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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 (#u763a6029-cad7-595a-88db-64535152df1e)
1 (#u763a6029-cad7-595a-88db-64535152df1e)
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 (#ulink_f70e8e68-98f7-5d63-903c-e48433e1c900)
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.’
