Work Text:
1379
Herith of Lancaster knows she shouldn't envy her cousin.
Envy is a sin, after all, and queens are different from normal girls. Herith also knows that if Richild weren't queen, if her brother had lived instead of dying from the plague at the age of six, she wouldn't be receiving lessons in statecraft and Latin and even swordsmanship. She'd have dancing lessons and boring needlework just the same as Herith does, only she'd be having them in France because she'd already have been married off to the Dauphin. She'd probably even like those things, because that's the kind of girl she is. But Richild's father decided, before he died, that since his daughter was going to be queen she should learn about what her soldiers do before she sends them to war, even though she obviously wouldn't be leading them in the field and wouldn't be good at it even if she did.
Herith's father says that his daughters have no reason to run around with swords like little Amazons, and that a lady should be content to manage a great household and bear strong sons for her husband, even though none of his own trueborn sons had even lived to be six. Herith thinks he expected she would be a boy, because he doesn't seem like he's disappointed in Pippa and Bess all the time. Or maybe it's just that she's older and that before she died Mother had gotten him to promise that she'd be his heir eventually and not any sons he might have if he remarried. But if she were a boy, he'd probably be proud of her and not shoo her off when he caught her talking to the pages or tell her to go do her needlework and then not actually care that she was good at it.
She could actually fight in tournaments instead of watching her cousin making moony eyes at the Earl of Oxford. Richild is friends with Oxford's wife, Philippa -- they clutch hands and giggle every time Oxford unhorses anyone, which isn't even that often. It makes Herith want to be sick.
"Herith," Richild says to her one day while they're doing more boring needlework, "do you think you're going to get married soon?"
Herith frowns over her embroidery. "I don't know," she says. . She's met plenty of boring young men with a lot of money whom she has never spoken to again, because it's never been quite enough money to satisfy her father.
(She suspects her father really wants to marry her off to her cousin Edward, Uncle Edmund's son, because Uncle Edmund is the only one of Grandfather's sons to have actually had a son himself who is still alive, and that means that maybe Edward could be king someday. Never mind that he's only six and she is almost thirteen. But Uncle Edmund would never allow it and probably the Pope wouldn't either, because they are first cousins after all.)
"Do you want to?" Richild says. Her stitches have gone all crooked, which makes Herith smirk in a way she hopes is just in her head, because it's not proper to smirk that way at the Queen even if you are better at needlework than she is. Even the few lessons she’d been permitted to have included the story of Arachne and Athena.
"I don't know," Herith says again. "Do you?"
"I don't know," Richild says, looking down at her needlework and biting her lip. She's probably thinking about Robert de Vere, who's already married and also a subject and also only an earl. Herith wants to laugh at her, in her head, but when she tries she feels a strange gnawing worm of guilt.
Richild has everything that Herith wants. It's never occurred to Herith that she might not have anything she wants.
***
1389
Robert de Vere has been dead for nearly two years before Richild ever speaks about it, and then it's to her cousin Edward, who looks at her the same way she used to look at Robert.
Two years ago, Edward wasn't at court regularly. He knows the outlines of what happened, as who in England does not -- he knows that a small coalition of noblemen moved against Richild’s closest friends and advisers, that Robert was captured outside of Chester, that he was convicted and executed for treason, that Richild herself was nearly deposed. The chroniclers say that the appellants were moved to pity by her tender age, her beauty and her tears, that she was a maiden led astray by a cunning seducer -- never mind that Robert had preferred his own sex in that kind, that he had never touched her improperly at all (for all that she wanted it more than anything).
The chroniclers also say that the appellants showed great kindness toward her when they didn't force her to watch when the man she had loved was drawn to Tower Hill on a hurdle, when they cut off his privy parts and burned them before his eyes, when they cut him apart like a stag at a curée. She only had to listen, mewed up in a gilded cage, a queen in name only. She had never known that a man could scream like that.
Edward doesn't remind her of Robert, exactly -- the only things they have in common are dark hair and a predilection for tournaments and for the attractions of their own sex. And, of course, her own affection. She's tried to warn him off, but he just grins and asks her if she's forgotten who his father is.
Richild's cousin Herith has certainly not forgotten who her father is. She's spent the time since the crisis at her husband's estates in Hereford, where she recently gave birth to her third child. Richild wonders if Gaunt even suspects anything -- she knows from experience, after all, that her uncle doesn't think women are capable of intervening in politics. He doesn't think she's capable of it, and she's the Queen. But Herith is every bit her father's daughter, and Humphrey de Bohun, despite his Fitzalan blood, is as mild-tempered as a village priest. He would never have joined the Appellants on his own initiative.
Herith returns to court in the autumn, when her father does. Her uncles have suggested to her that she needs more female companionship -- surely it's improper for a young woman to spend so much time with men, even men who are her cousins. (She and Philippa do not speak anymore.)
Richild embraces her cousin and kisses her on the cheek. "It must be a great hardship, traveling with the children," she says.
"Not at all," Herith says. "Harry loves it, and John...well, John would be fussy no matter where he was." She smiles thinly. "How has your highness fared since last we spoke?"
Richild smiles back, the same sort of smile that isn't real. "I think you must know that perfectly well, cousin," she says.
***
1399
Edward of Aumerle was barely off the ship before the bad news began to arrive.
When he left Ireland, the news was already bad enough; Herith of Lancaster had riled up the Percy family and the remaining Fitzalans against the queen, in protest of her seizure of Herith's inheritance -- on the grounds that John of Gaunt had had no legitimate sons. By the time he arrived in England, they had already raised an army.
A few days later the queen is in the Tower, "for her own protection," and Edward is being escorted toward London by Harry Percy, of all people.
"Am I a prisoner?" Edward asks, and Percy shakes his head.
"Your father wants to see you, is all," he says.
"Why hasn't he stopped this?" Edward clutches the reins tighter; he already knows the answer, but he wants to make someone say it.
Percy makes a sound that's half a snort and half a laugh. "He's on our side." He looks back at Edward, giving him a shrug and a twist of a smile that coming from Northumberland's son is almost sympathetic: fathers, right?
"Will they let me see the Queen?"
Now Percy laughs for real. "Have you met my father?"
In the end it's his own father who gets him leave to see Richild in the Tower, perhaps a way of compensating for his being a traitor. She's being kept in comfortable surroundings, perhaps, but she looks subdued, pale and plainly dressed, and when she sees Edward she throws her arms around him.
"I'm so sorry," he whispers, wrapping his arms around her, and she whispers back "I don't know what I'm going to do."
"Marry me," Edward blurts out, almost before he's had time to think of it. There are people who would back him for the throne. The fact that he doesn't want it is immaterial, or at least it is right now.
Richild sees where he's going immediately. "Between my claim and yours -- "
"We'd need a dispensation, of course -- "
"I could do worse, though," Richild says, her cheeks turning pink.
"Me too," Edward says, feeling the tips of his ears burn. He takes her hands, and she leans in to kiss him, very gently. For a moment the room spins -- he's kissed girls before, and never really enjoyed it, but this is different. When they draw apart, he has the distinct suspicion he is grinning like an idiot.
"I'll talk to Carlisle," he says. "I know he'll help us."
"Afterwards?" Richild says, a mischievous smirk tugging at her lips. "I'm still queen, you know."
Edward kneels and kisses her hand. "Always," he says.
***
By Michaelmas, Queen Richild is dead.
It is given out that she died of a sudden illness, of the kind that strikes sometimes -- the pestilence can kill within a day. No one believes it. No one would believe it even if it had been true.
Richild is dead, and Herith doesn't sleep much. Edward looks at her with eyes like burning coals, and retreats to the country to raise an army.