Rebellion (43 page)

Then I gave him back to his mother and
turned to my little girls, lifting each one up and kissing them tenderly. And I told
them all, told everyone, that it was
my heart's greatest joy, singular comfort and
gladness
,
to see them all there, safe and well, after so long.

My tears kept flowing and would not stop,
and all of us wept together. I looked at my wife and she was smiling through her tears.
I could see how tired she was, though she had dressed in her finest clothes – her eyes
were shadowed by exhaustion. So I held her close and spoke to her more intimately then,
feeling the soft pressure of her breasts and belly against me. I said that we would
never be separated again, and that our son, who had begun life in such inauspicious
circumstances, would now have everything he could desire. He would be treated better
than any prince in the world.

Then I greeted her mother, Jacquetta, and
kissed her and thanked her for taking care of my wife in her confinement. I spoke to
everyone once more, saying that I would go now with my family to Baynard's Castle, where
we would eat and refresh ourselves and rest for the night.

Then I moved among them, carrying my son,
Edward, so that everyone present could bless and touch him. And he did not resist
or cry, but submitted with more grace than is common in any infant;
looking at them all with the same intelligent and knowing gaze.

Afterwards I took him to meet my mother.

She seemed smaller than I remembered her and
was dressed in black with a black cap and veil over her grey hair as though for
mourning. Yet as she stepped forward to greet us a little stiffly, being troubled by
rheumatism, she put back her veil and I saw that she was smiling.

‘How I have prayed for this moment!' she
said, then adding, ‘So you are reconciled with your brother, George?'

I felt a prick of irritation. ‘Yes,' I said,
‘and I have retaken the kingdom.'

But she was looking among my company for his
face, and when she did not see him her disappointment was plain. ‘He will be here soon,'
I said, unable to keep the impatience from my voice. ‘Your grandchildren are here,' I
added pointedly.

‘Yes,' she said, and my little girls
clustered round her and she kissed and hugged them all. ‘How I have missed you!' she
said, and, ‘How you have grown!'

Then she kissed the air to either side of my
wife's face, and took my son from his nurse. ‘Oh, he is like you, Edward,' she said, ‘he
will be a great king just like you.' And she looked up at me smiling so that I was
almost mollified. She touched her finger to my son's lips and he sucked on it at once
and everyone laughed.

Then she gave him back to his nurse and said
that food was prepared and she hoped we were hungry. She picked up little Cecily, her
namesake, and my other daughters clung to her skirts as she led the way, saying that
they were all getting too big for grandmamma to carry – soon they would have to carry
her.

I took my wife's hand and followed my
mother, unable to suppress the thought that she had not embraced me at all, though she
had not seen me for so long.

We didn't wait for my brothers but began the
meal and I had
eaten my way through several courses before they
arrived. When they were announced my mother rose at once, flushing pink so that she
looked quite young again. She kissed Richard then turned to Clarence and held on to him
for a long time.

I exchanged a glance with my wife. She was
asking me without words not to do or say anything to spoil this homecoming. I stared at
my plate and pushed the food down along with my thoughts.

She is getting old
, I told
myself.

My daughters were taken to their room and
after the meal we withdrew to my mother's private chamber, because there was much to
say; although we did not talk about certain subjects at all. Clarence kept very quiet
about his part in the great rebellion, and I did not mention my plans for the former
king.

But we discussed my plans for battle. I
would leave in the morning, I said, to intercept Warwick before he arrived in London. If
he had the greater force, as I had heard, then surprise would be the best strategy. I
hoped the earl would not expect an attack at Easter.

And we remembered, all of us, how Towton had
been won at Easter. This time, too, I was fighting for my kingdom. But that time, of
course, Warwick had been with me.

Clarence said he hoped he would be the one
to strike the earl, and his face had darkened to the colour of the wine he was drinking.
But we did not dwell on this. My mother said we should all give thanks in the chapel for
my safe return and pray for the success of my undertaking.

‘And then,' she said, looking at me, ‘you
will need to rest.'

I did not rest immediately, but spent some
time rediscovering the pleasure of my wife; made new by absence yet flavoured by
familiarity that was in its own way as compelling as the novelty of successive
conquest.

When towards morning I fell asleep, it was
to dreams that were a curious mixture of the day's events; my mother's reticence, me
gathering my daughters in my arms, and my son the prince looking at
me, though in the dreams he was always in someone else's hands.

And through it all the face of the old king,
Henry, shining with surprise and joy. He knelt with me in the abbey as Archbishop
Bourchier placed the crown on my head and patted my arm as if to comfort me.
It will
not be long now
, he said.

I woke disturbed, not knowing what he meant.
Not long until the battle? The end of his reign? Or mine?

I lay in the early light, chilled by the
look he had given me: joy, yes, adoration, maybe, but also sympathy, or pity.

As if I were the prisoner.

But I could not afford to think of this now,
on the morning of what would be my greatest battle since Towton. I looked at my wife,
who was sleeping heavily, marvelling that I felt so separate from her, wanting something
from her if only warmth, but I did not wake her. I lay awake, alone, as everyone who
must ride to battle lies alone.

Henry woke alone, in his London house. He
kept his eyes closed in order to retain the dream he'd had, the sensation of touch on
his naked belly, the voice whispering in his ear,
No one will know.

Even without opening his eyes he knew that
morning had come, though it was not yet light. His body had woken before him, aching and
yearning. His mouth retained the sensation of that other mouth; the smell of a different
body was still lodged somewhere behind the bridge of his nose.

There was a powerful ache in his groin.

Hesitantly he moved his own fingers
downwards and attended to his urgent need, as he had done most of the days of his
married life.

No one will know.

It was not the same, of course. Even as he
finished, his eyes filled with the loneliness of it, although keeping them closed
prevented the tears from spilling. And retained the memory of his presence – the young
man whose name he did not know, who'd said that Henry could call him Joachim.

He'd wanted money, of course, and Henry had
paid him, would have been willing to go on paying him, but in fact that had been the
last time he'd seen him. He'd left, just after the harvest.

So there was only memory, which Henry had
never quite trusted. Was there not something slightly different each time he
remembered it? The young man's eyes were blue, or green; there was a
branded mark on one shoulder then the other.

What he actually remembered was the
amazement of that moment when the young man, who was so beautiful that Henry had found a
different reason each time to watch him in the fields, had understood; had apparently
wanted what Henry wanted.

He had taken Henry, who was so fat and
clumsy, so terminally awkward, to the side of the barn and told him that no one would
know.

If he opened his eyes, right now, he would
return to the loneliness of his life.

But that wasn't true either; he was not
alone, he was married. Thirteen years ago he had married the tiny, difficult,
complicated woman for whom he had come to have the greatest respect.

Not only respect; she was his companion.
They worked well together, had many of the same attitudes and beliefs. They read to one
another in the evenings.

They acknowledged one another's
loneliness.

It was his wife he had to consider now. He
had sent her a message to say that he had reached a decision, but was inadequately
equipped. Everything had happened so rapidly – she would need to send him some equipment
and supplies.

Her cousin, Edmund Beaufort, had written to
them at Woking, urgently requesting Henry to join with him to fight for King Henry. He
would be coming to visit them, he said, in the hope that Henry would accompany him to
war.

On 23 March Henry wrote back to the duke to
try to put him off. He was unwell, he said, which was true enough. The old disease had
broken out again. His skin had flared into lesions, his joints were swollen with
unmanageable pain.

However, on 24 March Edmund Beaufort had
arrived with forty armed men.

Margaret had instructed Henry to stay in his
room. ‘I will deal
with this
,
' she'd said. And she'd
entertained the duke on her own and seen to it that his men were lodged and
refreshed.

But he didn't leave. On the second night
Henry heard them arguing downstairs. He'd stayed in his room as instructed and prayed to
God to tell him what to do.

God, not unusually in Henry's experience,
had been silent.

On the third night, when the argument began
again, Henry got up. He made his way painfully down the stairs, his breathing laboured,
sweat breaking out on his scalp.

‘Do you always speak for your husband?' the
duke was saying as Henry entered the room. Then he fell silent.

Henry took one shuffling step after another
towards the table at which they sat. His feet were so swollen that his toes would hardly
flex. Contact with the floor sent arrows of pain through the joints of his knees and
hips. He could see the duke rapidly reassessing the situation.

‘Henry –' Margaret said, and she got up
swiftly and pulled a chair out so that he could sit on it. Henry sat facing the duke,
though the action caused more pain to shoot upwards from his buttocks to his hips.

‘My wife does speak for me,' he said, ‘but
she does not say anything that I would not say.'

The duke had the grace to look ashamed.
‘You're ill,' he said.

‘As I told you,' his wife said sharply.

‘What is it – this illness?'

No one seemed to know the exact nature of
the malady that afflicted him, nor how to treat it. The consensus seemed to be that it
was a species of leprosy called St Anthony's Fire, which was not contagious, nor fatal,
but debilitating. The attacks came and went of their own accord.

A speculative light appeared in the duke's
eyes.

‘How long do they last?' he asked.

Margaret started to say that it was
impossible to tell – a month,
maybe more – but Henry interrupted her.
‘I believe it will be over within the week,' he said.

‘You don't know that,' said Margaret.

‘Then you can join me,' said the duke. ‘At
the end of the week.'

Margaret started to speak again, but Henry
lifted his swollen hand. ‘I'll let you know,' he said.

This was not the answer that the duke
wanted. He leaned forward. ‘I must leave in the morning,' he said, ‘to join my men in
Salisbury. Then I have to take a decision: whether to fight Edward before he reaches
London or go to meet the queen as I promised to do. I will let you know my decision. If
you recover I will expect you to join me – for the sake of our family, our nation and
our king.'

There were only two male members of the
duke's family left now, himself and his younger brother, John. The duke had been
imprisoned in the Tower after Towton and released only when his older brother had
defected to King Edward. Then, that defection having lasted less than a year, he had
fled to Scotland with John, while his older brother had been executed, his mother
imprisoned, all their lands and titles confiscated and lost.

He called himself Duke of Somerset, but that
title had never been ratified by any king.

From Scotland he'd sought refuge at the
Burgundian court and had fought for Burgundy at Montlhéry. Now, with the new alliance
between Queen Margaret and the Earl of Warwick, he'd come back to England to fight for
King Henry.

If the alliance was strange to him he did
not mention it. His own allegiance had never altered, but he was aware, of course, that
Henry had fought for both sides at different times. There was a certain belligerence in
the way he put his goblet down.