The Jewels of Warwick (37 page)

 

 

Her gown was a rich velvet of royal purple slashed at the sleeves,
under which she wore a gold chemise. She did not need the jewelry
she continually shunned, for her skin was radiant and milky, and her
gown sparkled more brilliantly than any gems that could have adorned
her fingers and throat. This was going to be her subjects' first
preview of her as their queen, and what a generous queen she would
be.

 

 

She took one more trip to the kitchen for a final inspection, a
bustling but organized affair, as cooks all attired in white checked
the roaring fire in the central open hearth and two smaller hearths
on either side, above which were suspended huge iron cauldrons
billowing with delicious steam.

 

 

The master cooks scurried about, shouting orders to their
apprentices, stirring, churning, pouring batter into mixing bowls,
beating eggs, turning the roasts on spits. A young scullery maid
swept a sprinkling of flour from the floor, and the bakers slid
loaves of bread and cakes into the brick ovens.

 

 

The long worktables were strewn with carving knives, strainers,
sieves, whisks, ladles, and shiny copper pots. Platters were piled
with cheese tarts, pastries, cubes of jellied milk, different meats
and game, including turkeys, recently introduced from the New World.

 

 

Bowls were heaped with peas as green as the countryside, sunny
yellow squash, bright orange carrots chopped into round coins,
earthy turnips and radishes, luscious apples, plump pears and
succulent grapes spilling over the platters like waterfalls.

 

 

She had a few surprises for her guests in the exotic fruits in their
first season in her gardens; raspberries, black currants, and
melons, all germinated and raised lovingly from seeds imported from
the lush gardens of Portugal, Spain and Italy. In addition, on each
guest's plate would be a 'love apple,' tomatoes from Mexico, one of
the delicacies brought back from the South American colonies by the
brave explorers.

 

 

The invited nobles were brave soldiers and warriors, and the kitchen
help, her own personal maids, and servitors would cater to her
guests' every need. This week-long feast would be like none other
ever held at Warwick Castle–it was to be even more sumptuous than
the Christmas celebration attended by the King and his court.

 

 

There would be dancing, music, archery, lawn bowling, uninhibited
lovemaking, as she'd invited all her guests to bring a companion,
and on the final day, a staged tournament with jousting, knights and
horses clad in armor, wielding blunt-edged swords, charging toward
each other while the ladies shrieked with glee. For this occasion,
she'd sent Sabine away to visit Margaret Pole along with her
ladies-in-waiting.

 

 

Dipping her finger into a bowl of cream and putting it to her lips,
she nodded, turned and swept out of the kitchen. All was going well.
At any moment, they would begin arriving at the gatehouse, and she
wanted to be there to greet each one of them personally.

 

 

Thomas More was the first to arrive, just as she'd planned.

 

 

"How many guests do you expect at the castle, my lady?" he asked,
handing his reins to the groom who trotted off to the stables.

 

 

"At least two hundred, not counting their retinues," she replied.
"Every room in the castle will be occupied, although the sleeping
arrangements may be a bit awkward, since I know not who is bringing
whom and who wishes to share a bed with whom, but that will add to
the fun of it!"

 

 

Indeed, close to two hundred guests did arrive, some with as many as
ten servants, maids, and ushers, and as her ladies-in-waiting
checked off the guest list upon each party's arrival at the
gatehouse, the great hall filled with all the glittering jewels,
furs, embroidered velvets, satins and noble bodies that could have
graced Hampton Court Palace for a royal wedding feast.

 

 

After the final course was served, she stood, hushed the musicians
in the gallery, and the hall grew quiet. Those who were dancing
stopped in mid-stride or mid-leap, goblets halted halfway to open
lips, and all heads turned to face their hostess. Thomas More sat at
her right, looking up at her with awestruck admiration.

 

 

"My dear guests, some of you may be aware of why I invited you here
for this week of merrymaking," she announced, her voice ringing
through the great hall with confident resonance. "Every one of us
has something in common. We all share a common history. We are
descendants of the brave men who fought at Bosworth and lost their
lives fighting for either the Yorkists or Lancastrians. The two
houses are now united under Henry Tudor. But we must remember how
this battle was won, and who won it. And we must remember who my
father was. He was Edward, Earl of Warwick. He was the last
Plantagenet, and as such, he was in direct line for the throne."

 

 

She went on to explain her family's claim to the crown, how it had
been snatched out of her father's hands by Harry Tudor. She brought
their history right up to the present, condemning the present king
for his cruel treatment of Queen Catherine, causing her to die a
miserable death in a drafty castle, for his heretical abandonment of
Rome and the Pope, and for his adulterous behavior and bigamous
marriage to Anne Boleyn.

 

 

She denounced his dissolution of the monasteries and his declaration
that he was head of the Church. She mocked him for his hypocritical
heraldry of the continuation of his father's policies to bring the
kingdom out of the feudal systems of the dark ages into a radiant
outburst of Renaissance culture and finery while his subjects
starved.

 

 

By the time she had finished delivering her speech, her guests were
no longer scattered about the dance floor or wishing to pour more
wine down their throats. They were entranced with this charismatic
woman, who'd been born in the Tower of London and had seen her
father, the rightful Yorkist King of England, dragged to his death
at the request of Henry Tudor, the present King's father.

 

 

By the time the evening ended, she had the lords of many shires—and
the pledges of their sons and tenants—willing to fight for her
cause.

 

 

They came up to her one at a time, bowed and kissed her hand as if
she were the Queen herself.

 

 

And so I shall be, sooner than you think!
she vowed
silently as the last of her followers bowed his way out of her
presence.

 

 

She dashed up the stairs before any of her servers could bother her
with tomorrow's meals or appointments.

 

 

Digging in her wardrobe, she found what she'd been looking for: an
item she had never told a soul she owned. It was a glittering crown
with fake stones which she'd fashioned herself out of base metal.

 

 

She kept it highly polished and loved to place it on her head.
"Queen Topaz the First," she declared in a steady, yet quiet voice;
servers were everywhere.

 

 

"Off with Henry Tudor's head! Ha, ha, haaaa!" she ordered, not so
quietly this time.

 

 

Don't miss The Crown of Destiny, Book Four of The Yorkist Saga, an
excerpt from which is at the end of this novel.

 

 

 

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

 

 

I would like to thank the
Medieval Heritage Society
, who at
Goodrich Castle
, patiently answered my many questions and
gave a fine performance.

 

 

 

BIBLIOGRAPHY

 

 

Albert, Marvin,
The Divorce

 

 

Ashdown, Mrs. Charles H.,
British Costume During Nineteen
Centuries

 

 

Banks, F.R.,
The Penguin Guide to London

 

 

Bowle, John,
Henry VIII

 

 

Braudel, Fernand,
The Structures of Everyday Life

 

 

Burke, John,
The Castle in Medieval England

 

 

Doherty, P.C.,
The Fate of Princes

 

 

Durant, Will,
The Story of Civilization

 

 

Elton, G.R.,
Reform and Reformation

 

 

Gies, Joseph and Frances,
Life in a Medieval Castle

 

 

Griffiths, Arthur,
The Chronicles of Newgate

 

 

Harrison, Molly,
How They Lived, 1485-1700

 

 

Jenkins, Elizabeth,
The Princes in the Tower

 

 

Kendall, Paul Murray,
The Yorkist Age

 

 

Kendall, Paul Murray,
Richard III

 

 

Markham, Clements,
Richard III

 

 

Newark, Timothy,
Medieval Warfare

 

 

Quennell, Marjorie and C.B.,
History of Everyday Things in
England, 1066-1799

 

 

Read, Conyers,
The Tudors

 

 

Sorell, Alan,
Medieval Britain

 

 

St. Aubyn, Giles,
The Year of Three Kings

 

 

Stone, Lawrence,
The Family, Sex & Marriage in England,
1500-1800

 

 

Story, R.L.,
The Reign of Henry VII

 

 

Warnicke, Retha,
The Rise and Fall of Anne Boleyn

 

 

Whitaker, Terence,
Haunted England

 

 

Wood, Margaret,
The English Mediaeval House

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

CHAPTER ONE

 

 

Lytham St Annes, Lancashire, Northwest England

 

 

Topaz Plantagenet was doing what no woman had ever done in the
history of England – going to battle for the crown she felt was her
destiny ever since her father had been put to death by Henry VII
after Richard III had lost the battle of Bosworth Field.

 

 

Refusing to give in to weariness, she returned to the cliff-top as
the sun finally set, her horse stumbling now and again on the uneven
surfaces of the long-abandoned trails that wended their way through
the district. It had been another glorious clear day, finally giving
way in a blood-red haze to darkness.

 

 

Her brow furrowed as she squinted out to sea, but it was not the
setting sun, in its last dying throes, that troubled her. Where
were
they? Why weren't they here yet? For three days now she and a
handful of loyal followers had been waiting at this desolate spot
for her Continental allies to join her and depose Henry VIII at
last.

 

 

The location had seemed a perfect choice when they had all been
plotting around the table with Sir Thomas More, safely ensconced
within the walls of Warwick Castle by a roaring fire, but she was
not so sure now. The isolated cove, nestled back down the trail and
surrounded by jagged sentinel cliffs of rock, was a cursed place
seldom visited by the living. Even the bolder warriors in her party,
veterans of many a bloody campaign, seemed to sense the grim
atmosphere. None of them would make their camp tents within the
bounds of the ancient ruins.

 

 

She shuddered, not from the westerly breeze, bringing with it
another night edged with chill, but at the forsaken, desolate
landscape. The breeze that swirled round the cliff was evil, the
sweltering sun drifting away to cast its heat upon a more blessed
land. Her heart pounded at every rustle of the wind in the gorse and
ferns, sole inhabitants of this barren cliff-top, and she sensed
that even they wished her gone.

 

 

She chided herself out loud, patting her horse on the side of his
neck, not so much to comfort the animal as to reassure herself.
Railing at phantoms! If the men could see her now, after the way she
had derided them for their fear of the troubled spirits rumored to
walk these bleak cliffs and populate the long-dead hamlet below.

 

 

A thriving seaport two hundred years ago, the cove was now a tomb.
Even before the final deadly raid, when the French had landed in the
mist to slaughter every last unwary villager before taking their
plunder, the accursed place had been blighted. It had suffered the
lawless butchery of countless pirate raids, and twice been stricken
with the Black Death. The hangman's noose had seldom been empty when
people had lived there, for when no other enemy was afoot the
village would fall upon its own with accusations of witchcraft,
conspiracy or smuggling.

 

 

Small wonder then that this grim place had finally been forsaken by
mortal man, but not forgotten. Even now, few men would walk this
coastal path by day and none dared venture forth by night. The devil
himself had been spotted here just two years hence, leaving cloven
hoof prints in the barren earth, or so they had been told by the
elderly fisherman living in the cottage by the fork in the coastal
road that had led them here.

 

 

"Bad rum, superstition and wandering goats have conjured up many a
devil!" she had laughed, and in the warm summer breeze, her men had
laughed with her.

 

 

Now they clustered uneasily, cheek to jowl around their campfires in
the twilight, taking courage from strong ale and adding new
embellishments to the well-worn tales of their own bravado that
would see them to their bedrolls.