#i meant to draw his helmet on the bench beside him but i forgot it and im too tired to add it

[sundewa]

Wels, the head guard in Mythland just trying to do his job and then the king gets possessed by a demon and it all goes to shit

he doesnt want to deal with it

[lady-plantagenet]

A Bygone Era - Chapter 4

A fictionalised account of the life of Isabel Neville told through the eyes of those who knew her and herself.

Points of view written so far include Anne Beauchamp, Anne Neville, George Duke of Clarence and Isabel Neville herself

25th April 1469

High up and far-removed from the soothing slosh of a now fully thawed thames and the bustle of the city street’s mercers, sat the kingmaker’s women. The mahogany panels of the solar were warmed by ribbons of newborn saffron light. It now piercing through the stained glass windows threw a rainbow at the gold-adorned hems of the ladies’ gowns, setting them alight like embers. Queen Elizabeth sat above them all on a heavy dark chair propped upon the highest dias Isabel had ever seen. She was like a Heléne on her throne at Troy now gladly rinsed of her previous marriage to Sparta. The lovely curves of her rosy cheeks were raised in concentration as she led them all in the honourable practice of sewing shirts for the peasantry.

Isabel smirked at how much straighter her stitches were and how much nimbler her fingers worked through the countless linen shirts. Her mother from whom she had inherited her craft had, like her, finished ten, little Anne six and the Queen four. Perchance, it is true what they say about lineage and the gifts that come with it.

Besides her was sat the queen’s sister Anne, now Viscountess Bourchier, soon to be Countess of Essex, but never to truly be Isabel’s cousin-in-law. Not nearly as lovely as the Woodville Queen, but the way her long fingers would strum the strings of the psaltrey, was so light that the air seemed filled with each delicate twang.

The queen’s other lady, the flaxen-haired Elizabeth Tilney sat at the fringes of the queen’s entourage: far removed from Isabel’s mother, sister and the grandiose ‘proud Cis’. The room division’s resembled battle lines and that did not elude Isabel. She let out a dry cough, which she attempted to stifle behind her emerald sleeve in vain.

‘Milady Isabel’ started the queen causing her to arch an eyebrow at the masked daggers that lay beneath Elizabeth’s modulated voice. ‘You seem weary child, The way you danced at the St George’s day festivities! - oh - it is no surprise that your body may not have recovered’

Oh but how I danced. Isabel could remember that night still: the jolly minstrels, the helmeted cockentric clad in the blue and murrey livery of the house of York astride the pig and George’s invariably bright smile when portraying St George in the pageantries with a makeshift lead crown on his head.

Isabel felt a blush threaten to surface on her cheeks. Feeling the sudden wish to abscond to her chambers and immerse herself in her romances and think on George, graciously excused herself.

As she made for the end of the solar she caught sight of her mother’s drawn faded face. Rumours of her father’s clandestine affinity for Lancaster have seen a wane in his power at court. The future would scatter Isabel and Anne onto either side of this war depending on who they marry, but their mother’s rise and fall ran with her husband’s, for whom she now had only miscarriages to contribute. From the door Isabel once more dipped her head slightly as a special gesture meant only for her mother to which she responded with unmoving eyes.

Isabel’s moods now also greyed such that she forgot all about George and the pagentries and she felt the disquiet for her family’s fortunes grasp around her throat. Nevertheless, she counted herself fortunate to be free from the queen’s presence. That woman’s beguiling black eyes had done more damage to the House of Neville, then she could have ever herself known nor contemplated. That serpent. For all her foreigness to courtly power, it is for certes she who stands betwixt George and I.

Isabel took to hating her as organically as a fish to water. Little Anne however remained in awe of her loveliness and would often try to emulate her gestures and walk, probably believing that on account of similar colouring, someone would mistake her for the Queen. I was not as impressionable and naïve when I was her age, was I?

She made for the open hallway leading her to the wing where her provisional bedchamber was situated. The short trimmed grass enclosed within square shapes was a far cry from the phantasmagoria of the windswept scenes at Middleham or even Warwick castle. The Earl had always allowed the vines to grow onto the battlements and towers like in an Arthurian legend, their terre verte arms asserting their dominance over the grey stone like a snake would its prey.

‘Nostalgic, darling?’ Asked a young voice

Isabel spun around so quickly that the emerald of her skirts and the crimson of the long silk of her henin whirled around her thin frame as if in protection.

‘George! You half-frightened me!’ gasped Isabel

‘Are you indeed so surprised to find someone about court before vespers?’ he replied sardonically

‘No... no’ said Isabel regaining her composition ‘I was merely lost in thought’

‘On what may I ask?’

‘Thoughts too many to count on both hands’ she said feeling a sense of unwarranted nervousness creep into her voice, ‘mainly on when we are to marry. It has been many years past and I feel that if father cannot procure this, it only comes to show the King loves him no longer’

‘Oh how impatient you are!’ he chuckled

‘At ten and eight, how could I not be? Have you any notion of how it feels to know of all those since girlhood married and with children of their own?’ All those far plainer and less landed than I.

George gave her a look which no matter how endearing it may have appeared to him struck her as condescending.

‘Come here my haughty Isabel’ he said playfully gesturing to the stone bench behind them ‘Edward knows that I mean to have you and I will have it no other way. I have made my intentions clearer than a spring pond’

Though still appearing unappeased in the strain of her eyebrows, Isabel’s felt her body naturally turn towards his while she obeyed and sat. ‘It is that Rivers woman is it not? Casting her net over-‘

George placed his hand, on the small of her back bringing her closer, which they both knew was the most ardent gesture he could offer without making his cousinly preference for her visible. Little good it did them as the other half of the court that did not whisper of the Earl’s Lancastrian sympathies, rightly believed them secretly promised in a dangerous alliance. ‘Come now, as much as I am wrought to ever defend her or her kin, I must say that your father’s enmity over her has made you also overestimate her’

‘Do you truly believe my judgment to be wrong?’ demanded Isabel inquisitively ‘I have seen her over the past months. The Duchess of Bedford must have imparted to her all her craft’.

‘He has loathed her since that affair with Sir Hugh and how she spurned him thinking herself above in rank to his retainer. Who though a knight of Jerusalem, had not the courage to even ask for her hand himself. It was first father who had written to her and then yours.’

‘I thought it was because the Queen's father, then a mere knight, dared to summon father to Rochester believing him guilty of piracy and then having the nerve in refusing to relinquish his command of Calais, until the troops had been paid their - in arrears - dues.’

‘Oh but how much you do know!’

‘Father tells me all of this.’ smiled Isabel ‘I am his heiress after all.’ The future Countess of Warwick... like mother I shall be. How god wanted me to be powerful that he had me placed into a line where titles to pass to women like they do to men.

‘I see then. Would my lady care for a stroll around the herber garden?’ Asked George offering his hand, no doubt wanting to draw her somewhere more remote where he can freely confide.

Isabel knew she was expected to be in her room but begrudgingly accepted the offer nonetheless... She clung onto his peach satined arm as if he were leading her into a banquet. Feeling the slipperiness of the sumptuous material with each readjustment of her fingers. She started fearing that her nails would leave cuts into the material.

They dallied about the quadrangles pretending to be attentive to the spicy mix of violet hyssop and gentle-hued sage. Both their minds were elsewhere. They claimed their seats but this time on a bench so much smaller than the last, that George found himself blanketed by the thick skirts of Isabel’s Burgundian gown.

Isabel plucked a part of the Betony behind them. Its fuschia so bright it seemed to her that it did not belong in the same world as the fortress of Westminster with its sad colours and hoare-white walls whose winter spirit seemed to melt with each striking of the sun. ‘There George, I have just the plant for your humours’.

‘You believe me to have violent blood, you contemptuous girl?’ he said amicably responding to her coyness.

‘There never was a day I doubted it. Tempestuous, you were always’ she said softly with a twinge of longing for their schooldays

‘Then you ought to be my calming force. But now that I see how testy you be, I am beginning to question my belief!’ he teased holding a sage up to her eyes and finding it comparatively lacking in colour.

Isabel’s eyes peered at his back in amazement - at how they appeared to be constantly shifting in between honey and hazel. I may have the sea’s green in mine, but he has all its capriciousness. Oh how I mean to be married to him. Queen or mere Duchess, it matters not now. How noble he looks with his new black velvet cap - though a crown would suit better. She thought back to the tableaux of him as St George at the banquet. The delay in marriage had given her ample opportunity to grow accustomed to her role in George’s ambitions and for the past year she found she too yearned for their outcome. In being schooled in Latin and matters constitutional and equitable, she found a welcome addition to her otherwise stale instruction in religion and manors.

‘Now sweetling, tell me of your father’s plans. What was that business with Wenlock in Calais?’ prodded George

‘That I was not privy to’ answered Isabel quietly ‘But perhaps it is time you told me of what you and father mean to do with that Robin fellow. His name was circulating around Middleham before we left a fortnight ago.’

‘A mere decoy, my love. It is John Conyers, a kinsman of yours by marriage’ replied George ‘Would you keep a secret?’

It just now dawned on her how easily George is like to surrender information just to prove himself the more informed. Isabel nodded quickly, ‘Oh yes! Jesus wept, I thought I would go mad trying to wade through your and father’s spider mesh ‘till I could decipher your strategy!’

‘Well, We have borrowed some money from the city to raise men and we will march north to Edgecote’ whispered George jubilantly ‘with troops raining down on him from Yorkshire and us from the south. Edward will be entrapped like a lamb in its pen. With that simpleton Robin of Holderness dealt with, Edward would immediately assume that our Robin of Redesdale be of Lancaster as well’ George’s already large eyes clearly brightened at the prospect of schooling the kingmaker’s daughter in strategy. With a voice that bordered on too loud he continued, ‘-and deal with him himself thinking Captain Margaret begins this plot. Did you know he always secretly feared her’

Isabel nodded slowly in comprehension. ‘If you have taken to drawing arms against your brother, then pray tell: how may we secure permission to wed?’

‘Why we need only god for that, do we not? And that we have for the dispensation has been given by his Holiness’ announced George smuggly to a hushing Isabel who was now nervously peering around for any sign of life that would betray this conversation to her newfound enemies. Reassurance and bliss showed on her face when he added, ‘and we shall finally be married, in a couple months time but in Calais. And no one, not even Edward can move against it’

New dissensions brewed and strangely in a room which populated with the tight-lipped smiles of the barons’ wives, and the handsomest King and Queen that England had ever seen, seemed dyspathetic to such.

After being privy to what she believed to be the full extent of her formidable father and George’s plan, she felt an unfathomable anxiousness follow her with every step she took at court. She may have felt so uneasy, that even her raven hair felt heavy and tangling under the protection of the confining heart-shaped henin, but she was resolved to prove herself a true lady of good virtue.

I am kingmaker’s daughter and need to also mask my knowledge of treason, in every empty smile and curtesy, however dishonest that act may be, she thought to herself, while approaching the dias. The naïve Felice was now once more at war with the heiress of four great houses.

In the same azure gown she wore before vespers, Elizabeth the Queen minced onto the dias in a manner whose imperiousity, Isabel conceded, was greatly aggravated by her own dislike. Therefore, she was half-surprised to see it was indeed the king, who with a booming proclamation declared court reopened.

‘Ah- if only it had been you there beside the king. A more apt mediator to soothe our differences could never have existed’ cautiously joked her father, one step behind her. You mean to say I would have better filled the throne that you built.

‘Oh but father, surely you could not fault me for that, I was not yet ten and still with the nurses, when you - he was crowned’ said Isabel

‘The fault would be of none but mine. It did not occur to me until the last of your dear mother’s miscarriages that I would have no son. Had I realised how god feared the coming into this world of a son born of people as we are, insatiable and limitless, who would soon make half of our native land but the manor of one man, I would have made certain that if the blood of our lines must pass into new houses, it would have been that of royal. Nine years past he would have denied me nothing.’

The Earl’s tone was tender, causing a smile that revealed some of the lines and folds of one on the brink of advanced age. The way the rich red folds of his overgrown fell, however, revealed the body of a younger man still lean and strong. He amiably caressed the arm of his favourite daughter, the warmth of his hand cooled by the pale jewels resting on each finger. To all around them it would appear as if a plot were being hatched between the Neville clan, such smiles were commonplace for Isabel and foreign to all else. It was particularly that which made Isabel reciprocate.

‘But father, what of George?’ She queried with amusement still in her voice ‘I could not be more pleased with such an arrangement, not even if it were with the King himself’.

She spared him a glance. He who towered above all men unrepentant, shared the same kingly beauty as George: a small rosebud mouth, retrousse nose and high forehead. However, where George’s hair hung in châtain curls streaked with gold and some copper, Edward’s hair was straight, dark and fashioned under a velvet cap like she so often saw sported by his emulative brother of Gloucester. Where George’s eyes were large, round and revealed much, his were were her father’s Neville brown cunning eyes, sharp, alert and intelligent.

Edward of York’s large frame, voice and person did nothing to diminish the impossible elegance of his every movement and friendly countenance. In spite of Isabel’s penchant for prettiness in men that naturally exalted George in her eyes, she could see that Edward was rightfully considered the handsomest and born to be king, and begrudgingly Isabel accepted that, on looks alone, Elizabeth seemed to as well.

‘Yes, Clarence has all the superficial signifiers of his house: gallantry, bravery and chilvalry. I believe him to be a protector of the old ways and what is true and good. I also think him more inclined to listen to counsel than his brothers. But, dear daughter, you mistake me for your uncle of Montagu. It is he who is a soldier and I, a diplomat, have little interest in bloodshed and moreseo where it concerns one who I once thought of as a brother’ her father added sadly ‘Alas, you, Clarence and I are Nevilles and we do not shirk from our obligations to England’

‘I mean to say, I do not dutifully come to the Clarence as a wife’, she plead redressing her indescrete use of his Christian name. A habit that she should resign in the annals of her childhood, when becoming Queen ‘It is no resignation for me. Truly father if you’d know how lonely I felt after sister Margaret left to marry that knight, with naught but mother and books to keep me company... But whenever at court, Clarence provides me with a companionship I am so joyous and gracious of, that I feel loved by him as I merit. He is comely, charming, witty and oh so very learned’. To her chagrin Isabel noticed herself nervously fiddling with the rings upon her pale dainty fingers. When shall the day come where I no longer have to switch in between fingers George’s emerald ring? I so yearn to proudly present it to all.

‘A curse on that learning I say’ muttered the Earl ‘his love for poesies has yielded upon us a man full of scruples, fears and doubts. I daresay the only flaws he shares with his brother of Gloucester. But where Gloucester with the cold craft strange for one so young harnesses them into a shield, Clarence lets himself be swepped up in the chaos of his own wary premonitions and acts rashly.’ The Earl’s ominous speech was interrupted by the slight chuckle he had to himself, bringing his fingers up to his temple as if in a headache, he continued in a light incredulous tone that confused even Isabel in its interspersion of fatherly affection and judgment, ‘My, had you been there to witness how he demanded for your hand in marriage - he strode into the privy council and made his request in a manner so defiant, it was as if the king had already refused him before!’

Read the rest of the chapter and all those before it here: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22268239/chapters/55672000