The trumpets sounded yet again, stridently and more insistently, as King Edward and Queen Elizabeth were conducted, amid much pomp and ceremony, to their seats beneath canopies of cloth of gold in the centre of the dais. The King’s likeness to his brother George was immediately apparent. Both stood over six feet and were of splendid physique, with the reddish-gold hair and startling blue eyes of the typical Plantagenet. Once known as the handsomest man in Europe, Edward was, however, now starting to run to fat. Sybaritic by nature, he had for years denied himself no luxury that his body craved and, encouraged by his wife and her relations, had created a court which was a byword for hedonism. His waist had begun to thicken, his jaw was heavily fleshed and his roving eye – for he had never been the most faithful of husbands – a little bleary. Nevertheless he was still a good-looking man, a fact to which the simpering smiles and encouraging glances of all the women present testified.
Beside her lord, glittering with jewels, sat Edward’s queen, her famous silver-gilt hair shaved right back from the high white forehead and completely concealed by an embroidered cap, over which towered the twin peaks of her wired gauze headdress. The mouth, with its full underlip, was carefully painted and the skin stiff with a maquillage of white lead and rose water. Her chin was soft and rounded, like a child’s, but the blue eyes, which stared with almost unseeing arrogance across the crowded hall, told me that here was a woman high-stomached and pitiless. Stories concerning her and her family’s rapacity, and also about their lust for revenge, abounded. One such tale, oft repeated at that time, was of the terrible retribution visited upon the head of Thomas Fitzgerald, Earl of Desmond and sometime Deputy Lieutenant of Ireland. Ten years earlier, around the time of the Queen’s coronation, the earl had visited England and been asked by the King what he thought of his choice of a bride.
‘Sire,’ Desmond is reported to have answered, ‘the lady’s beauty and virtue are well known and deservedly praised. Nevertheless I think Your Highness would have done better to marry a princess who would have secured you the benefits of a foreign alliance.’
Such disastrous honesty did the earl no harm with the King, who sent him back to Ireland loaded down with gifts. But two years later, when John Tiptoft, Earl of Worcester and nicknamed the Butcher of England, became Deputy Lieutenant of Ireland in Desmond’s stead, he had had the earl arrested on some trumped-up charge, condemned and beheaded before any of his English friends, chief among whom was the Duke of Gloucester, had time to intervene. That was bad enough, but far, far worse was the brutal murder of two of Desmond’s young children, a crime with which Tiptoft was taunted by the London mob when it was his own turn to mount the scaffold. At the heart of this story, however, lay the persistent rumour that the King knew nothing of the deaths of Thomas Fitzgerald and his offspring until it was too late; that the Queen stole her husband’s signet to seal the death warrants herself.
Now, whether that particular aspect of the story was true or not I have no means of knowing and am still ignorant to this day, but it was certainly one that was often repeated in taverns and ale-houses whenever the Queen’s name was mentioned (together with the rider that the Duke of Gloucester had been beside himself with grief and had sworn that however long he had to wait, he would be revenged for the death of his friend and his friend’s two children). Be that as it may, watching Elizabeth Woodville that evening, looking at the contemptuous curve of that little rouged mouth, noting her dismissive attitude towards servants and courtiers alike and the condescension she displayed towards her mother-in-law, her superior in every way, I felt I could believe her capable of any infamy, even that of plotting her brother-in-law’s murder if such an act would advance the cause of her family by the slightest degree.
And it was at that precise moment that I saw her half turn her head and beckon to someone who had been hovering near her chair. Stephen Hudelin glided forward and sank to one knee, as though ready to serve the Queen. But his hands were empty. I left my station by the sideboard and edged a little closer, and through the haze of torch and candle smoke I could just make out the movement of their lips. The conversation was brief and, as far as I could tell, unremarked by anyone besides myself, it being only a moment or so before Hudelin rose and moved back into the shadows. All the same, I was convinced that he was indeed in the pay of the Woodville family and might well be the source of the threat posed to Duke Richard which had been nosed out by members of the Brotherhood.
The company was still settling itself, waiting for the banquet to begin, raising goblets of exquisite Venetian glass in pledges of friendship and goodwill. Thoughts of the coming conflict in France made for a more sombre mood than might otherwise have prevailed, but the atmosphere was lively enough and there were cheers when the minstrels in the gallery struck up with the Agincourt song.
‘And so we shall soon have cause to sing again, cousin!’ called out a young man who, I later learned, was the Duke of Buckingham, as he drank the King’s health in the best malmsey wine.
All the men were on their feet then, roaring their agreement so that the music was quite drowned out. King Edward, a slight, somewhat enigmatic smile playing around the corners of his mouth, waited for the uproar to subside before raising his own goblet in return.
‘My lords, I thank you,’ was all he said, making no effort to get up or make a speech.
I could see that this apparent apathy puzzled and disappointed a good many of his loyal subjects who, after a moment’s embarrassed silence, sank back into their seats muttering to one another. I also saw Duke Richard give his brother a quick, questioning glance, which the King seemed determined not to meet, hurriedly turning his eyes away.
‘Let eating commence!’ he ordered and immediately, at a sign from Duchess Cicely, the trumpets brayed again as the first course was carried into the hall.
Chapter Thirteen
At last the feast was over. The various dishes – broth, jellied eels and crayfish, duckling, roast kid and sucking pig, a boar’s head, chickens, roast heron, cokyntryce, venison with frumenty, doucettes and junkets, pancakes and fritters, nuts and cheese, dates and raisins, and a magnificent swan, drawn, plucked and cooked, then reassembled in all its plumage, a collar of diamonds about its neck – had come and gone, and all washed down with a vast quantity of wines. (I cannot remember at this distance of time more than a tithe of what was consumed that evening, but of one thing I am certain: it was enough to feed a hundred common men such as myself for a year or more, and to feed them well.)
The guests lolled in their chairs or slumped on their benches, faces red and shiny in the guttering torchlight, hands clasped over distended bellies. Every now and then a beringed finger would indicate to some sweating server that its owner’s cup was empty. The babel of noise which had filled the hall during the earlier part of the banquet was muted now, as energy waned with repletion. Occasionally someone was sick into the rushes, or heaved his heart up all over the table, but no one seemed to mind. Most of the men were, in any case, too drunk to care.