Anne O'Brien - A Tapestry of Treason

The forthcoming victory, as predicted by the golden dice, would shower us, the royal cousins, with even greater power. King Richard smiled on us, his hands open with generosity. And how important we were to the whole enterprise. My brother Edward, Duke of Aumale, fair and well-favoured, riding at the King’s side, noted by all as the King’s most beloved companion. Then came Thomas Despenser, my husband, Earl of Gloucester, in comparison dark and sallow-skinned, one of the inner circle of Richard’s friends and companions. Two of the Holland connection, John and Thomas Holland, the Dukes of Exeter and Surrey, joined to us through my father’s recent marriage to Joan Holland, rode in close company, forming a buttress around our King.

We had not always been so ostentatiously dominant. Until Richard’s reign we had wallowed in obscurity, thanks to my grandfather King Edward the Third. My father might be his fourth surviving son, thus rich in Plantagenet blood, but he had been much neglected in the handing out of titles and land and royal office. It was not until Richard became King that my father was created Duke of York. Until then he had been simply Earl of Cambridge, poorly endowed, without the estates and wealth appropriate to an earldom. He might have hoped for an endowment from marriage to an English heiress, but instead my grandfather saddled him with Isabella, who, foreign and disinherited, brought no dowry.

Nor was my father blameless, doing little to remedy his lack. With no noticeable ability in military ventures to bring home a fortune in ransoms, with no interest in the manoeuvrings of the Royal Court, my father did not shine on the political stage. He had no ambition, but we, his children, who would inherit these meagre offerings, were driven from the earliest age by naked desire to match our influence to our royal blood.

How superbly successful we had been. We were now power personified, for with the titles had come land and castles, vast estates and the wealth of gold coin from royal patronage, all these recent ennoblements bestowed by King Richard himself. To whom did the King turn when he needed advice? To Edward and Thomas. With whom did King Richard converse at royal masques when the child-Queen Isabelle grew weary? With me, the newly created Countess of Gloucester. We were the bedrock on which Richard’s power rested, the foundation and fortifications of England. We were pre-eminent, holding dominion within our new lands, and we would serve Richard well. It might not be for me to own political influence, a woman in a world where decisions were in the hands of men, but the promotion of my family was strong in my heart.

‘The King makes a brave show. Pray God the Irish are impressed.’

A laconic comment from the man at my side; stooped with years, his face seamed with unpleasant experience, my father and the King’s uncle, Edmund Duke of York. He was to be left behind in England to uphold firm government in Richard’s name as Keeper of the Realm. Another golden stitch in the tapestry of our value to the King.

I nodded, watching the pattern of the final leave-taking as Richard consigned his wife into the care of her ladies-in-waiting; Edward bid farewell to his wife Philippa with a gesture of the rich folds of his chaperon, intent primarily on catching the interest of the crowd with his smile and his handsome flamboyance. As for Thomas, he managed a brusque inclination of his head which might have been in my direction. Dickon had taken himself off to who knew where. My father, without a word, abandoned his young wife Joan at my side when summoned by the King to receive some final instruction. Joan, now alone, made no attempt to converse with me. Likewise, I had nothing to say to her.

All told, the day had been an exhibition of absence of familial affection. Fortunately, we were bound fast together by raw ambition.

31st August 1399: Palace of Westminster

‘If you are going to keep me company, I could wish you would not fidget.’

Two months. Two short months during which all the glamour of King Richard’s departure had collapsed into disaster. I could make no pretence that my mood was anything but heavy, unease sharpening my tongue. Indeed it was not an unease; by now it was rampant fear. If Dickon expected tolerance from me he would see the day pass without even a gnat-bite of it. I was held in chains of a grave anxiety.

We were still suffering the sultriness of high summer, but the heat did not penetrate to where we stood, Dickon and I, carved emblems of royal power pressing down upon us from above, enfolding us from left and right, from every angle. Such symbols of royal authority, King Richard’s authority, should have soothed and reassured. I frowned and Dickon continued to twitch and shuffle, a mess of angular limbs.

‘How can I not fidget? How long have we been waiting? You don’t even know that he will be brought here.’

‘I do know. He will come.’

‘There are twenty-six of them,’ Dickon informed me inconsequentially, squinting at the angelic band of heavenly angels, carved at the end of each hammer-beam above our heads. He had been passing the time in mindless counting, but I was not prepared to engage in ineffectual conversation. It seemed to me that my family and I were balanced like angels on the head of a pin. All we had achieved was about to be thrown into chaos.

‘How much longer?’ Dickon groaned. ‘Will he be shackled?’

When his large feet continued to scuff against the Purbeck stone, his shoulders hunched in a perpetual slouch, I pinned him with a stare of displeasure as I dug my fingers into the fine weave of his sleeve. I cared not that it was detrimental to the raised pattern.

‘Whether he is shackled or not, you will award him all courtesy. He is your godfather as well as your King.’

‘And the only source of any wealth that will come to me. I will be all courtesy, as douce as a girl, because if I’m not I’ll be cut off without a silver groat.’ Dickon’s glance was sharper and more calculating than it had a right to be. ‘Except that he may no longer have any groats to lavish on me. Will he be a prisoner?’ Dragging his sleeve from my grasp, he moved so that he could see through the carved arch of the doorway where they would eventually make an entrance.

‘I do not yet know.’

But I could not see this charade, this exchange of power from King to Invader, ending in any other fashion.

A servant entered, one I had sent on a mission, now hot from riding. He approached at a jog.

‘Well?’ I asked.

‘They are here, my lady, two miles outside the city.’ He bowed then wiped his face on his sleeve. ‘They’ll be closer now. The King is here with them.’

‘Who is in command?’

The servant shrugged. He was not one of mine or he would not have dared to shrug in my presence. ‘The Mayor and aldermen have met with them, my lady. It was their decision that the King should be brought here to Westminster. The King had no choice in the matter, I’d say.’

‘And the Duke of Lancaster?’

‘He rides at the head of his army, my lady.’

‘Is he in control? Does he have an air of authority?’ I was curious. What was the demeanour of my cousin Henry of Lancaster? Had he returned as supplicant or conqueror?

Richard had banished Henry from England, ostensibly for treason. Now Henry was returned on the death of his father, to reclaim both his title and his inheritance, choosing the opportune moment when Richard was in Ireland. I had to admire his perspicacity. Many would say that Richard had been far from wise in condemning Henry to banishment for life at the same time as he confiscated all the Lancaster wealth and lands for his own use. Our cousin Henry was unlikely to accept such wilful destruction of his true inheritance with a head bent in obedient acceptance. Cousin Henry would demand what was his by right. He had landed at Ravenspur to the north in the first week of July, collecting an army which included the puissant Percy Earl of Northumberland, and now he was here in London with King Richard firmly tucked into his gauntleted fist.