The Rose of York: Crown of Destiny (2 page)

Emboldened by wine, Thomas St. Leger spoke again on the subject he could not drop. “Sire, with your permission, I propose a toast. Let us drink to slaughtering the French like pigs in a pen, as we did the Lancastrians at Barnet and Tewkesbury! What say you, Exeter?”

Men snickered and eyes returned to the Duke of Exeter. A silence fell. As everyone watched, Exeter picked up his wine and emptied his cup. One by one the others upended theirs, exchanging winks as they drank.

Richard averted his gaze. The look in St. Leger’s eyes as he had challenged Exeter was familiar. He’d caught it in his own too many times, for he, too, had once wished a man dead for the same reason. For an instant he wondered whether he would be taunting Prince Edouard of Lancaster if it were Edouard who sat in Exeter’s place.

Yet strangely enough, it was Exeter who elicited his sympathy. He had never cared much for arrogant, swaggering St. Leger. Though a duke, Exeter had no allies, and no power or influence. He remained an outsider in an alien camp, resented by everyone. Only under such circumstances could a peer of the realm be humiliated with impunity by a mere knight. Richard thought of his Yorkist cousin, John Neville, who had found himself in much the same circumstances, and had died fighting reluctantly for Lancaster at Barnet. Richard wondered if this was how it had been for John towards the end. Sudden anger swept him.

“St. Leger,” said Richard.

The laughter died. Men’s eyes turned to Richard.

“How is it that you, a former Lancastrian yourself—if memory serves me correctly—see fit to challenge a prince of the blood? Have you forgotten your own sympathies, as well as your station in life?”

St. Leger turned as red as the wine in his goblet.

“It seems to me that you owe my brother-by-marriage an apology.”

Richard caught surprise in Exeter’s gaze as he jerked up his head to look at him, and he also noted the bemused expression on Edward’s face as he settled back to watch them. Richard returned his attention to St. Leger.

Fighting for composure, the knight took a moment before issuing his apology. “My Lord of Exeter. I meant no offence.” St. Leger uttered the words through his teeth, a muscle twitching in his jaw.

“Louder, St. Leger. From where I sit, I can barely hear you.”

The knight swallowed visibly, and a vein on his forehead throbbed, but he repeated his apology to Richard’s satisfaction. Richard knew he’d made another enemy. But court was like that, and what was one more foe?

That night, in the royal cabin he shared with his royal brother and Edward’s bosom companion, Lord William Hastings, Richard had trouble falling asleep. The seas were rougher than usual, and the talk of impending war with France had stirred painful memories. He tossed fitfully, trying to escape the images that rose before him: his cousin John Neville, in the fog of the battle at Barnet, halting in mid-blow to gaze at his Yorkist foe with grief-stricken eyes. John’s brother, Warwick the Kingmaker, a lumbering, awkward figure as he fled the field in his armour, pursued by Yorkist soldiers who threw him into a river. Richard heard water splashing, then realized it wasn’t water, but blood. Warwick turned his head, and Richard caught the look of anguish before his face was split in half by an axe and a tide of blood washed out the ghastly sight.

Richard groaned, turning away in horror, but the ghosts wouldn’t let him rest. They scuffled in the dark and cried out for his help, their pleas muffled by the fog and the armour, by the din of battle and the screams of the dying.
No
, he moaned,
don’t kill Warwick—don’t kill John—not John, I pray you, not John…!
He heard someone laugh, and someone else say, “So may all Lancastrians end!” Then more laughter, and John appeared again, a strange smile on his face as he sank to his knees beneath the pounding of Yorkist swords and pikes.

Richard bolted upright on his pallet.

He was met by the sound of snoring from the other two beds where Edward and his boon companion Hastings slept.
I’ve been dreaming again
. He rubbed his eyes and threw back the covers, now too awake to sleep. Slipping on his boots, he grabbed his mantle. He creaked open the door and made his way along the dim passageway leading up to the forecastle. The lantern that hung near the ladder swung steadily, throwing shadows around him and triggering a childhood memory of a storm at sea, a tossing ship, and the tight grip of Warwick’s hand on his own—a grip that had kept him from falling to certain death in the swirling black torrents below. He forced the memory away and grabbed the first rung of the ladder.

Drunken laughter drifted down from above. He looked up.

Flanked by two others, St. Leger was swaggering down, a broad grin on his swarthy face. “Somehow the very air smells cleaner now,” he was saying to his friends. “What a fight he…”

St. Leger caught sight of Richard and his laughter was checked abruptly. The three men scurried back up the ladder and stepped nervously aside to make way. Richard passed them with a curt nod of acknowledgement, and turned to watch them disappear down the hatch, wondering vaguely what they had been up to.

The night was chilly for May. A wind had risen and the seas were choppy again. Richard pulled up his collar and grabbed the rope railing to steady himself. The skeleton crew that manned the ship was busy at the stern of the vessel. He moved to a corner of the bow, away from intruding eyes.

All was quiet. Peaceful. Only the sound of wind and water punctuated the cold, clear night. He looked up at the sky; a few frosty stars glittered in the heavens, radiating a sense of permanence.

But he knew that nothing was permanent, that life offered no certainties. He thought of his beloved wife, Anne, Warwick the Kingmaker’s daughter, and his sweet babe, Ned, and wondered how they fared. Ned had been sickly since birth, and that worry had proved a greater burden than he and Anne would ever admit to one another. Never robust herself, Anne had suffered several miscarriages before Heaven had blessed them with Ned. The birth had been difficult, and the doctor had given him a choice: Anne’s life, or the life of the babe. He had chosen Anne. By God’s grace, they had both survived—but there would be no more children. So they doted on Ned, and fretted. His mind drifted back to their farewell in front of the castle walls.

“God keep you, my lady… and our fair babe,” he had said as his eyes sought Ned. The little one had celebrated his first birthday the day before, the sixth of May, and now he slept in his nurse’s arms, bundled tightly in the soft velvet blanket Anne had embroidered with his coat of arms of the Neville saltire and the Plantagenet Lilies and Leopards. His gaze moved to Anne’s mother, Anne Beauchamp, Countess of Warwick.

She stood a step behind her daughter, looking matronly in the grey gown that flowed from her shoulders, her eyes sad beneath her soft hat and pleated veil.
How many times
, Richard thought,
had she stood as Anne does now, watching her own husband leave for battle, wondering if he will return?
“And you, Madame,” he had said gently, “farewell. Guard them both for me till I return.” She had inclined her head and given a small curtsy. He turned back to Anne.

Slender as a willow and radiant as a yellow rose, she stood in her robes and he was reminded of the first time they’d met, when she was seven and he was nine, and he’d thought he was gazing into captured light. Tears rolled down her cheeks now. Aye, parting held bitter memories for them both—the lessons of the past could not be forgotten, and at times like these, seemed too near for comfort.

He reached down and tilted her chin up to him. “All will be well, my sweet,” he said. Anne’s lips, fragrant and warm, brushed his.

A violent roll of the ship jolted him into the present. He grabbed the rope railing to steady himself.
Aye it’s time to go back and give sleep another chance
, he thought. Fixing his gaze on the stars, he offered a prayer for their safekeeping, and that he would see them again.

~^~

At breakfast the next morning, Exeter was absent. Richard wondered how a man who had starved in the Tower for five years could miss a meal. When Exeter made no appearance at luncheon, Richard sent a man-at-arms to search for him. Then he went to join Edward in the cabin they shared.

Reclining against cushions, Edward looked up from the bed. Maps of France lay scattered throughout the cabin. He rubbed the back of his neck, and grinned. “I’m getting too old for war, Dickon.”

“You’ll feel better when you’ve won France,” said Richard.

“Aye, it’ll do my heart good, as well as my coffers. But if the truth be known, I’d rather be fighting the Battle of the Boudoir!” Edward laughed. “That’s more to my taste.”

Richard regarded his brother affectionately. That Edward preferred peace to war was well known and a trait widely regarded as a weakness. Many a plot against England had been hatched on French shores in the full belief that Edward’s threats of reprisal would forever ring hollow. But genial as Edward was, much as he loved his pleasure, and though war interfered with the royal trade sending money flowing into his coffers of late, King Louis of France had troubled his peace too long. He itched to teach the French king a lesson.

With a slap to the thigh, Edward heaved himself up from the bed. “Welladay, the old
Spider
must be trembling now that I’m on my way to squash him, eh, brother? Remember what he said when he heard I would invade…” Edward placed his palms together, looked up at the sky, and mimicked in a squeaky voice, “Ah, Holy Mary, even now, when I have given Thee fourteen hundred crowns, Thou dost not help me one whit!” Edward roared with laughter.

Richard gave a tight smile. He himself had never cared for King Louis. Aside from the fact that Louis was a deceitful man and given to intrigue, Louis of France had been instrumental in arranging Anne’s first marriage to Prince Edouard of Lancaster.

A knock came at the door. It was the man-at-arms Richard had sent in search of Exeter. “Your Grace, the Duke of Exeter is nowhere to be found.”

“Are you certain?”

“Aye, my Lord. We’ve searched the entire ship. Even the latrine. There’s no sign of him, and his pallet has not been slept on.”

“Very well.” Richard gave a nod of dismissal and waited until the cabin door had closed before turning to Edward. He found his brother watching him with a strange look in his blue eyes. Sudden realization struck him like lightning out of a clear sky. That was no dream he’d had the previous night! Murder had inspired it—or mingled with sleep to give his dream a hideous significance.

“Harry’s dead, isn’t he?” Richard said.

“Looks that way,” replied Edward, toying with his empty goblet.

“What are you going to do about it?”

“Do?” Edward returned his gaze to his brother. “What am I supposed to do?”

“Find the murderers. Hang them.”

Edward chuckled. “How unstatesmanly of you, Dickon. Don’t you know I need all the murderers I can get to help me kill the French?”

Normally Edward’s jests made Richard grin in spite of himself, but not this time. “You mean you’re going to let St. Leger and his henchmen get away with this?”

“You don’t know Harry was murdered. He might have fallen overboard. Or jumped.”

The hint of amusement in Edward’s tone angered Richard. “Pushed, more likely! Had I been a few minutes earlier going to the deck last night, I would have caught St. Leger in the act!”

“Perhaps, but you didn’t. That leaves nothing but conjecture—not enough for which to hang a man.”

“How can you be so unconcerned, Edward? For Christ’s sake, a crime’s been committed! Your prime duty as King is to serve justice.”

“Ah, my little brother,” sighed Edward, filling his goblet from a wine barrel in the corner, “you have always been overly concerned with the justice of the thing, haven’t you? Heaven knows why.” He downed a gulp and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “Look at the practical side for once, Dickon. Harry’s no loss. He was a carved-in-stone Lancastrian. King Louis gave him succour those years of exile from England, and once we reached France he would have fled back into the Spider King’s embrace the first chance he found… Taking our secrets with him, no doubt.” He upended his cup.

Richard watched his royal brother drain his wine. Once upon a time, Edward had cared about justice as much as he did. But ensnared in his evil Queen’s clutches, the golden, idealistic warrior-Prince had slowly degenerated into a King too fond of wine and women, concerned only with his ease—and the easy way out.

“Take my advice, little brother. Forget the whole unsavoury business. Harry’s not worth it.”

A rap came at the door. Edward’s bosom friend Hastings entered, a genial smile on his broad-carved face. Richard inclined his head in greeting, trying to suppress his distaste for the man. Hastings was one of Edward’s two debauched companions in his wantonness. The other was Edward’s own stepson—the Marquess of Dorset, the Queen’s son by her first marriage to Lancastrian knight Sir John Grey. With Edward’s indulgence, Dorset had remained behind in England, ostensibly for the sake of his duties, but common knowledge held that cowardice, not duty, kept him there.

“Aha, Will, just the man I need to lighten my spirits! My little brother’s heavy talk of murder and hangings has left me parched. Fetch yourself some wine and fill my cup while you’re at it.”

Richard realised that all further entreaties were useless. As he withdrew from the cabin, Edward called out, “Be happy for our sister, Dickon. She’s free to wed St. Leger now. See, it turned out for the best after all!”

~*^*~

Chapter 2

“Lo, mine helpmate, one to feel

My purpose and rejoicing in my joy!”

Seated at the cradle, with her babe asleep at her shoulder and her faithful hound curled up at her feet, Anne Neville, Duchess of Gloucester, gazed out the window into the fading light of day. The gentle hills surrounding Middleham Castle glowed a deep green after the rain, and pear trees dotted the landscape with luminous white blossoms. Sheep bleated, and the church bells, never silent for long, tolled the hour of Vespers across the dales.