The Golden Widows Read online

  THE GOLDEN WIDOWS

  Isolde Martyn

  www.harlequinbooks.com.au

  For my dear friend and great reader, Margaret Phillips, for Babs Creamer, who inspired me to become interested in the Bonvilles, and in memory of Eileen Larbalestier, who was such fun and is sadly missed.

  Sweet widow, by my state I swear to thee

  I speak no more than what my soul intends;

  And that is to enjoy thee for my love.

  – William Shakespeare, Henry VI Part III

  CONTENTS

  Map of the route

  History note

  List of historical characters

  The other side

  Kate: 4th January 1461

  Elysabeth: 12th February 1461

  Elysabeth: 19th February 1461

  Kate: 25th February 1461

  Kate: 8th March 1461

  Elysabeth: 1st April 1461

  Elysabeth: 24th April 1461

  Elysabeth: 24th April 1461

  Elysabeth: 29 April 1461

  Kate: 10th May 1461

  Elysabeth: 3rd July 1461

  Kate: 28th October 1461

  Kate: 23rd December 1461

  Kate: 7th January 1462

  Elysabeth: 12th January 1462

  Kate: 12th January 1462

  Kate: 15th January 1462

  Elysabeth: 29th April 1464

  Kate: 29th April 1464

  Elysabeth: 29th April 1464

  Kate: 30th April 1464

  Elysabeth: 1st May 1464

  Kate and Elysabeth: 28th September 1464

  Postscript and Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Kate and Elysabeth’s England in 1461

  History note

  It is estimated that between 1450 and 1500, during the struggle for the crown between the Houses of York and Lancaster, sixty-two of England’s lords and their heirs were slain. Of the forty-four noble ladies who were left as widows, twenty-one remarried.

  This is the story of two of those women, Kate and Elysabeth, whose husbands fought on opposing sides. Kate was the sister of the earl known in history as ‘Warwick the Kingmaker’ and Elysabeth became very famous in her own right.

  As the story begins, Kate’s young husband is away in Yorkshire in the army of the rebel Duke of York, and Elysabeth’s husband is a captain in the army of Queen Margaret d’Anjou, the leader of the House of Lancaster.

  In London, Kate’s brother, the Earl of Warwick (York’s nephew), is holding King Henry VI a prisoner at the Tower of London.

  To help readers, there are family trees of Kate and Elysabeth’s connections, a list of characters and a map of the places they knew in 1461.

  List of historical characters

  All the nobility and merchants appearing in this story are historical people. Elysabeth’s attendant, Tamsin, is fictional. The servants at Shute are also fictional but their names are based on the surnames appearing in a list of the Bonville tenants who lived there when Cecily Bonville was Lady of the Manor.

  SUPPORTERS OF THE HOUSE OF YORK THE BONVILLES

  THE HOUSE OF YORK

  THE NEVILLES

  The other side

  SUPPORTERS OF THE HOUSE OF LANCASTER THE GREYS

  THE WOODVILLES

  THE HOUSE OF LANCASTER

  OTHERS

  Kate

  4th January 1461

  The Manor of Shute, Devonshire

  Sitting in a splash of winter sunshine on the wall that separated the churchyard from the manor’s deer park, Kate Neville tugged off her gloves and took out the letter she had received two days ago from her eighteen-year-old husband, William Bonville, Lord Harrington, and read it for the umpteenth time. This letter of Will’s, a long time in coming, had a teasing gallantry that he had never shown her face-to-face.

  Written at Sandal Castle, Wakefield, upon the Feast of St Thomas

  My entirely beloved lady,

  I pray God daily for his blessing that you and our child continue in good health. Here is all in readiness to resist the queen’s army. I do not doubt that we shall put them to flight else it were great pity.

  My father is in good heart. The ague he has had a week since is now shent, and this day I was in my lord your father’s company too and spoke right merrily with him and your uncle, my lord of York.

  I beg you remember to feed my birds and I would take it a great

  kindness if you were to give Cecily kisses each day from her loving father.

  And, madame, while I shall not be there on the Feast of St Val entine to have you remember your wifely duties, so do I remind you to think upon your lonely husband as I shall think of you in your bed. For you are as ever mine own especial Valentine and true mistress.

  Your ever loving husband,

  William Bonville

  A pleasing letter for any young bride, so why did she feel a shivery unease, as though the Devil was opening the door to let in a whole heap of trouble? Guiltily, she read the last sentence of the letter again, wishing she might blush at ‘wifely duties’ and feel the true heat of love such as the Lady Guinivere had borne for Sir Lancelot, a worldly, muscular knight well past pimples. Of course, better to have a young husband rather than some smelly-breathed dotard, she chided herself. Eventually Will would attain the broad shoulders of manhood and not need to crushed madder leaves to cleanse his cheeks.

  After being sent to live with his family at the time of her marriage contract when she turned thirteen, she and Will had been friends not sweethearts. The compulsion of intimacy with him once she had begun her monthly flux had estranged them rather than drawing her closer. The wedding night had been so awkward.

  Anyway, she thought, tucking the letter back into her sleeve, noble ladies were not supposed to fall in love. Marriage was about family alliances and childbearing. That was the catechism that had been drummed into her and her sisters, and at least being a Neville and of fertile stock, she had given Will a healthy babe within a year of their marriage. A daughter. Not the son he and the Bonvilles wanted (and that was probably her fault for not taking as much pleasure in their awkward coupling as he did). But she was carrying again. A secret that only her bodyservant, Eleanor, was privy to. It would be her gift to Will on his return home, a son that would bring them so much happiness together.

  For a moment she sat very still, straining to hear if her tiny daughter might be awake in the nursery but the upper storey of Shute Hall was serene. Smoke rose placidly from the chimneys into the cold blue sky. So much was left to the women at the moment with many of servants and villagers gone to the Duke of York’s army. Save for the rattle of a pail being emptied and the comforting conversation of the fowl yard, all was quiet – too quiet. Kate missed the Bonville men, not just Will’s company but his father and blustery grandfather. These last weeks there had been no noisy homecomings, shaking of cloaks, scraping of boots, the horses led away, and the dogs muddy and happy seeking the hearth. No swift growl of lost temper between fathers and sons, no male banter, no stories of the hart or fish that got away, no fumings against their rivals, the Courtenays, or complaining about mad King Henry being unfit to rule.

  A lone, ragged, offending cloud slid across the sun, and chilled now, Kate wriggled off the wall. Yes, she would walk a little before she went inside; the sunlight would come again. A pity Eleanor could not keep her company but the girl was poorly with a cough and streaming nose.

  If Will had been here instead of with her uncle York, they might have taken the horses out. To be honest, that was what she missed most, the freedom that Will’s companionship had given her and escapades they had shared before she became great with child.

  Getting soaked to the skin – and scared – in a thunderstorm afte
r Axminster Fair; sliding down Steep Meadow on a sledge last winter; and lighting the great beacon to greet the New Year. Will had enjoyed teaching her how to fish for chubb near Whit Ford and given her a falcon of her own to take hawking when they rode out with his father, but best of all he liked to race their horses up the Roman road that cut across the east side of Stockton Hill to the wild, arcane wood that crowned it. Stockton Wood.

  And suddenly, staring up at the trees, winter-bare and stark upon the hillside, Kate felt again the Devil’s whisper of foreboding. Stockton Wood made her afraid of the deep recesses of her soul, afraid that there was a reckoning to be paid.

  That first leaf fall after their wedding, Will had spurred his horse through the great rutted puddles left by the woodsmen’s carts. She had been riding close behind, but the laughter had left her when he led her on foot deeper into the ancient grove of oaks that tonsured the hill. Everywhere, ivy snaked forth across the fallen logs, clawing upwards, tormenting the barks of the wizened trees. Less obvious, a few venomous greenish-white toadstools, death caps, pierced through the rotting leaves, and the phallus of a single stinkhorn breathed its corrupt miasma out into the shadowy air.

  ‘This oak grove is haunted by the wraiths of pagan victims,’ Will had whispered. ‘Young virgins sacrificed on a stone altar to the sun god.’

  ‘Then we are trespassing,’ she had whispered, pulling free. Their presence seemed a sacrilege. ‘Let’s go back to the horses.’

  He laughed, seeing he had upset her. ‘Pah, you are such an innocent, Kate Neville.’ His hands reached out to tether her but she guessed his intent and fled.

  Whooping, he chased her around the oaks and then he deftly hooked his foot around her ankle, tripping her. She remembered screaming as she fell face down into the mess of ivy. Then he had turned her over, the merriment slipping from his face and she had recognised the silent intensity that always heralded his ardour.

  ‘I don’t want to,’ she said. ‘Not here.’

  ‘Hush, it’s your duty to obey me.’

  Stifling her protests with kisses, he had fumbled beneath her petticotes, tossed her kirtle back and tumbled her as though she were some common shepherdess. Useless to be angry. Will was quite capable of sulking whenever she said no. Being ‘bloggy’, his father called it.

  ‘The Druids made love to the virgins before they sacrificed them,’ he lied with male authority afterwards, as he stood above her retying the points to his gypon. ‘It would have been a waste otherwise.’

  ‘But then they would not have been pure to sacrifice,’ she argued, hiding her resentment and tugging her skirts back over her garters and stockings. She pitied the pagan maidens; their ravishment an extra cruelty before slaughter.

  He straightened the flap of his hose. ‘You are too clever, you Nevilles,’ he muttered. ‘Anyway, say your prayers, madame wife, that we have made a boy of this moment’s work.’ But there had been an uneasiness in his eyes, perhaps a fear that he could have provoked the primeval spirits of the grove – a desecration that might require punishment. But then his mood lifted, like a tossed caravel, swinging round to confidence again.

  ‘It looks to rain. I’d better get you home.’ He helped her scramble to her feet and then as he plucked away the leaves snared in her boisterous hair, the shadows about them seemed to shrink back, the gnarled trees became less ominous. With his arm about her waist, he had hastened her back to where the horses were contentedly cropping the moss. Maybe it was his new doublet that concerned him, whether the dye of the lining could run and ruin his shirt, or else he was afeared and too much the swaggerer to admit it. Yet they quit the wood with a new spirit planted inside her. It had been there that Cecily had been conceived and although the baby had been born free of any deformities, still Kate feared there was some curse attached to that coupling and that the skein of destiny for Will was tampered with that day. That fear still lay heavy behind her heart although it was fifteen months since the begetting.

  ‘Did you enjoy your walk, my lady?’ The wet nurse, Joan Celer, a year older than Kate, sprang to attention from the stool beside Cecily’s cradle in the nursery.

  Acknowledging the servant’s curtsey, Kate picked up a wooden rattle and leaned over her little daughter, delighting in the way the infant’s eyes followed the toy. Cecily still had the silvery eyes of a young babe and it was hard to know if they would turn grey like Will’s or a Neville blue like hers.

  ‘Fresh swaddling?’ she asked, poking an inquisitive finger beneath the cradle blanket.

  ‘Yes, all done, my lady.’ Joan curtsied again and Kate nodded gratefully, knowing how hard it must be for her – the Celers’ babe had been stillborn. Apart from discussing tiny Cecily’s needs, the conversation between them was ever awkward. Only a fool would miss the clench of the girl’s jaw now as she stooped to poke the fire into a cheerful mien.

  Kate picked up the rabbit toy she had been making and set it down again. How was she going to fill the hours? It seemed a petty dilemma when the Bonville men were likely to face the queen’s army any day now. Reread a French romance from Grandfather Bonville’s library when Englishmen were riding out to slaughter each other? Music was sometimes her refuge but her lute was unplayable, waiting for new strings.

  She sighed. Her own manor house would keep her busy but no chance of that. Not yet. Although Will’s mother was dead, Grandmother Bonville, the beloved second wife of Will’s exuberant grandsire, had been ‘Queen of Shute’ for over thirty years and showed no signs of relinquishing her orb and sceptre to an eighteen year old. With ancient Lord Bonville either at court or making mischief harrassing the neighbouring Courtenays, charity to the sick, rent-collecting, manorial courts, the upkeep and provisioning of the Bonvilles’ many manor houses were all Grandmother Bonville’s domain.

  At times infuriating, manipulative and stubborn, the old lady (she must be over fifty) had been a formidable challenge for a young bride like Kate, but on the whole they trotted well together. Mind, Grandmother Bonville’s grey eyes could pinion a miscreant as well as any schoolmaster’s. Kate knew she was in for a scolding if ‘Katherine Neville!’ was rapped across the chamber.

  No babe had ever set within Grandmother Bonville and she was so thin-waisted, one might fear for her safety if she walked the edge of the cliffs at Seyton on a gusty day. Kate, whose body had not lost its thickening since Cecily’s birth, felt like a tubby little packhorse beside her. And thinking of horses…

  ‘Joan, is Lady Bonville back from Nalysworth?’ Kate asked, wondering if the old lady would be game to ride out with her after noon.

  ‘Aye, my lady came in an hour since. She said Mistress Whittle’s leg is still puffed up like some great bladder an’ she’s a-thinkin’ she’ll send word to the physician in Axminster.’

  Mistress Whittle’s husband, one of the free tenants, had gone north with Will and his father, so Lady Bonville felt some duty to help the woman in time of trouble.

  ‘Axminster,’ Kate mused. ‘Perhaps I could do that.’ It had been a statement not a question but Joan shook her head.

  ‘You’d not be back afore dusk, my lady, an’ the mist can come down summat awful. Why only last week Dick Geye’s granfer got himself lost in the fog an’ ended up t’other side of Wyke.’

  ‘That old man would get himself lost between the alehouse and his horse,’ Kate muttered. Of course, Joan was right, although it was hardly her place to advise her betters. ‘Pray go down and—’

  She hesitated as the barking of the dogs and bellow of horn at the front gate spurred her hopes down a different path. Visitors? That would be a welcome distraction. Or could it be Will come home at last? It had been over a week since he had penned the letter. Maybe there had been a peace-making between my lord of York and the queen’s grace, God willing!

  She was tempted to rush down the stairs and jump the last twist but married women, even eighteen-year-old ones, were supposed to behave with maturity. You are always in too much haste, her mother, the Countes
s of Salisbury, had warned her before her marriage. Servants expect a lady to be calm; it engenders a peaceful household. So Kate waited, tapping her foot impatiently.

  ‘It be Peter Haccom, I reckon, wi’ spices,’ Joan said, smoothing her waistcloth.

  Oh, of course, how disappointing. But if it was Haccom, the warty-nosed carter who served the villages and hamlets between Exeter and Axminster, he might have brought her lute strings. Usually if he picked up an extra bargain in spices or some other commodity, he would come to Shute, certain of a sale.

  It was him. She could smell cinnamon sticks as she entered the kitchen. A row of spice bags cluttered the end of the kitchen board and a small sack, its stitches ripped open to show the quality of the woody galingale within, leaned tipsily against an earthenware pot of quince paste. But something was wrong. It was like entering a chamber where people who were gossiping suddenly went quiet. Grandmother Bonville, two of their tiring women, the steward, the master cook and three of the young kitchen hands were just standing open-mouthed, staring at lanky old Haccom.

  The fellow’s expression, though respectful, was almost a smirk. His bony fingers played with the padded brim of his hat. He seemed to be waiting, but it wasn’t for payment.

  Kate ranged herself by Grandmother Bonville who, with a little shake of her head as though collecting herself, announced huskily, ‘Master Haccom has just given us some tidings, Katherine. Pray, repeat yourself to Lady Harrington, sirrah.’

  The carter gave Kate a half-bow and the self-gratified smile of someone suddenly important. ‘The news in Exeter, my lady, is that the Duke of York is dead, slain on his own doorstep, so to speak. I heard it from one of the sergeants-at-law and he heard it from our mayor.’

  But Will’s letter, Kate’s mind protested illogically, had only arrived a few days ago.