My legs were growing tired. I shifted my weight, and prayed for it all to end. I noticed that Isabel was still holding her pose. (She could easily have been replaced by a wall painting it would have saved some expense.)
‘We can best persuade Edward as a united family,’ Warwick went on. ‘George is to marry Isabel. You’re as good a man as your brother. Why not tie the knot with Anne at the same time?’
‘The King’s forbidden it, that’s why not,’ Richard answered.
‘Then he can flaming well unforbid it!’ Warwick yelled, so loudly that Isabel jumped back six inches without losing her pose. Anne started to cry, although exactly why was not clear to me, she being far less interested in ducal coronets than was her sister.
‘How you do run on, Cousin,’ said Gloucester, without raising his voice. He was very composed for a lad of his age. ‘You know right well that he will not.’
‘He will!’ cried the Kingmaker. He actually stamped his foot. ‘Sooner or later he will. If it comes to a choice between Warwick and the Woodvilles, only a damned idiot is going to choose the Woodvilles. That includes Edward, boy, and it most assuredly includes you.’
Richard drew himself up to his full, unimpressive height. (I could slouch and still stand taller than him, without counting my head-dress. So could Anne, even then.)
‘Ah, all that’s coming out of you is a load of wind, Warwick,’ he said.
You can see why, in later years, the men of Yorkshire took to Gloucester so well. They like straight talk in that part of the world.
Richard didn’t stay with us very long after that. Nor was I very far behind him. Warwick had friends at Court, and it soon came to his ears that Lord Audley had been stirring it down there. Warwick was the sort to take things like that personally. John went on the long list of people that he wanted to behead. It took him about a week and a half to figure out that I was Audley’s sister. You could almost hear the cogs turning in his head. He gave word, through his Countess, that I was to pack my boxes.
This was a real blow to me. It’d been a joy living with Lady Warwick. After all, she’d never beaten me except when there was a ‘d’ in the name of the day. Yes, if someone had only thought to present me with half a dozen raw onions I reckon I could have had a really good cry.
I had about a month at home in Shropshire before I was summoned to Court. This was a good career move. I didn’t need asking twice.
3
‘You’re twenty-one,’ said John, meaningfully.
‘Yes,’ I agreed. Thinking, so, you can add up.
‘Pushing twenty-two.’
‘Yes.’
‘High time you were wed.’
‘Has someone asked for me?’ I asked, hoping that they hadn’t.
‘Not yet. But for Christ’s sake, wench, if you can’t find a husband at the King’s Court you’re too lazy to make an effort. Get on with it!’
You’ll notice that John had been cured of his cold by this time. But he was still on a bit of a short fuse. I didn’t want another smack across the mouth, so I said that I would. Get on with it, that is.
The sort of offers I received weren’t generally of marriage. As I’d just arrived from the country everyone seemed to think that I’d still got straw stuck behind my ears. You wouldn’t believe the half of it but, I tell you, compared to some of King Edward’s friends and relations, Rob Percy was a master of subtle seduction.
Even the King himself wasn’t above having a crack. However, I must admit that once I had given him a friendly punch in the groin he recognised that the game wasn’t on. He never held it against me again.
I dare say that if you went around the world you might perhaps find the odd king who took exception to being treated like that. Edward simply laughed it off. I think it made him like me the better. He really was as big and as charming as everyone made out.
As for the Queen, Elizabeth Woodville, it suffices to say that all the training Lady Warwick had given me in the fields of curtseying and kneeling came in real handy. Elizabeth was by far the most beautiful woman I ever saw in my life, but she had never heard about not standing on form. If there was a form, believe me, she wanted to stand on it.
I’d just about found my bearings at Court when the fighting kicked off afresh. Warwick and Clarence had organised a rebellion. Don’t expect me to give you a blow by blow account. Look it all up in the Chronicles if you’re that interested.
At one point King Edward was captured by the enemy, and things looked so bad that my brother Audley fell to studying the timetables of the ships to Burgundy. I think he even booked himself an open ticket, and with good reason, because Warwick had him marked down as a public enemy.
But then fortune turned our way again. Edward regained his freedom, and when all was done it was Warwick and Clarence and their womenfolk who had to dash for the ferry to France. (I should have mentioned that Clarence had married Isabel by this time.)
It was decided that there should be a grand tournament to celebrate, and I popped into the King’s library to take a look at his copy of The One Hundred Wealthiest English Knights. I didn’t want to bestow my favour on just anyone.
Richard of Gloucester was already there, thumbing through the latest edition of the Court Circular. He was studying the Used Destriers section, and wearing the troubled expression of a man whose bowels have not moved for three months. Richard always did look a bit like that. You got used to it after a while. Some women even found it attractive.
‘It’s good to see a face that doesn’t belong to one of the damned Woodvilles,’ he said.
I shrugged. ‘I work for the Chief Woodville, but I hope it’s only temporary.’
I had aroused his sympathy.
‘Do you miss Middleham?’ he asked.
‘Like a chapped lip,’ I said, determined to be truthful. ‘The company, perhaps. Never the place.’
‘I miss the place, and the company.’ His sigh was so deep that it probably finished up somewhere in the vaulted cellar beneath our feet. ‘Warwick was always good to me. It wasn’t easy, you know, to make that choice. My brother, the King, came first, but it was only by a short head. The shortest of short heads. The hairs on the horse’s nose. Sometimes I wonder if I should have gone the other way, when I see the blasted Woodvilles, and all the other hangers-on, crawling out of every crack in the floor.’
‘Should you be telling me this?’ I asked.
‘No. But I have to tell someone. I gave up Anne, and the prospect of half the Warwick estates, and for what? I’ve not even been thanked.’
‘Well,’ I said, rather impatiently, ‘it’s no use sitting around here and moping, Cousin. You aren’t the only one who detests the Woodvilles and yet is loyal to the King. My brother Audley would be the first to offer his support, but there’d be plenty of others fighting to be next. You could be the leader of the third force in English politics.’
‘Politics!’ he spat. ‘I’m sick to my teeth with politics! Do you know that Warwick is planning to marry Anne to Mad Harry’s so-called son, Edward of Lancaster? He’s spent the last twenty years calling Margaret of Anjou a bitch, a whore and a murderess, and now he agrees to give his own daughter to her bastard, such is his hatred for the King. That’s where politics gets you.’
‘You mean that Warwick has turned Lancastrian?’
‘Exactly that. And Lewis of France is their ally.’
I sat down heavily. (I shouldn’t have sat down, heavily or otherwise, without his express permission, but we were going easy on the etiquette that day.) I was gutted. The wars were not over after all. Uncertainty does nothing for any market, and the marriage-market is no exception to this role. I knew that any husband I chose could be dead, attainted and penniless within the year. My plans for my future were ripped up into small pieces and thrown off the battlements into a swirling wind. (I speak metaphorically of course. Eltham Palace doesn’t have battlements worth mentioning, and it was a very still summer.)