Copyright

Harper

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London SE1 9GF

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First published in Great Britain by Harper 2014

Copyright © Joanna Hickson 2014

Joanna Hickson asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

Source ISBN: 9780007447015

Ebook Edition © 2014 ISBN: 9780007447022

Version: 2017-07-11

Dedication

For my intrepid and lovely sister Sue

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Family Trees

Map

Prologue

Part One: County Durham, England

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Part Two: France

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Part Three: Fotheringhay Castle Northamptonshire, Coldharbour Inn & Westminster Palace, London

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Part Four: Ireland & Northern England

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Part Five: Lincolnshire & Yorkshire

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Part Six: The Drums of War

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

Chapter 33

Chapter 34

Chapter 35

Chapter 36

Chapter 37

Chapter 38

Chapter 39

Chapter 40

Chapter 41

Chapter 42

Chapter 43

Chapter 44

Epilogue

Author’s Note

Keep Reading – THE AGINCOURT BRIDE

Keep Reading – THE TUDOR BRIDE

About the Author

By the same author

About the Publisher

PROLOGUE

Provins, County of Champagne, France, 1275

At first there was only a subtle hint of fragrance borne on the breeze, an exquisite teasing of the senses. To the knight on his weary warhorse it was like the breath of God, lifting the hairs on the back of his neck and stirring the golden leopards on his banner.

‘It is the scent of roses!’ he cried to his companions. ‘In the Holy Land we called it God’s Incense.’

When the cavalcade breasted the hill ahead he reined in his horse with a gasp of wonder. All over the wide plain below stretched a carpet of red roses, covering the earth as far as the eye could see, as if a celestial gardener had scattered divine seed. The knight gazed in silent awe, struck by the power of the symbolism laid before him; that the single rose, an object of beauty and simplicity could, when massed with a myriad others, become a potent force, a source of mystery and strength. The words of a hymn sprang into his mind, which he had heard sung in the dust and heat of the Holy Land by choristers in his crusading army.

There is no rose of such vertue

As is the rose that bore Jesu,

For in this rose contained was

Heaven and earth in a little space.

‘If there is a heaven on earth,’ he declared, ‘it is surely here.’

The knight was Edmund, Earl of Lancaster, crusader brother to Edward I, King of England and known throughout Christendom as Edmund ‘Crouchback’ or ‘The Cross-Bearer’. Returning through France from his crusade, he was making a mercy mission to Provins where the Count of Champagne had recently died, leaving his young widow and their baby son vulnerable to abduction by neighbouring barons, eager to acquire access to the great wealth generated by the famous rose fields.

Grown from a single root brought back from Damascus by an earlier crusader, the precious roses were not just objects of beauty, they were an industry. Their dried petals became shards of perfumed sunshine to freshen the rushes on a rich man’s floor; their floral essence could be distilled into attar of roses to perfume a lady’s breast or diluted into rosewater for bathing and cooking; rose leaves were pounded into healing poultices and even the prunings, with their long, sharp thorns could be woven into fences for protecting flocks and crops.

But it was the rose of ‘vertue’ that Edmund held in his mind when he first encountered Blanche, the lady in distress. Wearing white robes of mourning, she held her baby in her arms and her face was sweet and troubled. ‘The Blessed Virgin has answered my prayers,’ she sighed as he kissed her hand. By the next rose harvest Edmund and Blanche were married and the red Damask rose became for him a talisman, a badge of honour which he bore on his shield and gave to his favoured followers; the Red Rose of Lancaster.

A hundred years later another Edmund, younger brother to the great John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster, was created Duke of York by their father, King Edward III. This Edmund aimed to better his brother in all things, including the heraldic symbol of his dukedom. He could not have the red rose so he chose the white, the lovely wild rose of England with its five creamy petals and fierce, hooked thorns. He declared the white rose superior to the red because it was native to the soil it grew in, spreading over the hills and valleys of England in great tangled brakes, delighting all with its airy fragrance and spangled masses of blooms but repelling any who tried to seize it. Edmund had his minstrels compose a song in praise of the white rose:

Of a rose, a lovely rose

Of a rose I sing a song.

Lyth and lysten, both old and younge

How the white rose becomen sprong,

A fairer rose to oure leking

Sprong there never in kynges lond.

During the next century, in the battle for supremacy between Lancaster and York, the red rose and the white were to scratch a bloody trail across the ‘kynges lond’, leaving England blighted and bleeding.

PART ONE

1

Langleydale, Co Durham

Cicely

I breathed deeply of the scented air that swept off the Teesdale fells. It carried the chill of snow-capped mountains and the smell of juniper. When I was a small child my father had perched me in front of him on his great warhorse and taken me out on the moors to teach me the names of the peaks and pikes that rolled towards the horizon to the north and west of our home. Now I identified them one after another all the way to Cross Fell, misty blue in the distance; Snowhope, Ireshope and Burnhope, Holwick, Mickle, Cronkley and Widdybank. Their names sang in my head like a psalm, accompanied by the moan of the wind over the rock-strewn slopes and the cries of the birds that haunted them.

When I turned my mare’s head to the east, her ears framed a view even more familiar. Each beck and stream from those high moors fed into the River Tees, which flowed through a valley ever-wider and greener as it meandered towards the coast. Dominating the upper reaches of this fertile basin was Raby Castle, the ancestral home of the Neville family – my family. Renowned as one of England’s great northern fortresses, Raby’s nine massive towers sprawled below me like the giants of legend; they loomed over the meagre mud-plastered cotts of the village beyond its moat. I had lived most of my seventeen years within those soaring walls. To my mother it was a palace, a great haven of security and splendour demonstrating infallibly the enormous wealth and power of the Nevilles, but to me it had become a prison. Often I had felt like a caged bird longing to fly. It was wonderful to be out, after a winter confined by its grey stones, up high above Langley Beck, relishing the wind in my face and the trembling anticipation of the hooded falcon on my fist.

‘Look lively, Cis! Stop admiring the view and start working that bird of yours.’

It was my brother who spoke. We Nevilles were a numerous family and I could count six brothers who still lived; some I liked better than others. Three of them were out hunting with me on that March morning, but this particular brother held a special place in my life. Dark and even of temper, Cuthbert was my personal champion, five years my senior and sworn to protect me for life by an oath made to our father before his death. He was an expert swordsman, had enormous skill with the lance and a physique unsurpassed among the knights of the Northern March. Nevertheless I did not let him order me about.

‘Selina will fly in good time, Cuddy, when the dogs put up some partridge. I do not fly her at inferior prey.’

His baptismal name was Cuthbert, after the great hermit-saint of the Holy Isle whose bones lay only five and twenty miles away in Durham Cathedral, but I used the nickname he had earned among his fellow henchmen at Raby for his close affinity with horses. Not only was Cuddy the local name for the saint, it was also one of the many northern words for a horse, particularly the small, strong, nimble pony which carried men and goods over the treacherous terrain of the border moors. Cuddy had the knack of getting a good performance out of even the most stubborn nag. It would not be boasting to say that I sat a horse as well as he did, since it was Cuddy who had taught me to ride, and I rode astride from the very first lesson, despite the disadvantage of wearing skirts.

His reaction to my protest was indignant. ‘Huh! It will be a miracle if your merlin brings down a partridge. They are twice her size.’

We were hunting game for the Easter feast that was just over a week away. The birds would hang until then to intensify their flavour, while we Christians completed our Lenten fast. Cuddy preferred chasing stag. On this hunt he was acting as my bodyguard and the captain of our armed escort. He carried no hawk and, in my opinion, knew little or nothing about them.

‘You may think that, big brother, but Selina can bring down snipe, which are the same size as partridge and fly a lot faster.’

I dropped my reins briefly to remove the crested hood from the little bird on my other fist and felt her claws clench expectantly over the thick leather gauntlet that protected my hand and wrist. Released from the imprisonment of the blindfold, the falcon blinked and her yellow eyes began to dart about, filled with anticipation at the sight of the moor and the busy spaniel quartering the heather ahead of us. My palfrey pranced excitedly as I gathered up the reins and I bent to murmur calming words in her ear.

In a loud explosion of noise a covey of partridge burst up from the ground. ‘Climb, Selina, climb,’ I yelled, releasing the merlin’s jesses and sending her off my fist as the game birds sped away from us, swerving and tumbling in panic.

For a few joyful seconds I watched the powerful beat of my falcon’s wings as she scaled the wind, gaining height for her stoop and then the spaniel let out a throaty growl of warning, which crescendoed into a volley of barks. Only twenty yards away half a dozen men wearing protective canvas jacks and wielding an assortment of rustic weapons rose as if from nowhere, like demons from the underworld, and ran snarling and yelling down the slope towards us, leaping over the straggling heather which had so successfully hidden their presence. They must have belly-crawled from the cover of the stunted trees that grew in a rocky cleft nearby, where the beck tumbled down a steep part of the fell-side.

Cuddy drew his sword. ‘Holy St Michael – reivers! They’re after the horses. Ride, Cis – ride for the castle! Stop for nothing. I’ll hold them off.’ He wheeled his horse to face the oncoming foe and charged at the front-runner, yelling the family call-to-arms. ‘À Neville! To me!’

From the corner of my eye I spied the first reiver fall as I set my horse’s head down the slope. There I saw my other two brothers, Will and Ned, throw off their hawks, draw their weapons and urge their horses into a gallop, hurtling past me to give Cuddy support and returning his warcry, their mouths wide, faces twisted into angry scowls. Pounding up the hill behind them, yelling defiance, came our escort of half a dozen armed horsemen.

Reivers were the universal enemy, even here on the southernmost edge of the Northern March. Within the miles of untamed territory between Scotland and England known as the Debatable Lands, title to land and property was hotly contested and the rule of law rarely successfully applied. Gangs of bandits operated freely and internecine feuds abounded but however much they fought amongst themselves, English landholders and their tenants were united in their hatred of the Scottish reiver clans – Armstrongs, Elliots, Maxwells and Johnsons, to name but a few. These rampaging villains swooped down from the hills without warning, sometimes in a large troop to raid a whole town or village, sometimes in a small posse to grab whatever plunder they could, robbing travellers at random, raiding a single farm or rustling a herd of cattle and driving the beasts to a secret muster deep in the mountains.

Cuddy had automatically assumed that these particular bandits were after our horses, a valuable commodity, especially when of good breeding and training as ours were. Since he and I had strayed a small distance from the rest of the hunting party perhaps they had not realized how many of us there were nor how well armed and skilled in combat. Considerably older than me, my brother William was not only a knight of some renown but held estates and a seat in parliament as Lord Fauconberg and had been accompanied to the hunt by a number of his young retainers, including the brother next to me in age, nineteen-year-old Edward, known as Ned. In this part of the world no knight or squire ever rode out in less than half-armour, belting on his sword and carrying a mace or battle-axe slung from his saddle-bow, so I was confident they would make short work of the attackers. The hunt servants, unarmed except for their hunting knives, obviously thought the same because they called in the dogs and retreated only a short distance before turning back to watch the skirmish. Despite Cuddy’s order to ride non-stop to Raby, I was tempted to follow suit, hoping to lure back my precious merlin Selina from wherever she had found a safe perch. However, even as the notion entered my head my own situation suddenly became perilous.

We had misjudged these reivers. They were not a small band of snatch-thieves willing to risk their lives in the hope of securing one or two valuable horses; they were a gang of bandits seeking an even richer reward. As I galloped past a grove of gnarled ash trees rooted in a sheltered hollow, six wild men mounted on ponies burst out from their cover to block my path. My speeding mare threw herself back on her haunches to avoid a collision and within seconds I found myself surrounded.

I wheeled the mare around, looking for help, but quickly realized that this ambush had been carefully planned. The smug grins on the faces of the surrounding horsemen confirmed this.

‘They will not see us, lady. We are hidden by the hill, so best to come quietly.’

The speaker’s face was disguised with dark, caked mud and he wore a dented metal sallet on his head, its visor pushed up. A camouflage spray of myrtle leaves tied over the helmet shadowed his eyes so that he resembled the evil green man depicted in church carvings. His cocky smile revealed rotting teeth. Despite my fear I felt a fierce surge of anger.

‘I do not know who you are, villain, but I am a Neville and Nevilles do not “come quietly”,’ I said, and throwing back my head, echoed the family warcry I had heard so recently on my brothers’ lips: ‘À Neville! Cuthbert, to me!’

The evil green man spoke sharply to his companions and a large, callused hand was clamped over my mouth from behind me. At the same time another man snatched the reins from my hands as yet another pulled my arms back and wound a cord around my wrists, tying them tightly together.

‘We ride!’ shouted the leader and all at once I found myself desperately struggling to remain in the saddle as, corralled in the midst of their horses, my mare was forced to bound clumsily up the steep side of the hollow. But once I had caught my breath and clamped my thighs to my horse’s sides, I realized that although my hands were tied my mouth was still free and I took advantage of the fact, renewing my screams for help, albeit in shrieks and jerks from my mare’s hunched leaps. A loud oath came from the leader and as soon as we reached flatter ground he held up his hand for a halt. I continued shouting while he kicked his horse up to mine, scrabbled in the front of his battered gambeson and finally pulled out a filthy kerchief.

‘For a well-born lady you screech like a fishwife but this should shut you up,’ he growled and retaliated by spitting into the kerchief before using it to gag my screams.

I twisted my head this way and that but without the use of my hands I was unable to prevent him pulling the damp, stinking cloth between my teeth and tying it at the back. My shouts were reduced to muffled moans and then silenced altogether as I retched at the foul taste on my tongue.

‘Calm down, my lady,’ the man sneered, ‘or I will have to throw you over my pommel and that will make a very painful ride.’

Forced to inhale through my nose, my eyes bulged as I fought to draw the air into my lungs. I knew I would have to stop struggling if I was to keep breathing and so although I glared daggers at him, I stopped grunting and wriggling.

His lip curled in contempt. ‘That is better. Right – onwards, comrades – to the forest!’

He set off again at a fast pace but as we began to climb more steadily on a drover’s track, I found it easier to stay in the saddle. And now I knew where we were headed – to Hamsterley Forest on the northern side of the dale. I also knew that if we got there the chances of my being rescued were minimal. It was ancient forest, deep and impenetrable. Even if a hue and cry were raised, it would be hours before the bloodhounds found my trail and beyond the forest the terrain was full of hidden ravines which I did not doubt that the reivers would know intimately. By using them as cover they could hustle me over the River Tyne and beyond Hadrian’s Wall before a search party got near. I tried to look back for any sign of help but very nearly fell off in the attempt and gave up in favour of staying on my horse.

‘Looking for a knight in shining armour, lady?’ lisped the reiver leading my mare. Under the brim of his ancient kettle helmet were bloodshot eyes, a wrinkled brown face, and a toothless grin. He looked about seventy, but with only rough sackcloth for a saddle he stuck to his steed like a limpet. ‘There’s none of their like around here,’ he went on. ‘But dinnae worry, all we want is a good price for your horse and a queen’s ransom for you. And mebbe you might dance for us a bit, eh? He-he!’ He found this notion so amusing that he made himself cough and splutter.

That use of the word ‘dance’ had a sinister ring to it and I wanted to smack the grin off his face, but all I could do was stick out my chin and fix my eyes on my mare’s forelock, willing her to avoid all hazards, since I could not steer her.

Another loud stream of oaths from the leader silenced the bearded man’s mirth but they were not aimed at him. On the crest of the hill, our path was crossed by a drove-road that ran from west to east, and that very knight-errant I had been mocked for seeking was approaching the junction, closely followed by a dozen men-at-arms. I could not believe my eyes. The chances of meeting a fully armoured knight and his retinue on a drover’s path in any season were almost nil, yet there he was. As soon as he sighted the reivers he drew his sword, obviously as surprised to see them as they were to see him.

The green man did not hesitate. He knew when the odds were stacked against him. ‘Run for it, lads,’ he yelled, clapping his heels to his pony’s sides. ‘Every man for himself. Dump the loot.’

In different circumstances I might have been offended by being described as ‘loot’ but at that moment there was pandemonium as my captors galloped away in all directions and my mare plunged off the path into the maze of rocks, lose scree and whin that formed the terrain of this high fell country. Horses are herd animals and naturally follow their leader but which other horse to follow my mare did not know and I could not help her, being gagged and tied, so she skidded and skittered and plunged and it was only a matter of time before she lost her footing and fell, tossing me off into the middle of a patch of gorse, which luckily broke my fall.

Having all the air knocked out of your lungs when wearing a gag creates a desperate situation. For several long minutes I wheezed and coughed and feared I might lose consciousness but eventually I managed to force enough air into my deflated lungs to pay attention to my plight. All around me I could hear the cursing of men and the clatter of stones as even the reivers’ agile dale-trotters tripped and slithered over the treacherous ground. My own mare lay a few yards off, hooves thrashing as she writhed and twisted, trying to get to her feet. When she finally managed it she stood on three legs, her sides heaving. There was no doubt she was lame; perhaps her leg was broken. Even if I could have caught her she was no longer rideable and, anyway, I doubted if I could mount without the use of my hands.

I set about trying to extract myself from the gorse but my skirts had become entangled and sharp prickles pierced my clothes and scratched me painfully. When I stopped struggling to take a rest I noticed that the sound of the chase had diminished and the cries of birds were once more audible in the air. A few loose stones rattled close by and I felt a presence looming over me. Tipping my head back I found myself staring up at a richly trapped horse with a knight in armour on its back. Clearly the fighting was over because he had removed his helmet. Thick, neatly cut flaxen hair framed a suntanned face distinguished by a high brow, a straight nose and a pair of piercing grey eyes. He bowed politely from his saddle.

From my prone position almost anyone would have looked imposing but when he dismounted, making little of the encumbrance of steel-plate, I saw that he was tall and broad-shouldered, the belt on his jupon lying low on slim hips; but my attention was caught by the jupon itself: blood-red and cross-slashed by a white saltire cross, at its centre a black bull’s head. The X cross and the black bull were devices I knew. I did not recognize his face but this could only be a Neville knight.

Incongruously, he bowed. ‘God save you, my lady, are you hurt?’

My temper flared. Manners were one thing, I thought, but was he blind? Could he not see that I was gagged and tied? He must have seen the anger blaze in my eyes for he quickly bent and untied the filthy kerchief, pulling it from my mouth and gazing at it with distaste before throwing it away into the gorse. ‘That does not look pleasant,’ he said and beckoned to someone beyond my eye-line. ‘Bring a wine-skin, Tam,’ he ordered. ‘Lady Cicely needs a drink.’

My eyes widened. So he knew who I was, even though I wore no distinguishing badge. My heart missed a beat as he drew his dagger but he hastened to reassure me. ‘I will not harm you. It is to cut your bonds.’

With relief I felt my wrists fall apart and I was at last able to haul my skirt off the clutching bushes and clamber to my feet. I noticed several rips in my clothing where the gorse had done its damage but worse was the taste in my mouth, as if my tongue had been dragged through a midden. I stood gasping at clean air like a stranded fish and rubbing my chafed wrists.

Being taller than average I could meet Sir John’s enquiring gaze straight on. ‘I cannot thank you enough for your intervention, sir,’ I said, embarrassed that my voice emerged in a frog-like croak. I cleared my throat. ‘I was out hawking with my brothers and fleeing from one pack of reivers when another gang ambushed me. Did you catch any of them or see any of my hunting party?’

The knight ignored my questions. ‘Was it you or the horse they were after?’

I drew myself up. ‘One of them boasted that they would get a good price for the horse and a queen’s ransom for me.’

He raised an eyebrow. ‘Is that so? I heard you were soon to be a duchess but is not “queen” aiming a little too high?’

For a stranger he was far too knowledgeable. I was about to demand his name when the young squire Tam appeared at my side offering a wine-skin and suddenly the evil taste in my mouth was of vastly more importance. Murmuring thanks I sucked at it greedily, swilled the wine around my mouth and, abandoning good manners, turned away to spit it into the gorse.

The knight indicated my injured horse standing nearby, three-legged, her head drooping. ‘I believe you would hold your price, Lady Cicely, but I fear the same cannot be said of your mare.’

This was the second time he had used my name and title and I was becoming irritated. ‘You have the advantage of me. You seem to know who I am but I do not know you.’

His smile transformed him from merely good-looking to strikingly handsome. A complete set of even white teeth was seldom to be seen in a fighting man, which he so obviously was. ‘But you know I am a Neville from my jupon,’ he said, placing his hand over the black bull on his chest. ‘Sir John Neville of Brancepeth, brother to the Earl of Westmorland.’

‘Ah.’

It was a shamefully inadequate response but the revelation had given me a severe jolt. I had not shared the conversation in my mother’s solar for the past three years without hearing a great deal about the present Earl of Westmorland et al. Far from being rescued by a knight in shining armour, I may have escaped from the cauldron only to fall into the fire.

2

Weardale and Brancepeth Castle

Cicely

‘You appear disconcerted, Lady Cicely,’ said Sir John.

I made no response, merely staring at him, my mind filling with random memories and snippets of information. The Nevilles were an extremely large family and I was woefully ignorant of the undercurrents that steered the relationships within it.

‘As I see it, we have only one problem,’ Sir John went on, ignoring my bewilderment and addressing the immediate practicalities, ‘your horse cannot be ridden and my destrier is the only one strong enough to carry two people. So I hope you will accept a lift from me, unless of course you prefer to walk.’

I looked around. The knight’s retinue had been moderately successful; none appeared injured and two of my recent abductors now stood with their hands bound, the ropes tied to the panniers on either side of the sumpter horse which carried the knight’s baggage. One of them was the wizened man but I could not see the face of the other, nor could I see their ponies. Wherever the two captives were being taken, they were clearly going on foot. I had no intention of doing the same.

‘The last time I rode on the pommel of a knight’s saddle it was in front of my father,’ I said, ‘when I was seven.’

Sir John turned to the young man who had brought the wineskin. ‘Tam, get my bedroll and tie it over the front of my saddle. For the comfort of Lady Cicely.’

I had lost my hat in the fall and my unruly hair was loose, tumbling down my back and no doubt tangled with spikes of gorse. In my torn skirts and mud-stained riding huke, with my wild mass of auburn hair, I was conscious of looking more like a camp follower than a future duchess. I remarked pointedly, ‘If someone could find my hat in the gorse, it would prevent my hair blowing in Sir John’s face while we ride.’

As I had hoped, Tam glanced up from his task. ‘I will find it for you, my lady,’ he said with a shy smile. He did not wear a knight’s spurs and I guessed he was no more than twenty.

I smiled back and thanked him but Sir John frowned. ‘Make it quick, Tam. We must be going.’

This prompted me to ask the question uppermost in my mind. ‘And where are we going, Sir John?’

‘To Brancepeth of course,’ he replied tersely.

Brancepeth was Lord Westmorland’s castle, some twenty miles distant, on the road to Durham. It was not the answer I wanted to hear. ‘Surely Raby is more or less on the way?’ I pointed out.

He shook his head. ‘It is a detour and I must get to Brancepeth before nightfall. I will send a message with one of my men to let your mother know where you are.’

I forced a smile. ‘Thank you, Sir John. My mother will be relieved. I hope the present Countess of Westmorland will not object to accommodating a guest from Raby.’

Ignoring my remark he turned impatiently to inspect the squire’s efforts with the bedroll. ‘That will do, Tam. Now fetch Lady Cicely’s hat and let us be on our way. We will leave her injured horse here. Without doubt there will be a search party and they will find the mare.’

When Tam stirruped his hands to help me mount the destrier, Sir John looked surprised to see me settle myself astride the padded pommel, arranging my skirts modestly on either side of the horse’s withers. However he made no comment and swung himself quickly up behind me. The rest of his retinue fell into line, Tam leading the sumpter with the two prisoners attached. Since we could only progress at their walking pace I had to concur with my companion’s assertion that we would hardly reach Brancepeth castle by dusk.

In addition to the discomfort of riding on the pommel, I felt ill at ease at being thrown so close to this undeniably attractive man. Not since my father’s enthusiastic embraces during my childhood had I ever been physically so close to any male, even my brothers. It was impossible to avoid contact with him and I confess that I found it disturbingly exciting. Sir John remained silent behind me and, clinging to the mane of his big bay stallion as it sidled and pecked at the unaccustomed weight, I distracted myself by mentally analysing my situation. Brancepeth Castle was the seat of Ralph Neville, second Earl of Westmorland, and it should follow that I would be kindly treated there and returned as soon as possible to my home at Raby. But recent family history told me that this was far from certain.

At first sight the dispute between the Nevilles of Raby and the Nevilles of Brancepeth appeared to arise directly from my father’s death, but what was actually at the root of the family feud was my parents’ marriage. For both it had been a second marriage. My father had already sired seven children, and his first wife died giving birth to the eighth. I do not know what caused the death of my mother’s first husband, only that she was a widow at eighteen with two young daughters. And so there were already several infants in the nursery at Raby even before she and my father added another eleven children – theirs was undoubtedly a passionate love match. It would have been thirteen if twin boys had not sadly died within hours of their birth and almost taken our mother with them. I was the youngest of the family and I knew that the man whose saddle I now shared was my father’s grandson. The fact that I had never met him before was some indication of the distance of our relationship, even though as blood kin we should have had a close affinity. Paradoxically and through no fault of our own, we did not.

Although he had been dead for seven years, I still thought of my father as a giant among men, in every sense of the word. He had, indeed, been extremely tall – a head taller than most of his fellow noblemen, a physical feature I had inherited, being as tall as most men and towering over many. He had also been considered clever, charming and ruthless, a skilled soldier and one of the most successful military and political tacticians of his generation. However, when it came to writing his will his tactics had been, let us say, questionable. The Westmorland title had perforce to follow the senior male line but, controversially, he left most of his property to his second wife, my mother. Therefore while Sir John’s older brother Ralph, the second Earl of Westmorland, held and resided at Brancepeth Castle, my mother held the three other Neville palaces, Raby and two vast castles in Yorkshire, together with all their manors and other sources of revenue. As may be imagined, this arrangement had not gone down well with the Nevilles of Brancepeth, who resented what they called blatant favouritism and frequently found ways to express their resentment and press home their claim to a greater legacy. My fear was that I might be used as a tool to further their cause.

After plodding in silence across high moorland tracks for a couple of hours, passing several well-fortified farms, we dropped down into a dale where a small but sturdy castle stood sentinel over a bridge spanning a fast-flowing river. The crossing was guarded by a posse of men-at-arms, who saluted Sir John. As we rode through, one of them shouted a bawdy comment about the knight’s ‘saddle-doxy’ which Sir John studiously ignored but which had the effect of breaking the tense silence that had developed between us.

‘I must apologize for the guards’ uncouth manners, my lady,’ he said when out of their earshot. ‘They do not recognize you or they would not dare.’

‘Whose men are they?’ I asked. ‘And what castle is this?’

‘It is Witton Castle, held by Sir Ralph Eure, a tenant of my brother the earl. We have just crossed the River Wear.’

‘Only half way to Brancepeth then?’ I glanced at the western sky, where clouds were already blushing faintly pink.

I could not see Sir John’s face but I felt him tense in the saddle. ‘Yes, we make slow progress – too slow for my liking.’ He turned to beckon the squire forward. ‘Take the reivers to the captain at the Witton guardhouse, Tam. Sir Ralph can keep them in his prison until the session judge comes to Durham. We will water the horses while you sort it out.’

I watched the old reiver, the wizened man who had earlier held the reins of my mare, as he stumbled away behind the sumpter horse. No longer grinning, he now looked weary and desperate. I thought he would be grateful to sit down, even in a stinking dungeon, and very nearly summoned a pang of sympathy, until I remembered his sinister remark about me doing a dance. There was no doubt in my mind that he would have had no sympathy for me had I been subjected to whatever pain or humiliation ‘dance’ was a euphemism for. At least I had escaped the ‘dance’, whatever the unknown future I was riding into might have in store.

Presently we joined a well-trodden highway where a milestone indicated seven miles to the city of Durham, and I knew that we were nearing Brancepeth. This was mining country and the high moor above the road to the north was peppered with numerous adits, holes that had been opened into the hillside, and a web of paths leading between them, worn by the feet of miners and the wheels of the carts. They wove a pattern across the winter-brown grass of the slopes down to the river where the coal was brought for transport to the coast. I knew that these mines were an important source of income to the Brancepeth estate; without them the earl would have been even more impoverished than he claimed to be.

Before the end of our journey I became sleepy and, despite my best efforts, must have slumped back against my companion who punctiliously nudged me upright again. ‘Take care you do not slumber, my lady, in case you fall from the horse,’ he said. ‘It is not far now.’

‘Talk to me then,’ I urged irritably. ‘Tell me why you happened to be riding that drover’s track when you rescued me from the reivers.’

I thought he was going to maintain his stubborn silence because there was a lengthy pause before he launched into his reply. ‘The young man, Tam, who found your hat, is the Clifford heir and a ward of the earl’s. We had been attending a Halmote – a manor court – at Brough Castle and, if you want the truth, we always take the high route over the moors because that way we avoid crossing Raby lands. Surely you must realize that the sight of your home is like a red rag to the Nevilles of Brancepeth.’

Despite the grim tone of his remark I smiled, thinking of the black bull badge on his chest. ‘A red rag to a bull; yes, I see.’

‘No!’ His voice was angry. ‘I doubt if you do see, Lady Cicely. My brother is the second Earl of Westmorland – your father’s heir. Yet he has been deprived of the heir’s rightful inheritance. He should have tenure of the entire legacy of Westmorland – all its lands and all its castles. All of them – and the income they provide. And it should be up to him as their lord how those lands and castles are occupied and stewarded. Instead he was left only one seat – Brancepeth – and not even enough manors to provide his immediate family with homes and livelihoods. He and his dependents have been slighted and disinherited by your overweening, greedy mother.’

Now it was my turn to be angry. True, my mother was proud and sometimes haughty but she was a great lady of royal blood, a granddaughter of King Edward the Third, and I could not brook her being held in contempt. ‘My mother has served the honour of Westmorland more profitably than any of the present earl’s family and it is hardly chivalrous to speak thus of a great lady, Sir John.’ I laid particular stress on the ‘sir’.

‘Which is why it is better if we do not speak at all,’ the knight snapped back.

After this a heavy silence prevailed once more until we came within sight of our destination. I knew the history of Brancepeth from my childhood lessons. An advantageous union three hundred years ago had brought the manor and its castle into the Neville family when Geoffrey de Neville, grandson of William of Normandy’s Admiral of the Fleet, had married Emma, the heiress of Bertram Bulmer of Brancepeth. Heraldic wordplay on the Bulmer name had brought the black bull device into the Neville crest. It was an alliance which had marked the start of Neville dominance over the sprawling County Palatine of Durham. Many times had the warlike Prince Bishops of Durham taken up arms to defend the English border against the Scots, but bishops came and went by papal appointment, whereas succeeding generations of Nevilles had dug their roots deep into the denes and dales, establishing themselves among the clutch of great marcher clans on which successive kings of England relied to defend the northern fringes of their realm.

Brancepeth was a four-square fortress; its thirty-foot-high curtain enclosed a hall, chapel and bailey with a sturdy tower at each corner and a formidable gatehouse protected by stout barbicans. Defensively perched on the edge of a steep-sided dene or gorge, through which a fast stream flowed, its ochre-coloured stone was blackened by soot from burning the coal mined on its demesne and it loomed dark and grim in the deepening twilight. We approached through a closed and quiet village, where I could picture the villeins clustered around their hearths, filling their bellies with their evening meal. My own stomach rumbled at the thought. Only a few spluttering torches lit our way under the gatehouse into a flagged courtyard where a flight of steps led to the arched entrance of the great hall. There was a loud rattle of chains as the drawbridge was raised behind us; a sinister sound in the gathering gloom.

Sir John dismounted and helped me to do so, speaking to an eager page who had rushed forward to hold his stirrup. ‘Tell the countess there is a guest. Lady Cicely Neville. I will bring her to the hall.’

As the page hurried away up the steps I saw a mop-headed little boy wriggle from the clutches of his nursemaid and scurry towards us, ducking and weaving through the confusion of horses and men, his little face bright with curiosity.

‘You have brought a visitor, Uncle,’ he said in a high, sibilant voice. ‘Who is she?’

With a frisson of pleasure, despite myself, I saw the knight’s transforming smile once more as he greeted the boy with an affectionate cuff on the shoulder and a mild rebuke. ‘Where are your manners, Jack? Make your best bow to your kinswoman Lady Cicely Neville, and then you may take my helmet to the armoury.’

Pink-faced, the boy bent his knee and bowed his head to me, shyly keeping his eyes lowered. I guessed he must be the heir of Westmorland, whose birth I remembered being discussed with some surprise at Raby – surprise because it demonstrated that the earl, commonly described as a cripple, was not entirely disabled. The little boy proudly took the proffered helmet and carried it away, staggering slightly under its weight, and Sir John and I both watched his progress. He was closely followed by Tam Clifford leading the laden sumpter and the knight’s weary warhorse to the stable, a long timber structure built against the high perimeter wall.

All around us was clatter and chatter as the retinue dismounted and began leading their horses away. Reverting once more to cool courtesy, Sir John indicated the narrow stone staircase which hugged the hall wall. A pair of helmeted halberdiers guarded the iron-bound oak doors that stood open at the top. ‘Will you enter, my lady?’

His stern expression deterred any thought of refusal but as I ascended I felt the first stirrings of alarm, wondering what I would find within and when I would ever descend. Sir John’s armoured feet rang threateningly close behind me on the stair. We passed through the iron-bound doors into an ante-room, then up a shorter and wider stone stairway, through a carved wooden screen into a long, high-beamed hall warmed by two blazing fires, one on the dais at the far end and another under a carved hood in the body of the hall. As we entered, a lady dressed in a crimson fur-trimmed gown and a cream linen wimple emerged from a privy door onto the dais. A deep frown creased her brow and her thin mouth was set in a downward curve. She made no move to greet us.

Apart from a servant tending the fires the three of us were alone in the large room. If a meal had already been served there was no sign of it and the trestles had been cleared. Two cushioned chairs were set near each hearth and various wooden coffers and benches lined the walls, which were hung with dusty tapestries depicting aspects of the chase. Fading light seeped through high-set shuttered windows and guttering torches filled the room with sinister shadows. My anxious gaze met no reassurance.

His hand firmly on my elbow, Sir John drew me towards the dais and the frowning lady, who glared down at me. ‘Lady Cicely, may I present my sister-in-law, Lady Elizabeth, Countess of Westmorland.’ While I made an equal’s curtsy he turned to her. ‘This is Lady Cicely Neville of Raby, sister. She was the unfortunate victim of reivers who attacked her hawking party out on the moor. I was obliged to come to her aid.’

Lady Elizabeth voiced none of the customary words of greeting. ‘But were you obliged to bring her here, Sir John?’ she asked, blue eyes frosty in the tight frame of her wimple. ‘She is hardly welcome.’

Stung by this insult I protested. ‘Believe me, Lady Westmorland, I would have been more than happy to return immediately to Raby but this gallant knight insisted we come first to Brancepeth.’ My use of the term ‘gallant knight’ was laced with irony.

‘I am astonished to learn that your mother allowed you to venture on to the moors at all.’ Lady Elizabeth’s tone was as sharp as my own. ‘I should have thought the dowager countess would be more protective of her precious duchess-to-be.’

I freely admit that I am quick-tempered and I showed it then. ‘You seem determined to offer me nothing but scorn, my lady, but at least I am here to defend myself. I consider it churlish to slight my mother when she is not.’

The countess seemed to gather herself up, like a goaded cat, her whole body shaking with repressed rage. ‘Churlish! It is she who is churlish in the extreme and remains so while she holds lands and castles that are my lord’s by right. There is no welcome for one of Joan Beaufort’s children under this roof while she lives under a roof that is legally his and withholds from him lands and revenues that should be his also.’

She swept down from the dais and stalked past me to the great hearth with the carved hood where she seated herself in one of the two chairs placed there. I started to follow, fulminating. I was only vaguely familiar with the terms of my father’s will but I did know that commissions of inquiry in both London and Durham had confirmed its legacies and settled its terms.

I turned angrily on Sir John. ‘Since I am declared unwelcome I should be given the courtesy of a horse and an escort and allowed to leave. Or am I, in fact, a hostage, sir?’

The knight denied me eye contact and shrugged. A squire had entered the hall and began removing Sir John’s armour, kneeling to unbuckle the greaves from his shins. ‘I have sent word to Raby that you are here,’ Sir John said. ‘We must wait and see how your family construes the situation.’

‘I imagine their “construing” will depend on the content of the message you have sent,’ I retorted.

As the corselet was lifted from his shoulders a faint smile flickered across the knight’s face and was gone. ‘Indeed it will, Lady Cicely. To be precise then, I have told the dowager countess that you are free to leave as soon as we hear that the castles of Middleham and Sherriff Hutton have been handed over to my brother’s agents.’

These words fell between us with the impact of a cannon shot. Middleham and Sherriff Hutton were the two vast Neville estates in Yorkshire, the original foundation of the family’s assets. Lady Westmorland gave a little crow of delight; her hand flew to her mouth and her eyes began to glitter with gleeful excitement.

I exploded with fury. ‘So this is your idea of chivalry, Sir John! This is how you help a lady in distress? I think your fellow knights would call it dishonorable extortion.’

He met my anger impassively, his expression veiled. ‘We shall see,’ he said coolly. ‘Some might say that extortion has been practiced on me and mine, rather than by me.’

I fell silent, still hostile but bereft of words. By now the industrious squire had removed all elements of the knight’s armour and gathered them up for removal and cleaning. Sir John stood in his doublet and hose but made no less an imposing figure, tall and lean with well-muscled shoulders and the powerful thighs of a man who could control a war stallion through day-long combat. He also had the air of one embarking on a venture with some relish, anticipating the challenge ahead. The squire returned with soft leather shoes and a blue, fur-lined gown which he proceeded to help Sir John put on.

Eventually I broke in with a request. ‘Perhaps the next time you send anyone to Raby they would inquire after my bodyguard. When last I saw him he was tackling a band of cut-throat reivers single-handed. I would be grateful to hear how he fared.’

Lady Westmorland’s response to this cut the air like a knife. ‘You show great concern for a servant, Lady Cicely. I wonder what my cousin would think.’

At first I did not follow her train of thought. ‘Your cousin? Oh, do you mean the Duke of York?’

The countess nodded. ‘Yes, your betrothed. Perhaps you did not know that I am Hotspur’s daughter and my mother was a Mortimer, like his. I wonder how happy his grace would be to hear you so excessively concerned for your bodyguard.’

I resented her implication. ‘Of course I am concerned!’ I cried. ‘It is my brother Cuthbert I speak of. I suppose I may show concern for a brother without offending against any code of conduct?’

Lady Westmorland’s lip curled. ‘Ah – the late earl’s unfortunate by-blow.’

‘Unfortunate!’ I echoed, incensed. ‘I am sure that even Sir John would allow that, illegitimate or not, Sir Cuthbert of Middleham is one of the finest knights on the Western March.’

I swung round to seek the knight’s endorsement but my use of Cuddy’s full name had touched a raw nerve in the countess. ‘Marie! Not just a by-blow but a Middleham by-blow. He certainly spread himself far and wide, your father.’

‘Enough!’ Sir John’s face had darkened; his grey eyes were narrow beneath knitted brows. ‘Let us speak no more of such things. Is there no refreshment for returning travellers, my lady? I am starving!’

The countess rose from her chair, her expression sulky, but she snapped her fingers at the servant who had been stoking the fires. ‘Go, boy! Fetch food and wine for Sir John.’

‘And for Lady Cicely,’ added her brother-in-law as an afterthought. ‘She will also need a bed somewhere safe, sister. I am sure that can be arranged.’

He had fixed the countess with a steely gaze and she held it for several seconds as if tempted to deny him but then nodded briefly and made for the exit to attend to his request. I wondered why she had no lower-ranked female companion to whom she could delegate such a task but supposed that none could stomach her sour disposition. Certainly I had no desire to be beholden to such an unpleasant hostess but although my stomach was rumbling with hunger I needed other bodily relief more urgently. As she passed by me I adopted a placatory tone.

‘Lady Westmorland, I have been riding since morning and would be grateful for the use of a guarderobe.’

I have an audible voice, low and clear, but to my consternation the countess made no acknowledgement and disappeared under the screen arch in a swirl of skirts. I felt my cheeks burn.

Sir John gave an apologetic cough. ‘My sister-in-law cannot have heard you. I will summon a female servant to show you the way,’ he said. ‘There will be refreshments when you return.’

Of necessity there is always a guarderobe or latrine off every great hall but I was not shown to one so close by. Perhaps being mainly for the use of visiting knights and their retinues it was not considered suitable for ladies. Instead a hatchet-faced serving wench led me two flights up a spiral stair built into the thickness of the wall, which ended in a small tower chamber bare of furniture but with a small guarderobe leading off it. Although I was used to an upholstered seat rather than cold wood, at least I could not complain about the latrine’s cleanliness. After making use of it I spent a few minutes attempting to remove the gorse twigs and prickles still stubbornly attached to my clothes and hair, observed with dumb curiosity by the servant, who made no attempt to help.

On my return to the hall I encountered an influx of young men, all seating themselves noisily at a newly erected and cloth-covered trestle-table. Among them I recognized Tam and the squire who had removed Sir John’s armour. Two pages stood by with bowls and napkins for hand-washing. There was no sign of Lady Westmorland but Sir John had been joined at the dais fire by a thin, pale-faced individual well wrapped in fur-lined robes and seated in a curiously constructed chair equipped with a foot-rest and slots for carrying-poles. I approached them hesitantly, unsure of my welcome.

‘Ah, here is our visitor,’ said Sir John, catching sight of me and beckoning me onto the dais. ‘Lady Cicely, allow me to present my brother Ralph, Earl of Westmorland.’

‘My lord of Westmorland.’ I made the required acknowledgement with little enthusiasm in either voice or curtsy.

‘Well, there is no disputing your Neville breeding, my lady,’ responded the earl, showing more amiability than his wife. ‘You are nearly as tall as John here.’

‘She is Lady Joan’s youngest,’ remarked Sir John.

His brother glanced at him sharply. ‘The Beaufort’s youngest?’ he repeated. ‘I thought that one had married the Duke of York.’ He made a seated bow in my direction. ‘You must forgive me for not rising, your grace. I am unable to trust my legs.’

‘She is not “your grace” yet, brother. That is a betrothal ring on her finger, not a wedding band.’

I glanced down at my right hand, where the big polished cabochon diamond glinted even in the gloom of the ill-lit hall. ‘I am not yet married, my lord, no. But I am surprised to hear Sir John call me a visitor. I believe hostage would be a more accurate term.’

‘Hostage?’ Lord Westmorland looked up at his brother, one eyebrow raised. ‘What does she mean, John?’

The knight shrugged. ‘I have sent word to her mother that she will be returned to Raby only when Middleham and Sherriff Hutton are yours.’

His brother held his gaze for several seconds, blinking slowly, before bursting into delighted laughter. ‘Ha! She is right, she is a hostage. I do not know how you came by her, John, but you have clearly made good use of your windfall. You are the pillar of my house, brother, indeed you are.’

This was too much for me. I cut through his offensive laughter with a voice like flint. ‘I would have expected honourable treatment from a man of nobility, my lord! But clearly I am mistaken.’

The earl reduced his mirth to a smile. ‘I see no dishonour in demanding ransom for a noble prisoner, Lady Cicely, and you are certainly that. Daughter of an earl, betrothed to a duke – and what do they call you in these parts? The “Rose of Raby”, do they not? Your mother’s favourite child. Oh yes, the dowager will give much to see you back safely under her wing. I believe I can look forward to taking possession of my rightful inheritance very soon.’

This mocking speech had brought me close to tears but I forced them back. I knew enough about the senior branch of the Nevilles to appreciate that life had not been kind to them. The stories of the present earl’s childhood accident – a fall from a horse which had weakened his back and gradually robbed him of the use of his legs – and the unfortunate death of both his parents within a year of each other were well known in the north-country, as was the vast discrepancy between the grand-paternal legacies to him and those to my mother. Also, not only had my father left the bulk of his estates to our side of the family, while enjoying a flush of royal favour in his later years he had secured marriages and titles of much higher rank for his second family than his first and the best match of all had been won for me. Richard, Duke of York was the richest nobleman in England and, having reached his majority in September of the previous year, had spent the intervening months establishing his claim not only to the York estates but also to those of his cousin Edmund, Earl of March, his mother’s brother, who had died without issue at about the same time as my father. Ever since I had known him, Richard had been looking forward with a fervent appetite to petitioning parliament for his vast inheritance and, if I am honest, I shared his eagerness, having desires and ambitions of my own. In that respect I was my father’s daughter and he had made a perfect match, for Richard of York was no prouder or more ambitious than Cicely Neville.

What the Brancepeth branch of the family did not know – at least I certainly hoped they did not – was that the day was fast approaching when Richard of York would come to Raby to claim me as his bride and it would be unfortunate to say the least if, when he arrived, I was not there to marry him. I could imagine the heated debate that would take place between my mother and those of my brothers who were available; the urgent necessity of my return balanced against their united determination not to cede one stone or acre of their inheritance to the other side of the family. I would doubtless have found it funny if the situation did not make me feel like a scrap of meat being fought over by snarling dogs.

3

Raby Castle

Cuthbert

My half-brother Hal paced the floor of Countess Joan’s salon, his face displaying anger and fatigue in equal measure. He had ridden through the night from his castle at Penrith to attend this family summit meeting, gathered twenty-four hours after Cicely had vanished off the moor and twelve since the ransom note had been received from Brancepeth.

‘You have indulged the girl too much, my lady mother, and this is the result.’

Only Hal dared to address the majestic Dowager Countess of Westmorland in such an admonitory tone. Her eldest son, the first of the thirteen children she had borne to the late earl, he was the only one to whom she deferred because he had inherited our father’s air of authority, though not his devastating charm or extreme height. Richard Neville, Earl of Salisbury, was known in the family as Hal for reasons that went back to the establishment of the Lancastrian dynasty at the turn of the century. Having been baptized in honour of King Richard the Second, who had granted my father both the earldom of Westmorland and the marriage to his cousin, Joan Beaufort, the name became an embarrassment when Henry of Lancaster forced King Richard to abdicate in his favour – and so the baby Richard Neville quickly became known as Henry instead, or Hal for short. However, by the time he came of age, the name Richard was no longer out of favour and he used it officially, but within the family Hal had stuck.

Nicknames seemed to haunt Hal though. At court, where he served on the king’s council, I had heard him called Prudence behind his back, because of his strategic and cautious approach to everything. It was my guess that had Hal been at Raby, Cicely would never have been allowed out on the moor to hunt so close to the date of her wedding.

Now his attitude was starkly pragmatic. ‘If Richard of York hears of this he will repudiate the marriage and then Cicely might as well go straight to the nearest convent. She will be damaged goods.’

Seated in her gilded chair beneath a baronial canopy embroidered with the Beaufort portcullis crest, the dowager countess looked weary and distracted, but she retained her composure in the face of her son’s anger. ‘None of our retainers will dare to breathe a word of it, even if they become aware of Cicely’s precarious situation,’ she said. ‘York will never learn of it as long as we can get her back before his harbingers arrive and that cannot be for two more days at least. What is your plan to gain her release, Hal?’

Her son gave an exasperated sigh and let his gaze sweep the assembled company. ‘You let her leave the castle, mother, and Will and Ned let her ride into the arms of reivers. None of you seems to have covered yourself in glory over the matter and now you call me in and expect me to wave a magic wand and sort out the mess. Well, it will not be that easy.’

I suppose I should have been grateful that I was excluded from his list of blame but I knew that did not exempt me from responsibility; rather it indicated that Hal did not recognize my right to be in the room, for Lord Salisbury was a stickler for rank and protocol. I was baseborn and in his eyes a bastard could never be considered of rank, even one who had been accepted into his family household as a child, was reared with his brothers, and had earned the accolade of knighthood during a campaign on the Western March toward Scotland, of which he was Lord Warden. Although we were brothers, Hal Neville and I were not exactly friends.

Anyway I did not escape entirely.

‘It was Cuthbert who told her to ride for Raby.’ This helpful remark came from Ned, the brother closest to Cicely in age and another whom I did not count among my supporters. ‘Otherwise she would not have become separated from the rest of us.’

‘Cuddy was obeying orders,’ Will Neville cut in, the only one of my brothers who used Cicely’s nickname for me, a man on whom I could always rely to take my part. ‘Do not try and blame him for our mistakes. The reivers should never have got so near us. We should have kept scouts out all the time, not called them in when the hunting started.’

‘Dogs cannot flush out birds while scouts are tramping all over the moor,’ protested Ned. ‘There would be nothing there to hunt.’

‘Oh stop bickering!’ cried the countess, fixing Ned with pale-blue eyes narrowed and glittering with unshed tears. ‘The whole world knows that Cuthbert would die for Cicely. He is as distressed as any of us by her perilous position. Nor can we lay all the blame on Sir John Neville because it was he who rescued Cicely from the reivers. Had he not, her fate might have been even worse. No – if we are fixing blame we need look no further than the man who unfortunately bears the title your father worked so hard to achieve.’

Countess Joan used an exquisite lace kerchief to dab her cheek where a single tear had escaped her control.

‘You are right sans doubte, Madame ma mère.’

Young Ned had pretentions of grandeur and often used outdated Anglo-French phrases in order to stress the ancient Neville connection with the conquering Normans who had subdued England four hundred years ago. The rest of us were content to use English, the only language commonly understood and spoken by everyone in the north.

‘The devil twists a body which contains a twisted mind,’ Ned persisted. ‘We should attack Brancepeth with all force before that son of Beelzebub takes it into his warped mind to send a ransom demand to Richard of York. That would ruin Proud Cis’s prospects for certain!’ Despite his call for instant military attrition, Ned also sounded positively gleeful at the idea of Cicely being rejected by her wealthy bridegroom.

Will was indignant. ‘Neville cross swords with Neville? No! That is a recipe for disaster. Besides, Ned, there is no reason why anyone should have a warped mind simply because his body is not perfect, or vice versa. My Jane may be feeble-brained, but she is the most kind and loving of females.’

Will’s wife was Jane Fauconberg who, when she married him at sixteen, had literally been a childlike bride with the mind of a girl of six. Nevertheless she had brought him, an otherwise impecunious and untitled younger son, the extensive Barony of Fauconberg. Those who objected that the marriage was distastefully mercenary and wholly against nature were confounded by the affection and care Will displayed towards his spouse and her clear love for him. Love had been rewarded, and their marriage was confirmed as legal and consummated when she recently became pregnant with their first child at the start of the year. Needless to say, Will was hoping for a healthy boy to inherit the barony, having already proved his own ability to father sons by siring two with his resident mistress.

Ned was scornful. ‘You are as soft in the head as your wife, Will,’ he sneered. ‘Anyway, I say attack is the only option – preferably today.’

I waited to see which way Hal would jump. Surprisingly, for a man of the sword, he sided with Will and his mother. ‘I do not agree,’ he said firmly, turning his back on Ned’s angry glare. ‘We do not have to fear for Cicely’s honour or her safety. Westmorland and his brothers may be thorns in our side but they are not the monsters you paint them. It is our sister’s reputation we must protect. Richard of York will be keenly aware, as I am, that a young girl who has not been permanently under the protection of her mother or some other responsible female can be considered damaged goods. If he perceives Cicely’s abduction as a way to free himself from his obligation to marry her, the king’s council would support him because they are looking to strengthen England’s crucial alliance with Burgundy. A marriage between a scion of Burgundy and an English royal duke would re-point its masonry.’

He moved nearer to the countess’s canopied chair and knelt down before her in the guise of an earnest appellant. ‘We cannot allow that to happen, my lady mother. Although I know you remain sensitive in the matter, I think we should appeal to Eleanor to intervene. She must surely have considerable influence with Lord and Lady Westmorland.’

Lady Joan’s face set in an icy stare and her knuckles grew white on the arms of her chair. Strictly speaking, she was no longer required to wear mourning for her late husband but, by payment of a hefty sum to the royal exchequer, she had obtained permission to remain unmarried and she still favoured widow’s weeds. In her gleaming black minerva-trimmed gown, relieved only by the high neck of her white linen kirtle and veil, she resembled an affronted abbess about to address an offending novice.

‘No, my lord, under no circumstances! Eleanor made her bed with Percy and she must lie in it. I have nothing to say to her.’

Eleanor Neville, the eldest daughter, had eloped at sixteen with one of the Raby henchmen esquires, to be married by a hermit-priest in his cell deep in the Northumbrian borderlands. In a romantic turn of events it transpired that the apparently humble squire was, in fact, Henry Percy, heir to the earldom of Northumberland, who had been living incognito ever since his father and grandfather had forfeited their titles and estates by rebelling against the first Lancastrian king, Henry IV. Young Percy had wooed and won his lady in a fashion which might have thrilled a troubadour but had horrified and offended Lady Joan, who had never forgiven Eleanor, notwithstanding her chosen swain proving to have a status equal to her own. Family pride had induced the countess to intercede with her nephew, the newly crowned King Henry V, to get the young earl reinstated, so that her daughter could at least obtain the rank to which her birth entitled her, but the unforgiving dowager had never again set eyes on her runaway daughter, nor on the seven grandchildren Eleanor had provided her with.

Now she reinforced her objection. ‘Besides, as I understand it there is little love lost between Lord Northumberland and his sister, the present Lady Westmorland. She too disliked the manner of his marriage. I doubt if they communicate.’

Salisbury rose from his knees and stepped back speechless, merely shrugging his shoulders with a sigh.

‘So much for family loyalty,’ commented Ned with a grin. He made a sketchy bow in the direction of his mother’s chair. ‘If that is the best we can do I will take my leave. Cicely had better take her future into her own hands for it is apparent that no one here is going to bend over backwards to help her.’ He tossed a withering glance in my direction. ‘Least of all her much-vaunted champion, Cuthbert.’

I bit back a retort as the countess rose, indicating that as far as she was concerned the meeting was over. ‘At least we can pray. I shall be in the chapel and do not wish to be disturbed unless there is an emergency,’ she said, sweeping her dark skirts around her feet and heading towards her privy door, trailing a drifting fragrance of attar of roses in the air and causing an ornate heraldic banner to billow on the wall. The banner quartered the red rose of Lancaster with the Beaufort portcullis and was bordered in blue and white; her own personal standard.

Lady Joan made a small gesture as she passed me, indicating that I should follow her out but before closing the door behind us I heard Ned remark dryly, ‘Praying is all she will do. There will be no property concessions, that much is certain.’

The private chapel at Raby was a small gem. Intended only for the use of the Neville family and their distinguished guests, it had been built by the old earl’s father, but Ralph Neville himself had commissioned the colourful frescos on the walls which celebrated the family’s rise to power. On an azure sea sailed the three-masted ship from which Admiral de Neuville had commanded the fleet which brought Duke William’s force from Normandy to invade England; beside that a scene of knights and archers in close combat depicted the famous Battle of Neville’s Cross, when the Scottish king had been taken prisoner on the moors outside Durham; and finally there were scenes showing masons working on the soaring walls of Raby castle, confirming the establishment of the Nevilles among the premier barons of England. At the chancel end of the nave stood a beautiful rood screen carved from Ancaster alabaster and adorned with images of local English saints especially revered by the family; St Cuthbert, St Hilda, St Aidan and St Godric.

Lady Joan led me down the nave and paused by the screen. ‘You were named for St Cuthbert,’ she reminded me, ‘but my lord’s favoured saint was this one, Godric the crusader.’ She laid her hand on a fold of the saint’s stone robe. ‘A few weeks before your father died he brought me here and, despite his pain, he managed to kneel before this statue, though his wounded leg stuck out like a broken branch. Then he prayed aloud, asking the saint for guidance but I knew he was really consulting me.

‘“The surgeons want to cut off my leg,” he said. “You fought the devil, Godric. Standing waist high in the waters of the Wear, you battled the Anti-Christ for a day and a night. Tell me, God’s stalwart soldier, what must I do to combat Satan’s demons that fester in my leg?”’

The countess turned away from the screen and addressed me directly. ‘Ralph did not have the strength to continue and I finished the prayer for him. I begged St Godric to allow my lord to remain a true knight, proud and upright and to carry his sword in Christ’s name. Not to let him stand before God a cripple.’

‘Oh, my lady,’ I croaked, shocked to hear that word applied to the father I revered. ‘What did my father say?’

‘He understood. He smiled at me through his pain and said, “So be it. I am sixty-two. I have lived my life. I will go to the Creator as He made me, with every limb intact. It shall be as it shall be. May St Godric give me the strength to bear it.”’

I stared at her, bewildered. ‘You believe that cripples are the devil’s acolytes? That the present Lord Westmorland is a disciple of Satan?’ I asked.

‘Yes. But I believe he can be confounded by a miracle. There was no miracle for my lord Ralph but I will pray for one for Cicely.’

With that Lady Joan went to kneel down at the plush prie Dieu which had been specially placed for her in the chancel beneath an image of Our Lady. I hesitated, wondering why she had required my presence but all became clear when she began to pray aloud. ‘Holy Marie, Mother of God, be with my daughter Cicely in her hours of trial. Show her the way to escape her captors and let there be a strong hand to help her when your miracle has been fulfilled.’

I understood now. Lady Joan did not make specific requests of her vassals because she did not want to be disappointed if they failed to fulfil her wishes, but if they could be made to know those wishes indirectly then neither she nor they could lose face in the event of a failure. I was being given clear instructions to make it my business to act as spy and support for Cicely in any way I could, without involving the others. In other words, I was to perform the task that Lady Joan herself would have done, were she young and a man.

As her prayers dropped to a low murmur, I bowed to her apparently oblivious back and walked out of the chapel as quietly as my hard leather soles would allow. I never wore the soft-soled shoes affected by my brothers in their domestic life. It was part of my vow as a knight-champion that I remained constantly ready for action. To that end I carried a hidden blade, even when carrying arms was not permitted. All I had to do to begin my appointed task was collect my saddle-bags, my short sword, my helmet and my habergeon, the light body armour that protected throat and breast without hampering silent movement through any terrain; and, of course, my horse. I would wear no symbol of affinity but cease being a Neville knight and become an anonymous mercenary soldier of fortune; one that could mix with others of like kind.

However, before any of that I had to seek out one other person. I found her in the inner garth, a small and private walled pleasure garden. It afforded fresh air but there was little grass evident because the sun barely penetrated the high walls of Raby’s inner court, and so it was laid out with gravel paths, small evergreen bushes and painted wooden posts carved into heraldic beasts. At the far end was a sandy square reserved for bowling, where a girl in a green kirtle and a pretty lace-trimmed coif was throwing a stick for a little brown and white terrier.

Hilda Copley was the daughter of a local knight, who had arrived at Raby five years before to be a companion for Lady Cicely. The two girls had shared lessons, leisure activities and even a bed ever since, and I knew how anxious Hilda would be about Cicely’s continued absence. Besides, having taught both of them horsemanship and the rudiments of archery and self-defence, I was as close to Hilda as I was to Cicely, except that I was not Hilda’s half-brother and to me that was a very important difference.

When she saw me at the garth gate she abandoned the dog to his stick and ran towards me, skirts flying, a sight I greeted with a wide, appreciative smile.

‘What are you smiling about, Cuddy?’ she demanded excitedly. ‘Has Cicely returned?’

‘No, I fear not,’ I admitted. ‘Lady Joan wants me to spy out the situation in Brancepeth so I am about to leave.’

Hilda’s dark brows knitted in vexation. Usually I loved it when her pretty face creased in a frown and her brown eyes glinted in challenge but on this occasion I knew she was about to dispute my unquestioning obedience to Lady Joan – not a subject I was prepared to debate with her – so I forestalled her protest.

‘No one else seems to have any idea how to grapple with the problem so I am more than willing to go on a fishing expedition. At least I can travel unrecognized and ask questions in places where the Nevilles would not go. It might just yield results. God knows, something has to.’

The light of battle died in Hilda’s eyes and she became practical. ‘Someone has to,’ she amended, favouring me with faint twitch of the lips, ‘and Cicely can always rely on you.’ She did not add ‘more than the rest of her brothers’ but I could hear the unspoken words in her tone of voice.

She whistled sharply and the terrier came running up and dropped his stick at her feet. ‘Caspar is pining for his mistress,’ she revealed, picking him up and tucking him under her arm. ‘I thought a bit of exercise would cheer him up.’

Caspar was Cicely’s dog, used to following her everywhere except of course to the hunt, when the big alaunt hounds would probably have eaten him for dinner.

‘I expect Cicely is missing him,’ I remarked, falling into step beside Hilda as she walked towards the gate. ‘Are you going to feed him now?’

‘Yes, why?’

‘Well, I thought if you were going to beg some scraps from the kitchen for Caspar you might also acquire some supplies to sustain me on my travels.’

I was rewarded with a cuff on the arm. ‘So that is why you came to find me. And I thought it was for a sight of my bonny brown eyes.’

‘So it was,’ I protested, feeling the blood rise in my cheeks. ‘And your way with the kitchen staff.’

Hilda stalked off ahead, affecting indignation. The terrier’s tail wagged dismissively at me from under her arm. ‘Hah! Well, I suppose Caspar might spare you a bit of gristle.’

4

Brancepeth

Cuthbert

I took the moorland route to Brancepeth and rode in bright sunshine, my horse trotting easily over grassy sheep tracks. The dry conditions meant I could let my mind wander, considering the reasons for my unquestioning obedience to Lady Joan; the obedience which the spirited Hilda found so hard to comprehend.

Hilda was not illegitimate. She was the true-born daughter of Sir William Copley, late tenant of one of the closest of Raby’s many manors. Even as a young child, while her father was still alive, she had often been to Raby, making friends, especially Cicely who was nearest to her in age. I had often encountered her when I was a boy, but by the age of eleven I had begun serious training military training and grown scornful of little girls with their dolls and giggles. Now, of course, it was a different matter.

I do not remember precisely when I began to notice that Hilda had grown from a cheeky little girl into a dark-haired temptress, but it must have been during the summer that I started to teach her and Cicely how to shoot an arrow. I found something intensely appealing about the way Hilda tilted her chin before she hauled back on the bowstring, and when she flexed her arm and pulled I felt a blood-rushing response to the thrust of her budding breasts against the fabric of her bodice. She was thirteen and I was not yet twenty. During the three years since then, my teenage lust had turned into something more controlled, but my heart still missed a beat whenever I caught sight of her.

Since then, too, her father had died and her eldest brother Gerald had inherited the manor of Copley. Young Gerald had been one of my fellow henchmen at Raby, sharing the training, both military and social, that was intended to turn us into fierce and faithful Neville knights. As youths we had been quite good friends until I began to receive more senior and responsible posts than he did, a situation he judged to be due to favouritism. That was when he began to cast snide remarks in my hearing about ‘bastard blood’ and ‘bum-licking by-blow’, insults I managed to ignore. But when he got wind of my feelings for his sister his antipathy grew more sinister; there was ample opportunity on the practice ground for knocks and thrusts to result in real wounds inflicted accidentally-on-purpose. I had been much relieved when his inheritance took Gerald back to the manor of Copley, but before he left he made it abundantly clear to me that if any word reached him linking my name to Hilda’s, violent retribution would follow. Our paths had not crossed since but I knew that, apart from when he performed his knight’s service on the Scottish border, he was never far away.

The stain of bastardy was the glue that bound me to Lady Joan; not that she ever used that word. It was the reason I gave instant and unquestioning service to her. Very soon after my arrival at Raby I had been surprised and perturbed to be summoned to the countess’s tower and admitted to her private quarters. In the room she called her salon I was dazzled by the light that streamed through half a dozen diamond-glazed windows and awestruck by the opulence of the furnishings. Until then, I had known only the interior gloom of my family’s fortified farm high up in the dale above Middleham Castle, and its rough-hewn table and benches. Lady Joan’s sumptuous silk hangings and polished-oak chests and chairs were a revelation to me and I needed no nudging from her chamberlain to fall instantly on my knees before her raised and canopied throne. I was convinced I must be kneeling at the feet of a queen.

‘You are welcome to Raby Castle, Cuthbert.’ Her soft, aristocratic tones sent nervous shivers down my spine. ‘You may be surprised that I have sent for you but we have much in common, you and me. Like you I was baseborn and grew up under the shadow of illegitimacy. I know it is not an easy road to walk. I was lucky. My father eventually married my mother and was powerful enough to have her children legitimized. That will not happen to you and yet you too are lucky because you have impressed your father with your strength and intelligence. He will see to it that you receive the training necessary to join the elite force of Westmorland men-at-arms. But because you are his son he has asked me to ensure that you also receive an education and learn good manners, and so you are to join my sons and daughters at the appropriate lessons. I trust you will take advantage of this opportunity and repay our generosity with true loyalty.’

Under her gracious azure gaze I blushed furiously and mumbled some words of gratitude, turning the new homespun hood which my mother had made for me round and round in anxious fingers. At ten years old I needed no urging to pledge my loyalty to this beautiful, fragrant, splendidly jewelled lady. I wanted to prostrate myself before her and let her trample me under her satin-slippered feet but instead I bowed my head and tugged at the fringe of hair on my forehead. ‘Oh yes, my lady, I will,’ I said and, true to my word, I had repaid her over and over again and was even now continuing to do so.

At Brancepeth a posse of Raby men-at-arms was now camped in the shelter of a tree belt, well back from any archers’ arrows fired from the castle walls. Hal had seen to that at least. As I was wearing no insignia that might be recognized from the battlements, I went to speak to the sergeant in command but I took care to remain in the shadow of the trees. He reported no activity at all that day and, with dusk fast approaching, did not expect any. This puzzled me as Brancepeth was not under siege, but my curiosity was met with a shrug from the sergeant; his instructions were to keep out of arrow-range and log any activity. I took myself off to the village where I hoped to find looser tongues.

In the main street I promised a halfpenny to a loitering lad to mind my horse and he directed me to the alehouse, identifiable by a desiccated evergreen bush hung over its door. It was the usual low-roofed, smoke-filled, mud-floored hell-hole; a meeting place for unmarried local villeins with a farthing to spend, thirsty black-faced colliers from the nearby mines and weary travellers from the west who could not quite make it to Durham before curfew. I hoped it would be assumed that I fitted the last category. There was no room near the fire so I took a seat on a corner bench beside a man wearing the Neville bull on his jacket and signalled the pot-boy to bring me a mug of ale.

‘You must be a local resident, sir,’ I said politely, indicating my neighbour’s livery badge. ‘That is the Neville bull, is it not?’

The man’s grin revealed only three or four blackened teeth. ‘Brancepeth Neville, sir. The other lot, with their fancy sailing ship, do not show their faces here.’

I affected ignorance of Neville business. ‘Oh? Why is that?’

He rubbed his thumb and forefinger together with a knowing look. ‘Family feud, sir, over land, coin and castles. Rich men’s pickings.’

The pot-boy arrived with my ale in a banded wooden mug and I tossed him a farthing. ‘You seem very knowledgeable about the lord’s affairs,’ I prodded, taking a long gulp of the thin liquid. It was stale but not unpleasant.

He puffed out his chest. ‘Well I should know something since I work at the castle.’

With teeth like his I doubted if he worked in the private apartments but I decided flattery would aid my cause. ‘You must have a senior position, sir, if you can leave after dusk. When I rode past the drawbridge was up and the portcullis well and truly down.’

The man pressed his finger to the side of his nose. ‘There’s more than one way in and out of that place,’ he confided. ‘If you know the guards you can slip out the back. The lord’s brothers went that way very early this morning. I was returning from plucking a nice plump hen last night, if you get my meaning, and I saw them leave.’

I tried hard not to show my surprise at this information. ‘Off hunting vixen, were they?’ I suggested with a smirk.

He pursed up his lips, looking doubtful. ‘I reckon not. They had some skirt with them. There’s been a mystery woman staying and they fired one of the gatehouse canons at a troop from Raby which arrived this afternoon. Something to do with the family rift it seems. I work in the stables and one of the countess’s palfreys was missing from its stall but Lady Westmorland is still in the castle.’

Now the hair rose on the back of my neck. Was it possible that Cicely had been moved from Brancepeth and, if so, where had they taken her? Or had she persuaded her kidnappers to let her go and if so, again, where was she? I downed the rest of my ale hurriedly and stood up, excusing my hasty departure. ‘I need to get back to my horse before the lad I left it with realizes it would fetch more than I’ve promised him. Thanks for your company, my friend.’

‘If you need a bed I know a nice clean widow in the village who would share hers with you for half a groat.’ A big wink and another gap-toothed grin accompanied this offer.

I shook my head. ‘Not tonight, regrettably, I am on a pilgrimage.’ I saw his eyes pop with astonishment as I turned away and fought my way through the smoke and bodies to the door. Outside I smiled to myself and breathed the fresh night air with relief. The boy was still holding my horse and scampered off with glee, biting at the half-moon of silver I had given him. My stomach urged me to eat before following up on the information I had just received, so I set off, leading the horse, to seek a place to let him graze while I raided the saddle-bag supplies Hilda had procured for me.

In a far corner of the Brancepeth churchyard, I hobbled my horse and let him loose, then settled down on a gravestone to enjoy a substantial cheese pastry in the light of the rising moon. The church was dark; not even the flicker of a votive candle showed through the leaded windows of its rounded arches. Either they were shuttered or else the priest was gone for the day.

I could hear my horse munching his way around the graves and the occasional clink of his metal shoes as they struck a stone edge. I wondered what Cicely would be doing at that hour and where she would be laying her head. This would be the second night she had spent away from Raby. If she was no longer at Brancepeth would she even have a bed, or might she be confined in some cave up on the moors, or forced to sleep in a forest hut, hidden from prying eyes? If so, she would be uncomfortable and frightened but the worst aspect for her would be thinking that her family had entirely abandoned her. Cicely was not used to being belittled or ignored. Although she hated her brothers calling her Proud Cis, she was fiercely aware of her lineage and expected the deference due to a potential duchess. I wondered how she would have reacted if her ‘hosts’ had treated her with anger or disrespect. Might her removal from Brancepeth be due to them inflicting some form of retribution or inducement? A sense of the urgency of my mission escalated as I contemplated her position. I did not believe that the present earl would allow any physical harm to come to a female who was, after all, his close relative, but revenge could be achieved in many devious ways, particularly through damage to such a valuable young girl’s honour and reputation.

I consumed the last morsel of the pastry whilst considering what form that damage might take and disliking the turn my thoughts were taking, when my meditations were interrupted by the increasingly urgent sound of human copulation coming from the deep shadow of one of the church buttresses nearby. Copulation or rape, with a crescendo of climactic grunts coming from the male participant and what I took to be wails of increasing protest from the woman. I was in half a mind to intervene but held myself in check, conscious of my own invidious position. To become involved in any sort of incident in Brancepeth would inevitably destroy my anonymity and put paid to any chance I had of assisting Cicely – and might even lead to my own imprisonment.

Quashing feelings of guilt, I crept off to collect my horse and buckle on my saddlebag, but I had not made sufficient allowance for the woman’s distress. Hardly had I removed the hobble and re-bridled the courser when the grunting ceased, but to my dismay the protests of the unfortunate girl redoubled, and she crawled out of her dark corner into the moonlight, tugging her skirt down and screaming at her still-hidden companion.

‘You foul beast! You should be whipped. You promised me silver. Just a quick feel you said – then you force yourself up my arse! You are a liar and a pervert.’

By this time the moon had risen above the trees surrounding the churchyard and its soft blue light beamed down on the girl. She might have been pretty, had not her face been twisted into an ugly expression of hatred and anger. She looked no older than Cicely; too young, I thought, to be whoring herself in a churchyard, even for a shilling. I couldn’t help feeling compassion for her. Not only had she been cheated out of the promised silver, she had also been abused by a bully and a pederast. Her abuser, however, must have been brazenly confident of getting away with it, even to the extent of using the churchyard for his dirty work, when fornication and particularly buggery were carnal sins which could lead to the consistory court, a whipping and a public penance. Then the man himself stepped out of the shadows and my lip curled. It was my erstwhile bugbear, Hilda’s unpleasant and vicious brother, Sir Gerald Copley. I clenched my fists, itching to punch his teeth in, but he had not seen me and I wanted to keep it that way. Neither I nor the horse moved.

Gerald was grinning lecherously while adjusting the codpiece flap of his hose. ‘You stupid slut,’ he said and aimed a kick at his crouching victim, sending her sprawling. Her screeching redoubled and she scrambled to a gravestone and hauled herself to her feet as he continued to berate her. ‘You have the brains of a frog and the backside of a donkey. Why would anyone pay you a shilling to use that spotty arse? And why would any man risk getting a bastard by taking the front door? Bastards are the devil’s spawn. They should be strangled at birth.’

Sensibly the girl decided to retreat rather than risk another vicious kick. She gathered up her skirts and lurched off into the darkness, but not before she had aimed a gob of spit at him so large that I could see it glint in the moonlight. Gerald growled angrily and made as if to chase after her but took only a couple of threatening steps before stabbing the two-fingered witch sign at her and letting her go. From the deep shadow of the trees I watched him adjust his doublet over his sullied hose and saunter away between the graves to the churchyard gate. And I made a silent vow that if ever I encountered Gerald Copley in any kind of confrontation, whether on my side or the other, I would sink my dagger in one of his strutting buttocks. It would be in retribution for his remarks about bastards as much as for his callous mistreatment of a defenceless young woman.

5

From Brancepeth to Aycliffe

Cicely

My first night at Brancepeth had been short and sleepless. Seated at one end of Lord Westmorland’s high table I had forced myself to eat a little of whatever was offered to me but although I was hungry, I seemed to lose my appetite as soon as food touched my tongue. Rather pointedly I thought, the countess remained absent but the earl had attempted to engage me in conversation. However, as I felt no inclination to indulge him our intercourse had been brief and stilted and afterwards Sir John had escorted me back up to the tower chamber in brooding silence. As we climbed the stair from the bustling hall a sudden sense of loneliness engulfed me. Coming from a large family and a castle that teemed with activity like an ant’s nest, the prospect of a night locked away alone terrified me. There had been no response from Raby to Sir John’s ultimatum and the feeling of abandonment was overwhelming. All my life I had had someone to fight my battles for me, either my father, my mother or one of my brothers and now I had become convinced that the only way I was going to get back to Raby in time for my wedding was by using my own wits. The graunching scrunch of the key turning in the lock was a chilling reminder that there were daunting physical obstacles to be overcome even before confronting the twenty mile distance between Brancepeth and Raby. Seeing help from no other quarter, I threw myself on my knees beside the mean little cot that Lady Elizabeth had provided for me and began to pray.

The candle I had been left with had begun to gutter and I was steeling myself to contemplate the long darkness of the night when I heard that unnerving scrunch again.

‘May I come in, Lady Cicely?’ said the now-familiar voice of my knightly abductor. ‘I would speak with you.’

I rose hastily to my feet, stumbling forward on stiffened limbs but preferring to converse on equal terms with my captor. ‘Enter, Sir John,’ I said, arranging my face into what I hoped was an implacable expression, while inside my stomach churned with apprehension.

He was carrying a lighted lantern and a tray containing a bowl and a jug. ‘I noticed that you ate little at dinner, Lady Cicely. I have brought you curds and honey and some ale because I must warn you that we will be going on a journey. When the castle is sleeping I intend to take you on a ride which I hope will make you understand the injustice that has been done to my brother.’

It was as if my prayers had been answered. My chances of making a break for freedom were infinitely higher if I were taken out of the castle, but I did not want him to notice my surge of elation so I kept my expression blank.

‘Thank you for the warning, Sir John. I am agog to learn how you think to change my perception.’

His grey eyes studied my face but their narrow gaze gave me no hint of his intentions. ‘As I said, I plan to show you injustice, my lady. Now you should get some sleep. Be ready to ride before first light.’ He said no more but he left me the tray and the lantern.

When I lay down sleep eluded me but a vivid memory rose to the surface of my mind like a waking dream. My father sat in his canopied chair, his bandaged leg propped up on cushions before him. Although only nine years old I knew there was an evil presence hidden under that thick dressing, which drew him daily nearer to death. Cuddy had told me that an old wound, received many years before, had resurfaced and now festered, sending rays of blackened flesh creeping up his thigh which emitted a putrid smell and warned us all that the great man had little time left.

For this important occasion maids had dressed me in my best pink gown; tiny white roses decorated the skirt and sleeves. I understood the meaning of betrothal and so did the boy beside me – Richard Plantagenet, dressed in the York colours of dark murrey-red and blue. He was thirteen and looked rather sulky, perhaps because although four years younger, I already stood nearly as tall as he.

My father’s voice was mellow, despite the pain that etched deep furrows in his brow. ‘Your vows to marry give me much pleasure, my children. I hope you will honour each other and share a mutual affection. We have done our best to teach you how.’ He exchanged glances with my mother, who stood at his shoulder, beautiful in her sky-blue robe, her high, white forehead framed by a winged structure of pale gauze and gold filigree. She motioned us to kneel.

‘We seek your blessing, my lord,’ said Richard in a well-rehearsed sing-song tone, and took my hand in a moist clasp.

‘May God in his infinite mercy bless you both,’ pronounced my father, his voice carrying to the crowd of retainers and servants assembled below the great hall dais. ‘And when the time comes may he grant you the boon of children to unite the blood of York and Neville.’

I felt the betrothal ring bite into the sides of my fingers as Richard’s grip tightened and we both flushed with embarrassment. The mention of children evoked the notion of coupling – anathema to our childish sensitivities even though we both knew it was part of the marriage contract. There would have to be coupling – but not yet.

Minstrels struck up a lively tune and the Master of Revels took us off to lead the dancing. The great Raby Baron’s Hall was decked with flowers and ribbons tied into love knots and above them rows of brightlycoloured ancestral banners hung from the rafters. I enjoyed dancing and smiled as I executed the intricate steps of the estampie, a new French dance which I had just learned, but my mind was still filled with concern for my father. When the music ended I went to pick up the jewelled hanap on the table beside him, kept exclusively for the earl to drink from. I lifted the cover and carefully held it beneath the vessel to catch any drips as my father drank. He returned the precious vessel to my hands with a smile.

‘You play the cupbearer well, Cicely,’ he said.

‘You know I love to serve you, my lord father,’ I told him in a whisper. ‘I wish I could ease your pain.’

‘I feel no pain when I look at you, sweeting. You are my solace and my hope. Look – what does it say up there, under the ship on the great pennant?’ He pointed to the huge gold and crimson fretted battle standard which dominated the parade of banners in the rafters. In the centre, superimposed over the Neville saltire, was the black outline of a ship in sail, symbolizing the fleet commanded by Admiral Neuville which had brought the Conqueror’s army to England. The motto read Esperance me confort – ‘Hope comforts me.’

I spoke the words to him carefully, knowing them by heart.

‘You are my hope, Cicely,’ he said, his eyes holding mine. ‘You are the one …’

The image was so vivid that when I opened my eyes I thought I could still see my father’s grey gaze fixed on mine. Then I realized it was not memory but reality. Sir John was leaning over me with a lamp and his eyes were the re-incarnation of those that my mind had conjured up, even flecked with the same colours of chestnut and green as my father’s had been.

He spoke in a hushed whisper, as if afraid to wake the rest of the castle inhabitants. ‘We leave now, Lady Cicely, before it gets light. You must come.’

I threw off the covers and stood up, feeling suddenly dizzy so that I swayed on my feet. Sir John took my arm to steady me and for a few moments I found myself leaning against him with a rush of emotion that I could not put a name to. Then I realized we were not alone and hastily drew back. The stolid maid stood behind him and it was she who pulled my discarded riding huke over my head and laced up my boots. By the time I was ready the dizziness had passed and we crept quietly from the chamber and down the narrow stair. I cast a glance back at my prison and put up a silent prayer of thanks to St Agnes for my deliverance. I had no idea where I was going but surely anywhere had to be better than that cold, lonely cell?

A rear exit from Brancepeth opened onto a path leading directly down into the densely wooded dene on which the castle stood. My sturdy palfrey slipped and scrambled down the steep bank with remarkable agility while I clung to the saddle and left him to it. We then followed the course of a shallow but fast-flowing stream which our horses seemed to navigate more by feel than sight.

There were five of us mounted and one loaded pack pony; I recognized the two squires who had both been in the hall at dinner the previous night; Lady Westmorland’s son Tam Clifford I knew from my spurious ‘rescue’ and the other I had gathered was Sir John’s younger brother, Thomas. The fifth rider was the stolid maid who turned out to be called Marion, brought along I assumed because Sir John’s sense of honour would not allow me to be in the company of three men without a female chaperone, for which, had she known it, my mother would certainly have been grateful.

For the first mile the only sound to be heard was the splashing of the horses’ feet in the water and the occasional screech of a hoof slipping on rock, when we all held our breath. No one spoke, knowing that the Raby observers were camped within earshot above us on the flat land in front of the castle. For an instant I wondered if a cry for help would bring them running but then I realized there would likely be bloodshed and I did not want to be responsible for any death or injury. I was determined that this situation should be resolved peacefully and without bloodshed. The only thing I had not decided was how.

Once clear of the dene I ventured to speak. ‘May I now ask where we are going?’

Dawnlight had begun to flush the eastern sky and the castle had disappeared into the forest gloom behind us. Sir John had carefully dropped back beside me leaving Tam in front and Thomas behind Marion, leading the sumpter. Even if I spotted a possible escape route, the knight’s sleek charger would easily outrun my serviceable steed.

‘As I told you, Lady Cicely, I am going to show you the true injustice of your father’s legacy. We will ford the river you can see ahead and then we will cut across open country, avoiding several villages before we reach our destination. So there will be no opportunity for you to seek assistance, should you have it in mind.’

I made no response but kept a keen eye on our surroundings. I had enough local knowledge to guess that the river we crossed, wading hock-high through the spring-swelled flow, was once again the Wear and with the sun rising to our left we must be heading south. I guessed that Raby stood somewhere towards the west but how far and over what terrain? Although I harboured a spirit of adventure and believed I could elude recapture if the right circumstances arose, I felt daunted by the notion of making my way there alone across open country. In the anonymity of the surrounding moorland it would be easy to follow the wrong stream and become hopelessly lost.

At high noon in uncommonly bright spring sunshine we sighted our destination when a dark silhouette appeared on the horizon like a stump protruding from the earth. At that point we entered treacherous terrain where the going was flat and sinister, reeking with the stench of stagnant water and covered in a warning carpet of moss and myrtle. A moist humidity clung to it, producing swarms of biting flies which we swatted irritably as we followed a series of tall marker sticks sunk into the soggy morass to show where the ground was firm enough to take the weight of our horses. The stump gradually resolved into a grey stone edifice about thirty feet high, topped by uneven gap-toothed crenellations and standing square on a rocky mound attended by a huddle of low, straw-thatched hovels and a small stone chapel. A fearsome iron yett secured the ground floor and a random succession of tiny, deep-set windows pierced the thick stone walls of the tower, providing maximum defence but minimum light to the upper stories. It was what northerners called a peel, built to repel marauding reivers but offering nothing in the way of domestic comfort. I could barely suppress a shiver, imagining my next confinement in the grim twilight of an upper chamber, set in the middle of a stinking bog.

We had been riding slowly and carefully in single file, picking our way gingerly over the untrustworthy moss, but when we finally reached secure rock Sir John kicked his horse up to mine. ‘This is what I wanted you to see, Lady Cicely. Thanks to your father, this dank place is where my brother Thomas will have to bring his bride, should we ever find him one willing to make it her home. Welcome to Aycliffe Tower.’

6

Aycliffe Tower

Cicely

The squat tower seemed to rise out of a deep tangle of briars, which at this early spring season were just beginning to hide their fierce thorns behind emerging green shoots. Someone had struck on the ingenious idea of planting wild roses in the sparse patches of soil that littered the rocky foundations and these now formed a dense, flesh-ripping defence against any enemy attempt to scale the walls. Only the entrance to the undercroft, guarded by its latticed yett and a pair of thick iron-bound oak gates, remained free of this thorny barricade so that both people and animals could speedily take refuge in an attack. Gazing at these impenetrable thickets of briars my first random thought was to wonder whether they bloomed red or white. The red rose was one of the symbols of the Royal House of Lancaster, loyally supported by all branches of the Neville family, ever since my father had changed his allegiance from King Richard to King Henry. Planted here in Lancastrian-held soil by a Lancastrian vassal, it occurred to me that it would be ironic if, when they flowered in June, these defensive English roses were not red but white.

After struggling with a gargantuan lock and key, Tam and Thomas managed to get the yett and the gates open, but in order to reach the narrow tower stair we were obliged to cross the lower chamber, where until very recently a herd of cows had wintered. As a result the earth floor was still mired with their excrement so that our boots and the hem of my skirt quickly became filthy. I shut my mind to the stench and the image of rats scuttling over my feet and headed for the stair.

The upper floor was divided into two chambers, the first furnished with a few rickety benches and a heap of grubby sleeping mats piled in one corner. There was a cold, ash-filled fireplace in one wall. The deep gloom was preserved by tightly closed shutters; these Tam hastened to throw open, allowing welcome light and air through the two small window holes, but the smell of cattle dung still clung with fierce pungence and I clamped my hand over my mouth to stop myself gagging. Bidding me to duck my head, Sir John ushered me through a low door in the rough stone dividing-wall which led into another room containing a settle placed opposite another dead hearth and a low bedstead which lacked any mattress.

Eying this, I asked coldly, ‘Is it part of your plan, that I should sling myself on the bed-ropes to sleep, Sir John?’

‘We have brought mattress bags,’ he replied with a hint of a smile. ‘I will have Thomas send villeins out to fill them with myrtle leaves. They make fragrant bedding.’

‘I must take your word for that. Until I came to Brancepeth I had never slept on anything but feathers.’

‘Perhaps then you will begin to understand the difference between a castle and a hovel.’

‘I might, but I do not see how that will make me favour your cause.’ I shot him a sceptical glance.

Ignoring this challenge, Sir John removed a large iron key from the lock in the heavy door to the chamber and held it aloft while he spoke crisply and concisely. ‘You will sleep in here, the maid where you will. Tam and Thomas and I will sleep in the room above. There will be no keys but there will be a constant guard on the yett and a watch on the tower roof. Otherwise you are free to roam. The guard will not stop you but I do not advise trying to venture beyond the perimeter of the policies, due to the surrounding bog. Whole oxen have been swallowed by it in the past, when they strayed too close to the edge. The path is marked as you saw but the posts are removed at night. Only the reeve knows the safe route. Now I have arrangements to make. A meal will be served very soon. I hope you will join us.’

With a small bow he left the room, closing the door behind him. True to his word there was no dreaded sound of the key in the lock. I stared after him, trying to fathom his intentions in bringing me to this cheerless, dank little tower. To change my view of the Neville family feud?

The promised ‘meal’ was day-old bread, hard cheese and raw onion served on a trestle table. The men had removed their gambesons and boots and sat comfortably in tunic and hose, pointedly discussing Thomas’ inheritance.

Tam Clifford was succinct in his assessment of Aycliffe. ‘This place is a dump,’ he said. ‘What are you going to do about it, Thomas?’

Thomas pursed his lips. ‘I really do not know. I will have to win some big prizes at tournaments when I am knighted, if I am to build new domestic quarters.’

With a sly glance at me, Sir John remarked, ‘In any case it is no place to rear a family. Bogs may be a good defence against reivers but children do not thrive in them.’

‘True,’ Thomas drawled, downcast. Then, with a cheeky look at his brother, ‘John, you do not seem to be in any hurry to marry. If you are not going to take possession of the constable’s quarters at Barnard, perhaps I should move in there.’

It was news to me that Sir John was Constable of Barnard Castle, a royal stronghold not far from Raby. I supposed the post was connected to the earldom and had gone to the Brancepeth branch of the family.

He scowled. ‘As you well know, commanding a garrison like the one at Barnard is no task for a squire. Besides, I have every intention of using those apartments myself in due course, other duties to our brother permitting.’

‘Well I hope you take the young heir with you when you do. It is time young Jack escaped maternal rule,’ remarked Tam Clifford. ‘He is being mollycoddled.’

This criticism from Tam did not surprise me, even though it was of his own mother. I had already gleaned the impression that all the men of Brancepeth found the countess difficult to live with. I had only been under her roof for one night and found even the prospect of rat-infested Aycliffe Tower preferable.

I was uncomfortably aware that I needed a clean kirtle and the hem of my gown still reeked of cattle dung, although Marion had brushed it, but I found myself enjoying the cut and thrust of male conversation again. Having shared my brothers’ tutors for years, recently my mother had removed me from formal education and obliged me to acquire more feminine skills from her ladies. However, I now took care not to make any comment or contribution. Once or twice I felt Sir John’s gaze lingering speculatively on my face and guessed he was assessing my frame of mind; whenever I caught his glance he turned away.

The meal was soon ended and I decided to test his assurance that I could roam the tower’s surroundings at will, even if it meant crossing the dung-covered floor of the undercroft once more. I was agreeably surprised to find the dung had been cleared and our horses installed there, with fresh straw spread around them. Some of the villagers had obviously been called from the fields to perform this task and I met one of them carrying a tinder-box into the tower, to set fires in the upper chambers, I hoped, for I assumed the evening would be cold, though the sun still shone brightly by day. The guard on the yett saluted as I passed but made no attempt to stop me.

The rocky island on which the tower was built was also home to the manor village and the workers’ cotts. Buildings clustered around an area of land where there was enough soil, remarkably, to accommodate gardens and the burial ground of a small stone-built church. The cotts were roughly fashioned:wooden cruck-frames, walls of lath and mud-plaster and roofs covered with some sort of reed weathered in most cases to a dull dun colour, but streaked green with moss and lichen, and each leeward gable had a black-ringed hole in it where smoke escaped from within. Each cott had a small vegetable garden, fenced with woven briar hurdles against the lord’s herds of pigs and goats which roamed the rocky demesne at will. A few chickens pecked listlessly in wattle coops, being reared no doubt as rent in kind to be paid at the next Halmote. I wondered if Sir John would preside at the Aycliffe manor court, at least until its putative lord reached his majority. It seemed unlikely that the earl, crippled as he was, would ever travel to this bog-bound manor.

Skirting the village and rounding the back of the tower, I discovered to my delight that Aycliffe possessed an unexpected pocket of natural beauty. On this south-facing side of the rocky outcrop the ground sloped gradually, a grassy meadow dipping gently to the shore of a small lake, the sort fell-dwellers called a tarn. Unlike the stagnant pools we had ridden past on our approach through the bog, this water gave evidence of being fresh and clean, spring fed and life-giving. Encouraged by the early-season sunshine, green shoots were sprouting from the tangle of brown reeds at its edge. Occasional flashes of silver beneath the breeze-rippled surface revealed the presence of small fishes offset by the background of the silt-covered bed of the lake in the transparent water. Water birds ducked in and out of little islands of vegetation, investigating potential nest sites.

In shadows cast by a stand of stunted willow a heron stood like a statue. I pondered the riches that this small lake brought to the manor folk; fish, roofing material, baskets, wildfowl, irrigation and, above all, fresh drinking water. As well as refreshing the spirit with its beauty, its products were the reason the manor was here at all.

I wandered down to stand on a lichen-covered rock that jutted out into the lake. The water tempted me to squat down and scoop up water to splash my face, and as I did so I became aware of footsteps behind me, then a flat stone skipped across the surface of the lake four times and sank, taking me and a busy pair of moorhens by surprise.

‘I had a feeling I would find you here.’

I sprang up, my face dripping, to find Sir John not ten feet from me, bending to pick up another stone.

‘The lake is Aycliffe’s jewel. It is the only thing that makes it habitable.’

‘It is beautiful,’ I said, dashing the water from my eyes. ‘And the peel could be also. Why does the earl not make it so? Drainage, a barmkin, some byres and stables, a church tower. These things are soon built.’

‘The necessary funds, my lady, have gone to swell your mother’s dower.’

I could not let that pass. ‘Every widow must have a dower. That is enshrined in law.’

‘Not three quarters of her husband’s estate.’ Sir John’s face was stern. ‘What widow needs so much?’

I fought down an urge to agree with him by reminding myself that it was my mother’s closeness to the throne and the king’s patronage which had brought such wealth to my father.

‘My mother’s dower is one third until her death. The rest is entailed for her sons. All widows have as much. That is why so many younger sons fight to win them in marriage, is it not? Even if they are ancient crones! You could do so yourself, Sir John. If funds are so urgently needed I wonder you do not.’

‘I have no inclination to the wedded state,’ he retorted. ‘The earldom has its heir and due to my brother’s infirmity I am its steward. No, it is Thomas whose future is threatened because his betrothal was made when your father was alive, before the terms of his will became known. His bride-to-be is Margaret Beaumont, a widow with a substantial dower. She was married as a child to Lord Deyning but he died before they were bedded and she was betrothed to Thomas soon afterwards. Her father says now that he will not allow that dower to be squandered on a penniless younger son, even one who is the brother of an earl, and he is taking legal steps to break the contract. His strongest argument is that Thomas cannot provide a home suitable for the daughter of a viscount and he is right. Thomas will lose a valuable marriage to a girl of whom he has unfortunately become fond, because your mother hoards all the best Westmorland lands, which she does not need as your father ensured that all her children made advantageous unions. That is why I brought you here, to see the effects of her avarice for yourself.’

This remark stirred my capricious temper and I felt the blood rush to my cheeks. But though greatly tempted to deny my mother’s employment of the third deadly sin, I reminded myself that only one thing mattered, to escape back to Raby. Angrily confronting my abductor would not help achieve this and so I bit back the furious protest that sprang to my lips and took a deep, steadying breath.

‘Thomas is young. There will be another marriage. But I still do not understand why you cannot solve your family’s difficulties by making your own advantageous match. Whether inclined to matrimony or not, it is surely your duty, unless you are drawn to the religious life.’

It was his turn to exercise control. I could see his chiselled jaw clenching and unclenching as he turned away and let his gaze wander across the lake to where a pair of water birds were performing an elaborate ritual, shaking their crested heads to alternate sides, rearing up in the water and making each other gentle gifts of dripping weed. It was a charming sight but I was not prepared to let him retreat into ornithology. Leaning round to catch his eye, I shot him an encouraging smile and waited patiently for his response. When it came it took me completely by surprise.

He gestured towards the birds, busily involved in their courtship and unaware of the human passions building beside the lake. ‘I have been told that grebes like these mate for life and rekindle their relationship every spring by performing this extraordinary dance. I have seen it many times and I believe it demonstrates God’s intention that all creatures should make faithful partnerships. Did He not tell Noah to take only pairs of animals into his Arc? The Church teaches us that birds do not have souls and cannot experience human emotions like love and happiness but such behaviour indicates to me that they can only build their nest and lay their eggs if they have established some sort of bond. This ritual allows them to trust each other.’ He turned to face me and his expression was one of extraordinary intensity, grey eyes boring into mine. ‘I feel like that about marriage. Of course as noble men and women we must go through all the formal procedures of betrothals and contracts but I will only make a match with someone I can love and with whom I find a mutual understanding. So far I have not found such a one and I do not feel obliged to set my feelings aside to enter into a loveless marriage just because protocol declares it to be the right thing to do.’ Once again he turned away. ‘There, does that satisfy you? Or perhaps you now think me weak and hopelessly romantic?’

I was seventeen. Like most teenage girls I had cherished the notion of courtly love portrayed in the songs and lays of the minstrels who entertained us at feasts and celebrations, but ever since childhood I had been schooled to accept that such romances were fairytales; fairytales which were not for Nevilles. We were overlords, the rulers of the north; we had to make alliances with other noble families to perpetuate the power we had accumulated. Marriage was one way of achieving this. It secured treaties and preserved loyalties and I had to fulfil the role which God had given me by doing my duty and marrying the man my father and the king had chosen for me. Adolescent yearning for romantic love must be denied. I was, therefore, dumbstruck to encounter a man of power and position who not only cherished the concept of love and happiness but felt able to deny his obligation to God, king and family in order to do so.

I stared at Sir John wide-eyed and he, in his turn, wrinkled his brow in challenge.

I managed to hold his gaze but my heart lurched in a bewildering way. ‘I understand the desire to break the rules,’ I said faintly.

‘But you will not?’ His frown of disappointment forced me into a desperate attempt to make light of it.

‘It would take a braver woman that I to defy the Church, the king and my mother!’ I protested and when he did not react I stumbled on. ‘Perhaps my parents had that kind of marriage. My mother certainly loved and trusted my father. Perhaps he repaid that trust in the way that he fashioned his will.’

It was not the response he wanted. With a sudden exclamation he stooped, picked up another stone and hurled it violently across the surface of the lake towards the grebes, causing them to break off their dance and dive underwater in panic.

His voice cracked with emotion. ‘No! The old earl was much too shrewd ever to let his heart rule his head. When I was young my father served with him on the Northern March and we lived in his household for several years but when my father decided to follow the fifth King Henry into France they argued violently. The old earl thought Neville duty lay in the north, defending the border, but my father was lured by the prospect of wealth and honours to be won across the Narrow Sea. The rift between them never healed and by that time the sons your father had sired with your mother were growing to manhood. When your oldest brother Richard came of age, the earl made it clear that he wanted him as his heir, but for all his wily diplomatic skills, he could not change the laws of England to achieve that.’

‘You did not like him then?’ For some reason the thought of this distressed me.

‘On the contrary, I loved him. He was always kind to us children, making us laugh and bringing us treats and presents. I was sad when he no longer came to see us but too young to understand why. Now I do, of course. My father had crossed him and the first Earl of Westmorland could never bear to be crossed, especially by his son and heir.’ The knight cleared his throat as if struggling to continue. ‘I was not with my father when he passed away in London but it was officially recorded that he died of the plague. I have never really believed that.’

There was something in the tone of his voice that drew from me an expression of horror. ‘You surely do not believe that my father had anything to do with his death?’

Sir John shrugged. ‘Not personally no, but these things can be arranged at a distance. And you have to admit that it served his purpose well, if he did not wish my father to inherit.’

‘No, no!’ I was incensed. My father had been a good man. I was certain of it. He was a powerful lord and a strong leader who demanded nothing less than complete loyalty from his vassals, but to arrange the death of his own son merely because he had defied him – I simply did not believe he could or would have done such a thing. Apart from any moral issue it would have condemned him to eternal hellfire.

‘You are mad, Sir John! I swear before God that my father would never have killed his own son or even conspired in his death. I demand that you withdraw the accusation in the presence of the Almighty. What good would it have done him anyway, while your father had a son to inherit the earldom?’

Sir John’s lip curled at that. ‘A son who was a cripple and a minor might possess no power against the might of an earl who stood high in the king’s favour. My brother Ralph told me that after my father’s death the old earl sent his lawyers to demand that he give up his right of succession. It was in the face of Ralph’s flat refusal that your father spent the next four years until he died making sure my brother would inherit only a fraction of the Neville wealth. I will swear that is true on any holy relic you choose!’

Before I could prevent him, Sir John reached out and grabbed my hand and his eyes were so full of earnest zeal that I found myself powerless to pull it free. The touch of his fingers sent a shocking thrill up my arm which seemed to travel to my heart, causing it to race uncontrollably. Yet I continued to protest. ‘No, no, no. My mother would never have allowed him to make such a demand of your brother. It is a wicked thing to do.’

Even as I spoke the words, I could hear the weakness in my own argument. I knew nothing of what plans and schemes my parents had made during my father’s dying days. I had never spoken with him about the other half of his family. All his children by his first wife were strangers to me, as were their children. Apart from the man who now held my hand and his brothers, I hardly knew which of them still lived.

Sir John pursed his lips wryly and nodded. ‘You are right, it is wicked. But you are not as familiar as I am with the wicked ways of the world. Even as we fight our family wars here in the north, in the south there are forces gathering around the young king of which he is also unaware. You and he are both too young yet to know how power corrupts people and causes them to act against God’s commands and the laws of the land. But you must trust me, Cicely, because I do know and I can help you to understand. Justice is a fragile flower but if we treat each other fairly and deal reasonably together then justice can still be done.’

I tried to pull my hand away because the contact between us was confusing me. The messages passing up my arm were in conflict with the thoughts tumbling in my head. The first made me eager to believe the words of the man before me, while the second told me he was spinning a tale. Then his other hand rose to touch my cheek and my mind seemed to swim into a warm blue cloud and become lost to my rational self. I closed my eyes and let my starved senses relish the caress, then I felt his mouth close gently on mine and for what seemed like minutes I reveled in the first rush of fevered blood my body had experienced. The warmth of the spring sunshine was as nothing compared with the heat generated by the pressure of his lips on mine and the surge of pleasure it released. My bones seemed to turn liquid and I felt as if only our joined hands and lips were holding me upright. No carefully taught rules or commandments remained to order my feelings or actions. I did not care if I was on the steps to heaven or the road to hell; whether it was the devil or my own intoxicating desires that were drawing me along this unmapped path.

7

Aycliffe Tower

Cicely

After what seemed an eternity while all my senses swirled in glorious commotion, my eyes flew open and reality flooded back, bringing confusion. Guilt, shame and elation fought for supremacy in my bewitched mind and the sunlight flashing off the lake dazzled me as I jerked away from him, blinking and gasping.

I pressed my fists together against my chest so that my nails dug into my palms and the pain of it mustered my scattered senses. I gazed at him, lips parted and eyes full of questions.

‘You are beautiful, Cicely,’ Sir John said quietly.

‘No!’ I tossed my head, as if to shake his words away. ‘Do not say that. You do not have the right.’

His laugh was harsh with irony but his expression was tender. ‘Hah! What has right to do with beauty? I find you beautiful. What is there to fear from that?’

‘I fear where it may lead.’

‘Now there you are right. Where do you think it may lead?’

My cheeks burned and I turned my face away. I wanted to tell him that I, too, found him beautiful but the words froze on my tongue.

Instead I said, ‘I do not know. That is why I fear it.’

He was not so tongue-tied. ‘You felt the connection between us, though? I have never experienced such pleasure from another’s touch. Tell me you felt it too, Cicely. I cannot believe you did not.’

My gaze was drawn back to his as if by some external force. His cheeks were flushed, as I knew mine were, and they blazed even hotter when he sank down onto one knee before me, his eyes locked with mine, fiercely questioning. I nodded slowly. ‘Yes, I felt it,’ I said. ‘It burned like a brand. What does it mean? Why do you kneel?’

‘Because it means you are my lady.’ He reached for my hand and again I felt a jolt of recognition, as if our fingers ignited as they met. ‘You are my lady and I am your true and faithful knight.’ His words were solemn and fervent but after he pressed his forehead to the soft flesh above my knuckles, he raised his head to favour me with a sudden brilliant smile, which transformed his Nordic features with a curious blend of joy and mischief.

‘Now, if I were a grebe I would bring you gifts of weed dripping with diamond drops. And I would build you a nest of rushes threaded with buttercups and yellow irises and you would float on lavender-scented waters and rule your besotted subjects with a green willow wand.’ Ignoring my startled expression he rose and threaded my arm through his bent elbow to draw me to the water’s edge. ‘You would be queen of the lake. No predator would trouble you for I would slay them all and spike their heads on bulrushes so that the world would know that I am your consort and we two belong together forever in our peaceful, fragrant haven.’

I found myself laughing at this preposterous fantasy, delighted by its glorious sensuousness. ‘And what would I do all day, lying among the buttercups and irises?’ I wondered, tilting my head in enquiry and catching his eye.

The antipathy which had flared between us had evaporated as though it had never been and I felt reckless and light-hearted. Aycliffe Tower had suddenly become a wonderland rather than a place of conflict and confinement. Perhaps I was also light-headed from lack of sleep but I did not pause to consider this.

Sir John swept his free arm in a wide arc to indicate the pastoral scene. ‘What do nymphs and naiads do in their watery idylls? Bathe in fresh springs and gossip in dappled shade.’

‘Have you been reading a little too much poetry, Sir John?’ I enquired with exaggerated concern. ‘I would hardly call the breeze balmy and those fresh springs are probably freezing.’

He tossed back his heavy fringe of flaxen hair. ‘That is no problem. To please his honoured lady a gallant knight would cause the breeze to blow warm and the springs to bubble hot from the earth.’

I pulled my hand from the crook of his arm and bent to dip it in the lake, splashing water up into his face. ‘Brr! I do not think your spell worked.’

He raised one eyebrow sceptically and smiled as he brushed the drops from his cheek. ‘We shall see. I think you may find it did.’

His air of smug male confidence suddenly annoyed me. I avoided his gaze and pretended to shiver. ‘I am cold. I think I will go to the church. If I cannot hear Mass at least I can pray.’

‘The priest is not of the kind you are used to,’ Sir John said. ‘He is only half literate and almost certainly not celibate. But the church will be peaceful. There will be a hot meal at dusk. I hope you will join us.’

I was already walking away and he raised his voice so that his invitation would reach me but I made no reply one way or the other. Instead I voiced what was suddenly uppermost in my mind again, my tone intentionally barbed. ‘Perhaps you will have heard from Raby by then. I presume you have been in contact.’

My back was turned but I could feel Sir John’s puzzlement at my abrupt change of mood. ‘Any message will reach me here,’ he said. ‘But I get no sense of urgency from that quarter.’

His words echoed in my head … No sense of urgency from that quarter … and they troubled me greatly. Kneeling before the simple wooden cross above the altar of the little whitewashed church, I could not pray for delivery from my abductor because he had suddenly assumed the guise of my admirer. With only a slight sense of impiety, I found myself praying that there might be a way I could achieve my own freedom – since my family was making no great effort to free me – while also pursuing the emotional fulfilment of which I had so recently and enticingly had a taste.

I returned, disconsolate, to the tower, but my mood would not last. Either on her own initiative or on instructions from Sir John, the stolid Marion had packed a change of clothes for me in the sumpter’s panniers, and my spirits rose as I discarded the mud-and-muck-stained garb I had been obliged to wear since leaving Raby. I presumed the fresh white linen kirtle and fur-trimmed green worsted gown I put on had been purloined from the Countess of Westmorland’s wardrobe, but I did not quibble about their ownership. Marion further surprised me by showing a certain skill with comb and brush and managing to braid and style my hair into something more graceful than the wild curls I had hitherto been obliged to control under my battered riding hat. I had no mirror in which to check my appearance but the expressions on the faces of my male companions when I joined them for the evening meal were sufficient to tell me that there had been a substantial improvement.

Despite the restrictions of Lent, a simple but tasty meal had been prepared for us consisting of grilled perch and trout, accompanied by boiled crayfish and a mess of creamed leeks and onions. I ate hungrily for the first time since my abduction and noticed that the men did too and soon the level of tension had dropped as the food restored the equilibrium in each of us. Afterwards there was soft cheese and freshly griddled oatcakes which, preferring wafers, I had always considered peasant fodder, but which smelled so delicious that I could not resist trying one.

‘I will never spurn an oatcake again,’ I confessed as I reached for a second. ‘Who has prepared this meal for us?’

Sir John cleared his throat and looked a little embarrassed. ‘The fish and vegetables were cooked by the priest’s, er, shall we say housekeeper? And the cakes come courtesy of our own expert campfire cook, Tam Clifford, Esquire.’

I looked across the table at Tam, gratified to see that the warm smile I gave him brought a blush to his cheeks. ‘A man of many talents then,’ I remarked. ‘Groom, hat-finder and now oatcake-baker. Thank you, Tam.’

‘He is also no mean swordsman,’ put in Thomas, clapping his friend on the shoulder. ‘Though no match for me, of course!’

‘Ha! We will see about that at the next arms practice,’ declared Tam. ‘Meanwhile, I will challenge you at chess after dinner.’

‘Done,’ agreed Thomas. ‘I will have you checked in three moves.’

‘Braggart!’ The young Clifford was indignant. ‘You have never beaten me yet.’

Sir John broke into their banter. ‘You can take the chessboard upstairs. Lady Cicely and I have business to discuss. And pour us more wine before you go.’

I frowned as Thomas refilled my cup but did not refuse. We were drinking a sweetish white wine which was stronger than I was used to and it had already made my head spin a little. I wondered what ‘business’ Sir John thought he had with me.

Soon we were alone and Sir John suggested we move across to a wooden settle that had been furnished with several threadbare but still serviceable cushions and set at an angle to the hearth where a fire was now glowing.

‘I fear it may be too hot, Sir John,’ I said, but I rose nevertheless.

‘If so we can move the seat, but I have not noticed you shying from the heat, Lady Cicely.’ I presumed his lop-sided smile indicated an intended double meaning, but I made no response.

Nevertheless I could feel my heart begin to beat faster as I took the proffered place on the settle and he sat down at the other end. Only a short distance lay between us. My hands were shaking as I took a sip from my cup, and I did not doubt that he could see this also. ‘Have you news from Raby, Sir John?’ I asked, unable to prevent myself spilling some wine as I placed my cup on a small table beside the settle. ‘I presume that is the business you wish to discuss with me.’

He gulped down the entire contents of his own cup and leaned down to dump it on the floor where it rolled drunkenly away. His face was suddenly anguished and the distance between us vanished as he took both my hands in his. ‘I have no news from Raby, Cicely, and of course that is not what I wish to discuss with you!’

All at once his lips were on my hands, he was kissing my fingers, turning them over to drop feathery kisses into my palms and onto my wrists. I felt the hairs lift on my arms and my belly clenching inside as his mouth began exploring the hollows of my throat and caressing the smoothness beneath my chin, then in between kisses he began murmuring softly, whispering words I had yearned for in my girlish dreams but never expected to hear in reality. ‘Ah, Cicely, you are even more beautiful than I first thought. Your throat is like silk, your cheeks are like velvet, your eyes are the colour of the Virgin’s robe and your lips are glowing coals that burn and burn and burn …’

As he mentioned each of these features he planted kisses on them, ending with another lingering, probing, searching of my lips, which mine instinctively opened to receive. The clenching sensation in my belly grew wilder and more demanding and without heed for my position on the settle, I arched my body into his in order to feel the beat of his heart and the response of his need to mine and then, as we clung feverishly to each other, the inevitable happened. The cushions slipped and pitched us both onto the floor. I found myself lying beneath him, slightly winded and breathless and he was staring down at me with a bemused expression, as if he could not quite understand what had happened. Then we both began to laugh.

However, with his body pressing down on me I could not breathe and had to push him off in order to give way to my mirth. When I could speak I spluttered, ‘Do you woo all your ladies by throwing them on the floor?’ By now I was sitting up and hugging my knees, feeling tears beginning to run down my cheeks. It had been funny but at this point I was not sure if they were tears of mirth or nervousness. I brushed them away. I had decided on my course of action and I was not going to change my mind now.

‘I would ask the same of you,’ he said with a grin, ‘except that it would not be chivalrous to assume that you had experience in these matters.’

‘Well now I have – and in future I’ll avoid polished settles with cushions on.’

Rising to his feet, he then bent to help me up.

‘Have you tried your myrtle-leaf bed yet?’ he asked.

I gave him a surprised look. ‘No I have not. Have you?’

‘Of course not!’

‘I am told they are fragrant.’

‘Who told you that?’

I picked up my cup and took a long draught of wine, gazing at him over the rim. ‘You did,’ I said. ‘Would you like to find out for yourself?’

John took the cup from my hand and put it back on the table. ‘Oh yes I would, very much.’ This time I took courage from the fact that his kiss was one of eager reassurance and encouragement.

‘What if Marion comes back?’ I murmured, my lips against his.

He opened the purse he wore on his belt and took out a key. I recognized it as the one he had removed from the door of my chamber earlier.

When the key turned, unlike the previous night, loneliness was not in my mind – and neither was regret. I was not afraid. I had chosen this course of action, fate had shown me what overwhelming feelings passion could release and it was somehow not in my nature to deny them. I had no thought for yesterday or tomorrow, only for the moment and what that moment might achieve. I was young and my senses were whirling almost out of control, except that, behind the powerful mutual attraction that had drawn me to the beautiful John and the joy I ardently desired to find in his arms, there was also a deep determination not to be used, either by him or by my own family. There was no doubt that my actions that night served my own needs as much as his but I was not to know that he would read them very differently. He was older and more idealistic and his feelings ran truer and deeper. I could not have asked for a more gentle and ardent lover to show me the delights of mutual passion. How could he have known that when he offered his love so sweetly, he chose the wrong woman?

Myrtle did indeed make a wild and fragrant bed. After we had spent our passion John slept deeply and soundlessly but I lay awake, my mind in turmoil. I had barely noticed the pain of defloration and had subsequently wondered, after the thrilling throes of climax, what there was about it that the Church revered so highly and the virgin martyrs died for. My body ached from the unaccustomed activity of love-making but I nevertheless yearned to stay beside my lover, to feel again the pleasure of his caresses and the joy and fulfilment of union.

Nevertheless I forced myself to rise, softly and soundlessly, from the bed and reach for the dirty shift and kirtle that I had discarded before supper. The borrowed gown from which John had hurriedly unlaced me lay on the floor among the jumble of his doublet and hose and I almost stumbled over them as I searched for my riding boots. Carrying them I turned the key cautiously in the lock, holding my breath as it scrunched over the cogs and wheels, but I heard no stirring from the bed. As I had hoped, the outer chamber was empty and the door to the stairway open. I paused at the foot of the stair to slide my feet into my boots and thread the laces. I could hear rats scuttling about in the straw and I could not face crossing the byre barefoot. The horses snuffled and shifted on their feet, dozing like the guard propped up on a sheaf of straw against the wall. Everything now depended on what I found when I opened the heavy oaken gates; if the yett had been lowered, escape from the tower would be impossible.

8

To Aycliffe Tower

Cuthbert

In the trees behind Brancepeth church the ground dropped away into the same deep, narrow dene on which the castle stood. Feeling my way in the dappled moonlight, I led my horse to the edge where I found a useful thicket of bushes to tie him to while I ventured hand over foot down the steep side, clinging to roots and saplings. Within minutes I reached secure footing on a sloping gravel path dug into the dene wall. I climbed, guessing it would lead to the sally gate of the castle mentioned by my drinking companion. Where the ground levelled out, sure enough, I caught sight of the moon’s glare reflected off a high expanse of the castle curtain, and at its base, flush with the stone wall, a small archway, defended by an overhead turret and sealed by a studded wooden door, just large enough to allow a mounted man to pass through.

Keeping within the shadow of the bushes, I turned and retraced my steps, for the path ended at the castle. The archway had been newly built, the door thick. Following the beck downstream towards the River Wear, I deduced that it would provide a discreet and direct route to the Bishop of Durham’s hunting lodge at Auckland, on the edge of Spennymoor: this had lately been developed into a military fortification, with a large bailey to accommodate troops mustering for the defence of the Scottish marches. The bishop had appointed Sir John Neville as its constable, but I asked myself if Sir John would have taken Cicely to such a busy place.

As a young squire in my father’s retinue, on the last of his annual tours of his northern manors, I remember hearing of a particularly poor and remote peel tower a few miles south of Auckland which struggled to wrest five pounds in annual revenue from woefully undernourished villeins. I wracked my brains for the name of the manor. The only thing I could remember of any relevance was that when the old earl’s will was revealed, Hal Neville had remarked that ‘the peel in the bog’ was one manor he was more than happy for the new earl to keep. Instinct told me that this might be where Cicely had been taken and, after all, it was my instincts that Lady Joan had encouraged me to employ in her daughter’s aid.

I collected my horse and followed the beck as far as the River Wear while the moon rose high in the sky, its bright light flooding over uneven moorland covered with large areas of gorse and dead bracken. Fast-moving shadows cast by scudding clouds did not hamper my progress south. I carefully avoided the small hamlets and fortified farms on the route, because on such moonlit nights lookouts would be posted for reivers, and I did not want to be sighted and apprehended as one of their ilk. But most of the country between Brancepeth and Richmond, thirty miles to the south, was Neville territory, and familiar to me; its manors were now distributed piecemeal between the two branches of the family. Lady Joan had, on occasion, detailed me to represent her in settling the feuds and disputes between tenants arising from this complicated division of property. So although I could not remember the name of the peel in the bog, I did have a rough idea of where it was located.

When I eventually spotted the tower, poking up like a lone tooth from a fetid maw of flat, moss-covered marsh, I faced the problem of approaching it without either being seen or swallowed in its mire. There was something truly ghastly about the way the moonlight glinted off the surrounding expanse of innocent-looking moss and reeds, concealing the lurking presence of a bottomless bog beneath; when I tried to urge him on, my horse snorted and danced on the spot, flatly refusing to take one step onto such unstable ground.

Common sense told me there had to be a safe path or else how did its inhabitants reach the tower? For nearly an hour I rode around the edge of the morass, trusting my horse’s instinct not to venture onto dangerous terrain, but I could find no evidence of a marked route. I contemplated leaving my horse and trying to navigate the bog on foot but as the moon dropped in the heavens I realized I would be taking a foolish and possibly fatal risk, particularly in the dark. There was no option but to wait until sunrise.

As a squire I had spent months with the marcher scouts, a troop of hard-bitten, border-reared fighting men recruited for their intimate knowledge of the wild lands between Scotland and England and their ability to move secretly through them on their dale-trotter ponies. They could survive for weeks patrolling their section of the march, living off the land and avoiding human contact whilst observing all movement of men and animals without detection. I admired their skills and I would now apply all I had learned of them. I hobbled my horse in an overgrown spinney. My stomach made sharp protest at its lack of nourishment but I silenced it with a long swig from the wineskin slung from my saddle, rolled myself in my campaign blanket and lay down to gather what sleep I could in the undergrowth.

The unmistakable sound of a hue and cry roused me a couple of hours later. Shouting, the long wail of a hunting horn and the answering sounding of hounds ripped through the veil of sleep and jerked me to my feet, sleeve dagger at the ready. Dawn had mottled the eastern sky in shades of red, pink and grey and my horse’s head was up, ears pricked. I crept to the edge of the spinney for a cautious search but could see no movement from the section of bog within my view. Nevertheless the sinister sounding of horn and hounds and the shouts of men in pursuit were loud to my left. I decided that being mounted would give me an advantage in a tight situation, and better visibility. In a matter of moments I had tacked up my horse and was heading out of the spinney.

The reason for all the noise quickly became evident: a mud-streaked figure was struggling at the edge of the bog, only yards from firm ground but caught thigh deep in wet mud and unable to reach safety. It was Cicely, almost unrecognizable, covered in mud, exhausted and clearly terrified, her face twisted into a desperate snarl as she rocked herself to free one foot or the other from the clinging ooze. The hue and cry was close by, any moment it would be here and what I assumed was a break for freedom would be brought to an end, or, more terribly, she would fall flat into the watery mud and disappear beneath its surface.

‘Do not move!’ I shouted, spurring my horse forward and galloping as near to her as the horse would go. ‘It is me, Cuthbert. I will get you out. Wait.’

I jumped from the saddle, commanded my horse to stand and ripped my blanket from the restraint of its buckling.

‘Oh, Cuddy, thank God it is you!’ Cicely’s eyes were enormous with fright in her mud-daubed face. ‘Quick! The dogs are coming.’

‘Yes, Cis, I can hear them.’ Turning briefly, I caught sight of a man on the path pushing sticks into the ground as a companion behind him hauled on the taut leashes of two scent-hounds in full voice. I took aim and threw out the blanket. ‘Here, catch this.’

One corner landed near her hand and she grabbed it like a drowning sailor might grab a life-line. ‘Do not let go, Cis! Lie down, I’m going to pull you out,’ I said urgently.

The Cicely I knew might have quibbled at falling face down in a bog but luckily she wasted no time in clutching two sides of the blanket in a white-knuckled grip and throwing herself horizontal, face down in the soggy blanket. Immediately there was less suction drag on the cloth and I managed to haul her swiftly towards me until I could hold her hands and heave her, drenched and panting, onto the firm ground.

I could see she was about to speak and I growled at her. ‘Save your breath, Cis. I have a horse and we will ride away from this first.’

Although her weight was nothing to arms honed by years of sword-play and archery, her soaked skirts hampered my stride so that I stumbled rather than ran towards my stoical horse who fortunately obeyed orders and stood firm, even as I threw Cicely face down over his withers and leaped up behind her. ‘Hang on for your life. I’ll stop as soon as I can,’ I yelled and dug in my spurs.

He exploded away just as the first pursuers stepped onto firm ground and began racing towards us, scent-hounds baying with excitement. Cicely’s right hand closed on my leg like a vice as our hectic pace threatened to hurl her from the horse’s neck. I am not certain we would have made it but instinctively the courser threw up his head, tossing her back towards me so that I could wrap one hand in the cloth of her skirt, while the other handled the reins. She must have been winded and in pain but she made no sound and we galloped away as if fleeing from a battlefield, the important difference being that we were victorious. The only glance I managed to make behind me showed a dozen mud-spattered men spilling from the bog-path yelling in frustration. One was noticeable for his red tunic emblazoned with a white saltire cross and his shock of fair hair. The tall figure of Sir John Neville was familiar to me from sharing duties with him on the Scottish march. White-faced and wide-eyed, he looked like a man in shock.

9

The Raby Bath House

Cicely

Cuddy rode away from that accursed bog as if the hounds of hell were at his heels while I pitched and bumped over his horse’s neck, offering desperate but silent prayers to the Queen of Heaven. I had no breath even to murmur an Ave, every thud of the horse’s hooves seemed to force out what little air I managed to drag into my lungs and every so often I had somehow to raise my head for a life-giving gulp. Fortunately, just as I had started to fear I could hold on no longer, the pace began slowing and we came to a halt. When I fell to the ground my legs would not support me and I crumpled in a muddy, sodden heap under the horse’s feet, a safe landing place because he could not move another step. His head hung down and his sides heaved. We were both gasping like stranded fish.

It was several minutes before I found the strength to sit up. By then Cuddy had dismounted and satisfied himself that there was no sound of pursuit before pulling me out from under the horse and unhitching his wineskin from the saddle-bow. He put it to my lips and I spluttered as the sharp liquid hit my throat.

‘How did … you know … where …?’ I croaked, unable to go on.

Cuddy knew what I meant. ‘Intuition. Instinct. Second sense. Your mother sent me on a wild goose chase and look – I found the goose.’ He grinned. ‘After all, I am your champion.’

I gave a weak smile and wheezed, ‘My champion …’ My voice cracked and failed once more.

He bowed. He did not seem breathless in the least. ‘Glad to be of service. But you take the laurel wreath, Cis. How in God’s name did you manage to break out of the tower?’

That was when reality hit me. Vivid memories came flooding back. I bit my lip to stop the tears and stifle the words threatening to spill off my tongue. I knew then that they would all ask the same question. How had I managed to get away from my captors? It was a question I decided there and then that I would not answer. Let them wonder. Except for Cuddy they had done nothing to help me. I did not owe an explanation. But had it not been for Cuddy, everything I had done to enable my escape would have been for nothing. I might as well have died.

I shook my head and decided it was easier to speak in short bursts. ‘Not difficult. Bog was the problem. Frightening. Then I heard the horn. Tried to hurry. Fatal step – if not for you. Thank you, Cuddy.’

Gradually I felt strength returning to my legs. ‘There is one more thing you can do for me, if you will,’ I said, taking another gulp from the wineskin and handing it back. ‘After you have helped me up, that is.’

I held out my hand and Cuddy pulled me gently to my feet. I swayed and staggered and he steadied me, regarding me appraisingly, his gaze travelling from my sodden skirts to my dripping locks. I had not found my hat in the dark and I daresay my cheeks were streaked, for I had not managed to hold back all my tears. ‘I think I know what that one thing is,’ he said.

‘More intuition?’ This time my smile was rueful.

‘You do not want to return to Raby looking like a camp follower who has been caught in a thunderstorm.’

I nodded. ‘Exactly.’ For the first time I glanced around me, taking stock of our surroundings. We were in a small clearing among mature trees. It could have been almost any wood in England. ‘Where are we?’

‘Houghton Forest. About ten miles from Raby. It will take us an hour to get there once the horse is rested. There is a stream over yonder. You could wash off some of the mud while we wait. When we get to Raby you can hide somewhere safe and I will fetch Hilda. She will know what to bring to restore you to your customary splendour.’

He was teasing, his eyes twinkling, trying to lighten my mood, and I appreciated his restraint in not pressing me on my escape. Cuddy may have been conceived in a barn but his manners were castle-bred. ‘And Hilda knows how to hold her tongue,’ I said with a nod of approval. ‘But where would I be safe?’

‘There is an old bath house on a lake in the woods south of the castle. You can barricade yourself in there while I fetch Hilda. No one goes near it now but they say our father used to entertain there in days gone by.’ Cuddy gave me a look, which told me not to enquire about who the old earl had invited to a bath house in the woods or what the entertainment had been. Of course there were plenty of rumours, but in deference to my mother nobody ever talked about other ‘by-blows’ her husband might have sired on pretty girls around the various Neville territories. No others had joined the household. For some reason, in our father’s eyes, Cuthbert of Middleham had been special. Perhaps Cuddy himself did not know why.

The bath house was no woodland shack. It was a domed, stone-built grotto perched on the side of a glassy mere which reflected a stand of magnificent trees that must have been planted when our great-grandfather enclosed the Raby hunting park a hundred years earlier. Although the trees were still leafless, waiting for spring to spread its canopy of green, the castle itself was not visible, but I knew it was not far away because in order to reach the place unseen we had skirted the village of Staindrop and entered the park like poachers, avoiding all well-used tracks. Staindrop stood only a mile from Raby; my father lay in its glorious collegiate church, under a marble tomb, beside his first wife. Cuthbert forced his way into the bath house through a wooden door, not locked or barred but swollen from winter damp, and left me with the wineskin, telling me he would be back within an hour.

The bath house consisted of a single chamber. Stripped of any of the luxury or comforts it might once have contained, cobwebs festooned its walls, all hung about with insect carapaces; droppings of various small animals littered the floor and the curved steps that led up to the parapet of the round stone bath and, at the bottom of the bath, the remains of a deserted nest covered what I guessed must have been a drain for emptying the water into the lake. Outside, on the bank of the mere, I found a firepit where a cauldron would have been slung over the flames. My imagination conjured up a vivid image of servants fetching steaming bucket-loads from the cauldron, because surely nothing would have cooled the ardour of the ‘bathers’ more than icy water straight from the lake.

I could not wait in the bath house. It was full of echoes, the ribald shouts of men and the lusty laughter of women, the splash of water on naked flesh, and I did not like it. My father had always been my image of the perfect knight, lord and sire. In recent days that gleaming icon had become tarnished by the stories I had heard and the truths I had learned.

The silence and stillness of the mere drew me. I guarded against discovery by taking up a position a few yards from the bath house, hidden by the branches of a holly tree growing close to the edge of the lake. There I sat on a convenient log and I studied my reflection in the glassy surface of the lake. What I saw absorbed and disturbed me. It was not that my hair was tangled in Medusa-like curls and my face was still mud-streaked, despite my efforts to wash it: I was not the same person who had set out blithely from Raby with her falcon three days before. Then I had been thoughtless and carefree, a young girl on the brink of marriage but who had given little thought to what that marriage might mean. My life had been ordered for me and while I had occasionally rebelled against the restrictions placed on me, I had not seriously questioned my own feelings or considered my own future. I had scarcely known I had any of my own feelings. Now there was a new look in the wide blue eyes that stared back at me and a more determined set to the curved mouth which did not smile. There were secrets behind those eyes; thoughts and words which those lips had spoken but would never speak again. The child who had gone out hunting had come back an adult.

10

Raby Castle

Cicely

‘Sweet Mother of God, he brings a whole army! Does he intend to wed or make war?’

It was Will who spoke. I stood between him and Ned on the battlements of Clifford’s Tower, the tallest at Raby, staring out through a crenel at the long procession snaking down from the Auckland road towards the castle gatehouse, the far end of which was not yet visible. Richard, Duke of York, was arriving at last and he rode at the head of an enormous retinue and baggage train.

‘Does he think he is the king?’ Ned cried. ‘There must be three hundred retainers. Can we feed so many?’

‘We will have to hunt more game, brother. That should be no hardship.’

‘I am not sure the park contains enough deer.’

Viewing my betrothed’s enormous train, I felt a mixture of awe and bewilderment. ‘Why does he need such a vast retinue?’ I asked. ‘Has there been unrest in the realm?’

Will laughed. ‘It is not a case of need, Cis. Richard is declaring to the world “I am the Duke of York. See how many follow me. Behold my wealth and power.” Brother Hal will be a little disconcerted. His Salisbury retinue numbers only two hundred.’ Ned turned and headed for the tower stair, adding, ‘He will be at the gatehouse soon and we are detailed to escort him in.’

They were both gone. It was Maundy Thursday. Tomorrow the whole castle would plunge into the solemn fasting and ritual of the Unveiling of the Cross before bursting into full celebration of the Resurrection on Easter Day with joyous feasting and minstrelsy. Two days after that would be my wedding to this rich and powerful new duke – the grandest nuptials ever to be celebrated within the walls of Raby castle. I lingered a little longer, mesmerized by the spectacle of the cavalcade approaching ever closer.

A trumpet blast sounded a fanfare of welcome. Next, Westmorland Herald recited the list of honours and titles in a high, penetrating voice that carried all around the outer bailey – ‘Richard Plantagenet, Duke of York, Earl of Cambridge, Earl of March, Earl of Ulster, Baron Mortimer, Lord of Wigmore and Lord of Clare’ – and my future husband. He rode in full armour and trappings, an upright, broad-shouldered man. Behind him rode his escort of retained barons and knights, all proudly in formation displaying the blue and murrey-red livery of York. White rose pennants fluttered at their lance-tips, fixed between their own individual pennants and the scarlet, gold and blue of the royal leopards and lilies, to which Richard was entitled as a royal prince and direct descendent of King Edward the Third. Behind each of three barons and twelve knight-captains, rode their troops of squires and men-at-arms and behind them the household officials, couriers, clerks and house-carls, huntsmen and falconers with their hounds and hawks and a procession of wagons containing clothing, furnishings, provender and presents.

Anyone would have marvelled at what I saw, but I was remembering the under-age lordling who had set out from Raby seven years previously to take service in the king’s household. I could scarcely believe my eyes. Then he had been a scrawny lad of fourteen, spotty and insecure, an orphan who had fought hard to establish himself among the numerous squabbling henchmen and progeny of his Neville guardians. Now he was twenty-one, the wealthiest magnate in the kingdom, who carried his head so high it seemed to add inches to his stature. Immediately behind him rode a squire bearing his crested helmet and richly emblazoned shield. No wonder Ned had compared him to a king.

By the time the principal members of the procession had passed through the gatehouse, I had descended from the keep to the inner ward where my mother and brothers were already gathered to greet the new arrival. The clatter of hooves on the flagstones of the long Neville tunnel-gateway, built by my father to secure the castle’s inner core, gave us warning of the duke’s approach and, to the muttered reproof and intense relief of my mother, I slid into place beside her just in time. As the king’s aunt, she was the only one who outranked Richard and as soon as he had swung down from his horse he strode up to bend his knee to her, a deference which gave me a chance to assess this bridegroom of mine before he scrutinized me. Seven years at court, three of them in France; how greatly altered was the boy to whom I had been betrothed at the age of nine.

Close to I saw that he was good-looking without being naturally handsome. His complexion was fair, his cheeks smooth-shaven and his hair, the colour of dark honey, was thick, curly and shining. Expert grooming, good posture and extreme fitness had given him a chiselled profile and the gleaming and costly silk of the crested jupon he wore over his armour was embellished with bold and intricate embroidery depicting the royal arms quartered with those of his Mortimer mother and his Castilian grandmother. My first impression was of an ambitious man who sought perfection in everything. I wondered if he would find it in me. The only feature that softened this image was that luxurious mane of burnished hair in which, suddenly and to my guilty surprise, my fingers itched to bury themselves.

Before I could banish this sinful thought to the dark recesses of my mind, my betrothed was moving to greet me, his eyes fastening so intently on mine that I felt sure he must be able to read it through their window. Consequently, to my chagrin, I blushed.

‘My lady Cicely, my duchess,’ he murmured and he squeezed my hand gently as he lifted it to his lips. His attitude was so charming and assured that I could find no similarity with the awkward, gawky youth who had slipped the betrothal ring on my finger and I quashed any comparison with Sir John Neville of Brancepeth. He was no longer to exist for me. The man who kissed my hand was my destiny, the future that was mapped out for me. Since my return to Raby I had prayed fervently for the strength and grace to embrace that future and fulfil the role expected of me. I lifted my head and felt the blush recede. To my relief I could see admiration in the flecked green eyes which studied me so intently.

My mother had insisted on an intimate talk with me on the day following my return. She had banished all family, companions and servants from her salon and settled us both in cushioned chairs near the hearth. I had expected this and after a much-needed bath, a hot meal and a good night’s sleep, I felt confident that I could handle my mother’s inevitable probing about my time as a hostage. I managed to avoid lying to her by concentrating on the fraught circumstances of my escape and Cuthbert’s rescue and avoiding too much mention of my companions at Aycliffe Peel. Fortunately she was more interested in my encounters with Lord and Lady Westmorland, exclaiming indignantly over Lady Elizabeth’s unkindness and Lord Ralph’s unreasonable demands. I think she was so relieved that I had returned in time for Richard’s imminent arrival and by so doing also avoided the necessity of her having to make any concessions over property that she neglected to ask any direct questions about Sir John Neville.

On the night of Richard’s arrival, it being Maundy Thursday, there was a discreet and private meal in the Great Chamber behind the Baron’s Hall, attended only by family members, visiting clergy and the principal York retainers. Only one course was served, consisting of fewer than twenty meatless dishes and accompanied by light Anjou wines and Spanish sack. When a single subtlety was paraded towards the end of the repast, Richard was delighted to recognize a gilded marchpane model of his own personal emblem, a falcon perched on a fetterlock, a special type of padlock used to secure valuable horses against theft.

‘I compliment your cooks, my lady,’ the duke said to his hostess. ‘I only registered my personal badge with the Royal Heralds quite recently. I am surprised anyone so far north knew of it.’

My mother frowned. ‘We are not completely out of touch at Raby, my lord duke, and my cooks have plans to conjure even more imaginative ways of celebrating your marriage feast on Tuesday, which I believe is also your saint’s day.’

‘Yes, the feast of Richard of Chichester – a truly English saint. I shall look forward to those. But Raby has already conjured me a wondrous bride. What more could I ask?’

This gallant response had me blushing again, despite my desire to appear mature and controlled, and my mother made no secret of her delight at her future son-in-law’s honeyed words. The frown disappeared and her sapphire eyes sparkled. Richard’s time at court had certainly taught him how to charm the ladies and I could see that my brother Hal, not usually easily pleased, was more than a little impressed by the urbane and sophisticated nobleman that had developed from the diffident young squire who had left Raby soon after our father’s death. By contrast I was beginning to feel gauche and insecure, not a sensation I enjoyed.

This sense of inadequacy was compounded by Hal’s remarks to me later as we said goodnight. ‘You will have a great responsibility as Duchess of York, Cicely. Richard gives every sign of becoming a force in the land and not only thanks to his birth. He is a man of fierce ambition which will need tempering and a good wife should be the one to put a curb on his pride. Otherwise what now appears to be admirable intent could end up looking like arrogance and he will make enemies. Your role will need great patience and subtlety. I hope you have these qualities.’

I frowned, surprised by his sensitivity. ‘I thought that all a great lord wants from his wife is sons, Hal. And that is in God’s hands surely.’

He shook his head. ‘You are wrong. Believe me, my wife Alice has brought far more than three sons to our marriage. She has become my most valued confidante and adviser. Only she knows the true workings of my mind and gives me her sincere view of its direction. You can be of similar value to Richard if you cause him to respect your opinions.’ He gave me one of his rare smiles. ‘And a few sons would not go amiss as well, of course.’

I gazed at him with innocent enquiry. ‘And I suppose the earldom of Salisbury which Alice brought you has nothing to do with the regard you have for her?’

Hal looked affronted. ‘The earldom was not a foregone conclusion, Cis. We married just after Alice’s father had re-married and it was assumed that his young second wife would bring him the son and heir he needed. Who could know he would be killed in action before this hope was realized? My wish is that Richard will find you as loyal and chaste a wife as Alice has been to me,’ he said. ‘I am sure he will expect no less.’

That set me back on my heels. Being only too grateful for my escape from my abductors, Hal had refrained from asking me how I had managed to achieve it and I wondered if this rather pompous delivery only days before my wedding contained a veiled warning that what I may have chosen not to vouchsafe to him should never be revealed to anyone, especially not to my bridegroom. I wished him a thoughtful good night.

During the long Passiontide vigil on the following day my prayers before the veiled crucifix in the castle chapel were intense and fervent. When, at the climax of the litany, I watched the priests lower the purple shroud to reveal once more the figure of the crucified Christ, I wanted to be the first to rush forward and kiss the Cross but I waited patiently for my mother to lead the way and wondered, as I took my turn, if there truly was redemption in the twisted and emaciated body we so reverently acknowledged. If there was not, then surely I was damned.

11

Raby Castle

Cicely

During the quiet, contemplative afternoon before Sunday’s Feast of the Resurrection, Richard came to my mother’s salon. I was sitting with Hilda, a little apart from the other ladies, pretending to embroider a chemise while we whispered girlishly together about what we would wear for the Easter celebrations, our first opportunity for dressing up since the Shrove Tuesday feast before the start of Lent. Despite the barrage of curious female glances, Richard entered the room with no sign of awkwardness. In fact he appeared the embodiment of self-assurance, attired in neat, sober apparel appropriate to the holy day but nevertheless displaying subtle touches of sartorial style. His deep-red Cordovan leather shoes were not excessively pointed but the laces were tipped with gold, anyone with an eye for style could tell that the rich chestnut fur trimming on his grey doublet was not mere lordly minerva but ducal sable and the brooch in his black draped hat contained a darkly-glowing garnet the size of a hen’s egg, set all around with moonstones. I felt suddenly lacking in ornament in my rather demure if fashionable blue woollen houppelande, chosen in deference to the season, and wished that I had worn a more elaborate gown.

After greeting Richard warmly, my mother immediately apologized and declared that she was needed in the castle chancery to discuss arrangements for the wedding festivities, while her ladies were due to attend a dance class. ‘We intend to make merry at your wedding,’ she assured him, ‘so I have commissioned a master from London to teach us the latest dance-steps. Cicely and I will be having our lesson later. For the present, I will leave you two together. Hilda will stay but she will not listen or interrupt. I am sure you and Cicely have much to talk about.’

I cringed at her lack of subtlety and rather gushing tone, but Hilda gave me a little wink and squeezed my hand before collecting up her needlework and slipping across the solar to a distant corner where a brazier had been set to ward off the chill so far from the fire. As Richard approached me I stood up, smiling a greeting and dropping into a slow curtsy. I daresay I should have modestly lowered my eyes but instead I kept my chin raised, re-affirming our childhood relationship which had always been candid and lively. ‘I did not expect to see you before dinner, my lord,’ I said. ‘You must have a thousand matters to attend to with so great a train about you. I hope they are all adequately housed and fed?’

He bent down, took my hand and raised me to my feet. Our eyes met, green on blue. We were of almost equal height now but for a time as children I had stood taller than him, a situation which I had relished but which I knew had riled him. There was no sign of irritation in his eyes now though; rather he looked captivated by what he saw and I thanked St Cicelia that I had chosen to bundle my mass of russet hair into fine gold filigree netting on a pearl and gold fillet. If my simple blue gown lacked sophistication, at least my headdress supplied some evidence of elegance.

His response to my enquiry held a hint of amusement. ‘My people have no complaints about the Raby hospitality, thank you, but I did not seek your company to discuss their wellbeing, Cicely. We have much more important things to talk about now that we are at last alone.’ His glance swivelled to where Hilda sat, eyes cast down on her embroidery, and his smile widened. ‘Well, almost alone.’

‘Perhaps you remember Hilda?’ I made a gesture in her direction. ‘She has been with me since childhood. She is my closest friend and privy to all my secrets.’

He took my hand and led me to the window where my mother often sat to read. The salon was on the second floor of the eponymous tower my father had built especially for his second wife, with windows that looked over the curtain wall and the wide moat to afford a panoramic view of the surrounding countryside. The stone seat of this oriel was comfortably cushioned in bright-blue figured damask and within its deep embrasure we would be out of Hilda’s line of sight.

‘I hope that will not be quite so true after we are married. I believe that man and wife should hold certain matters secret between themselves,’ he said, seating me gallantly before settling down himself at a carefully judged distance. This was my first indication that with Richard everything was carefully judged, that is until he lost his temper, but I was not to discover this important variation just yet.

‘You were young when I left Raby but I remember your skill at horsemanship,’ Richard added unexpectedly. ‘Even at ten years old you would slip away to the stables to tack up your pony and ride out. Cuthbert was invariably with you, of course, but your fusspot of a governess would come scurrying around the outbuildings looking for you. It made us henchmen laugh.’

I shrugged. ‘I tried not to stay within call. I suppose I was an unruly little girl.’

‘Yes, you were.’ Richard shifted about to make himself comfortable on the soft cushions. Afternoon sun shining through the leaded panes bathed us in soft, golden light. ‘But I admired you even then,’ he added – as an afterthought, it seemed.

‘Admired me?’ I echoed. ‘I thought you considered me silly and annoying.’ I had a sudden recall of a particularly disdainful look when I was in trouble following one of my illicit rides.

‘No, I never thought you silly. Annoying perhaps but mostly because you were so confident you would be forgiven whatever you did. And of course you always were.’

I gave a little laugh. Had he known what I was thinking? But what he said was true. I said, ‘I was spoiled; an occupational hazard of being the youngest child in a large family.’

‘I envied you that privilege.’ Richard leaned forward, suddenly earnest. Once again he took my hand in his, clasping it gently. His palm was callused from wielding his sword and I could feel the scratch of the raised skin against mine. ‘I should like us to have a large family, Cicely.’

I felt myself blushing again and berated my lack of self-control. ‘We must be content with whatever God sends I suppose,’ I murmured. I stared down at our joined hands and had a sudden image of how our bodies would be joined after our marriage. It would be so soon after John – but perhaps that was just as well. A shiver ran down my spine but Richard seemed not to notice.

‘I am the last of a line,’ he was saying. ‘The House of York needs sons. I intend to make the white rose flourish and there will be much to pass on to the next generation. Still, as you say, it is in the hands of God.’

He was fiddling with the betrothal ring on my middle finger. ‘I remember when you put that ring on my finger,’ I said. ‘You did not look as if you admired me then. You are greatly changed from the boy that was my father’s ward.’

‘I hardly knew you. You were only eight or nine and I did not want to be betrothed to anyone. But on the contrary, Cicely, it is you who are most changed. You have become beautiful.’

His use of the word unnerved me. Emotion and memories rose like a tide and I could feel the same frisson running up my arm as I had when John had used it, only a few days ago. Was I so gullible, so vulnerable to flattery? I snatched my hand away but managed to hide the action as if assailed by a sudden sneeze, pulling my kerchief from my sleeve pocket.

‘Please forgive me.’ My words were muffled in the kerchief. ‘It is not an ague – just dust I think. Or perhaps I am not used to flattery.’ I managed another little laugh, turning back and tucking the kerchief away again. ‘At least I hope my appearance coincides with what you consider appropriate in a duchess, although I am afraid you find me rather plainly attired today. It is Lent …’

He shook his head. ‘You look just as I hope I may see you many times in the future, in private moments. But I do believe that greater display is needed for public appearances. People love a spectacle and it is important that we give our vassals reason to bend the knee. With you by my side they will have splendour and beauty. And to that end I have something for you which I hope you will wear at our wedding.’

He opened the gilded leather purse he wore on his belt and took out a silk pouch, tied at the neck. I gasped as he tipped it over his palm. Shards of brilliance began to dance around us when the object it contained caught the light from the window. It was a brooch, fashioned to represent the wild English rose from which the York emblem was derived. Five white diamonds set in gold were laid like petals around a large central stone of a much yellower colour, such as I had never seen before. The gems seemed to pulse with life in his hand.

‘I had it made for you by a London goldsmith,’ he said. ‘The middle stone is a yellow diamond and very rare. May I pin it on your gown?’

We both stood up. My gown was fashioned with a central opening at the neck, through which the white linen and lace of my chemise showed. He pinned the brooch to my bodice, just above where the gown was cinched under my bust by a gold-braided girdle. I felt the pressure of his fingers on my breasts and was sure he could sense the nipples pucker. He smiled as if he knew my knees had gone weak and leaned in to kiss my mouth, raising his hand to caress the back of my neck. His lips left a warm, soft imprint on mine.

‘It is the first of many jewels I shall give you, Cicely, for beauty demands beautiful things. I look forward greatly to our wedding on Tuesday but even more to our life together afterwards.’

Due to the season there were no fresh white roses at my wedding, which took place before a large assembly of guests in the Baron’s Hall at Raby, but the white rose symbol featured liberally on the heraldic banners hanging from the rafters, on the badges of many of the guests and in the elaborate embroidery on the new ducal mantle draped on the shoulders of the bridegroom. As I stood before the Duke of York, waiting to confirm my betrothal commitment to him, I wondered if my father had envisaged this white rose challenge to the red rose of Lancaster, to which he had been so faithful. Up to the time of our marriage affinity badges had been small and inconspicuous; noble support for Lancaster had mainly been signified by the wearing of the double S collar and any rivalry between the red rose and the white had been restricted to the jousting lists. There was no reason to suppose that my union with Richard would be anything more than a peaceful one between two dynasties for the purposes of perpetuating their lines and establishing an accord between their families. However, looking back on the day I suppose we might have detected the first signs of discord, stirred by the flamboyance of Richard’s retinue with their conspicuous white rose badges and the sly jokes this inspired among the other attendant peers, not least my own brothers.

At Richard’s invitation, the nuptial mass in the castle chapel was presided over by the elderly bishop of Durham, Thomas Langley, a former Chancellor of England and an eminence grise of the Church. As he blessed our union I found the venerable Bishop’s gnarled hand on my head a reassuring reminder of God’s promise of forgiveness and in return I made a silent vow of marital faithfulness.

The wedding feast lasted well into the night, impressive for its ten ceremonial courses with their seemingly endless procession of dishes that were paraded shoulder-high around the hall before being removed to the carvers and divided into portions; for the ingenious table-fountains which flowed constantly with wine and hippocras and for the army of tumblers, mummers and minstrels that had travelled from far and wide to entertain us in the intervals while one course was cleared to make way for the next. From my seat of honour beside Richard at the high table I watched the guests grow drunker and the dancing become wilder and I laughed and smiled while my stomach churned with anxiety so that I ate little and drank less. I watched my mother nodding and laughing with Bishop Langley while on her other hand my brother Hal barely cracked a smile. Perhaps he was worrying about his absent wife Alice, who might at that moment be birthing their latest child.

I could not begin to imagine how much all this revelry had depleted the Neville coffers but Richard was well pleased by it. ‘I confess I had wanted to hold our wedding at my castle of Fotheringhay,’ he whispered during the feast, ‘but your lady mother wrote that her husband had made a point of leaving special funds for our nuptials, providing they were held at Raby. It was a long way for my vassals to travel but this feast alone has made it worth their while. However, they are just having a feast, whereas I have gained a brilliant and beautiful duchess.’

My new husband raised the jewelled gold bridal cup we shared. On an impulse I leaned in close to hold the lid beneath it as I had used to do for my father and Richard’s eyes lit up in delighted surprise. ‘Thank you, my lady wife; no female has ever done that for me before. While we both live I shall never allow another to do so.’

This was no tipsy wedding promise. I understood his implied declaration of marital loyalty and when he had drunk, I gently took the cup from him and turned it, then pressed my own lips to where the rim was still warm from his and sipped at the rich red wine. Our eyes locked and I knew we had exchanged a solemn vow. ‘I shall hold you to that, my lord,’ I said softly. ‘And while you live I shall never be cup-bearer to another man.’

This exchange and Richard’s obvious sincerity did much to loosen the knot in my belly, as did the subsequent flow of wedding gifts presented to us. First and foremost a gloriously illuminated Book of Hours, ostensibly from King Henry but clearly acquired for him from France by his uncle Duke John of Bedford, judging by the skilful artistry displayed in its pages. My mother’s gift was a set of tapestries from Arras depicting the miracles of Christ, including the wedding at Cana, while from Hal and Alice came a pair of jewelled hanaps, from the Bishop of Durham a portable altar and a beautiful chased silver flagon from Will and Jane Fauconberg.

The loving smile on the cherubic face of Will’s childlike wife moved me deeply, especially when she laid her hands on her own swelling belly and asked in her piping voice, ‘Baby for Cicely soon, too?’ before embracing me enthusiastically. So she does understand what is happening to her, I thought, whatever people may think. I thanked my brother warmly for his gift and wished them both God’s blessing for the impending birth.

In the midst of this a courier arrived, whose appearance stirred a noisy reaction on the floor of the hall. His tunic bore the Neville saltire differenced by a black bull’s head and all present knew this indicated that he came from Brancepeth. He approached the dais and knelt, offering me a sealed letter.

I could feel my face drain of colour as he intoned clearly, ‘I bring greetings to her grace the Duchess of York from Sir John Neville of Brancepeth.’

My hand shook as I broke the seal but I did not unfold the letter. Whatever it contained I did not want to be the one who read it first. Instead I turned and handed it to Richard, sensing that a demonstration of my new subjection to his will would gratify him. ‘Read it, if it please you, my lord,’ I said, my heart in my mouth.

To my relief, after scanning the page Richard smiled broadly. ‘Sir John sends you a wedding gift, my lady. He describes it as “a gentle palfrey which will carry you faithfully into your new life”. What a chivalrous gesture. Where is the palfrey, goodman?’

‘In the stable, your grace.’

I heard my mother ask icily, ‘Is there no present from the earl?’ but there was no response. The courier merely studied the floor and shuffled his feet.

Richard appeared not to notice. ‘We will inspect it tomorrow. Pray convey her grace’s gratitude to Sir John.’

My lips smiled at the retiring courier but my heart and mind were still racing. For several minutes Richard stood and received more gifts and good wishes while I waited for my nerves to steady. Eventually, during the next lull in proceedings I stood up and walked down the table to address my mother.

‘I would ask a wedding boon of you, my lady mother, if you will be generous enough to grant it.’

Alarm rose in her eyes but was quickly stifled. ‘If I can, naturally I will,’ she answered cautiously.

‘Since Sir John Neville has been kind enough to send a wedding gift, I would like to return the compliment. His brother Thomas has recently lost a good marriage because he had no suitable home to offer his bride. I would count it a personal favour if our family was to grant him the manor of Slingsby as a place to establish a future family life.’

It was my mother’s turn to blanch. She glanced furtively at Richard before biting her lip and frowning at me, clearly unable to comprehend my sudden desire to reward the very people who had endangered my own marriage. Yet she could not remonstrate because Richard was unaware of my abduction and she knew it to be imperative that he remain so. It was clear that my mother remained as unwilling as ever to relinquish an acre of the lands her late husband had left her, but it was my belief that the transfer of Slingsby into Thomas’s ownership would ensure the silence of the Brancepeth Nevilles on the subject of her legacy and that of Sir John Neville in particular. My mother cast a beseeching glance at Hal, looking for assistance, but my gamble paid off. He was full of gratitude to me for escaping my captors without him needing to offer the palatial castle and substantial landholding of Sherriff Hutton as a ransom, and perfectly willing to surrender the comparatively unimportant manor of Slingsby at my request. ‘I think that is a splendid notion, Cicely. I will make the necessary arrangements for the title to be transferred to Thomas Neville of Brancepeth. Once he is knighted and the lord of such a prosperous manor, he will have no trouble in attracting a well-endowed wife. We cannot have a family of Nevilles living in reduced circumstances.’

Confronted with a fait accompli, my mother had little option but to accept the situation. ‘So be it,’ she said and demonstrated her displeasure by turning her back on us.

At this point the minstrels struck up for dancing and after Richard and I had led a merry estampie and several prominent vassal-lords had raised toasts to our health and fertility, my new husband told the Master of the Feast to announce that we would retire, generating a chorus of whistles and catcalls from the body of the hall. The minstrels played a stately march but some scurrilously bawdy lyrics sung from the lower trestles marred our dignified exit. Fortunately it was only a short walk to the privy door, when I could hide my burning cheeks from general view.

‘In the name of God, what is this?’ Richard demanded, reaching down among the luxuriant covers of our nuptial bed.

Following Bishop Langley’s fatherly blessing, when my mother and Hilda had drawn the curtains at my side and Richard’s chosen lords had done the same on his, I could not have been more relieved. Amidst the lewd sniggers of the tipsy crowd of guests who had attended our formal bedding, I had made a silent vow that any children Richard and I might have would never be subject to such an indignity. A blessing on the wedding night was one thing but bawdy comments and suggestive remarks were another. I was not called ‘Proud Cis’ for nothing and I had not relished the ignominy of such a barrage of innuendo. Nor, I suspected, had Richard, for in the dancing shadows of the night-lamp his expression was thunderous.

A wriggling movement among the fur covers in the great bed’s nether regions revealed the cause of his new displeasure. He pounced and extricated a squirming brown and white animal which he held out to me with an expression of distaste. ‘Is this yours?’ he asked.

We were both still wearing the velvet chamber robes in which we had been put to bed but his had fallen open during his search and for a few seconds I found myself admiring the sculpted muscles of his torso as he held my pet dog at arm’s length. I took the little creature from him.

‘Caspar always sleeps on my bed,’ I said. I could feel a volcano of nervous giggles threatening to erupt and I snuggled the terrier into my chest to muffle them in his wiry coat. ‘He must have sneaked in. He has missed me all day.’

Richard reached over and firmly removed Caspar from my arms. As he did so one of the dog’s claws inadvertently scratched me, drawing a bloody red line across the swell of my breast. Unceremoniously Richard dropped the terrier over the side of the bed and I heard Caspar scuttle away whimpering. My giggles instantly gave way to protest. ‘He does no harm really. He just wants to be friends.’

‘He has hurt you though. You are bleeding.’ Richard was staring at my breast where beads of blood were oozing up in the red weal left by the little dog’s claw. He pulled up the rumpled sheet and dabbed at them gently. ‘Does it hurt?’

‘No, not much; it does not matter.’

I was still worrying about Caspar and did not notice that Richard’s expression had changed from frowning concern to narrow-eyed lust. ‘It matters to me,’ he said, bending to put his lips to the bloody weal. His voice sounded different – fervent and thickened and I felt his sexual tension as he licked at the blood. Tentatively I indulged my fantasy of plunging my fingers into his luxuriant curly bronze hair and he responded by lifting his head and pulling my robe fully open, taking my breasts in his hands and stroking the nipples with his thumbs. He was smiling now, a proud, possessive, sensuous curve of his moist lips. ‘These are mine now. You are mine, Cicely. I want no harm to come them or to you.’

I was startled by my own rapid reaction to his ardour. I felt my breasts swell and my nipples stiffen under his caress and something like liquid fire trickled through the core of my belly and into the flesh between my legs. I was deliciously aroused and wanted it to go on but at the same time it frightened me. Surely this was wicked? Against everything I had been taught. Pleasure did not happen between man and wife. Ever since we were children I had expected to couple with Richard in order to get children; it was a duty to be performed, not an act to make me feel as I had felt with … no I would not name him even to myself. It was as if my mind and body were two different creatures; one crying out in protest, the other beginning to arch in ecstasy.

It was on the tip of my tongue to tell Richard to stop, that this was all wrong, when I felt a stab of pain and he was pushing fiercely inside me as I lay spread-eagled beneath him. As quickly as it had come, all my pleasure abated. I was his wife. I could not refuse him. I must ignore the pain and let him thrust his seed deep inside me so that God could make a child. That was my duty and after several thrusts and a groan of release, duty was done.

When we had rolled apart and arranged ourselves for sleep I realized that at least, thanks to Caspar, one of my worries was over. Richard had entered me and there was blood on the sheets. Our marriage was consummated and we were one body in the sight of God and the law of England. There was no going back.

PART TWO

12

Rouen, Normandy 1442

Cuthbert

Towards the end of the road to Rouen we broke free of the dangers of the forest and I ordered my troop to draw rein in order to walk the last mile. Armour and harness jangled less percussively as our horses slowed from their fast, working trot to a gentler pace while at the same time their necks stretched out and their nostrils flared as they caught their breath.

Ahead of us the city gradually came into sight. Once a jewel in the crown of France, it was now a battered shell, its pale stone walls displaying ugly gaps, like the smile of an ageing man. In the twenty-three years since the English had marched into the capital of Normandy after a long and bloody siege, repairs had been done to the cathedral and castle but the damage inflicted by Henry the Fifth’s massive cannons on the city’s outer defences still showed as gaping scars, testament to the fact that the tightly defended borders of the duchy now prohibited any French attempt to retrieve the city at its centre, making repairs unnecessary. In this Year of Our Lord 1442 the commander of those defences and the King’s Deputy and Lieutenant General in France was Richard, Duke of York.

However, the sight that struck me most forcibly whenever I approached the city was not its crumbling walls but the extraordinary ghostly landscape surrounding them. In fields where crops had once grown, long strips of fabric in a hundred different shades of white now billowed in the breeze like the sails of some enormous land-locked armada. The famous linen weavers of Rouen had taken over farms abandoned as a result of the siege and employed them for cloth-crofting, the complicated business of employing the elements to turn their cloth the purest white. The process took months and involved successive soakings, first in urine and finally in buttermilk, with washing and extended periods of airing in between.

‘This is a sight to see, is it not?’ remarked the lady riding beside me. ‘They used to send the raw linen to Holland for crofting.’

The lady was Anne, Countess of Stafford and I had been sent to Calais in command of a troop of men-at-arms to bring her safely to Rouen for her sister Cicely’s lying-in. Strictly speaking, I was brother to both these noble ladies, although as a mere knight, the division between our ranks could scarcely have been wider and this hazardous journey across the plains and forests of Picardy and northern Normandy had been the first time the Lady Anne and I had ever met. I had expected to find the task of escort irksome but had now decided that a man of any rank could do worse than spend a few days in the company of this spirited female. Although she was nine years older than Cicely and already well into her thirties, she was far from being middle-aged in her attitude to life and her elegant red-leather trappings and fashionable fur-trimmed riding huke disguised a practical, down-to-earth disposition. Several times during our ride from Calais, where her husband was captain of the embattled English garrison, we had been forced to draw swords and engage with desperate gangs of bandits called écorcheurs who haunted the northern forests, preying on unwary travellers, and far from cowering behind her escort the countess had unsheathed a useful poignard concealed in her riding boot and wielded it in earnest.

‘There is no trade with the Low Countries now, not since the Duke of Burgundy broke the alliance with England,’ I replied, watching her shift her weight in her sideways saddle and tuck a stray strand of silvery temple-hair back under the scarf of her blue chaperon. ‘So the weavers must bleach all their own cloth.’

‘Well it is heartening to see the land put to some use,’ she said. ‘Even a wilderness of white linen is better than thistles and weeds, though it will not feed the people.’

‘The duke has ruled that the weavers’ guild should set up feeding stations for the poor and dispossessed. He has even endowed them generously himself,’ I told her. ‘There is less unrest in the city since he took up his post.’

She pursed her lips. ‘I am glad to hear it. At least he puts his riches to good use.’

I made no comment. Richard of York was, as everyone knew, the richest man in the two kingdoms and there was much barely concealed envy among those of the landed nobility who were not so well endowed. Although the Earl of Stafford was almost as wealthy, it seemed that even his countess was not averse to passing the odd mildly caustic remark.

Our conversation was forced to cease because we had reached the city gate and became caught up in the crowds queuing to press through the narrow tunnel beneath the battered barbican. Encouraged by our trumpeters’ noisy blasts they shifted reluctantly to let us pass but our royal banners and white rose badges were not greeted with any enthusiasm by the sour-faced citizens of Normandy. Indeed, despite the fact that many of their leaders now apparently worked willingly alongside their English conquerors, the common people of Rouen still tended the graves of their siege-starved forebears and went about their daily tasks in silent resentment, taking the money their goods could earn but hating the hands they took it from. It was pointless to tell these stiff-necked Frenchmen that the men they called ‘conquerors’ were Normans like themselves, back in their own duchy two hundred years after the French had stolen it from them. In their eyes the invaders were ‘cochons Anglais’, English pigs, who hid tails under their doublets and murdered their kings. Rouen may be peaceful but it was not content.

I led the troop across the busy market square towards the castle where extensive patches of new stonework indicated the level of damage the siege artillery had inflicted. It was a sprawling warren of towers and courtyards centered on an imposing buttressed hall with a steep sloping roof of green slates which housed the law courts and meetings of the Normandy Estates. It was the seat of English government and therefore the official residence of the Duke of York. I was pleased to see the lily and lion standard flying from the hall tower, indicating that the Royal Council was in session. The duke would be entertaining his fellow councillors and my rumbling stomach welcomed the fact that there would be plentiful feasting at dusk.

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