The Golden Widows Read online

  ‘…and we are here to mourn those who are with us no longer—’

  Oh, Will! A broken dream.

  Then something rattled her hearing.

  Horses. The clink of harness. The west door thrust wide. It was not the Second Coming. The cloaked latecomer, who paused beneath the arch, looked more like the Devil until he swaggered forward and everyone could see he had ginger, curly hair, a nose like Lady Bonville’s and no tail.

  The priest, Father Gregory, cleared his throat and then faltered, his eyes going wild and round, his mouth like a rock-dove nest hole as armed men in yellow surcotes clanked in around the font. The villagers drew crosses over fearful hearts because – God ha’ mercy – the three scarlet rondels on each man’s breast roared the Courtenays’ presence.

  ‘Jesu!’ muttered Kate, jerking her head to the front.

  ‘Move up then!’ the newcomer ordered glibly, edging in beside her and ignoring the swift gather of skirts that shrieked a lack of welcome. Darting her gaze sideways confirmed Kate’s estimate that the latecomer was at the butt end of his twenties. Old enough to have better manners.

  He perched his liripiped hat upon his knee and then leaned across to poke Grandmother Bonville. ‘Good morrow, Aunt. And I suppose this is Lady Harrington, eh?’

  ‘Henry, what in Heaven are you doing here?’ Grandmother Bonville’s nose wrinkled at his tavern breath.

  ‘Henry who?’ Kate interrupted crossly.

  ‘Why, Courtenay, sweetheart.’ She received a faceful. ‘We haven’t met before. I’ve come down all the way from West Coker to join you in your grief.’

  ‘I doubt that very much.’ Grandmother Bonville looked fit to clout him. ‘He’s the middle brother, Katherine. The oldest one is the Earl of Devon and his manners are not much better.’

  ‘Forgiveness, Aunt, I’m here to commiserate for the loss of the old tosspot. And the young one. Ahhh, losing such a young husband.’ He drew an impudent gloved finger down Kate’s cheek. ‘Ah, are these tears for Willy?’

  Both women ignored him. ‘Oh, for heaven’s sake, get on with it!’ Grandmother Bonville growled at the priest.

  ‘Poor fool looks fit to piss himself,’ sniggered Courtenay behind his hand. The next half hour was a torture not just to Kate with a drunken noble next to her misbehaving but to Father Gregory who was trying to ignore the loud yawns, sighs, farts and pretend snores. Kate could hear the rustle of clothing, of fear, from the rest of the congregation.

  ‘Have you no reverence?’ Kate snarled beneath her breath.

  The interloper was clearly enjoying himself. His repertory held no end of insults. Running a hand salaciously across his stubbled cheek as he leered over his shoulder at Lovidia and sideways at Kate, unhooking the leather jack from his belt, guzzling the contents, and nudging his foot against hers. His breath stank of wine, his armpits stank of sweat and his clothes reeked of horse. He had to stagger out once to relieve himself. Only during the bells and blessings of the most sacred part of the Mass, did he show a modicum of piety. When he belched for the umpteenth time, Kate would have kicked him hard except her feet had gone numb with the cold. Why in Heaven’s name had he bothered? To humiliate them or for a purpose more sinister?

  ‘Wish I could excommunicate him, Lady Harrington,’ muttered Father Gregory afterwards, bidding Kate farewell at the church door, ‘but…’

  ‘But?’ prompted Kate.

  ‘I can’t complain to your brother the Bishop of Exeter, my lady, because there’s a proclamation out for his arrest and, you must pardon my frankness, but apart from being consecrated as bishop, he’s hardly set foot in the diocese and—’ He smothered an unpriestly oath as Lord Henry emerged from the church and flung an arm about Grandmother Bonville’s shoulders.

  ‘You are inviting us in, Aunt?’ he asked, with a breath that would have ignited every beacon from Plymouth to Portchester and kept up unsteadily beside them as they swiftly marched towards the church gate, where their horses were waiting. When Grandmother Bonville refused to answer, he repeated his words without the question mark, and rode after them with his retinue. How he managed to stay in the saddle was a credit both to his horse and the nearest man-at-arms.

  ‘Haven’t been here for years,’ he exclaimed, lurching in to admire the tapestries that adorned the walls of Shute’s great hall. An anxious Stephen Gylle hastened in after him. If Courtenay had not been accompanied by his men or the occasion one of grieving, Kate would have dissolved in irrepressible laughter. She made her way to the fire lit in the huge hearth, waiting for Will’s formidable grandmother to evict this obnoxious man.

  Courtenay joined her, annoyingly grinning and imitating her as he stretched his hands out to the warmth. It was tempting to trip him into the embers but there would be witnesses and…And looking again at his face, her instincts screamed that he was far more sober than he pretended.

  ‘Where’s the heiress then? Being burped?’

  Why was he interested in her baby?

  ‘Being fed,’ Kate muttered.

  ‘Unlike me. Unlike me!’ Courtenay thumped his chest. ‘Where’s your hospitality to guests, my fine ladies?’ he exclaimed loudly, so his men might hear. ‘Where’s courtesy these days? Down the jakes?’

  Thank God, Grandmother Bonville came back to life. ‘You’ve had enough already, Henry. Why don’t you go and burn a few haystacks.’

  ‘But it’s February, Aunt.’ He gave some sort of signal to his men and they started banging their fists on the trestle tables. ‘I’ve always a thirst on me, Aunt. You know that.’

  ‘Oh, fetch them something, Gylle.’ Aunt Bonville took off her winter mantle and slung it over the back of the chair of estate on the dais and then she seated herself. A reminder that it was she who was lording it at Shute? Yes! Kate gleefully waited for the sharp dismissal but Will’s grandmother slid a weary hand across her brow. O Jesu forbid! With increasing apprehension, Kate recognised the exhaustion of grief. Never say it was she who must deal with this unpredictable sot and his entourage.

  ‘Am staying over at Colcombe Castle, by the way,’ he was saying.

  Colcombe! Too frighteningly close. God’s mercy! For how long?

  ‘Why are you not with the queen’s army, my lord?’ Kate asked.

  ‘What? Hey, shhhh, you poxy whoresons! What did you say, Lady Harrington?’

  She repeated her question in the unexpected silence.

  ‘Not in my interest.’ His eyes glittered playfully. It was not cowardice, she realised, but far more threatening. A disrespect for duty? But she was only partly right. ‘Brother’s heir, you see,’ he was explaining. ‘It would have been unwise for him to risk all three of us.’ Contempt rather than pity lifted the corners of his mouth. ‘Three generations of Bonvilles slain, eh. That’s bad luck or miscalculation, Lady Harrington.’ Then he was looking up at the tapestry behind Kate. Like a dragon flicking a tongue across its lips as it eyes some sheep to carry off, she thought. Then the dragonish smile swerved to confront her. ‘My brothers and I will miss the feuding with the old man. Won’t be the challenge any more. Can’t pick a quarrel with a mewling babe, can we?’

  Again that worrying mention of Cecily. Was his real purpose to abduct her child? By Heaven, she’d kill him if she had to.

  ‘And so you are here to convey your grief,’ she stated with feigned innocuousness. ‘How very gracious.’

  ‘Saw the proclamation about your brother, too, Lady Harr’ton. Where is the noble Dick? Hiding in rabbit burrows?’

  ‘I wish you were,’ exclaimed Kate, deliberately beaming. But the remark fell wasted. Courtenay was more interested in watching Gylle ushering in servants with flagons of ale for the soldiers. Why was it men asked questions of women and never listened for answers? If her words fell short, how could she best him? Let him drink again? It looked like she did not have a choice.

  It was the new Master of the Horse, Newton, whom she had mistaken for Will, who was carrying a tray of mazers to the dais as though he was sud
denly a house servant. The world was going insane. Swiftly she crossed to him.

  ‘Put a guard on the nursery,’ she whispered as she took up a mazer for their guest.

  ‘Already done, madame.’ Newton bowed.

  Astounded, Kate gave a faint approving nod and turned.

  ‘To peace between neighbours, sir!’

  Courtenay received the two-handled vessel, drank down the contents and held it out to Newton to be refilled. ‘Not a valediction to the dear departed, Lady Harrington? Are you not joining me?’

  ‘Oh, I definitely am,’ exclaimed Kate, waiting until Lady Bonville was served before she took a goblet. They clinked metal and again he drank greedily. Was he wed? She pitied his wife if he was. ‘Tell me, is boorishness a family characteristic or are all the Courtenays as ill-mannered as you?’

  ‘Oooh, here be dragons!’ He swaggered across to the high table. ‘Proper Neville, isn’t she, Aunt?’ he muttered, leaning over Grandmother Bonville’s shoulder. Then twisting round with difficulty to face Kate, he came to the point of his visit. ‘Listen, Lady Harri-on, we can do this a number of ways. My brother the earl will ask her grace the queen for guardianship of the little heiress.’ He giggled, ignoring Kate’s horrified face. The chair shook from the slap of his hand. ’Lordy, Aunt, your old man will turn in his grave at the thought.’

  But no one was turning. Not corpses. And not Lady Bonville. No tirade rushed Courtenay to the door. Again, it was up to Kate.

  Was he here to snatch her and Cecily for his brother?

  ‘But…but I’ve another suggestion – are you listening, Lady Ha’ton? You can marry me so I become her guardian. What’s her name, I forget? Cissie-cely, isn’t it?’

  ‘Rot in Hell!’ The words shot out before she could stop them.

  ‘Naughty, naughty. I’ll be admonishshishing you when we are handfast, but, but…’ He scowled fiercely. ‘Anyway maybe I won’t.’ He leaned lower over his aunt. ‘I like my women sleek, see,’ he whispered, undulating his palms through the air.

  That was an insult indeed.

  ‘Lord Henry, a private word with you,’ Kate purred, with an edge a soberer beast might have recognised as dangerous. The instant the man came across, she tossed her very full goblet into his face. ‘Out!’ she snarled, pointing to the great door. ‘I don’t care if you are a Courtenay. I don’t care if you are the Archangel Gabriel, Queen Margaret or the Devil himself, I want you out of here. Go and drink with your little armoured friends somewhere else.’ She charged down the steps. ‘On your feet!’ she shouted at the Courtenay retainers. ‘Go! How dare you come mocking us in our sorrow. Have you no respect? Go! And as for you, Henry Noggerhead Courtenay, I’ll see you shackled in Hell before I let you have guardianship of my daughter.’

  To her amazement and their master’s, the soldiers started to shamble out.

  ‘W-wait!’ exclaimed their leader.

  ‘You’re drunk and you’re stupid, nephew,’ exclaimed Grandmother Bonville, rising to her feet at last. She jabbed him in the ribs with her finger and jabbed him some more. ‘You heard Lady Harrington, Go!’

  He jerked his body away. Kate, caught between him and his men, watched him stagger towards her. She held her breath. A whack of his arm would floor her.

  ‘Woman, you are an interfering, bloody Neville. All this,’ he lurched and hiccoughed. ‘All this is…’ he gestured to the tapestries, ‘coming to us.’

  ‘I’m not telling you again,’ Kate said loudly. ‘You insult the dead and the living.’

  ‘Well, I’m taking this! And it’s just the beginning.’ Henry Courtenay brandished the mazer he was holding, jerked it upwards in final insult and staggered from the hall. His remaining men, with shaky farewell salutes, followed.

  Kate collapsed on a bench and started to giggle. She grabbed a fresh goblet, took a swig and her laughter became tears. She wept in relief that the danger was over. For now.

  Someone started applauding. It was Newton. Stephen Gylle took off his cap and scratched his head in amazement and the servants crowded into the hall from behind the buttery screen to surround her with praise. Absurd, undeserved, but what a delicious feeling to have stood up to a man like Courtney. It was for her baby, she told herself, she would not have had the courage otherwise, but how reassuring to know that she did have a backbone. The trouble was that Courtney might be like the plague and keep coming back.

  Someone else thought so, too.

  ‘I should not rejoice if I were you,’ admonished Master Gylle and his eyes met Kate’s. ‘Henry Courtenay is a lamb when drunk, my lady, but he’s a bloody wolf when sober.’

  Kate woke in the middle of the night with a rat running across the coverlet and a swarm of fears making nests in her head. She threw a shoe at the rat, wishing it was Henry Courtenay. It vanished under the door but took none of her other dreads with it.

  Cecily’s future did lie in the queen’s hands and if the accursed woman continued being vengeful, a Courtenay could indeed end up as guardian or worse still (and Heaven forbid!) as hers or Cecily’s future bridegroom. She would need to keep strong guard about her baby, maybe move her in secret up to Chewton, the Bonvilles’ house in Somerset. If matters became desperate, St Mary Magdalene’s in Chewton was a sanctuary church.

  Having resolved that, she fell into a light sleep, but followed by a nightmare that she was being marched past a row of her family’s heads on stakes and before her, waiting by the executioner’s block, was Henry Courtenay with an axe, and soldiers were forcing her brother Richard down for beheading.

  ‘No!’ she screamed, struggling against her guards to run to him. ‘No!’

  She awoke to find it was Eleanor’s hands trying to restrain her. ‘Oh, my lady, you were thrashing summat awful.’

  Her heart and breathing still a-galloping, Kate struggled into a sitting position with her knees up beneath the sheets and buried her face in her hands. ‘Your pardon, dear friend.’

  Eleanor slid an arm about her. ‘Can I make you a posset to help you sleep?’

  Kate shook her head. ‘I dreamed that everything was taken from us. Everything! But, Eleanor, I’ve been so stupid not to realise. If my brothers have been proclaimed traitors, then all the Neville manors, up and down the kingdom, will be seized for the crown! Mama will be homeless unless they let her have her dower, so will Richard’s wife and—’ God in Heaven! She straightened her shoulders abruptly as she at last realised the full consequence of Grandfather Bonville’s execution.

  ‘If Queen Margaret orders Parliament to attainder Grandfather Bonville as a traitor,’ she pointed out to Lady Bonville in the great chamber after Mass – not easy with Cecily’s tiny fingers pulling at her earrings. ‘Then by law she can send officers to seize this house and, well, everything.’

  Standing by the fire, Grandmother Bonville was unpinning the brooch that secured her cloak. ‘Ouch! Now see what you’ve made me do.’ She swiftly sucked at her finger lest it bloody her gown.

  ‘It makes sense,’ Kate pursued. ‘Don’t you see, keeping an army in the field all this time must have been very costly for the queen and she will be needing to reward the lords who have fought for her. All these manors could be given to the Courtenays. Your jointure and my dower, too, perhaps! We are the widows of traitors!’ She omitted the horrid possibility that the queen might nail Lord Bonville’s head up at Exeter’s Rougemont Castle. ‘And we have to protect Cecily. Vast estates and only this baby girl to inherit them!’ She was fearful of telling anyone about the babe inside her. Henry Courtenay might very well shove her down a staircase.

  ‘Of course, we shall take measures, Katherine. Just calm yourself! We must tilt at the enemy when we see them, not at shadows.’

  ‘Henry Courtenay is no shadow.’

  ‘Henry will receive nothing from the queen since he has done her no service. It will be the earl his brother who will prove the greater danger. Boo!’ She was flapping her veil to distract Cecily.

  ‘I think you are wrong, mada
me. Did you not hear his threats? And anyway, shouldn’t we shift all our valuables from here, before the Sheriff of Exeter receives his orders?’ She made play of looking round the solar. ‘I am sure if our husbands had lived, they could have bargained, changed allegiance if need be, but as widows we haven’t anything to bargain with. In fact, I should not be surprised if the confiscation of Grandfather Bonville’s estates up north may have begun already.’

  ‘And where are we supposed to take our moveables, Katherine Neville?’

  ‘I’m not sure,’ Kate admitted glumly. ‘Somewhere they can be protected easily. There’s our manors on Purbeck or what about Padstow? No one would think of—’

  ‘Padstow! That’s the end of the earth!’ Grandmother Bonville rolled her gaze heavenwards with a groan, and Kate agreed tactfully, ‘Yes, you are right and if we send a whole train of sumpters that far it will take days and the sheriff will be sure to get wind of it.’

  The faint sound of the vesper bells from the abbey on the other side of the valley filled the impasse between them. ‘There’s our answer,’ exclaimed Kate, bouncing with inspiration. ‘Newenham Abbey! Scarce a mile away. Much more manageable!’

  The old lady shrugged. She swept her gaze around the chamber, taking in the tapestries, the stained cloth paintings, the costly goblets, especially the silver gilt mazer bestowed on Grandfather Bonville by an abbot of Newenham at his baptism. ‘Well, I know the earl my nephew has always coveted that.’ She scowled at the lithe young woman dancing for Herod while a brawny John the Baptist, loaded with chains, waited stoically between his guards outside the door. ‘Yes, you are not such a young featherhead, after all.’ And she wasn’t talking to Salome.

  ‘You’ve been grieving, Grandmother. We all have.’

  ‘No excuse, though. Very well, we shall move everything as fast as we can but in order of worth, eh? Get my secretary in here and tell him an inventory must be made! I’ll not go delivering my valuables to any man willy-nilly, even if he has a bellrope to God.’

  Within the hour, Grandmother Bonville rode off to negotiate with Abbot Hunteford, an offertory purse heavy on her belt. When she returned without it, the household, already primed by Kate, drew a unison breath and hurtled into action. Shute soon resembled a frenzied, toppled beehive.