A Tapestry of Treason

Chapter Six

The door was flung back and Dickon entered, bringing with him an excitement that caused the greyhound to leap up and bark as our spy gathered enough breath to announce:

‘It’s not good news. Not for any of them.’

‘Then tell us…’

He paused to gulp in air. Now beneath the excitement and flush of exertion I could see the suppressed horror, the pale skin around his mouth as if his lips had been pressed hard into silence. Whatever it was, it had been enough to shake Dickon’s engrained shallow heedlessness. His words fell over each other.

‘It’s this. The valet John Hall has been brought from Newgate, on the King’s orders. He is being questioned about the death of our uncle, Thomas of Woodstock, about what he knows and what he saw. But that’s not the worst of it. The King has summoned the Lords to meet with him.’

I shook my head, unable to dispel the dull beat of fear that Dickon’s news had delivered. ‘To what purpose? I presume that our family is still safe.’

‘You might say that. But not for long, I’d say.’ A feral expression twisted his face into that of a malign imp. ‘The King’s excluded from his audience with the Lords those accused by Bagot. The Counter-Appellants. So our Dukes of Aumale, of Surrey and of Exeter are all left to cool their heels in an antechamber while the rest give their counsel.’

The fear roared back into life with the agility of the hound that still leaped up against Dickon as he pulled its ears.

‘What about Thomas?’ I asked. ‘What about our father? Are they too banished from the King’s presence?’

‘I don’t know.’ Dickon subsided to sit on the floor almost at my feet, his back against the window seat, arms clasped around the hound, chin tilted. ‘What I do know is that the King is asking the Lords for advice. Should these maliciously evil counsellors named by Bagot be put under arrest?’

Worse than I thought, but Edward had warned me.

‘Who tells you this?’ I demanded.

His grin widened to accompany a self-deprecating shrug. ‘I have my informants.’

‘And what does your informant say? Will the Lords push for imprisonment?’

‘It’s still being discussed, but voices in the chamber were raised. Even I could hear them. There is much throwing down of hoods, I was told, which is bad, but no one has yet drawn his sword, which is good. The King is being circumspect and has made no decision so far but tempers are high.’ Dickon’s eyes gleamed. ‘I can go back, if you give me more coin.’

I considered a sharp refusal, but with this unforeseen twist knew that I must send him. The axe falling on our combined necks might just become reality.

‘Try not to find it all so enjoyable, Dickon. The outcome here can endanger us all.’

‘I know. But the atmosphere in Westminster buzzes like a beehive disturbed by a badger’s claw. Do I go back?’

Joan allowed a second stream of small coin to fall into Dickon’s outstretched hand, watching it disappear into his clenched fist. By now, as Dickon departed, Joan’s stitching was abandoned on the floor.

‘I don’t think there is any hope that the Lords will lean towards mercy,’ I said. There was nothing to be gained from wishing for the unobtainable.

‘But we don’t know,’ Joan fretted.

‘I think we do.’ And no point at all in trying to bolster her spirits when all pointed to a disaster.

But Dickon, who returned before the end of the day, flushed with his efforts, eagerly snatching the cup of ale from me and gulping it down, seemed on the surface to be more hopeful.

‘They’re still free. But that’s all I can tell you.’

‘Is that not good?’

The question was drawn from me, because for the first time there was a crease between the lad’s brows to match my own. ‘It all hangs in the balance, as I see it. It’s being said that the Counter-Appellants were charmed foster-children of King Richard, and they had incited the King in his vengeance. Since the foster-father was now locked in the Tower, so should his foster-children be condemned to join him there. There are those who are demanding execution.’

I ignored Joan’s intake of breath. This was no time for excess emotion. ‘So it is revenge.’

‘Not revenge. Not in the eyes of the Lords. To them it’s common justice.’

And so it would be in the eyes of many, as I knew.

‘I must pray,’ Joan announced. ‘I will be in St Stephen’s Chapel. Will you come?’

‘No. What good will that do?’

‘How do we know? Better than standing here, watching the prospect of an agonising death unfold before us!’

‘Then you go and pray. I will do the standing and watching.’

Rosary in hand, she left the chamber. I could not pray. It needed some political intervention to save my family. My prayers of thanks to God would come when our position was secure.

They returned. At last, before the sun fell below the horizon, they came to us, including Joan’s brother, a desperation hanging over them like a pall, but still free. Joan, having returned from an hour on her knees, was no less anxious despite her recourse to the Almighty.

‘We know what has been advised by the Lords,’ I said as I helped my father to his chair, Joan relieving him of chaperon and heavy cloak. ‘Dickon has played the spy for us.’

‘It was a terrible day.’ My father, ashen, drawn with pain, his jaw tight, groaned as he settled his limbs. He looked older by a decade as I poured him wine and pushed it into his hand, tightening his fingers around the cup as he looked up into my face. ‘As bad as any I recall. If you will lock the door, I will be grateful. If the King decides to take us prisoner, it will not be tonight unless he is of a mind to break it down. Lock the door, boy.’

Dickon obediently turned the key in the lock.

Wine was poured but the food I had ordered to be brought sat in a congealing mess of grease and sauce, the aromas of roast meat pleasing to none. No one had an appetite.

‘But not one of you is restrained.’ I tried to delve beneath the bleakness.

‘Not yet, we are not, but the Lords in our absence were in damnably unanimous agreement.’ Once again anger overlay anxiety for Edward as he took up his habitual stance in the centre of us all. He would not lounge at his ease today. ‘We should all be imprisoned, they advised. Myself, Surrey and Exeter. I, of course, head the list of undesirables. I am accused of being midwife to Thomas of Woodstock’s murder, desiring it and giving birth to it to further my own ends. Thus saith the Lords. The Commons too demand that all the evil counsellors should be arrested.’

‘Which will include me,’ Thomas added. ‘I was not banished. I was in the Lords to hear the venom. It suffused the whole chamber like a stench from a midden in high summer. They’re after our blood and won’t rest until they get it.’

Joan, white-faced, was enfolded in her brother Tom’s arms. Prayer had brought her no relief. I could have told her, but momentarily I envied her the solace of Surrey’s embrace. Thomas was not so moved to reassure me, but then I would have rejected his comfort as a cynical ploy.

‘What is the valet saying?’ I asked. For I knew that all might rest on this one testimony.

‘All that he could to incriminate me,’ Edward replied. ‘John Hall says that it was my valets who were foremost amongst those sent from England and who smothered our uncle to his death in Calais. It’s damning and it’s horribly accurate.’ Then: ‘I should have silenced John Hall,’ he added, ‘by one means or another, when I had the chance.’

‘Since you did not,’ Thomas accused, ‘all is lost. You have no evidence to give to prove your innocence. If they make their charges stick against you, Aumale, then the rest of us will soon follow.’

‘No. All is not yet lost,’ Tom said. ‘Nothing is yet clear.’ I thought he was adamant for the sake of his sister. The odds were weighted impossibly against us. ‘The King has warned the Lords against taking extreme measures. I don’t think he wants a bloodbath so early in his reign.’

‘But he might want justice for his uncle. He might find this the perfect opportunity to rid himself of those who were party to his exile,’ I said. What use was being full of hope when there was so little hope to cling on to?

‘Perhaps.’ Tom released Joan with a final embrace and a smoothing of all the laughter lines in his austere Holland features, flexing his soldierly shoulders as if he would protect her from whatever Fate had to drop at our feet. ‘All we can do is support each other. Since our future, for good or ill, will hang together, we must support Edward.’ He gave Thomas a warning glance.

‘I’m hardly likely to give evidence against him,’ Thomas responded.

‘For which we must all be relieved.’ Edward, too, caught Thomas in his stare. ‘If we do not stand together, we will fall.’

‘I never said that we wouldn’t stand together—’

Against the backdrop of antagonisms, our danger seethed and boiled like a deadly quicksand. But I could not allow myself to be drawn in, and interrupted Thomas before he could begin another liturgy of complaint:

‘Stop snapping at each other and listen. We know the argument we must hold to. We were under the King’s power and we were not in a position to disobey him. Richard wished to be revenged on the Lords Appellant, who curbed his power before he grew to his full strength. As loyal servants we did what he bade us. There is our proof, that we did nothing that was not demanded of us by the King himself.’

I paused, and when there was no rejection of this as a plan: ‘What man would have dared disobey Richard? There is not one member of the Lords who can deny Richard’s determination to bring the Lords Appellant to their knees. There is not one of them who can deny Richard’s fury when he was thwarted. And since our present King also suffered at Richard’s hands, he must see the rights of our argument, if you hold fast to it.’

‘God’s Blood, it’s a specious argument.’ Thomas was not convinced. ‘Will Henry accept our obedience to Richard as a reason for the murder of his uncle? And if the Lords and Commons are in agreement against us, then what value in our supporting one another?’

‘Because you are all guilty,’ I said. ‘And you as much as anyone, Thomas. We will do nothing to undermine each other. That would only be a monumental stupidity.’

My father grunted and struggled to his feet, a hand on Joan’s shoulder as he headed towards the door, gesturing for Dickon to unlock it.

‘I’m for my bed. We can do nothing but wait on the mercy of my nephew of Lancaster.’

I watched him go, considering the strong possibility that he might be the last of our family to bear the title of York. Henry had removed Richard. How difficult would it now be for him to remove the families of York, Holland and Despenser as well?

The days in which my family continued to remain at liberty, a blessing in itself, passed with the slowness of winter ice-melt, agonising in the manner in which each one crept from hour to hour, from sunrise to sunset, Dickon continuing to fulfil the role of informant for Joan and myself. It was a relief to know that the Dukes were all once more allowed to take their places in the Lords, but the atmosphere there did not improve. The demand for revenge, or justice, continued unabated, coloured by much throwing down of hoods in challenge for personal combat. Even without Hall’s testimony, many of our erstwhile friends were convinced that we had been party to royal murder.

‘Nothing’s happening,’ Dickon reported on the third day, looking disappointed. ‘There’s a general thought that no one would have dared disobey Richard, but the blame for our uncle’s murder is still being batted back and forth. We are to blame. Brother Edward is to blame. I fear they’ll get him in the end.’

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