The Golden Widows Read online

  Wincing inside at the wicked, heartless remark, Elysabeth clapped a hand to her forehead. Was there no way she could thwart this woman? ‘I’m sorry,’ she said, falling back on politeness. ‘That was ungracious of me. You must see I am fighting for my sons with every weapon left to me.’

  Nothing softened in Lady Ferrers’ eyes. ‘Then ask your family for help. Your mother is a duchess, after all.’ Oh yes? Aunt by marriage to a lunatic king, who was in hiding somewhere up in Northumberland and more likely to gain a heavenly crown than regain his earthly one.

  ‘Madame, you know very well that my family does not stand well with the new king. My father and brother have yet to be pardoned for fighting for Queen Margaret.’

  ‘A wonder then that they stand at all.’ Lady Ferrers crossed herself mockingly. ‘And God forbid that they should be attainted, too.’ She set her handiwork aside and stood up, like a queen weary of some tedious entertainment, and swept over to the door, where she paused and turned. ‘Sue me for your dower in Chancery if you feel yourself unfairly treated by us. But be of good cheer, Elysabeth. With your fair looks, I’m sure you’ll not go hungry. There’ll be some old knight who’ll take you penniless so he can paw you before his younger friends.’ Elysabeth’s shock had been guaranteed. ‘And if you feel accepting charity from this family does not suit you any longer, I think you’d be happier if you return to yours.’

  *

  ‘Why are we not eating in the hall, Mama?’ Dickon asked Elysabeth as Tamsin served their evening repast in the boys’ bedchamber.

  Tom bit into a capon leg. ‘Because Mother is not on speaking terms with Grandmother Ferrers. The old skinflint won’t give us any money.’

  ‘Tom! Mind your manners and your language!’

  ‘Why won’t she?’ persisted Dickon.

  Tom charged in again. ‘Because, Knucklehead, Grandmother wants a new husband and no one will marry her unless she is rich.’ Before Elysabeth could reprimand him further, he added, looking hard at her, ‘And she must be keeping her money all to herself because I heard Uncle Grey say to her that he was going to ask for Warwick’s good lordship because it was his only chance of rising in the world.’

  Grey was going to Warwick, cap in hand? Not the new king but Warwick!

  ‘Warwick killed Father,’ Dickon stated mundanely as though he was talking about the weather.

  ‘Yes,’ Elysabeth muttered, ‘he did.’ Both children were watching her face as she exchanged glances with Tamsin. ‘Excuse me,’ she said. ‘I seem to have lost my appetite.’

  She fled. Not to the Norman ruins that had been Tom’s refuge but to John’s tower, up the inner wooden steps, round and round to the upmost floor, where sawdust still flaked the boards and the smell of fresh timber hung in the air. There she fisted the wall and cursed the slate that had arrived from Swithland on her request. If only she had known. Oh stupid, stupid of her. She had not thought to ask.

  ‘John, help me! Help me!’ she cried out in desperation and fell to her knees on the floor. ‘O Sweet Mother of God, you had a son you loved who died to save the world. Please intercede for me. Give me the strength I’ll need.’ But the dim air around her was silent. With bowed head, she wept and afterwards, when all tears were wrung from her, she rose, leaned her head against the wooden frame and stared out across the fields and the woods, lit to gold and burnished green by the beams of the dying day. Somewhere lay the answer, she knew that, sensed it in the depths of her soul. But where? And how?

  ‘O Blessed St Jude, hold my hand and those of my children in the years to come. Help us find our way.’

  ‘Madame,’ she declared at breakfast next morning, pushing away the platter she had shared with the boys, for she had little appetite anymore. ‘I promise we shall leave well before your wedding but I need just a few days more.’

  ‘Indeed? Why?’ Haughty crone! ‘Dickon, stop behaving like a lackwit and bring the ewer for your mother’s hands!’

  Elysabeth dabbled her fingers in the lavender water held unsteadily by her serious little son, then she set the napkin back over his arm and turned him to perform the same duty for his grandmother and his brother. ‘It is so I can pay some of the bills you gave me yesterday, madame. I am riding to Leicester this morning to sell some of my jewellery.’ Her fingers rose to the collar she was wearing. Her precious pendant was in her jewel coffer still unworn.

  Lady Ferrers wiped her hands upon the towel. ‘Are you now? Very well, Elysabeth, but take care you are not fleeced. John must have been out of his wits to give you baubles when he owed so much on the tower but there’s no accounting for people’s whims. Enough, Dickon! You can take it away now, child! Don’t just stand there.’

  ‘It was out of love, madame, as you well know,’ Elysabeth retorted, rising from the table. ‘Indeed, I sincerely wish you joy in your new marriage for I know you never enjoyed it in your last.’

  She gave John’s mother an ambiguous curtsey and received a cold stare that told her that remark would be stashed away for kindling.

  ‘I trust you are taking that nuisance with you this morning,’ Lady Ferrers mutttered, scowling at Dickon’s precarious passage. He perched the basin back on the sideboard and to Elysabeth’s astonishment, turned wearing his grandmother’s arch expression and announcing with exactly her tone: ‘Tom and I are going to Leicester, because Mama says you don’t want us here anymore.’

  Along the table, Tom muffled a giggle.

  ‘Thomas!’ Elysabeth growled reprovingly.

  Lady Ferrers recoiled at the unexpected mockery. ‘We could all do without your brother’s vile manners that’s for sure,’ she exclaimed, with a sideways glare at her older grandson. ‘As for you, little Master Grey.’ A scrape of chair, fingers coiled, she swept fiercely down the steps. Elysabeth followed swiftly to intervene. Dickon’s brains were shaken enough already.

  ‘Tom is not vile, madame,’ Dickon asserted, fists on hips like his father. The ‘madame’ sounded just like John on his high horse.

  His grandmother stopped before him. ‘Yes, he is. Thomas Grey is a lazy good-for-nothing with a tongue like a razor.’

  ‘No! He’s! Not!’ To Elysabeth’s horror, Dickon launched himself forward, all kicks and punches. He was still flailing as she dragged him back.

  ‘The little devil bit me,’ exclaimed his grandmother. ‘Look, you can see the damned teeth marks.’ Behind her back, Elysabeth met Tom’s eyes and he was laughing.

  But she wasn’t. Baubles! Dear God, maybe she needed to sell her gillyflower pendant not the lesser jewels. Leicester might not be prosperous enough to boast a goldsmiths’ row since the city’s livelihood came from wool, cloth and leather, but its wealthiest citizen, a merchant of the Staple, Roger Wigston, was an old friend of John’s. Maybe he would buy it from her.

  *

  Leaving Tamsin to buy hot pies for the children at their favourite cookshop (although she could ill afford the cost), Elysabeth made her way down past Newark College to where Roger Wigston’s three-storeyed house lay in the shadow of the castle.

  Christ be thanked, John’s friend was at home.

  ‘Lady Grey,’ he exclaimed, as his steward showed her into his modest hall. ‘I am most happy to see you but I was just on my way out.’

  ‘Please, just a few moments,’ Elysabeth begged. ‘My business is urgent and I am desperate for help.’

  ‘Be brief, then, my lady, and I shall assist you if I may.’

  Perhaps because he was in haste or else moved by her circumstances, he agreed without hesitation to buy her precious pendant and went further, generously offering to lend her funds so she might journey to London to see the trustees as well as settle some of John’s tower costs.

  ‘Are the Greys not bidden to the reception at the Mayor’s Hall this morning to welcome our steward of the city?’ he asked, as he hurriedly counted out the money for her onto his table in his strong room.

  Steward of Leicester! Another newly created office. That could have been John’s if
he had chosen the winning side.

  ‘Reception, Master Wigston?’ No wonder her host was wearing his best livery and looking so well shaven. ‘So that’s why the city is unusually busy for a Tuesday. No, I received no invitation, sir.’ The wife of an attainted traitor would not be on the morning’s list of handshakers.

  As though he realised his tactlessness, Wigston added, ‘Actually, it’s more a guild banquet this morning. I daresay the Leicester nobility will find their own way to Sir William Hastings’ door.’ He turned to a shelf behind him and took a pre-written receipt to be filled in and signed.

  ‘Hastings, did you say, Master Wigston?’ she murmured as she added her signature. ‘I have heard of a Sir Leonard Hastings, a northerner, who served the Duke of York.’

  He passed across the bag of coins. ‘This man is Sir Leonard’s eldest son, knighted at Towton. He’s already the king’s chamberlain and likely a baron, too, before the summer is out. The reception is in his honour. There’ll be plenty of forelocks pulled this morning, but such is the way of the world. Now I fear I must escort you out, Lady Grey, and, as I said earlier, I’m right sorry about John, God keep him. Although I never shared his allegiance, I regret his passing with all my heart.’

  He must have seen the tears glistening in her eyes for he set a comforting hand upon her arm. ‘Any road, come and have supper with us some time soon and if there is aught more I can do for you, do not hesitate to ask.’ But the lift of eyebrows suggested much more than a hospitable smile and a mazer of wine was on offer. Just before the door, he bent and kissed her on the mouth, as was customary between good friends. ‘Aught!’ he reiterated.

  ‘Thank you, Master Wigston, I’m very grateful and John would be, too. You have been more than generous, and I will repay your loan, I promise, as soon as I may.’

  But I shall not lie with you.

  ‘Take care in the streets now, there’ll be cutpurses in plenty today.’

  Stuffing the drawstring bag down her front (even though it make her look as though she had three bosoms) and drawing her light cloak tightly about her, she walked northwards along High Street past the backs of the gathering crowd to the corner of Blue Boar Lane where Tamsin and the children were to meet her. The thoroughfare had been cleared for the procession and she saw them standing behind the crossed halberds of the civic guards.

  ‘How fare you, my lady?’ whispered Tamsin, straightening up from wiping the crumbs from Dickon’s chin.

  ‘Well enough, considering. He gave me a fair price.’ She lifted a finger to her lips but Tom was distracted, talking with one of the soldiers.

  ‘Looks like we’ve no chance of getting back to Bart and the horses at Master Gaddsby’s, ma’am. There is some great lord arriving at the Mayor’s Hall yonder.’

  ‘No matter,’ murmured Elysabeth, curious to set eyes on the shiny new official. ‘Let’s see this wonder. Leicester would welcome a rooster if it crowed loud enough.’

  They waited almost till the next o’clock before the fanfares and procession of guildsmen, accompanied by shawms and tabors, confirmed the Yorkist cockrel had squawked in from the dung heap.

  Mayor Robert Sheringham in his fur-trimmed scarlet mantle and civic chain was easily recognisable. The richly clad stranger riding heel to heel beside him on a fine white stallion must be the royal usurper’s arsewiper (a term she’d better not use in front of the children).

  One of Warwick’s newly blessed, perhaps? Oh, angelic indeed! His hair, battle-short like John’s had been, was passing fair, and his face, impressively handsome and grave, was freshly barbered and devoid of beard or stubble. Plentiful jewels gleamed on this rooster’s apparel: in the brooch pinned to the scarlet rolled brim of his hat, on his black-gloved fingers and the garter on his thigh. A fulsome chain of interlocked Ss, roses and suns lay across the lapels of his scarlet brocade robe. He would have looked better in blue but maybe he had ‘acquired’ the horse and its expensive scarlet leather saddle from some dead enemy after Towton and was dressing to match.

  At the Mayor’s Hall, not far from the corner where Elysabeth was watching, he dismounted, and Sheringham began introducing him to the green caterpillar of waiting worthies. The fawning of the city aldermen made Elysabeth yearn for a basin to retch in, but this was the way of the world, as Wigston put it.

  It was no surprise. The city was already in favour with the new king because Mayor Sheringham had sent men to fight for him at Towton, but there were city charters to be reconfirmed, not to mention permission for the annual fairs. This Hastings could rely on being wined, dined, oozed over and ogled. He certainly had the Leicester market wives hallooing, and a cheerful trio of cherrylips, who had illegally broken into an empty messuage next to the Blue Boar Inn, were leaning out of the casement, waggling their scarce-covered breasts at him.

  ‘A comely bird, ain’t ’e?’ cackled the housewife next to Tamsin, with a dig of elbow. ‘An’ unwed as yet. Goin’ to be rentin’ at Kirby Muxloe whenever he’s up our way.’

  No wonder the buttering up ceremony was fulsome.

  I daresay the Leicester nobility will find their own way to his door.

  Elysabeth bit her lip. Kirby Muxloe! Oh, St Jude, you’ve been listening to my prayers.

  ‘Tom,’ she said, laying her hand on her son’s arm. ‘I think we shall be paying Sir William Hastings a visit if he’s at Kirby tomorrow.’

  Elysabeth

  29 April 1461

  Kirby Muxloe, Leicestershire

  This newly acquired castle seemed more at home to weeds and weevils than a shiny knight with lordly prospects, Elysabeth decided sourly, as she and Tom, with Bart as their escort, crossed the repaired drawbridge of the Greys’ new neighbour. She was hoping that Sir William Hastings might agree to take Tom as a page but the boy’s compliance was as likely as an icicle’s survival in Hell and, judging by her surroundings, maybe she was asking the wrong man; the planks beneath her horse’s hooves might be freshly hewn but not much else was. The hall within the bailey was even worse than Groby’s – no new windows in its south wall and a roof louvre instead of a chimney. Even John’s bricks would be an improvement.

  Why would Sir William in his gems and velvet bother with this ruin? Gossip of buried treasure within its walls? Cheap rent from a relative? Ah, maybe military strategy!

  Perhaps Hastings wasn’t a bucket short of a well, after all. Kirby Muxloe was in the centre of the kingdom, within spitting distance of the Fosse Way or Watling Street. The plethora of wattle and daub buildings within the walls, despite shrieking for a re-thatch, could probably house a hundred soldiers at a squeeze. With repairs made, the curtain wall could be easily defended, and the moat, flowing in from the local stream, looked deep enough to drown in. Lordy, but it would take a huge amount of riches to wallop away the spiders, let alone make this worthy of a royal visit.

  The king’s new chamberlain already had his pennons up flapping above the crumbly battlements and the ancient keep. Sable maunche – a black sleeve. Not a clenched fist but it still looked threatening and she had best not underestimate him. He might prove to be the Pole Star of the Yorkist constellation until Queen Margaret’s boy came of age.

  Apparently most of the kingdom thought so, too. The smoky bailey was as crammed as Leicester’s May Day Fair and could have outprized the Tower of Babel in hubbub. Dialects from every shire shouted and swore. Snapping at Tom to keep up, Elysabeth tried to direct her horse behind an abbot and his retinue who were attempting to nose their mules through the chaos to the stables but she ended up triangled between a carter trying to prod protesting livestock from his wagon into a pen, the hot fire of a spit roast and a string of tubby pack ponies laden with panniers of cheeses. In the end, she surrendered the horses to Bart and wriggled her way through to the steps of Hastings’ hall, trying to avoid being goosed by the men-at-arms. There were too many of them for her peace of mind, fellows not just with Hastings’ maunche embroidered on their brigadines, but soldiers in the royal livery and couriers wi
th Warwick’s bear-and-ragged-staff. Men who might have slain John.

  It was hard seeing the scars; here, a stump instead of a hand, or there, a patch over a missing eye, and not remember John’s hacked body. Hastings had not been at St Albans, thank the saints, otherwise she would not be here to ask for his good lordship.

  But she and Tom were just two of many seeking his favour. Since this knight was now a conduit to the new royal waterbutt, the hall was bursting with people: church, trade and tillers, the greedy, the desperate, widows like her, mothers with babes mew-ling hungrily, whole families, all crowding the trestles, leaning against the walls, fidgeting, stamping, mouthing and complaining. Some of them smelled of perfume and many of them just smelled.

  ‘Have you a written petition, mistress?’ demanded a tabarded usher, blocking their way. ‘No? Then, that line there!’ He spread his arms to herd her and Tom into one of the four long tails of people stretching down from the dais.

  ‘You mistake us, sir!’ Tom argued, folding his arms and squaring up to the fellow like some brave little lapdog with a temporary truth: ‘I’m–I’m Lord Ferrers and my grandmother is a duchess.’

  ‘And mine’s married to the Pope,’ guffawed Hastings’ man, his sneering gaze observing that Tom’s russet doublet was too short in the sleeves and barely fastened over his shirt.

  ‘Mother, say something!’ But she had seen the fellow’s thumb and fingers rub together hopefully. Only a bribe would speed them to the front and she had none to spare.

  ‘Remember Aesop’s tale of the tortoise and the hare, Tom.’

  ‘But if we keep our heads stuck in like a pair of tortoises, no one will bother with us.’

  ‘Tom! Be patient.’

  But for how long?

  Officers sat at trestles at the top of each queue questioning each petitioner. The fast moving line was for written petitions, the other three were for commoners to briefly state their purpose.