Читать книгу A Tapestry of Treason - Anne O'Brien, Anne O'Brien - Страница 12

31st August 1399: Palace of Westminster

‘If you are going to keep me company, I could wish you would not fidget.’

Two months. Two short months during which all the glamour of King Richard’s departure had collapsed into disaster. I could make no pretence that my mood was anything but heavy, unease sharpening my tongue. Indeed it was not an unease; by now it was rampant fear. If Dickon expected tolerance from me he would see the day pass without even a gnat-bite of it. I was held in chains of a grave anxiety.

We were still suffering the sultriness of high summer, but the heat did not penetrate to where we stood, Dickon and I, carved emblems of royal power pressing down upon us from above, enfolding us from left and right, from every angle. Such symbols of royal authority, King Richard’s authority, should have soothed and reassured. I frowned and Dickon continued to twitch and shuffle, a mess of angular limbs.

‘How can I not fidget? How long have we been waiting? You don’t even know that he will be brought here.’

‘I do know. He will come.’

‘There are twenty-six of them,’ Dickon informed me inconsequentially, squinting at the angelic band of heavenly angels, carved at the end of each hammer-beam above our heads. He had been passing the time in mindless counting, but I was not prepared to engage in ineffectual conversation. It seemed to me that my family and I were balanced like angels on the head of a pin. All we had achieved was about to be thrown into chaos.

‘How much longer?’ Dickon groaned. ‘Will he be shackled?’

When his large feet continued to scuff against the Purbeck stone, his shoulders hunched in a perpetual slouch, I pinned him with a stare of displeasure as I dug my fingers into the fine weave of his sleeve. I cared not that it was detrimental to the raised pattern.

‘Whether he is shackled or not, you will award him all courtesy. He is your godfather as well as your King.’

‘And the only source of any wealth that will come to me. I will be all courtesy, as douce as a girl, because if I’m not I’ll be cut off without a silver groat.’ Dickon’s glance was sharper and more calculating than it had a right to be. ‘Except that he may no longer have any groats to lavish on me. Will he be a prisoner?’ Dragging his sleeve from my grasp, he moved so that he could see through the carved arch of the doorway where they would eventually make an entrance.

‘I do not yet know.’

But I could not see this charade, this exchange of power from King to Invader, ending in any other fashion.

A servant entered, one I had sent on a mission, now hot from riding. He approached at a jog.

‘Well?’ I asked.

‘They are here, my lady, two miles outside the city.’ He bowed then wiped his face on his sleeve. ‘They’ll be closer now. The King is here with them.’

‘Who is in command?’

The servant shrugged. He was not one of mine or he would not have dared to shrug in my presence. ‘The Mayor and aldermen have met with them, my lady. It was their decision that the King should be brought here to Westminster. The King had no choice in the matter, I’d say.’

‘And the Duke of Lancaster?’

‘He rides at the head of his army, my lady.’

‘Is he in control? Does he have an air of authority?’ I was curious. What was the demeanour of my cousin Henry of Lancaster? Had he returned as supplicant or conqueror?

Richard had banished Henry from England, ostensibly for treason. Now Henry was returned on the death of his father, to reclaim both his title and his inheritance, choosing the opportune moment when Richard was in Ireland. I had to admire his perspicacity. Many would say that Richard had been far from wise in condemning Henry to banishment for life at the same time as he confiscated all the Lancaster wealth and lands for his own use. Our cousin Henry was unlikely to accept such wilful destruction of his true inheritance with a head bent in obedient acceptance. Cousin Henry would demand what was his by right. He had landed at Ravenspur to the north in the first week of July, collecting an army which included the puissant Percy Earl of Northumberland, and now he was here in London with King Richard firmly tucked into his gauntleted fist.

The messenger broke into my thoughts. ‘The Duke of Lancaster’s armour is very fine, my lady. Italian and worth a King’s ransom, so they say. He looks like a man who knows what he wants and intends to get it.’ His face split in a wily gap-toothed grin. ‘There’ll be much changing of allegiances, I reckon, now that the King is under Lancaster’s heel.’

Heel or fist, the result could be the same. Disliking his humour, I dismissed him without further coin than I had already given. King Richard’s crown was under threat, but we would wait until all was made clear. Dickon drifted away again.

‘Do you know what I think…?’ he called across the vast echoing space.

I was never to know. The repetitive beat of marching feet intruded, the clatter of horses’ hooves, and not least the rancorous shouts of the crowd. My sole concentration was focused on the great doors, now dragged back, stirring the air. In marched an armed guard; at the centre of their protection, or perhaps their containment, walked Richard. King Richard, heir of King Edward the Third, our cousin and God’s anointed King of England, all hedged about by bland-faced soldiery. In the face of such military might, Dickon and I retreated once again to the feet of a carved and unimpressed statue.

The guard came to a halt and so did the King.

I could not take my eyes from his face. Never had I seen him so unkingly, whether in demeanour or in apparel. Pale, dishevelled, his soft lips pressed hard together, Richard stared round him as if he had still to accept where he was and why he was here, hemmed in by soldiers not in his own livery. Then he was plucking at his tunic, a garment that he might have been wearing for the whole of the journey from Wales, so travel-worn and stained as it was. His boots were covered in dust, as were his hose to the knee. Eyes wild and uncomprehending, he was hollow-cheeked, implying that he had not eaten a good meal since he had fallen into Lancaster’s hands. This man was so much changed from the crimson-clad ruler who had left London a mere few weeks ago that all I could register in that moment was shock. His youthful beauty and vibrancy had been beaten out of him. Even his hair visible beneath the plain felt cap had lost its lustre. He wore no jewels. The ruby ring had gone from his hand. There was no sword at his side. Degradation, as rank water in a thunderstorm, dripped from him.

Richard’s vacant gaze fell on me, so that I stepped forward and, through a lifetime of duty and custom, curtsied. The King might have been robbed of all royal grace, but I, clad nobly in deep blue damask with gold stitching at cuff and hem, would uphold it for him. We owed him so much. Was he not my own cousin, my own Plantagenet blood? Unfortunately so was Henry of Lancaster. As I rose to my full height, I foresaw a complex future, troubled by bonds of conflicting family loyalties.

At a glance from me, Dickon bowed.

‘Constance?’ The King’s voice trembled.

‘Yes, my lord.’

‘Have you come to petition me?’ His tone was querulous.

‘No, my lord.’

I was distracted, for into the Hall had marched an escort in livery that was my own by birth, the same lions and French lilies as were carved onto Richard’s shields, and then came the Mayor and aldermen, self-important in their red robes despite having walked the distance from their first meeting with the King. It was the man at the head who was in command, a man who once had the height and bearing to be an imposing figure. Now his hair was grey, his face marked by years, his shoulders no longer braced beneath the armour plating. My father, Edmund of Langley, Duke of York.

‘My lord.’

I curtsied dutifully again. He nodded to me, ignoring Dickon, concentrating on dealing with the immediate problem.

‘Take the King to his chamber,’ he directed his serjeant-at-arms. ‘See to his comfort there, but post a permanent guard at door and window. We need no more attempts at escape as at Lichfield.’

I thought that Richard, standing silent and unresponsive in our midst, would not have the wit to escape. The Mayor nodding his approval, we watched as the King, with a light touch to his arm, was led unresisting, uncomplaining, away in the direction of the royal apartments.

My father approached, forehead thick with lines. ‘What are you doing here?’

Why would I not be here? What I found difficult to understand was why Richard’s Keeper of the Realm was acting in the role of captor, and thus I wasted no words in courteous greeting. Fear was too strong in me.

‘The King is a prisoner and suffers humiliation, sir,’ I observed. ‘Could you do nothing to stop it?’

‘It was not possible.’ My father, perhaps unaware of my peremptory demand, slapped his gloves against his thigh, raising a cloud of dust which made him cough, his gaze tracking to where Richard had just departed. ‘I am merely following orders.’ Then he added: ‘As will every one of us, if we have any sense.’

‘Whose orders? Are you not Keeper of the Realm?’

‘For the moment.’ He returned his gaze to me and it was uncompromisingly bleak. ‘Lancaster plans to ride to St Paul’s to pay homage at his father’s tomb. From there he will stay at the Bishop of London’s palace overnight, before returning here. All will be settled tomorrow. I advise you to keep your opinions to yourself meanwhile. What is loyalty in one breath becomes treason in the next.’ Which I decided was a surprisingly apposite warning from my father who was not known for his keenness of wit. I too looked to where the guard had disappeared, taking Richard with him. ‘Tomorrow I expect he will be moved to the Tower.’

‘And no good will come of that.’

He raised his brows in reply. ‘He is still King. That has not yet changed.’

Then he turned away to discourse with the importunate Mayor, before signalling to his entourage to depart.

‘Where is my brother Edward?’ I asked before he was out of earshot.

My father halted, looked back. ‘Aumale is with Lancaster, of course. Where else would he be?’ I detected more than a breath of cynicism.

‘Making himself indispensable, I expect,’ Dickon added sotto voce as the Duke of York was swallowed up into a crowd of loitering soldiery and aldermen. ‘And your most noble husband? Where will he be? You did not ask.’

I overlooked the sneer that Dickon had been practising of late. ‘I know where he’ll be. Following in our brother’s footsteps, so close that he treads on his heel. As he always does. They’ll both be waiting on the commands of the Duke of Lancaster. If Lancaster is in the ascendant, why would they throw in their lot with Richard?’

‘Why would they?’ The sneer did not dissipate. ‘I doubt you need to worry. Thomas will be polishing his armour to make the best impression in the ceremonial entry, at Lancaster’s side.’ But then his grin robbed his comment of too much malevolence. ‘And what will you do?’

I thought for a moment. Power seemed to hang as insecurely as a bees’ nest in a wind-tossed sapling. ‘Stay here at Westminster. I’ll be here when King Richard’s fate is decided, one way or another. You should do the same. It may be vitally important to us.’

Was all not still in the balance? If my father, brother and husband were cleaving to Lancaster’s cause until we were certain that Richard’s crown was lost, it might be good policy for me to show my loyalty to the man who was still the anointed King. If that was to be cunning within a cunning family, then cunning is what I would be. A York foot in both camps could prove to be advantageous. I made to follow my father towards the rabbit warren of apartments in the Palace of Westminster where the Duke of York’s family could always command accommodations. Dickon elected to accompany me.

Recalling the King’s sad humiliation amongst this regal display that he had created, I realised for the first time the enormity of what had happened. Halting at the end of the Great Hall, I took a moment to inspect the row of Kings, thirteen fine statues of Reigate stone set in carved niches, each one representing one of our past Kings from Edward the Confessor to Richard himself. Their crowns were gilded and their robes painted red and green, giving it the air of a reredos in some great church, an altarpiece to the glory of God. And before it all, there was set in place the new throne that Richard had had carved, complete with a gilded cushion. I considered whether he would ever again sit on that throne. There had been cries for his execution from some of the aldermen.

‘All will be decided on the morrow,’ I said aloud.

It seemed to me that the only hope for Richard was if some high-born family with military strength was willing to lead a resistance against Lancaster. Who better than our own? We could surely command support. But was it too late? How firm were Lancaster’s hands on the reins of power?

I walked, to halt before the finely executed statue of Richard himself.

‘Where is our loyalty?’ I asked Dickon who had come to hover beside me, not really expecting a reply.

‘Where do you think? You saw Richard. All was lost for him. I’ll stand with Edward and Thomas. I expect you will too.’

‘Are we so fickle?’

I must discover how far my family, and the Holland lords, had committed themselves to Henry of Lancaster, and how much Lancaster was prepared to forget our past allegiances. If he was unforgiving, our position at Court would be untenable, our humiliation as great as that of the King, which led my thoughts into a different path, an unpleasant one edged with thistles. If our future lay with Lancaster then we must bow and scrape. How I despised such a plan, even as I accepted that sometimes the despicable must be adopted for the future good and because, indeed, I was given little choice in the directing of my fate. I grimaced lightly. Much as in my choice of husband, where I had been given no choice at all and found him more than despicable.

I remembered Friar John, wondering where he was now. The warnings of his golden dice had proved to be more than accurate. We should have taken heed. But what could we have done?

‘If you’re going to upbraid your lord and husband for abandoning Richard, I might just come along,’ Dickon, still shadowing me, suggested in a spirit of devilry.

‘No, you won’t. I’ll see Thomas alone.’

It was early evening before the brisk tread, easily recognisable after so many years of sharing the same less than amicable space, announced the arrival of my husband. The latch on my chamber door was raised and he entered.

‘Thomas,’ I said, with a smile that could be interpreted, by the uninformed, as a welcome. ‘I expected you a good four hours ago.’

‘Constance, love of my life. They said you were here. I knew I would receive a wifely tribute to my survival.’

‘You receive the words due to you, my lord.’ The smile remained pinned to my lips. ‘They said that you had returned in Lancaster’s train.’

‘Are you going to take issue with that?’

‘Should I?’

My hours of solitude had given me no respite and my temper was warm. Thomas, only now discovering the time to visit me, had seen a need, despite the critical events afoot, to change his well-travelled garments for a figured silk-damask tunic and velvet cap. Insurrection might threaten the realm but Thomas must dress to proclaim his rank. As he closed the door behind him and leaned his compact figure against it, his chin was tilted in defiance.

I chose not to rise from my chair where I knew the light from the high window would enhance my beauty in this richly appointed room, the perfect setting, as carved gold enhanced the flawless jewel in the brooch at my breast. Moreover I had freed my hair from its confinement. The Earl of Gloucester was fortunate in his bride, both in her looks and in her royal connections. Unfortunately, Thomas would have wed me even if I were the most ill-favoured Plantagenet daughter in England.

‘A picture to welcome any man home from the wars.’

‘What have you been doing?’ I asked, continuing my cold appraisal.

‘I had matters to attend to,’ he said, walking slowly forward.

‘As I see.’ I made a languid gesture to the furred garment and the costly shoes before firing the obvious arrow. ‘To whom are we bowing the knee today? King Richard or the Duke of Lancaster?’

He was annoyed. He bent, elegantly, to raise my chin with one finger, scanning my features, as I returned the regard. Not an unattractive man with dark hair, flattened into seemly order beneath his cap, and eyes the colour of brown agates, I thought for the first time that it was unfortunate he roused no heat in my blood.

‘And good day to you too, Constance.’

‘Is it? It is not a good day for Richard.’

Thomas caught my gaze, held it. ‘Have you seen him?’

‘I have. He was under guard.’

‘So you don’t need to ask where our allegiance must be.’

I remembered Richard as I had seen him in the Great Hall. Bewildered at his change in circumstances, all his glory dimmed from his dirty shoes to his vacant expression. Yet here was Thomas, very much undimmed as he dropped his gilded gloves and chaperon onto my lap. In a little spirit of spite I allowed them to slide to the floor, ignoring Thomas’s silent snarl.

‘Have you seen York?’ Thomas asked.

‘Yes. My father was keeping guard on the man who may or may not still be King. He says he’s following Lancaster’s orders. I understand my father did not even engage with Lancaster, despite the strength of the army at his command.’ I made no attempt to hide my disgust. ‘Surely Lancaster could have been stopped when he first landed in England,’ I suggested.

‘I expect that he could, but he wasn’t, and now he’s strong enough to order up and pay the piper and we all dance.’

‘And you are garbed for dancing, my love. Lancaster cannot fail to be impressed.’

I stood and ran my hand down the length of his embroidered sleeve, but when Thomas moved away, I deliberately softened my mood, knowing from long experience that I would get nothing from him unless I appeared compliant.

‘All we can do, then, is wait,’ I offered.

‘Wait for what? For Lancaster to decide that I and the rest of your family are as culpable as King Richard for robbing him of his inheritance? Is there wine in here?’ he demanded.

I fetched the cups and a flagon from the cupboard and poured as he flung himself into the chair I had just vacated.

I chose my words carefully.

‘I know so little, Thomas, and my father was too busy with the Mayor. Put my megrims down to spending too long alone with no certain knowledge.’

Not quite true but he would enjoy informing me of his own experience.

Thomas took the cup of wine, raising a little toast at last with a show of grace. ‘I’ll tell you what I know, for what it’s worth, but it’s not pretty. York headed to Gloucester, we thought to join up with Richard when he returned from Ireland, and together they would deal with Lancaster.’

Thomas scowled.

‘But that didn’t happen,’ I prompted.

‘It didn’t happen. York went to Berkeley Castle where he just sat on his arse. When Lancaster advanced west against Richard, when your father could have stood in his way, York did nothing other than meet him in the church outside the walls of Berkeley Castle.’

‘And what was the outcome?’ I took a low stool at his feet and sipped.

The damask rippled in a shrug. ‘York agreed to let Lancaster proceed against Richard. And by doing that he sealed Richard’s fate.’

I watched him, absorbing the underlying anger which in effect matched my own. Beneath the brutal self-seeking that governed his every action was a man of some ability, acting as one of Richard’s trusted lieutenants in Ireland. At Court he had been one of Richard’s close coterie of friends. Now his past loyalties had put him in danger; his whole future could be in doubt unless he was clever enough to extricate himself from the coming conflict of Lancaster against Richard. From Lancaster’s inevitable victory.

My future would be in doubt too.

‘So you are saying that all we can do is wait.’ I was becoming as repetitive as a well-trained popinjay.

‘But we will use the waiting well, and make plans.’ Thomas leaned forward. ‘Are you going to welcome me home?’ His hand closed around my wrist to pull me to my knees, close enough to plant a kiss on my lips, a possessive gesture rather than an affectionate one. ‘I could have died in Ireland. Did it cross your devious Yorkist mind that today you might be a widow?’

I was well used to retaliation. ‘Yes, it did. But you obviously survived to return to my welcoming arms.’

‘Would it have been a blessing if I had fallen into an Irish bog?’

I considered his polished presence. ‘There are no signs of battle on you. Did you actually fight?’

‘Do you brand me a coward?’

I did not flinch from his regard. No, I would never so condemn him. Lacking courage he was not. Thomas had been given command of the rearguard of Richard’s army. And not only was he capable with sword and lance, but he had proved to be equally skilled in negotiation. He had been sent to bring the King of Leinster to terms. It had not been his fault that he had failed, so I understood.

‘Would I openly brand the father of my children as coward?’ I replied in all fairness. ‘Don’t judge me. I don’t wish your death, Thomas. It would not suit me to be a widow, nor our children to be left fatherless.’

‘Your dower would keep you, as a widow, in silk under-tunics.’

‘So it would. My dower has kept you in well-bred horseflesh,’ I responded in similar style for the value of my father’s gift to my husband had been a prime attraction from the moment our marriage contract was signed. I was a woman of affluence and worth a marriage, with estates and castles in Glamorgan as well as scattered throughout England. I knew my value, as did Thomas.

Yet he was clearly feeling aggrieved. ‘If I were dead on a battlefield, you could wed again, a knight of your own choice.’

‘My father might have something to say about that. And better the devil you know…’ I smiled at his grimace, twisted my wrist from his grip and sat back on my heels. ‘Tell me: what have you been doing since the Irish campaign came to so abrupt an end? I presume you fought with your usual panache?’

‘Of course.’ Preening came second nature to him. ‘I returned with Richard – although what your brother Aumale was thinking in dripping poisonous advice into Richard’s ear… Doubtless he’ll have some good reason. He always does. And I’ll wager it smacks of some outrageous scheming.’

My ears pricked up at my brother’s involvement in something nefarious.

‘What did Edward do?’

Thomas was not inclined to be informative; his smile was feral. ‘Oh, he’ll tell you himself, full of self-vindication which no one will believe. As for what I did – Richard sent me to rally the men from my estates in Glamorgan. They refused.’

The crease in his handsome brow suggested some unfortunate clash of will, which he had lost.

‘How hard did you try?’ I asked, giving no quarter since he had been unwise enough to suggest that I might wish him dead.

‘Hard enough to know there was no moving them.’

Which did not surprise me. Thomas had no interest in estate management and made no effort to win the goodwill of his people through fair husbandry. I considered the jewels on his hands, the gilded leather of his soft boots. All he did was rake money from the rents for his pleasure. He took with one hand, then took again with the other. His tenants despised him, and if I were in their worn shoes, I would have refused to march north for him. What was the point in abandoning the harvest, with possible death on a battlefield as the only incentive, for a lord who had no thought for their well-being?

Thomas must have seen the derision in my gaze before I could hide it.

‘Oh, I tried, whatever your opinion of me might be. I know as well as you where our interests lie and a small force of our tenants rallying to Richard might have made a difference. But then Richard abandoned his army at Carmarthen and fled north, so it would have made no difference at all.’

‘And you fled with him.’

‘Yes. I did.’

I frowned, taking the empty cup from him, handing him mine which was almost untouched. ‘And so?’ I enquired.

Thomas’s voice was as flat as a boned herring. ‘I left Glamorgan to return to fight for Richard but I was taken into custody with him at Conwy. God rot those cold and draughty Welsh castles! There were eight of us. Richard asked for guarantees of our safety from the Earl of Northumberland, who has thrown in his lot and his Percy troops with Lancaster, which to my mind makes Lancaster invincible.’

‘So your life was never in danger.’ I did not wait for a reply. ‘You changed sides. You abandoned Richard and gave your allegiance to Henry of Lancaster.’

At that moment I disliked him more than I had ever done in my life. He had been my husband since I was four years of age. I did not like him then; I liked him far less now.

‘I did. I’ll not lie to you.’ His eyes narrowed in some bitter memory. ‘The cause was lost by the time Richard was taken from Conwy to Flint under restraint. The Holland Dukes of Exeter and Surrey had tried to negotiate with Henry, but they had already relinquished their freedom. What value would there be for me – for us – in my remaining at Richard’s side to join your Holland cousins under lock and key? If I had, I’d be locked in the Tower with Richard now. Is that what you would have me do?’

I shook my head. In truth that would not have been to our advantage. Nor to Richard’s. If there was any hope of his rescue, he needed his friends with freedom to conspire, not comrades sharing his incarceration. Moreover I understood the ambition that drove Thomas. To stand with Richard at the eleventh hour, without an army, without friends, faced with the overwhelming power of the Percy retainers, would have been politically inept and personally destructive. But I suspected that there was little compassion in Thomas’s planning for Richard. Thomas would do whatever would best suit his vision of Despenser aggrandisement.

‘What do you suggest that we do now?’ I asked with the sweetness of autumn honey. ‘You know that I dislike sitting on my hands when all is to fight for.’

For the first time in our exchange of hostilities Thomas laughed, although the edge was plain enough. ‘Thank God He never put a sword into your hand and sent you out onto a battlefield!’ But the laughter died. ‘I don’t think we have any choice in the matter. The momentum is against us. Lancaster is proving to be a driving force with an iron will to batter all into submission.’

‘But what we don’t know, of course, is whether Lancaster will accept your change of heart.’

‘No, we do not. And I dislike the possibilities if he decides that we are too much of a threat to his plans, whatever they might be. He executed the rebels who stood against him at Bristol fast enough. So we must keep our heads below the parapet.’

‘As long as we have heads to protect.’

His glance was sharp. ‘What we have to ask ourselves is – what is Lancaster’s intention towards Richard? Does he want him alive or dead?’

I saw the cold judgement in his face, heard it in his voice. Would he actually care, as long as his own neck was safe? Ambition aside, I hoped that I cared.

‘Do you actually like Richard?’ I asked, without thinking.

‘Like him?’

‘You have lived in his palaces, eaten the food provided by him, worn the clothes and jewels he has given as gifts, enjoyed the patronage and the title of Duke of Gloucester. You have enjoyed Richard’s recognition of your family and its reinstatement after the Despenser treasons of the past. You have been grateful to him. But do you like him?’

‘Does it matter? I swore my oath of loyalty to him.’

‘That is not at all the same thing.’

He considered, prepared to answer my question after all. ‘Like is too innocuous a word. Yes, I am grateful. Without this upheaval I would have remained loyal to him. But I don’t trust him, if that’s what you mean.’ And I thought that for once I could accept Thomas’s honesty, for there was no one here for him to impress except myself. ‘He is fickle. He can turn against his friends as quickly as he can turn against his enemies. Any man foolish enough to make an enemy of Richard might risk the kiss of an axe against his neck.’

We all knew it well. When Richard was still young and untried as a monarch, giving power and patronage to unsuitable favourites, a group of magnates had taken issue with him. His favourite, de Vere, was beaten on the battlefield and hounded into exile. Richard was forced against his will to promise to take advice from those who knew better. Thus the Lords Appellant had become a force to be reckoned with.

But Richard would not accept this curb rein on him for ever. Three years ago now, he had taken his revenge on those five Lords. His uncle Thomas of Woodstock had been smothered in his bed in Calais. The Earl of Arundel had been executed on Tower Hill, the Earl of Warwick imprisoned. The Earl of Nottingham had been banished for life. And Cousin Henry, then Earl of Hereford, the youngest of the Appellants, had been banished for a treason he had probably not committed. We all recognised that Richard had a vengeful spirit.

‘He carries grudges. He is self-absorbed in his own powers. No, I do not like him. I do not trust him.’ Thomas finished off the cup of wine. ‘Now we have to see what happens with the disposition of the crown, since it has been snatched from Richard’s fair head. We will act accordingly. I will not willingly give up what I have achieved.’

He tightened his hand into my hair, curling his wrist into its thickness, and bestowed another kiss, harder, surer.

‘The question is, my lovely, ambitious Constance. Do you stand with me or against me?’

My loyalties to my family were strong, yet I would stand or fall with my married Despenser fate. Indeed, were they not so completely intertwined, as Thomas’s hand in my hair, that there was no need to make a choice? York, Holland and Despenser would fight as one to keep their pre-eminence, whoever was King, be it Richard or Henry.

‘With you, Thomas. Are you not my devoted husband?’

His kiss deepened. His hands tightened on my shoulders.

‘Then show me.’

‘Do I not always?’

‘No. Of course you do not.’ His hands slid to encircle my wrists and he pressed his mouth against the soft skin there, where my pulse beat, slow and unaroused. ‘I missed you.’

‘Which I do not believe.’

‘If only for your sharp tongue.’ His eyes softened, warning me of his change of mood. ‘But not only that.’ He lifted the ivory-backed mirror from the coffer at my side. ‘What do you see?’ He held it before my face. ‘What do you see, my lovely Constance?’

‘What should I see?’ I asked, determined not to respond to his cold-blooded wooing.

‘I’ll tell you.’ The curve of his lips became sardonic, his chin tilted, as he surveyed me. ‘I see a profusion of hair as fair as that of any angel painted in a missal, a face which is a perfection of shape and fine bones. Eyes lustrous enough to entrap any heedless man. A straight nose, lips indented at this moment with displeasure, an unhandsome crease between elegant brows.’ Thomas stroked the brows with the tip of one finger. ‘Is that sufficient to express my heart-felt admiration?’

‘How unexpectedly chivalrous,’ I observed as the crease became deeper and thus even less handsome.

‘Smile, Constance.’

Obedient to his command, I smiled, knowing that my face would be lit as if with an inner light, even though it was a mockery.

‘If your unholy mother gave you nothing beyond a love of duplicity, at least you inherited the handsomeness of your Castilian forbears. Why should I not miss you? A lovely woman at his side is a gift of value to a man of ambition.’

The mirror was cast aside regardless of its fragility. His chaperon and gloves were abandoned where I had left them on the floor, the damask garment shrugged off to join them, while I was efficiently dutiful if not enthusiastic as he led me into the inner chamber where the great bed with its Despenser hangings, all sumptuous gold fretwork on a red field, dominated the space. I knew the words to say, the caresses to give. I knew what duty meant within a loveless marriage. We had a son and a daughter, healthy evidence of my wifely attention. I gave him ease and obedience. If he wanted ecstasy he could employ one of the Court whores and pay her well in coin and compliments. He paid me in neither and awoke no desire in me. Nor did I expect it. I would live out my life with no experience of love, be it the soft caring gestures within a family or the blazing passion of lust. Life, I accepted, would be far more equable without. My mother had felt the hot breath of such a lust, with raw repercussions when she took a lover. I would never follow in her scandalous footprints. Political aspiration for my family would serve me well enough.

Thomas fell asleep at my side with no more than a grunt of exhaustion while I lay awake and considered the dangers in which we found ourselves. For what was treason? Treason depended on whose brow bore the crown. At the moment it seemed that the crown of England lay in the gutter.

And then as I fell into sleep, I wondered what was the advice that Edward, in Ireland, had given Richard which had awakened Thomas’s suspicions. I sighed a little. Whatever it was that Edward had set his hand to must wait.

From where had my enmity to my husband stemmed? It had always been there. I had never found anything to like in Thomas, Lord Despenser, as he had been titled since the day I had wed him at the age of four years. There were some elements of that event that clung to my mind, to make a lasting impression on the woman I was to become. I was told what to say during the ceremony and spoke the words, although I did not understand the questions asked of me by the priest. The boy of six years at my side, gloomy-faced, without a glance in my direction, said the same. We were word perfect, and there was much indulgent laughter when our hands were joined and the boy was instructed to kiss my cheek, which he did, a peck worthy of a cock pheasant.

I was his wife, I was given to understand. I looked at him with some interest, for he was a handsome boy. He looked at me, fleetingly, as if he would rather I had been the gift of a new hawk or hound. I don’t think that he looked at me again, except when I asked him:

‘Where is your father? Is he not here?’

‘My father is dead,’ he said.

‘I am sorry.’

‘I don’t need your sorrow.’ His lips twisted. ‘I don’t like you. I am here because my mother commands that I must wed you.’

The only words we exchanged on that auspicious occasion. I would never forget his utter lack of interest in me, not that I would ever allow him, then when I was a child, or in later years when it mattered more to me, to see how much his indifference had wounded both my pride and my desire to be liked by this boy to whom I was tied by oaths and religious ceremony. Nor could I forget the overheard heat of ill temper between my father and mother as we sat at the culmination of the feast.

‘Could we not have done better than this?’ my mother asked under cover of a ceremonial blast of a trumpet as King Richard arrived late, but still to grace us with his presence.

‘The lad is a ward of the King. How much better do you want?’ My father was trenchant.

‘Despenser! His family is mired in past scandals. There are still treason judgements against his ancestors for corruption and misplaced ambitions. Are we not worth a more advantageous alliance?’

My mother’s voice was still heavily accented from her Castilian birth, but her words were clear to those who eavesdropped, as I did while I washed my hands in a silver bowl.

‘Your mother was a whore,’ my father said. ‘Before your father made her respectable and married her. How much scandal do you lay claim to, Isabella?’

It meant little beyond the shock of his use of that word in polite company.

‘But a royal whore, and to your advantage. You only wed me because of my royal Castilian blood.’

There was no love lost between them.

‘I wed you, Isabella, because my father the King insisted on it and for no other reason,’ was the brusque reply. ‘Both Castilian heiresses married to two of his sons. As my wife, no one can use you to make a claim against your sister Constanza, who as the elder has the claim to the Castilian throne. If anyone will be King of Castile it will be my brother John of Lancaster who had the privilege of wedding her. I will not challenge him.’

This was not new to me, that my uncle John of Lancaster hoped to lay hands on the Kingdom of Castile for himself in his wife Constanza’s name, although then, in my childhood, it was beyond my true understanding. My mother and her sister were the heiresses of King Pedro of Castile, recently stabbed to death by his half-brother Enrique of Trastámara. Through their blood ran the claim to the kingdom even if their mother Maria de Padilla had been Pedro’s mistress, her secret marriage to Pedro repudiated in favour of a more well-connected legitimate bride. Thus the legitimacy of the two girls was open to dispute, but my mother was a woman of some importance, particularly in her own mind.

‘You have water in your veins,’ she announced to anyone who wished to hear. ‘I would have liked you better if you had refused me.’

They detested each other.

My mother caught me, now patting my fingers dry on a length of fair linen, at the same time watching and listening.

‘Go and sit with your husband.’

Thomas was engaged in fighting imaginary battles or tilting at famous opponents, in company with some of my cousins. He had not turned his head in my direction for the whole of that interminable feast.

‘He has no interest in me, madam,’ I said.

She leaned and whispered, lips thin: ‘You will do well to make him have an interest in you, child.’

‘Why, madam?’

‘Don’t question everything, Constance.’ She was always impatient. ‘You’ll learn soon enough. Just do it.’

But how to achieve the impossible? Thomas Despenser regarded me as a possession to stamp respectability on his name.

‘What does mired in scandal mean?’ I asked my brother Edward, for with two more years than I, he would surely know.

He wrinkled his nose. ‘Nothing good, I’d say.’

So I asked my nurse.

‘Nothing you will ever be accused of, Constance. You will be the perfect daughter. The most acclaimed wife. Look how pretty you are. And how pretty your young husband is.’

‘Will I see him again?’

‘When you are a young woman grown.’

‘When will that be?’

‘When you have reached your fourteenth year.’

It seemed an age away. ‘I don’t think he will miss me.’

‘No, I don’t think he will.’

‘It doesn’t matter, does it?’

‘No. You are royal, my child. And he is not.’

‘Will he like me?’

‘It matters not whether he does or does not.’

It was an unsettling day after which I returned to my life of prayer and learning and skills appropriate to a daughter of Edmund, Earl of Cambridge, fourth son of the old King Edward the Third and soon to become Duke of York. My parents returned to their own interests which, with deliberate intent, did not often bring them into each other’s company, nor into that of their children. We had no memory of maternal love during our childhood years. If we had, it might be that we would have become a less rancorous brood.

As for Thomas Despenser, Lord Despenser, I had wanted more than the hostility that sparked between my father and mother, whether he was worthy of me or not. It was not to be. I might have loved him. I might have experienced at least an affection for him, but Thomas admired my dowry and my Plantagenet blood far more than he admired me, and for the most part ignored me except for the need to produce an heir. In the end, it did not matter. We were man and wife and, as many another ill-matched pair, we would live out our days together.