Warwick stared down at him. It had been on his tongue to remind Edward of the beheadings he’d ordered after Mortimer’s Cross and Towton Field. Now he was glad he had not, disarmed by Edward’s candid admission of executions meant only to avenge. He was remembering, too, Edward’s uncharacteristic outpouring of emotion before York’s Micklegate Bar, remembering that brief glimpse of a bitter grief seeking release in rage. It had been two years since Sandal Castle; time enough, he thought, for all wounds to heal, but he saw no reason now to probe for scar tissue. If Ned had the bit between his teeth on this, so be it, then. Ned would learn the hard way with Somerset, and perhaps that wasn’t all that bad, either.
“All right, Ned. We’ll do it your way.” He summoned the resolute smile of a good loser. “You may be right, after all…. Who’s to say?”
“Who, indeed?” Edward echoed, and although it was said placidly enough, even with a hint of ironic amusement, John Neville moved swiftly to the sideboard and, without waiting to summon a servant, poured the wine himself, passing cups to his brother and cousin.
“Shall we drink, then, to Somerset’s conversion to the True Faith?” he said lightly, and felt an undefined yet very real sense of relief when both Edward and Warwick laughed.
7
Middleham Castle Yorkshire
May 1464
Middleham Castle, the Yorkshire stronghold of Richard Neville, Earl of Warwick, was situated on the southern slope of Wensleydale, a mile and a half above the crossing of the Ure and Cover rivers. For three hundred years, the castle had dominated the surrounding moors, and the limestone Norman keep towered fifty feet into the chill northern sky, encircled by a quadrangular castle bailey, a dark-water moat, massive outer walls, and a grey stone gatehouse that faced north, toward the village that thrived in the shadow of the Neville Bear and Ragged Staff.
Francis Lovell hated Middleham from the first moment he laid eyes upon it, eyes that stung from held-back tears and the dust of a six-day journey. With each mile that took him farther from the Lovell manor in Oxfordshire, his heart grew heavier, his mood more oppressive, his self-pity more acute. Francis did not want to leave Minster Lovell, did not want to leave his mother and little sisters. Still less did he want to join the household of the Earl of Warwick. Francis knew a great deal about Warwick, as who in England did not? Warwick was the mightiest of the Yorkist lords. Admiral of England. Captain of Calais. Warden of the West March toward Scotland. The greatest landholder in England, for King Edward had shown himself to be a monarch of lavish generosity, and none had benefited more handsomely under his reign than his cousin of Warwick.
It was due to the King’s partiality to his Neville kinsman that Francis found himself making his reluctant journey northward that May. Francis was the only son and heir of John, Baron Lovell of Tichmersh, a man who was one of the wealthiest lords of the realm below the rank of Earl. Lord Lovell had died that January, leaving a ten-year-old boy as his sole heir, a boy suddenly very wealthy and, therefore, very important. The wardship of Francis Lovell was a lucrative prize, one that soon passed to Warwick, courtesy of his cousin, the King.
In a dizzying turn of time, the world as Francis had known it was forever changed. His father died. He was to be the ward of the Earl of Warwick. And less than a month ago, he’d been wed to Anna Fitz-Hugh, the eight-year-old daughter of Lord Fitz-Hugh and Alice Neville, Warwick’s favorite sister. Francis was told he was most fortunate to be able to call the Earl of Warwick his kinsman. Francis was not so young, however, that he didn’t understand Warwick had acted to secure a wealthy husband for his little niece. That the marriage had not been of his choosing mattered to no one but Francis.
And so, on a cool morning in mid-May, he arrived at Middleham to take up residence and to take up study of the courtesies and craft of knighthood. As he rode across the drawbridge into the inner bailey of Middleham Castle, he did so with considerable apprehension and a muted degree of antagonism. The Lovells were Lancastrian.
More than three years had passed since Edward’s bloody crowning at Towton. Francis’s father had fought that March day for Harry of Lancaster, but he was a man able to recognize the realities of power. He’d soon come to terms with the Yorkist King, had taught Francis to do the same.
That had not been difficult for Francis. He’d been only seven when the battle of Towton was fought, had no memories of the exiled Lancastrian King and Queen. Marguerite d’Anjou was something of a mythical figure to him, was one with those beautiful tragic Queens of legend. Certainly, there was legend in the making in the tales told of her troubles these three years past. Hazardous Channel crossings back and forth to the Continent in vain attempts to win French or Burgundian backing for her cause. Encounters with highwaymen. A shipwreck off the Yorkshire coast. Debts she could never hope to repay. Yet still she persevered, refused to admit defeat.
The stories were dramatic in the extreme and were so embroidered upon in the telling that fact and fiction became inextricably entwined. Francis believed all and felt very sorry for the woman who’d once been Queen of England, who’d been forced at last to seek refuge in France. He accepted Edward of York, however, as England’s King, the only one he could truly remember. It was one thing, though, to accept the Yorkists. It was quite another to find himself suddenly in their very midst, to find himself in the Yorkist citadel of Middleham, home of His Most Formidable Grace, the Earl of Warwick, and the King’s own brother, the Duke of Gloucester.
To his relief, neither Warwick nor Gloucester was at Middleham upon his arrival, both being at York with the King, who’d come north that spring to deal with yet another Lancastrian uprising. Francis had been courteously received into the Earl’s household, and settled down to learn the routines of his new world.
The two weeks that followed were the loneliest of his life. He was woefully homesick, found no friends among the other boys in the Earl’s service; like him, sons of the nobility, but with impeccable Yorkist credentials. It wasn’t that they tormented Francis for his Lancastrian heritage. Worse, they ignored him.
Determined not to shame himself before these indifferent adversaries, Francis applied himself grimly to his studies, passed the morning hours practicing his penmanship, conjugating Latin verbs, poring over the Rules of Chivalry and The Government of Kings and Princes. The afternoons he spent in the tiltyard, trying to hold his horse on a straight course toward the quintain, to master the elusive art of hitting the target and then ducking to avoid its bruising backswing, which, more often than not, sent him tumbling to the sawdust that so ineffectively softened his fall.
After supper, he was occasionally ushered into the private solar of the Earl, to make stilted and “courtly” conversation with his new kinswomen by marriage, the Earl’s two daughters, Isabel and Anne. And then he retired to the quarters shared with his fellow knightly apprentices, to struggle silently to swallow the lump of misery that rose relentlessly in his throat each night, that he dared not allow to escape in that most disgraceful of all sounds, a muffled sob. Each night he won his war; each day his battle began anew.
The last day of May dawned with the promise of summer languor, the sky so blue that it dazzled Francis to look up at it, and raised his spirits in spite of himself. There was to be no practice at the tiltyard this afternoon; there were to be further executions at Middleham, and the Countess of Warwick did not want the boys to witness the beheadings. They were taken, instead, out onto the moors, each with a hooded falcon perched upon a leather-sheathed wrist. Francis alone remained; he’d taken a particularly bruising fall at the quintain the day before, had twisted an ankle too severely for a day on horseback.
He’d been cautioned to keep to his quarters; of course he didn’t. He wandered aimlessly for a time in the inner bailey, but as he passed the auditor’s kitchen, he saw a large wooden tub of honey sitting just inside the doorway. To his own astonishment, he saw himself reach out, tip the tub over in a sweet sticky flood. There was a startled squawk from one of the cooks
, followed by a burst of profanity colorful enough to have impressed Francis, had he waited around to hear it. He hadn’t. Realizing at once the enormity of his inexplicable sin, he’d taken to his heels, was already sprinting through the gatehouse and into the outer bailey.
He slowed, panting, when he saw he’d either outdistanced pursuit or escaped detection. His ankle was throbbing again. He limped along the outer curtain wall, toward the outlying buildings that housed the granary, the stables, the brewery. As he drew near the slaughterhouse, he came to a sudden halt, remembering that for today a block had been set up within, for the execution of the Lancastrian rebels.
In the two weeks since Francis had come to Middleham, there’d been a number of beheadings, all in the wake of the battle of Hexham fought by the banks of the Devilswater River, a battle that ended in defeat and death for the turncoat Duke of Somerset.
Though Lancastrian, Francis had little pity for Somerset. Somerset was twice a Judas. He’d forsaken Marguerite at Durham when offered a pardon by Edward of York, only to repent of his Yorkist allegiance this past December, almost a year to the day since he pledged his loyalty to Edward.
To Francis, this had seemed doubly dishonorable, and he’d said as much to his father, who agreed with him but offered an intriguing explanation for Somerset’s defection. Lord Lovell was of the opinion that Edward of York appeared so easygoing, so rarely riled and so pleasure-loving that people tended to dwell upon his conquests in the bedchamber while forgetting his equally formidable conquests upon the field. There were those, he told Francis, who could not believe a man who so loved his own ease and the company of women was secure upon his throne.
“That be a fatal mistake, Francis,” he’d said soberly, and for Henry Beaufort, Duke of Somerset, the grim prediction was to be borne out before five months had passed.
On May 15, Somerset had confronted John Neville at Hexham. The result had been a resounding Yorkist victory, and for Somerset, there was to be no second reprieve. Wounded in the fighting, he was captured after the battle. John Neville had taken him to the village of Hexham. There in the marketplace, his spurs were struck off, his coat of arms torn from him, and he was beheaded before a jeering crowd.
Yorkist justice now proved swift and lethal. Four others were executed that day with Somerset. On May 17, five more died at Newcastle. The next day, seven Lancastrian rebels were beheaded at Middleham, and on May 26, fourteen went to the block at York. Today, two more were to die at Middleham, and Francis found himself drawn inexorably toward the door of the slaughterhouse.
No soldiers barred the way. He decided he could risk a quick glimpse within, perhaps even get a look at the two doomed prisoners. He sidled closer, taut with the anticipation of reprimand. None came. He gathered up his nerve, slipped silently through the open doorway.
Within, the light was dim, and coming from bright sunlight, he blinked, at first saw little. A number of men were standing in the shadows. A large wooden block was set up in the center of the chamber. A man was sprawled across it, in what looked to be an improbably awkward position. Realization hit Francis then, but even as his brain acknowledged what his eyes were registering, the blade above the kneeling man’s head was sweeping downward and suddenly there was nothing in Francis’s world but the horror of that decapitated head hitting the straw and the blood gushing over the block, the straw, the executioner, and the twitching thing that but seconds before had been the body of a living man.
Francis choked, stumbled back, and then bolted from the slaughterhouse, out into the sunlit bailey. He only made it as far as the stables before his revulsion burst from his constricted throat. Throwing himself down upon the straw, he was violently ill.
Time passed. No one entered the stables; even the grooms seemed to have disappeared. Francis was alone with his misery. Once his stomach no longer heaved, he rose to his knees and crawled over into an empty stall, lay still. After a while, he cried.
He had no idea how long he lay there. He tried not to think, to keep his mind perfectly blank, to concentrate only upon the scratchy feel of the straw against his cheek, the pungent odor of horse dung, the soft nickering of the horses. When he heard stallions being brought into the stable for unsaddling, he kept very still, listening as these new arrivals were led into stalls to be rubbed down, watered. No one came toward his end of the stable, and eventually the laughter and banter faded away. It was quiet again.
He was swallowing with difficulty. His mouth tasted vile, and the sour smell of vomit seemed to cling to his clothes, his skin. He rolled over, sat up, and then came shakily to his feet. But as he emerged from the stall, he saw that he was not alone.
Another boy stood looking at him in surprise. He was older than Francis, but no taller, a thin dark youngster with a bridle in his hand and a quizzical expression on his face.
“Where did you come from?” he asked, sounding curious but not unfriendly.
Francis was mute. There was no way he could make casual conversation with this stranger. He wanted only to escape the stables before the other boy discovered the evidence of his weak stomach and laughed at him, wanted nothing so much as to be a thousand miles from Middleham and all the hateful people it housed. He debated making a dash for the door, but his knees felt weak, his ankle ached. It was too late, anyway. He saw the other boy glance down at the soiled straw, see the unmistakable signs of sickness.
He raised his eyes swiftly to Francis, saw how white and shaken Francis was. Before Francis knew what he was about, he stepped forward, caught Francis by the elbow.
“Over here,” he directed, and giving Francis no opportunity to object, he pulled Francis toward a bale of hay near the far wall.
“Sit there,” he said, still in the same peremptory tone, and as Francis sank down upon the bale, he disappeared into one of the stalls, returning with a pail of water. At that, Francis abandoned pride, leaned over to plunge his face into the water. Rinsing his mouth, he spat into the straw and then took the handkerchief the boy was silently holding out to him.
“Thank you,” he mumbled, reluctantly remembering his manners.
The other youngster seated himself beside Francis on the bale.
“Was breakfast as bad as that?”
Francis subjected him to a suspicious stare, but could find no malice in the other’s low-key amusement.
“No,” he said, and then, with a touch of bravado, “I did see the beheadings.”
“I see.” The boy was silent for a moment. “That was foolish, you know. Such things must be done. But there’s little pleasure in the viewing of them.”
He sounded so matter-of-fact that Francis frowned, not sure what reaction he’d expected but vaguely disappointed, nonetheless.
“Did you ever see a man’s head struck from his body?” he challenged.
“No,” the boy said tersely, but then he gave Francis a sideways grin, confessed, “I don’t trust my stomach enough!”
Francis liked him for that, grinned back. “It was ghastly,” he confided. “Blood all over.” This was the first person who’d been even passably friendly to Francis in a fortnight, and he groped now for a conversational topic.
“I’ve been here since May seventeenth, but I’ve not seen you before. Be you in the Earl’s service, too?”
A nod. “I’ve been at Pontefract. We only returned this noon. I knew I hadn’t seen you before either.”
This last was said with a smile, and Francis was encouraged to probe further.
“Have you been long at Middleham? Do you like it here?”
“Three years come November. And yes, I do like it here very much.” Another smile. “Middleham is home to me.”
Francis felt a pang at that, a wave of longing for Minster Lovell and his own world. One thing he did know for sure, that Middleham would never be home to him.
“I’m the Earl’s ward,” he said. “I was wed last month to his niece.”
The other boy was leaning forward, sorting through the straw for a stal
k of unusual length. Finding one, he flipped it deftly through the air, watched it sink below the surface of the bucket.
“That will make us kin one day then,” he remarked casually. “The Earl does mean for me to wed with his daughter when we’re of an age.”
Francis made no response, struggling with a keen sense of disappointment in his new acquaintance. He knew very well that Warwick’s daughter was one of the greatest heiresses in England. The other boy must think him very gullible, indeed, to believe such boasting. His pride was affronted; a skeptical challenge was taking shape. But the other didn’t follow through with his bragging, seemed unaware that he’d said anything out of the ordinary. Francis hesitated, and then decided to let it pass. He was finding too much pleasure in the first friendly encounter he’d had since arriving at Middleham to sabotage it willingly.
“If you be the Earl’s ward, then your own father must be dead?” the other boy said suddenly and Francis nodded.
“Yes. He died on January ninth.”
“My father is dead, too. Three years last December.”
They looked at one another, recognizing a common kinship of loss.
Francis wanted suddenly to impress his new friend, but didn’t know how to best do so. “I once met the Duke of Somerset,” he said, after some thought. “He was friend to my father.” Honesty compelling him to amend that to, “Well, they did know each other.”
The Sunne in Splendour Page 13