Fortune's Wheel Page 5

  Hastings laughed. ‘It would be easier to stop a bolting horse. Go to your mother, the Duchess of York, and see what she can do, though I believe even she is powerless now.’

  In spite of this advice, Richard felt that it was his duty to speak to Clarence, to try to reason with him, to prevent him exceeding altogether the bounds of family feeling. The brothers met briefly at Coventry, where George was keeping almost royal state in one of the best houses in the town. Richard knew that he was wasting his time from the moment they met.

  ‘If you’ve come to tell me to lick the boots of brother Ned — royal Ned — you can save yourself the trouble and get out!’ George said. He had adopted the tone of voice he used for menials who had got on the wrong side of him.

  ‘I don’t want you to lick anyone’s boots. What do you want out of all this, George? Do you think you’ll be better off after holding the King to ransom? You’ve lived like a prince, the King’s heir, ever since you were ten years old. What cause have you got for ingratitude?’ Richard adroitly circled round to the other side of the table, putting it between himself and his brother. Where he was concerned George had always been easily roused to violence.

  Clarence leaned forward, picked up the nearest object, a heavy book, hurled it at Richard’s head and missed. A hundred pounds’ worth of fine book crashed on the floor. Richard had ducked instinctively.

  ‘You little creeping louse!’ George yelled. ‘Worming your way in here to preach at me! Get out before I have you thrown out!’ He was beside himself with temper, looking round for some other missile which might do Richard an injury. ‘If you want to know what I’ll get out of it,’ he shouted wildly, ‘then I may as well tell you — I’ll get a kingdom! Edward has abused his power, he has no right to rule — I’ll call him a bastard to his face if I see him. Do you think I’ve enjoyed seeing the crown on his head all these years? Rolling about with his whores — every time he picks a new one, he pays off that bitch of a wife with more money and favours — a titbit for a brother, a husband for a sister. I won’t stand it any longer — why, I know I’d make a better job of ruling than he has!’

  This final statement was delivered in a shriek, and it shocked Richard into instant action. In an uncontrolled fury, like those of his childhood, he hurled himself on his brother. George was still bigger and stronger than he — unarmed, he never could compete with him. They scuffled undignifiedly, and George kicked his shins; in the end he bore Richard down by launching his superior size and weight on top of him. When George drew his knife Richard, pinned down and struggling, watched the thin steel blade waver in front of his eyes, and was very frightened. He thought for a moment that his brother meant to blind him, or to cut his face to shreds. He shut his eyes and lay very still. The next thing he knew was that George had jumped up and given him an almighty kick in the ribs, which nearly winded him. When he had managed to scramble to his feet, gasping like a stranded fish, George was savagely attacking the arras, jabbing and ripping with his knife in a childish display of rage and frustration. Richard fled.

  The discovery of what really lay in George’s mind, revealed in wild indiscretion, left Richard far more troubled than his brother’s violent hostility towards himself. He doubted if the King had estimated one tithe of George’s discontent and ambitions, or how dangerous they were, or how soon that danger might become an open threat.

  *

  At Warwick Castle that August, Anne Neville was paralysed with alarm every time the new resident in her father’s household appeared. She realized quickly that King Edward was a prisoner, though he was treated as a guest. He was allowed to walk in the castle gardens which were, of course, walled, and the doors discreetly guarded. Here she unwittingly discovered him one afternoon. Her dog rushed ahead of her into the garden and disappeared round a corner, where a furious barking made her think at first that he had found a cat asleep in the sun. But when she came round the corner herself, she saw with horror that the target was not a cat. It was King Edward. He was sitting on a garden bench — or he had been sitting. Now he had his immensely long legs propped up on it out of the way of Ben. He was snapping his fingers and making mock growling noises at the little dog, sending him into a leaping frenzy of barking.

  Anne’s voice came out in a squawk as she called, ‘Ben!!’ The dog slunk back, still yapping and growling, and she grabbed his collar, descending in an undignified heap to the ground as she did so. King Edward stood up. This made things infinitely worse, because he was so enormous. He cast a shadow that quite enveloped her. But he was grinning as if he almost enjoyed being caught making silly noises at a little dog by Warwick’s daughter.

  ‘Lady Anne,’ he said amiably, ‘your father may hold my head in his hands, but I’d be happier if your Ben left me my ankles.’

  ‘Oh, but… Oh, your Grace, I beg your pardon… If I’d known you were here. I… Of course, I wouldn’t have let him out. He doesn’t like strangers. Oh dear, he didn’t…?’

  ‘No, he didn’t.’

  In spite of her relief that the King was unpunctured by Ben’s teeth, Anne trembled so much she could not immediately get up from the ground. King Edward, seeing that his mere presence was causing her distress, regretted his barbed remark about her father. This one was an innocent, he could see.

  ‘Well,’ he said, ‘if Ben hadn’t gone for me, I wouldn’t have had the pleasure of meeting you. I don’t believe I’ve spoken more than half a dozen words to you before. Come and sit beside me and introduce me to Ben.’

  From the way she sat gingerly on the edge of the bench leaving a good foot between himself and her skirts, it was obvious that she had been well instructed in his reputation as a seducer. She could not know that he did not have any interest in seducing innocents. She kept glancing nervously around, as if to be found talking to him would land her in trouble; this was probably so. They’d know in any case; in this castle, walls had eyes.

  King Edward was as friendly with dogs as he was with people, and he never worried about paws on his hose. As Anne watched him scratch the little dog’s ears and charm the growls into ecstatic pants and grins, she thought that for one who was a prisoner and in danger of losing his crown, and had already lost two of his closest friends, the King showed remarkable resilience. He was so big and looked so healthy, it seemed strange to see him cooped up at Warwick, unable to ride out hunting. His good looks and, above all, his bulk, intimidated her. He had a skin a girl might envy, fair and clear, and very little lined. Where his beard began he was fair, and his big chin did not show stubble, but the rest of his thick head of hair was light chestnut brown, the colour of some horses.

  The conversation was going to be hard going, but he did not seem to mind. ‘You were born here at Warwick, weren’t you?’ he said.

  ‘Yes, your Grace.’ She was astonished that he should know, or remember.

  ‘Where do you like best to be, of all your father’s castles?’ He restrained himself from adding: And God knows there are enough of them. She looked up at him, then lowered her eyelids, as if merely to look was to invite advances.

  ‘Middleham.’

  King Edward turned his eyes directly upon her, interested. They were dark grey, with golden flecks swimming about in the colour, and his eyelashes were thick and golden, too. He looked like an amiable lion. She was wary of him, as one might be of a large uncertain animal.

  ‘What is there special about this place Middleham?’ he asked. ‘My brother Richard has always sung its praises since I sent him there. I thought it would either make a man of him or kill him. I’m not over fond of the north.’ He watched the deliberately remote, pale little face turn a vivid red.

  ‘Yes,’ was all she said.

  Edward wondered if there was any connection between Anne’s blush and Richard’s unwillingness to say anything at all about Warwick’s daughters. Not that there was any point in giving the subject any thought, but he knew that Warwick had wanted Richard for this girl. Damn Warwick and his schemes for marrying
his daughters. He now had Clarence dancing to his tune like a street bear. That George was willing to be led into a position of open warfare against his own brother was more wounding than anything Warwick had done. Richard suffered in all this, too; Heaven knew what was in store for him, if the boy managed to live past seventeen. He had always felt fatherly in his responsibility for his youngest brother. He thought of what could so easily have happened at Olney — Richard dead before he was ever fully grown, like their brother Edmund, who had been murdered at Wakefield bridge ten years ago.

  Anne saw the King’s face change with his thoughts and become harsher and older, as his habitual buoyancy of spirits deserted him. She was afraid, in case she had offended him, perhaps with the inadvertent suggestion that she and Richard had once been friends. She did not want him to think that Richard had been secretly planning the same sort of things as Clarence.

  The King, realizing his change of mood might kill this stilted conversation, said, ‘Prisoners sometimes make poor company, Lady Anne; you take Ben for his walk. You’ll see me again. I don’t know how long I shall be your father’s guest, but I can see it will be for a while yet.’

  Because she was schooled in good manners, she did not jump up from the seat at once, though her relief was plain. She hovered a moment or two, then took her leave. He watched her go. She was a curious little thing — no shape at all, as straight up and down as two sticks, but the shy gaucheness apart, her movements were quite pleasing, light as a butterfly. Too like a cabbage white for his taste, but then he had no fancy for girls of thirteen. The well developed in tit and bum were easy on the eye young, but he preferred his women over twenty, or even over thirty, and the more experienced the better. It was depressing that while he was in Warwick’s custody, it was certain that he was not going to get any women at all. The devilish old hawk eye knew him well enough to take satisfaction in depriving him of female company. Warwick had assured him that the Queen would not be harmed in any way. The most she would suffer was a blockage in the money supply, which would no doubt increase her hatred of Warwick to a degree frightening to contemplate. He preferred to restrict his contemplation of his wife to her bodily charms. Last time he had seen her, she had been recovering from childbirth and not available. From the first moment he had met her, she had been perfecting the art of playing him on a line, like a salmon. He got home frequently enough, but by Heaven she was clever at holding him off. He usually thought of Elizabeth with increased desire when she was absent.

  He suddenly felt more like a prisoner than ever, and desperately wanted to escape the confines of Warwick Castle. Even to see over the garden wall seemed an urgent necessity, though all that lay beyond was the higher, curtain wall. Yet he wanted to climb it, which was nothing but a foolish, schoolboy idea. He was the King. Also, he was rather big and heavy for nimble climbing. Richard could go up a wall or a tree like a little ape. Poor Dick, he thought, what will become of you; may God and Our Lady in Heaven protect you, wherever you are.

  During the week in which he was at Warwick, two pieces of news arrived which increased the King’s anger against his captors. Lord Rivers, the Queen’s father and Constable of England, the King’s chief military officer, together with his son John, were beheaded at Coventry on Warwick’s orders. The Earl had his revenge upon the begetter of all the tribe.

  As if this were not enough to injure and insult the King, the Queen’s mother was arrested — upon prejudiced evidence — and accused of witchcraft. Anne’s mother, white, trembling and gullible, whispered that a Thing had been brought to Warwick, and lay within the very walls of the castle.

  ‘The wicked, evil old woman,’ the Countess whispered. ‘A man-at-arms, made of lead in the image of my husband, a horrible little puppet, broken in the middle and bound up with wire. She has been seeking the death of my husband! And people have seen others — a little man and a woman tied fast together with a lock of hair — the King’s hair,’ she said meaningly. ‘These wicked people invoke the Devil,’ she crossed herself, ‘to bring about marriages, using these — Things.’

  She meant, of course, the King’s marriage. She had forgotten, however, that the Duchess of Bedford had a will to get her own way — and her family’s aggrandisement — quite as strong as the powers of witchcraft, and that her daughter had enough attractions and the King enough weaknesses to need no images to bring about what the Duchess desired.

  Her mother’s words frightened Anne, in case her father should suddenly fall ill, or waste away, and she was glad when they left Warwick to go north to Middleham, taking the King with them. There, in the Earl’s home stronghold, where rescue was impossible, King Edward was allowed more freedom, to go hunting and hawking as if he were not a prisoner, but a guest. From the high walls of the round tower, Anne watched him ride out, in the company of her father and her uncle John, talking to them as if the deaths of his best friends and his father and brother-in-law did not lie between them. She decided that the King was a clever dissembler, of an amazingly equable temper; and that he was playing a waiting game.

  There could be no better place in which to wait. Harvest was beginning. Beyond the heavily shaded pasture of Sunscough Park, where brood mares and foals browsed belly deep in grass, towards the river Cover, lay open fields, whose pattern had begun to change from a smooth sea of gold to trampled stubble and ranks of stooked corn. Earl and Marquess appeared intent upon their sport, but they held a captive lion gambolling at their side.

  Warwick had summoned a Parliament to meet at York in the third week of September, for the purpose of forcing ratification of his actions upon it. Did he intend to proclaim Clarence as King? This would make Isabel Queen. Anne could not imagine her sister as Queen; would she be any better than Elizabeth Woodville? This was an unkind thought for a sister to have. How, Anne wondered, could her father bring all this about without bloodshed, when it had taken so much to bring King Edward to his throne? How much more would be spilt in making King George?

  *

  By the end of August, the meeting of Parliament had been postponed. Richard, who had received his summons with everyone else, received the writ of supersedeas cancelling it, with relief. That Warwick could think of no better excuse than the untruth that England was threatened with invasion by France and Scotland, was evidence of his own weakness. Since his brother’s capture, Richard had busied himself with sending out spies and canvassing support, and keeping company with Lord Hastings in the Midlands. The results had been encouraging. It was obvious that Warwick has flown too high, and that he would have to restore the King to power, or face an outbreak of savage war. Riots were occurring all over the country and on the London streets, a sure sign that the imprisonment of the King would not be tolerated for much longer.

  At York, Warwick himself met his brother the Archbishop, who had ridden north, with the grim facts of their quandary.

  ‘We have trouble, George, as if there were not enough elsewhere, from a different quarter. As you know, not all our Neville relatives here in the north have been our friends. That old villain Humphrey Neville of Brancepeth is busy up there on the Border, where they live thirty years behind the times, with raising the ghost of Henry of Lancaster. It’s only a matter of time before he has the Scots joining him and descending upon us. I’ve sent out commissions of array, but there’s been delay, or downright disregard of them. If I stay here and go against our cousin Humphrey, I shall find myself taking on Scotland on my own.’ He drummed his fingers on the table, irritable in his admission of failure. ‘The truth is, I cannot hold the kingdom on my own.’

  ‘Richard,’ said the Archbishop, all practicality and sweet reason. ‘You need a king — a king whose armies you may be seen to lead as you used to do. Let him out of Middleham and bring him here, where everyone can see him at his own business again. We have pressed ahead too far, too soon, though it galls me to admit it.’

  ‘It galls me, too,’ said his brother grimly. ‘But you’re right. The alternative is bloodshed. I do
n’t want that now, it’s to no one’s advantage. Better to bend the knee to our King again — quietly, civilly, as if we intended nothing else. He had no choice but to make peace. King Edward IV shall be restored — for the time being!’

  *

  The west coast of Wales in winter was as indecipherable as its customs and language. A curtain of mist and drizzle cut off Cardigan town from all the rest of the world, hid the river and drove the people off the quays. The bridge led nowhere. Richard felt equally cut off from events in England, by a hundred miles of impassable mountains. King Edward could be deposed and dead a fortnight before ever he heard of it. This was the worst that might happen; at best there would be tiresome outbreaks of violence. Richard had left London in October on his first independent commission, loaded with new offices at the expense of Warwick, who could not expect to go unpenalized for his misdeeds. This had put the perennial problem of order and government in wild Wales into Richard’s hands. In addition, he had been given the highest military office in the realm, the Constableship, which he was now incapable of exercising effectively because of his isolation in Wales. It could only be a matter of time before he was recalled to England. Warwick was not the man even to make a pretence of eating humble pie for long, and Clarence was still drunk upon dreams of a crown.

  Christmas passed, without any breaking of the uneasy stalemate between King and Earl. Indeed, King Edward had far exceeded what might have been expected in the way of peacemaking. He had been generous to Northumberland, the least culpable of the Neville brothers; John Neville’s son had been given a dukedom and promised the King’s eldest daughter in marriage. Richard shrugged to himself when he heard of the dispensing of this bait; it would make little difference. By February he had received enough warnings to alert him into readiness to leave Wales at an hour’s notice, should the King have need of him.

  The news, when it came, was nastier even than Richard had feared. On the 17th March, St Patrick’s Day, a King’s messenger rode a horse to death in reaching the Duke. The King’s summons were urgent; Richard gave orders to be ready to travel before he had finished reading the letter. Out of some feuding in Lincolnshire, between the Welles and Dymoke families, a rebellion had arisen against the King himself. A skirmish had been fought at Empingham near Stamford, and the rebels had broken ranks as soon as faced by the King’s force and run away. In their flight, they had cast off their livery jackets, hoping to escape unrecognized. Many of them, including their leader, had been wearing the livery of the Duke of Clarence. A man known to be Clarence’s servant was found dead, carrying enough written evidence on him to make things unpleasantly clear to the King. His brother was determined upon an attempt to seize his crown, urged on and abetted in his treason by Warwick.