Daughter of York (56 page)

Ravenstein waited patiently while she processed the information, shifting his weight off his painful leg.

“The earl has always favored France, Messire Ravenstein,” Margaret said finally. “Why, even during the negotiations for my own marriage with Duke Charles, Warwick was still trying to push me—and thus Edward—into Louis’ clutches. Louis will treat with Warwick, I promise you.”

“I fear you are right, your grace, although with Burgundian booty in his waters, he must have a care he does not break the Treaty of Péronne with us.”

Margaret snorted. “Certes, Warwick will find a way out of that little problem. Or Louis. They are both as wily as each other.”

Ravenstein had called for pen and parchment, and his squire appeared with them as if by magic. Margaret saw him glance at her right hand and take note that she was wearing her signet ring.

“You came prepared, messire,” Margaret said, amused. “You are right, we must inform my husband immediately of this state of affairs. Do we know where he is?” Margaret found this question slightly embarrassing. She had long since decided that she did not care where her husband was once he left her after his infrequent visits. “I crave pardon, but with the excitement of the arrival here and my birthday, I have lost track of him,” she said hurriedly.

Ravenstein coughed over a chuckle. “’Tis understandable, your grace. We have news he is in Zeeland, and as soon as we have a letter, I will dispatch it there at once.”

In ten minutes he was gone. Margaret sank down heavily onto the cushions, moistening her inkstained finger with saliva and wiping it on
the grass, all the joy in the day gone. Whatever Warwick was planning with Louis, it did not bode well for Ned.

M
ARGARET HAD TO
admit Charles had done his best to help Edward, and her journey to the great castle at Middleburg in June to beg for his support was in vain. He had even been pleased to see her, calling her his love and his dearest wife. The castle was across a narrow stretch of water from Sluis, guarding the harbor into Bruges, and almost completely covered half of the island it sat upon. The vast North Sea filled the view from her window in the great keep, and she spent many solitary moments gazing across its gray expanse and hoping for a glimpse of her homeland through the mist.

Fortunata complained of aches and pains every morning, and Margaret had to admit the ancient fortress was drafty and unwelcoming. But she had come for a purpose, and she was determined to arouse Charles to action against Warwick if she could. She knew she was Edward’s only hope, as in his heart Charles was still loath to favor the York cause. I cannot be too direct, she reasoned, but maybe—just maybe—he might be lured into acquiescing if she caught him at a vulnerable moment. She chuckled to herself as she lay in bed plotting her strategy. Vulnerable was not a word a fighting machine would ever like attributed to himself, but she knew he was susceptible to flattery, and so she decided on a plan of attack.

She invited him to her chamber on two occasions during the week she was there, the first one yielding no satisfactory results. On the second, she fed him tempting delicacies herself, including oysters, a known aphrodisiac, and poured his wine while he lay comfortably on velvet cushions in only his gipon, shirt and hose. At least he is a handsome man, she thought, as she expertly shucked another oyster. She could at least pretend she loved him enough to seduce him, and he was not immune to her advances, when he was in the mood.

“Come to bed, my love,” she urged, feeling the moment was perfect—her monthly course was about to start and she was convinced she was at her most fertile. “’Tis the right time for conception, and I would so dearly love to give you a son, a son who will look just like you and carry on your glorious mission.” She held out her hand. “Come.”

Charles was flattered and feeling pleasantly amorous. He did not usually respond to female artfulness, but Margaret had broken her resolve with Fortunata and asked the dwarf to lace Charles’s hippocras with an aphrodisiac, in case the oysters didn’t work. Whatever the combination of perfume, revealing gown and herbal helpers she used, Charles was like dough in her hands that night. He even allowed her to mount him and be in control of his body. To her surprise and pleasure, she reached a sustained climax at the same time as Charles, who immediately fell fast asleep and stayed with her all night. The next morning, he eyed her with new awe but said nothing until he quit her chamber, his gentlemen fussing around him.

“I will be discussing the Warwick situation this morning, my dear, if you care to be present.”

Margaret was overjoyed. It worked, it worked, she told herself! “Nothing would give me greater pleasure, Charles. Thank you,” she said coyly from the bed. He grunted, and jutting his head forward and waving his hand in salute, he strode from the room.

“My most severe gown today, Marie,” she ordered, throwing off her false coyness with the fur bedcover. “I would have the councilors know I am a serious person.”

Fortunata giggled, and Marie frowned. “Quite right, your grace. ’Tis unusual for Charles to include his wife in matters of state,” she said.

The lords of Humbercourt and Hugonet flanked him during that morning’s judicial meeting, and as she couldn’t tell them apart, Margaret resolved to refer to these most important of Charles’s advisers in her mind as The Henchmen. Both were about Charles’s age, had black hair and favored long, colorful houppelandes.

However, their speaking styles were so different that Margaret thought she might finally be able to distinguish them. That of Guy de Brimeu, Seigneur of Humbercourt, was short and to the point, but when it was Guillaume Hugonet’s turn to speak, she was not prepared for an almost two-hour oration filled with references to Ovid, Sully and Homer. Charles leaned forward in his usual fashion, and his eyes shone with pride for his favored adviser, the man who was so hated in Ghent for his harsh dealing with the rebels in the mid-Sixties. Hugonet’s erudition pleased him, especially when it came to flattering him with the usual comparisons to
Charlemagne, Alexander and Caesar. He even applauded a few times, startling some courtiers out of napping on their feet.

“And therefore, your graces,” Hugonet concluded, pushing back a lock of coal-black hair that had escaped from under his bright red velvet hat during a particularly dramatic moment, “as Menelaus set forth from Troy with a thousand ships to recapture his wife, Helen, so shall Burgundy set forth to recapture her treasure—the booty stolen from us by the traitor Warwick.”

Margaret was not sure the simile worked very well, but she was more than satisfied that Hugonet was advocating an attack against Warwick, and this time it was she who applauded. A gasp went up from the watching court. Charles and The Henchmen turned to look at her as her smile faded and she quickly gripped her hands in her lap, lowering her eyes.

“Madame la duchesse is quite right,” Charles announced after a pregnant pause and began some applause of his own. “This is a righteous act for Burgundy, and we shall ready the fleet with all haste to prevent Warwick from escaping back to England to cause our dear brother-in-law trouble.”

Margaret raised her eyes and closed her lids once to him in silent thanks as the other courtiers shouted, “Long live Burgundy.”

PART THREE

A Dutiful Duchess
Burgundy 1470–1477

17

1470–1471

Despite the best efforts of the Burgundian and English fleets—and Margaret credited Charles with at least a halfhearted effort—Warwick and George eluded them and landed in England later that summer. It was as though Edward had forgotten the lessons of the year before, for he did not heed the warnings from his spies and ambassadors. Edward could not believe his one-time mentor had made a pact with Margaret of Anjou and her warmongering son through Louis and was intent on reclaiming the crown for Henry, who was still languishing in the Tower.

Margaret worried more about where George fitted into Warwick’s plans now. George could not be happy, she surmised, after being promised the throne. More to the point, however, was that Edward was caught in Coventry between two armies, those of Warwick and his brother, Lord Montagu, the earl marching from the south and Lord Montagu, who had finally deserted Edward, from the north. Edward, Richard, Anthony, Will Hastings and two hundred adherents streaked for the coast, found whatever ships they could at King’s Lynn and fled the country on the second of October, Richard of Gloucester’s eighteenth birthday.

“Edward is fled? You say he is in Holland? How can this be?” Margaret was in tears, and Ravenstein was taken aback. He had credited the duchess with too much sense to resort to weeping. He gestured behind his back to signal to her ladies that their mistress needed them, but Fortunata was already there, pouring her some newly pressed cider from the palace orchard and soothing her.

“Drink this,
madonna.
It is good apple juice. It will calm your belly. You must thank the Virgin Mary for giving a good landing to your broth-ers—and his friends,” she emphasized, meaning Anthony. “Maybe you will see them soon,
madonna.
’Tis not so bad.”

Margaret raised her red eyes. “Aye, ’tis true, I should thank God for their safe delivery.” She sniffed loudly and crossed herself. “I shall ask my husband if they may come here.”

Ravenstein doubted that Charles would allow the exiles to travel wherever they chose, especially in view of Edward’s lack of funds. It was said that he arrived near the small port of Alkmaar after being chased by Hanseatic pirates and getting stuck on a sandbar and could only offer the captain of the ship that rescued him a fur cloak as payment for the voyage of two hundred stranded Englishmen.

“Your brother is lucky he landed in that part of the duchy where Louis de Gruuthuse is governor, your grace. Gruuthuse has always been a supporter of your house, and King Edward will find a safe haven in The Hague with him,” Ravenstein said, relieved that Fortunata had succeeded in stemming the flow of tears down Margaret’s cheeks. “I promise I will add my voice to yours to suggest that Duke Charles might allow your brothers to visit you, but I cannot promise he will agree, you understand. Politically, ’tis awkward for the duke to have them here. And without upsetting you further, I respectfully submit that you are in a rather embarrassing position.”

He had Margaret’s attention now, and he shifted from one leg to the other, trying to ease his gouty foot.

“I beg of you sit, messire,” Margaret said, seeing him grimace. “Guillaume, fetch Messire Ravenstein a chair, and Fortunata, put a stool close so that he can rest his leg.” She waited until the grateful adviser was comfortable before firing off her next question, her tears forgotten. “What embarrassing position do you mean?”

“You are the sister of a penniless exiled king, your grace,” Ravenstein said softly. “Charles’s councilors will remind him of this, and they will remind him that Edward has not yet paid your dowry. I would not make too many demands at present, ’tis all,” he finished nervously.

Margaret slumped back in her chair and stared up at the canopy above her, where her own marguerites and device,
bien en aviengne
, were woven into the heavy fabric. “Good will come of it” was the motto she had chosen when she first came to Burgundy, and she knew she must believe in it now of all times.

“I am grateful for your honesty, messire. In truth, I had not grasped my precarious position because of concern for my brothers.” And Anthony, she stopped herself from saying. She gave a short laugh. “Life is never dull, is it?”

“I have not found it so, your grace,” Ravenstein said, relieved that the duchess had found her sense of humor once more. “And never, it seems, around you.”

“You are a brave man, Messire Ravenstein,” she chuckled. “And so how should we proceed from here?”

I
T WAS THREE
months before Margaret was once again enfolded into Edward’s ample embrace. She patted his belly. “Why, Edward, what have you been doing since I have been gone? Or is this extra padding a new English fashion?” she teased, her excitement at seeing him overstepping the bounds of court courtesy. His gown appeared shabby beside the Burgundian courtiers, but she assumed that with little money at his disposal he must have done the best he could to replace the clothes he had landed in. What a sorry mess, she thought.

Edward was equally happy to see his little sister and merely laughed at her remark. “It seems I no longer have the power to cut off your head even if I wanted to, Meggie. You, on the other hand, are a sight for sore eyes, as I have said many times. Jack Howard was right. You are magnificent.” He held her away from him and inspected her from the top of her two-foot hennin with its gold filigree decoration to the tips of her elongated red crakows that protruded beneath the sable hem of her velvet gown. Her face had lost its young plumpness, and he had to admit she was fair. He immediately spotted the rose brooch pinned proudly to the center of her gown and smiled. He knew he was truly among friends.