HORSES SCREAMED, MEN SHOUTED, and a trumpet blared, the sounds mixing with the thunderous crash of hooves and clangor of swords and lances on shields and armor. The roar of the river was lost in the din. The horn blew more frantically, and Alys could hear Sir Nicholas’s shouts above the others’, but she could not understand what he said. Only when she heard another voice screaming orders in English did she realize he had shouted his in Welsh. At least she supposed it had been Welsh. It certainly was not French, for she could speak a little French herself.
She drew the mare a short distance further away from the battle but made no attempt to flee, for she could not imagine that either side would do her harm, since the attackers must be Yorkists. Peering through the mist into the melee, she fancied she recognized one or two who had visited Middleham or Sheriff Hutton, though it was hard to recognize anyone for certain when one could not see the devices on their surcoats. For that matter, only a few of the men seemed to bear such devices.
Suddenly, a group of the attackers broke from the skirmish and charged toward her. Before she had time to think, one man reached out and grabbed her bridle. The palfrey plunged and struggled to be free of him. “Tha’rt wi’ us, lassie!” the man shouted. His mail was rusted, and he looked fierce and wild, and in any case, Alys had no wish to ride off with a group of unknown men. Remaining in the Welshman’s charge was preferable to that. She slashed at the man’s arm with her whip, but the stroke had no effect through his mail sleeve.
“Nay, lass, none o’ that!” he exclaimed, snatching the whip from her hand. Kicking his horse to a faster pace, he forced her palfrey to follow. Then suddenly, glancing ahead, he wrenched his mount to a halt again and released her rein, shouting at his men to look out. “’Ware riders! Get thee gone!”
The group Sir Nicholas had sent ahead with Hugh, having heard the clarion call of the trumpet, had turned back and could be seen now galloping toward them, growing clearer as the leaders emerged like ominous but substantial shadows from the mist.
No sooner did the attacker bellow his warning and release Alys’s mare than he and his men seemed to vanish into the forest, but when one of Sir Nicholas’s men wheeled his horse to follow, the Welshman snarled at him to hold. Then, giving spur to his destrier, he galloped up to her, reining in with such violence that the stallion reared, pawing the air with its sharp hooves, sending shudders of terror through her mare.
Not turning tail instantly at the sight of him had taken most of Alys’s courage, for Sir Nicholas alone, bearing down upon her out of the ragged skirts of fog, had looked more dangerous than the entire rebel force. But when her mare began to tremble, she straightened in her saddle, her anger lending color to her cheeks. “Control your mount, sir,” she snapped.
“’Tis not Black Wyvern you need fear, Saesnes,” he retorted, “but me. I commanded you to ride on, to take shelter in the forest, but you dared yet again to defy me. You had best learn, and right quickly, to obey when I give a command.”
“Those men would not have harmed me,” she said, hoping she sounded more sure of that than she felt.
“You know them then?”
“No,” she replied swiftly, telling herself it was so, that she had not really recognized anyone.
He looked long at her, then said, “Those rebels no doubt hoped to use you as a pawn against Harry Tudor, but they were fools to attack a larger force, or else mighty desperate. In either case, you ought never to have trusted them.”
“I did not!”
“You did not run, though I told you to do so, and I saw no sign when they approached you that you resisted them.”
“They took me by surprise!”
“They could not have done so had you obeyed me.”
“I am not such a coward as to ride away and hide!”
“You will learn, Saesnes.” He raised his mailed fist, and she gasped, thinking he meant to strike her, but she realized even as the fear ripped through her mind that he was merely signaling to his men.
While they regrouped and moved up behind, Alys saw by the expressions on a number of faces that they must have heard every word that flew between Sir Nicholas and herself. She grimaced but was glad to see that other than one soldier whose arm was wrapped in a bloody rag no one appeared to have been badly injured in the brief but hard-fought battle.
When Sir Nicholas gave the signal to ride, Alys scowled at him and muttered for his ears alone, “You have no right to command me, sir. I am not one of your men.”
Making no attempt to keep his voice down, he said, “I have been patient with you, Lady Alys, but you will do well to test my patience no further. You were foolish not to obey me. I will do you the courtesy to believe you did not know them, but that means only that you could not have known they meant you no harm. They might have decided that a lady’s dainty ear—or her finger or hand—sent to our Harry would encourage him to agree to any demand they might choose to make. ’Tis not unknown for rebel abductors to begin with a lock of hair and proceed from there.”
Paling, and distractedly jerking her rein so that the mare danced nervously in the road, she cried, “They would not dare!”
He grabbed her rein, halting the mare and demanding grimly, “And why would they not?”
She opened her mouth to tell him she believed that at least one or two must have known her brother, but she caught herself before the words were spoken, swallowing them, and after a long, uncomfortable moment, said only, “They would not, that ’s all.”
“Only a liar or a fool would make such a statement,” he said. “I do not know which you are, but I’ll tell you one last time that you’d best obey my orders. I have only your safety in mind, nothing more, but while I am responsible for you, you must do as I bid or suffer the consequences. Where is your whip?”
She bit her lip at the transition his thoughts had made but answered steadily enough, “That villain snatched it when I tried to strike him with it.”
His expression softened. “I see. I wronged you then, by believing you did not resist. Still, mi geneth, you will do as I bid next time, for your own safety. If you persist in defying me, I will have no choice but to order your hands tied and place you in charge of one of my men, who will lead your mare and, if we are attacked again, take you instantly to cover.”
Instead of cowing her, the threat, coming as it did on the heels of what amounted to an apology, helped steady her, for she could not believe he meant it. No man would treat a lady so. She smiled, looking at him from beneath her thick lashes. “I was glad to see Goorthfan Gower and his men.” She tried to match Ian’s pronunciation but clearly failed, since Sir Nicholas looked bewildered. “The one you call Hugh,” she explained. “Is Goorthfan Gower not his proper name?”
Amusement lit his eyes. “Welshmen do not have surnames as you English know them. In legend Gwr Gwrddfan is a strong, tall man, a giant. Tales are told in Brecknockshire, where our homes lie, and in nearby Glamorgan, of a giant called Gwrddfangawr. The men began to call our Hugh the same, because of his size. But you and I do not speak of him now, mistress, only of you.”
“Ought we not to ride on, sir?” she asked with an innocent air. “You have spoken often of your wish to travel swiftly.”
“I want your word of honor that you will defy me no more, Lady Alys, and I will have it before we ride another league.”
“My word of honor, sir? Do Welshmen believe—No,” she interjected quickly, realizing that he would only twist her words if she asked such a question. Smiling again, albeit wryly, she said, “Would you really trust my word, sir?”
“May I do so?”
She nodded, serious now, holding his gaze with her own. “If I give it, you may trust it. I know that women are not held to that same high standard by which knights abide, but—”
“In these modern times, mi geneth, even knights can no longer be trusted to abide by that standard.”
“That is not something about which to speak lightly, sir!”
“I do not speak lightly, mistress, but I do speak truth. I said before that the world is changing, and that manners and morals change with it. One cannot say if such changes are right, but they come to us, and the Lord does naught to hinder them; and so, though ’twas once true that the word of a knight could be trusted, your Richard found, to his misfortune, that that is no longer the case. Harry Tudor uses change to suit his own good. No doubt, when it was expedient, Richard did the same.
“That is not true! Richard was an honorable knight.”
“So honorable that none can say what became of the nephew who by rights should have sat upon the throne in his stead, or of that lad’s younger brother. So certain are men of their fate, in fact, that none do question it.”
Alys opened her mouth, then clamped it shut again.
“Well,” he prompted when she remained silent, “have you naught to say to that, mistress?”
She had much to say and much to do to keep from saying it, but the conversation had now taken a tangent too dangerous to explore, for she knew both too much and too little. In truth, she had her suspicions and little else, but since she dared not make those suspicions known to him, she could say nothing. Her thoughts tumbled over one another, without order or sense, and suddenly, for the first time since her illness, she remembered the possibility that there had been men hiding at Wolveston, and she wondered if they had been among the recent attackers.
He was watching her. She bit her lip, regarding him again from beneath her lashes, trying to read his expression, wondering if there might be any way to make him see her side of the matter. Certainly, if that was too much to hope, she ought still to be able to win his good offices by employing the same tactics that had served her before now, both with Plantagenet men and others. She looked down and said quietly, “I do not understand what you want me to say, sir, but you must not speak so to me of Richard. You are no doubt a wise man, strong and brave as a lion—”
“Such woman’s prattle does naught to soften me,” he said with sudden harshness. “Not even a wench with hair like a raven’s wing and eyes like shiny coal would move me with such simpering wiles. You will learn that I do not easily lose sight of my intent. I will have your word now.”
“I thought you liked my hair.” She was pleased with the retort, thinking she had learned to use his own device against him, to twist debate as he did himself. “You did tell me once that it is like burnished gold and prettier than Elizabeth’s.”
His stern look did not waver. “Shall I call Ian up here, Lady Alys, and tell him to bring bindings?”
Believing now that he would do it, she swallowed and said with as much dignity as she could muster, “I will not defy you again, sir, not before we reach London.”
He nodded without comment, and they rode on in silence.
Without conversation to distract her, Alys had to fight to keep from thinking about Jonet, no doubt dead now. She found the effort to maintain a calm demeanor was exhausting, and soon realized that she had not fully recovered from her own illness. When the fog lifted at last, and Sir Nicholas increased the pace, any inclination she might have had to initiate more conversation disappeared. But despite his continued silence and the fact that his attention seemed fixed upon the road ahead, she knew he was watching her. Determined though she was not to let him suspect her growing fatigue, she nearly exclaimed aloud in gratitude when at last he signaled to his men to slow again so that some could dismount and lead their horses for a time, to rest them. She was having all she could do by then to remain upright in her saddle.
Knowing that to occupy her mind would help her stay awake, but wanting to dwell neither upon Jonet nor upon Sir Nicholas’s preference for dark women over fair, or on the humiliation she would experience if she tumbled to the ground before all these men, she forced her thoughts ahead to London. Elizabeth would be there before her, would in fact—if the Tudor held by the vow he was said to have made at Rennes Cathedral two Christmases past—soon be Queen of England. Remembering Sir Nicholas’s suggestion as to the most likely fate of Elizabeth’s brothers, Alys realized that Elizabeth had said nothing about either of them at Sheriff Hutton. That was not so odd in itself, since Elizabeth preferred to speak only of herself, but as best Alys could remember, no one else had ever mentioned the two young princes either.
“You are silent, mi geneth. Art weary?”
“Aye, a little.”
“I thought it must be so, for I had expected you to speak again by now in defense of the Yorkist usurper. You have not so much as attempted to deny that he murdered his young nephews.”
It was as if he had looked into her mind, but she refused to allow him to disconcert her this time. She said calmly, “King Richard would never have harmed them, sir. He had been charged with their care and that of the realm by one whose regard he sought and to whom he owed his greatest fealty. He would have protected his brother’s sons with his very life.”
Sir Nicholas said gently, “It will perchance be better for them if that is not found to be the case, mistress. This country wants peace, but there are rebels who would rally in support of a Yorkist heir if they thought he could supplant our Harry. I doubt he would harm Edward’s sons by choice, but if the boys do live, Harry might find himself left with no other recourse.”
She said, “They can be no more of a threat to him than they were to Richard, for they cannot inherit. They are bastards.”
“I have been told that your Parliament can alter that fact.”
“So, too, might they set aside the bill of attainder that prevents Neddie—the Earl of Warwick—from inheriting. You must know he is the son of Richard’s elder brother Clarence, but Richard did not harm him. He sent him to Sheriff Hutton with Elizabeth. If you fear for Richard’s nephews, sir, you must also fear for Warwick, and verily, the Tudor has no cause to harm him. Neddie is no knightly warrior but only a soft and gentle boy.”
“Like your brother?”
“My brother?” But as she spoke, she remembered that he had described the dead youth at Wolveston in just those words. Despising herself for a fool, she kept her countenance with effort and said with another casual shrug, “I do not think them at all similar. My brother was no doubt a scholar like my father, who detested war. Neddie is … Well, not to put too fine a face on it, sir, Neddie is a bit simple.”
“What about your other brother,” Sir Nicholas asked, “the one who had already left Wolveston? Do you still insist, mi geneth, that you know not whither he has gone?”
Alys shot him an angry look. “I do not wish to speak of my brothers, sir, and you are unmannerly to ask me such questions. In point of fact, I scarcely know them.” That, at least, was true, and she was glad, for she found it uncomfortable to lie to him. But she truly did not know Roger well, since she had met him only on a few occasions since leaving home. Daringly, she added, “I believe you question me only because I have made you think of things you had rather not have pondered. You did not know our king and yet have you attempted to blacken his name, only to justify your own allegiance to his usurper.”
“Why must I justify my allegiance? You do little enough to justify your own, and do you not honor Richard for his unswerving fidelity to his brother, King Edward? I should think you would understand that such loyalty needs no justification.”
She was silenced for a moment, because she understood that men frequently believed such things. Her own loyalty, regardless of what he might think, was not so easily commanded. She believed in Dickon because Anne had believed in him and because she had loved Anne. But perhaps it was likewise with Sir Nicholas. After all, the Tudor was also a Welshman, though he had spent most of his life in France. Perhaps Sir Nicholas’s true loyalty was to Wales, and to the Tudor only because all Welshmen believed he might be depended upon to benefit Wales.
“Well?” he prompted.
She smiled. “Perhaps you are right, sir.” It was always better, she knew, to agree with a man until one had marshaled one’s thoughts with care. One accomplished two things thereby. One pleased the man in question, thus disarming him, and gave oneself a chance to think of a new and better argument. Then, when the time was ripe, one still might have the last word if one was careful and a bit lucky. A woman in these perilous times had few weapons with which to protect herself against masculine power and authority, so it behooved her to make careful use of the two greatest ones she did possess, her wits and her allure.
With these thoughts in mind, she turned the subject, but it was not long before the conversation died again. She was finding it harder to keep her seat, and Sir Nicholas seemed reluctant to stop the cavalcade to rest properly. Her replies to his comments became monosyllabic, and although the fog had lifted, the scenery around her began to blur. Her eyelids were heavy, and kept drooping, until suddenly and without warning, she slept.
When she awoke, the first thing she noticed was that the sounds around her had not changed. There was still the rhythmic clatter of hoofbeats on the road, the tumult of the river to her left, and the steady murmur of men’s voices behind her. She was also still mounted, although her saddle seemed to have grown more supportive. Even as the thought crossed her mind, she realized she was no longer riding her palfrey, or riding alone.
When she realized that she leaned against a broad masculine chest, her head nestled comfortably in the hollow of his shoulder, she started, straightening as best she could to look about her in bewilderment.
“You ought to have told me how tired you were, mi geneth,” Sir Nicholas said behind her. “I should not have liked it much had you fallen beneath the horses’ hooves.”
“I am sorry to have troubled you,” she replied tartly, straining to turn and look at him. “I suppose it was too much to expect you to stop this procession while I rested.”
“There was no need. You are not ill, merely exhausted, and that is not to be wondered at.”
“I can ride my palfrey now,” she said stiffly.
“I think not. You will do better to rest while you may, and Black Wyvern can carry us both easily. You are no weight at all for him compared to a full suit of armor.”
“I am surprised he will consent to carry me at all. He cannot be accustomed to skirts.”
“He does as he is bid,” Sir Nicholas said with meaning in his voice. “Moreover, he is fully accustomed to trappings of all sorts. Though we do not burden our horses with all the colorful but unneeded ornaments that the English do, we do, even in Wales, have tourneys and ceremonies for which such trappings are worn.”
“But you do not wear armor now either, though you travel in enemy lands,” she said, voicing a question she had wanted to ask since she had first laid eyes upon him and his men.
She felt him shrug, the plates of his brigandine feeling rough even through her cloak. “We are a cavalry troop,” he said. “It behooves us to move swiftly, and heavy armor slows the horses. Therefore do we wear as little as safety allows, much as foot soldiers do. War is not like a tournament these days, mi geneth. The victory goes to those who can deliver their blows and move away again with speed to strike again. Moreover, if a man falls from his horse, he does not want to be spitted by his enemy like a tortoise flipped over in his shell.”
She encouraged him to tell her more about the methods of war, and an edgy truce was begun between them that lasted until they reached London. The days of travel soon fell into a routine that made them seem to pass swiftly, and the nights passed quickly, too, for Alys no sooner swallowed her supper than she took to her pallet and slept like one dead. She rode her palfrey in the mornings, gaining strength with each passing day, and after the midday meal, she rode with Sir Nicholas, who made no more mention of placing her in charge of anyone else.
He told her of his childhood in Wales, of his studies at the Blackfriars’ school in Brecon, and some of his adventures as a soldier. She liked the sound of his voice. With her head against his chest, she let its deep vibrations lull her, and often she slept. Her grief for Jonet faded when she was with him like this, and she felt secure with him in a way she had never felt before. A little unsettled by these feelings, she told herself she merely looked upon their conversations as highlights of what otherwise would be a rather dreary passage of time.
They crossed the Trent at Fiskerton ford to join the Great North Road south of Newark. Although Alys had never been so far south before, the rolling green hills and the rivers soon began to look alike, as did the villages through which they passed. Each had cottages, common, manor house, and tithe barn. And each had its curious citizens, who turned out to watch the cavalcade. Men bowed and touched their forelocks and women made their curtsies, but Alys, knowing they recognized the red dragon on Sir Nicholas’s standard and bowed to the Tudor, ignored them. She was tired of travel and longed to be clean again, to enjoy once more the caressing softness of velvet or silk against her skin.
Even Leicester failed to impress her. She had seen York, after all, a vast city of ten thousand people, so she was not likely to widen her eyes at a town of fewer than one thousand folk. There was a fair in the town, however, and she laughed to see the jesters and wished she might visit the stalls and perhaps purchase a new ribbon or two. She was riding with Sir Nicholas at the time, and she glanced over her shoulder at him, but his face was set, his eyes narrowly watching the crowd of people in the streets, no doubt on the lookout for unfriendly faces.
There did not appear to be any. After all, they were south of the Trent now, in a land where people had long been easily swayed from faction to faction, preferring peace to principle. If there was any expression to be seen, it was curiosity, and Alys soon realized it was directed at her, not at the soldiers. The people had seen many soldiers, but rarely had they seen a cavalcade accompanied by a lone young woman in a scarlet cloak.
“I hope they never learn my identity,” she murmured to the man behind her. “I would acquire a most undesirable reputation.”
“They will not do so,” he said calmly. “It is one reason we do not stop in the villages through which we pass, or at houses of religion. I do not want the lads chatting with strangers, nor do I want any of them made vulnerable to an assassin’s blade. Had I provided you with waiting women before now, I’ll wager they’d have been more trouble than their presence was worth.”
“They would have slowed us, to be sure,” she agreed, repressing a sharp pang at the inevitable thought of Jonet.
“Aye,” he replied, “and more. My men will not trouble you, mistress, but women of a lesser station might tempt them. I want no additional worries on this journey, but I trust you have not been put to a great deal of trouble.”
“No, sir,” she said. “Your squire and the Scotsman make admirable maidservants.” When he chuckled, she was pleased, for there was a warmth and intimacy in the sound that she found soothing. Shifting in her seat, she settled more comfortably against him, having long since given up any attempt to sit bolt upright when they rode together.
The villages were coming closer and closer together, with less expanse of open countryside between them. On the morning of the ninth day of their journey, Sir Nicholas sent Hugh with a party of four men to ride on ahead of them.
“You anticipate danger, sir?” she asked.
He glanced at her, smiling. His helmet was lashed to his saddle, and his gauntlets hung from his sword hilt. “Look yonder, my lady, betwixt us and the sun.”
She had been riding with her eyes on the roadway because the sun shone bright enough that day to hurt her eyes. But she obeyed him now, squinting into the brightness. They had come to the top of a rise, and there, just to the right of the brightest rays of the sun, she could see the towers and walls of a city, with a wide silver ribbon of river beyond.
“London?”
“Aye, London.” His voice throbbed with pleasure, his eyes gleamed with anticipation, and she realized that, like herself, he had never been there before.
Reaching the gates of the city took longer than she thought it would, and the nearer they got, the more her excitement grew, for it was as clear as could be that this city was much, much larger than York. She had heard that it was the greatest city in Christendom, and now she believed it, for so large was it that it had spilled over its walls to the fields beyond, to sprawling villages unlike any others she had seen. There were not only cottages dotting the land but shops and great houses as well, and large gardens with trees and bright flowers that could be seen from the road. The cavalcade passed between hedgerows and elm trees, beyond which they could see pleasant meadows with rivers and brooks meandering through, and people walking or riding.
Just before they reached the city gates, the party Sir Nicholas had sent ahead joined them again, and after speaking with Hugh, he turned to Alys and said, “Harry is at Greenwich. We are to join him there.”
“Where is Greenwich?” she asked, disappointed to think she would not see London after all.
Sir Nicholas grinned at her. “Downriver, mi geneth, but we ride through the city, for the only nearby bridge across the Thames is here, and ’tis too wide a river for swimming or for ferrying so many horses. Art fit to continue riding alone?”
“Aye,” she said firmly. Not for the world would she ride through London on his saddlebow. But he did not debate her decision and when she glanced at him several moments later, she saw that he was as fascinated by all he saw as she was herself, though he took more pains to conceal it.
London bustled with humanity, for it was ten times the size of York, larger even than England’s second city combined with the next three largest in the country. But, for all that, it had not lost its country flavor. Alys remembered York as a pretty city of cobblestones and people, noise and clatter. London was certainly noisy, for besides the shouting of people and the clatter of horses, there was also the clamor of church bells and the cries of street vendors. Houses were built flush to the streets, and many of the streets she saw were narrow, with upper stories hanging over them, just as in York, but there were trees around and behind the houses, and the air was fresher than she had expected it to be, for there was a breeze from the river.
There were birds, too, and flowers and trees everywhere, for they passed pleasant squares of houses built around central gardens. And even when the streets grew more crowded, as they neared the great river Thames, she caught an occasional glimpse of a tree beyond a garden wall. They did not have far to ride, for the city was built in a wide half-moon crescent along the river, measuring a mile and a third from the Tower to Westminster and little more than half a mile from river to northernmost gate.
The river was as fascinating as the rest. There were ships drawn up to great wharfs and others riding at anchor, all towered over by the huge five and six-story warehouses that crowded the banks. The noise and bustle were greater than ever, but once they had crossed the stone, shop-flanked bridge to Southwark, the populated area soon merged into meadows and woods. Behind them, back across the river, they could see the Tower of London against the horizon, until a turn in the river hid it from sight.
The road took them along the riverbank, where late summer wildflowers made colorful splashes in the green and golden meadows that punctuated otherwise dense woodland on their right. They saw several great houses, and then suddenly, ahead, lay the stone battlements and towers of the palace of Greenwich. The drawbridge over the moat was down, and soon they were clattering over it into the outer court. Alys barely had time to look about her before Sir Nicholas lifted her down from her saddle and they followed a pair of retainers in royal livery into the hall. So far, her impression was that Greenwich was a fortification built to withstand siege, so the hall came as an astonishing surprise.
It was magnificent, gilded and hung with exquisitely worked tapestries. The floors were paved with terra-cotta tiles bearing the monogram of Queen Margaret of Anjou, the spirited wife of Henry the Sixth, whose palace it had been before the York kings had taken possession. The windows were glazed with expensive glass, and sculptors had adorned the pillars and arcades with Queen Margaret’s emblem, the ox-eyed daisy called the marguerite.
“His noble grace will see you at once, Sir Nicholas,” one of the lackeys said. “The lady is to come with us.”
Panic surged in Alys’s breast, and without thinking she clutched at Sir Nicholas’s sleeve.
Placing his hand comfortingly over hers, he said calmly to the servant, “Where do you take her, sirrah?”
“Why, to the ladies’ chamber, sir. His noble grace, the king, will send for her later, after she has rested.”
Not wanting the Welshman to guess that she was still afraid, Alys removed her hand from his sleeve and raised her chin, looking at a point beyond the lackey’s shoulder. But Sir Nicholas must have sensed her unease, for after a momentary silence he said gently, “Go with him, Lady Alys. I swear by mine own honor that no harm awaits you here.”
Comforted more than she would have liked to admit by these simple words, she said, “I do not fear harm, sir.” Then, to prove it, she said firmly to the lackey, “I shall want to order a bath at once.” Looking back over her shoulder, she had the satisfaction of seeing a delighted grin on Sir Nicholas’s face. Its warmth supported her up a broad stairway and along a wide stone gallery, but her poise nearly deserted her when she saw two armed men ahead, flanking a pair of tall doors. They flung them wide at her approach, and panic rose again when the first person she saw upon passing through them was Elizabeth of York.
Without rising from the elegantly carved and gilded armchair in which she sat, Elizabeth said with sweet, albeit right royal, dignity, “Why, Alys Wolveston, how pleasant it is to have you with us again. We hope we see you well.”