Lady of the Roses (33 page)

“What does this mean?” I asked John. But my husband had no answer for me before he left for Pontefract Castle, where he was constable and had pressing business to attend.

Not long afterward, we all learned its meaning. Desmond, the charming, beloved Irish lord who had risked everything to support the Duke of York against Marguerite d’Anjou during the years when few dared give overt support, was accused of treason by my uncle, Worcester. When Desmond came in bravely to answer the false charge, he was thrown into prison and his death warrant was sent to the king for his signature. Sir John Conyers brought me the news.

“At the banquet at Westminster, King Edward pressed Desmond to tell him what he thought o’ his queen, and Desmond told him the truth—that his queen was beautiful, but it might have served England better had King Edward secured the friendship of France or even Burgundy by an alliance with a royal princess. And Edward related his comments to Elizabeth Woodville.”

I turned away, my head reeling.
Is this sufficient grounds for which to execute a man? Dear God, what is happening?
With John away, I went to find comfort with Nan at Middleham.

“This is Elizabeth Woodville’s doing, but the king will pardon his father’s friend,” Nan assured me. “How can he not? The Earl of Desmond stood by him through all the troubles with Lancaster, and he knows, as we all do, that the charge is false.”

“You must be right,” I replied. “It has been a month since Desmond’s conviction. Edward could have signed the death warrant long before now, and he hasn’t. It must mean he plans to pardon Desmond.”

On the following Sunday in February, only days after the Feast of St. Valentine, Archbishop George was conducting mass in the chapel, when shouts and the clatter of horses sounded in the courtyard. We hurried outside. Two messengers dropped from their saddles and fell to their knees before Warwick, their travel-stained clothes and sorrowful expressions attesting to the ill nature of the news they carried.

“My lord, the Earl of Desmond is dead! He was beheaded by the Earl of Worcester on the fifteenth of February.”

I stared, mouth agape, unable to believe the words they uttered.

“The king signed the death warrant?” Warwick demanded incredulously through ashen lips.

“Nay, nay! The king left the warrant unsigned in a drawer in his bedchamber, but the queen grew tired of waiting. She stole the king’s signet ring and forged the king’s signature. She sent the sealed death warrant to the Earl of Worcester, who executed the Earl of Desmond without the king’s knowledge,” the messenger said.

As we digested this horror, the second messenger informed us of another.

“His two boys, mere children of eight and ten, were sent to the block with him. One had a boil on his neck and asked the executioner to pray be careful, for it hurt.”

Warwick groaned; Nan gasped. Archbishop George made the sign of the cross, his lips moving in prayer. I gave a shudder. The Countess of Desmond had lost not only a husband but two of her children. I remembered her praise of Edward:
Perhaps with this Sun of York on the throne of England, we can look forward to peace and contentment.
Instead the Sun had been shrouded by a vicious black cloud that rained down atrocities.

I hugged myself against the fit of shivering that seized my body. Once again Elizabeth Woodville had wreaked vengeance on an innocent man for a perceived slight. I had never believed, as others did, that she had committed sorcery to win Edward, and deep down I had always nursed the hope that she was not as wicked as she seemed, but now I faced the hideous truth: Her great beauty hid evil the way a gilded sepulcher hid the rot and stench of decaying human flesh. This creature that held the king in its fangs was a demon vomited up from the bowels of Hell.

“The king was furious when he learned what his queen had done,” one of the messengers said.

Too late, too late!
With dragging steps, I joined Nan and the others in the chapel to pray and weep for Desmond, and for his wretched countess, now left to mourn a husband and two sons butchered on Elizabeth Woodville’s sacrificial altar.

AS ILL TIDINGS NEVER COME SINGLY, BUT IN
threes, late one morning, after we had returned to Warkworth, I found Ursula missing. I searched for her myself until at last I spotted her red head in a far-off, little-used chamber, where she sat in a corner, weeping.

“What is the matter, dear Ursula?” I asked.

“My f-f-father—” she sobbed.

“What has happened to him?”

“He’s been imprisoned…with T-Thomas C-Cooke—” She burst into fresh tears.

My breath caught in my throat. I sank down on the floor beside her.
Is there to be no end to the misery that Woodville causes?
The verdict on Thomas Cooke’s third trial had come in. This time Cooke was convicted and assessed a fine so enormous, it cost him everything he owned. On top of that sum, Elizabeth Woodville, reviving an archaic law long since fallen into disuse, demanded a ruinous payment of “Queen’s Gold.” Cooke fled the country.

“But your father—what is his connection with Cooke?”

Ursula shook her head. “None…he was taken into imprisonment because of his connection to my lord of Warwick.”

I stared at her, not comprehending.

“My lady Isobel,” Urusla sniffled, “’tis said the king suspects my lord of Warwick of treason, and since he is too powerful to be imprisoned, the queen has chosen others she wishes taken into custody in his place.”

I could not speak for a long moment. Finally I said, with more conviction than I felt, “Dear Ursula, Warwick will find a way to get him out.”

But it was an ill wind that blew through the land. Warwick was away in France on royal business during that summer of 1467, and we both knew the matter would have to wait until his return. Then came a fresh series of harsh tidings in swift succession. Taking advantage of Warwick’s absence, Edward threw a lavish tournament for the bastard of Burgundy, and at the end of September, before Warwick’s return, he announced Meg’s betrothal to Charles the Rash.

King Edward had chosen Burgundy over France; Elizabeth Woodville had won over Warwick. Archbishop George, Edward’s chancellor, who was to open parliament, absented himself with an excuse of illness. And Edward, in fury, rode to George’s residence, demanded the return of the Great Seal, and appointed a new chancellor.

When Warwick returned and learned all that had transpired in his absence, he fell into a rage and went about the Erber smashing urns and furniture, pulling down wall hangings, hurling goblets, books, and anything not fixed to the wall. He knew Meg’s future husband and despised him utterly.

“He’s half-mad. You can see it in his eyes,” he said on a visit to Warkworth. “His father, Philip the Good, loathed him and was sore troubled to leave Burgundy in his hands. Edward will rue the day he made his pact with Charles, for it frees Louis of France to back Marguerite against him—and back her he will!”

Warwick retired to nurse his rage at his fortress of Middleham, and King Edward, fearful of an uprising against his rule, surrounded himself with two hundred archers when he rode out from Windsor to spend Yuletide in Coventry.

“Not since that hated monarch Richard the Second has a king seen the need to protect himself with such a bodyguard!” Warwick huffed to us.

Nevertheless, for the sake of appearances and to reassure the land, Warwick made his peace with Edward as the New Year of 1468 blew in on a ferocious blizzard. Assuming a gracious demeanor in the spring, he escorted Meg from Blackfriars to Margate, where the
New Ellen
and thirteen other ships awaited to take the bride and her company to Burgundy. But as soon as he returned to Middleham, he summoned John to a meeting.

It was a sunny morning in the month of July when we left Warkworth for Middleham. But ominous storm clouds, hanging dark and low over the land, gathered in the distance as we approached Warwick’s fortress. We wound our way through the pastoral countryside, our retinue at our side, trotting our horses through rolling meadows, past green pastures dotted with woolly sheep, along grassy riverbanks, and down steep wooded slopes. Wildflowers nodded in the breeze, and lambs bleated gently; the world seemed peaceful enough. But silence was all around us and we did not speak, for our hearts lay heavy in our breasts, and whatever it was that Warwick had to tell us, we knew it boded ill.

Northumberland’s herald sounded the clarions in the Middleham market square, and villagers gathered to the castle with solemn expressions to watch us climb the hill. Warwick, Nan, and Archbishop George met us impatiently in the courtyard, their faces somber. As we mounted the stairs to the keep, I noted the strange hush that engulfed the castle. Chapel priests whispered their prayers, clerks buried their heads in their papers, and servants went about their tasks wordlessly. The knights, squires, and men-at-arms of Warwick’s retinue sat around the halls and on the staircases, polishing their armor and sharpening their weapons, and while they stood to give us due obeisance as we passed, their expressions spoke their gloomy thoughts.

Nan and I hurried to a chamber adjoining Warwick’s corner suite, which afforded us a clear view of his apartments and where we might eavesdrop on his conversation. Slipping the bolt into place stealthily, we tiptoed to the window and pressed ourselves flat against the wall on either side of the opening, straining to hear what was said.

Warwick blocked the window with his broad back so that I could not see John, who stood across from him. What passed between them I couldn’t hear. Then Warwick shouted, “Elizabeth has made herself as hated as Marguerite ever was!”

Snatches of his words floated to us on the breeze drifting through the open window. “Malory still imprisoned…our brother deprived of the chancellorship…French ambassadors left with…leather bottles…empty promises…The Burgundian envoys…loaded like mules with gold…precious gifts…”

Nan and I exchanged an anxious look, not daring to stir. Warwick was mulling over the humiliation he’d suffered at Edward’s hands on his return from France. He’d brought with him several French ambassadors and a generous offer from Louis for Meg’s hand—but King Edward refused to meet with them and sent the embassy back to Louis with a few beggarly gifts.

Warwick spoke again, and though we both strained to listen, his voice was too low for us to hear. Then he boomed, “Woodville witch!” followed by, “John! Did you hear me, John?”

Warwick moved away from the window, and I caught my first glimpse of John. He stood at the large table with a stunned look on his face.

“What just happened?” Nan whispered.

I shook my head and raised a finger to my lips, for I did not know and feared to miss something. We both edged closer to the opening. “You’ve gone mad!” I heard John say.

Warwick crashed his fist on the table. “’Tis Edward…mad with lust for his greedy witch…. I did not put him on the throne for this!”

What I heard next sent sheer black fright surging through me. “I put him up, and I can bring him down!” Warwick roared.

I watched John lean his full weight on his hands as he stood at the table, as if to steady himself. The pain I witnessed on his face made itself felt through my body, and tears sprang into my eyes. John spoke, but so quietly I heard not a word. My heart broke for him, and I ached to take him into my arms and soothe away his grief. I must have moved too dangerously close to the window, for Nan warned me back with a gentle kick.

Again John spoke, but I could not catch his words.

Warwick replied, “Not me…Edward’s own brother Clarence, who…”

Nan nodded. She turned to me and held an imaginary crown to her head.
Warwick intends to make Clarence king!
For Clarence, Edward’s ambitious brother, had long maintained he was the true king of England, and Edward but a bastard sired by an archer—a ridiculous tale concocted in the depths of Clarence’s shallow and cloudy brain that made sense only to him. The men moved away from the window then, and all that came from the room was a mumble of voices. Archbishop George drew into view. “Aye,” he said, “Dick is right. The Woodvilles are rats gnawing on the ship of state! They’ll sink us unless we destroy them first….”

He moved away and John came back into view. I heard him clearly now. “Easy for you to say! You’ve no convictions of your own, George, only ambition!” A silence. Then, “But I’ll have none of it.”

I began to tremble.

Warwick stared at John. “But you’re a Neville,” he said.

“And have always done what you wished, Dick…” John paused, and the corners of his mouth worked with emotion. “Except in this. I cannot—I will not. My duty is to the king.”

“What about your duty to your kin?” Warwick stormed.

Archbishop George blocked the window with his back. “You can’t go against us, John,” he said, and his voice sounded as clearly as if he stood in the same room with us. “You’d be fighting your own flesh and blood.”

John mumbled a reply, which I neither heard nor cared to hear, for now I understood what had happened. Warwick was mounting a rebellion against Edward, a rebellion John refused to join. I could barely breathe. The room had grown so warm…so warm….

I put a hand to my heart and felt it beating erratically, as it had done often of late. When John swept his gauntlets up from the table, a pain rose in my breast that squeezed my chest so tightly, the breath left my body and my legs folded beneath me. I slipped down along the wall until I sat on the floor, and I dropped my head into my lap.

ON THE DAY JOHN BROKE WITH HIS BROTHERS,
there was a violent storm. As summer faded into winter, the Woodvilles became more detested, and tensions escalated between the king and Warwick. In this quarrel, the king’s brother George of Clarence, driven by passion for his brother’s crown and hatred of the queen’s ilk, sided with Warwick. That hatred was making itself felt all across the realm. In Kent, Earl Rivers’s estate was pillaged, and to the king came rumors of rebellion. As the situation deteriorated in England, so too did it worsen in Ireland. There my uncle proved a disaster for King Edward. Far from settling the land, his harsh measures had stirred it to the brink of rebellion. Only when my uncle, the hated “Saxon Earl,” was recalled and the Earl of Desmond’s good friend the Earl of Kildare appointed deputy governor was peace restored.

But the situation in England did not offer such easy remedy. The Woodvilles could not be made to vanish, and their spiteful acts continued to aggravate the realm. Soon rebellions broke out in the North.

The New Year of 1469 began with many sinister portents of disaster. A shower of blood stained grass in Bedfordshire; elsewhere, a horseman and men in arms were seen rushing through the air. In the county of Huntingdon, a woman who was with child and near the time of her delivery felt the unborn in her womb weep and utter a sobbing noise. And in the early spring, England heard about the first trouble, a rising in Yorkshire led by someone calling himself Robin of Redesdale, citing as grievances heavy taxes, injustice in the courts, and the rapacious Woodvilles, whose greed and impudence, they said, outraged honest men. No sooner did John put this down than a second arose in East Riding, led by a Robin of Holderness, who called for the restoration of Henry Percy as Earl of Northumberland. At the gates of York, John met the insurgents, crushed the rebellion promptly, and executed their leader.

“I’ve earned my earldom, Isobel, and been a good lord to them,” John said. “Why should they call for Percy—what have the Percies ever done for them?”

From my window seat in our private solar at Warkworth Castle, I regarded my husband. In a fur-edged velvet tunic of my favorite emerald, his faithful hound curled up at his feet, he sat at an oak-carved table, writing a private missive to the king that he didn’t wish to dictate to a clerk. My heart ached for him. I knew that the executions troubled him, that what he was really asking was whether he’d been justified.

Aye, he didn’t deserve such ingratitude. Though he hadn’t the means of his brother Warwick, his kitchens never turned away a hungry mouth and his door was never closed to those in need. He had in truth done many a noble deed. What Percy had ever sent firewood to the prisons or wine to the prisoners? What lord had thought to do it in summer so men wouldn’t have to cart the heavy loads through the bitter chill of winter? Such kindness was a rare thing, but John cared so for everyone: his soldiers, his servants, his family. His king.

I stretched out my hand and he came to me. I lifted my eyes to his handsome face. Dear God, so much change! His decision to support the king against his brothers came to him at fearsome cost. No longer did he sleep at night or have heart for amusement. How different was this careworn face from the glorious countenance I had fallen in love with on that precious night of the dance at Tattershall Castle! Gray dusted the tawny hair at his temples, and deep furrows marred his once-smooth brow. His generous mouth was now grim-set and drooping at the corners, and a fresh scar cut through his left eyebrow. I remembered the hopeful, dauntless youth he had once been, and my heart squeezed with anguish.

“Do not fault yourself, my dear lord. Robin of Holderness had no right to call for Percy’s reinstatement…. And Robin of Redesdale, is he also against you?”

John turned. With a gesture, he dismissed the servants. The minstrel hushed his harp in the corner of the room and rose from his stool. My maidservant, Agnes, who had been moving quietly about her duties emptying chests and hanging clothes in the garderobe, set a hand basin of perfumed water down on a bedside table and withdrew.

John’s eyes took on a pained expression as he met my questioning gaze. “I fear Robin of Redesdale is none other than our cousin John Conyers, Isobel.”

I gave a gasp and rose from my place at the window. “Oh, John, my dear lord—” So the nightmare had already begun. So soon! I took his sun-bronzed hand into my own—such a strong, fine hand. I pressed tearful kisses to the long fingers.

John took me into his arms.

“Dearest Isobel, what comfort you are to me…. What comfort you have always been,” he said softly. “I remember that day when you saved me from Percy’s ambush on St. Albans Road. You came to me dressed as a nun then…. And later, before Edward conferred the earldom on me, and I was fighting the Scots and the Lancastrians on the border, and there was nothing all around but death and suffering, you came to me in my camp with your troop of women, disguised as a dancing girl. I didn’t know you, and I didn’t pay much heed at first, but seeing my men laugh for a change so soothed my sore spirits, Isobel…. And then I realized who you were, and I couldn’t believe my eyes, and you winked at me. You cannot know how you have lightened my heart with your courage and joy in life…. Oh, Isobel, how I have loved you these twelve years!”

He pulled me close. With his cheek against mine, we watched swans glide on the blue River Aln and sheep graze on the lush green grass of placid hills.

“Sunshine is always brighter when I’m with you, and birdsong sweeter, Isobel. I forget all else…the gales, the fogs…the cold, weary men trudging over the frozen earth…the battlefields….”

I snuggled into the warmth of his embrace. “For me, ’tis the same, John…. Our dance together at Tattershall Castle seems like yesterday to me. You were young and so handsome, my dearest, and I was so in love with you…. As for those frightful days when you were taken prisoner by the Percies at Blore Heath and I thought I might lose you, never would I relive them for all the earldoms in England.” I pulled away and looked up at his face. “To think it was all so needless! You were taken prisoner, after a battle you’d won, only because you recklessly pursued the Cheshiremen into their own territory.” An image of John flashed into my mind: a dashing Neville chasing a hated Percy with all the wild abandon of youth. I smiled. “What were you thinking, my love?”

John grinned suddenly. “I wasn’t thinking. That was the problem.”

How good it felt to see him smile again; how long it had been since I’d seen those dimples I loved! I watched his eyes go back to the window, the smile fixed on his lips. I turned in the circle of his arms and followed his gaze to the walled garden below, where our three-year-old George had suddenly appeared, romping and screeching with delight as his sisters made a game of chasing him around the hedges. George had been born nine months after John had won his earldom, and I felt myself blush a little, remembering that night in York.

“You’ve given me everything I cherish on this earth,” I whispered.

John tightened his hold around my waist and brushed my forehead with a tender kiss. “One day George will inherit my earldom. I’m thankful I have that to leave him, Isobel.”

Aye, the earldom, with its annual income of a thousand pounds, would greatly ease George’s path. Had his proposed marriage to the daughter of the Duchess of Exeter not been snatched away by the Woodville queen for her son, little Georgie would one day have been one of the richest magnates in the land. I banished the sour thought. As John was fond of saying, “In last year’s nest, there are no eggs.” Looking back never did anyone any good; we had to set our face to the future. We still had many blessings to count; Georgie would not have to take out debts in order to last the year, as we’d been obliged to do. Or worse—far worse—carve his livelihood through bloody battlefields as his father had. John had sacrificed much for the earldom. He’d devoted his life to the king’s business. Whether it was fighting battles or negotiating truces, the earldom of Northumberland had been hard earned. No one had a right to take it away.

“You are a good lord and the king’s truest subject, John. He knows that—how can he not? As for me, I am the most fortunate of women to call you husband, my love.”

“And I, my lady, am the most fortunate of men to have a nun as my lady wife—”

I looked at him sharply. “A nun?”

“Or a dancing girl. Which are you, Isobel?”

“A bit of both, I suppose.” I smiled.

“No, neither…You are only what I always knew you were…an angel. I have watched you walk through the storms of our life with your head up and a smile on your lips, and never in all these years, with all that’s happened, have I heard you utter a single complaint. I have an angel as my lady wife.” He looked down at me, and my heart leapt to see those creases around his mouth. “Did I ever tell you, Isobel, that you have the most beautiful smile I’ve ever seen? I still remember when I first saw that smile. At Tattershall Castle, as I stood in the courtyard. In fact, right now, I can almost feel the breeze….”

“That’s because we have the window open, my lord.”

He laughed. “What if I tell you I can almost see Lord Cromwell’s castle?”

I shook my head. “Then you are the only one, since this is rugged Northumberland, not dainty Lincolnshire.”

“’Tis the truth, though…. I can almost see it…right there…. The glow of sunset reflects off the western battlements as I clatter over the drawbridge into the inner court with my small party…. I’m weary from the long, dusty journey from Raby, and I’ve thrown the reins of my horse to one of the groomsmen, wondering why my brother Thomas doesn’t come out to greet me…. Surely we’ve made enough noise. And at that instant I hear a laugh light as silvery bells…a sound that seems to fall from the heavens like the beating of angel wings. I glance up—” He glanced up.

“What happens next?” I whispered, tilting his chin back down to me.

“I see a face…. Framed by the violet sky, the face gazes down at me from a high window…. It’s the face of an angel, serene, beautiful, with a complexion white as lilies and hair dark as chestnuts…and a luminous smile, and eyes like jewels….”

I stared at him, tears welling at his description—that he should remember so clearly after all these years the moment when he first saw me! His eyes had taken on a faraway look, and it seemed to me that he was truly standing in that courtyard, looking up at that window, seeing me again for the first time.

“I couldn’t tear my gaze away,” he said, returning to the present. “Your brilliant topaz eyes had me enthralled. I didn’t even hear the jangle of steel, or the shouts of men, or the neighing of the horses as Thomas rode into the castle with Cromwell and a troop of men-at-arms. I heard only the lyre you played…and the sweet notes of the lament you sang.”

I hummed a few bars for him now.

“Aye…and then you laughed…and it was an angel’s laugh, sweet as chapel bells over the dales at morning time—”

I waited for him to continue, wanting to relive every moment of that exquisite evening…the night of the dance. But he said, “And Thomas called to me in his cheery voice,
‘John!’
And he leapt off his horse and ran to me. His dark hair was disheveled and there were streaks of dirt on his cheeks, but his eyes were alight to see me…. I remember that he clasped me to his breast and said, ‘My fair brother, what a relief you’re safe! You were so late, we rode out to search for you. One never knows with those damned Percies—’”

His voice had sunk to a bare whisper, and I knew I had to interrupt the stream of memories, for horror lay in wait. So I forced a laugh.

“All these years you’ve called me your angel,” I said, “and all these years I’ve been telling you angels don’t have chestnut hair. They have golden hair, as any painter or colored-glass maker will tell you.”

He grinned. “My angels have chestnut hair.”

I took his hand and held it tight against my cheek. “I love you, John, and have loved you from the first moment I saw you.”

John smiled into my hair as he rocked me in his arms. “That blessed twilight eve at Lord Cromwell’s castle.”

I threw him a glance. “Nay, ’twas not at Lord Cromwell’s castle where I first saw you. I was fourteen and riding past the River Ure with my cousins. We surprised you as you came out of the water after a swim.”

John flushed. “You mean you were with that party of giggling maidens on the cart that saw me—”

I laughed. “Aye, naked as Adam, standing on the riverbank! Thomas had the sense to cover himself, but you blushed red as a beet root and covered the wrong part.”

“My face.”

“That was why we were all laughing, my sweet lord.”

John grinned. He bent his head tenderly to mine. “My love,” he whispered softly, “you never told me.”