Sumerford's Autumn

by Barbara Gaskell Denvil

  The girl did not curtsey. She moved back and did not take his hand. Ludovic stepped forwards and put both palms to the girl’s waist, hoisting her up impatiently. He felt the coarse shapelessness of her gown between his hands, the slippery veneer of old grime, and beneath it the warmth of her small body. His fingers brushed the narrow curvature of her hips. Avoiding intimacy, he moved and caught instead the sleek wet coils of her hair. He looked up suddenly, read her expression and was startled. The girl looked neither grateful nor melancholy. The bitter, smouldering fury in her eyes matched that of any war horse. He bumped her down onto the cart’s wide bench. Her wooden shoes thumped against the boards and she tugged down the frayed hem of her skirts. There were flea bites on the bare protruding bones of her ankles.

  She did not thank him. Ludovic turned, looking back over his shoulder to the cottage. The elderly woman had sunk into a deep curtsey, stiffened knees painfully bent. She was thanking him profusely. “Oh so incredibly gracious, my lord. And the purse – so very generous.”

  He looked up again to the cart bench where the girl sat hunched. She had bundled her skirts around her feet, and her face was dark beneath the shadows of her hair and her shawl. He still felt grease on the palms of his hands from the decrepitude of her clothes. Her anger and contempt were in some way equally defiling.

  Ludovic nodded to the porter’s lads to drive on. He wiped his hands on the damp velvet of his coat, turned, mounted his own horse, and rode back through the rain to Sumerford castle. He rode slowly, curbing impatience. His thoughts seemed more burdensome than usual.

  Chapter Two

  Gerald cleared his throat, made sure his father was not present somewhere beyond the immediate visibility of the firelight, and said, “I know exactly who he is.”

  “We know who you think he is,” said Ludovic. “And it’s a damned unwise opinion.”

  The great hall was ablaze with candlelight, the dizzying brilliance of a hundred tiny flames from sconce, table and chandelier, outmatched by the thunderous dance of leaping carmine from the hearth. Yet Gerald sat, knees to chin, in the shadows. “I don’t think it. I know it. If you weren’t all cowards, you’d know it too. Our gentle Tudor monarch certainly knows it.”

  “Our gentle Tudor monarch,” said Brice, “has already separated several pretty heads from their bodies because of this particular conspiracy. I intend staying as firmly attached to my head as is humanly possible.”

  Gerald scowled from his corner. “If you’re all terrified of the bastard Henry, then I pity you.”

  Ludovic smiled. “No need to fear him, my dear. Our esteemed father will find out and murder you long before the king gets his hands on you.”

  “Cowards,” repeated Gerald. “Abysmal cowards and traitors to the Yorkist cause.”

  “Ludovic’s right,” said Brice softly. “He may be a supercilious little peacock, but he’s still right. Forget the damned king. It’s our beloved papa will tear your head from your shoulders if he smells the taint of treachery.”

  “And be careful for Humphrey,” added Ludovic, crossing to the long table beneath the chandelier. “I’ve no wish to make unjust assumptions, but Humphrey enjoys carrying tales to Father.”

  Gerald sniggered. “Humphrey? He wouldn’t understand a plot if I explained it to him. Poor sot doesn’t know his prick from his toe.”

  Brice shook his head. “The only two things our most elegant brother does recognise, my dear,” he said. “He’s mighty fond of both. Sucks one and cuddles the other. No doubt he’d like to suck his prick too, but he can’t reach it. I’ve watched him try. He’s mighty jealous of the hounds, I’m sure.”

  Ludovic filled three pewter cups from the big earthenware wine jug, took one for himself, presented another to Gerald and indicated the third for Brice to collect for himself. “But does it matter?” he objected. “Even if this Perkin Warbeck creature is the true Duke of York, what difference does it make? The king now has him in custody, so there’s an end of it. And besides, fourteen years ago the whole country accepted proof that old King Edward’s boys were the result of a bigamous marriage. They’re bastards, and have no more right to rule than damned Henry Tudor himself.”

  “Everyone in England has more right to rule than Henry Tudor,” muttered Gerald. “Besides, it was Tudor himself who repealed the law turning King Edward’s children out of the succession, and making them legitimate again.”

  “Only so he could marry one of them to bolster his own miserable claims,” grinned Brice. “So let’s have an end to this. I’d always assumed those boys were done to death in the Tower a decade back. And if not, so what? Whether this Warbeck is the real heir to the throne or simply some idiot low-born impostor from Flanders, matters not one wit now he’s finally the king’s prisoner. Drink up and be merry, little brothers.”

  “Merry? With the true king taken?” Gerald buried his nose in the wine cup. His shirt cuff showed a rip, well darned. “And me without a shilling to my name. So if you’re feeling merry, big brother, then you’ve a good smug reason for it since I see you’re dripping more cloth of gold and silk damask than damned Stanley himself. You’re as much a younger son as I am, so how do you generate such enviable wealth? You’re not one of Tudor’s darlings.”

  “Heaven forbid,” shuddered Brice. “I hold my life and limbs too valuable to associate with kings. I’m merely careful with my allowances, little one, with no wish to throw away my small purse on lost causes.”

  Ludovic frowned at Gerald. “You’ve been sending money to these conspirators?”

  Gerald nodded at once. “How could I do anything else? I know it as a true cause, and I wish Tudor dead. So every penny I can find goes to help.”

  “I’ll not be lending you money for a new shirt then,” said Ludovic. His own doublet, well-padded against the castle’s draughts, was of fine purpura deep dyed in mahogany and trimmed in sable, worn over a linen shirt thick laced in silver thread.

  Gerald eyed him with sudden suspicion. “And you Lu, you’re the damned baby of the family, so how do you dress like a duke? We’ve an alarmingly expensive mother and a father more parsimonious than the bastard king. So, what am I missing?”

  “Missing loyalty and familial duty by the sounds of things,” Brice pointed out. “We younger sons must all do what we can, my beloved, and it won’t be something I ever discuss with you. You may be shameless in revealing your secret transgressions, but I am not. What humble means I can contrive to constitute a decent living, is my business alone. Now, have you finished explaining your treasons, little brother? Or have you more shocking opinions to confess?”

  Gerald turned away, retreating again into the contemplation of his wine. “You two think only of self-indulgence. Clearly our father’s sons, both of you, as selfish as he and not much better than Humphrey. Hoarding your own secret treasures, and hiding the way of it. What, are you both turned to robbery on the highway? Certainly you’ve neither the sensitivity nor the altruism for noble causes.”

  “For lost causes, no.”

  “Cheer up my dears.” Brice stroked his miniver trimmings. “We’ll all have a new purse for Humphrey’s nuptials. Mother will insist on it. With a real heiress beguiled into the family, will she risk the noble sons of the house appearing in darned hose? Never. Mother’ll steal from father’s coffers to deck us out like maypoles, I promise.”

  “Humphrey’s imminent wedding,” brooded Gerald, “is as shameful as every other damned affair arranged by our gallant father. How dare he drag some poor innocent female into this family, with Humphrey the way he is? Do you think they’ve warned the bride’s family that her groom is a depraved loon with the brain of an infant?”

  “Why should I lament?” objected Brice. “What bride ever really knows what she’s getting? Do they care? The woman’s gaining the heir to the Sumerford title and estate, isn’t that enough?”

  “Humphrey doesn’t know what he’s getting either,” said Ludovic, refilling his cup. “She might be a termagant.
Presumably she’s bringing a deal of land and property as her dowry, and will end up a countess. It’s a fair deal.”

  “You think being married to Humphrey a fair deal?” demanded Gerald, shocked.

  “You’re a fool, my dearest beloved,” Brice smiled. “A sad collector of sentimental and inane causes. Who do you sympathise with most? The future bride of our handsome big brother, or this impostor Perkin Warbeck, feigned prince of the realm?”

  Gerald stood abruptly, emerging from the shadows of the alcove. “I don’t know this woman. None of us do. But I know I wouldn’t care to see any innocent female married to a dribbling lunatic, and that’s more or less what poor Humphrey is. How can you bear to think of her sharing his bed? Required to produce a Sumerford heir? For God’s sake, I shared Humphrey’s bed as a small boy and he was a damned uncomfortable companion then, with sticky fingers groping just where I didn’t want them. Thank the Lord they soon moved him into his own separate quarters in the opposite tower. As for the true Duke of York, he’s a man I love and admire as the rightful king of England. I know where my loyalties lie.”

  “In a bog, my dear, stuck in a bog,” Brice said. “Forget princes. Loyalty should remain close to the heart, concentrated only on oneself. There are dangers enough in this sweet wide world, without choosing to antagonise the powerful. What interest should I have in loyalties, my pet, when they surely do nothing but enrage some other warring faction?”

  Ludovic drained his cup. “Yet self-interest turns boring if permanently unchallenged. And we’re well enough accustomed to antagonising the powerful in this household, since our beloved parents have breathed out hatred and vice ever since we were born.”

  “Indeed,” Brice sniggered. “After nigh on twenty five years of spasmodic acquaintanceship with our noble sires, I have learned the value of self-interest. And how do you imagine we were ever born, my sweet? Can we contemplate visions of dearest Papa making passionate love to our esteemed Mamma? Certainly not. An absurdity. My conception was no doubt achieved in some more sombre manner as yet unknown to me.”

  “He presumably beat her into submission,” Gerald muttered. He sat again, and was chewing his lip. “Poor Humphrey was clearly begat by violence.”

  Ludovic again poured the wine. “Can Humphrey be brutal?” he mused. “He has a child’s temper, but seems tame enough. Yet he has a propensity – against animals – he once killed a hunting bitch. And he stamped on the barnyard kittens when Father refused to take him to court. Perhaps – thorns in a horse’s hooves for instance – would he be capable do you think?”

  Gerald looked up. “I had a particular groom once when I was young. Goran Spittiswood. My first horse and my first groom. I liked them both.”

  Brice clapped his hands. “Enough, little ones, enough. First we are embroiled in treachery and false pretenders, and now in the idle comparisons of servants.” He stood abruptly, swinging back the long skirts of his surcoat. “I cannot abide the contemplation of the contemptible. I shall leave you to your absurdities, my beloveds, before I expire of tedium.”

  “Nobody could spook Turvey,” Gerald muttered, watching his brother’s departure slant across the candlelight. “You can’t think that damned giant of a horse would stand meek and mild and let someone hammer spikes into his feet. Go to bed, Lu, and think of gentler things while I dream of Richard Plantagenet and the future victories of our true king.”

  The tallest turrets of the Sumerford castle, on a bright clear day, might see across the tree tops to the velvet hills around Taunton where the young man named Perkin Warbeck by the king, but who called himself Richard Plantagenet and claimed to be the true Duke of York and prince of the realm, had last breathed freedom. But as the autumn wind whistled its bitter ghosts one midnight, the young man’s wife had whispered her warnings, and Richard had taken her advice, and left. He had crept from the camp, unable to face the morrow’s battle which he knew he must lose. Exactly as Henry Tudor had done before the Battle of Bosworth twelve years earlier, the inexperienced boy had listened to the night terrors echoing across the moors, and in abject misery had deserted those who followed him. Henry Tudor had also fled, but being an older man, had attended to his advisors and returned by the morning’s light. Richard Plantagenet did not, his advisors were as inexperienced as he was himself and his battle was never fought. Now, having surrendered to his enemy in return for the promised safe keeping of his wife and son and the lives of his men, he rode under guard to Westminster. His claim to the throne was over.

  Autumn russets shimmered, staining Somerset’s vales and flickering through the forests like little flames fanned by breeze. Across the fields and pastures of the Sumerford estate and flanked by the shadows of the castle, the tenant farmers deep ploughed their yardlands for winter crops. The martins were flocking high in the sun dipped azure beneath the clouds, massing for migration, and a heron was picking along the waterline, long toes fastidious amongst the squabbling gulls. The Abbey’s bees were returning to their hives, fat with clover, as echoes of the Abbey choir were interrupted by bird calls.

  The evening hazed into blues, shedding warmth. And in a small croft just inside the borders of the forest, an old woman huddled weeping while a dark haired girl, on her knees in the straw and ashes, laid twigs and lit a flicker of fire to warm the damp corners. The girl brushed away her own tears, the back of her hand wiping streaks of soot across her face. She owned no kerchief so sniffed, keeping her head down, her hair in her eyes, eyes stinging from salt tears and smoke and the sharp tang of mouse piss. The next morning she would start at dawn and walk to the castle to claim the position promised her. It would doubtless be scrubbing and sweeping and labour she despised, but she would be fed and earn a few pennies for sending back to the croft, so keeping all of them alive. Gamel was dead but the rest of them could live.

  Finally within the castle stables Turvey snorted, nodded and slept, his huge head slumped to his chest as his grooms settled down into the hay, scratched their noses and prepared for their own sleep. The long day sank further and the sun dipped its colours into the ocean, spreading a haze of cerise across the small cold waves, while beyond the barns and the scrabble of rats, the strange piping song of the little quail gathered his friends for their night’s escape to a warmer south.

  Each day swelled, swam and ebbed. Weeks passed within the small safe promise of an ordered life, the routines of the seasons, the melodies of the countryside, secured and watched over by the great castle in whose shadow each man lived, and hoped, and struggled, and finally slept deep in his cot, snoring with a forgetful and untroubled conscience.

  It was the eve of the wedding, and the family had guests.

  In the great hall the table was set for the supper feast. The silver flashed in the high perfumed candlelight, the well bleached linen was edged with the Sumerford arms embroidered in scarlet silk, and the huge stone walls, swathed in massive tapestries, absorbed the skittering draughts. Wedged into a minstrel’s gallery with its boards creaking in time to the fiddle, the Sumerford players kept the pace as cheerful as determination rather than talent permitted, while the earl led the prospective bride to her place. The bugle announced the first course and the platters were borne in. The roast venison steamed, on its nest of galantine, dates in compost and marchpane leaves. Humphrey began with pickled eggs and frumenty, baked porpoise and blandesoure. He had dropped his napkin, wiped his fingers on the tablecloth and had to be reminded by his mother not to belch. His father sat on his other side, and beyond him, the bride. The Lady Jennine, heiress from the north, neither spoke nor ate, but drank liberally from her wine cup and gazed with faint dismay at the bleeding porpoise, central upon its mighty silver stage. Her napkin, neat folded across her shoulder, was the same colour as her face.

  Since her parents were deceased, the Lady Jennine was accompanied by her brother, a boisterous gentleman who appreciated the wines on offer, and sat opposite his sister with his wife at his side, making bawdy jokes with his mouth full. H
is wife was cautious of his elbows.

  Brice tittered. He wore white damask and rose velvet, courtesy of his mother’s insistence on the family’s best appearance, and his new clothes inspired his good humour. Gerald, who also wore new clothes, looked as though he might be on the verge of tears. Ludovic, as the least important member of the immediate household, sat at the end of the table and kept his eyes on his platter. It was he, however, who first became aware of the interruption.

  Hamnet’s voice was only a murmur, heard beyond the screen to the corridor, his words lost beneath the players’ pibcorn and rebec. Then the steward’s voice was raised, a woman’s shrill insistence answered. There was a scuffle, Hamnet began shouting, and three women pushed into the hall. The oldest and tallest was forcibly dragging the other two, and set herself forwards before the great table. The music faltered, the feasting paused. Only Humphrey, unperturbed, continued to eat. The earl stood in silent fury, his lady screeched, flinging down her napkin, and Brice began to laugh. Only Ludovic recognised two of the intruders.

  “Throw them out,” spat the earl. He sat again abruptly as the countess stood.

  She said, “I shall deal with them outside.” The steward began to manipulate the clump of unruly women backwards past the long screen.

  Brice jumped up at once. “I’ll come with you,” he said, ignoring his father’s glare. “An utterly fascinating distraction, don’t you think?”

  Humphrey chose two powdered chicken pastries from their dish, and put both into his mouth at the same time. Without a word Ludovic put down his napkin, scraped back his stool and followed the growing commotion in its enforced retreat from the hall. The earl began a hurried discussion with the intended bride concerning her bride clothes, her preference for fresh flowers rather than beads in spite of the difficulties of the season, and the necessarily placid temperament of the chapel priest who would officiate at the nuptials. The earl would not countenance a chaplain who preached hellfire. The marriage blessing would be a calm and unquestioned affair.