The Golden Widows Read online

‘No, please, madame, it’s best you join her.’

  With relief, Kate heard Cecily cooing healthily as she opened the door to the great chamber. That was one concern off her mind. Joan, waiting inside, offered the babe to her in placatory fashion but Kate, her gaze on Will’s grandmother, brushed past. The pain in the room was almost tangible. Behind her, she heard Eleanor dismiss Joan and close the door.

  Old Lady Bonville sat in the chamber’s only chair, her shoulders drooping as though a monstrous weight had been strapped upon her back. Will was standing before the fire, his back turned. He was still cloaked. Waterlets trickled from his rain-soaked hair. His footsteps had trailed mud across the tiles; spatters still clung to his spurs and rimed his boot heels.

  Safe. Alive.

  Your husband will be famous and much loved.

  Her heart steadied somewhat. Dear God! It must be Will’s father who would not come back and yet…

  The young man turned and bowed, and she saw in shock that it was only Rob Newton, servant to Will’s grandfather. This ill news must be from London then, not from the north; the Tower of London, where Grandfather Bonville was holding King Henry prisoner. Had the London mob rescued the king? Was Lord Bonville dead?

  ‘Madame?’ Kate whispered, approaching in fear that the old lady’s world had suddenly shaken into chaos.

  Lady Bonville stared unseeing into the fire. An opened letter lay spread upon her lap. Kate recognised the neat flourishes of her oldest brother Richard, the Earl of Warwick’s, hand. Cradled in the centre crease was a small ribboned scroll typical of Grandfather Bonville’s ‘writ in haste’ communications.

  ‘M…may I see, please?’

  Resting on her knee, the fingers of Lady Bonville’s right hand rose briefly in assent and dropped as if in desperate resignation. Bracing herself, Kate took up the two missives and carried them to the better light in the windowed recess where she usually sat to embroider. Tucking her brother’s letter beneath her arm, she pushed back the twin curls of the smaller parchment. Its words began to dance before her vision as she read the opening sentences of Grandfather Bonville’s scrawl.

  Dead? Her father-in-law, her brother Tom and…

  Will!

  Hurriedly she dashed away the tears distorting her vision and, fumbling, grabbed her brother’s letter. It was to Lady Bonville begging her to break the news to Kate that their father had been beheaded in the marketplace at Pontefract on the orders of Queen Margaret.

  Then Father’s head must be on a pole somewhere.

  On the gate next to Uncle York’s or like a grotesque trophy being brought south in someone’s saddlebag to be spiked above London Bridge.

  And Will was never coming home. Cecily would never know her father.

  ‘I’m so sorry,’ she exclaimed, retreating towards the door. ‘Oh God!’ Wrenching it open, she ran down the stairs and out in her stockinged feet across the cobbles, heedless of the rain, across the garden and over the steps in the wall that linked the manor grounds to the churchyard.

  Blind with tears, she ran between the tombstones and almost pitched headfirst into a newly dug grave. For Will? His body to lie forever in the unfeeling, freezing earth? In horror, she stared across the gaping pit at the surprised, uncomprehending faces of two gravediggers and the globs of red soil trickling down their paused shovels.

  ‘My lady, is aught wrong?’

  Shuddering, she backed away and grabbing a gravestone for support, retched. Fool, she chided herself once the spasms ceased. Will’s body would be put in the Bonville vault. Not alone. He’d have his father…

  But her father’s body…?

  Oh, God! Oh God!

  ‘Lady?’

  She fled from the gravediggers’ solicitous concern. Stumbling, she reached the church porch and leaned for an instant against its lintel. Her grieving breath made splashes of vapour that bruised the icy air. Grabbing the ring handle, she pushed open the church door. She needed sanctuary, sanctuary against the truth, but here was more pain as she faced the font where she and Will had stood together for Cecily’s baptism. And the nave? Numbly she walked the lias flagstones alone, remembering how she and Will had approached the chancel hand in hand after their wedding at the church porch.

  Alas, save for the muted sound of the rainwater dribbling from the tongues of the outside gargoyles, the church was silent, lifeless about her. The paltry daylight barely alleviated the dimness; only the oil lamp hanging above the chancel offered a gleam of hope.

  Her drenched hem and muddy feet sullied the tiles as she flung herself on her knees before the rood screen. Someone was sobbing. A voice that was hers, and yet not known by her, was whimpering and howling like a snared creature, disdaining the growing whispers at the door.

  Hasty footsteps halted at her shoulders. ‘Lady Harrington.’

  Like a trapped, wild rabbit, she flinched at the rector’s touch upon her shoulder.

  ‘Leave me alone, Father! I don’t need your help. Go away from me! Go! Go!’

  ‘Daughter!’ The admonishment was stern. Did he think she was self-indulgent, wallowing in her misery? Part of her mind heard the annoyance in the retreating rustle of his clothing, the angry creak of shoe leather. Cradling her body, she rocked, her gaze searching about her for answers. She felt guilty, so guilty that she had not loved Will enough. Above her, wearing his crown of thorns, Christ drooped from his cross in his own suffering, but the carved eyes were looking heavenwards.

  ‘Madame, my sweet lady!’ A young woman’s voice seemed to come from a distance, past the haze of tears. ‘Christ’s mercy, you are so cold. Come, I beg you, before you take a chill.’ Eleanor dropped a fur-lined cloak about her shivering shoulders and with a firm arm, gathered her by the waist and drew her upwards. ‘Come back to the house, there’s mulled wine for the old mistress and the little one is crying for you.’

  ‘I’ll carry my lady!’ The youth, Newton, pushed in. Without a by-your-leave, he scooped an arm behind her knees and lifted her against his breast.

  Kate’s bodily state seeped through her grief, forcing her to recognise that she must still contend with matters earthly; the discomfort of her frozen feet, the damp of her gown between her shoulder blades and the sane, healthy beat of the young man’s heart against her cheek as he strode with her through the church gate. This should be Will not some servant, and the fact that Will would never hold her or Cecily ever again shook more sobs from her.

  ‘I can walk,’ she protested. Behind them the church’s funeral bell began to toll.

  ‘Nay, my lady, not without shoes,’ he answered firmly.

  ‘Are any of them coming back, Rob?’ she heard Eleanor ask.

  ‘The old lord is still hale, remember, an’ if Master Gylle and the others survived the battle at Wakefield, they’ll be let go. Like as not, there’ll be more trouble. Her grace’s army is marching south to take London.’

  ‘Jesu! I hope we’ll see no change o’masters.’ Eleanor’s comment needed shaking into meaning but Kate’s mind was too burdened to deal with it now, and there was a cluster of servants round the door as though she was a royal barge being met by a group of welcoming courtiers. Robert Newton carried her up the stairs and stood her up like a toppled chess piece. She remembered to thank him and saw he was red with exertion – and perhaps embarrassment for his uncalled-for display of masculine assertion.

  Some colour was back in Lady Bonville’s complexion as well. ‘Chaplain’s awaiting us in the chapel – when you’ve composed yourself, of course.’

  Kate flinched inwardly. Masses for the dead. ‘Yes, of course,’ she said bleakly.

  ‘You are too cold, my lady.’ Eleanor was chafing her hands, leading her to the fire.

  ‘Well, get those wet stockings off her!’ Grandmother snapped. ‘Help her, Joan, you daft ha’ppeth. Are you all breast and no brain?’

  Kate gave herself over to their kind hands as they stripped away her sodden kirtle and reclothed her in a sombre gown of mourning with a cap and ve
il of blue-black lawn.

  Freshly kindled logs were burning in the grate but the cold draught from beneath the door wrapped like an invisible icy cloth about her ankles.

  The ancient words of the paternoster numbed her mind as they came from her lips. The apparatus of grief had grooves she could follow until they put her to bed.

  Later, when there was a posset of valerian warming her insides and hot bricks around her feet, she thought once more about the foolish old soothsayer.

  Your husband will be famous and much loved.

  Will had boasted that one day he would be famous throughout the realm. His plans had included slaying Saracens (he was vague about where), pissing on the Courtenays (his language not hers), knocking some sense into King Henry, invading France (he wanted to be as renowned as his grandsire, one of the few lords still living who had fought at Agincourt) and becoming a Knight of the Garter (‘because that’s something Grandfather hasn’t managed yet!’).

  God rest his soul!

  So much for prophecy.

  Elysabeth

  12th February 1461

  The City of Leicester

  Alas, not another leering look.

  Elysabeth sighed, taking care to keep close behind her husband, Sir John Grey, as they threaded their way out of the Blue Boar. John might complain that she always wore high necklines but it was not merely because of the winter cold that she did so. She hated the way men – whether barons or beggars – fingered her with their stares. This time it had been a greasy apprentice in a leather apron with a ripening boil upon his neck.

  ‘Now, Elysabeth, is there aught we still need to purchase before we leave the city?’ John, replete with ale and a dinner of Leicester beef and Tewkesbury mustard, awaited her answer before dispatching their groom to bring their horse.

  She shook her head, knowing how much it must have vexed her husband to spend so much time amongst the city wares, especially when he had only been back a day and his family were still in month-mind for his nine-year-old brother, Reginald. But John had seen how much she craved to escape the gloominess of Groby Hall and his mother’s scowls.

  ‘I wish we might return to Astley,’ she said wistfully, tucking her arm through his. Astley in Warwickshire had been their home since their wedding, but Groby with its 200-year-old hall and ancient motte had come into the Grey family as part of John’s mother’s dowry and although John shared the running of it, Elysabeth always felt she was there under sufferance.

  ‘Be content, love. I know you like Groby as much as a cat loves water but I’ve hardly seen Mother since our brother’s death.’

  And I have hardly seen you, she added silently and, as if he sensed her thoughts, he hugged her against him. ‘Thank you for last night,’ he murmured. ‘You would not believe how many times I imagined holding you once more in my arms.’

  Their first bout of lovemaking had been fierce, his hunger urgent. But when he was finally satiated, he had lain beside her with a tight frown creasing his forehead as though his mind was elsewhere, and she could only guess at the ugliness he had seen these last months. Trying to make him unstopper his thoughts had been futile. ‘Not now,’ he had said. Did he unburden himself to any of his brothers-in-arms? Or were the memories like a poison stoppered in the depth of him, ever to be left untouched?

  ‘Lighten your heart, Elysabeth,’ he whispered now, letting go of her as their servant arrived from the inn stable with their bay ambler. ‘God has been good to us. Let us not spoil today with ifs and maybes. Live for today not for the morrow.’ Yet there was a tensing of his jaw as he spoke as though his thoughts were once more with the queen’s army.

  She understood. It could not be easy to slough off the preoccupations of the last few months, to rest his mind from packing and unpacking the daily minutiae of soldiering: strategies, supplies, the mustering, the miles, the mud, the wind howling outside the canvas skin of the tent, the arming for battle of both mind and body, and the aftermath, the search for comrades among the dead, the prayers over the mass graves and then the relentless marching on again next day.

  All cruel hardships. And no doubt he thought her soft, pampered.

  So could he guess the emptiness she had endured these last months and the bliss of being with him now? How wondrous it was to know the joy of being a much-loved wife; the protective, possessive hand between her shoulder blades, the banter between them – sweet heaven, it was so good to laugh again – and his patience. Yes, this morning in Leicester, such patience while she had been deciding on a modestly tasselled girdle for her mourning gown. And later, his indulgence, as she deliberated over gifts for their sons, Tom and Dickon.

  ‘By the way, I’ve a surprise for you, m’duck,’ John murmured playfully, letting his hand stray up her calf after he had helped her onto the pillion, heedless that the groom and half a dozen smirking horseboys were watching.

  ‘St Valentine’s Day is two days hence!’ She gave him a teasing sideways look from beneath her lashes. Had he purchased some trinket for her?

  As they rode up High Street towards North Gate, she snuggled against his back and discreetly adventured her hand beneath the skirt of his doublet to torment him a little. It was amusing to see his respectability under siege. They had been married almost ten years but Elysabeth liked catching him off his guard. She had learned such tricks from her own mother and seen for herself how it kept the love match between her parents vibrant and affectionate. Besides, she was only twenty-four and John still had a year to his thirtieth birthday.

  ‘Wicked wench!’ her lord and master growled, shifting her hand back to his belt. ‘If you do that again, we’ll both end up in the mucky meadow past Walker’s Croft, thistles or no.’ He chuckled and pulled his cloak firmly across his belly and kneed their ambler to make haste, for the overcast sky was glimmering with the pale rusty hue that betokened snow by evening and it was almost five miles to home.

  They were late back to the family house at Groby, carelessly, deliberately so. The penance was enduring his mother’s silence through supper. It was one of the baroness’s huffy sulks, punctuated by glares and sniffs that quivered the pleats of her widow’s wimple beneath her chin. John took no notice. Whenever he returned, his mother’s ill temper trickled off him for the first few days, but Elysabeth knew that within a week Lady Ferrers’ criticism of her and the boys would start to soak into John’s self-esteem and he would grow stricter with the children.

  Lady Ferrers had fiercely opposed the marriage, even though Queen Margaret herself had been their matchmaker and Elysabeth had been only fourteen when John brought her home as a bride. After a happy exuberant childhood, she had not been prepared for such animosity.

  ‘By Jesu,’ she had overheard John’s mother complain to her father-in-law during the first month after her wedding day, ‘I cannot believe how you have been so bewitched. You and your son are like two old dotards hastening to please. A pair of winsome eyes and pretty paps…’

  ‘Pah, wife,’ interrupted John’s father. ‘Sounds like the deadly sin of envy to me,’ and judging by the small shriek that followed, he goosed her.

  That was ten years ago but Lady Ferrers’ dislike for Elysabeth had not lessened. Tonight, her mother-in-law was not just angry at their lateness but peeved because they had not taken her with them to Leicester. Tomorrow, verbal crossbolts would be fired at Elysabeth across the mending. Trouble was, to put it bluntly, Lady Ferrers needed a lover. She was two-and-forty and had been a widow for four years now.

  ‘I suppose you did not remember to bring me the ell of black sarcenett I asked for, John.’

  You tell her, Elysabeth, suggested John’s grin as he removed his gloves.

  ‘Of course we did, madame.’ Spoken sweetly. ‘And some taffeta for the sleeve lining. And the cheeses you asked for.’

  ‘Oh.’ Silence and then her mother-in-law said gruffly, ‘I see you’ve bought yourself a new silk girdle, Elysabeth. Must have cost you a fair penny.’

  ‘John bought it f
or me.’ She dashed a smile at her husband.

  ‘Really.’ Out of verbal bolts and arrows for the time being, John’s mother directed her annoyance to the tearing of an innocent hunk of bread.

  John made no comment but the beak of his shoe nudged Elysabeth’s beneath the table. His gaze as he raised his goblet told her that they would go early to bed.

  There was no linking door between bedchambers to be unlocked, no draughty passageway to be navigated, no negotiations necessary, yet Elysabeth deliberately kept her husband waiting while she went to bid their sons goodnight and give them their gifts from Leicester. For Dickon, who was four, a wooden dragon, which moved its paws when you pulled a string, and for Tom, who was nine, a wooden curiosities box, inlaid with ivory.

  The children had been left behind that morning because Tom had been rude to his grandmother and little Dickon was recovering from a cold. Elysabeth was perhaps too careful of Dickon but he had been a frail infant and she did not like to expose him to the miasmas of Leicester’s marketplace.

  ‘Were our boys pleased?’ John surprised her from behind the bedchamber door, dragging her back against him and stroking her thighs through her skirts.

  ‘Of course. All the more so because the gifts were your choice.’

  ‘Tom is fortunate he’s gotten anything.’

  Elysabeth leaned her head back against her husband’s shoulder but her mind was preoccupied with her children. It was useless to tell John that he should be home more, that the boys longed for his presence like shoots searching for the sunshine, but being a baron, he had spent too much of the last year in Queen Margaret’s army or attending parliaments that mouthed much and achieved little.

  The wrangling – very lethal at times – had been because of King Henry’s health. It was as if God occasionally blew the old king’s wits out like a candle and it was happening too often. So often, that the Duke of York had asserted he would make a worthier king and had taken up arms against Queen Margaret, but now he was slain and – please God – the fighting was over. Elysabeth was so weary of sharing her husband with the queen.