Her sister Mary had died earlier that year, fifteen and headstrong. The children had wept piteously when she was found and for weeks afterwards. Edward had only winced at the keening sounds they made. His own brother had been killed at seventeen. Death was a part of life, he’d told them. His wife had called him heartless.
Edward had seen more of death than she ever would, he thought grimly. He had brought a great deal of it into the world that would not have come without his call. Perhaps it was fitting that it reached then for his own children. God knew, he had enough of them, if he included those of his mistresses. He sometimes thought he had won the throne only as a way of securing livelihoods for all his get and kin.
Young Elizabeth should have been married by then, of course. The French king had reneged on that little arrangement, blaming his son’s illness. Edward’s head sank a little further at the memory of his one campaign season in France. He had landed from Calais and by God, if Burgundy had supported him properly from the first, they’d still have been ruling France together. Richard had put it best: not bleeding téméraire at all, not when it mattered. Poor bastard. They called Louis the Spider, Edward recalled, or some such name. In just a dozen years, the man had unified France and taken back all the lands of Burgundy.
Edward felt a surly anger come upon him at the thought, somehow made worse by the sight of so many young men and women laughing and singing and dancing together, without cares. At such times, he had to struggle against a desire to spring up and scatter them, to remind them to whom they owed their lives and livelihoods. They never remembered. They went on with their lives and there was disdain or resentment in their eyes when they looked at him.
He saw a sparkle of new love or something more roguish between young ladies of the court and their admirers, bowing to one another and holding hands as they danced. They flirted and preened and Edward watched them all and lifted his goblet of pale-blue glass, blown in swirls to represent the ocean. Case after case of the glass cups had been brought in by ship, commissioned for that night’s occasion. Every one of the guests would take a goblet home to treasure as a reminder. It was the sort of extravagant detail Edward demanded from his seneschal, backed by his silver flowing like a river. They would know a royal feast from any other by the time they went home! The tables groaned with hams and poultry and every manner of thing that flew or swam or grazed. Yet they were not grateful. They bowed and kissed his hand, but the moment he looked away, he knew they had forgotten him.
Edward emptied his cup in a great gulp and put it down, belching and wincing at the rise of acid in his gut. It was his proud boast that he never drank water, that he considered it a poison. Water could spoil and carry some taint that would have him marooned in a royal privy for a day, groaning. That had happened far too many times and he had learned to blame the water he had sipped with his meal. Wine and small beer seemed to have no similar effect, though they could not make him drunk any longer. For that, he had grain whisky, or on this night, French Armagnac brandy.
His children came past once more, laughing and shrieking as they wove through the dancers. Elizabeth with her red hair in a plait down her back. God, he loved her, more than he had ever expected. More perhaps since Mary had gone into the tomb, her own hair of gold brushed a thousand times, as bright in death as it had been in life. Edward felt his eyes sting as he glared at the crowd. The dancers seemed to sense his darkening mood, so that they swung a little further away from him, as geese will make a path for a farmer’s tread.
Edward’s sons expected rough humour from him, if anything at all. He could not find an ease of manner with them, coming it always too loud or too clumsy. Prince Edward was still too slim at twelve, his father thought. The boy was taller than the sons of other men, but all elbows and thin arms. It made him wonder what Lord Rivers was feeding the boy on the borders. The prince certainly wasn’t thriving on it.
By all accounts, Prince Edward did as he was told, whether it was learning his declensions or his sword work, or the command of a trained warhorse. Yet he seemed not to have an urge to succeed that his father might have understood. Edward looked for it in both his sons, but they were too meek. He did not want to break their will with hardship, but it seemed to the king that he had been a big, rough brawler by the time he was twelve. Edward recalled betting on himself in light-hearted wrestling contests against men of the Calais garrison. Those bouts had been brutal, with few rules. Though he had lost against the regular soldiers, they’d put him up then against the French dockmen and merchants. He’d surprised one or two and won enough to get truly drunk for the first time. He shook his head at that, lost in fumes of spirits and memory. The people in those halls knew nothing of such things. They ate his food and drank his beer and lived lives of softness and ease.
Edward raised his hands suddenly, looking at the thick fingers. Two were crooked from old breaks. His palms were thick slabs of callus. A knuckle had been pushed back in on his left hand, from some blow he could not remember, so that it lay smooth. They were a warrior’s hands and they ached most days, in a way that made him think he would not see an end to the pain. He clenched his right fist and heard a clink as the servant refilled the blue glass cup. Edward sighed and picked it up as he leaned back, raising it to his eye so that he bathed the dancers in the colour of the sea.
He felt a pressure then, so wrong on the instant that he was suddenly afraid, though it came without warning and passed just as quickly. He closed one eye over a sharp discomfort, more a sense of falling than an actual headache. It had come and gone so fast he could not even be sure it had happened, but it had unsettled him. He put the cup down on the small table at his side, frowning at a tremble in his fingers.
He did not know if he had been a good king. He had been a good son, first. He had avenged his father and that was something that either didn’t matter at all, or it mattered a great deal. He smiled at that, an old phrase that he had come to appreciate. It didn’t matter at all, or it meant the world.
He had been a good brother, though to Richard more than George of Clarence. Poor George had kept a foolish spite and sense of injury alive for far too long, as if he was owed something by the realm, as if he had some special claim on King Edward. George had sent fools into Parliament even, to claim he had been treated poorly and illegally. Edward had warned him then, for the last time. He would not allow his brother to humiliate him in public.
‘Be warned,’ Edward had said to him, but George had not understood. The source and root of law lay on the field of battle. The rest was just fine dreams for the years between, too good for an age of feud and bloody vengeance, perhaps.
Edward had given Clarence a chance to leave the court, to leave London, to just live quietly with his wife and his children on their estates. Perhaps the death of his wife had driven him mad, as some said. George had accused almost everyone, including her maids. In the end, it had been like putting down a mad dog, more a mercy than a cruelty. That was what Richard had said.
They’d left George of Clarence uncut at least, unmarked for a Christian burial. Richard’s men had drowned him in a vat of Malmsey wine and it had been quick enough. In the end, George of Clarence had been his own executioner, no matter who had tipped him in. The poor fool just could not find peace.
Edward felt again a strange pressure that made him grip the arm of his chair. This time he could not seem to take a proper hold, so that his right hand slipped and curled in on itself. What was wrong with him? He had not drunk as much as the evening before, even. He should not have been leaning and mumbling words, with vomit rising in his throat. God, he should stand up before he was sick. It had been a long time since he had drunk so much as to fall down. His muscles were cramping and he leaned back, looking up at the ceiling and closing his eyes.
In Scotland, one son had ruled while the fellow’s brother, Alexander of Albany, had turned against him, like Cain and Abel. That younger brother had brought a dozen bottles of some fine liquor down to London and
when they’d seen it was not poisoned, Edward and Richard had matched him cup for cup over three days until it was all gone. They’d never been so ill before or since. In their drunkenness, they’d promised to support him. Edward was proud of Richard as he recalled those days. Alexander, Duke of Albany, brother to the king of Scotland. Edward had liked him in drink, though not sober, not as well. The Scot had promised he would be a vassal to England if they won him the throne. Edward had shaken his hand and solemnly given his word.
Richard had taken Edinburgh, Edward remembered. God, they’d said he would never manage it, but he had. He’d held the Scottish king prisoner and waited for Albany.
Edward twitched his hand, though he thought he had waved away a bad memory. The fellow had let them down, of course, too meek at the end to do what had to be done. Richard had freed the king to exact his own vengeance, taking his army south once again. He’d left a garrison at Berwick and that at least would remain England. It was only fair, for the expense they’d undertaken. Edward wished George of Clarence could have been alive then, so he could have pointed to Berwick-upon-Tweed, a city that had been English and Scottish and was English once again. Where was the law for such a thing, if not in the power to hold it? Where would his brother have looked for his fine sentiments, his rights and wrongs, if not in the swords of hard and cruel men, ready to fight for it?
The king was leaning sideways in the chair. His manservant hovered nervously behind as two legs of oak came an inch away from the floor. The chair was heavy, but so was the man in it, even without his armour. Edward wore a doublet tunic of gold velvet and white silk over hose. It was a bright creation that cost as much as most of his knights would see in a year. It was almost certain Edward would wear it once and not again, but still he would be angry if it was stained, when he woke the next morning.
The serving lad tried to rest his weight on the chair arm unobtrusively, rather than let his master topple right over in front of hundreds. The king would not remember his small act of kindness, but he did it anyway.
Standing closer, the young man saw that the king’s brandy had not been emptied. It was an unusual sight and he blinked and hesitated.
‘If the brandy is poor, would His Highness prefer wine, or ale?’ he asked, expecting a rebuke. Edward did not reply and he edged closer and further around the chair.
‘Your Highness?’ he asked, then stood very still as he saw the king’s face had twisted and reddened in an apoplexy, sagging on one side so that his mouth hung open and made odd, choking sounds. The music played on behind and no one else seemed to have seen it. One of Edward’s eyes had closed, while the other swivelled in panic, unable to understand what was happening or why his serving man was peering at him and mouthing words. Edward gave a great lurch then, kicking out so that the servant went flying and the chair fell, spilling the king on to the wooden dais with a great groan that went on and on.
Edward sat up in bed, his legs hidden by a vast coverlet of purple and gold. His face had recovered its usual shape, though his right arm was still no stronger than a child’s and caused him great distress. If he had lost the left, it would have been much easier to bear. His right arm had carried him through the great trials of his life and he hated the way it curled and lay limp. The royal physicians said there was hope of regaining some movement in it. One of them had disagreed and offered only to cut it cleanly. That one had been dismissed from service.
The king lay in the royal rooms at Westminster, in the bed where he had once seen Henry of Lancaster. Yet Edward spent time each morning clenching and unclenching his right fist. He thought he was improving, that he could hold it closed for longer and longer. He had not told the physicians, not yet. He wanted those doubting bastards to see him hold a sword again.
‘Very well, I am ready,’ Edward called to the master of the bedchamber. The man bowed low and disappeared to call his guest from outside. Edward grumbled that Alfred Noyes fussed over him, but he was secretly relieved to have the man tut and bother those who came to see the king. Since his collapse, Edward tired easily and he did not like to admit it.
He brightened at the sight of his brother.
‘Richard! Now why would Alfred hold you outside with the rest? You are always welcome here, of course.’
Richard smiled as Edward made a show of shaking his head in rebuke at his servant. He understood his brother better than Edward realized at times. Nothing would change.
‘I am pleased to see you looking so strong, Edward,’ he said. ‘Your maids said you fell again last night.’
A spasm of peevish anger crossed Edward’s face.
‘Well, they should know better than to carry tales! Which ones opened their little beaks?’
‘I won’t tell you, Brother,’ Richard said, his expression still wry. ‘They care for you, that is all.’
In that moment, Richard suddenly understood that his brother could not force him to speak. Their friendship had changed and was still unfolding in a new pattern. He thought he saw the same flash of awareness in Edward, but it came and went.
‘I fell because my balance is poor, that is all,’ Edward said. ‘There is nothing I can do to improve it.’
‘Can you not catch yourself?’ Richard said. His brother looked bleak.
‘No. I have begun to fall before I even know it is happening. I am black with bruises now. If I could reach out, I would, believe me.’
‘And you are not drinking? The doctors said your great appetite did not help, as it worsens your gout and inflames the liver.’
‘Oh, I have been a good boy, do not fear for me.’ Edward spoke in irritation, then relented. Richard had come to see him almost every day for three months. Even his wife and children had not come as often, though he grew frustrated at times and roared at them, which may have played a part.
He and Richard had known each other before the court, before his wife, before the teeming brood of his children that had come into the world. Edward thought at times that only Richard could look upon him and see him truly. It was not always a comfortable thing.
‘Richard, I have put my seal to some new papers and sent them to Parliament. There, in the satchel, is a copy for you. In case I die.’
His brother snorted.
‘You are, what? Forty? Older men than you recover from these apoplexies, Brother. You have grown somewhat fat about the loins, it is true …’
‘A little …’ Edward admitted.
‘And you were drinking that foul Armagnac like water. A bottle a day? Two?’
‘It is like mother’s milk to me,’ Edward said. ‘I could not deny myself brandy.’
Richard chuckled at the wounded stiffness of his brother’s manner.
‘Edward, you were taking back the realm when I was eight years old. I went into exile with you, when we had nothing. I have fought at your side and I have seen you triumph over all our enemies. I trusted you – and I trust you still.’ He saw Edward would interrupt and held up his hand, sitting on the edge of the bed. ‘You have been an older brother and a second father to me, you know it. I am always on your side. By God, if you don’t know by now! I went on that wild adventure into Scotland, did I not? “Go north, Richard! Put my lad Albany on the throne and we’ll win Scotland!” And I went! Though I knew it was madness.’ Richard began to chuckle and his eyes filled with light as he did so. ‘God, whatever you want, I will do, Edward, because you are the one who asks. Do you understand? I will not talk of your death, that is all.’
Edward reached out with his left hand and held his brother’s fingers awkwardly. It served to remind them both how diminished the king had become and he did not look at Richard as he spoke.
‘There are some things I must say, even so. No, listen to me. The papers are to appoint you Lord Protector. Our father had the title many years ago, when Henry fell ill for the first time. It grants you the authority you will need to stand over the wishes of all others. It makes you king in all but name – and you will need it to keep my son Ed
ward safe.’ Edward held up his hand to forestall any objection. ‘If I die, make yourself his regent until he reaches an age where he can rule. I would … I hope you can be kind to him. He has not suffered as you and I have, Brother. Perhaps that is why he is so gentle. I sent him away with Lord Rivers to make a man of him, but it has not worked.’
‘This is madness, but yes, very well,’ Richard said. ‘I will guide your son if the worst comes. You have my word, are you satisfied? Now, your hand is shaking. Can you sleep, do you think? Shall I leave? Your wife is outside, waiting for me to go.’ Edward turned his head to one side on the pillow and waved his hand in the air.
‘She comes when she wants something else from me, some bauble or post or title, some piece of land that will end a dispute and make one of her cousins happy. I think at times … it doesn’t matter. I am tired, Richard. And I am grateful that you come every day. If not for you, I seem to speak only to women. They wear me down with their chatter. You know when to be silent.’
‘And when to leave,’ Richard murmured. He saw his brother’s eyes were drifting closed and he stood slowly. Perhaps he would tell Edward’s wife to wait until morning, though she was a hard woman to refuse and always had been.
Richard left in good spirits and retired to his rooms in Baynard’s Castle on the bank of the Thames. He was woken in the pale light of dawn by his wife, Ann Neville. He looked at her in sleepy confusion as she leaned in and took his hand.
‘I’m so sorry, Richard. Your brother is dead.’
25
The wind was cold and filled with specks of frost that rattled off armour. The horsemen bore no banners as they might have done on a battlefield. Of the dozen men with Earl Rivers and his charge, three wore the livery of the earl and the remaining nine had gone out from London with the prince. Though the boy was just twelve years old, the prince was tall and slender, a reed among oaks on that road. The news of his father’s death had reached them only a day before and still showed on their expressions. No one had expected that tree to fall. As the oldest son and heir, Edward had become king in that moment. In time, he would be surrounded by the trappings and men of his rise in status. For the moment, it was as if nothing had changed and he was hurrying back to London. He would not be crowned until he stood before the Archbishop of Canterbury and all his lords.
Ravenspur: Rise of the Tudors Page 31