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.’
My father’s face was still flushed, but his reply held the quality of ice.
‘I made a truce with Lancaster at Berkeley because I believed that his claim for justice had much weight. He is my brother’s much-loved son, and as such he should be answered. Besides, my army was breaking up. My best troops were those of John Beaufort. When Beaufort made his peace with his half-brother of Lancaster, he took his troops with him. I would not have expected otherwise.’
Thomas continued to accuse, ignoring the increased pressure of my hand as his tone became increasingly insolent. ‘God’s Blood! So you had sympathy with Lancaster’s cause?’
‘I did,’ my father acknowledged. ‘Richard treated him shamefully.’
‘I don’t deny it, but Richard was our road to power.’ Thomas’s reply lacked pity for either Richard or Henry of Lancaster. ‘Now the goose that laid the golden eggs for all of us is shut up in the Tower, impotent and likely to stay there. I don’t expect Lancaster to be liberal in casting largesse in our direction. We were all too close to Richard for Lancaster to trust us.’
Edward had been as silent as I throughout Thomas’s torrent of invective, but I needed an explanation for the insinuation that he could not ignore if he was guiltless.
‘Why did you advise Richard to delay his return from Ireland?’ I dropped the question into a pause in the hostilities. ‘It smacks of rank stupidity, but when were you ever so careless of battle tactics? You could be accused of collusion with Lancaster.’
Edward, totally unmoved by any of the arrows fired in his direction, stood to place the hawk on the stand against the wall. The hound followed him, sticking close to his heels when he returned to take up a stance in the centre of the group. On my left Dickon slid to sit on the floor, arms around his knees, forehead resting there as if he might sleep through sheer boredom.
‘I am neither stupid nor careless,’ said Edward. ‘It all depends whose poisonous tongue you prefer to believe, dear sister.’
I remembered Richard’s utter weakness. Was Edward truly to blame?
‘Lance the venom, Edward,’ I responded. ‘We’ll all be interested in your explanation.’
‘By God, we will.’ Thomas leaped once more to take up the attack. ‘All was ready in Ireland. We knew Lancaster had returned. The ships were loaded, even down to the horses being on board with all the trouble that takes. And then what? Then you whispered in Richard’s ear and all was unloaded again. We sat and waited in Waterford for another two weeks – two weeks! – by which time Lancaster was well and truly embedded in the country. Whether you were traitor or just incompetent, it was ill-managed, Aumale.’
My
