Anne O'Brien – A Tapestry of Treason (страница 11)

‘Yes, yes, I can do that.’

‘Promise me that you won’t forget. Otherwise Henry will have his revenge on all of us.’

‘I promise. You will not suffer for your friendship to your King.’

He was smiling at me, although a watery affair as I saluted him on his cheeks and walked to knock on the door to summon the guard to release me. I had done all I could, for Richard and for my family’s uncertain future, but Richard’s utter weakness appalled me.

‘How can I live, if I am not King?’

His final despairing words as I left him standing at the window, looking out on the realm that was indeed no longer his, remained with me as I returned to the barge, the oarsmen who would need to flex their muscles against the drag of the Thames, aiding their wait with leather jugs of ale. My family and the Hollands owed so much to Richard, our present Dukedoms of Aumale and Surrey and Exeter a precious gift after our support in his campaign to punish the Lords Appellant. We could not abandon the giver of such costly patronage. We had been the jewels in Richard’s crown, but it was clear to me that Henry might prise those jewels out and replace them with new. And then where would we be? I had no confidence in Richard’s promise to win Henry’s compliance, that we would be free from any revenge if Henry decided to take it.

Thomas said we should wait.

It seemed to me too dangerous to wait.

‘You’ve company, mistress.’ The captain broke into my thoughts, nodding towards the gilded prow where a familiar figure sprawled on the cushions, regaling the rowers with some tale that had them laughing.

‘How did you get here?’ I asked as I stepped aboard and the oarsmen took their positions.

Dickon pointed at a wherry that was heading towards the opposite bank. He came to sit beside me.

‘What does the King say?’

I shrugged. ‘He’s concerned about his ruby ring and his hound.’ I caught the slide of my brother’s eye. ‘What is it?’

‘A man might wonder whether you came here for Richard’s sake or for ours.’

How true. I had not been completely altruistic, but I would not deny my loyalty to Richard. Equally I would not reveal to my brother the content of my advice to him. ‘A man should keep his inquisitive nose out of my affairs,’ I said, and turned my face towards Westminster, where all was to play for.

A little time after dawn on the following day I met with my family in my father’s private chamber at Westminster, summoned by him with unaccustomed stringency. Even the timing was unusual. My father, ageing rapidly week by week, rarely broke his fast before the day was well advanced. There were six of us all told. It had, I decided, although I would never have been allowed to attend such a meeting, the semblance of a council of war. The room might be familiar with its solid stonework and hunting tapestries, but the atmosphere was as sharp as that first sip of newly brewed ale.

‘You are late,’ my father observed as I entered.

I curtsied, watching my tongue. I suspected that this would be a long and acrimonious exchange of views.

Here we were, my father lowering himself awkwardly to a cushioned chair. His lips were pressed hard against the pain that these days never left him. The stiffness in his back was now permanent, exacerbated by any attempt to ride or walk far. It made his temper chancy. Joan gave him a cup of ale and took a stool at his side.

And then my brothers. First in importance as my father’s heir, my brother Edward, indolently stretched on a window seat, a hawk on his fist, a smoothly brindled greyhound at his feet. Dickon lounged against the ribbed stonework near the door as if to escape at the first opportunity, fidgeting with a knife he had taken from his belt. Thomas, my husband, seated on the only cushioned stool, glowered with some silent discontent.

And I? Why was I tolerated in this convening of male minds? Because in this household we talked politics and power. We always had, from dawn to dusk, assessing friend and enemy, alliances and allegiances. Such were the subjects of most importance to us. I stood behind my husband, my hand lightly resting on his shoulder, seemly as any wife. Joan was present because everyone had forgotten about her. She had a gift for drawing no one’s eye. My mother, the Castilian princess who had caught everyone’s eye, had been dead for seven years. My father’s second wife, Joan Holland, was young at nineteen years to my father’s fifty-eight. I watched them together as she stood to stuff another goose-feather cushion behind him, remarking not for the first time that the famous beauty of her grandmother, Joan of Kent, had left only the faintest imprint on her. She was a sparrow here, amidst a flock of goldfinches, yet however unmemorable her brown hair and pale, plain features might be, my father smiled his thanks. He treated her like a daughter, with far more affection than he had ever shown to me. Sometimes I found it difficult to tolerate Joan’s presence, much less her meek subservience.

Thus the house of York, the noble family of the fourth son of King Edward the Third. Some would say a family to be reckoned with given our rank and royal blood; others would deem us a family to be wary of, a family driven to snatch at wealth and power. Beneath the unity of our name seethed rank ambition and sour suspicion, in no manner alleviated since the day that our gifts had caught the wayward eye of King Richard, when our present and our future had gleamed with gold. Now that golden gleam hung in abeyance. After my meeting with Richard, I would not wager a silver penny on any golden future.

Nor, it seemed, could my husband.

‘Why could you not keep Richard safe and at liberty?’ Thomas demanded, unconsciously echoing my own thoughts, voicing the concern that had clearly eaten away at him since Lancaster had taken his royal prize. ‘Was it beyond your powers?’ He turned his eye on my father. ‘You were Keeper of the Kingdom with an army at your command. Surely it was not beyond the wit of man to defeat a traitor who landed in the north with only a handful of misguided supporters? It wasn’t that you did not know Lancaster was coming.’

Thomas stood, shaking off my hand, as if he could bear to sit no longer.

My father replied promptly. ‘I knew he was coming, but I did not know where he would land. How can we gauge the tides and the winds? By the time we met, it was my judgement that Lancaster’s following was too powerful to be stopped.’ His gaze narrowed against the attack, his response blisteringly formal. ‘You had your own role in our failure, Despenser. A man who could not get his own tenants to arm and march to the succour of their King is in no position to denigrate others. You are not innocent in this debacle.’

The room, from carved roof beams to painted tiles, churned with rancour. I could do nothing to halt the accusation and counter-accusation, and indeed knew better than to try. Joan withdrew circumspectly to the far end of the chamber, as far from the imminent conflagration as possible, signalling her distance by picking up a length of girdle that she proceeded to stitch.

‘At least I stayed with him to the end.’ Refusing to be silenced, Thomas’s eye swept on to land on Edward. ‘Unlike some of us here. And it wasn’t me who advised Richard to remain in Ireland, when we all knew Lancaster was already in England. Why in God’s name did you do that?’

Edward merely smiled, eyes as hooded as the hawk’s whose neck he scratched, causing it to bob its head in pleasure. ‘No one wanted all-out war, and one we would have lost.’

My father was reining hard on his temper. ‘Sit down, Thomas. You knew the situation as well as I. Lancaster was stronger. The Earls of Northumberland and Westmorland were riding with him and more than half the northern magnates, not to mention the Cheshire archers. If we had taken it to a battlefield we would have been beaten out of sight and Richard would be in a worse position than he is now.’

Thomas sat, hands planted on his knees, but was no more amenable to reason. ‘Is that possible? He’s a prisoner under Lancaster’s brutal justice. If you had met with Lancaster near Ravenspur, before he joined up with Northumberland, you could have swept him back out to sea. But no, you marched west and—’

I replaced my hand on Thomas’s shoulder and pressed down hard. No point in inflicting wounds here that could never be healed. The past could not be changed, even though every accusation he made against my father was undoubtedly true.

My father continued to explain his lack of effective action. ‘I marched west to meet up with Richard’s army and present a united front. That was the plan.’

Thomas had no intention of being silenced, since by now we were all aware of the flush of guilt along my father’s cheekbones. ‘Which didn’t happen.’ Thomas twitched free of my hand once more, a rough gesture. ‘By the time Richard landed on the Welsh coast,’ – once more he glared at Edward – ‘you were comfortably holed up in Berkeley Castle. You had an army of three thousand men. Surely you could have made a good resistance.’