‘But the chaplain, my lady. He already thinks me a cursed changeling. Dear God, I should have kept my own counsel.’
‘And not obeyed your conscience?’
‘I believe this is yours, mistress,’ interrupted an unfamiliar voice from the threshold. Male arms unfolded and long fingers held out Heloise’s damaged headdress and muddied coif. Heloise shyly took the ruined headgear back, not sure how long Sir Richard Huddleston had been leaning against the doorframe. She had not met him face to face for he was newly arrived from Cumbria.
‘I have to thank you, sir, for rescuing me from Master Harrington,’ she said huskily. And saving the duke’s beloved child.
‘Think nothing of it, demoiselle.’ Sir Richard brushed one hand against the other as though dealing with Harrington had sullied his palms. His languid gaze lingered fondly upon his wife before he glanced back at her companion. If he felt surprise or loathing at her witch’s hair spread wild and loose, his green eyes gave no sign of it. ‘There is a messenger come from your father, Mistress Cockatrice.’
‘Ill news, sir?’ She slid off the bed in alarm, ignoring the name.
‘I cannot say, demoiselle. His grace will speak with you tomorrow.’ He stepped forward into the bedchamber, tossing his hat and gloves upon the bed. ‘Your handling of the cockatrice was skilful, Mistress Ballaster, and the eggs …’ His wife smiled and the air crackled between the two of them. ‘… were a masterpiece.’
‘Well laid?’ Margery smoothed her skirts skittishly at her husband.
‘Oh, very.’
Heloise had heard outrageous rumours about this pair: how King Edward had seduced Margery, Warwick the Kingmaker’s bastard daughter, and sent her to France as a spy. Could it be true that Richard Huddleston had committed high treason, joining Warwick’s rebellion, to win her love? Seeing them now together for Yuletide, she could believe it.
‘I was telling Heloise this morning about the donkey,’ Margery said softly. ‘How it dropped gingerbread in the King of France’s lap.’
‘The donkey of Angers! Oh surely that was I,’ answered Sir Richard, raising his enigmatic gaze to his lady’s eyes for the answering echo of his meaning.
Oh, this was love! This was what Heloise desired of life. She felt privileged to witness the love between these two and yet bereft, for she could not imagine Piers Harrington gazing on her like this. The realisation brought a sense of reprieve.
‘Heloise has been afraid to let people see her beautiful hair,’ Margery was telling Sir Richard.
‘I cannot think why,’ observed her husband. Perhaps his matter-of-fact tone was intended to be reassuring, but Heloise still felt uncomfortable beneath the man’s intelligent study.
‘The other children used to say I had witch’s hair,’ she whispered.
‘And once upon a time, people used to say I was a whore.’ A trace of pain laced Margery Huddleston’s voice. ‘You must not be ashamed. Your hair is a gift from God, not the Devil. It is what you believe that counts. Now, be cheerful, you do not lack for friends.’
Heloise’s childhood fear that the faeries had stolen the real Heloise Ballaster from her cradle was beginning to dissolve. Oh, the belief seemed foolish now, in this sophisticated company, but she had been bred on such teasing. First her dreams, and then her dark brown hair, turning silver like an old woman’s, had convinced her she was different from other children. And her father’s scoffing and saying only a blind man would take her for a wife. Well, changeling or not, she would show him. She lifted her chin defiantly and smiled.
‘And I should look higher than Harrington if I were you,’ Margery added, as if she too had the gift of reading minds. ‘Marriage is not always an answer.’
‘But merely the beginning of the question.’ Sir Richard took his wife’s hand and drew her to her feet. ‘Lend Mistress Ballaster one of your caps, my love, and let us see her safely to her quarters.’
‘Pleasant dreams,’ they wished her kindly. Dreams? That was the crux of the problem. She was young, accursed and afraid to dream.
*
Fattened on Yuletide fare, hoarse with carolling and aching from the carousing, the household was sluggish and subdued next morning as Heloise followed the page on duty through the great hall to the Duke of Gloucester’s more private demesne.
The southern-facing chamber was warm from the fire and lit by wintry sunlight. The Huddlestons, after months apart on their respective duties, were inevitably together, decorating the windowseat in their silk and velvet, their conversation in full sail while their infant child, fetched from the nursery, crawled about their feet.
Closer to the hearth, Richard, Duke of Gloucester lolled upon the cushioned settle, with a hound lying belly-up close by, and his son propped against his bootcaps. The pages of a bestiary lay open across the child’s knees.
‘But it says here, my lord father, that the stone from a hyena’s eye can make you prophesy if you put the stone under your tongue. Does—’ The duke’s hand shook him to silence as Heloise curtsied in the doorway.
‘Ah, Heloise.’ The Duchess Anne, a younger, compact rendering of Margery Huddleston, looked up from her playing cards. Leaving her mother, the Countess, widow of Warwick the Kingmaker, in mid-game, she came across to stand beside the duke.
The duchess’s errant maid of honour curtsied again and waited, feeling as if she were already on the executioner’s scaffold. At least the chaplain was not present.
‘Woman’s intuition is a strange commodity,’ observed the duke, fidgeting with the ring on his smallest finger. ‘Expensive, too, it seems. You have dented my ledger, Mistress Ballaster, not to mention our best flagons.’
‘It was out of no malice, I swear to you, your grace.’ Desperate, she turned her face to the duchess. ‘Please, I beg you, do not dismiss me, madam. It shall not happen again.’
‘It is not why we summoned you, Heloise,’ Gloucester said gently. ‘Indeed, we are certain you acted honestly last night, and we thank you for your care of our son. No, rather, it is this.’ He lifted up a parchment from the cushions beside him and held it out to her. ‘Your father’s letter changes matters. Sit down and read it.’
With no choice, she sank down obediently upon the tapestried stool and unfolded the parchment. It contained what she had feared. In twelve meagre lines dictated to his notary, Sir Dudley Ballaster was summoning her back. Because her delicate stepmother was with child – and since no man had yet offered for Heloise – she was to come home and become their chatelaine. Home? No, not the childhood home she had left in Northamptonshire, but a castle called Bramley in Somerset which (her father proudly informed her) had been bequeathed to him by a friend.
‘It seems we must lose you, Heloise. Your father’s man, Martin, is bidden to escort you back.’ Duke Richard stood up and kindly drew her to her feet. The boy rose also, straight-shouldered like his father.
Heloise wore her disappointment openly. Free from her father’s tyranny, Gloucester’s household had given her life a new order and beauty. But nothing endured. If she stayed, the whispers of her premonition and strangeness would seep out and the servants would be crossing themselves as they passed her by. Her fellow maids of honour had previously kept silent about her witch’s hair, but now they would begin to look on her with suspicion. The chaplain would see to that.
The duchess fondly set a hand upon her lord’s brocaded arm. ‘We …’ she glanced at her husband, ‘we wondered if you would like us to receive your younger sister when you can spare her. Of course, there is no need to make a decision now.’
‘I thank your grace.’ It was a generous offer. Dionysia was beautiful, normal. Dionysia would soar like a comet in the world of Middleham. ‘With my father’s permission, I should like to send her here as soon as I may.’ That at least would soothe her father’s temper.
‘Good lass,’ Gloucester nodded approvingly. ‘Well, it is decided that you should leave tomorrow with Sir Richard and Lady Huddleston as they ride south. Best go while th
e roads are hard with frost.’
‘You have been very diligent in your duties, Heloise. We have grown fond of you.’
‘I have been so happy, madam,’ Heloise exclaimed, the duke and duchess blurring in her vision like a disturbed watery reflection.
‘I know what you return to.’ Her grace’s hands framed her maid of honour’s shoulders. ‘I know how difficult fathers can be, believe me.’ She turned to include Margery in her observation before adding, ‘And I think you shall be missed, Heloise, especially by a certain esquire, hmm?’
‘No, I do not think so. No, your grace, not after last evening.’
Margery came in a slither of silk to curl her arm within her half-sister’s. ‘Heloise is afraid that her unusual hair will repel any suitors.’
Gloucester frowned. ‘Yes, I heard.’ He glanced warily at the blue velvet cap and the carefully pinned veil that Heloise was wearing. ‘Silver, I believe.’ His golden mead eyes lit with kindness. ‘Surely not so rare as you imagine.’
‘What is wrong with it? Can I see?’ The child’s voice chimed between them at breast height.
‘Nothing is wrong with her hair,’ interfered the boy’s grandam firmly from her seat at the small table. ‘But Mistress Heloise wants to be the same as everyone else. So will you when you get to her age.’ Then the countess turned the overweight cannon of her fifty years fully upon Heloise. ‘You will find, young woman, that other worries will chase away such idle thoughts as you grow older. A broken fingernail or tresses that do not curl will become insignificant when you have a house to run and children at your skirts. You will see.’
I have already seen, thought Heloise rebelliously, biting back a retort, angry that the older woman thought her vain and frivolous. I have already slaved day and night for my father with no smile or word of thanks to ease my burden.
‘My lady,’ she protested, ‘I assure you I know that hard …’ She faltered, not because the countess’s attention was back upon the playing cards, but because it was happening again – the blurring of reality and possibility.
It was as if her lungs were bursting. Before her eyes, Duchess Anne’s skin was paling. Blood flecked the lady’s lips like spittle, the serene eyes were retreating, distressed, dilated, into cavernous sockets, and the world was darkening.
‘Heloise! Heloise!’ Margery Huddleston’s fingers were clamped about her wrist, jerking her back by physical pain into the present.
‘I must go,’ whispered Heloise, her mind shrieking at the invasion, not daring to look at any of the others, lest the vision return.
She would go from Middleham. Aye, but then what?
Chapter 2
LATE FEBRUARY 1483, BRECKNOCK, WALES
Harry Stafford, Duke of Buckingham, rose from his carved chair, dismissing his council with an impatient gesture. His chamberlain, Latimer, gathered up his notes noisily and departed, his disapproval stated in the briefness of his bow. The other councillors followed almost at a tiptoe, like husbands back from a carousal. All except Sir Miles Rushden, who closed the door behind them and swung around, his gaze questioning Harry’s decision.
‘I do not give a cuss if you disapprove, Miles. You are not going to make me change my mind this time,’ the duke exclaimed, thrusting open the shutters of the lower window and tapping an amethyst-decked thumb upon the sill. Below the castle, the town of Brecknock shivered against the winter gusts. Beyond, the hills rose from the vale like a long, green wave and dark tumbling breakers of land heaved up into the shrouded mountains. Rough, raw, the January wind from Pen-y-Fan’s steep ridge rushed into the room, frightening the papers on the table.
Miles shifted a river-smoothed pebble across to anchor the dispatches and wrapped his fur-edged cote more closely across his breast.
‘It is but a small matter to give Ralph the vacant stewardship at Yalding, your grace,’ he argued, leaning across to take a handful of sweet chestnuts from the pewter salver. He judiciously kept to one side of the hearth, nicking each nut with his dagger before he pokered them into the embers.
‘No,’ muttered the duke, glaring resentfully at the distant fog-shrouded beacons. He looked over his shoulder and scowled. ‘Jesu! Ralph will never make Yalding pay.’
‘Surely he deserves the chance to prove himself?’ Not that Miles had a great respect for this particular servant of Harry’s, but Ralph’s wife, Eleanor, had proved efficient and steadfast.
‘They have Lacon farm at Wem. Let that suffice, Miles. I will hear no more of the matter.’ The duke struck his fist against the wall. ‘By the saints, I have had enow of being cooped up here. I need to hunt. Tomorrow! Arrange it!’
Miles inclined his head obediently. He too felt the lack of exercise after a week of rain but for him it never evoked the black despondency that plagued Harry Stafford.
‘I daresay it is time the realm had another rebellion, your grace,’ he remarked dryly. ‘Shall I arrange that too? Although there is the possibility you might end arse-up in a butt of malmsey.’ For treason, like the king’s jealous brother, George, Duke of Clarence, five years before.
The duke’s ill humour fell from him like a loosened mantle and he pulled the window casement half to and turned. ‘Whoreson!’ he exclaimed affectionately. ‘Some wine, if you please.’
His friend complied with a lazy grin. Miles was a fine judge of when to let matters rest. The southern Welsh had given him the name of Y Cysgod – the duke’s shadow – but his strength lay in keeping a pace ahead. He knew the Scorpio in Harry Stafford’s nature; it was a matter of keeping to the front of the man.
‘By the by,’ the duke exclaimed, ‘you still have not told me what your father wrote concerning your betrothal with Lady Myfannwy?’
Miles frowned as he passed across a cup of muscadelle. He was willing to marry Rhys ap Thomas’s ward as part of Harry’s political manoeuvring for alliances in Wales, but at twenty-seven he did not feel the match was any longer his father’s business, nor was he contemplating this second marriage with particular enthusiasm. His girlwife, Sioned, and their child lay buried in the cold ground these two years since. Besides, his mirror showed how the world saw him, and a pitted face would not please a young bride.
‘My father gives his blessing, and thanks your grace for your care of my fortunes. The other news is that my younger brother has a son. Thank Heaven! Perhaps now my parents will give up parading neighbouring maidens every time I return home.’ One of the chestnuts shot across the hearth like a cannon ball and Miles coaxed the rest out.
‘I shall suggest Rhys bring Myfannwy here in April.’ Harry juggled a hot chestnut from palm to palm. ‘A tasty little piece, she is.’
And she would bring him considerable lands, Miles conceded. As the heir of a family that had fought for the House of Lancaster against the victorious Yorkists, he needed to improve his fortunes, and the alliance with Rhys would be advantageous. He pensively divested a chestnut of its shell; so be it, in April he would take Myfannwy to his bed.
‘What is this doing in here?’ With thumb and forefinger as though he held a rat’s tail, Harry plucked a tapestried cushion from the settle and swung it with distaste. The Woodville cockleshells, the arms of his wife’s detestable family, sprawled across its puffed-up innards. Since King Edward IV had become so infatuated with Elizabeth Woodville that he had married her, the Woodvilles had crept into all the nooks and crannies of power. Marrying an heiress here, an heir there, they had stretched their tentacles across the entire kingdom. Even Wales, where Harry should by rights have had great lordship, was not free from their interference. Nor was the duke’s marital bed free either, although Catherine Woodville, the queen’s youngest sister, avoided it as much as Harry did.
Estimating distances, Harry dropped the cushion in line with the window, and kicked it at the casement. It hit the wall instead and fell with a soft plop onto the oaken chest. He shrugged.
‘So, what have you in mind to waste the day? Shall we send a bailiff down to Tretower to annoy the Vaugh
ans? Or I could tell my wife I want another son.’
Friendship was all very well – Miles ran a hand wearily through black hair that might have passed for a Welshman’s – but sometimes he felt centuries older than Harry, rather than two years younger. He raised his brow at the pinioned parchments hopefully, but the duke shook his head.
‘There is that sloe-eyed treasure that Pershall found for you over at Llantrynach, my lord.’ Retrieving the cushion, he replaced it before the ducal foot. ‘Marged? Lives in the lane behind St Brynach’s?’ He glanced up and recognised the kindling of interest. ‘Shall I have Pershall fetch her over?’ At least the girl was eager.
‘Yes, why not?’ muttered his grace. ‘And I pray God she will be amusing.’ He thumbed his heraldic emblem, the Stafford knot, upon the goblet. ‘The seed head of a dent-de-lion has more wit than the last one I bedded.’
‘And your grace has not forgotten that I leave on Monday.’
‘My grace has not forgotten, no. But can you not delay? It will be so tiresome without you.’
Miles cursed; his leave time was precious. It might take a week to reach Somerset with the roads so miry. ‘But, my lord, I thought we agreed that I should meet with you at Thornbury.’ Yes, he should be able to help his father take possession of Bramley from that interloper, Sir Dudley Ballaster, and then skirt Bristol and make speed to Thornbury.
‘Oh yes … well, I suppose you must go.’ The remark was tepid; the following silence deliberate. Harry’s confidence was seesawing again. ‘I wish I might rip Thornbury apart and build anew. A pox on the king! If only he would grant me the rest of my Bohun inheritance, I would have the funds.’
Yes, fifty manors-worth, that had fallen into the crown’s holding. They had ploughed this ground so many times before, groaned Miles inwardly, as he perched himself on the edge of the table, but he prepared to listen with his usual patience. If only Harry had not fallen out with the queen, high offices might have come their way and they would both be busy at court, instead of peeling chestnuts in this god-forsaken apology for a castle. Mayhap the opportunity would come one day with God’s good grace, but meantime he would not be sorry to have a brief respite from Brecknock and its bored master.
The Silver Bride Page 2