Red Rose, White Rose (37 page)

Pain snatched at the muscles of John’s face. ‘Jack wanted to avenge a brawl his men had with Warwick’s bears. He decided to break up Saint Alkeda’s Fair. You probably remember that it is held at Middleham on the feast day of the town’s patron saint. I advised against the raid, fearing that blood would be spilled but Jack said he only wanted to show the folk of the dale that the strutting Earl of Warwick could not protect their property. His plan was to creep secretly into the market and release all the pigs in the swine pens. He thought it would be a fine sight to see them run amok through the town.’ John grimaced. ‘That was his sense of humour I am afraid. He only took a handful of followers and they all dressed as dalesmen, no badges or armour. But the bears were waiting for them; they must have known they were coming. It was a lynch-mob.’ His face suffused with anger. ‘That devil Warwick sent Jack’s bloodied body out of the town naked and tied to a mule. It was ignoble treatment of one knight by another. For all he is your nephew, the man is a scorpion!’

I did not say, as I could have done, that if a knight dressed as a peasant he could expect to be treated as one because in my opinion no unarmed peasant should be treated thus and I had been no great admirer of Warwick before I heard John’s story anyway. I merely said, ‘So now you want revenge on Warwick.’

John gave a fierce nod. ‘That is no secret. And I want your brother out of Yorkshire; that too is no secret. But Egremont plans to ambush Tom Neville and his bride on their way to Sheriff Hutton and I do not consider a newly married couple a legitimate target.’ He flicked the hair off his forehead. ‘After much deliberation I have decided to warn you of the ambush. You should be able to get them to change the route, or delay the journey. Do you understand?’

‘Of course I understand!’ I snapped. ‘But why do you not simply refuse to support Egremont’s scheme?’

‘Because it is the first test of our alliance and I cannot renege on the oath so soon. Surely Tom Neville could find urgent business elsewhere – at Middleham for instance. Then he need not take the road over Heworth Moor, which is where the ambush is planned.’

I narrowed my eyes at him, carefully considering his words before I spoke. ‘Why should I believe you? The route to Middleham would take them very close to Spofforth, which I am informed is where you and Lord Egremont are mustering an army. I could suspect that you are trying to lure my nephew and his bride right into the spider’s web.’

John slapped the table with his hand. ‘No,’ he almost shouted. ‘Why should I lie?’ He stood up and began to pace the room. ‘This ambush is not an action of which I approve. You can prevent it. It is in both our interests.’

I rose also and moved to sit on the settle beside Cuthbert. ‘What is your opinion, Cuddy? Should we trust this man? Or is he diverting us into a trap?’

Cuthbert’s gaze slid from me to John and back again. ‘Is there any particular reason why you should not trust him?’ he asked.

I darted a swift look at John who now stood on the other side of the room, drawn up to his considerable height, his face stern and impassive, studying us both. ‘Perhaps there is,’ I murmured, my mind racing. John’s side of the family and mine had been adversaries ever since my father’s will had been made known. The passion that had flared at Aycliffe Tower had surely been but one aberrant instant in a history of family enmity, a mad, youthful kick at the traces which constantly reined us in. Was it logical to base trust on such a fleeting moment? Or had it been something more? John had told me that day that he believed that true love bred trust between a man and a woman. Did he cling to the memory of that one night of love we had shared and still feel the heat of the flame it had kindled? Or did he plan revenge for what he saw as an unforgiveable betrayal on my part? I could not find an answer in his face.

I rose and walked over to him. We stood close together, eye to eye as we had at Aycliffe Tower. ‘Why have you never married?’ I asked.

I saw indignation blaze. ‘I do not think it any of your business! However, as Westmorland needs heirs I intend to remedy that imminently.’

I felt my heart beat a little faster. Had he now found his one true love? And could I trust him if he had. ‘Who will you marry?’

He favoured me with a sly smile, as if he knew that what he was about to say would shock me. ‘I am going to marry my nephew’s widow.’

I gave an involuntary gasp. ‘Surely you cannot! Legally she is your niece.’

He shook his head. ‘She is still only thirteen. Their marriage was never consummated, therefore it can be annulled. She is my ward and she is willing. We will do well together. Besides she is related to the king and it would be a pity to lose that connection.’

‘She is Exeter’s half-sister, is she not? Anne Holland.’

‘The same,’ John agreed. ‘But happily she resembles her mother; more Montague than Holland. Your son-in-law is uncontrollable they tell me, whereas his half-sister is sweet and biddable.’

I held his gaze, my expression stern, thinking of my Anne. ‘I hope you will not seek to sire the necessary heirs too soon, my lord. She is very young.’

He laughed at that and his face lit up in a way that tugged sharply at my memory. ‘I can wait,’ he said. ‘I am a patient man.’ Fleetingly I felt absurdly glad that his new bride would be too young to share his bed, then he drew me resolutely back to the matter in hand. ‘Do we have a bargain?’

I lifted the old-fashioned hood back onto my head, giving myself time to form a reply. ‘I will ask Tom to consider altering his route but I do not have much hope he will agree. I doubt he will want to appear a coward.’

‘Then our journeys have been wasted,’ John said with a shrug. ‘It seems a pity.’

‘Not entirely wasted,’ I responded, holding his gaze and smiling into his eyes for the first time. ‘It has been good to see you.’ I held out my right hand, ringless except for the gold York signet.

He took my fingers in his, studied the engraved symbol of the falcon and fetterlock then bent and kissed the knuckle directly above it. The touch of his lips burned me like a flying cinder. ‘I trust it will not be another twenty years before we meet again,’ he whispered. As he raised his eyes to mine I caught a glimpse of the softness beneath the steel. Twenty years since our last meeting? He had forgotten our brief encounter at my mother’s funeral and remembered only the night of love. But did he also remember the betrayal that followed? I would not know until Tom and Maud crossed Heworth Moor.

Before Cuthbert and I left the priory, I emptied all the coin in my purse into the prior’s grateful hands. It was more than I would normally have donated but I did not care. In his stark parlour, feelings had re-ignited in me that I thought had shrivelled and died long ago. As we rode slowly through the gatehouse arch I turned hesitantly to my brother. ‘Would you undertake a secret mission for me, Cuddy?’

The formality he had used in the priory persisted. ‘You know I am always at your grace’s command.’

I sucked my teeth impatiently. ‘I do not mean for her grace, the Duchess of York, I mean for Cicely Neville, your sister.’

‘I thought they were one and the same,’ he remarked dryly, dropping his official pose. ‘Why are they suddenly separate?’

I could feel the blood rise in my cheeks. ‘I want to send a letter to John.’ My gaze slid sideways to gauge his reaction.

He raised an enquiring eyebrow. ‘John?’

‘Lord Neville!’ I cried in exasperation. ‘You are not blind or stupid, Cuddy. You must realize there was more between us than a failed abduction.’

‘Yes, but what am I to conclude from it? If you want me to carry correspondence between you and our brother’s arch-enemy there will have to be truth between us.’

I took a deep breath and stared between my palfrey’s ears for a long minute. ‘We were lovers,’ I said at length but my words came out in a whisper.

Cuthbert leaned nearer, his brow knitted. ‘What? I did not hear what you said, Cis.’

Vexed, I turned and shouted the words at him, loud enough to flush a charm of goldfinches from a nearby bush. ‘We were lovers!’

The birds flew over our heads, twittering in alarm. ‘I know you were, I just wanted to hear you admit it.’ He out-stared my astonished glare. ‘I am not stupid, Cis. There was no other way you could have given him the slip.’

I gasped. ‘Ah! You never said.’

‘If I had you would have had to trust me not to reveal the secret and as there was no need for you to worry about that I did not tell you.’ He shrugged. ‘So now you know you can trust me, as I have kept it for twenty years.’

‘I always knew that, Cuddy, and always will trust you.’ We rode along silently for a few minutes before I plucked up courage to ask him again. ‘Will you take a letter to John, then?’

Heworth Moor, 24th August

Cuthbert

‘W
ill you take a letter to John, then?’ Cicely asked.

It had not taken much imagination to deduce how matters had progressed between Cicely and John when they were thrown together in such tense circumstances at Aycliffe Peel. She had been a giddy girl of seventeen, inexperienced and headstrong but she had preserved the secret of exactly who had seduced who and how she had contrived to make her escape as a result and I considered she had a right to keep it. However, having witnessed their meeting at Nostell Priory I understood without asking that the spark which had lit the original flame was still alive, despite the subsequent passage of years. I had seen the way they looked at each other and felt the fiery undercurrents flowing in that stark priory parlour.

‘I never told anyone,’ she stressed, ‘not even my mother, even though she quizzed me with grim determination before my wedding. But I have been a good wife to Richard, have I not? I have borne his children, kept his household, been his counsellor – and I swear before God that since we took our marriage vows I have never been unfaithful.’

I was bound to agree that she had been all of the first and I presumed she had not been the last. Then I added, ‘But I detect a change in the wind. Am I right?’

Tears welled in her eyes. ‘I have been dutiful and obedient to God and my husband but now I have discovered that something still lives which I thought had died and I cannot bear to let it lie unexplored. I cannot contemplate the rest of my life spent solely on church and children when I know that a spark of lost love lies waiting to be fanned into life. Is that so wicked?’

I could almost see the devil’s imp clinging to her shoulder and said what was in my mind, despite the risk of stirring her anger. ‘You have spent twenty years building a successful marriage. I spent most of those years believing I would never have the chance of similar fulfilment but now that I have Hilda and Aiden and hold land to call ours, I set great store by faith and loyalty …’

She cut me short. ‘And you think I do not?’

I thought of my two-year-old boy Aiden – the son I had believed I would never sire – and Hilda, the wife I thought I had lost for ever, and the manor in Coverdale, near Middleham, which Richard had purchased from Hal in order to grant me land near the place of my birth. I owed so much to York. However, my deepest debt would always be to Cicely herself, the little girl to whom I had reluctantly committed myself as a favour to her proud and beautiful mother, who had ignored the fact that my very birth was evidence of her husband’s infidelity and taken me into her household. A debt of honour such as that could never be superseded.

‘Yes I think you
do
, Cis, but you also have unfinished business with Lord Neville; business which will plague your heart until it is settled.’

‘So you will help me?’

I reached over and gripped her hand as it loosely held her palfrey’s rein. ‘God help me sister, I will take your letter,’ I said, ‘but if it is adultery you plan then I do not know if I can help you commit it.’

She took her reins in one hand and turned the other in mine, clasping my fingers and lifting our arms into a pointed arch between our horses in unspoken salutation. Our eyes met and I saw indecision in hers. ‘God help
me
, Cuddy, I do not know what I plan. Let us see what happens on Heworth Moor.’

I delivered Cicely’s letter to Spofforth Castle but they would not let me enter. I never knew what was in the letter or whether it was put into John Neville’s hand.

Cicely insisted on accompanying the wedding party to Sheriff Hutton. As she had predicted, Tom’s pride would not allow him to contemplate changing his route or his destination and his father backed him up.

‘I do not know how you learned that Egremont plans an ambush, Cicely,’ Hal remarked with a frown, ‘but from what I hear of the rabble he has recruited to his banner they will be no match for our disciplined men and now that we can add your escort too, I expect we shall outnumber them. My guess is they will take one look and melt away into the moor, if they even put in an appearance. Tom is right; we should ignore this unreliable information.’

And so after a one night stop in York the wedding party trotted over the Monk’s Bridge towards Heworth Moor. The bright streamers and ribbons which had first been unfurled at Tattershall were now faded and ragged but continued to give a festive air to the cavalcade. Tom Neville’s white-on-red saltire standard flew at the head beside Maud’s Stanhope lozenge, while Salisbury’s green spread-eagles flew at the rear and the pennons of the supporting knights fluttered throughout the column like bunting. In the midst of it, under the white rose, rode Cicely and her escort, a pocket of murrey and blue liveries among the majority of Neville red and white. In all we were nearly four hundred and the bridal nature of the party could not be mistaken owing to the fresh flower-garlands decorating carts and harness and the gaily dressed minstrels playing tabors, pipes and hurdy-gurdys in wagons at the front and rear.

Even Cicely’s warnings of possible ambush did not dampen the exuberance of the cavalcade. As we passed through Heworth Green Market the tinkling of the silver bells hung on Maud’s bridle brought marriageable girls flocking to touch her skirt for luck. ‘Heaven bless you, hinny!’ called the goodwives, blowing kisses. One little girl ran forward with a posy of wildflowers – bright-blue scabious, red poppies and creamy lady’s bedstraw – and Maud, already decked in flowers, leaned down with a smile to take the nosegay while Tom tossed the lass a silver penny.