Gruffydd grunted. ‘Not while I am listening, you thieving bard. Not if you want your dinner.’ He glanced irritably around the hall and raised his voice so that the rafters shook. ‘And where is dinner! Someone kick the cook up the arse. I am hungry and so are my guests.’

8

Jasper

London and St Albans

WHILE I WAS ABSENT in Wales the feud between Lancaster and York reached boiling point in London, fuelled by the Duke of York’s unceasing campaign to be proclaimed King Henry’s heir, and by the constant drip of innuendo from Warwick’s scandalmongers, suggesting an adulterous relationship between the queen and the Duke of Somerset. York’s demands to be named Henry’s heir were halted temporarily when Queen Marguerite was delivered of a healthy boy at Westminster Palace, but the slanders proliferated once more when King Henry failed to recognize the child as his heir.

At Windsor the little prince had been placed in Henry’s arms but the king’s face had remained expressionless, his grip flaccid. If not for the swift reaction of the nurse in catching him, the infant would have tumbled to the ground. Several subsequent attempts were made to secure the king’s attention but with equal lack of success. In the absence of the monarch’s approval, the boy was hastily baptized Edward after the canonized English king known as the Confessor, whose shrine was in Westminster Abbey, while Parliament agreed to the appointment of the Duke of York as Protector of the Realm. Within weeks York had his rival Somerset confined in the Tower, charged with treasonous negligence for the loss of France under his command. As a royal duke he was housed in the palace rather than the prison but he must have heard the crowds of Londoners, stirred up by Warwick’s agents, yelling for his head.

By Christmas however the queen had emerged from her confinement and the king recovered his wits enough to acknowledge his son and heir and resume his rightful place on the throne. With power back in royal hands the Duke of Somerset was released from the Tower and the Duke of York relieved of his post as Protector. The Lancastrian star should have been on the rise again but sadly Henry’s malady soon returned and when Marguerite petitioned Parliament to allow her to rule as interim Regent for her infant son they rejected her outright and reappointed the Duke of York as Protector. A fresh flood of pamphlets now turned the people of London against the queen, stirring those who believed their poison to march on Westminster declaring the baby prince to be no son of the king’s but sired either by the Duke of Somerset or the Earl of Wiltshire. Marguerite took her son and fled downriver to Greenwich in fear for their safety.