Revenge by David Pilling Read Free Book Online Page A

look to me for salvation. I look to God, but He turns from me.”
    Henry uttered a little groan and covered his face with his hands. He knew it was not an impressive face. His smooth rounded features, placid blue eyes and perpetually earnest expression gave him the appearance of a keen, if slightly vapid, monk or a scholar. To be either instead of a king was his fondest wish, never to be fulfilled.
    He would prefer to be in the adjacent room – known officially as the Painted Chamber – where he could take comfort from the vast painted murals of scenes from the life of his idol, Edward the Confessor, but his wife had insisted on conferring with him here. Queen Margaret was strong where he was weak, a lioness to his lamb, and he rarely defied her will in anything.
    She was standing inside one of the deep window embrasures, reading a letter by the pale light streaming in through the glass. Her brow furrowed, and the hard little lines at the corners of her mouth and eyes deepened as she digested the contents. They were lines of care and determination engraved onto the face of a woman who often found herself obliged to play the man, since her royal husband was incapable of doing so.
    Henry dreaded what the letter had to say. It would not be good news. It was never good news. After a few brief months of peace the carrion birds were again circling over his head. They would not be so easily dispersed this time.
    “I should very much like,” he said mournfully, “to withdraw to a private place, and be a private person. I could do that, and be no more trouble or disappointment to anyone. Then my son could have my throne, or the Duke of York, or a cow-herd. Any one of them would be better suited to kingship than I.”
    Margaret wasn’t listening. She finished reading the letter and folded it in half as she gazed reflectively out of the window. “Warwick has sailed from Ireland,” she said, “and returned to Calais, where he is busy re-fitting his fleet.”
    “Calais?” Henry said, looking baffled, “but Calais is mine. He can’t go to Calais. Can he?”
    “Calais is indeed yours, husband, but only in theory,” she replied with steady patience. “Currently it is held by the Earl of Warwick, and has been for some time. Our ally the Duke of Somerset is valiantly trying to dislodge him, but so far without success.”
    Henry massaged his forehead. He had no aptitude for politics, and a severe bout of mental illness had affected his memory.
    His recollection of the illness was vague, but enough to fill him with sick horror. The endless run of English military disasters in France, culminating in the loss of Bordeaux in the late summer of 1453, had precipitated it. Shortly after receiving news that the province was lost he had fallen into a catatonic stupor, unaware of anything happening around him.
    Even the birth of his son and heir, Prince Edward, had passed him by, and when he recovered his wits he was shocked to be presented with a strong, healthy boy that was apparently his own flesh and blood. The conception, his wife assured him, had occurred before he fell ill. Henry had no memory of it.
    The initial madness had lasted eighteen months, and since then he had lived in terror of relapses. Occasionally he sank into black moods that robbed him of what little energy and purpose he naturally possessed, but thankfully never threatened to plunge him back into his former helpless condition.
    Still, the shadow lingered. He was all too aware of the insanity that had afflicted his grandfather, Charles VI of France. Charles had died strapped to his bed, screaming that he was made of glass and would shatter if anyone touched him. Henry spent long hours on his knees in church, praying to be spared such a fate.
    “There are two Dukes of Somerset,” he said wearily, “father and son. Which one do you refer to?”
    “For God’s sake, Henry!” snapped Margaret. “There is but one living. Henry Beaufort. His father Edmund was killed