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By October, dead leaves had already begun to dot the green expanses of the Tower complex. The day was grey, damp, but not cold; Henry imagined that the gentle breeze that rolled over the Thames from the west may have followed a similar path as he did, starting from the Welsh coast in the dwindling days of summer and arriving in London as tired and disoriented as he felt now. In another mood, Henry thought that he might have enjoyed the sights of the capital as the narrow barge wound its way down the river to its destination—the lofty heights of its cathedrals, the stone tracery of Westminster Hall, the bustling markets that sometimes stretched across the river on bridges that seemed to have grown organically, like treetops that reached out to one another to form a canopy over a country road. Today, however, as the slightest chill penetrated his doublet, Henry’s eyes could only find their focus on the man who sat across from him in the small boat, whose gaze was seemingly always called elsewhere.
This was the triumphantly-returned Earl of Pembroke—or at least all assumed he would come to hold that title once again very shortly—but it would take Henry some time not to associate the title with the man who had held his wardship for most of his life. He could remember a time before William Herbert, but not easily. Unlike the Herbert children, and, as he assumed, most children elsewhere, there was no possibility of Henry remembering his own father. In his place, in the darkest recesses of his memory, was his uncle, whose subsequent absence his mother had explained as the consequence for fighting bravely, nobly, but unsuccessfully against wicked men who sought to do the royal family harm. She had carefully added that while Henry himself was perhaps not “royal,” he was indeed noble, as was his father and his uncle, the sons of a French princess and onetime queen. Henry’s mother was the only family he knew, and even she was only allowed the occasional visit, but she promised him that this would not always be true, that someday he would come to know his uncle quite well, and beyond that, his other uncle too, the king in the Tower, and the king’s son who was not much older than Henry himself. And then his uncle Jasper had finally come to his doorstep at the very end of the summer of his thirteenth year with a most exciting proposition: to travel with him to London to free King Henry and restore him to his divinely-ordained place. The old Earl of Pembroke had been executed the summer before. That title now belonged, once again, to Jasper, who sat across from Henry on the barge and had so far struggled to find many words to say to the lad since they had begun the journey to London.
When the boat docked at the Tower, Jasper disembarked first and held out a solid arm to Henry. When the boy held onto it, unsteadily making his way onto the pier, it was the first time the two had made intentional physical contact since Jasper had wrestled Henry into a tight hug at first meeting. Henry had returned that embrace thinly, with hesitation.
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Jasper kept a steady hand on the small of Henry’s back as the trumpet sounded. They had made their way into the White Tower, where a small crowd of noblemen and soldiers had gathered, nervously awaiting the presence of their returned king. The Earl of Warwick stood at the head of the room; his son-in-law shifted uncomfortably on the other side of a throne that had just been swiftly brushed of visible cobwebs. Warwick, a sturdy column of a man, though not particularly tall, gave off the impression that he did not feel fully dressed without his armor, and despite the confidence he exuded, a careful observer such as Jasper could notice him occasionally finger a loose thread on the sleeve of his overgown.
When the king finally did make an appearance, each of the seven or so years it had been since he saw him last were etched upon his brother's face. Jasper thought of his father, a man who at his death was fully ten years older than his brother must be now, and the light that still danced behind his eyes, the vigor that pulled the muscles of his arms taut like the strings of the telyn that he played so skillfully up until he met the axe. What was left of the intelligent and winsome young man who welcomed Jasper and Edmund to court with open arms and an earnest smile so many decades ago was a lean frame, sallow cheeks, and limp, stringy hair. He seemed to have just been freshly shaved. Warwick gestured towards the king, beaming, announcing him as Henricus Rex once more, but what was left unspoken in that high-ceilinged room felt to Jasper as though it could flood the Tower and wash them all back down the Thames, back across the Channel, back to the unrelenting desperation of his sister-in-law and nephew in France.
His grip on the present nephew tightened; he curled his hand around the boy’s skinny arm and pulled him in close enough to be able to whisper the following: “ You must greet him. You don’t have to say much.”
Jasper’s gaze traveled continuously between his brother, who was not inconspicuously handed a note by Warwick and began to read aloud from it, and his nephew, who stared unblinkingly at the king, the other uncle that his mother had promised. The king thanked all present for turning his captive state to liberty and specifically the Earl of Warwick for acting as the instrument of that which God was the author before announcing what all present already knew—that Warwick and Clarence would serve as true governors of the realm, not the gaunt and slow-moving shadow before them who spoke as though unpracticed at shaping sound from his throat into words with his mouth. Official business concluded, the room watched in silence as the king turned to Warwick with a plaintive look writ across his face, a lamb’s soulful expression before being led to the altar. “Sir, where is our wife and son?”
Warwick seemed desperate to empty the room before getting too deep into discussion with his newly-risen king; he muttered something about in due time before encouraging the rest of the witnesses to prepare for the days of banqueting and revelry ahead. The king and the earl shared a more intimate exchange as the room slowly shook away its shuffling inhabitants, and Jasper gave Henry another firm shake of the arm before pushing both nephew and self towards the king, his brother.
King Henry met Jasper’s eyes and for a single moment Jasper felt as though he were ten years old again, being shown around court by his eldest brother, who seemed to sit at the very center of the universe. Before then, he had thought that seat had been occupied by Edmund, but then even he had been frightened to meet their brother the king, Edmund who Jasper thought until then was incapable of experiencing fear. Henry had noticed their timidity and embraced the two of them at once, calling them not his half or uterine brothers but just his brothers , and spoke to them in French in the precise, clipped accent of their mother, notre mère. In a quiet moment after compline, Henry had admitted to the boys that he had always wished for little brothers and sisters to care for, and that he was grateful to God for granting them to him. In the receding light of that October evening in the Tower, it was now Jasper’s turn to initiate the embrace, forgetting his sense of decorum. His brother returned the gesture, though with little vitality and somehow distantly, like he had to push through a thick curtain separating the two of them. Henry took a step back as he noticed the youth standing a pace behind his brother.
“Jasper, is this your son?”
“I have no son, my lord.” Jasper draped a heavy arm across the lad’s shoulders. “This is Edmund’s boy, now Henry, Earl of Richmond.”
Henry could not remember ever being called that before. His two uncles, the ones that his mother painted pictures of as flowers of chivalry, true and honest soldiers of God awaiting His command to bring the world back into order, conferred it upon him easily. Perhaps, Henry wondered, because he particularly reminded them in countenance and spirit of the previous earl, his father, who appeared in his imagination as an empty, faceless set of armor.
The king suddenly cupped Henry’s face in his hand, the most physical exertion he had demonstrated so far, and a bead of sweat trickled down the back of the boy’s neck. “He so reminds me of my boy,” the king said. The corners of his eyes, already marked with deep furrows, crinkled. “God forbid anything happens to my Edward, this youth should proudly take his place. A crown would suit his head better than my own.”
An electric shock traveled through Jasper’s body as for the first time in his nearly forty years did he allow himself the fantasy of being not just tangential to the throne, a footnote in the annals of its history, but instrumental to its upkeep: the guardian of the king . He reached his hand towards Henry’s back again as though to keep the boy from reeling away from the seat of majesty, but he did no such thing; Henry knelt to the king, kissed his hand, and spoke with a solemnity beyond his years. “May the good Lord bless and keep your royal highness and his grace the Prince of Wales for many years to come, my loving uncle.” The king, seemingly stunned by the sureness of the boy’s gesture, lifted him to his feet and gave him a quick embrace. Jasper felt a touch of Edmund in the air that blew in through a nearby window, as he often did when the weather began to turn cold, whispering in his ear: my boy, my boy, my boy.