by Livi Michael
The last words came out more bitterly than he intended, but he had spoken them now and he did not flinch.
King Edward for the first time looked away from his brother. He made a sound that might almost have been a laugh. ‘You are eighteen years old,’ he said. ‘I did not know that you were so desperate to marry.’
‘I would like to know who your majesty has in mind for me.’
The king shot him a sharp look. ‘Who does Warwick have in mind, I wonder?’
When Clarence did not answer the king stood up suddenly, but he did not come towards his brother. He walked away from him, and stood for a moment facing the wall.
‘You have heard, I trust, of all the attacks on Lord Scales’ estates? The unrest among the artisans of the city who have been told that the Flemings are coming to take their jobs? My men have only just averted a bloodbath in Southwark – a mob had gathered to kill all the foreign merchants in the city. Now, who do you think has incited these good citizens to murder, eh?’
He turned to face Clarence, who said nothing, so the king continued. ‘The instigators are even now being rounded up and imprisoned. How many of them do you think will be wearing Warwick’s badge?’
‘I know nothing about this –’ Clarence began, but his brother was coming towards him.
‘Who is it do you think has maintained a correspondence with the French king, passing on all the secrets of our realm? He has already been implicated in a conspiracy with the old queen to restore the old, tired king to the throne.’
‘That’s not what he wants at all!’ Clarence burst out, and was alarmed by the look of absolute cunning on the king’s face.
‘No?’ the king said softly. ‘What does he want?’ He stood still, only a couple of feet away from Clarence.
‘He wants to make this nation – and this House of York – secure.’
‘Does he?’ said the king. ‘And how does he plan to do this?’
He stepped forward again until he was standing close, too close to the duke. ‘Has he talked to you of marriage, little brother?’
Clarence could smell the king’s breath. It was not pleasant. He turned his face away. ‘It may – he may – have mentioned something –’
‘Something?’ said the king. ‘Not someone?’
Clarence said something barely audible.
‘Who?’ said the king. ‘Who does my cousin think you should marry?’
Clarence felt a sudden movement of violence in him, the urge to push his brother away. But he knew that he must not, on any account, lay hands on the king. He closed his eyes. ‘It is not an unsuitable match,’ he began.
‘Hah!’ said the king, but Clarence was not going to be silenced.
‘It is, in fact, highly suitable – we have grown up together – we are of an age – and – I love her.’ He opened his eyes.
The king’s expression was a perfect blend of incredulity and wrath. ‘You love her?’
‘I do.’
‘Does she have a name?’
‘You know her name. Why should it matter to you if I marry Isabel?’
‘Ah,’ said the king, nodding. ‘You plan to marry the Earl of Warwick’s eldest daughter. Because you love her.’
‘Is that so incomprehensible?’
‘No,’ said the king, stepping away from him at last. ‘She is pretty enough. And she will inherit the greatest earldom in the land.’
‘Who would your majesty have me marry? A serving girl?’
The king stood with his hands on his hips, shaking his head at the floor. ‘He has told you, I suppose, that I have already forbidden this match?’
Clarence looked at him.
‘I see,’ said the king. ‘And what inducements did he offer to help you overcome your scruples?’
He was breathing heavily, but Clarence was angry too. ‘I don’t see why it should be forbidden,’ he said. ‘Why should it surprise your majesty if I should choose to marry as you did – for love?’
‘Do not compare yourself to me,’ said the king, in that dangerously low voice.
‘Why not?’ said Clarence, his pale face flushing now. ‘You may be the king but you are also my brother – we are not so different that –’
‘– that you cannot play my role.’
‘I did not say that –’
‘No, but I’m sure Warwick did. Did he remind you that until I have an heir you are next in line to the throne?’
Clarence felt outmanoeuvred, but also he felt the injustice of the situation keenly. ‘You accuse me, brother – of what? Of wanting to marry the girl I love – as you did?’
‘Do not talk to me of love!’ thundered the king suddenly, making Clarence’s heart leap in terror and his tongue loosen.
‘Who are you to lecture me on marriage?’ he said. ‘Who are you to dictate to my heart?’
‘I am your king!’
‘You were not always my king,’ said Clarence stubbornly. ‘You were my brother first.’
‘Yes!’ said the king. He had lifted his head and closed his eyes. ‘You are my brother and I am your king. I have built this nation from nothing – I have made it great again. I will make this House of York the strongest dynasty that ever sat on the throne – that is what I have set myself to do. And I will destroy its enemies – even if they are within my own family.’
He opened his eyes. Now might have been the moment for Clarence to declare his absolute loyalty to his brother and king, but instead he said, ‘Then you must not make me your enemy, lord.’
In a lightning movement the king slammed him up against the wall. He pressed against him so that Clarence could hardly move. For while they were a similar height, the king, because of his massive frame, was much stronger. Outraged, Clarence tried to move away, but the king caught his face. ‘Look at me,’ he said. ‘Look at me.’
Clarence stared into the king’s small eyes, made smaller by the pouches beneath them. His face was congested with blood.
‘I may not always have been your king,’ he said, ‘but I am your king now. I will not have everything I have built destroyed and taken away from me. Do you understand that, eh? I will destroy my enemies wherever and whoever they are, because I am king.’
Humiliation and outrage flared in Clarence. ‘You are king because you took the throne from another man –’ he said.
‘No,’ said the king, meaning Do not say it.
But Clarence, compelled by some terrible impulse said, ‘You – of all people – know that kings can be made and unmade –’
The king lowered his head until his forehead rested on Clarence’s own. ‘No, no, no,’ he said. He released his grip on Clarence’s face and his fingers moved gently, like a caress, until they came to his mouth, where the king pressed two of them to his brother’s lips. ‘Do not say anything else,’ he said. Then as Clarence started to speak he pressed his fingers down harder. ‘Sssh,’ he said, ‘sssh.’
Then, after a long moment, the king released him. His hands fell to his sides and he closed his eyes again. He started to speak, then stopped, then started again. ‘I will tell you what we will do,’ he said. ‘You will agree to see the Earl of Warwick no more. You will make no promises to Isabel. You will spend Christmas with me and my family at Coventry, where we will enjoy ourselves, as a family. And in the New Year I will give the matter of your marriage my full attention.’
Clarence could not speak. The king looked at him warily, as if from a great distance. ‘Yes?’ he said.
Clarence managed to nod his head.
‘Good,’ said the king. ‘You will join us at Coventry and nothing more will be said about what has happened here today, or anything that has happened previously between you and the Earl of Warwick. There will be friendship and accord between us. And we will love one another, as brothers.’
Clarence closed his eyes, partly so that the king could not see either the sudden tears or the murderous rage in them.
‘Excellent,’ said the king, when he didn’t answer. ‘You m
ay go.’
Clarence hesitated only for a moment before bowing without evident irony. He left without looking again at the king, shaking internally, but grateful that he had not entirely disgraced himself. He had not wept.
The king, with the queen and many other lords, held the feast of Our Lord’s nativity at Coventry in the abbey there, where for six days the Duke of Clarence behaved in a friendly way. And soon after Epiphany, by means of secret friends, the Archbishop of York and Lord Scales were brought together at Nottingham and they were so agreed that the archbishop brought the Earl of Warwick to the king at Coventry to a council in January where the Earl of Warwick, Lords Herbert, Stafford and Audley were reconciled …
Annales Rerum Anglicarum
27
Jasper’s Journey
In France the news was all of Warwick. He was no longer seen at the English court. He spent more time at the French court than the English. He was so opposed to the marriage between the king’s sister and the Duke of Burgundy that if King Edward went ahead with it there would be civil war. And Warwick was more popular than the king.
Most sensationally, it was rumoured that Warwick had seduced the king’s brother, the Duke of Clarence, by offering him his own daughter in marriage.
Margaret of Anjou was worried. Did Louis think he could use the earl to further his own ends in England? She knew that Warwick would only pursue his own objectives. She wrote to the French king, demanding to know what his plans were, and begging him not to trust the earl. When she received no reply she sent her own brother, John of Calabria, to speak to the king against the earl.
But the king replied that the Earl of Warwick had always been a friend to his crown, whereas King Henry had been a mortal enemy, and had waged many wars against him.
Which was not true, and it was all in the past, before Louis had been king and when England still had territories to defend in France. Louis was making excuses, she said, to further his own plans.
In the New Year, details of the Anglo–Burgundian alliance were proclaimed, followed by a pact between England and Brittany. Then finally King Edward announced his intentions to invade France.
Louis’ reaction to this was typically indirect. He would provide Jasper Tudor with ships and men for an invasion of Wales.
She could see this tactic for what it was, a diversion which together with the disturbances in England would prevent Edward from doing anything immediately. But she was anxious that Louis was putting another of her generals at risk, and so she wrote to Jasper, asking him to come to see her before he left for Wales.
Jasper Tudor, half-brother to her husband, had been a fugitive for many years. He had followed her from France to Bamburgh in 1463 and had been in Bamburgh Castle with the Duke of Somerset when the Earl of Warwick had captured it. The Duke of Somerset had accepted a pardon from the king, but Jasper had fled to Scotland. Since then he had become Queen Margaret’s emissary, travelling, often in disguise, between Wales and Ireland, France, northern England and Scotland.
His older brother and father had been killed. His father had been a Welshman who had married the queen of England; his half-brother, Henry, rightful king of England, was now imprisoned in the Tower. These facts had shaped his life. His life did not belong to him, but to the cause that had begun sometime before he was born and would continue, possibly, after his death.
He looked older, she thought as he approached, but then he had always looked older. He was in his late thirties, she supposed, but she would not have been surprised to hear that he was fifty. She had to remember what his life had become: he could put down no roots and could talk freely to no one. Obviously he had grown wary and distrustful; he was all thorns, this man. It had been easier to like his brother, Edmund.
Yet there was something about him, a kind of achieved innocence that came from the fact that he was bound to nothing and no one apart from his one single purpose.
Perhaps, she thought irrelevantly, as he took her hand, he would spend the occasional night with someone he was unlikely ever to see again.
He bowed stiffly over her hand but did not kiss it. He murmured a formal greeting and she thanked him for coming out of his way.
‘What has he given you?’ she said as soon as they were alone.
Jasper studied the floor and said, ‘Enough.’
‘Enough?’
After a pause he said that Louis had offered him three ships.
‘Three ships?’
‘A bigger fleet would more easily be seen.’
‘Three!’
‘Our support is in Wales itself.’
‘Ah, Louis,’ she said, ‘do you want us to fail?’
‘You forget, my lady,’ Jasper said, ‘that most of the English lords will be in Bruges with the king’s sister.’
‘I do not forget it,’ she said. ‘But what does he expect you to achieve with three ships?’ She paced up and down. ‘He is offering you as a blood sacrifice,’ she said.
Jasper said he did not look at it that way at all. Many of the Welsh would respond to his summons. And he would land near Harlech – the last bastion held by the Lancastrians. It had held out against the Yorkist regime for seven years now, with help from the Irish. The soldiers there would support him and he believed that many of the Irish too would fight for them.
‘And if they don’t?’ she said.
Jasper pulled the corners of his mouth down. ‘Then we will manage without them,’ he said.
She stared at him, but his expression gave nothing away. She thought of reminding him that this would be the third time he had attempted to invade England and failed, but something stopped her. They could not afford to make predictions from past evidence. He would not make any predictions at all. He had learned to do only what he had to do at any one time.
After a silence she said, ‘Harlech will be surrounded by Herbert’s men.’
‘I know.’
‘The biggest armed force in Wales.’
‘He will not be expecting the men of Wales to rise against him.’
‘But if you defeat Herbert – what then?’
Jasper pulled his face again. ‘I should like to retrieve my nephew.’
‘Your nephew?’
‘Edmund’s son,’ he said, looking at her fully for the first time.
The queen sat back in her chair. Obviously he would want to rescue his nephew, who had been placed in Herbert’s care. But that was almost as great a risk as attacking Harlech.
‘What will you do with him?’
Jasper said that, if he could, he would bring him to the queen. It would be good for him to spend some time with his cousin the prince. ‘They will be like brothers,’ he said. ‘When your son is king it will be good for him to have supporters of his own age and kin.’
The queen chose to accept this. She had no choice but to believe in his loyalty. He had never once deviated from her cause, or that of the prince.
‘Where is the prince?’ he asked.
Her son was practising his fencing skills, but he was overjoyed to see his uncle. He almost ran towards him, then, remembering his age (he would be fifteen that year), he waited, smiling, while Jasper knelt.
‘It is good to see you, Uncle,’ he said.
‘Your highness has grown tall,’ said Jasper. In fact, the prince was almost a head shorter than Jasper.
‘Uncle – watch me fence!’
They watched him training with John Fortescue, whose man made the mistake of allowing the prince to knock his sword from his hand.
‘Pick it up.’
‘Your highness –’
‘Pick it up! I am not a child! You do not play with me!’
There was a moment of silence. John Fortescue glanced at the queen and Jasper, uncertain whether to rebuke the prince in their presence. Then Jasper stepped forward and picked up the sword himself.
Swiftly the atmosphere altered. The prince’s stance changed. He stood very straight and stared at his uncle with that dark, intent gaz
e. Then he fought with a sharpened focus.
Jasper parried at first, lightly, easily, allowing him to move in, then he too fought with an absolutely serious intent.
The queen had noticed before that the prince was different with his uncle, never so rude or rebellious as with his usual trainers. It was as though Jasper called out something different in him, something stricter, more self-contained. Or as though he represented to the young boy who had no father – for she had almost discounted the king as father – something he wished to become. But this thought caused a shadow to fall across her heart, for Jasper had won no battles. He had never given up, but had never won.
Just at that moment, in a lightning stroke, Jasper disarmed the young prince.
Colour rose in the prince’s face. For a moment it looked as though he would say something angry or rude, but Jasper spoke first.
‘I’m sorry, your highness – that was not fair.’
Pride and humiliation battled in the prince’s face, but then he said, ‘It was fair.’ And he walked away rapidly, without any of the usual formalities.
The queen started to call him back, but Jasper said, ‘Leave him.’
‘But –’
‘Leave him now. I will speak to him later.’
And, later, she saw them both walking by the lake. Jasper had his hand on her son’s shoulder. He was talking and the prince was listening in the way he no longer listened to her.
Jasper was good with him, she had to admit it. He was so stern and prickly with adults, yet able somehow to reach out to this boy on the threshold of manhood and claim his respect. They were talking together so privately and intimately that she would have walked away, but her son saw her.
‘Maman,’ he said, walking rapidly towards her. ‘My uncle says he will sail tomorrow. And I want to go with him.’