Margaret had raised her head at that, determined not to wilt. Her expression had been chilly as she welcomed Baron Clifford. The man matched her for stiffness, following the servants to rooms far from the main halls.
The absence of one name was a source of enduring bitterness. Margaret counted Somerset as a friend and she hated to think of him being held prisoner. The earl’s rank allowed him some freedoms in the Tower, even as he was held for trial. Yet York had refused to allow the man his parole for the season, replying to Margaret’s request with a pompous letter about high crimes against officers of the state. York had sent his spidery script enclosed with her husband’s own seal. She knew she must not dwell on his pleasure in doing so. If she let herself think of York too long or too often, she would discover she had wound loops of her hair around her fingers until they had gone purple. She had already mourned for Somerset, his loss one more thorned branch on the fire within, a constant burn that she struggled to keep hidden.
Windsor Castle was busier than it had been all year. Huge and elaborate hunts kept the guests entertained, as well as plays, magicians and music in the evenings. The mood was light among them, despite the presence of so many armed retainers and servants, a symptom of the age. Even in the royal castle, there was fear, amidst the revelry.
As Christmas morning dawned, Margaret returned to her private rooms in time to watch her son feed from his wet nurse, sucking busily at the pink teat until he could be belched and put to rest for a short time. Young Edward was a year old and had discovered crawling, so that he could no longer be left with any expectation that he might remain in the same place, or even the same room. The nurse wiped away a little milky vomit and placed a cloth on Margaret’s shoulder before handing over the child. Margaret felt the warmth of him as he clucked and shifted, screwing up his tiny face in irritation at something. She smiled and the nurse responded to her unguarded expression, before dipping into a deep curtsey and leaving the room.
For a brief time, Margaret was alone. She found herself yawning and shook her head in amusement, thinking of all the things that still had to be done before the great feast later on. There would be a service in the chapel to attend and as they all prayed for the health of the king, the kitchens would be as busy as a battlefield. The staff would already be decorating and impaling carcasses, spicing and seething dishes to impress her husband’s nobles – all men and women who employed their own cooks. Margaret had insisted on a French flavour to all of it, knowing that the dishes of Anjou would be mostly unknown to her guests. There were geese, of course, roasted by the dozen, but there would also be woodcock, partridge and pigeon, delicate sugar tarts and pastries, savoury jellies cast in huge copper moulds and soups, stuffed prunes, cakes, eels in brine, a hundred different dishes for the Christmas Day feast.
She began to sing softly to the child on her shoulder, feeling him shuffle and peer around before he laid his head back down. Her breasts had ached terribly for a time after he was born, but the custom of a wet nurse was one she was happy to continue among the English.
Margaret looked up from the fussing child at a clatter of boots nearby. Someone was calling for her, asking loudly where she was to be found. She tutted to herself, looking down at the Prince of Wales as he sucked his thumb and opened his eyes for a moment. They were very blue. Whatever he saw seemed to satisfy him and he closed them again, but the shouting had not ceased. Margaret frowned. The moments alone with her son were precious and too rare. She only hoped no one had been injured out in the vast hunting park. One of the Duke of Buckingham’s servants had broken his ankle the previous day and she did not want the nobles to remember a spate of bad luck during the season.
The nurse came back in, her face unaccountably flushed. From instinct, the young woman reached for the sleeping child and Margaret handed him over, feeling a deep pang in her womb as the weight left her shoulder.
‘My lady …’ the nurse began, so nervous that she could hardly speak. Her movements were all unthinking as she settled Prince Edward once again in the crook of her arm. Of course he chose that moment to begin bawling, shaking tiny fists at the world in paroxysms of rage.
‘What is it, Katie? Did I not say to give me an hour? A single hour in the day, is it too much to ask?’
‘M-my lady, Your Highness …’ the voices and steps were still clattering closer. Margaret felt a sudden spasm of fear, imagining assassins or murder.
‘Out with it! What has you in such a flutter, Katie?’
‘Your husband, the king, my lady. They are saying he has woken.’
Margaret took a step back, so hard did the words strike her. Her eyes widened and she gathered her skirts, rushing to the door. By the time she reached it, the king’s chamber servants were already coming through, panting from running.
‘The king, Your Highness!’ one of them exclaimed. His presence across her path checked her in body and mind, allowing a moment of stillness.
‘Wait,’ Margaret retorted. She raised her hand as if to push the man out. He backed hurriedly away until she closed the door on his astonished face. She turned to the nurse and her son, both staring at her.
Margaret had cultivated dignity in her manner ever since arriving at the English court aged just fifteen. For Henry’s honour she had tried to become a queen in her bearing, a noble swan in manner as well as the symbol of her house. She had learned all she could, but being his wife was about far more than simply knowing the names of houses and estates. It was more than the laws of England and the peculiar little traditions that seemed so entwined about them. Above all else, being queen to a helpless king meant Margaret had to think before she rushed in. It meant she had to taste before she ate, and sip before she drank.
Henry had been weak and in danger for over a year. She ached to run to him, her skirts gathered up at her thighs, pelting down the corridors like a market urchin. Instead, she thought, and thought, finally nodding to herself and opening the door. Then she walked.
The news was everything she had hoped for, everything she had wished a thousand times, but the reality brought its own fears. There were many who would rejoice at Henry’s waking, while others would rage and flap and curse. She did not doubt some of his lords had expected him to die – and planned for that end. Margaret came up short at the entrance to Henry’s rooms. She sent the door crashing back, stinging the hands of those fumbling to open it.
The sun was rising behind her husband. Margaret raised a hand to her heart, unable to speak as she saw he was standing – standing, by God – looking back at her. King Henry was thin, his skin stretched over his bones. He wore a long white shift that reached to his ankles, one hand resting on the bedpost. Two men fussed around him as he looked at her, touching the king’s wrists with their fingers and leaning across his view. Doctors John Fauceby and William Hatclyf were the royal physicians, with three yeomen assistants and Michael Scruton, the serjeant-surgeon for the king’s person. Bowls of urine and blood steamed on tables by the bed, with two of the men peering into them and calling out their observations on clarity and sediment for the recording scribe. As Margaret stared, Hatclyf dipped his fingers and tasted the urine, noting to the scribe that it was too sweet and recommending bitter green plants be added to the king’s meals. His colleague sniffed at the king’s blood and he too touched the liquid in the bowl, rubbing his fingers together to check its grease before his pink tongue darted out. Their voices clashed and called over one another, each man struggling to be heard and to have his observations written down first.
It was a bustling scene, but at the centre of it, the king was there, awake, very still and very pale. His eyes were clear and Margaret felt her own fill with tears as she went to him. To her astonishment, he held up a hand to halt her.
‘Margaret? I am surrounded by strangers. These men are telling me I have a son. Is it true? God’s wounds, how long have I been lying here?’
Margaret opened her mouth, shocked to hear her husband use an oath for the first time she c
ould ever recall. She had known him as a drowned man, pushed under by agues and dreams until he was completely lost. The man staring at her neither blinked nor looked away. She swallowed, nervously.
‘You do have a son. Edward is just over a year old. I showed him to you when you were taken by illness. Have you no memory of him?’
‘Not that, nor anything else, no … moments, instants, nothing I can … a son, Margaret!’ His eyes narrowed suddenly, an expression of dark suspicion. ‘When was he born, this Prince of Lancaster?’
Margaret flushed, but then raised her head, suddenly angry.
‘The thirteenth day of October, the year of Our Lord 1453. Six months after you fell ill.’
Henry stood for a moment, rubbing the fingers of his right hand against each other as he thought. Margaret could only wait, overwhelmed as he nodded and seemed satisfied.
‘And yet you stand there still! Bring him to me, Margaret. I would see my heir. No, by God, send someone else. I must hear everything that has happened. I can hardly believe I have lost so much time. It is as if a year was stolen from me, torn out of my life.’
Margaret gestured to one of the chamber servants, sending the young woman running back to fetch the Prince of Wales.
‘Longer, Henry. You have been … absent, no, ill for over eighteen months. I prayed and I had services said every day. I … you don’t know what it means to see you awake.’ Her lip quivered suddenly and tears spilled down her cheeks, wiped quickly away. She watched as her husband’s gaze turned inward, a frown creasing his forehead.
‘How fares my England, Margaret? The last I remember … no, it does not matter. Everything I remember is so long ago. Tell me quickly. I have lost so much!’
‘Richard of York was made Protector, Henry, a regent to rule the country while you were … unable.’ She watched in wonder as her husband’s fists clenched, almost in a spasm. Not once had he given thanks to God for his deliverance, this man who had prayed for hours every day in all the time she had known him.
‘York? How very pleased he must have been to have my crown dropped into his lap.’ The king twisted a ring on his finger almost viciously, as if he wanted to take it off. ‘Which of my lords forgot their honour to such a degree? Surely not Percy? Surely not Buckingham?’
‘No, Henry. They stayed away from the vote with many others. Somerset too, though he was put in the Tower for his refusal to accept York’s authority.’
King Henry’s face darkened, the flush of blood to his cheeks standing out like a banner against the white skin.
‘That much I can change today. Where is my Seal, that I may sign an order for his release?’
The king’s steward chose that moment to speak, his own eyes still bright with moisture from being witness to the king’s waking.
‘Your Grace, the Duke of York has the Royal Seal, in London.’
Henry staggered slightly, stretching out his hand to the bedpost. His arm was too weak to hold him and gave way, so that he sat hard on the bed. His doctors reacted with febrile excitement, murmuring all the time on his colour and his disposition, the sound like a drone of bees around the king. Doctor Fauceby reached once more for the king’s neck to check the strength of his heart’s spasms, only to have Henry slap his hand away.
‘By Christ, I am as weak as a child,’ Henry snapped, his colour deepening in embarrassment and anger. ‘Very well. I will see my son and the servants will dress me. Then I will ride to London to put York out of my place. Now help me up again, one of you. I want to be standing when I see my son for the first time.’
‘Your Highness, this is the crisis,’ Hatclyf said as firmly as he could. ‘I must recommend you rest.’
The physician was trembling, Margaret realized. For more than a year, Henry had been little more than a pale body to be washed and clothed, tapped and measured like a blind calf. The men around King Henry were intimately familiar with his flesh, but they knew the man not at all. She wondered if she did herself.
Margaret watched as Fauceby exchanged a glance with Hatclyf. Both doctors had a monkish air, all thin fingers and sunken cheeks. Yet Fauceby was the more senior, and when he spoke his voice was firm and low.
‘Your Highness, my colleague is correct. You have been very ill for a long time. You are sweating, a sign that your liver and tripes are still weak. If you excite yourself, you risk collapse, a return of the sickness. You should rest now, Your Highness, in normal sleep. Hatclyf and I will prepare a broth of dark cabbage, sowbread and wormwood for when you wake again, with your permission. It will purge and restore your humours, so that your recovery will be more lasting.’
Henry considered, looking aside as he judged his own strength. He was appalled at the weakness that beset him, but if he had judged the lost time correctly, he was thirty-three years old. The realization that he was the same age as Christ at his crucifixion hardened his will. He had woken on Christmas Day, at the age of Christ at his death. It was a sign, he was certain. He would not wilt, or spend one more moment in his sickbed, no matter what it cost him.
‘No,’ he said. ‘You two there. Help me stand.’
The two yeomen servants responded instantly. They took Henry under his outstretched arms and lifted him to his feet once more, shuffling back with bowed heads as Henry found his balance on trembling legs. They could all hear footsteps coming closer and the wet nurse entered the room at that moment, struggling to curtsey and hold up the baby prince at the same time. She did not let her eyes settle on King Henry while he still stood in his nightclothes.
‘Bring him here,’ the king said, his smile unforced. He took the child and held him up, though his arms shuddered with the effort.
Margaret put a hand over her mouth, trying not to sob in relief and joy.
‘You,’ Henry said to the tiny boy looking down at him. ‘By God, I see you, my own son. My son.’
7
King Henry felt himself shivering as he reached the sweeping curve of the River Thames. Though he could see the Palace of Westminster, he was still half a mile west of the city of London. It was said the two parts crept closer each year as merchants built workshops and storehouses on cheap land in range of the London markets – and the city grew beyond its Roman walls.
The darkness only increased the horrible, biting cold. The wind brought a spatter of frozen hail as the sun set, but the weakness the king felt was all his own. Henry was appalled at how feeble he had become, so wasted of limb that barely twenty miles on horseback had reduced him to a gasping mass of aches, with sweat pouring from him under his armour. He thought at times that only the iron kept him from falling.
He had not intended to ride to the Palace of Westminster in procession, but there had been almost forty loyal lords in attendance in Windsor. As word spread that the king had risen from his bed and intended to ride to London, they’d begun to cheer and stamp, the noise growing and swelling throughout the castle until it reached the town outside and was doubled and redoubled on a thousand throats, until it became a great bellow to match the winter gales.
Before he’d left, King Henry had endured the Christmas service in St George’s chapel, sitting pale and still as all those present gave thanks to God for his deliverance. The great feast waiting for them had been pillaged by passing men, excitedly summoning horses and servants to join the king as he set forth. The winter sun had already been sitting low in a red sky by the time Henry took to the road with more than a hundred men, all armed and armoured, with the royal lion banners fluttering on the freezing wind.
The Palace of Westminster had been built upstream of the city, away from the foul miasmas that brought disease each summer. Henry took the road that followed the banks of the river, with Buckingham on one side, Earl Percy on the other and Derry Brewer following with the rest in serried ranks behind. By then, the king was walking his horse to eke out his strength. It had already taken five hours or more to ride the miles from Windsor, and Henry was worried his will had taken him beyond the strength of his
body. He knew if he fainted and fell, it would be a blow to his standing from which he might never recover. Yet Somerset was still imprisoned by York’s order. Henry knew that if he tarried too long, the earl might be made to vanish. Even without that concern, he wanted his Royal Seal from York. He had no choice but to push on and ignore the fluttering heart in his chest as well as the pain in every joint and sinew. He could not recall such physical exhaustion before, but he reminded himself over and over that Christ had fallen three times on his way to Calvary. He would not fall, he told himself, or if he did, he would rise and mount and go on.
With Westminster in sight, Henry could feel the expectations of those riding at his back, the weight of faith from all those who had been shoved aside by York’s favourites over the previous year. Their complaints against Nevilles had gone unheard, their cases in law dismissed by judges in the pay of the Protector. Yet the king had woken and they were jubilant, almost drunk on it. It helped that villages around London emptied out on to the road to see Henry pass. They left their Christmas meals and services to stand and cheer, recognizing the banners and understanding the king had returned at last to the world. Hundreds ran alongside where there was room, trying to keep the monarch in sight, while Henry only wanted to rest. His legs were shaking inside the armour and more than once he reached up to wipe itching sweat from his eyes only to have the gauntlet scrape noisily against the iron.
He had thought at first that he would enter the city and cross to the Tower to free Somerset from his imprisonment. Shuddering pain made him reconsider, so that the Palace of Westminster became the only place he could reach that night. He prayed to God as he went that he would be able to recover there, at least for a time.
Henry rode in, between the royal palace and Westminster Abbey, bringing his horse around in a tight circle to dismount. Buckingham sensed his king was close to collapse and jumped down from his own saddle to stand by Henry, shielding him from staring eyes as best he could. Henry leaned forward and struggled to the ground, standing for a moment with his gauntlets still on the saddle-horn until he was sure his legs would take his weight. Royal heralds blew long notes across the yard, though there were already men running to carry the news of the king’s arrival, shouting it as they went.
Wars of the Roses: Trinity (War of the Roses Book 2) Page 9