The Lord of Greenwich (The Plantagenets Book 5)

by Juliet Dymoke

  'The child is mine?' he asked, though doubt was gone. 'A boy?'

  'Aye, my lord.' Margery rose, her face bright with colour, her eyes filling with happy tears, for she had not thought he would ever return to her.

  Her father was even now negotiating for a husband for her, a man who would accept her bastard, but here was the Duke even as he had promised. 'My dearest lord!' She came to him and held out the child. 'Here is your son, baptised Arthur as you wished.'

  Suddenly he began to laugh, wrapping his arms about her and the boy together. 'Arthur!' he said, 'My son! You shall come with me to London, both of you, and lack for nothing. Bastard or not he shall be my son before all the world.'

  He escorted them to his house in the City and the next day presented his papers of commission to the Council and took his place at the head of the table, the gold collar about his neck, Regent of England. For the first time he tasted the pleasure of power and moved at once into the great palace at Baynards. He set up a fine library there, invited Titus Livius and John Lydgate to visit him, encouraged the tavern poet Hoccleve to eat at his table and filled the hall with men of like tastes. John Fortescue, now a lawyer, came often to supper and he brought a young poet, George Ashley, into his household as secretary in charge of his books. A long room facing out on to the water was turned into a library and Humfrey found he turned easily from his preoccupation with gunnery to his passion for literature.

  With a few months of his return Margery was pregnant again. Arthur was a delightful child with his own Plantagenet looks and an eager affectionate nature, and he kept the boy with him and sent Margery to his manor at Penshurst to await the birth. After a few nights with an empty bed he looked for company and at supper his eye lighted on a lady new to his household. Her husband was a middle-aged Pembrokeshire knight who had written asking if he might serve in the Duke's London household in order to be near an ailing sister. Humfrey had consented and since hardly noticed the couple, but tonight the knight's lady chanced to be late for the meal and made him a graceful apology as she moved to her seat. He watched her casually and then with growing interest. She was not pretty but she was tall and slender with small breasts and narrow hips. She moved with an elegance all the more striking because it was unstudied and there was almost virginal quality about her that intrigued him. He judged her to be about twenty-five or six and asked Elys a few questions to discover that she had been wed since she was sixteen but that she had no children. 'And a dull stick for a husband,' Elys said. 'A worthy man, my lord, but with no conversation.'

  'Then we must cheer her,' Humfrey agreed and when the dancing began went to seek her out. For a moment he could not recall her name. Aline, Avice? Avice, that was it, and as he led her on to the floor he was amused at her open surprise.

  'You have not been here long enough to know that I make a point of dancing with all the ladies in my household,' he told her.

  She gave him a straight look. 'I have heard many things about you, my lord Duke, but not that.'

  He laughed. 'I can guess what the gossips have been telling you.'

  'A great deal that is good,' she answered seriously and he touched her arm lightly as they moved, his fingers sliding under her sleeve. He felt a tremor shake her and wondered whether it was through sudden fear of him, or perhaps in anticipation in view of what she had been told. He was tempted to find out, to know whether this wife of ten years had been loved with any degree of passion. Looking at her husband he doubted it.

  The dance ended and he left her but covertly he watched her and was well aware that she knew he was doing so. In the morning he rode into the city with some of his household and indicating that Lady Avice should ride beside him, pointed out various places of interest as they went. 'You are new to London,' he said, 'and there is much for you to see.'

  She began to respond and he had the satisfaction of seeing a gentle pink under her pale skin. Once when she laughed he saw that she had beautiful even teeth. Again when their knees touched he felt that tremor. By heaven, he had been right! She was innocent, unawakened by her marriage, and he determined to try his skill in bringing her body to life. Under cover of the general chatter he leaned towards her and said in a low voice, 'Are you content, Lady Avice? I think you know what I mean.'

  The colour rushed into her face then and she half turned in the saddle to look away from him towards Ludgate Hill and the spire of St Paul's church. 'Sir Abel is . . . a kind husband.'

  'Kind? No more?'

  She did not answer and he said, 'If I sent for you tonight, would you come to me?'

  Such a candid invitation upon so short an acquaintance seemed to catch her utterly unawares and he heard her sharp intake of breath. She was all the more horror-stricken that this conversation was taking place in a crowded street and although they two were abreast a long line or riders followed them. His amusement grew.

  'My lord, you know I cannot. It is wrong . . . wicked . . . my husband . . .'

  'I'll see he is absent,' Humfrey said. 'If I did that, would you come?'

  She did not answer as her palfrey picked its way past an overturned handcart, vegetables spilling into the road, the peasant who owned it watching helplessly as the stream of riders trod his produce to pulp.

  'If I order you?' Humfrey persisted, her discomfort amusing him in this game he knew so well, and all the more for the warring emotions he sensed beneath.

  'I do not know,' she said at last. 'But . . . but you are our lord and we owe you . . .' her voice trailed away and he wondered if she was going to weep.

  He did not want that.

  'I'll not order you, Lady Avice. Yet do I ask what you give elsewhere?'

  'Once I would have said there was no more,' she answered, her face half hidden in her hood, and he was surprised at her quick understanding.

  'Oh, there is much more, my dear. Your husband is no longer young, and I ask you again, do I take what he esteems?'

  She did not evade the question this time. 'I think not, my lord.'

  'Or ask what you are unwilling to give?'

  She did not assent but neither did she deny it and he went on, 'Then I shall send him to Hadleigh for a few days. I've instructions that must be taken there and he can leave in the morning. You see how easy it is to arrange?' He saw the hesitation, the incredulity followed by a helpless look on her face. He would put a very different expression there. 'Then tomorrow night shall be ours,' he said and turned to call over his shoulder to Beckington. They were passing the Cardinal's Hat now, the usual rowdy noise coming from within and though he did not know it, nor look up, Betty saw him from her high window and sighed for the days when an inebriated lad would fall into her bed and sleep the clock round. This man who had returned from the French wars to so exalted a place had gone beyond her simple ken, but she looked down with honest jealousy at the lady riding by his side.

  It was late the following night when he sent Elys to wait outside Lady Avice's door.

  'I trust you are still willing to run such errands for me?' he asked in mock solemnity. 'I little thought when I found you a knight's daughter for your wife that you would become so faithful a husband.'

  Elys smiled. 'I am content, my lord, and pray that one day you may be as I am. In the meantime I will fetch the Lady Avice!'

  He was surprised that his lord should choose her, yet when she came silently from her chamber, her long fair hair unbound she seemed like a coiled spring ready to be released.

  'Sir Elys,' she said with quiet dignity, 'pray take me to his grace.'

  He had half expected embarrassment, a last minute refusal that would either annoy his lord or set him off laughing, but her self-possession would please Humfrey, Elys thought. 'That is why I am here, my lady. You need not fear.'

  'Should I?' she asked in surprise.

  'No.' He shook his head. 'He is the best of masters, unlike some I know, but –' he paused wondering how to say what he felt must be said, 'but do not expect to hold him for too long. No one has ever d
one that yet.' He held back a curtain and opening a door ushered her into the room, closing the door behind her. She had an instant sight of a tall figure, of large eyes and a humorous smile, of a man whose very glance dismissed all the natural fear in her, and Elys's words went unheeded.

  In the dawn Humfrey woke and lay for a while, his arm still beneath her neck, she asleep full length and relaxed beside him. He felt an odd exhilaration, a satisfaction at having been right. He had indeed found latent passion in her, awakened her senses as clearly as no other man had ever done, until she clung to him in the darkness, her body arched and eager. He drew a deep breath and turning his head let his mouth caress her cheek, her lips a little open in sleep, and he wondered that her foolish husband could have so failed with her. He slid above her and had possessed her again before she was fully awake.

  'Well,' he murmured, his mouth just above hers, 'was it ever thus before, sweeting?'

  Still half asleep she shook her head. 'Never, my lord.'

  Thereafter she came every night to his bed and he watched her whole personality grow and change under his expert guidance. Her eyes grew more luminous, she smiled more often and there was that indefinable look about her of a woman loved and satisfied. He accepted it without too much thought. He had seen it before in past mistresses, in Margery awaiting his child at Penshurst.

  At the end of a week Sir Abel Trent returned. What Avice said to him Humfrey did not know but she came as before and the next day Humfrey called him to give an account of his mission to Hadleigh.

  When the knight had finished Humfrey said, 'You shall not find me ungenerous, Sir Abel. I think you take my meaning?'

  Abel Trent rubbed his grey stubble and muttered something awkwardly. Humfrey caught the words, 'Your grace . . . only too . . . if we may serve you . . .' and then he floundered in confusion and Humfrey took his arm in a kindly manner.

  At least the fellow had more sense than to make any sort of fuss and Humfrey went on, 'When you return to Wales that small manor adjoining yours shall be added to you. I will instruct my steward.'

  That night Dorothy Foxton confided to her husband that she would never understand great men. She was a small girl with red hair and a freckled skin and she adored her swarthy young husband. She had come from a modest home near Finchley and the great house in which she now lived still overawed her. 'The whole household knows the Duke has a new mistress,' she said in puzzlement. 'The cuckolded husband has a new manor and so it is all arranged. It is very strange.'

  'Very,' Elys agreed. 'But you and I, Dorothy my love, will never, please God, need to understand.'

  As the days went by Humfrey became aware of a change in Avice and in the darkness one night he tasted the salt of tears on her cheeks. 'What is it?' he asked in surprise. 'What makes you weep, sweetheart?'

  'Oh . . . it is different now . . . Abel. . . . My lord, what are we to do? I don't know how these things are managed.'

  'Leave it to me,' Humfrey said.

  'But my husband talks of going home. And he looks . . . I cannot bear to have hurt him so and yet, my dearest lord, I cannot think of not being with you. I want to be with you always . . .' The flood of words stopped for he had released her suddenly and she remembered Elys's warning. For a while there was silence and she tried to stop her tears.

  Humfrey lay back on his pillows and stared up at his motto embroidered on the cover above his head. 'Loyalle et belle'. Loyalty! What did it mean? One man, one woman, above all others? He had never thought of it as applying to the search for love, never had cause to do so.

  'I am sorry,' she said, 'I did not mean . . . My husband talks of going back to Pembroke now that his sister is well.'

  'He will go,' Humfrey said, 'when I permit it,' but he had sensed in her the lessening of last night's absorbing joy, the slow realization that ecstasy was a transient thing. He had long ago learned it. He kissed her lightly and added, 'We'll talk of it another day. We have all the time we could wish for, though for the moment you must go. I've to see a delegation from my Portuguese cousin today.'

  He also had other things on his mind, for he was busy with the refurbishing of Baynards, and he sent Elys to the city to beg Sir Richard Whittington to call on him. 'I need new hangings for my bedchamber,' he said, 'in the same cloth I saw at Greenwich. And new curtains to cover the screen by the buttery. The wind blows straight through there from the water.'

  The mercer duly came bringing two journeymen with bales of cloth for the Duke to inspect, but to Humfrey Whittington was far more than a tradesman. He was an able and intelligent man, bringing distinction to the office of Mayor of London, and they spent a pleasant afternoon talking of city affairs.

  'No one can put the clock back,' Humfrey said. 'You, Sir Richard, must guard your rights, and I for one will make it my business to scotch any encroachments.'

  'I thank your grace,' Whittington said. His face was framed in neatly bobbed hair, his eyes fixed on the chased stem of his cup. He seemed to be choosing his words with care. 'There have been incidents of late.'

  'Oh? Tell me.'

  Whittington shrugged. Small things, but such as nag at a man until he does something foolhardy. There are some lords who think they can still rule the city. They do not understand that the Guilds are there to protect our people.'

  'We must talk more of this,' Humfrey said. 'Make me a list of any complaints and I'll see them righted. Now let me show you this house and where I want your hangings to cheer the place. It is not what I wanted,' he paused seeing the open prospect of Greenwich far from the confines of the City, 'but it must serve for the moment. Let me have your advice.'

  When Whittington left he hesitated by the great river entrance and then asked, 'Your grace, if I am not presuming, you would honour my house if you would dine with me. My wife, Lady Alice, would be delighted and I would seek out some company to entertain you.'

  Humfrey thrust an arm through the mercer's.

  'Nothing would please me more. Believe me, I find your men of business very agreeable, more so than some of the court,' he added smiling. 'I respect craftsmen – what would my house be without them? I shall come on Wednesday next.'

  Thereafter his familiar figure passing within the walls became a welcome sight to the city folk about their daily work. It aroused, as he knew it would, jealousy among the more stiff-necked lords and there were one or two sneering remarks made concerning the folly of pandering to the London riff­raff.

  He paid no attention, riding through the streets in extravagant dress, his retinue suitably bedecked. He was always cheered, mothers holding up their children to see him pass, and he responded with smiles and waves and a coin or two thrown at random. It was small wonder that he was soon dubbed 'the good Duke' by the adoring mob.

  'The good Duke!' Richard Neville snorted. 'They would not say that if they knew how shabbily he had treated me in Normandy.'

  'You made such a fuss about that,' his friend Edmund Beaufort answered, though he had no liking for Humfrey either. He was Somerset's younger brother, a slender, vain young man with a silken tongue. 'But the Duke grows large in his own eyes. I hope the King comes home soon.'

  Humfrey was well aware of their ill humour and at a Council meeting he proposed appointing the newly knighted Neville to be warden of the west marches.

  'My lord of Westmorland,' he said with polite deference, 'I am sure you would be glad if your son relieved you of some of your more onerous duties? The post of warden cannot be too pleasant in the winter from what I hear of the borders.'

  Ralph Neville stirred his long limbs. He had been dozing but he roused himself to say, 'We of that region are used to our stark countryside, my lord Duke.' He did not care for his wife's nephew, Regent or no. When Humfrey talked in that smooth way one never knew whether he was being genuinely concerned or whether he had some devious motive. However having heard something of the incident at Bores, though not from Richmond who did not blab his shame even to his parents, he assumed that the Duke wanted to be rid o
f the boy. 'I am not so senile I cannot do what is needed,' he said tartly, 'but if you think –'

  'Then that is settled,' Humfrey said smoothly, 'and with my lord of Northumberland on the east march I need no longer concern myself over affairs there.' It was growing near the supper hour and he was tired of the interminable arguments of the Council table. He wanted to take himself down the river to Baynards where, despite Harry's injunction to economize, there were masons and carpenters at work from dawn till dusk, and he wanted to see how the last two days' work had progressed. He tapped a letter lying in front of him. 'My lords, talk of the border brings me to one final matter. I have here an order from the King. He wants the King of Scots sent immediately to France.'

  If he had suggested sending James to the moon they could not have been more surprised and the Bishop of Durham made a most unpriestly sound. 'Whatever for?'

  Wooden head! Humfrey thought. 'My lord,' he explained patiently, 'you must know that a large Scottish contingent has joined the Dauphin's party. It will be less eager to fight if its King is on the other side. I cannot see even Regent Murdoch's men leaving Scotland to do battle against King James.'

  'Very wise,' Bishop Beaufort agreed. 'My nephew is astute to perceive the advantage.'

  Humfrey gave him a cursory glance. 'Naturally.'

  Lord Talbot said, 'It's dangerous though. Suppose James should be slain. They'll say we compassed it.'

  'Why should we? We've held him all these years and treated him well, he's more use alive than dead.'

  'So is the Duke of Orléans,' Talbot went at the subject belligerently. 'I suppose the King doesn't want him too?'

  'Of course not.' Humfrey retorted. 'He can sit in Pontefract Castle until every penny of his ransom is paid.' Actually he thought Orléans very witty and his conversation could become so bawdy that at Christmas when Humfrey allowed him to attend their feasting, he had reduced the whole court to riotous laughter. But the hard facts were not to be discounted for that.