Dangerous Enchantment

Prologue

It was a strange night. The air was calm, the leaves on the trees still and petrified. There was a low murmur from the camp but no rowdiness. Above the silence was the steady clank and clamor of a Blacksmith, the shudder of horses, the faint grumbling of scorched wood from dying fires.

Once inside the camp, the Messenger dismounted and, handing his reins to a groom, turned to help the lady down. In the pearly light of evening her face looked pale and tense. Come, Madam, he said.

She did not know him, had never met him before, but he had carried a summons that could not be refused, a curl of parchment bearing the seal of a man to whom she could refuse nothing!

Following the Messenger, she was aware of sly glances. Even though the night was warm she kept the hood of her cloak close about her head and face. She was not ashamed of being seen here, but covered herself from view because he might not wish her to be recognized.

At last amongst the maze of tents she saw his tent, a little way off, isolated from the rest. Always these days he seemed to distance himself from people. The betrayal of those he had trusted implicitly had wounded him deeply.

There was no breeze, so the standard hoisted above the tent lay limply against its pole. There was something ominous about the stillness. It was as if God were holding His breath. He would not interfere. He could no longer make up His mind. God was weary of the internecine warfare that had already practically decimated the aristocracy of England. The idea made her tremble; although it was warm she was shivering as one who had the ague.

The Messenger had left her outside the tent but in moments he returned and beckoned her. Come, lady, he said. Then once she had entered, he left, closing the tent flap.

It was quite dim. There were only a couple of rush lights. For a moment her eyes had to search the interior. Then she saw him. He was standing by the rush light, dressed as he always was these days, in black. The light reflected the dark auburn lights in his hair, his thin melancholy face as hauntingly handsome as it had always been to her.

She dropped to a deep curtsey, head bowed, until he came and took her hand. Kate, he said softly, my dear Kate. He gently tugged her to her feet; his fingers were chilling on her wrist. Are you so cold or do I make you afraid?

I am not afraid, Majesty.

Come, sip some wine.

He poured wine into a jewelled goblet. It was warm and sweet, just a little too heavily spiced for her taste but she drank it all, with quick sips, watching him as he paced the tent like an agitated cat. She closed her eyes, first compressing her lips, then chewing the lower. He had sent for her! What had the Messenger said? The King demands your presence immediately. He will fight a battle tomorrow against the Usurper Henry Tudor. You must come at once.

On the eve of the battle he had remembered her. He had wanted her, not one of the women who followed the camps, not one of the widows who were happy to serve a noble lord, not a harlot. Her cheeks flushed. She should not even know such words but she did—she knew everything!

You still tremble, Kate. He came to her, an ermine-lined purple cloak on his arm. Tenderly he put it around her shoulders and murmured, You shall have this from me.

Oh Majesty, I could not. Was it payment? Did he think her a whore? His dove gray eyes were too intense and she looked away. Did he not realize that she loved him? That she had always loved him, even while he had been married to the sickly Anne, and she a lady in waiting, moved by his devotion to his ailing wife?

Anne had been a trial at times, jealous and watchful but never accusing him to his face, or being anything to him but compliant and adoring. Only to her maids did she release her frustration, once clipping Kate around the head several times, because she had, Anne accused, gazed with sheep’s eyes at the Duke. Kate had been thirteen at the time and unable to hide her adoration. Later she managed to be as sly as everyone else, though it was not something that she enjoyed doing.

Now he was alone. Anne had died and some of the autumnal warmth had gone from him. He was like winter, a man who had always been a little sad, a man betrayed by those he trusted, a man let down to a greater and lesser degree by his brothers, a man whose only legitimate well-loved son had died and who had lost the only woman he had ever truly loved. Now he had to face a challenge from someone who was not fit to scrub pots in his kitchens.

Kate sighed very softly to herself. Would she bring him some comfort? Would she be able to drive away the veil of frost that had gathered around his soul? Would her youth and innocence melt his sadness? In her arms would he forget all the evil things that had been done to him? Her eyes filled with tears. She loved him so much, loved him with all the fervor and intensity of one who had had to love in secret.

Kate, he said. Kate, sit here. He indicated a trunk and she sat. He came and sat beside her, taking up her hand and fondling it gently. Kate, I have to ask something of you. There is no other that I might ask. No other I trust. I can trust you, Kate, can I not?

Oh Majesty, of course. I would give my life for you.

Dear Kate, I hope I would never have to ask you for that. What age are you now?

I am almost eighteen, Majesty.

You are so young, so beautiful. He sighed. Believe me, if there was another way, another person, I would not ask. But, Kate, I have only you that I can ask. I have to implore you to do this thing for me.

I will do it. She allowed her fingers to answer his back, her heart hammering against the wall of her chest with such intensity she thought it would shatter.

When he asked her the question, How can you say that when you don’t know what it is? her mind formed the reply: but of course I do. However, shyness prevented her from saying it. Of course his command had told her all. Come, I desperately need you. To a woman in love there were no sweeter words.

Whatever you ask of me I shall do, she said.

Forgive me, but I must ask you to swear before God that you will never reveal the matter.

I swear to God that I shall never reveal the matter, she swore, and she would not. Always, it would be their secret. When it was over and the Usurper, Henry Tudor, lay dead on Bosworth Field, and Richard forever triumphant in London, even should he never acknowledge her, she would feel no acrimony towards him. She would live in silence with the memory of this one joyful, yet ominously sad night.

So be it, he said firmly. He stood and went to pour more wine into his goblet. She refused more. She wished her mind to be uncluttered. Her memory must be unimpaired. Each moment had to be crystal clear. Every gesture from him, every nuance stored, so that her recall of it would be vivid.

You know Lord Mellor?

Yes, sire. Mellor had been a friend of Richard’s brother, King Edward the Fourth. He had proved his allegiance to Richard and had remained as loyal as Richard’s dearest friends, Lord Lovell and William Catesby. But Kate did not care for him at all. He had been as profligate as Edward, sharing in Edward’s sexual escapades, a man as licentious as the King he had served. Richard, on the other hand, had never been licentious. He had always stood aside from his brother’s doings, ever faithful to his wife. Before his marriage he had had one mistress. She had died young, but had given birth to two children, a son, John, and a daughter, Katharine. Richard openly acknowledged his off-spring and when he married Anne, she had accepted them as her own.

Richard though had never judged men by his own morality. Men were judged solely for their loyalty. Loyalty was all to him. It was the code by which he lived. It was written in his arms. Loyaulte me lie. Loyalty was something that Mellor had always given. A Yorkshire man, his estate along the wild and desolate coast of north Yorkshire, Mellor had always supported the cause of the White Rose, and even when the red rose had been in ascendance he had defiantly flown the white rose from his castle ramparts.

His only child, his son Richard… A wintry smile crossed the face of the King. My Godson has died. A fever last evening, a galloping horrible malady that took him swiftly, a summer chill was what we thought.

I am so sorry, Kate said. He would be remembering his own child. How they had grieved, Anne and he, and Anne had not been able to recover from the loss and wasted away into death, as if she were anxious to join her only child.

He is heart broken, of course. The king shrugged miserably. Richard was his only child. His wife had died giving birth. I think that is why he led such a profligate life. I have known him since we were boys and I swear it was only after his wife’s death that he began to imitate the behavior of my brother.

I see. But she did not see what any of this had to do with them. They should not be talking of such sad matters as a prelude to love. They should be exchanging silly inconsequential words that would lighten both their moods.

It is difficult for me to tell you these things. There are barbs in every word, Kate. There are people who believe that I don’t love my brother’s children. Dear God, I don’t love nor care for their mother, yet even she, she-devil that she was, knows that my brother’s seedlings are like my own.

No one should deny that, Majesty.

But they do, Kate, they do. I did not steal my nephew’s throne. Circumstances forced me to act. You know the reason?

Aye, sire.

Everyone knew. Evidence, strong and irrefutable, had been brought that the late King Edward before his rise had married Lady Eleanor Butler. Later he had married Elizabeth Woodville. It was a bigamous marriage, the children illegitimate. An illegitimate boy sat on the throne. It was not safe. It could not be right. England had been torn apart by the Wars of the Roses for too many years. A firm, strong King whose claim could not be disputed was needed. That was the reason why the late King’s brother, the Duke of Gloucester, took the throne from his nephew. There had been no other way. All right, thinking people had wanted it to be so.

The Tudor’s invasion impelled me to act. I feared that he would plan some heinous deed to my brother’s children. See you, Kate. He knelt on one knee beside her. He calls me the Usurper. If he came to take the throne for the boy, that would be all well and good, but I know that he comes to take it for himself. His claim is false and odious. He cannot have an heir of my brother’s flesh alive. If I am a Usurper, then he will have to kill them to make his own way clear. That is why I place my nephews in the Tower, for their protection. Once I had rid the country of Tudor I intended to take them to their mother and then all would be free to live in peace. She knows this and agreed to the plot. There had been much bitterness between us, but she knows the truth of what I am saying to you. However I could not settle. I was tormented by their vulnerability. I sent for them. Two trusted servants brought them here to me. He stood, fists clenched, pacing the tent in anguish.

Your nephews are here? Kate asked, surprised to hear a thin note of hysteria in her voice.

Better among my fellows, all Yorkists true and tested, all loyal. They will, if things go wrong, speed them away—at least that was my plan.

Nothing will go wrong, Kate said firmly. You are a proven warrior, sire.

Aye, though I am weary of it, Kate, but my plan has gone awry. How the devil’s dogs do snap at my heels, he murmured, his voice full of a terrible kind of defeat. The fever that took young Mellor also took Edward, my nephew.

Oh, sire. Kate left the trunk, going to his side, yet not daring to touch him, for he was a King and she was not worthy to offer such intimate comfort.

If he had been left in the Tower, if I had not moved him... But good fortune has fled my side.

He stood straight now, pulling the cloak of nobility around him. He was not too tall but strong and lean of body. There was a majestic quality about him, a fineness that could never be achieved by practice but that came from inside. It could not be purchased either. It was inherent.

The daughters of my brother are safe. They are with their mother. The fact that they are female will protect them from vengeance and… He paused a moment. Of course there is Richard. How I do love that lad. Richard is here, he is well and strong and so shall he grow, even should I not be here.

"But you will be here. You must be here."

It will be in God’s will, Richard said. Now, he said brusquely, I have a plan. That is why you are here.

It is?

She felt the first inkling of pain; it was not to be as she imagined.

All who are here, apart from my son John, Lovell and Catesby and Mellor, of course believe that it is my brother’s seedlings that have taken the fever. You notice the silence. They brood. They feel it, but I cannot relieve their curiosity. I dare not. My first and only thought is to protect Richard. Kate, I make no command. You may leave safely and I shall think none the worse of you. You see I wish…I wish you to marry Lord Mellorsdale now, tonight, then to take the boy with you to Mellor’s castle in Yorkshire, to pretend to all that he is Mellor’s son.

* * * *

Lord Mellor was drained of facial color; even the red beard and shock of wiry red hair was lackluster. He had been of ruddy complexion, Kate recalled, robust, noisy and gregarious. Now grief had robbed him of that liveliness.

The marriage was performed by a priest. The very Blessing seemed to mock Kate. Surely it was a sin to partake of this Sacrament when in reality neither partner really desired it. Lovell and the King bore witness, both somber. The whole occasion seemed doom-ridden. Kate did not think forward, did not dare contemplate her future. She could not even imagine what it would be like to be married to this man who sent a shiver of revulsion through the length of her slender body. The touch of his hand repelled her. The thought of his future marital demands made her tremble, her stomach swelling with a genuine feeling of sickness.

I cannot think of it now, she told herself. I have to drive these thoughts from my mind and face them only when they are due to happen.

Later the conspirators shared a draught of wine, while young Richard sat on the trunk, slowly swinging his long, skinny legs. He was pale, his enormous blue eyes filled with sadness that no child should ever experience. He was a handsome child with red-gold hair, truly a child of the son of York.

They would travel to a safe house, spend the night, and then ride ever onwards to Lord Mellor’s castle. They would be accompanied by Mellor’s steward, a man of some middle years, faithful to his master and who swore he would sooner die than reveal the true identity of the boy.

When the time came for them to leave, Richard began to sob. Clinging to his uncle, he begged to be given a sword that he might defend that uncle against Henry Tudor.

No, you are the seed of York. You must be held safe. You must look to Kate. You must also look after her as she will look after you. I will send for you when it is all over. You will see your mother and your sisters again.

I hate my sisters! Richard cried. I hate them all, but I hate Elizabeth above all.

King Richard sighed. There have been too many feuds. You must learn to love your family. Believe me, any other way leads only to misery and pain.

Very gently he pushed Richard into Kate’s arms. For a brief moment the boy buried his face, childlike, in the folds of her skirts. Then gathering the shattered remnants of his courage, he pulled away and, pushing back his shoulders, he stood firm and straight. He held out his hand and Kate clasped it gently.

He said very solemnly, I love you, Uncle Richard.

And I love you too, very much. God speed to you all and may God always smile on you. The King leaned forward and kissed Kate’s cheek. Lord Mellor merely said abruptly, Madam, I am your servant.

As she mounted her horse, Richard riding pillion behind her, the King came and draped the purple cloak across the saddle. For you—and—there is something more. He pulled off his little finger a slim gold band studded with rubies. He slipped the ring onto her middle finger where it fitted snugly. Wear it always, my dear.

They rode on through the night. A huge August moon lighted their way. Once away from the camp the air changed. There was a slight breeze and the smell of warm summer grass and meadow flowers. She realized then what it was that the camp had smelled of. It had smelled of fear and anxiety, of men sweating in anticipation of the dawn and the dread of battle.

Richard was clinging to her waist, his arms beneath her cloak, his head at the center of her back,