I, Richard Plantagenet: Book Two: Loyaulte Me Lie

  I, RICHARD PLANTAGENET, PART TWO:

  LOYAULTE ME LIE

  BY

  J.P. REEDMAN

  Cover art by Frances Quinn

  Copyright April 2016, Herne’s Cave Publishing

  CHAPTER ONE: LORD PROTECTOR

  The King was dead.

  Edward, my brother, his flame extinguished not on the field of battle but by an ague taken while fishing with his friends. He had rallied once, filling his doctors with false hope, then suddenly declined, dying in his bed whilst exhorting the feuding Woodvilles and his bosom companions to kiss and ‘love each other.’

  In a codicil added to his will, Edward had named me ‘Lord Protector.’

  Within the chapel of Middleham castle, I knelt with hands clasped and prayed fervently for Edward’s immortal soul while my head spun from the shock of the disastrous news. Ned had been unwell for several years and I had suspected he would never fight a battle again…but to die so swiftly from what seemed a mere trifle? No. He had not even reached one and forty years of age. Even in declining health—he had grown very fat—I thought he would live till old age like King Louis of France, who lingered on, plotting and scheming, despite his frequent apoplectic fits. Edward Plantagenet, the Rose of Rouen, the Sunne in Splendour, should have continued to sit well fed and content on his secure throne, while I, Richard, his brother and loyal right arm, fought for him when he needed…

  But he was gone.

  William Hastings’ man had brought word of his decease. Hastings, of all people! No word of Edward’s death had come from Queen Elizabeth or her kin, the Woodvilles. That was telling, even disturbing. They loved me not and never had.

  And yet he had named me Lord Protector…

  The middle of April had arrived, bringing warm southerly winds that flapped the banners on the turrets of Middleham castle, yet I was as chilled as if December’s snow still lay upon the ground. Shaking gripped my limbs, and I wondered vaguely if the deadly ague that took my brave, strong brother had come upon me too.

  Edward… Memories crowded my churning brain, ghosts from the distant past: how Ned visited me and George every day when we were little fatherless lads in London; how together we fled to Bruges, with Ned trading rich robes for passage and I so poor I had to ask the Master of Veere for a loan; how we had fought together at Barnet and Tewkesbury, two brothers united in our aim, crushing the hopes of the House of Lancaster forever.

  Leaf-light, a hand brushed my arm. My wife Anne had entered the castle chapel and was kneeling beside me, wearing a gown of velvet such a dark blue it was near on black. Her veil fell over her face, dark, twinkling with tiny diamonds like stars. Even so, through its fine mesh, I could see her grief-reddened eyes.

  “Anne...no,” I whispered harshly, shrugging her hand off. I wanted no comfort from my wife. What comfort could anyone give me, even Anne?

  “It is all right, Richard.” She tried to soothe me, as one would a child. “It is no shame to weep. It is natural that you grieve for your King, for your brother…”

  “No, no! Anne. I…I cannot!” Trembling taking me again, I flinched away. I felt as though I might explode, or shatter like glass. (Had not one of the French kings, Holy Harry Six’s ancestor, thought he was made of glass?)

  She did not know—yet—the rest of Will Hastings’ message. ‘Get you to London as swift as you may.’

  Nor had I told her of the second courier who had reached Middleham, bearing yet more evil tidings: The Woodvilles would pervert the late King’s wishes. Thomas Grey laughs and says, ‘We need no Lord Protector’. The accursed family wanted a full-sized army to escort the young King from Ludlow but I naysaid them in this plan, and swore I would retire to Calais in protest unless they limited the size of the entourage to 2000. You must come to London immediately, Gloucester…and you must take charge of the King’s person.”

  Shakily I rose from my kneeling position. “I cannot dally in my grief, Anne. I must send a letter to Edward’s council. And another to the Queen. Although Elizabeth Woodville and her kin seem to have forgotten that Ned had a brother—a brother he named Protector of the Realm of England!”

  I stumbled out of the chapel, leaving a stunned Anne on her knees behind me. Seeking my private study, I summoned my secretary John Kendall and composed the two missives, my words blunt and straight forward, with no niceties or polite embellishments. Once these were composed I then wrote a slightly more courteous message to Anthony Woodville, Earl Rivers, who resided in Ludlow Castle with my brother’s heir, suggesting that we meet in an agreed place so that I might ride into London beside the young King, as befitted my position as Lord Protector-to-be.

  No sooner had my couriers galloped off on the road leading south, and I was about to return to chapel for more prayers, when another rider came clattering over the castle drawbridge, his mount lathered in sweat and caked with mud from the road.

  As he was brought before me in the Great Hall, to my surprise I noticed that he wore a badge bearing the Swan device of Harry Stafford, my Lord of Buckingham. What could Harry want with me at this desperate time? I thought crossly, not at all pleased to have a distraction from a cousin I only really knew from attending my young nephew Richard’s wedding to the heiress Anne Mowbray.

  Bemused, I took the parchment Buckingham’s messenger proffered, unrolled it and then read it with some surprise, for it was in Harry Stafford’s own hand, rather than his secretary’s; small, rounded letters, almost like those written by a child, the letters of a boy in his hornbook. An urgent letter, a very personal letter, eulogising the late King. I could almost see tears, real or feigned, staining the parchment. Stafford waxed lyrical, praising Ned and lamenting the untimeliness of his death, and added that he prayed I might soon be eased of my natural grief…so that I might not ‘chance to lose’ the high position the King had bestowed upon me.

  It was almost what one might expect as a letter of condolence, excepting the open flattery and florid prose, but then, below the main body of writing, a postscript had been added in scrawled, hasty writing, changing the tone of the letter from standard sentiments—to something else. Something dark, ominous.

  I can meet you along the road to London. I can bring a thousand good men.

  Your loving Cousin,

  Harry Buckingham

  Souvente me Souvene.

  The Duke of Buckingham was offering me a thousand men? Frowning, I chewed on my lower lip. Why would I need such forces to ride into London? No battle was brewing. Lord Hastings had curbed the excesses of the Woodvilles, at least for now, and once I had reached the capital, asserted my right and was proclaimed by the council, there would be nothing to fear.

  Or was I being too optimistic? Troubled, I secreted the letter inside my doublet. Harry Stafford knew the Woodvilles far better than I did. He was, after all, wed to the Queen’s own sister Catherine, although their match appeared to be inharmonious—the marriage had been forced upon him as a boy and he despised her lesser blood. I would not answer the Duke just yet but would bide my time for as long as I could, seeing if any more news of importance reached me from the south.

  It did. Anthony Woodville, writing from Ludlow on the Welsh borders, responded promptly to my earlier letter. His return message was brief, but friendly enough in tone. He proposed that he meet me in the town of Northampton with the new King on or about the 29th of April. From there, we could travel together to London, where the city fathers would to receive us and pay homage to young Edward V.

  Without thinking, my hand snaked inside my clothing to touch the letter from Buckingham, lying crushed against my heart. With a strange feeling of unease, I drew it
out and slowly read it over. As I did so, I once again recalled what Will Hastings had told me; that the Woodvilles had at first wanted a full-sized army to escort the King to London. Will’s threats had caused them to abandon their plans, but the fact remained that they seemed to anticipate conflict.

  I did not, could not trust them.

  Hastily, I summoned John Kendall, with his ink-stained fingers that could also hold a sword.

  “Kendall, sit you down. I have need of your talents yet again. I want to send a letter to My Lord of Buckingham at his castle of Brecknock. Tell him I would be glad of his company upon the road; let us meet in the town of Northampton just before the month’s end. But I do not wish him to bring a thousand men, I would not have it seem we are bent on confrontation. Bring three hundred only, to match the amount I will have in my own retinue.”

  Clad in dark mourning clothes, I prepared to leave the safety of Middleham for the journey south. “God go with you.” Anne clutched a jewelled rosary in her hands, face fearful, white-cheeked. She knew of Will’s letters, knew the Woodville faction would seek a control that was contrary to my brother’s final wishes…and to the will of most of the country.

  “I will write as soon as I may,” I told her, and then, furled in black mourning garb, and with my sombre men likewise dressed, I rode over the drawbridge, out through Middleham town and away upon the road.

  York was our first stop. Awe inspiring as ever, it rose up before us, the mighty gold-hued walls and the spires of its many churches and religious houses shimmering in an unearthly haze. Riding through Bootham Bar to the Minster, my company sought solace within the grandeur of that church, taking Mass and praying for Edward’s soul, before solemnly swearing oaths to serve the new young King. A night was spent in town; I with the monks at the Lendal, withdrawn from any company, consumed by my sorrow and my worries. Then, as dawn’s light reddened the Minster’s vast towers, my entourage struck out along the King’s Great Way, hurrying toward Nottingham and the more southerly lands beyond.

  Nottingham went by, a hazy distant sprawl, and then Leicester, much the same; passing through Husbands Bosworth and Wellford, the company reached the main road into Northampton and proceeded onwards at a steady clip.

  Approaching the town, immediately I spotted stone walls in poor repair. Northampton had once been a wealthy place, but the Black Death had killed half its residents, and it had never recovered from that blow. Riding past the monastery of St Andrews, I skirted alongside the curtain wall of the Royal Castle, one flank of which faced the town, while the other overlooked the brown waters of the River Nene. The fortress’s crenellations were crumbling, its defences poorly manned and weak; although once the site of many a parliament, it was now mainly used as a gaol. The royal apartments had been ransacked years ago, and were now rumoured to be so damp that a mere night there would bring on deadly maladies. No royal standard flew from the turrets, so the young Edward V would not be waiting there with his uncle Anthony but lodged in more savoury accommodation elsewhere.

  My companions were eyeing me speculatively, looking for direction. “We go on.” I turned my steed’s head away from the ivy-swathed castle portcullis and toward Marefair, one of the main thoroughfares into Northampton.

  As my company entered the street, dismay filled me. Northampton’s ruination was greater than I had heard. Hard by the castle, ramshackle houses clustered like beggars before a church door, some empty, with their roofs torn away and sunlight shining between naked beams. Haggard folk shuffled between them and gazed down from shutterless windows. The plague had hit hard indeed, and poverty and penury had followed in its wake.

  To my left, the church of St Peter, used by the castle’s garrison, still retained some of its former glory; kings and nobles had prayed there once. A little further up the street, between the ragged houses, the solid walls of a smaller church were also visible—St Gregory’s, where an Angel had once appeared to a pilgrim newly returned from the Holy Land. Tormented by bodily affliction and without land or belongings save for the Rood he had found in the sands near Jerusalem, the pilgrim had lain down to die in despair when the Angel appeared to him, wreathed in marvellous light. “This be the centre of England,” cried the Angel, “and here may the Holy Rood rest within the Wall, unto the end of days, to the marvel of all men in Christendom.”

  And so the Rood was set into a carven niche, with much scrollwork and ornament around the edge, and ten years ago a branch of William Hastings’ family became benefactors of the church and established the ‘Guild of the Holy Rood.’ I would have gladly halted and gazed upon such a wondrous relic, but time was pressing. The King and Anthony Woodville might have reached Northampton already, though no messengers had come to find me.

  Surrounded by curious bystanders, I continued to ride up Gold Street, where the Goldsmiths had their workshops. Greater prosperity was evident here, the buildings repaired and rebuilt, the shop fronts garishly bright and the crowds thronging the streets rowdy but ruddy-cheeked—a mixture of artisans, hawkers and merchants. Behind the rows of shops, a bell was ringing from the newly built college of All Hallows and another from St Katherine’s, a chapel of ease built for the families of victims of the plague.

  At the crest of Gold Street, several streets merged; on one side, a steep hill swooped down to the hospital of Saint John, while on the other Draper’s Row stretched towards Marehold and Sheep Street, where local farmers sold their livestock. In the centre, at the crux of the roads, stood All Hallows church, the heart of Northampton town, with the battlemented Guildhall and the huge market square, largest in all England, just beyond its churchyard. Crusades had been called in All Hallows, and King Henry One, having lost his only son the Young King in the wreck of the White Ship, had forced his barons to swear loyalty to his daughter before the high altar—my esteemed ancestress, Matilda, wife of Geoffrey Plantagenet.

  However, Northampton had a reputation of lawlessness. I remembered Ned (oh Edward, how it pains me to think of you…your great heart, your laughter, now forever stilled!) one night before Tewkesbury telling tales of the battle he and Warwick had won before the very doors of Northampton’s Abbey of St Mary De la Pre. (They had carted Holy Harry Six from his tent, gurgling prayers, while the Duke of Buckingham, Harry Stafford’s Grandfather, died defending him—fighting on the wrong side, I might add.) “After the battle, Richard, we went to Northampton looking for…Well, drink, plunder and women, I suppose!” Edward’s laugh had rumbled out like warm thunder. “But, my God, Richard, they were a rowdy lot! Someone stole my boots from a baggage cart, and the town full of cordwainers, where boots are aplenty! That put me in a foul temper…and then I saw the women! Ugh! I thought I might have an apoplectic fit, like old King Louis of France!”

  “What were they like?” I had asked, leaning forward, eager to hear some amusing ribald tale. I was, after all, only eighteen at the time!

  Ned had laughed again, shoving a wedge of apple into his mouth. “Didn’t know whether I was looking at the Fishmonger’s wares or the women! Jesu! Goggling eyes and flapping mouths. Sad to say, I slept alone that night! Just as well. Fights kept breaking out all over town, and it was not my men doing the brawling, nor was it because the town favoured the Lancastrians. The locals just found it a good opportunity to break someone’s pate.”

  “But why, Ned?” I had asked, all youthful innocence. I liked a good scrap myself, but only if there was a good reason.

  Edward had shrugged. “Some folk are just like that. Should have expected it—years ago, blessed St Hugh of Lincoln was summoned to Northampton after the townsfolk set up a shrine to a murdered thief who had stolen riches from a Jew! They rioted within All Hallows, slashing at each other with swords until St Hugh leapt on the false saint’s tomb and threatened to smash the combatants to Hell with his crosier!”

  I sighed, forcing memories of Ned to the back of my mind in case grief overtook me. With luck, none of the riotous Northamptoners would be in evidence, and my visit would be an
uneventful one….although I was a slightly perplexed. The town seemed a little too quiet, considering my three hundred men had arrived, and Anthony Woodville and the new King were, if not in Northampton already, about to arrive. I glanced amidst the crowds in the market place, seeking for Anthony Woodville’s colours or for those of the new King. Nothing.

  I hastened to the Bantam Cock hostelry, where my outriders had purchased rooms where I would stay. A rag-tag crowd had gathered to gawp at the royal Duke; as I dismounted and flung my reins to an ostler, they swarmed towards me, uncaring that my armed retainers shouted, “Stand back!” and thrust them further into the gutter.

  One doxy slipped under a soldier’s arm and grinned up at me with broken teeth. She was dwarfish, and had but one hand—the other must have been cut off for some thievery. “If yer lonely tonight, milord, I’ll be down the market square! I know yer fancy me really!”

  I stared, aghast, thinking ‘Ned was right!’ as the crowd hooted with laughter and a local beadle shouted, “Off with you, Maud!’ and hustled the shrieking hussy toward the market square.

  Unscathed though a bit perturbed, I entered the common room of the Bantam Cock. The innkeeper was waiting, bald and shiny-headed, as innkeepers frequently seemed to be, while members of my entourage rushed about him, bringing in my supplies and belongings and tripping over his own busy servants, his dogs, and his womenfolk.

  “Are there any messages, any visitors?” I peeled off my gloves and stretched out my stiff fingers.

  “No, your Grace, none at all.”

  “Hmm. I will go upstairs and wait for news. Bring me wine and bring me food. Naught too heavy on the palate, for I will doubtless dine again when those I am expecting have arrived.”

  The innkeeper led me into the upstairs hall and I sat down at the table, which had been scrubbed and disinfected with a wash of vinegar. Sweet muscatel wine was brought in a decanter, and a maid flounced up the stairs with a pie upon a platter, looking so nervous and flustered by my presence I feared she might drop it in my lap.