on that crucial lesson.
So, while my hurt at John Holland’s behaviour rumbled in the background, I watched the political manoeuvrings at Richard’s royal audience. It was indeed an education in itself, now that I knew how to see the settings of the chess pieces on the board. Why had I never realised it before? I had been too taken up with the individual knights and pawns, the King and Queen. Too interested in their characters, their clothing, the rumours that knit them all together into a family, I supposed.
Be my eyes and ears, Princess Joan had instructed me, and I had agreed with no real understanding of what it would mean. But now I did. Now I separated myself from my family and watched them with a political eye. My father would have been proud of me. I saw their movements, like those same chessmen. I sensed the political cunning.
Some were moved and directed by Richard himself, those set on the fringe of the gathering. The royal uncles. My father. Even Henry. Even the Queen who my father had thought might be a power to be reckoned with but still had to find her feet in this country alien to her. One day, perhaps. But for now Richard saw her as an acquisition who would enhance his own glory. When I caught her eye and smiled, I thought that she was watching and assessing as closely as I, even if for entirely different reasons.
For there also, not quite in the royal eye, were the two Holland brothers. How accurate my father’s reading of their isolation. Although they conversed easily with Richard, there was a quickly veiled irritation on John’s face when he observed, as I did, those who were fast becoming Richard’s new court. The expensive coterie of flamboyant, fashionable courtiers. All young. None of the older generation who had nurtured Richard from child to man.
And at the centre, the vivacious Robert de Vere, well-born, well-blessed with looks and stature, son and heir of the Earl of Oxford. They were the group from the courtyard, well-mannered, courteous and dignified in this formal audience, and yet there was the same flattery in their glances. The same fawning as they hung on Richard’s every word. And Richard loved it. Richard was in thrall. When they covered him with praise, he laughed. To one he handed a ring as if it were of no consequence, even if the stone glinted its value from across the chamber. To another he handed with casual brilliance a gilded Book of Hours worth more than my precious gold-stitched gown.
Whose was the master hand here, moving the King in his solitary steps? Was he his own man? And I knew that he was not. I could see it. It was Robert de Vere who smiled and spoke, soft-voiced, encouraging Richard in his extravagance. It was not John Holland. Richard’s half-brothers received no gift on that day.
How important it was for ambition-ridden John Holland to build himself a new alliance—for he would get no promotion from Richard who had eyes for no one but de Vere. So John would make his fortune with my father. Was I then truly a part of the plan? To gain my sympathy, my compassion, my support? Was John placing stones one on another to build a formidable position of strength, with me as one of those blocks, smoothed and created by his own flattery? My father admired his talents if not his character. Henry owed a heavy debt to him, for the rescue from certain death in the Tower. As did I. Henry might scowl, but there was a powerful connection there that would never be truly severed. So what if Elizabeth was also a useful tool to weld the Hollands and the Lancasters into a formidable block of power? I could forgive him the torrid relationship with Isabella. Mostly. But to use me as a pawn in his political game I could not forgive.
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