by Anne O'Brien
The Duchess has a new project in mind. To persuade our brother Clarence to abandon Warwick and return to Ned. Is it possible? I have promised to lend my support, although I think we are grasping at straws in a high wind.
We refrained from discussing my husband who has indeed returned from exile but managed not to visit me, for which I offer up prayers of thanks to the Blessed Virgin.
My mother, by the by, regrets the official loss of her title. I think that she envisaged being King’s Mother until the day of her death. If she could not be Queen, it was the next best thing.
You will notice that she continues to make use of it when writing letters.
Anne
My mother gave me a most costly paternoster. It is a magnificent piece, the beads all gilded and enamelled with Venetian craftsmanship. I think it was a gift from Clarence. I think that, in her heart, she has given up on him, and cannot bear to use it.
England’s Chronicle, March 1471
The House of York is back!
Some news that will disturb all the troublesome fish dominating the pond at the English Court. Our erstwhile King, Edward of York, is no longer hiding with the Burgundian merchants. His feet are once more firmly planted on English soil. Supplied with ships and money by Charles the Bold and the Flemish merchants who are hoping for trade, and with the support of Earl Rivers, Lord Hastings and the Duke of Gloucester, Edward has landed at Ravenspur.
Many of you might recall the last invader to land at Ravenspur. Henry Bolingbroke. Who went on to reclaim his inheritance and snatch the crown from the second King Richard.
The supporters of King Henry might be quaking at this news. So might King Henry if he has the wits to know what’s going on around him.
We have just witnessed an example of Edward’s cunning, far more highly developed than that of his father, the late Duke of York. (If, that is, he is not the son of Archer Blaybourne.) Stating that he had returned only to reclaim the title Duke of York, he made no display of flying the royal standard. He was, he acclaimed, a loyal subject. The city of York welcomed him with great rejoicing.
We wait to be persuaded of this.
We hear that the three sisters, the esteemed Margaret, Duchess of Burgundy, Anne, Duchess of Exeter, and Elizabeth, Duchess of Suffolk, are being drawn into the battle by Duchess Cecily who is once more emerging to don her armour and take up her weapons. A combined and powerful force of Yorkist women to bring the King and his estranged brother back into an alliance. Can it be done?
Will Edward take back the crown in conquest, after abandoning it in flight?
‘It is a difficult matter to go out by the door and then want to enter by the window,’ the Milanese ambassador to the French King has written.
It is difficult indeed, when the window is bolted shut by the Earl of Warwick.
Duchess Cecily sacrifices her dignity in the Palace of Westminster, March 1471
We regarded each other across the room.
I had had no difficulty in discovering where he might be, or in getting access to my nephew who had suddenly, to my chagrin, become the most powerful man in the realm. He did not seem surprised to see me. Once at this time of the late morning he would have been returning from the hunt or conversation with courtiers. Now his time was taken up with affairs of state. King of England in all but name, and I could not deny that he looked the part. His sleeves hung impressively from shoulder to knee; his low-crowned hat was graced with a cabochon ruby as large as a pigeon’s egg.
‘Well, my bold nephew?’
‘Well, my esteemed aunt.’
His face was expressionless. He stood, walked around the table where he had been seated, but halted next to it, one hand splayed on the surface, the other still holding the quill he had been making use of to order my son’s realm.
I folded my hands lightly together at the high waist of my gown. This was no occasion for emotion. I felt the weight of my paternoster beads slide against my thigh. This was no occasion for praying either. This was the time for hard-bargaining, and I feared that I would lose.
‘My son the King is returned to England,’ I said.
‘The King is now Henry, of the House of Lancaster,’ he replied lightly enough.
‘I would argue differently. So should you. You made Edward King.’
‘As I unmade him. As I remade Henry.’
Casting aside the pen, Warwick walked towards me and sank to one knee, taking my hand and pressing his lips to my knuckles. It surprised me, so that I almost snatched my hands away at such hypocrisy. But I did not, acknowledging all his political skill in achieving what he wanted.
‘You are most dutiful,’ I remarked to his bent head. Inconsequentially I noted that his hair was the same richly brown tones of Salisbury, my brother. ‘But I see little duty in your life.’
‘You will always have my respect, madam.’
I raised my chin. ‘Even when you branded me harlot?’
‘It was necessary. You were not my enemy.’
‘Neither was my son Edward your enemy.’
‘He became so when he swam into the Woodville shoal.’ Warwick’s voice had grown less than soft. ‘He became my enemy when he thrust me to the edge of my rightful place in government.’
I drew him to his feet, so that once more I was forced to look up into his face. We had come so far since the day when he and the rest of my adult family had fled from Ludlow. Age had touched both of us. Here was a battle-hardened man, bent on a policy I could not envisage. Perhaps I was chasing wild geese, but it must be done.
‘I have come to beg for your indulgence. I should be the one kneeling before you.’
‘I’ll not ask it of your knees, aunt.’
‘If I can kneel before the Blessed Virgin, I can kneel before you.’
I watched as his brows rose, as if in disbelief. He thought I had too much pride, too much dignity, to kneel before any man.
Yet I did so. Abandoning all my dignity, and my pride, I knelt before my nephew. There was a sudden tension in the room, empty as it was apart from the two of us, almost as if I had blasphemed. Or struck him.
‘Indeed you must not, my aunt.’
He looked as shocked as I felt, that I had done what I had sworn I would not, when I set forth on this mission.
‘Why must I not? Do you fear for my honour,’ I asked bitterly, ‘that I should kneel before my nephew? A mother must fight for her son in any manner presented to her, like a vixen for her cubs when an eagle swoops. So I will lay my dignity at your feet, Warwick. Stop this. Don’t let it come to a final decision through metal and blood and death on a battlefield. You are my own blood, my brother’s son.’
I raised my hands in an open gesture of appeal.
‘What would you have me do?’ he asked. ‘Withdraw? Hand victory to a man who had no place for me in his government?’
‘Yes, I would, if it is necessary. Is your pride too great?’
‘Yes. As is yours. Would your son withdraw his challenge to me? Would he return to exile rather than risk battle?’
‘No. But he is King.’
‘He is not, Henry is King.’
‘A myth. A ruse to buy time. Henry is incapable of ruling. Is that all you desire, to rule England with a Lancaster puppet in your hand? Or Clarence? Edward would never become your creature, but my son of Clarence might. As for pride… How much pride did you abandon when you had to kneel before Marguerite and sign away your loyalty to her? I know all about the power of pride, yet I am here on my knees before you, to beg your indulgence.’
I watched as he inhaled slowly, as if to shackle the rags of temper. I waited for his excuse, his flawed reasoning, but he made none. Instead he helped me to my feet, but I drew away.
‘There was no need for such mummery. You knew I would not be moved,’ he remarked mildly.
‘How could I not know it? But I need to hear why you would change camps so irrevocably. I need to hear it from your own mouth.’
‘You know the reas
on. My life is nothing without the ability to wield power over my own possessions. It is my destiny to be a royal counsellor, to see the policies of the realm open out beneath my hand. Your son wilfully destroyed that possibility. In the end, unless I was to live in permanent exile, I must make any alliance which would enable me to return and take up what is mine.’ He lifted his shoulders in a shrug of acceptance. ‘It was Marguerite.’
‘And I despise you for it.’
‘I know. You should not have come here, my aunt.’
‘I had to. Neville and Plantagenet. They should not be divided. They should not meet in a clash of arms.’
‘But they are divided.’ His expression was not unkind but his eyes were dark with resolve, his words relentless. ‘There have always been some Nevilles who raised their arms for Lancaster. I have merely joined them.’
‘Is there nothing I can say?’
I knew that we had come to the end of words.
‘No.’ Stepping forward, he kissed my cheek, and I did nothing to prevent it.
‘All is not lost,’ I persisted. ‘I can still work on my son the King. And on Clarence.’
‘I think it is all lost, Duchess Cecily. It may be that we will not meet again on this earth.’ His fingers tightened around mine, then released me. ‘If I die on some battlefield, pray for me.’
‘If you do not die,’ I replied, ‘Edward will.’
‘And where will your family loyalty be then, my dearest, most astute of aunts?’
I felt tears damp on my cheeks as I turned and walked to the door, only to look back. Loyalty was so strong, and yet so fragile. For a moment I studied the Earl of Warwick in the full panoply of his power. It might be the last time that I would see him. Or it might be that he would govern my future until the day of my death.
Cecily, King’s Mother, to Anne, Duchess of Exeter; Elizabeth, Duchess of Suffolk; Margaret, Duchess of Burgundy
Written from Baynard’s Castle, March 1471
To my three daughters, written at my dictation, by my clerk.
Pick up your pens and start writing. Send out your couriers.
I have failed to move Warwick. Now we must focus all our efforts on the King and Clarence. It may be that they will listen to their opinionated sisters, when their mother’s advice falls on stony ground.
Use every means at your disposal to bring them together before they kill each other. Anne, write to Ned, who says that he can never again forgive or trust Clarence. Margaret, stir Clarence into a spirit of reparation. He can never be King of England, whether the throne is warmed by a Yorkist or a Lancastrian rump. Elizabeth, write to both. You are the calmest of us all. The fact that you are not involved in the cut and thrust of politics might just tip the balance with one of them.
Offer them prayers, stern advice and gifts of bribery if necessary. Call on all your memories of childhood. Shame them into listening to the wise words of mere women.
By the Virgin, it will take a battering of cold fact and hot emotion to extract us from this entanglement.
Send out streams of messengers until they can only comply to shut us up. In my experience, no man can stand a constant abrasion on his ear of female complaint.
Once your two brothers have come to terms, then it is in their own hands, but we have to get them to see sense before they meet on a battlefield.
If we fail, English blood will once more be shed, and it may well be Edward’s.
Your desperate mother,
Cecily, King’s Mother
England’s Chronicle, April 1471
Surely a battle was inevitable.
Two armies facing each other on the flat lands without the mighty castle of Warwick.
One army led by the returned Edward of York, his brother the Duke of Gloucester and his brother by law Anthony, Lord Scales, now Earl Rivers. The other under the command of George, Duke of Clarence.
Yet what an astonishing outcome. Imagine this dramatic scene, if you will.
Clarence, with a small escort, abandoned his forces and approached his brother who was once King. Clarence walked on foot, fully accoutred in armour and weapons. Edward saw him coming. He waited before his own troops, without moving, not even to draw his sword, not even when Clarence did so.
What then?
Clarence fell to his knees, head bent, his sword cast aside, speaking words of repentance, we presume, sadly lost when Edward waved away those who might have furnished us with the pertinent exchange. Edward’s face broke into a smile. He lifted his brother to his feet and embraced him, leading him into a knot of Yorkist supporters to accept a cup of wine.
Edward’s army cheered.
Clarence’s army looked understandably nonplussed.
An unprecedented outcome in these troubled times.
The Yorkist sisters have been delivering effective admonitions of fire to their warlike brothers. Thus the Earl of Warwick has lost one of his main weapons. He will be praying for the fast arrival of Queen Marguerite with the promised French troops.
Duchess Cecily has wisely won a few days’ grace before the next conflict.
Cecily, King’s Mother, to Katherine, Dowager Duchess of Norfolk
Written from Baynard’s Castle, Easter 1471
Dear Katherine,
What miracle was achieved on that abortive battlefield?
I owe so much to my daughters who wrote, and wrote, and wrote again, until my sons could not withstand the force of their exhortations.
We have spent a day of joyful reuniting here at Baynard’s Castle. Ned is returned, Elizabeth and the children collected from the Abbot’s lodging at Westminster. Diccon is here. George is here and his wife Isabel, too. The Blessed Virgin be praised. All are under my roof, the new generations of the House of York. It makes me feel my years and a deep weariness.
Yet my heart is overflowing with thanks. The Wheel of Fortune has once more turned to the glory of the House of York. Perhaps we shall see the end to hostilities, even though I tell myself that the cloud of fear can never be entirely dissipated.
But for now, Henry is sent back to the Tower, while our clever Neville nephew has managed to cling onto his York archbishopric by coming to terms with Edward. But only when he was ridiculed for parading sad Henry through the streets of London as a man worthy to be King. Rather a man not capable of putting on his own shoes. Such a sad occasion. I think Henry is not aware of his residence or his future. When Edward visited him, he beamed with pleasure, unaware that his life will always be in danger.
Today, as I write, it is Good Friday. We are all black-clad like a parcel of rooks. We have all knelt together to give thanks in solemn Mass, but then came the necessity of looking to the future. On the surface as we partook of a simple abstemious meal, all are united, but Warwick is out there with an army and Marguerite is preparing to sail to make contact with him. With Anne Neville’s marriage to Edward of Lancaster now complete, it remains a formidable alliance.
As King’s Mother, and in my own home, I claimed the right to speak, urging them to bury all old disputes and take up the burden of fulfilling their father’s wishes, as Christ took up the burden of the Cross on that first Good Friday. How difficult to advise Ned and George to grasp forgiveness and acceptance. But they concurred. Or at least on the face of it.
With Warwick at large, Ned has taken his wife and family to the Tower for safekeeping, and I will go with them. Who would have believed that I would willingly inhabit the same space as the Woodville Queen?
Ned has now ridden out to face Warwick.
My consternation is beyond imagining, but I have learned to live with alarms and excursions.
Cecily
Duchess Cecily visits a forlorn King, April 1471
Out of duty, out of compassion, I visited Henry of Lancaster where he was kept safe in the Tower of London. Perhaps I had a strange presentiment that the future of this man, born to rule, lay in the gutter, to be tossed and turned like foul debris by whoever emerged as the victor in the coming batt
les.
I immediately wished I had not sought this interview. Nothing could have convinced me more of his unfitness for the crown that still graced his brow. Dishevelled, unkempt, with only one candle for lighting in the dim room, he rose slowly to his feet as if it were almost beyond his strength. His cuffs were frayed, his hem cobwebbed. How many weeks since he had been provided with clean robes, or even combed his hair? Henry blinked as I walked forward and curtsied, through habit. The room had a rank, musty smell that caught in the throat.
‘You must not curtsey to me. It is not fitting,’ Henry said, his voice that should have moved men on the battlefield little more than a croak.
He appalled me by falling to his knees before me, hands clasped against his breast.
‘No! Henry…’
‘Are you not the Blessed Virgin Mary?’ He looked up, fear darkening his eyes.
‘No. Of course I am not.’
‘But you wear a blue robe.’
Taking his arm, I lifted him and pushed him towards a chair, where he slumped in a sad heap of neglected humanity. I realised that the rancid aroma came from his body and clothing.
‘I have visions of the Holy Mother,’ he told me, quite confidentially. ‘She sits in the room with me.’
‘I am Cecily. Duchess of York.’
Henry drew his sleeve across his face as if he might wipe the vision away.
‘Yes. Yes, of course. I see that you are.’
I was not sure that he recognised me at all. His eyes glazed, staring into the distant corner. I could rouse him to no further conversation, not even when I bade him farewell. I left him, aware of nothing more than a deep sense of helplessness. Even of sadness. Henry would be used by Warwick, until he was of no further value to anyone, even to himself. I prayed that the Blessed Virgin would continue to come to him and give him comfort.
A few sharp words were delivered to Henry’s body-servants. A man of royal birth should receive better care. His dignity should not be squandered in filth and degradation.