sorry to have a brief respite from Brecknock and its bored master.
And now—because Harry’s dark moods had to be endured else the entire household would feel the brunt—he patiently leaned his chin upon his ringed hand and waited. It was a small satisfaction that the duke’s confidences lent him power. But he had no wish to abuse Harry’s friendship, nor was he easily manipulated. There were just a few in the household who could understand the bitterness that rose up in the duke like a poisoned, flooded well from time to time—the hatred of the queen, Elizabeth Woodville. Like a constant open sore, the rift with Westminster had begun when Harry, at ten years old, had openly declared his boyish fury at being made to wed not just a girl but worse—the queen’s eight-year-old sister. The queen and her brothers had never forgiven him. And, of course, Harry was a Plantagenet.
“I have more royal blood in my little finger than the plaguey Woodvilles can muster in the whole of their ancestry,” grumbled his grace, “but I will wager they all were invited to Westminster for Christmas.”
Miles refilled the duke’s goblet. “No, your grace, Lord Rivers kept Christmas with the Prince of Wales at Ludlow.”
Harry looked sulky at the reminder. Establishing the twelve-year-old heir to the throne at Ludlow, with the queen’s eldest Woodville brother, Lord Rivers, as tutor, had been calculated to keep not only the Welsh to heel but his grace of Buckingham too. For King Edward, having established the Yorkist dynasty, feared that if ever his enemies gathered strength again, they would seek out Harry for their rallying point. Harry was the last legitimate heir of the House of Lancaster, which was why Miles was safeguarding him. All of Miles’s future lay in the value of Harry’s birthright and one day, God willing, if ever there was a division in the House of York, Miles would exploit it to the full.
“You and I could have been in that campaign at Berwick against the Scots, Miles. Richard of Gloucester would not have minded me bringing a force to help him. Oh, Christ, Miles, mayhap you should go and join Gloucester’s retinue at Middleham. It might bring you more fortune than rotting here in cursed Brecknock.”
“What, and break tradition? The Rushdens have always served the Staffords.” Someday, Miles vowed, Rushdens would repair their fortunes. One day the wheel of destiny would shift again and he would help Harry topple the Yorkist-Woodville alliance. “Be of comfort, my lord, it will not always be thus. The queen might die before new y
ear—in childbed.” It was spoken softly lest passing servants pass the treason on like a contagion.
“Pah, and I can travel to the moon,” muttered the Duke of Buckingham, and he kicked the embroidered Woodville arms right out of the window.
THERE SEEMED TO BE A MINOR BATTLE GOING ON, OBSERVED Miles, reining his horse, Traveller, to a halt on a rise some two weeks later and staring in fascination at the full-blooded anarchy that was taking place in the snow down the road. He did not know this part of Somerset.
“That Bramley village, eh?” muttered Dobbe, his manservant, unimpressed. They had passed a castle of rather modest proportions about a quarter of a mile back. Since it had been decorated with a sickening superfluity of scarlet and azure pennons, they had certainly reached their destination, a demesne still usurped by Sir Dudley Ballaster.
The March wind was biting and Miles edged his horse into the shelter of a laneway to their left. His servant, and the two men-at-arms he had brought for escort, followed.
“Do you think someone has forgotten to tell them that we have had peace in England for the last twelve years?” he muttered and sprang to the snowy ground, thrusting back his fur-lined hood and rubbing leather-clad fingers over his darkening chin. He had been looking forward to a shave and a bath, not a skirmish. It was irksome to be summoned to Bramley by his father when he had intended spending the rest of his leave at the family home farther south, in Dorset.
One of his companions chortled. “Well, this is Somerset, ain’t it, sir? I am a Hereford man, m’self.”
So this was Bramley, formerly his great-uncle’s little kingdom. The village looked prosperous enough: its church was steepled, the snow-dappled roof in good repair, and the gardens of the thatched dwellings fringing the king’s highway were fenced and planted. The alehouse’s summer garland was withered and frosted, but its doors and windows, broad and candlelit in the afternoon gloom, beckoned him like a friendly whore, for it had been a tedious, cold journey.
“Just like Wales. We might ha’ saved ourselves the journey.” Dobbe mopped his dripping nose with his cuff. The thwack of quarterstaves on shins and grunts as fists met jaws carried clearly in the cold still air and the knot of villagers watching from a sensible distance were adding rude yells to the shouting. “You goin’ down there, sir? Show ’em how ’tis properly done?”
His master frowned, slowly making sense of the scene. Jesu mercy, it was his worthy father down there bellowing at a little man with a thatched-roof head—or was it the huge armored fellow he was roaring at? “Well, well,” he muttered appreciatively.
Of course feuds still happened in parts of England. Some were local squabbles that had begun during the lawless years of King Henry VI; others were disputes over land ownership, exacerbated by the wars between the great families of York and Lancaster when lands had been attainded and dealt out to loyalists by the victors. Miles knew exactly what the skirmish was about but he had hoped his father would have settled the quarrel by now. He had already glimpsed the bone of the dogfight: Bramley castle—a square Norman tower, a renovated hall boasting scarlet shutters and two chimneys, an encircling wall, a moat with a mill race hard by, a further scatter of dwellings, and a dozen adjacent fields complete with last year’s scarecrows. The cozy little fortification had been bought with ransom money earned bloodily by his great-uncle during the French wars of the ’40s and passed down to his second cousin, who had died pickled and heirless, bequeathing Bramley not to Lord Phillip Rushden, Miles’s noble sire, but to a stranger, Sir Dudley Ballaster. Presumably it was Ballaster who sported the unpleasant haircut and was now shouting retaliatory abuse at Miles’s father.
Perhaps it was time to make his presence known. With a lopsided smile at his parent’s rumbustious behavior, Miles gave Traveller’s neck a rewarding pat and slid once more into the saddle.
“Looks like ’tis over for the day, sir.”
In a matter of minutes it was. A score of the combatants, with the armored giant and two limping wretches in their midst, were noisily making their way towards the alehouse but the short man swung himself onto his horse and, with several henchman and two hounds in his wake, thundered up the road past Miles’s party without a second glance at the hooded travelers hunched against the wind.
“Friendly, ain’t they?” muttered Dobbe.
The Rushden contingent was dealing with several bloodied noses, each dripping impressively onto the much abused snow, but it was hard to tell what other damage had been done without closer investigation.
Miles swung round to his men-at-arms. “When Dobbe and I are out of sight, go to the alehouse. Pretend you are but travelers. See what you can find out.” He kneed his horse to a gallop down the hill.
“Not pitchforks, my lord!” he exclaimed in loud disdain as he drew rein. “How very primitive.”
“What the—” His father, scarlet-visaged, strode heavily forward with fists raised, the sable serpents on his breast heaving mightily. “By our Lady! Miles!” he wheezed in astonished delight as his son dismounted. “I was not expecting you until morning.”
“It seems I should have brought my full armor, my lord.” He had thought to find Bramley already in his father’s hands.
“Ha, we almost had ’em, my young hawk.” The older man’s embrace was still vigorous but he seemed more stooped than when they had parted last summer. The dark, once lustrous hair was liberally flecked with silver and, though the strength was still there in the aquiline nose and determined mouth, the older man’s chin was dewlapped from feasting too richly. More disturbing was the labored breathing that betided weakening health.
Masking his concern, Miles clapped his sire on the back. “You will not be entertaining me at the castle, I think, my lord father.” He nodded in greeting to the Rushden men. “Not exactly a victory, I see.” It certainly would not do to count bruises or missing teeth.
“Did you note Ballaster?” Lord Rushden sniffed and glared disgustedly up the street. “Rode past you. Strutting little cock! Carpet knight!” He spat, and added in the hushed growl he always used when criticizing the House of York, “Got his tap on the shoulder for supplying old King Ned with arms and a loan during Warwick’s rebellion. Godsakes, the man’s father was a crossbow merchant in Bristol.”
“And does Ballaster play the shopkeeper?”
His father sneezed. “Aye, when he is not playing at being a nobleman. ’Pon my soul, lad, you should have seen this swaggering varmint sticking his chest out like a pigeon and proclaiming, Ooohh he had supped with the king and my lord Hastings. Should be a law against wretches with no breeding acquiring land. Next thing we shall have ploughmen representing the shire in Parliament.” He sniffed again, rubbing at his moustache with his forefinger. “Mark my words, we shall have a hard time getting Bramley from this dog’s arse. Tie us up in the courts for years if we let him. You might have a word with Duke Harry, Miles. See if he can do anything to resolve matters in our favor.”
“I suppose the place is worth it,” muttered Miles, anticipating a pile of lawyers’ bills. His family’s fortified manor house was much more to his taste, and he wished he were there now instead of standing on an icy sward in cursed Bramley. His father already had two castles and both needed repairs. Why did he want this one? Miles glanced towards the retainers his father had led up from Dorset. Most of them were stamping and blowing on their fingers to keep the blood flowing. Miles was not feeling warm either, and his father sneezed again, a hand to his throat as if it irked him. “So where do we honorably retreat to, my lord?”
“Retreat? Watch your language, lad. Seized one of the outlying manors yesterday. Gives us a base at any rate. I daresay you are hungry.” Lord Rushden whistled for his esquire to bring his horse. “Think I am coming down with an ague, lad. My throat’s as rough as a carpenter’s file.”
“And when is the next battle?” Miles asked with tolerant affection. “Cockcrow?”
“Ten, tomorrow, but a small matter. Yon fool has challenged me to comba
t. Whether he thinks it will settle matters, God knows. I reckon that whoreson wouldn’t know a charger from a packhorse.”
“Combat?” Miles’s dark eyebrows rose, his amusement vanishing. His father might have earned his knighthood at the battle of St. Albans, but that was some twenty years back. “You are surely not going to fight the fellow?”
“No, of course not,” exclaimed his father, flinging an arm about his shoulders. “Now that you are here, you are.”
Three
It was one thing to acquire a castle but it was quite another to be accepted by the nobility. And if your grandsire had been a crossbow dealer and your father had gained his temporal power by swaggering around London, buying himself a baron’s younger daughter, donating liberally to royal funds, and doing disgustingly well in the world, then you were definitely to be ignored. What made matters worse for Heloise and her younger sisters after they settled into Bramley with Matillis, their timid stepmother, were the tidings that Phillip, Lord Rushden, cousin to the previous owner, was disputing their father’s right to the castle. He had already journeyed from Dorset with an armed force, seized one of the dwellings in the nearby manor of Monkton Bramley, and was trying to collect rents from her father’s villagers by coercion. Vowing vengeance, Heloise’s father, Sir Dudley Ballaster, had taken every able man and was gone down to Bramley village to put a stop to such effrontery.
Sir Dudley’s daughters were used to their sire charging off in a pother as if he had been stung by a gadfly, and Matillis, who was scarcely older than Heloise, was too dreamy to be anxious, so they gathered in the solar, the castle’s warmest chamber, and deliberately busied themselves with Dionysia’s departure for Middleham.
Growing uncomfortable from the huge fire, Heloise gazed forlornly at the thick glass panes dribbling with moisture. The chamber smelt stiflingly of woodsmoke, beeswax, and the lavender perfume that her stepmother had dabbed on too generously that morning. Heloise’s day had gone ill: her father, expecting her to be more omniscient than God, had scolded her not only for the red cloth left in the laundry, which had turned his underdrawers rosy, but also for the hole in his boot sole and her youngest sister’s cut knee. A wonder he did not blame her for the Rushdens!
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