A Tapestry of Treason Page 4

  For the first time in our exchange of hostilities Thomas laughed, although the edge was plain enough. ‘Thank God He never put a sword into your hand and sent you out onto a battlefield!’ But the laughter died. ‘I don’t think we have any choice in the matter. The momentum is against us. Lancaster is proving to be a driving force with an iron will to batter all into submission.’

  ‘But what we don’t know, of course, is whether Lancaster will accept your change of heart.’

  ‘No, we do not. And I dislike the possibilities if he decides that we are too much of a threat to his plans, whatever they might be. He executed the rebels who stood against him at Bristol fast enough. So we must keep our heads below the parapet.’

  ‘As long as we have heads to protect.’

  His glance was sharp. ‘What we have to ask ourselves is – what is Lancaster’s intention towards Richard? Does he want him alive or dead?’

  I saw the cold judgement in his face, heard it in his voice. Would he actually care, as long as his own neck was safe? Ambition aside, I hoped that I cared.

  ‘Do you actually like Richard?’ I asked, without thinking.

  ‘Like him?’

  ‘You have lived in his palaces, eaten the food provided by him, worn the clothes and jewels he has given as gifts, enjoyed the patronage and the title of Duke of Gloucester. You have enjoyed Richard’s recognition of your family and its reinstatement after the Despenser treasons of the past. You have been grateful to him. But do you like him?’

  ‘Does it matter? I swore my oath of loyalty to him.’

  ‘That is not at all the same thing.’

  He considered, prepared to answer my question after all. ‘Like is too innocuous a word. Yes, I am grateful. Without this upheaval I would have remained loyal to him. But I don’t trust him, if that’s what you mean.’ And I thought that for once I could accept Thomas’s honesty, for there was no one here for him to impress except myself. ‘He is fickle. He can turn against his friends as quickly as he can turn against his enemies. Any man foolish enough to make an enemy of Richard might risk the kiss of an axe against his neck.’

  We all knew it well. When Richard was still young and untried as a monarch, giving power and patronage to unsuitable favourites, a group of magnates had taken issue with him. His favourite, de Vere, was beaten on the battlefield and hounded into exile. Richard was forced against his will to promise to take advice from those who knew better. Thus the Lords Appellant had become a force to be reckoned with.

  But Richard would not accept this curb rein on him for ever. Three years ago now, he had taken his revenge on those five Lords. His uncle Thomas of Woodstock had been smothered in his bed in Calais. The Earl of Arundel had been executed on Tower Hill, the Earl of Warwick imprisoned. The Earl of Nottingham had been banished for life. And Cousin Henry, then Earl of Hereford, the youngest of the Appellants, had been banished for a treason he had probably not committed. We all recognised that Richard had a vengeful spirit.

  ‘He carries grudges. He is self-absorbed in his own powers. No, I do not like him. I do not trust him.’ Thomas finished off the cup of wine. ‘Now we have to see what happens with the disposition of the crown, since it has been snatched from Richard’s fair head. We will act accordingly. I will not willingly give up what I have achieved.’

  He tightened his hand into my hair, curling his wrist into its thickness, and bestowed another kiss, harder, surer.

  ‘The question is, my lovely, ambitious Constance. Do you stand with me or against me?’

  My loyalties to my family were strong, yet I would stand or fall with my married Despenser fate. Indeed, were they not so completely intertwined, as Thomas’s hand in my hair, that there was no need to make a choice? York, Holland and Despenser would fight as one to keep their pre-eminence, whoever was King, be it Richard or Henry.

  ‘With you, Thomas. Are you not my devoted husband?’

  His kiss deepened. His hands tightened on my shoulders.

  ‘Then show me.’

  ‘Do I not always?’

  ‘No. Of course you do not.’ His hands slid to encircle my wrists and he pressed his mouth against the soft skin there, where my pulse beat, slow and unaroused. ‘I missed you.’

  ‘Which I do not believe.’

  ‘If only for your sharp tongue.’ His eyes softened, warning me of his change of mood. ‘But not only that.’ He lifted the ivory-backed mirror from the coffer at my side. ‘What do you see?’ He held it before my face. ‘What do you see, my lovely Constance?’

  ‘What should I see?’ I asked, determined not to respond to his cold-blooded wooing.

  ‘I’ll tell you.’ The curve of his lips became sardonic, his chin tilted, as he surveyed me. ‘I see a profusion of hair as fair as that of any angel painted in a missal, a face which is a perfection of shape and fine bones. Eyes lustrous enough to entrap any heedless man. A straight nose, lips indented at this moment with displeasure, an unhandsome crease between elegant brows.’ Thomas stroked the brows with the tip of one finger. ‘Is that sufficient to express my heart-felt admiration?’

  ‘How unexpectedly chivalrous,’ I observed as the crease became deeper and thus even less handsome.

  ‘Smile, Constance.’

  Obedient to his command, I smiled, knowing that my face would be lit as if with an inner light, even though it was a mockery.

  ‘If your unholy mother gave you nothing beyond a love of duplicity, at least you inherited the handsomeness of your Castilian forbears. Why should I not miss you? A lovely woman at his side is a gift of value to a man of ambition.’

  The mirror was cast aside regardless of its fragility. His chaperon and gloves were abandoned where I had left them on the floor, the damask garment shrugged off to join them, while I was efficiently dutiful if not enthusiastic as he led me into the inner chamber where the great bed with its Despenser hangings, all sumptuous gold fretwork on a red field, dominated the space. I knew the words to say, the caresses to give. I knew what duty meant within a loveless marriage. We had a son and a daughter, healthy evidence of my wifely attention. I gave him ease and obedience. If he wanted ecstasy he could employ one of the Court whores and pay her well in coin and compliments. He paid me in neither and awoke no desire in me. Nor did I expect it. I would live out my life with no experience of love, be it the soft caring gestures within a family or the blazing passion of lust. Life, I accepted, would be far more equable without. My mother had felt the hot breath of such a lust, with raw repercussions when she took a lover. I would never follow in her scandalous footprints. Political aspiration for my family would serve me well enough.

  Thomas fell asleep at my side with no more than a grunt of exhaustion while I lay awake and considered the dangers in which we found ourselves. For what was treason? Treason depended on whose brow bore the crown. At the moment it seemed that the crown of England lay in the gutter.

  And then as I fell into sleep, I wondered what was the advice that Edward, in Ireland, had given Richard which had awakened Thomas’s suspicions. I sighed a little. Whatever it was that Edward had set his hand to must wait.

  * * *

  From where had my enmity to my husband stemmed? It had always been there. I had never found anything to like in Thomas, Lord Despenser, as he had been titled since the day I had wed him at the age of four years. There were some elements of that event that clung to my mind, to make a lasting impression on the woman I was to become. I was told what to say during the ceremony and spoke the words, although I did not understand the questions asked of me by the priest. The boy of six years at my side, gloomy-faced, without a glance in my direction, said the same. We were word perfect, and there was much indulgent laughter when our hands were joined and the boy was instructed to kiss my cheek, which he did, a peck worthy of a cock pheasant.

  I was his wife, I was given to understand. I looked at him with some interest, for he was a handsome boy. He looked at me, fleetingly, as if he would rather I had been the gift of a new hawk or hound. I don’t think that he looked at me again, except when I asked him:

  ‘Where is your father? Is he not here?’

  ‘My father is dead,’ he said.

  ‘I am sorry.’

  ‘I don’t need your sorrow.’ His lips twisted. ‘I don’t like you. I am here because my mother commands that I must wed you.’

  The only words we exchanged on that auspicious occasion. I would never forget his utter lack of interest in me, not that I would ever allow him, then when I was a child, or in later years when it mattered more to me, to see how much his indifference had wounded both my pride and my desire to be liked by this boy to whom I was tied by oaths and religious ceremony. Nor could I forget the overheard heat of ill temper between my father and mother as we sat at the culmination of the feast.

  ‘Could we not have done better than this?’ my mother asked under cover of a ceremonial blast of a trumpet as King Richard arrived late, but still to grace us with his presence.

  ‘The lad is a ward of the King. How much better do you want?’ My father was trenchant.

  ‘Despenser! His family is mired in past scandals. There are still treason judgements against his ancestors for corruption and misplaced ambitions. Are we not worth a more advantageous alliance?’

  My mother’s voice was still heavily accented from her Castilian birth, but her words were clear to those who eavesdropped, as I did while I washed my hands in a silver bowl.

  ‘Your mother was a whore,’ my father said. ‘Before your father made her respectable and married her. How much scandal do you lay claim to, Isabella?’

  It meant little beyond the shock of his use of that word in polite company.

  ‘But a royal whore, and to your advantage. You only wed me because of my royal Castilian blood.’

  There was no love lost between them.

  ‘I wed you, Isabella, because my father the King insisted on it and for no other reason,’ was the brusque reply. ‘Both Castilian heiresses married to two of his sons. As my wife, no one can use you to make a claim against your sister Constanza, who as the elder has the claim to the Castilian throne. If anyone will be King of Castile it will be my brother John of Lancaster who had the privilege of wedding her. I will not challenge him.’

  This was not new to me, that my uncle John of Lancaster hoped to lay hands on the Kingdom of Castile for himself in his wife Constanza’s name, although then, in my childhood, it was beyond my true understanding. My mother and her sister were the heiresses of King Pedro of Castile, recently stabbed to death by his half-brother Enrique of Trastámara. Through their blood ran the claim to the kingdom even if their mother Maria de Padilla had been Pedro’s mistress, her secret marriage to Pedro repudiated in favour of a more well-connected legitimate bride. Thus the legitimacy of the two girls was open to dispute, but my mother was a woman of some importance, particularly in her own mind.

  ‘You have water in your veins,’ she announced to anyone who wished to hear. ‘I would have liked you better if you had refused me.’

  They detested each other.

  My mother caught me, now patting my fingers dry on a length of fair linen, at the same time watching and listening.

  ‘Go and sit with your husband.’

  Thomas was engaged in fighting imaginary battles or tilting at famous opponents, in company with some of my cousins. He had not turned his head in my direction for the whole of that interminable feast.

  ‘He has no interest in me, madam,’ I said.

  She leaned and whispered, lips thin: ‘You will do well to make him have an interest in you, child.’

  ‘Why, madam?’

  ‘Don’t question everything, Constance.’ She was always impatient. ‘You’ll learn soon enough. Just do it.’

  But how to achieve the impossible? Thomas Despenser regarded me as a possession to stamp respectability on his name.

  ‘What does mired in scandal mean?’ I asked my brother Edward, for with two more years than I, he would surely know.

  He wrinkled his nose. ‘Nothing good, I’d say.’

  So I asked my nurse.

  ‘Nothing you will ever be accused of, Constance. You will be the perfect daughter. The most acclaimed wife. Look how pretty you are. And how pretty your young husband is.’

  ‘Will I see him again?’

  ‘When you are a young woman grown.’

  ‘When will that be?’

  ‘When you have reached your fourteenth year.’

  It seemed an age away. ‘I don’t think he will miss me.’

  ‘No, I don’t think he will.’

  ‘It doesn’t matter, does it?’

  ‘No. You are royal, my child. And he is not.’

  ‘Will he like me?’

  ‘It matters not whether he does or does not.’

  It was an unsettling day after which I returned to my life of prayer and learning and skills appropriate to a daughter of Edmund, Earl of Cambridge, fourth son of the old King Edward the Third and soon to become Duke of York. My parents returned to their own interests which, with deliberate intent, did not often bring them into each other’s company, nor into that of their children. We had no memory of maternal love during our childhood years. If we had, it might be that we would have become a less rancorous brood.

  As for Thomas Despenser, Lord Despenser, I had wanted more than the hostility that sparked between my father and mother, whether he was worthy of me or not. It was not to be. I might have loved him. I might have experienced at least an affection for him, but Thomas admired my dowry and my Plantagenet blood far more than he admired me, and for the most part ignored me except for the need to produce an heir. In the end, it did not matter. We were man and wife and, as many another ill-matched pair, we would live out our days together.

  Chapter Three

  Early September 1399: Tower of London

  * * *

  ‘Where is Mathes?’ King Richard demanded as soon as I set foot within the confines of his room. ‘What have you done with Mathes?’

  ‘Who?’ For a moment I was nonplussed. Of all the opening commands or pleas I might have expected from Richard, this was not one of them.

  ‘Mathes. My greyhound. I wish him to be here with me. Where is he?’

  ‘I don’t know, my lord.’

  It seemed to me that there was far more serious content for this discussion between us than the whereabouts of Richard’s favourite greyhound.

  ‘Bring him to me. I command it.’

  But how could I?

  I had awoken that morning, Thomas long gone on his own affairs, with one clear thought leaping fully fledged into my mind. I must go to Richard. Waiting for Henry of Lancaster to show us the length and breadth of his ultimate goal toward Richard and the kingdom was all very well, but I could not rest. The one memory I could not shake free from my mind was that of Richard standing in the Great Hall, alone, isolated, even though he was surrounded by my father’s retainers. It had touched my heart with a deep compassion of which I had thought myself incapable. I could not abandon my cousin.

  Richard commanded our duty and our loyalty. He was our King, anointed with holy oil, crowned and invested with the sacred regalia of kingship. Casting off such a loyalty was not a simple matter. Nor, for me, was it only a matter of loyalty to my King. Thomas would not understand, but Richard was my cousin. I had known him from birth, enjoyed his hospitality and his patronage, but also his kindness, which had not been merely an extension of his power. Were we not close by blood?

  I recalled him drawing me into the intimate circle around his first much-loved wife Anne. I had clear memory of his dancing with me when my steps were still unsure. A collector of fine jewels, he had given me the heraldic brooch of a white hart, bound with gold and rubies, that I pinned to my bodice every morning.

  With no need to inform anyone of my movements, for the Countess of Gloucester was beyond criticism, I arranged to travel by river from Westminster to the Tower in my father’s barge. Enjoying the luxury of the scarlet-cushioned seats with their gold-embroidered lions, I made good time for the tide had just turned, the strengthening current aiding the oarsmen. Once there, entering by the Watergate, I acknowledged, as I often did, that the bulk of the Conqueror’s White Tower would intimidate any visitor, its shadow causing me to shiver despite the warmth of the autumn sun reflecting from the stonework.

  There was an immediate obstacle to my plan, all six feet of him standing in my path before I had barely stepped beyond the wharf. Will Plimpton, knight, my father’s Captain of the Guard. He had known me since I was a child and still had the habit of addressing me as he had when I held no status other than my father’s daughter.

  ‘If you have come to see the King, then you can’t. He’s kept under strict confinement, Mistress Constance.’

  He had read my intent well enough.

  ‘I am not here to manage his flight to safety, Will. I am here as a friend and a cousin, to give comfort.’

  ‘There’s an unconscionable number of cousins in this affair. And be that as it may, mistress, he is allowed no visitors unless sanctioned by the Duke of Lancaster himself. Those are my orders.’

  He was an old ally of mine. ‘Do you not serve my father?’ I asked with terrible innocence, smoothing my knuckles over the Yorkist livery that covered his chest with fleurs-de-lys and Plantagenet lions.

  ‘Not when Lancaster is occupying the royal apartments.’

  I changed direction. ‘I am a mere woman, Will. I am no threat. I will not stay long and none need know that you have given your permission. Certainly not my father or Lancaster. I promise I will not speak of it. Besides, my father does not object to my being here, so why should my cousin of Lancaster? Indeed, I believe my father discussed my visit with Lancaster on his arrival in London.’

  My father had done no such thing; he had no idea of what I was about, and would have forbidden it out of hand if he had been aware, but what was not known could not be grieved over.