Free Rebellion by Livi Michael Page B

the king lost his sword and the duke had him, holding the tip of
     his own sword against the king’s exposed throat, only a flicker in the king’s eyes
     showed that he was notpleased. Then he laughed, and said that the duke
     would have to become his instructor.
    And Edward had been more than generous to
     him – embarrassingly so; steadily promoting him, giving him extra responsibilities such
     as the charge of the garrison at Newcastle, restoring to him all his former estates and
     titles, releasing his brother from the Tower and his mother from her custody also. He
     kept the duke with him at all times; Henry Beaufort was more frequently in the king’s
     company than even his great friend Lord Hastings; and certainly more frequently than
     Warwick, from whom the king seemed to wish to preserve a certain distance. He consulted
     him first in matters of importance and laughed loudly at any joke he made.
    Such obvious preference could only provoke
     hostility, of course. Whenever the duke entered a room he could feel the temperature
     change; people stopped talking as he approached. He’d even wondered, more than once,
     whether this elaborate show of affection and esteem was part of some plot of the king’s
     to have him killed by indirect means. He took care not to wander along the palace
     corridors alone.
    But the king remained avuncular, walking
     with his arm round the duke. He had lost one brother, he said, who had been killed along
     with his father at the Battle of Wakefield; but now he had gained another. The duke felt
     himself being pressed uncomfortably into this role of younger brother (he was, after
     all, some six years older than the king), while all around him people muttered that the
     king had gone mad, or was bewitched. Had he forgotten the role Henry Beaufort’s family
     had played in those deaths?
    Yet gradually, and this was the most
     disconcerting part, the duke began to suspect there was something more to this show of
     affection than display. The king’s face lit up when he saw him and he would gesture to
     the duke to sit at his side. He would tease him about his guardedness (and who would not
     be guarded in this situation?), saying that he would have the duke’s beard shavedoff so that he could tell whether or not he was smiling. Then there
     were all the private asides. When one of his councillors left the room, the king glanced
     at the duke and said, ‘He has gone to get some grease, so that he might slip himself
     more perfectly into my arse.’
    And of one of the women he was bedding, ‘She
     spends all her time on her knees, either praying or fucking – I confess I find it hard
     to tell the difference.’
    It was as though, with these comments, he
     was drawing the duke into some private conspiracy.
    And reluctantly the duke had started to like
     the king. Not so much for his showmanship as for the sense that there was another man
     beneath the display; someone at once tougher, shrewder and more sensitive. He was, in
     effect, a good king – he fulfilled the role he had taken on himself admirably. He looked
     the part, but more than that, he acted in it capably and well. He was undefeated in
     battle yet not hungry for war; he strove, in fact, to repair the damage done by warfare.
     And he was no fool. He debated with the best lawyers, took a leading role in the
     decisions of his council, assiduously pursued foreign relations and trade, and was fond
     of literature and music, though he admitted that in his younger days (he was still only
     twenty-one) he had not been a great scholar. But he could foresee a time, he said, when
     the rule of this country would depend on the scholar not the fighter.
    There was no question in the duke’s mind
     that he was better for the country than King Henry.
    There was another side to him, of course. He
     ate and drank too much, and, as if proving that as king he should have the most