The Golden Widows Read online

  Tightly strung Bessie Scales certainly needed an ally. Every muscle looked taut. She did not evoke the offer of a comforting arm; only words might offer warmth between them. Well, at least it was not some fruitless conversation about plucking eyebrows.

  ‘It’s not easy being a new wife, Bessie, especially here at Grafton where everybody knows your husband better than you do.’

  The woman’s upper lip swished sideways. ‘You are very shrewd.’

  Was that praise or a needle jab? Lady Ferrers had left her on her guard in noblewomen’s company. Men were much more readable.

  Bessie gave another sigh and some of the icy edges thawed. The crevasses began to show.

  ‘Sometimes I think I should have stayed a widow or taken the veil. Your brother has been so moody and irritable since he came back. He thinks of no one but himself. Can he not rejoice that he is alive, unlike your poor husband, God save him!’ She crossed herself.

  A thrush sang descant to their mutual sadness until curiosity prompted Elysabeth to ask, ‘How long were you betwixt husbands?’

  ‘Three years, Elysabeth, I grieved more for my father than Hal. And…and if you want to know why I am further out of temper with Anthony…it is because it is almost a year to my father’s murder and I need to be with my mother not here.’

  ‘Oh, Bessie.’

  Lord Scales’ death in the July of last year had shocked everyone. He had been serving as one of King Henry’s captains at the Tower of London, when it had been under siege from the Thames by Warwick’s ships and cut off from supplies. There had been negotiations and surrender but no trust. Scales had been savagely killed out on the Thames as he tried to flee to Westminster Sanctuary, and his body had been dumped naked outside a city church. Warwick claimed he had naught to do with the killing and that might be true, for the city had been full of panic, lawlessness and violence, but how many great lords turn a blind eye when it suits them? Another reason for her to loathe the man.

  ‘I’m sorry, Bessie.’ Jesu! Anthony needed a lance up his backside. ‘I’ll talk to him about, I promise you.’

  ‘He’s so stubborn.’

  ‘I’ll make him think it’s his decision.’ She set her hand upon Bessie’s. ‘Shall we go back in?’

  Bessie shook her head. ‘I’ll stay a while longer, and Elysabeth—’

  What, another complaint? To show courtesy, she turned, hiding her weariness.

  ‘I just wanted to say I’m not surprised you had trouble from John Bourchier over your dower rights. I hope you get fair judgment. They’re an ambitious pack, the Bourchiers. Mind, your family are no angels.’

  The unangelic Woodvilles were still in session. Elysabeth, hesitating outside the solar door, could hear John in full flight. ‘Who better?’ he was saying. ‘Fair hair, dark eyes, a figure the mirror of Venus would recognise.’

  There was a finger-in-mouth sort of gagging that sounded like Lionel.

  ‘You’ve forgotten her teeth,’ added Anthony sourly. ‘She has all her teeth.’

  ‘Indeed, sweet-breathed. Ow! You cur! I’m only trying to help.’

  ‘Oaf! You know nothing about women,’ sneered Anthony’s voice. ‘And from the utter nonsense you’re spewing, you don’t know her.’

  Elysabeth sprang back with a squeal as the door was flung open.

  ‘Eavesdropping, sister?’ Anthony pulled it swiftly shut behind him.

  ‘I was on my way in.’

  ‘Yes, and your nose will get longer with the next lie.’ He whirled his finger in the air, directing her to go back down the stairs. ‘Out!’ There was no argument. Even though she was tall for a woman, he topped her by a head and he seemed to have grown broader.

  ‘Let go!’ she said good-humouredly, tugging her elbow free. ‘And if we are heading for the peace of the garden, your wife’s out there waiting to bang you on the head with a shovel. I’d have used a dibber myself.’

  ‘Tell me later. Let’s go to the withdrawing chamber, then, if Anne and Jacquetta aren’t winding wool there or playing with kittens.’

  The servants were tidying the hall for breakfast but the great chamber beyond was empty of giggles or livestock.

  Elysabeth did not feel like sitting. ‘So what has John decided for me?’ she asked, tugging off her cap and veil. ‘Prodding to market with the cows?’

  ‘Vain cat! You think it was you being talked about.’

  She pushed back her hair. ‘Ears burning, see.’

  He peered close. ‘Bah, that’s where the linen’s been rubbing. Now I know where Papa has a secret flask of aqua vitae. Want some?’

  She nodded. ‘It will help me sleep. Strange bed.’

  ‘Aye, and the girls will keep you up all night whispering.’

  A curse escaped her. Thin wooden boards or worse still, just curtains. With so many offspring, Grafton was a warren of humans.

  Her brother lifted a small carpet off the wooden chest behind the door and flung the lid back. The smell of lavender was strong. Some rustling ensued before he hoisted up a stoppered flask like a huntsman displaying a snared rabbit. ‘Voilà!’ He pointed to the aumery. ‘Well, move, wench! Not the mazers. On the left. The left! Lord love us, let me!’ He tipped a dead ant out of one of them and blew the dust out of a second. ‘Your health, Lissie!’

  ‘Hmm,’ she said, savouring the golden brew. ‘Where did this come from?’

  ‘One of the monks at St Albans trades from the postern. Good, eh?’ He sat down, stretched out his legs. ‘Now, I’ll tell you what John was wittering on about. He and our duchess, Lord love her, reckon you should have another tilt at Hastings, since he’s a neighbour at Groby et cetera. Ha! Thought you’d like the notion.’ His grin might have resembled the Devil’s when he heard of St Peter’s denial.

  She deliberately played dense. ‘Badger him about Tom, they mean?’

  ‘No, you dafty, as a diversion for Sir William Hastings when he’s not holding the royal pisspot.’

  ‘Become his whore?’

  ‘Well, you can’t marry the plaguey knave. He’ll want a broad-hipped, virgin heiress.’ He jabbed a finger at her annoyed expression and laughed. ‘I told them it wouldn’t work. Anyway, you said he wasn’t interested. I’m right, he didn’t make an offer, did he?’

  ‘No.’ She shook her head.

  He pulled a face. ‘More a fool than I thought.’

  ‘Him or me?’

  ‘The pair of you.’ He leaned forward, rolling the little goblet between his palms. ‘So what’s to be done, Lyssie? You’re stuck here, aren’t you?’

  She nodded. ‘Have they guessed yet? Will they mind?’

  ‘Our wrinkling parents? It’s whether you have staying power. You can always come and malinger at our house if you need some air.’

  ‘Maybe. Thank you.’ Come November, she hoped to have the case settled and receive the trust money.

  ‘You’ll be looking for a husband sometime, though, when the twelve months are up. It’ll be hard to replace John Grey. He was a good fellow.’

  ‘Enough, Anthony!’ Her grief might never truly heal. ‘It’s my turn.’ Time she mentioned Bessie’s wish to leave, loathe as she was to lose her brother’s company so soon. But the door behind her crashed open and Bessie charged into the chamber as though the Devil Himself was after her but it was only Mama who was following.

  For once there was colour in the young woman’s cheeks. Something white and pasty had been spattered down her dark red skirt. ‘I have had enough!’ she shrieked at Anthony.

  ‘Which of zer girls was it, Bessie?’ pleaded the duchess, although she was shrugging her shoulders at the tantrum. ‘Why do you not tell me, hein?’ Her daughter-in-law ignored her; the tirade was levelled at her husband.

  ‘They run amok, my lord. They have no respect and…’

  ‘I’ll deal with it!’ An outsider might have seen Anthony’s purposeful departure as magnificent avenging rage but Elisabeth recognised it as a male dash for safety.

  ‘My dear Bessie,
’ persisted the duchess. ‘You will get your death of cold, so I order you a hot bath, oui, and you may use some of my bath perfume, hein?’

  Bessie rolled her gaze at Elysabeth before she permitted herself to be ushered from the room.

  ‘Welcome to Grafton.’ John was leaning against the lintel, his arms folded. ‘When I marry, I shall choose a woman who appreciates me, not a whey-faced misery.’

  ‘Then you’ll be fortunate. At the moment I see nothing to attract a wife.’

  ‘Whoo-hoo.’

  She walked across to the cupboard and poured herself another swig. ‘John,’ she said calmly, swinging round to face him. ‘My husband was brought home dead across a pack ass, my children have been disinherited and I’ve been fighting in the courts for my widow’s dower. My older son feels he’s worthless and my younger son doesn’t know how to laugh anymore. I’m not sure I do, John. And now you would like me to be a whore. How would you feel if it was asked of you? And you, Anthony,’ his older brother had returned from playing magistrate, ‘you should poxy well take your wife and her mother to London so they may lay flowers on her father’s grave!’ She marched across to the settle, sat down and took a gulp. ‘Well, I’m waiting, John. Come on, grovel!’’

  ‘Your pardon, Elysabeth.’ He hung his head.

  ‘Lyssie.’ Anthony sat down beside her; his long fingers curled over hers; her pain was like a mirror in his eyes. A childhood memory came creeping back. Him taking a beating for her when she had failed to latch the pigsty. No end of adventures and him always loyal. Dependable.

  ‘Tell us about John Grey,’ he said. ‘Really tell us.’

  She told them how Queen Margaret had sent him back to her. And with the telling came tears, like raindrops trickling down the panes of her face, and then a torrent that darkened the pleats of Anthony’s doublet.

  Afterwards there were no quips, no foolish comments and the three of them sat silent.

  ‘If the queen had taken London,’ Anthony said eventually, ‘none of us would be in this bind.’

  ‘No, and nor would she,’ muttered Elysabeth.

  ‘But she has managed to keep the old king out of Warwick’s clutches and there are plenty still fighting for her in the north.’ John prowled to the window and back. ‘By my faith, were I a stranger coming to England this very day and given the choice of supporting a woman, a madman and a child or Edward of York, a soldier who never lost a battle, well…’ He made a questioning face at them, his hands splayed.

  ‘Yes, John,’ Anthony muttered, ‘but Margaret has too much spine to give up, and one day when he’s a man, “the child” may come back to claim his throne. If we change sides now, we have to be certain King Edward’s future is sure.’

  ‘Or maybe all the people like us have to make it sure,’ Elysabeth murmured. ‘If I were in your shoes, Anthony, I should join the king’s forces in Wales or the north, putting down any uprisings.

  It will take time to prove yourself again but if you’ve the stomach for it, it can be done. John or Dick could go with you. They’ve no proven allegiance except being a Woodville.’

  Anthony rubbed a hand across his stubble. ‘I’d already considered doing so but it will mean fighting against some who were my friends but, yes, if a man like Pembroke will accept us, we can only try.’

  ‘And I daresay we could cart Papa off to London for the next parliament,’ suggested John. ‘Dick could take over here.’

  ‘You need a strategy, too, Lyssie.’ Anthony shook her knee. ‘Not to mention a bed soon. We can talk again in the morning.’

  ‘I have thought of something,’ she said slowly. ‘Instead of seeking the patronage of Yorkist lords, perhaps we should look to the women. Use the backstairs, so to speak.’

  ‘Mama’s a liability now,’ Anthony pointed out quietly. ‘She has no more influence. You could try petitioning one of the new king’s sisters. It won’t help your case in Chancery but it might assist with regaining Tom’s inheritance. Pity there’s no new queen to influence the king.’

  ‘Well,’ declared Elysabeth, ‘there’s bound to be one shipped in soon and if all else fails, I’ll plead that I’m half a foreigner and fling myself on her mercy. She perhaps can melt King Edward’s heart.’

  Kate

  28th October 1461

  The Church of St Mary Magdalene, Chewton Mendip, Somerset

  Leaves were falling fast. Only the St Michael’s Mass flowers, pale mauve petals fluffed around deep gold centres, were lingering in the manor house garden at Chewton Mendip, old Lord Bonville’s birthplace in Somerset. The household had been here through the late summer, mostly cloudy, irresolute weather that made Kate leave her straw hat on a peg and tuck a gauzy scarf into the neck of her gown when she went outside.

  It had been the season for braving the bramble thorns for the most luscious of the blackberries, brewing cider, perry and elder-flower wine, weaving corn dolls and holding a feast in the great barn for the harvest labourers.

  Every day, as well as carrying out the manorial duties she now shared with Grandmother Bonville, such as speaking with the bailiffs, hearing disputes and receiving petitions, Kate either took Cecily out on horseback across the fields or walked her to the church. The child’s Papa was in some unmarked grave in

  Wakefield but at least Grandfather Bonville’s tomb was there (he had grandified the building with a tower in anticipation) and Cecily liked being lifted up to put a clutch of wildflowers on his monument, or, to be correct, on top of Lady FitzRoger. It was too early to explain to Cecily why her great-grandfather looked like a woman.

  For sure, the Bonville crests were on his tomb but as yet no marble likeness so Lady Bonville, being of tidy mind, had insisted the effigies of the FitzRogers, a lord and lady who had once owned the manor, be shifted across for the time being.

  ‘It looks better,’ she decreed.

  Today, instead of flowers, Cecily had scattered some leaves on the lady’s stone bosom. Kate had kept a few back – beech, oak and hazel with gorgeous liveries of red, copper and gold – and she sat down beside Cecily on the steps of the preaching cross in the churchyard and, like any diligent mother, arranged the leaves in a row upon her dark woollen skirt and tried to point out their different shapes and hues. Cecily, at sixteen months, was more interested in the rabbit droppings. Yesterday it had been cow dung.

  Kate had tried to compensate the child for having no father, grandfathers or great grandsires. Will would have scoffed at any timidity so she had let the precious infant totter through the long meadow grass even though she could not help thinking about vipers or ticks. Nor did she fuss when Cecily leaned precariously over the large fishpond or held out her plump palm to feed apples to the grumpiest of the stallions.

  ‘Pah, she’ll turn into a wench who cares more for horses than she does for men, if you’re not careful,’ warned Grandmother Bonville, but she was proud of the tiny one’s fearlessness.

  Cecily’s eyes were no longer the ambiguous colour of a newborn but grey as the stones of Shute Hall. The colour and tilt came from the Bonvilles, too, and sometimes, Kate felt she was looking into Will’s eyes, and her heart ached for Cecily’s sake that the child’s father would never know the joy of hearing her chatter and watching her blossom.

  It was possible to recognise features of Cecily’s grandparents in her little face: eyebrows from Lady Bess, Will’s mother, and the Neville corn-coloured hair from Kate’s father. It was fairer than Kate’s, with a will that matched its owner. And the freckles? Well, too much time in the sun perhaps, teaching Cecily to love each tree and gather the wildflowers. That was how the world should be for a child.

  And the world beyond the walls of the manor had thankfully grown safer. There was still anxiety: rumours that although my lord of Somerset had paid homage to the king, he had plans to ferment an uprising for King Henry in the southern shires, and more fears that the French might come before the winter, but with the passing of the Bonville lords and their feuding neighbours, lawlessne
ss had abated. Thomas Courtenay, Earl of Devon, had been executed for treason and word was that Henry Courtenay had been summoned to the king. Presumably that was partly Richard’s doing. He had read Kate’s complaints and taken it on himself to become Cecily’s guardian ‘as a temporary measure’.

  ‘Richard must be carrying so many honours now that you can probably hear his chains of office rattling from a league away,’ Kate had commented to Eleanor but she observed how the gentry round about spoke of her brothers now with awe. Both her brothers! Bishop George had been appointed Lord Chancellor of England.

  The incense of power had even wafted in her direction. Caps came off and forelocks were tugged in Shepton Mallet and Midsomer Norton; there was a formal reception every time she visited Wells (which was rather a nuisance when she just wanted to shop); innkeepers jostled to provide my Lady Harrington with refreshment; peddlers and chapmen, lawyers and clerics, masons and merchants called at Chewton or inquired for her at Shute. It was a wonder Somerset woodlice weren’t coming out from under the flagstones to beg her to intercede with her brothers; certainly gentry who had supported the queen or sat upon the fence were now eager for her friendship. Even the Bishop of Bath and Wells had called at Chewton on his way back from Ned’s coronation in London (the proper coronation not the swift business back in February), and he was full of praise for my lord of Warwick.

  And ‘my lord of Warwick’ was becoming rather a nuisance, too. As head of the family and ‘temporary guardian’, he was trying to rule Kate as well, demanding that he approve the appointment of any new steward or bailiff and meddling in all sorts of tiresome ways as though she and Lady Bonville had the brains of snails. True, his letters always inquired how Cecily fared, not because of an uncle’s fondness, Kate suspected, but an anxiety to make sure that her child stayed healthy and the vast inheritance did not pass outside the family. Lately, his letters had been more personal.

  ‘Flou-ers,’ said Cecily, and louder, ‘flou-ers, Mama!’

  ‘Leaves, darling,’ Kate corrected, swishing her thoughts back to the moment. ‘One, two, three, f—’