The King’s Sister

by Anne O'Brien

  Ralph Stafford was cut down, in a despicable, unprovoked blow, by John Holland.

  The whole court talked of nothing else. Those who had no love for John Holland and his aspirations to power rubbed their hands with glee for surely there was no redemption for him here. And those who saw behind John’s ambitions to the brilliant skill, men such as my father, failed to hide their dismay. How could this cold-blooded murder be excused? The death of the friar under questioning could be overlooked as a necessity in the face of treason, but this victim of John Holland’s outrageous temper was a young man, son and heir of Earl of Stafford, with many friends.

  John, it became clear, had few friends to leap to his defence.

  As the tale grew in gore and viciousness, I tried to preserve a dispassionate face, even joining in the speculation of how Richard would react to his brother’s crime, while my heart became a thing of ice and my spirits in tatters. If the telling of the deed was true, not even I could vindicate John from the foul deed.

  How could I justify this? I knew John’s temper. I knew it could rage on the very borders of control. Far to the north in York, one of John’s squires had been killed in a drunken brawl by an archer in the retinue of Ralph Stafford. An unfortunate killing in the heat of ale, but John, full of ire, went hunting for the perpetrator, and when, riding through the night, he came across a Stafford retinue, John drew his sword and killed the leader, without waiting to discover that it was the Stafford heir. Or perhaps he did know, some muttered, but the violence of his temper drove him on to avenge his dead squire.

  No matter the detail, John Holland had run Ralph Stafford through with his sword, leaving his dead body on the road.

  The news could not be kept from Richard who was gripped by a silent rage, seated immobile on the throne in his audience chamber, tears fresh on his cheeks, unresponsive to Queen Anne who left him with a lift of her shoulders.

  So what now? the court mused. And so did I with a dread that kept me awake through the early hours when fears leapt from every shadow. Stafford was demanding vengeance. John had taken refuge in Beverley Minster, surely evidence of his guilt. But what would Richard do?

  As I considered the possible scale of Richard’s revenge, an undercurrent of pure rage rumbled beneath my speculations, aimed at both men. Richard might well dole out the ultimate penalty for murder, so that the royal brother would face the axe. Or be banished from the kingdom to seek his turbulent fortune elsewhere. I had no faith in Richard’s compassion.

  As for John Holland, how could he have been so intemperate?

  And then the undercurrent became a raging fire that swept through me as I put the blame where it lay. John was everything to me, and I to him. How could he risk all that we were to each other by a blow of a sword on a dark road? I could not justify his lack of humanity, of morality, his lack of foresight in bringing about an innocent death.

  Had he not promised never to allow his temper to harm me? But he had. Oh, he had. His life might be forfeit and I left to mourn a love that shook me with its power.

  The fault was all John Holland’s, and Richard’s grief erupted into an outpouring of rage against his absent brother. Fraternal affection held far less weight than the loss of Ralph Stafford. John Holland, Richard swore, would answer for his crime, while I was cast into a desperate foreboding. I was helpless.

  But was I? Laying my anger aside, I gave my mind to plan, to plot—for was not Richard my cousin who might be open to persuasion? Richard would never condemn his own brother to death or even banish him from his presence. Richard had a brother’s love for John Holland. What if I appealed to him for clemency? Would he listen as he had listened to me—and obeyed me—in our childhood games? But those days were long gone, Richard now eighteen years and a man grown, a man driven by extreme passions when his will was crossed. If he could conspire in the death of a once loved uncle, Richard was not the cousin I remembered. And how could I confess my interest in John Holland, in full public gaze, when as a married woman I was not free to do so?

  But I could not sit and allow John Holland to come under royal vengeance.

  Who could help me?

  I considered petitioning the Queen, but her eyes were strained with sadnesses I could only guess at. Not de Vere and the courtiers of Richard’s charmed inner circle. Never them. Would they not rejoice in John’s fall from grace? Princess Joan was not in health, residing with her own household at Wallingford Castle. I could think of only one voice that might, in spite of everything, still have Richard’s ear and the authority of royal blood.

  I attended Mass, from which Richard was noticeably absent, even though it would have been good for his inner peace, then went in search of my father in his accommodations.

  ‘Elizabeth.’ He looked up as I entered. ‘What brings you from your bed betimes? It must be urgent.’

  He was, as usual, in the depths of state business, the table before him covered with lists and correspondence. It would fall to him to secure the Scottish border against reprisals after Richard’s abortive campaign. His eyes were tired. I noticed the grey in his hair and felt the weight of his responsibilities. Would it be thoughtless for me to add to his burdens?

  ‘Are you too busy?’

  ‘Yes. But since you think it’s important enough to come and see me, you’d better tell me. What is it you want me to do for you this time?’

  I felt my face flush, but returned his kiss and allowed him to lead me to a seat in the window. I knew I was taking a risk in broaching this matter, but I could not reconcile myself to letting events take their course.

  ‘Well?’

  ‘I want you to put Sir John Holland’s case before the King.’

  The Duke’s expression did not change. ‘And why would you wish me to do that?’

  I folded my hands neatly in my lap. ‘Because he does not deserve Richard’s wrath. There is talk that Richard will bring the weight of the law down upon his head.’

  The Duke inhaled sharply, but at least honoured me with his reasoned thoughts. ‘Holland is his own worst enemy. He killed Ralph Stafford. He has not denied it—his flight to seize sanctuary is proof enough. If he had bothered to think before drawing his sword … I understand his displeasure over the loss of his squire, but his response was reprehensible. If he were a dozen years younger, with adolescent lack of control, I might excuse him, but he is thirty-three years old. There is no excuse.’ He looked at me, brows flat, mouth unsmiling. ‘And why are you so concerned? I thought I had made it plain that it was not wise for you to give any level of thought to John Holland.’

  ‘I do not think of him,’ I responded gravely as I marshalled the line of reasoning I had constructed during the night hours. ‘But I think he deserves that we take an interest in his preservation. He has not been backward in supporting our interests.’ I would not mention the friar—it would not enhance my argument—but moved on into less troubled waters. ‘He rescued me, if you had forgotten. He saved me, and Henry and Princess Joan, from certain death in the Tower. Can we allow him to fall victim to Richard’s temper? The Princess is your friend. Can you turn your back on her? She pleaded for you when Richard was crying foul over your attack on de Vere. She persuaded Richard to come and meet with you.’

  Here was the argument that might do the trick. I waited, wondering if my ploy would work. My father had a debt to pay to the Princess. If he could see the need to pay it on this occasion, he might be willing to stand between her two sons and beg for mercy for one of them.

  ‘Does Sir John not wear your livery?’ I added, innocent enough, when the Duke’s thoughts engendered nothing but a heavy frown.

  ‘Very true.’ The driest of comments with no inflection.

  ‘So will you?’

  ‘I think Princess Joan will make her own powerful arguments without my intervention. I am barely reconciled with the King.’

  ‘Princess Joan is not fit to travel. She might hope to rely on you.’

  As my father studied my face, I t
ried to breathe evenly despite the leaping anxieties.

  ‘You are very importunate.’

  I was very afraid. I tried a lift of my chin, a calm smile. ‘I would see justice done.’

  ‘For John Holland rather than Ralph Stafford.’

  ‘For both. I don’t ask that Sir John go unpunished. Merely that Richard does not order the executioner to sharpen his axe. If it were not for Sir John my neck would have felt its kiss on Tower Green. And Henry’s.’

  I drove the nail home with little subtlety. It was the strongest point I could envisage.

  ‘I will think of it.’

  No promises. I had to cling to hope. I had done what I could.

  Why did you have to do it, John? You promised me that your temper would never harm me. It could destroy our love—so young, so new and untried—for ever.

  We were announced into the audience chamber at Windsor as if we were a foreign delegation, to be received by Richard seated in state, the royal crown on his brow. Gone were the tears, the pale cheeks of past days. Now his face burned with fury. My pleas to the Duke had held weight, but I had no anticipation that Richard would hear. Beside him sat Queen Anne, straight-backed, watchful, equally resplendent in royal robes and coronet. The Duke and I had clothed ourselves in silk and damask as if for a formal audience rather than a family petition. I was relieved that we were alone, without the keen-eyed, long-eared courtiers primed for further gossip about royal disputes.

  The Duke bowed. I curtsied. Richard gave no sign of recognition. The Queen leaned across and touched his arm.

  ‘Have you a request for me, Uncle?’ Richard blinked, as if suddenly awakening. ‘I did not think we had business to attend to.’

  ‘No, my lord.’ The Duke wasted no time. ‘I am here on family matters. To ask your royal pardon for your brother, John Holland.’

  ‘What is it to you how I deal with Holland?’ Richard all but spat the name.

  ‘He is a useful man for you to have on your side, sire. A gifted man.’

  ‘At the tournament.’ Richard surged to his feet. ‘I see no other gifts!’

  The Duke was patient. ‘He has excellent judgement as a soldier, a leader of men. It would not be politic to alienate him from your side. His loyalty to the Crown—to you—is without question.’

  ‘Politic?’ Richard snarled. ‘Holland murdered my friend!’

  ‘A sad misjudgement, sire.’

  ‘A symptom of his vicious temper!’

  The Duke inclined his head. ‘If you could find it in your way to be magnanimous.’

  ‘I could not.’ Richard turned his face away.

  All of which I could only absorb with increasing anxiety. If my father could not sway Richard, who could?

  The Duke glanced at me, then back to the King. ‘Sire …’

  ‘You have our answer. Leave us.’ His fair face was dark with an intensity of hatred. ‘I will not receive into my presence those who would support a murderer.’

  I looked towards the Queen. So did my father, but she merely shook her head. My father bowed, I curtsied. What a brief, disastrously unsuccessful audience it had proved to be. But as we turned to go, the door was opened, with a disturbance outside.

  ‘Now who dares to disturb my peace …?’

  Richard strode forward, leaping from the dais, as if to slam the doors shut with his own hands, but stumbled to a halt.

  ‘Madam!’

  In the doorway, aided by one of her serving women who held her arm firmly to guide her faltering steps, was Princess Joan. Burdened by rich cloth that did nothing to disguise her swollen flesh, Joan struggled forward with agonising slowness. How she had aged in those few short weeks since she had argued my father’s cause with such skill. I now understood why she lived in seclusion at Wallingford. Every step was for her an agony.

  And yet here might be the one voice to persuade Richard to show mercy.

  ‘What brings you here, madam?’ A belligerence but a wary one, as if Richard might still heed his mother’s words. I prayed that he would. There was only one possible reason for Joan to be here at this crucial hour. ‘Can I guess? You have wasted your time.’ Richard, who usually spoke to his mother with tenderness, was brutally intolerant.

  ‘You might well guess.’ The flesh of her once beautiful face was drawn with effort and a quality of grief I had never experienced from this redoubtable woman. How she must have suffered on her journey here, in mind and in spirit. ‘I am here to see you, my son.’

  ‘To see your King.’ Richard’s chiding was remorseless.

  ‘As you say. You must excuse the frailty of my flesh, that I cannot perform the obeisance you clearly hope for. I must assure you that you have my regard and my loyalty as my lord and King. As you have my love as my son.’

  Her flesh might be weak but her voice was as strong and assured as it had ever been. Princess Joan raised her chin with a direct stare.

  ‘There’s no need to say more. I know why you are here. And I won’t do it.’

  ‘Then I ask pardon for importuning you.’ The Princess glanced at us, her eyes keen even as her body trembled, betraying her. ‘I see I am not the first, if I read this right.’ Then she fixed Richard once more with the flat regard of a woman who had survived more scandals than anyone I knew. ‘It is not fitting, Richard, that one brother should seek the life of another.’

  ‘He has committed bloody murder,’ Richard roared.

  Joan raised one hand. ‘He has killed. I know not his justification. Or even if he had any. Have mercy, Richard.’

  ‘I will have no mercy.’

  ‘Help me!’

  The command, addressed to her woman, was harsh, as with greatest difficulty and a groan of anguish, the Princess fell to her knees. And before my father could move, I was at her side, kneeling with her—some would say driven by my own selfish desires, but how could I not be moved by compassion for this courageous, suffering woman?

  ‘I beg of you, sire,’ I pleaded as I had never pleaded with Richard before. ‘Have pity on this lady whose health cannot withstand the loss of one son at the hand of the other.’

  The Princess grasped my arm hard, but there we knelt. What an image we made, two nobly-born but impotent women, like the sea washing up against the impregnable rock of Richard’s intransigence.

  ‘Go back to Wallingford, madam,’ Richard said in cold judgement. ‘And you, Countess of Pembroke, should return to your husband. What is it to you how I deal with those who commit crimes in my realm and disturb my peace?’ Richard’s eyes were as killingly bleak as those of his favourite raptor. ‘You do no good here. Neither of you. I will not be swayed by the whining of women over matters beyond their comprehension.’

  Joan held on to me, pulling her spine erect. ‘I will not go, my son, until I have your answer.’

  ‘Then here it is, since your understanding seems to be lacking. John Holland, whom I will no longer call brother, will face the demands of the English law. Coward that he is, he lurks in some northern sanctuary. If he dares to show his face before me, he’ll suffer the blow of the axe to his arrogant neck.’ He addressed Joan’s woman. ‘Arrange for this lady’s return to her home. She has made her petition and I have answered it.’

  With a silken swish of the folds of his houppelande, Richard swept past us, leaving the Duke and me to raise and shepherd a tearful princess to her waiting litter. The fact that she wept was more shocking than all the rest.

  ‘I doubt she’s fit to travel,’ my father observed as the Princess insisted, all traces of tears dashed away, but her hands shaking as she drew the covers over her legs. ‘I think today we have seen Richard sign her death warrant. He has broken her heart.’

  I thought he might have broken mine too.

  ‘Did we achieve anything?’ I asked, even as I knew we had not, but all I could do was cling to a last hope. ‘Will he at least consider compassion as his anger fades?’

  ‘No. Not in his present mood.’ The Duke pressed his lips to my forehead
. ‘Go with her, Elizabeth, and do what you can. She has an affection for you and she is a broken woman.’

  I went to Wallingford Castle, unable to soothe the distraught lady whose breathing worsened and whose pallor frightened me. She would neither eat nor drink. When we arrived at her refuge the shadows beneath her eyes were as livid as bruises.

  ‘Speak for him, Elizabeth. Speak for John. I know you have a softness for him.’

  I did not deny it. How could I? My heart was as heavy as Joan’s with the certainty of failure.

  Richard has broken her heart, my father had observed. But so had John Holland. How could I argue against that? Were they not both to blame, one for vile murder, the other blind intolerance? It was as if all the life had been sucked out of the very stones of the castle at Wallingford, and out of Joan too as she sank into a torpor. The fear of one son being responsible for the death of another was too much for her strained heart to bear. Refusing all food and drink, the once valiant lady seemed to be sliding slowly but inexorably into the arms of death, and I was helpless to prevent it.

  ‘You must live. You must live to petition for your son,’ I urged, trying to help her sip from a cup of wine.

  ‘I have petitioned,’ the Princess whispered, pushing the wine aside. ‘Richard will not hear me.’

  ‘He will. He will regret what he has done to you. How he has reduced you to this. Let me send for him.’

  ‘There was no regret in his eyes.’

  She turned her face from me, and death came swiftly then as if she had willed herself out of this world that promised so much pain. The Princess abandoned the struggle without another word being spoken, other than to me and her confessor. The words the Princess whispered to me held the weight of a confession, indeed of a binding oath, and put a burden of conscience on my soul. Meanwhile Wallingford stood stock-still in shock at this long and eventful life coming to so puny an end. Had we not expected a shower of stars in the heavens or the raging torrents of a storm? Princess Joan slipped, unrecorded by any of her own family, into death.

  And then the aftermath, which fell to my hand. Servants whispered in corners as Joan’s women packed her garments into coffers, uncertain of their future as the whole household was put into a state of mourning and I ordered the black robes last worn for old King Edward to be brushed and aired. Musty and creased they might be, but we would show appropriate solemnity.