Chapter 18

York Castle

The Parliament of York met in mid-May. Clergy, barons, and commons were represented, but few barons attended. Some, like Phillip Rendell, had chosen to stay away; others were dead or imprisoned. The missing magnates made Edward' II's will that much easier to execute. The subsequent Statute of York left His Grace virtually free to rule as he pleased. He ignored all the matters that had sparked his barons' original rebellion and allowed the Hugh Despensers to take active part in all matters. At Parliament's end Hugh the Elder was made earl of Winchester, though fear of the Marcher lords caused Edward to withhold from the younger Hugh the title—if not the authority—of "earl of Gloucester."

To Richard of Sussex the titles were the last outrage in an increasing list of acts that ranged from bizarre to dangerous. While awaiting his half-brother's arrival from a late night of gambling with Nephew Hugh, Richard crossed to a window in his small chamber, tucked away in York Castle. A sudden gust of wind rattled the shutters. He felt a cold blast of evening air, heard a low rumbling of thunder. The threatening storm well matched Richard's mood.

"Pour us both some wine, Michael," he said, and as his squire moved to obey, stared unseeing into the night. The world had gone awry, and was spiraling into madness. Edward's revenge had careened beyond the bounds of reason. He and Hugh had ignored the laws of the land with nightmarish results. Not only England's magnates, but even ordinary folk, trembled over King Edward's actions.

I am also frightened.

Richard accepted the wine from his squire. Horrible precedents were daily being set. Not only would Edward be remembered for Bannockburn but also for the atrocities he was committing in the wake of Thomas Lancaster's execution.

On the same day as Lancaster's death, a group of northern retainers had been hanged. At Bristol, Gloucester, Windsor, Cambridge, Wales, and Cardiff multiple executions had occurred. To terrify the rebels' vassals, Edward had ordered the executions to take place where they held their lordship—a novel, albeit ghoulish, idea. Though in the past hanging, drawing and quartering had almost invariably been limited to foreign rebels, multiple Englishmen had already suffered the same fate.

A jagged bolt of lightning came to ground seemingly in York's courtyard. A log crumbled in the fireplace. Flames shot upward. Richard stared into the darkness as a scattering of rain rattled on the roof tiles. Never had he felt such bleakness. 'Twas as if he'd glimpsed into Edward's soul and found there a blackness as yawning and infinite as the night.

In Kent, Bartholomew Badlesmere had been dragged by his horse through Canterbury to the crossroads at Bleen. There he'd been hanged—though not dropped—and allowed to nearly strangle before being revived with vinegar. Then Badlesmere's belly had been cut open, his entrails drawn out and burnt before him. Finally Badlesmere had been beheaded and his body cut into quarters. As a silent reminder of King Edward II's justice, his head had been stuck on Canterbury's Burgate.

The baron's fate had been repeated elsewhere, indiscriminately it seemed, and the randomness of the punishment frightened Richard, everyone as much as the manner of death. Sixty-two barons were imprisoned in obscure castles, but worse, their wives and children, even their elderly relatives were incarcerated. Such acts were not only ludicrously petty but unprecedented.

The rain increased its patter. Opening the window attached by hinges, Richard leaned over the sill, breathing in the cool night, the moisture, the purity of new-falling rain.

Night and day still appear, he told himself, and rain and sunshine as they should. Crops are growing in the fields and ewes dropping their lambs. 'Tis only man who has gone awry.

At that moment King Edward entered, his face flushed with drink and good cheer. "Close the window, brother. You'll be soaked. And 'tis a fine storm we'll be having, will it not?"

A nervously ebullient Edward motioned for Michael Hallam to serve him wine. He was certain that Richard would do naught but berate him this night. Increasingly their time together consisted of verbal bickering, every bit as tedious as his quarrels with Isabella, and he had taken to avoiding his half-brother. If he wanted criticism he could recall Parliament.

Blue-white lightning forked across a boiling sky. The wall torches sputtered, danced, and dimmed. Richard closed the window and turned to the king.

"I am leaving court, sire. I am going south, to Chilham and Dover."

Edward raised his eyebrows. "You were just there. What is so important that you spend all your time so far from me?"

Richard thought suddenly of Maria Rendell, and just as suddenly shoved the thought aside. "Business matters."

"What business?" Lifting a poker from the hearth, Edward thrust it into the blazing fire. "You did not tell me."

"I cannot countenance what is happening," Richard blurted. "You no longer listen to me and I will not watch you destroy yourself and your kingdom."

"Do not be so dramatic. You just want to criticize me over Parliament or my friends, and I'll not listen. You are unfair to both me and Hugh. He only wished to govern well by making my administration more efficient, by helping me bring more money into England's treasury. What is the harm in that?"

"Aye," Richard said bitterly. "Lord Despenser is a true champion of the people."

"Did not we invite representatives of the commons in north and south Wales to Parliament so they might speak on behalf of their region, where all these accursed troubles began? That was Hugh's idea."

"And what about these barbaric executions? Are they Hugh's idea, as well?"

Edward said sullenly, "They were my enemies."

"Englishmen are not hanged, drawn and quartered. Englishmen are not imprisoned as it pleases you, or their wives and children. You even imprisoned Roger Mortimer's poor mother, by the rood, and she is seventy years old. You cannot rule by tyranny, brother, for the people's hatred will someday overwhelm their fear. You must cease these executions, listen to the voice of Parliament—"

"Parliament!" Edward waved a dismissive hand. "'Tis useful only for raising taxes. Otherwise 'tis just a troublesome device used to thwart my rule at every turn. I can govern more peaceably without my barons always yapping at my heels like a pack of pesky dogs. I need not them to tell me how to run England."

"Nay, and how can they? Most of them no longer possess heads from which to voice their protests."

His Grace poured himself a second cup of wine from the table near the fireplace. Outside the storm approached a crescendo, howling around corners, beating with angry fists against shutters and windows, demanding entrance.

I would prefer the storm outside to that within. He gulped down his wine. Why cannot even Richard understand?

"My subjects will not soon forget what it means to rebel against their rightful sovereign." Edward's voice was little more than a whisper, hard to catch above the pounding rain. "No longer will I attempt to be loved, to be reasonable and just, for I'll not win their love anyway. They loved Father, not me. Why? His rule was one continually of war. He left England's treasury so empty I've had to spend my reign like a beggar, living from hand to mouth, supplicating my barons and bankers. This war, especially, proved humiliating beyond endurance. I could not pay my way. I was decried throughout the country and had to exist on whatever driblets of revenue the exchequer could send. Foreign bankers refused to extend me credit. Only the Bardis deigned to lend me a few hundred marks or pounds here and there." He clenched his fist. "I'll no longer beg. I have the captured estates of my enemies and I will soon have England's treasury full to bursting, which is something Father could never do."

"Do not dare bring up Father," Richard cried, losing all restraint. Though there were things that must never be said, especially between brothers, he was past the point of caring. "Tell me what you did on Father's death."

Edward slammed his goblet down on the table. "I'll not speak of that."

"I was there when Father was dying, just as you were, when he requested of you three things."

"Enough, I warn you." Edward doubled his fist. "Do not continue. You have no right to dig up things that best remain buried."

Richard faced him across the folding table. "'Do not recall Piers Gaveston without consent of Parliament,' Father told you. Do you remember? 'Send one hundred knights to the Holy Land carrying my heart,' he said, and 'Wrap my bones in a hammock so that you can carry them before you to victory in battle.'"

"Aye, I'll not forget," Edward cried. "Even in death Father thought himself superior to me." He paced the narrow room. "I hated him, I did—always lecturing me, filling my head with shoulds and should nots, and criticizing me because I could never measure up."

"You did not even try. There was no trip to the Holy Land, no bones, and Piers was recalled before Father was cold in his grave. No wonder your reign is cursed."

Edward wheeled on him, his face white. "What did you say?"

"Listen well to the wind outside, brother. Mayhap 'tis not the wind at all, but Father crying for justice."

"Such nonsense!" Edward snapped, but he glanced beyond Richard to the rain-streaked window. "It seems you have forgotten to whom you speak. I am king of England, dear brother, and what are you? Some bastard pup that father begat during some meaningless tryst."

They faced each other, their breathing ragged in the ugly silence.

Striving for calm, Richard inhaled deeply, then motioned to Michael Hallam. "My men are awaiting me at the outskirts of York, Your Grace. I request your permission to join them."

Edward spread his hands in supplication. "Let us not fight, please. I hate it when we bicker. I did not mean what I said."

"But I did." Without waiting to be dismissed, Richard left York Castle and his brother the king.

* * *

Richard spent the next months in Kent deliberately remaining detached from political events. No reason to become upset over Edward's actions when the earl was helpless to change them. Better not to know. After his initial anger had faded, however, Richard found that he missed his brother and often toyed with attempting a reconciliation. But Edward seemed content with the company of Nephew Hugh and with planning another Scottish campaign to take place in the fall of 1322, so Richard busied himself at Chilham.

Recently he'd been approached by several lords concerning a possible marriage alliance with Thomas Lancaster's wealthy niece, Beatrice. A marriage uniting Lancaster's house with the royalist cause seemed a possible way of healing some of England's still festering wounds. Dead, Thomas Lancaster was proving himself a more powerful adversary than in life. So many miracles had been reported at his tomb that His Grace had ordered the entrance sealed. Many who'd once castigated Thomas now openly spoke of him as a saint and invoked his name in every conversation critical of the king and his policies.

To the talk of marriage, Richard said very little. Throughout his life he'd been involved in many similar negotiations, but all had come to naught. He wasn't adverse to the idea. A man in his position had not the luxury of marrying for love or staying a bachelor, and Richard did not question the fact that he must someday wed. A part of him even embraced it.

Perhaps married I will forget Maria Rendell.

Since his return to Chilham Richard often hawked, hunted, or rode with Phillip but he avoided Fordwich. Sometimes he wanted to explain to Phillip about May Day, but how could he explain his feelings about Maria? Instead, he pretended that nothing had ever happened, and Phillip allowed him to pretend. When he didn't see Maria, he could almost convince himself that his attraction to her was purely physical—and events seemed to bear out that belief. Upon his return to Chilham, he'd taken Ivetta Smythe, the Sturry Prostitute, as mistress. Though initially Richard had found Ivetta's resemblance to Maria intriguing, her considerable physical charms kept him returning.

"Ivetta is no surrogate lover," he said to Michael Hallam, who stood guard doing Richard's frequent visits to Ivetta's cottage.

"If you keep telling me, my lord, perhaps someday 'twill be so," his squire said glumly. "But I doubt it."

Victim of an unhappy marriage which he preferred never to discuss, Michael had little use for most women. Eleanora, however, at least possessed a measure of sense and no false airs. His lord's attraction to Lady Rendell would lead to tragedy, of that he was certain. Though Michael also knew his lord would never intentionally hurt Lord Rendell, women had a most unpleasant way of making men forget all about duty, obligation—and friendship.