The Lady of the Rivers (30 page)

I tidy the house and command the servants to prepare them for my departure. I hear gossip that the king and queen have gone back to London and that the king himself has ridden out against the people of Kent. Then a message comes from Richard, written in his own hand.

Beloved
,

I am sorry to trouble you. The king has been persuaded by the queen not to march into Kent himself, but he has ordered me to pursue the outlaws at the head of his guard and I am doing so. Trust me that I will be safe and come home to you when this is over. Your Richard.

I put the scrap of paper inside my gown, against my heart, and I go to the stable. ‘Saddle up,’ I say to the household guard. ‘And tell them to get my mare ready for a journey. We are going back to London.’

LONDON, SUMMER 1450

All the way I ride with a heavy heart. I have such a strong sense that Richard is in danger, that he is outnumbered, that the thickly forested county of Kent will hide ambushes, traps, armies of the people who will take him, as they took William de la Pole, and behead him without clergy, with a rusty sword.

We take the London road in silence, but as we pass through the vegetable gardens and little dairy farms, the captain of my guard orders the men to close up, and starts to look around him, as if he fears we are unsafe.

‘What is it?’ I ask.

He shakes his head. ‘I don’t know, my lady. Something . . . ’ He pauses. ‘Too quiet,’ he says, speaking to himself. ‘Hens shut up before sunset, shutters closed on the cottages. Something’s not right.’

I don’t need to be told twice. Something is wrong. My first husband the duke used to say that if you ride into a town and feel that something is wrong it is usually because something is wrong. ‘Close up,’ I say. ‘We’ll get inside the City before the gates close, and we’ll go to our London house. Tell your men to be alert and look about them. We’ll go on at a canter.’

He beckons the men to close up and we ride towards the City gates. But almost as soon as we are through Moorgate and in the narrow streets I can hear the swell of noise, people cheering, laughing, trumpets tooting and the banging of a drum.

It sounds like a May Day procession, it sounds like joy unleashed, but there must be hundreds of people on the streets. I glance at my men, who draw their horses closer to mine in a defensive square.

‘This way,’ the captain says, and leads us at a swift trot through the winding streets till we find our way to the great wall that runs around my London house. The torches, which are always kept burning either side of the gateway, are missing from the sconces. The gates themselves, which should be either barred for night or flung hospitably wide, are half-open. The sweep of the cobbles approaching the house is empty; but there is a scattering of litter and the front door is ajar. I glance at George Cutler, the captain, and see my unease in his eyes.

‘Your ladyship . . . ’ he says uncertainly. ‘Better that I go in, and see what’s amiss here. Something has gone wrong, perhaps . . . ’

As he speaks a drunken man, no servant of mine, weaves out through the half-open gates and shambles past us, disappearing down the lane. Cutler and I exchange glances again. I kick my feet out of the stirrups and swing down from my horse, and throw her reins to one of the guard.

‘We’ll go in,’ I say to Cutler. ‘Draw your sword and have two men behind us.’

They follow me as I walk across the cobbles to the house, my London home, that I was so proud to receive and so pleased to furnish. One of the front doors is thrown off the hinges, there is the smell of smoke. As I push the other door open and go inside, I can see that a mob of people has run through the rooms, and taken whatever they thought was of value. There are pale squares on the walls where my tapestries, the Duke of Bedford’s tapestries, once hung. A huge wooden sideboard, too heavy to carry off, has been stripped of the pewter ware that it held, carved doors left banging. I go to the great hall. All the trenchers and wine jugs and drinking vessels are gone, but, absurdly, the huge beautiful tapestry which was behind the great table is still there, untouched.

‘My books,’ I say and jump up to the dais and through the door behind the great table and up the short flight of stairs into the upstairs solar. From there it is two steps through a wreckage of precious broken glass, into the gallery, and there I pause, and look around me.

They have taken the brass grilles off the shelves, they have taken the brass chains that fettered the books to the reading desks. They have even taken the quills and the pots of ink. But the books are safe, the books are untouched. They have stolen everything made of metal but damaged nothing of paper. I snatch up a slim volume and hold it to my cheek.

‘Get these safe,’ I say to Cutler. ‘Get your men in to put them in the cellar and board it up and mount a guard. These are worth more than the brass grilles, more than the tapestries. If we can salvage these then I can meet my first husband at the Last Day of Judgement. They were his treasures and he trusted them to me.’

He nods. ‘I am sorry about the rest of it . . . ’ He gestures at the wrecked house where the wooden staircase is scarred by sword cuts. Someone has hacked off the carved newel post, and taken itaway, as if to behead me by proxy. In the painted beams above, there is smoke blackening the ceiling. Someone tried to burn us to the ground. I shudder at the smell of the scorched plaster.

‘If the books are safe, and my lord is safe, then I can start again,’ I say. ‘Board the books up for me, Cutler. And take down the big tapestry too, and anything else you find of value. Thank God we took the best stuff with us to Grafton.’

‘What will you do?’ he asks. ‘My lord will want you to find a safe haven. I should go with you.’

‘I’ll go to the palace,’ I say. ‘I’ll go to Westminster. Meet me there.’

‘Take two men with you,’ he advises. ‘I will make all safe here. And then we’ll follow you.’ He hesitates. ‘I have seen worse done,’ he volunteers. ‘It looks as if they came through on a whim and took anything that was of great value. It was not an assault. You need not fear them. It was not directed at you. They are people driven to despair by poverty and fear of the lords. They are not bad people. It’s just they cannot bear it any more.’

I look around the smoke-blackened hall, at the spaces where the missing tapestries used to be and the hacked banister. ‘No, it was an assault,’ I say slowly. ‘They did all that they wanted to do. It was not directed at me – but it was directed at the lords, at the wealthy, at the court. They no longer think that they have to wait at the gates, they no longer think they have no choice but to beg. They no longer think that we command them by right. When I was a girl in Paris and married to the Duke of Bedford we were hated by the people of the city, by the people of France. We knew it, and they knew it. But nobody even dreamed that they could breach the gates and come inside and destroy our things. They think this now in London. They no longer obey their masters. Who knows where they will stop?’

I walk out. The guard outside is holding my horse, but already a crowd has gathered and is murmuring against them. ‘You two, come with me,’ I say. ‘You two, go in and set it to rights.’

I snap my fingers and one of the guard helps me into the saddle. ‘Go quickly,’ I urge him, under my breath. ‘Into the saddle and onwards.’

He does as I bid him and we are away from the courtyard and some distance from my house before anyone knows we are gone. I don’t look back. But I remember, as I ride down the road, the dark smear of the smoke stain in the hall of my house, and my realisation that the people had come into my house and taken what they wanted, and done just what they wished.

‘To Westminster Palace,’ I say. I want to be with the court, behind the walls of the palace, guarded by the royal guard. London no longer feels safe for me. I have become like the queen – a woman uneasy in the heart of her own home.

We round a corner and suddenly we are swirled into a mob of people, dancing laughing cheering people, a great joyous May Day crowd. Someone gets hold of my bridle, and I clench my hand on my whip, but the face that turns up towards me is beaming. ‘Easy!’ I say quickly to the guard at my side who is spurring forwards, his hand on his sword.

‘God be praised, we have our champion!’ the woman says, sharing her happiness with me. ‘He is coming, God bless him! He is coming, and he wil petition for our rights and the good times will come again!’

‘Hurrah!’ shout half a dozen people in earshot, and I smile as if I know what is happening.

‘Good woman,’ I say. ‘I have to get through, let me go, I have to meet my husband. Let me go.’

Someone laughs. ‘You’ll get nowhere till he has come! The streets are packed with people like pilchards in a barrel. There is no going through nor going round.’

‘But won’t you come and see him? He is coming over the bridge.’

‘Oh, come,’ somebody else says. ‘You will never see the like of this again, this is the greatest thing to ever happen in our lifetime, in any lifetime.’

I look around for my two men but they cannot keep their place at my side. They are separated from me by a dozen merrymakers, we are totally outnumbered. I wave to one. ‘Go your ways,’ I call. ‘I am safe enough. You know where we will meet.’ Clearly, there is no point trying to resist this crowd and our safest way is to join with them. One of my men jumps from his horse and pushes his way through to come alongside me.

‘Steady on!’ someone says. ‘No shoving. Whose livery are you wearing?’

‘Leave me,’ I whisper. ‘Meet me later. You know where. Don’t upset them.’

It is the safest way, but I see him struggle to obey the order.

‘High and mighty!’ someone complains. ‘The sort that should be brought down.’

‘Are you a king’s man?’ someone demands. ‘Think you should have everything and care nothing for the poor man?’

At last, he takes his cue. ‘Not I!’ he says cheerfully. ‘I am with you all!’

I nod at him, and the movement of the crowd takes him from me, almost at once. I let my horse walk with them. Familiarly, a woman rests her hand on my horse’s neck. ‘So where are we going?’ I ask her.

‘To the bridge, to see him come across the bridge!’ she says exultantly. ‘I see you are a lady but you will not be ashamed of the company he keeps. He has gentry and squires with him, knights and lords. He is a man for all the people, of all degree.’

‘And what will he do for us when he comes?’

‘You don’t know? Where have you been?’

Smiling, I shake my head. ‘I have been in the country, all this is a surprise to me.’

‘Then you have come back to the City at the very hour of its joy. He will speak for us at last. He will tell the king that we cannot bear the taxation, that the fat lords will ruin us all. He will order the king to ignore the French slut, his wife, and take good advice from the good duke.’

‘The good duke?’ I query. ‘Who do you call the good duke now?’

‘Richard Duke of York, of course. He will tell the king to lie with his worthless wife and get us a son and heir, to take our lands in France back again, to send away the wcked men who steal the wealth of the country and do nothing but make their own fortunes and fight among themselves. He will make this king as great as the king before and we will be happy again.’

‘Can one man do all this?’ I ask.

‘He has raised an army and defeated the king’s men already,’ she says delightedly. ‘They chased after him to Sevenoaks and he struck them down. This is our champion. He has defeated the royal army and now he takes the City.’

I can feel a pain hammering in my head. ‘He destroyed the king’s army?’

‘Led them on, turned on them and struck them down,’ she says. ‘Half of them ran away, half of them joined him. He is our hero!’

‘And what of the lords who led the men?’

‘Dead! All dead!’

Richard, I think to myself in silence. Surely the two of us did not come so far, and risk so much, for Richard to be ambushed by a hedge-sparrow commander at the head of patchwork rebels, and killed outside Sevenoaks? Surely I would know if he were injured or dead? Surely I would have heard Melusina sing or felt the very spheres dance sorrowfully one with another, to mourn him? Surely the man that I have loved for all my adult life, loved with a passion that I did not even know was possible, could not, cannot be dead in a Kentish ditch, and I not know?

‘Are you ill, mistress?’ she asks. ‘You’ve gone white as my washing.’

‘Who commanded the royal army?’ I ask; though I know it was him. Who else would they send but Richard? Who has more experience, who is more reliable? Who is more loyal and honourable than my husband? Who would they choose if not my beloved?

‘Ah, now that I don’t know,’ she says cheerfully. ‘All I know is that he is dead now, for sure. Are you taken ill?’