I wait for them, standing before the huge fire of wood in the great hall, Ursula at my side, seven-year-old Geoffrey’s hand in mine. Henry comes in first, as he should, kneels for my blessing, and kisses me on both cheeks then steps aside for his brother Arthur. Side by side they kneel before me, their height and their strength obscured by their deference. These are boys no longer, they are young men. I have missed five, nearly six years of their lives, and no one, not even a Tudor king, can restore that to me. This is a loss that can never be made up.
I raise Henry to his feet and I smile at my pride as he goes up and up. He is a tall, well-built young man of nearly twenty. He overtops me by a head, and I can feel the strength in his arms. “My son,” I say, and I clear my throat so that my voice does not tremble. “My son, I have missed you, but we are returned to one another now, and to our place in the world.”
I raise Arthur and kiss him too. At seventeen he is nearly as tall as his older brother, and broader, stronger. He is an athlete, a great rider. I remember that my cousin George Neville—Lord Bergavenny—promised me that he would make this boy into a great sportsman: “Put him at the king’s court and they will fall in love with him for his courage at the joust,” he told me.
Next in line, Reginald rises to his feet as I step towards him but though I hold him close he does not put his arms around me, he does not cling to me. I kiss him and I step back to look at him. He is tall and lean, with a narrow face as sensitive and mobile as a girl’s, his brown eyes very wary for an eleven-year-old, his mouth firm as if closed by enforced silence. I think he will never forgive me for leaving him at the monastery. “I am sorry,” I say to him. “I didn’t know how to keep you safe, I didn’t even know how to feed you. I thank God that you are restored to me now.”
“You kept the others safe enough,” he says shortly, his voice unreliable, sometimes a boyish treble and sometimes cracking and going low. He glances at Geoffrey at my side, who tightens his grip on my hand when he hears the hostility in his brother’s voice. “They didn’t have to live like silent hermits, alone among strangers.”
“Come now!” Henry surprisingly interrupts his brother. “We are together again now! Our Lady Mother has won back our fortune and our title. She has rescued us from a lifetime of hardship. What’s done is done.”
Ursula comes close to me, as if to defend me from Reginald’s resentment, and I hold her to my side. “You’re right,” I say to Henry. “And you’re right to command your brother. You are the man of the family, you will be Lord Montague.”
He flushes with pleasure. “I am to have the title? They give me your title too? I am to carry your family name?”
“Not yet,” I say. “But you will have it. I shall call you Son Montague from now on.”
“Are we all to call him Montague and not Henry?” Geoffrey pipes up. “And do I have a new name too?”
“Surely you’ll be an earl at the very least,” Reginald remarks unpleasantly. “If they don’t find a princess for you to marry.”
“And will we live here now?” Ursula asks, looking round the great hall with the high painted beams and the old-fashioned fireplace in the center of the room. She has learned a taste for good things and the life of the court.
“This will be our London house but we’ll stay at court,” I tell her. “You and I in the queen’s chambers, your brother Geoffrey as the queen’s page. Your brothers will continue to serve the king.”
Montague beams, Arthur clenches a fist. “Just what I was hoping for!”
Reginald’s face lights up. “And me? Am I to come to court too?”
“You’re lucky,” I tell him. “Reginald is to go to the university!” I announce to the others, as his smile dies.
“The king himself has offered to pay your fees,” I tell him. “You are fortunate in his favor. He is a great scholar himself, he admires the new learning. It is a great privilege. I have told him you were studying with the Carthusian brothers, and so he is giving you a place at Magdalen College, Oxford. This is a great favor.”
He looks down at his feet, his dark eyelashes shielding his eyes, and I think he may be struggling not to cry. “So I have to live away from home again,” he observes, his voice very small. “While you are all at court. All of you together.”
“My son, it is a great privilege,” I say, a little impatiently. “If you have the king’s favor and rise through the Church, who knows where you might end?”
He looks as if he might argue, but his brother interrupts him. “Cardinal!” Montague exclaims, ruffling his hair. “Pope!”
Reginald cannot even find a smile for his brother. “And now you are laughing at me?”
“No! I mean it!” Montague replies. “Why not?”
“Why not?” I agree. “Everything is restored to us, everything is possible.”
“And what do we have?” Arthur asks. “Exactly? Because if I am to serve the king I shall need to buy a horse, and a saddle and armor.”
“Yes, what has he given us?” Montague asks. “God bless him for putting everything to right. What have we got?”
“Only what was our own, returned to us,” I say proudly. “I petitioned the king for what was rightfully mine, the title and the lands that were taken from me when my brother was wrongfully executed. He agreed that my brother was no traitor, so he is restoring our fortune. It’s justice, not charity.”
The boys wait, like children waiting for New Year’s gifts. All their lives they have known of the shadowy existence of an uncle whose name must not be mentioned, of a past so glorious that we had to conceal it, of wealth so great that we could not bear to discuss what had been lost. Now it is as if their mother’s dream is proven real.
I take a breath. “I have the earldom back,” I say. “My family name, my title is restored to me. I shall be Countess of Salisbury.”
Montague and Arthur, who understand the scale of this privilege, look astounded. “He gives you, a woman, an earldom?” Montague asks.
I nod. I know that I am beaming, I cannot hide my joy. “In my own right. And the lands. All my brother’s lands are returned to us.”
“We’re rich?” Reginald suggests.
I nod. “We are. We’re one of the richest families in the whole kingdom.”
Ursula gives a little gasp and clasps her hands together.
“This is ours?” Arthur confirms, looking round. “This house?”
“It was my mother’s house,” I say proudly. “I shall sleep in her great chamber, where she lay with her husband, the king’s brother. It’s as big a palace as any in London. I can just remember it, when I was a little girl. I can remember living here. Now it is mine again, and you shall call it home.”
“And what country houses?” Arthur asks eagerly.
I see the avidity in his face, and I recognize my own greed and excitement. “I’m going to build,” I promise him. “I’m going to build a great house of brick, a castle fitted out as richly as any palace, at Warblington in Hampshire. It’ll be our biggest house. And we’ll have Bisham, my family house, in Berkshire, and this house in London, and a manor at Clavering in Essex.”
“And home?” Reginald asks. “Stourton?”
I laugh. “It’s nothing compared with these,” I say dismissively. “A little place. One of our many other houses. We have dozens of houses like Stourton.” I turn to Montague. “I shall arrange a great marriage for you, and you shall have a house and lands of your own.”
“I’ll marry,” he promises. “Now that I have a name I can offer.”
“You’ll have a title to offer your bride,” I promise him. “Now I can look around and find someone suitable. You have something to bring to a marriage. The king himself calls me ‘cousin.’ Now we can look for an heiress whose fortune will match yours.”
He looks as if he might have a suggestion, but he smiles and keeps it to himself for the moment.