Queen of Trial and Sorrow (8 page)

Wines from the Rhine were served at the high table, cheaper wines at the two lower ones, although they were tested first for sourness, and the wine stewards were kept busy darting between the diners pouring ruby and amber streams while the water pitchers were often waved off.

The king was at his merriest, keeping his server busy refilling his wine cup and engaging in conversation with anyone within hearing.  Although I was served by a squire on bended knee, whenever I indicated I wanted something Edward would carve me a sliver and feed it to me on the end of his own fork, and when I’d had enough he would tempt me with a little more or to try a new dish, until I swore I could eat no more without bursting. 

While the guests gorged themselves on the king’s largesse, jugglers and tumblers occupied the space between the two lower tables, and then the king’s fools capered in and attempted to perform some of the somersaults to the noisy hoots and cheers of the diners.  To end the banquet, hippocras was served at the high table as an aid to digestion.  The almoner swept up all the trenchers to feed to the poor waiting at the palace gates.  The minstrels appeared in the gallery and the trestle tables were taken down and stacked to make room for dancing.

It was evident that Edward had spared no expense to make his first Christmas court as a married man a memorable event.  He was disposed by nature to be lavish and openhanded, only held in check by his pitiful penury. But it was the first opportunity for many of the noble families who hadn’t been at Reading to be presented to me, and he showed in every word and deed how much he loved and honored me.  I suspected that many of those who had accepted an invitation had done so as much to look over the new – and controversial – queen as to enjoy the king’s hospitality.

Among them were the king’s three sisters: the Duchesses of Exeter and Suffolk and the as yet unwed Lady Margaret.  The matriarch, the formidable Duchess of York, had made very clear her feelings with regard to her son’s choice of wife.  When she had been presented, she merely inclined her head and then gave me a look of such frank dislike as I had never encountered before.  She was not present at our first Christmas court and I missed her as much as I missed that other absentee, the Earl of Warwick, who continued to show his disdain for me.

He had ridden off with his two hundred liveried retainers to the north because the king had commissioned him to adjourn parliament, which was to have sat at York.  Their quarrel had been patched up.  The broken pieces of what they had once been to each other had been put back together.  The whole thing was a bit ragged but it was reinforced when Edward granted George Neville the temporalities of the archbishopric of York and proposed him for election.  Edward forgave wholeheartedly, but Warwick was made of sterner stuff and, I suspected, wouldn’t find it so easy to forgive.  Soon after, the Duke of Clarence joined him there, which pleased me well

It was at the Christmas court that I began probing for suitable matches for my siblings, and my first success was Lord William Herbert.  He had been with Edward at the battles of Mortimer’s Cross and Towton.  They were friends in spite of very disparate natures.  He was a dour man, brave and loyal, but with a fierce temper requiring little to set it off.  Many found him intimidating, especially those who crossed him.  But he had the most beautiful speaking voice I had ever heard; I could have listened to it for hours.

No question, Lord Herbert was a coming man. I wanted to reach at least a tentative agreement with him.  “Your eldest son,” I began.  “Fourteen, I believe and not yet wed.  Is he committed?”

“No, Madam.” He looked interested. 

“I have in mind a lady who might suit him.”

“Very kind of you to consider my interests, Madam.  May I ask who she is?”

“My sister, Mary.  A very amiable lady, I’m sure you’ll agree, and his Grace the king will see she has an adequate dowry.”

He bowed.  “I am deeply honored that your Grace would consider my son as a husband for your sister.”

“As I understand it, you possess the lordship of Dunster.  It would be desirable to bestow this, or another, on your son to make him a more suitable match for my sister.”

“Of course.”

And thus were things done: a word or two exchanged at a social event and hands were bestowed, lives arranged to suit the purposes of concerned parties: I had five sisters to dispose of; Edward wanted both to reward a loyal man and to tie him more closely to the Crown, and Herbert would be a step closer to the seat of power.  So all parties were made happy.  Except Mary, that is, who complained mightily at being given to the youthful son of a marcher baron.  She was a little mollified when I told her she was to be Lady Dunster and still more pleased when she learned her fourteen year-old husband was fully capable of functioning as a man.

While I was talking to Lord Herbert, I watched a lady approach the king holding a sprig of mistletoe, for which she received a kiss.  I don’t know why mistletoe bestows on its holder the license to improper behavior; perhaps some relic of a time when blue-skinned men worshipped trees and danced naked under the moon and indulged in all manner of orgies in the name of religion. In our modern age you would think people would be done with such foolishness.  

I sat on the dais, from which vantage I could look down on all the nobility in their finery: gowns and doublets of cloth of gold or velvet in vermilion, emerald and peacock blue, jewels sparkling in candlelight.  I watched and I listened, trying to pick up all the intrigues and nuances behind the smiling courtesy.  Who wanted what post?  Who needed more land?  Or a new wife?  Who would support me and mine?  There were incipient enmities here.  Those close to the king, men like Hastings, the Herbert brothers and Lords Stafford and Audley, resented Warwick for his arrogance.

I saw that my brothers and sisters were putting themselves about, trying to be charming, trying to look as if they belonged at Eltham with the court at Christmas and didn’t mind the snubs.  My brother John, a gregarious youth, usually had no trouble making friends.  He had that rare gift of being able to get along with anyone, of any age and either sex, because there was a wit and a sparkle about him that was hard to resist.  Yet I saw that whenever he joined a group, within moments they would fade away leaving him standing alone. 

Later in the evening, I had the opportunity to speak to the king’s youngest brother Richard Duke of Gloucester.  He was a surprise.  Despite the prognostications of doctors and the expectations of his family, he had survived a sickly infancy to become a thin and pale twelve year-old, the runt of the litter, an ugly duckling in a family of gilded swans.  They said he resembled his father: dark hair and gray eyes that could shine with luminosity when he was happy or smolder like wet ashes when he was angry or hurt.  His mouth was thin-lipped, his skin pale.  He suffered a slight but visible curvature of the spine, which may have been the cause of his extreme shyness.  Our world does not look kindly upon deformity.  Despite his youth, there was something incongruously adult in his pinched face.    

The previous year he had been sent to Middleham, Warwick’s stronghold in Yorkshire, to learn knightly skills.  Edward had told me that he had advised Warwick not to spare the boy because of his physical weakness but to test him to the very limits of his endurance.  Richard often went to bed nursing bruises and was back at practice the next day, never attempting to beg off because of his hurts, the way some of the boys did, never complaining. 

Though I sensed he only wanted to have the courtesies done and be gone from my presence, I tried to engage him in conversation.  “My lord of Warwick speaks well of you.  His Grace is pleased.”

His eyes fell and slid sideways; they seemed to skitter around the floor like flat pebbles flung at the surface of a river.  I put it down to diffidence.  “I know I have to work harder than the other boys because I am the king’s brother,” he said quietly.  “I have to do better than the rest.”

“That’s very commendable.  Do you like it at Middleham?”

“Very much.  I like the moors and the dales and the hills.  Yorkshire has such diversity.”

“And the other boys?  Do they treat you well?”

“They are all my friends.  I like them very much.”

“I’m pleased to hear it.  The friends of one’s youth are adulthood’s most loyal adherents.”

I dismissed him and he went with obvious relief.  The only conclusion I could reach was that he was very different from his brothers, but I had no idea what he felt about my marriage.  He was unreadable.  He might be puny and undersized, but his defenses were strong.

I danced with my husband, who loved to dance and in spite of his size was very graceful, and then with Lord Hastings, who was his
bon vivant
and seldom far away.  There was none Edward trusted more.  A big man was Hastings, bulky, with a rather florid complexion, large brown eyes that seemed to reflect an appreciation of the humorous side of life and a mass of chestnut curls that refused to follow the current straight and flat fashion.  Not a handsome man, yet there was something indescribably attractive about him.  He reminded me of a robin redbreast.

He had served the house of York man and boy, as his father had before him. His service in arms ran the gamut from the first battle of St. Albans in ’55 to Towton, where Edward won his crown and he won his knighthood.  His barony came after the coronation.  He was battle-hardened – who in England was not? – and politically astute. 

As proof of Edward’s trust, he was master of the mint and Lord Chamberlain, one of the most influential and lucrative Crown offices, as it gave him virtually the running of the palace, daily contact with the king, control over who approached him, authority over all the knights and squires of the household, and a handsome revenue from bribes. It was not a matter of exactions, nor was there anything underhanded in his activities; it was understood by all parties, the king included, that the taking of bribes was a perquisite of the post.

The king had said of him: ‘Anything you want to know, ask Hastings.  He has a wide acquaintance in the city as well as at court, and he’s an unabashed busybody.  He can’t help himself.  Knowing other people’s business, ferreting out their secrets and disseminating such information over a tankard of ale with his fellows is to him a compulsion every bit as irresistible as… well, never mind.’

One of my ladies complained that he was a dreadful gossip and Alice Fogge replied: ‘Not at all.  He’s really very good at it.’  

After one dance he was sweating.  Between the huge fire, the many candles that burned in overhead chandeliers and wall sconces and the emanations of overheated bodies going through the energetic motions of a galliard, the air was thick and hot.  Wiping his brow, Hastings excused himself.

Sir John Fogge appeared at my elbow.  He was wed to Alice, one of my Haute cousins.  As treasurer of the royal household, he had the unenviable task of filling his royal master’s needs from a slender budget.  He complained that it was rather like trying to fill a tankard with a hole in it from a dripping tap.

“Did you hear, Madam, that his Grace ordered me to buy gifts for the entire household, including the grooms and the lads who turn the spits and stack the firewood?  Every member of the family is to have a costly gift.  I’ve sent a tun of wine to her Grace of York, his godmother Lady Say and to Lord Dyneham’s mother.”

“And what did you find for the spit boys?”

“Shoes.”

“Shoes!” That was rather generous.  “And he approved that?”

He nodded morosely.  “They’ll only sell them.  What do spit boys want with shoes?  The shoemaker will have to take his place at the end of a very long queue of angry men, all waving their bills in my face.”

“Royal patronage is worth a groat or two.”

“I could like my job better if our lord the king could be persuaded to take a more realistic view of his finances.”

“Sir John, his Grace is fully aware that it is one of the most crucial and complex issues facing him.  He has the attitude of a prince: treasurers may groan, but money must be found when it is needed. That’s your job.  That’s what he appointed you to do.”

Sir John pulled off his hat to claw at his prematurely balding head.  His wife insisted he was balding because he was tearing his hair out, and there was some truth in the statement.

“Yes, Madam,” he said mournfully.

I returned to the dais, where Edward was talking to Hastings.  “Hugh Wyche and I have sent a load of cloth through the Straits of Marrok.  The ship will bring back pins and combs, hats, mirrors and fans, all those fripperies our ladies love.  I tell you, Will, there’s an untapped market in Italy for our cloth and raw wool.”

I had to smile at his enthusiasm.  He was likely the poorest prince in Christendom and yet I now believed him when he said he would be rich one day. As he looked out across the great hall, I could see schemes and dreams weaving before his eyes. 

“Few are taking English goods there and the Italians are hungry for them.  One thing vexes me, though.  I am forced to use foreign ships instead of English ones, because English made ships are just too small.  The shipyards of Holland and Zeeland are building wonderful cogs of twelve hundred and even fifteen hundred tons burden, while we possess only two ships above five hundred tons, which is adequate for crossings of the Narrow Sea but not for a longer voyage through the Straits of Marrok.”

I stifled a yawn and said: “With your permission, Sire, I will retire now.”