The Sunne in Splendour

by Sharon Kay Penman

  Letter? Ned would not be likely to have written to her.

  “You do come from the King?” she faltered, and Tyrell’s face cleared.

  “No, Madame…from the Duke of Gloucester.” A comprehending smile had begun to shape his mouth; he grinned outright as she snatched at the letter in his hand.

  She broke the seal with suddenly shaking fingers, moved toward the window to read it. When at last she turned back to the Abbot and Tyrell, her face was wet with tears.

  “The King has given me leave to depart sanctuary!” She stopped, laughed, and then began to cry in earnest. “I…I am to go home!”

  On their way north, Sir James Tyrell had willingly acceded to Nan’s request that they stop at Bisham Abbey, where the Earl of Warwick and John Neville were buried. They did not reach Wensleydale, therefore, until the second week in June.

  Anne was in the solar, sitting before her embroidery frame. She looked prettier than Nan had ever seen her, dressed in emerald green, her favorite and most flattering hue; her color was good, her hair, held in place by a pearl-seeded frontelet that matched her gown, swept down her back in glossy, well-brushed waves. But she showed no signs of pregnancy, none at all.

  A shocked query formed on Nan’s lips, to be quickly stifled. If Anne had lost her baby, she did not want the first words between them to be of so painful a loss. She smiled, instead, at her daughter, and held out her arms; her relief was considerable when Anne came into them without apparent hesitation.

  “That little boy who was with you earlier, Anne…Johnny, you said his name was? He’s Dickon’s son, then?”

  “Who could look at him and ever deny that?” Anne laughed. “Born well before our marriage, I should add! Richard had him at Sheriff Hutton, and then after we were wed, at Pontefract, since we do spend so much time there. When Richard went last month to Nottingham—to see Ned about winning your release and for talks with the Earl of Northumberland—I was able to do what I should have done months ago. I had Johnny secretly brought from Pontefract a fortnight ago.”

  “Dickon doesn’t know?”

  Anne shook her head, laughed again. “Not yet…and I truly cannot wait to see his face when he does! From Nottingham, he was to go to York, but I do expect him back any day this week. My birthday is Friday and he swore before he left that he’d not miss it. I don’t know what he does plan to give me, but Johnny be my present to him, a present too long overdue. It would have meant so much to Richard—having his son here. And for Johnny, too; he does adore Richard. But…but I just could not bring myself to do it, Mother. It shames me to admit it, that I was jealous of a little child, but I was. He wasn’t mine, and I couldn’t accept him as if he were, however much I knew I should.”

  “And now you do think you can?” Nan sounded dubious, and Anne smiled, reached for her mother’s hand.

  “Now I do know I can.” She rose, kept Nan’s hand within her own. “If you will come with me to the nursery, I shall show you why.”

  Until she saw the sleeping infant, Nan had not known what a hunger there was in her for a grandchild. Bending over to brush her lips to the feathery brown hair, she felt a sudden stab of envy. How lucky Anne was, to have been able to give Dickon a son. How she would have loved a little boy like this, would have cuddled him and spoiled him, made none of the mistakes she’d made with Isabel and Anne.

  “I get nothing done these days, spend hours hanging over his cradle like this. I needs must watch him sleep, yawn, sleep again—I even find myself watching the very air in and out of his mouth, as if he might forget to breathe were I not there to witness it!”

  “How old is he, Anne?”

  “Six weeks this Thursday last. I’d not expected to be brought to childbed till the end of May, had not even begun my confinement yet. But he was not willing to wait, was born on the eve of St George’s Day, so tiny the midwives did harbor fears for him, though they tried to keep it from me.”

  They had been speaking in whispers, so not to disturb the child asleep within the oaken cradle once used by both Anne and Isabel. Anne stroked the baby’s cheek with a soft finger, said with a sigh,

  “I didn’t want a wet nurse, wanted to nurse him myself, however unfashionable that might be. But I hadn’t enough milk. He has more hair than most babes his age, don’t you think, Mother? It looks to be the same shade as Father’s, mayhap some darker. You know…it’s strange, but I do find myself…for the first time in my life…having some sympathy for Marguerite d’Anjou! I remember how desperate she was to get into Wales, that nightmare ride we made for the Severn River crossing, so frantic she was to see her son safe…and I think I can understand better now how she did feel. Édouard was her son, her flesh and blood. When I look now at my own son, when I think of what I would do to keep him safe, free from harm or hurt—”

  Her musings were interrupted by a stifled sound from her mother. She glanced up to see that Nan’s face had frozen, that her hands had closed convulsively upon the rim of the cradle.

  “You speak of a mother’s concern for her child. But what you are truly saying is that I showed no such concern for you and your sister, that even Marguerite d’Anjou showed herself to be a better mother than I!”

  “No, Mother, truly I wasn’t,” Anne said slowly, but none too certainly. “At least, I do not think that was my intent….”

  They looked at each other across the rocking cradle. “I did love your father; he was my life. When I was told he was dead, it was as if…as if all were ashes and cinders. I felt dead inside, could think of naught but what I had lost. Can you not understand that, Anne?”

  Anne looked down at her sleeping child, for some moments said nothing. “No,” she said at last. “No, Mother, I cannot. I wish I could say otherwise, but I do not understand.”

  “I see. You are determined to pass judgment upon me, to blame me for a moment of weakness. That isn’t fair, Anne. I should have gone to you and Isabel at Cerne Abbey; I do admit that. But I cannot undo what I did, and as for the other, for the marriage with Lancaster…Surely you could not have expected me to speak against your father on that?”

  “No, Mother, I would not have expected you to gainsay Father…in anything. But could you not have given a thought to how it was for me? I was fourteen years old, Mother, fourteen! And so wretched I did not care whether I lived or died. Had you only once showed me you understood, I think I could have borne it better. But you didn’t, did you? Do you remember what you did tell me when I came to you for comfort? You said it mattered little whether I liked laying with Lancaster as long as I did get with child!”

  Nan had paled as Anne spoke. Now hectic spots of color flared forth upon her cheeks. “I said that?” She touched her tongue to stiff lips, said softly, “I truly don’t remember. If I did say it, I can only assure you that I did not mean it. Ah, Anne, those were such bad days for us all. I was so fearful for your father, so frantic to join him in England…. But…must we speak of this now? It serves for naught, does only hurt. And you are happy now, Anne. You have the home and husband of your choosing, a newborn son. Perhaps…perhaps it did all work out for the best, after all….”

  “All for the best…. Oh, God!” Anne’s mouth had hardened, contorted with a rare rage. “I’m still haunted by dreams of that time; yes, even now. And with reason. Do you know how long it took, Mother, for me to be able to respond to Richard as fully as a wife should? Nigh on three months, and Richard as tender and loving as any man could be. Yes, I am happy now, but I did pay a great price for it, greater than any duty I did owe you and Father, and for you to say that it was all for the best…”

  The anger in her voice had at last penetrated the veil of sleep surrounding her son. Opening his eyes, he began to cry. Anne at once bent over him, took him up in her arms. For a time there was no sound in the room but his subsiding protest.

  Nan swallowed, but made no attempt to hide the tears falling fast and free. “I’ve made mistakes. I know that. But are they beyond forgiving, Anne?”

/>   Anne was cradling her baby. She looked up when her mother spoke, and Nan saw that she, too, now seemed close to tears.

  “No, Mama…. Of course they are not.” Anne watched Nan fumble for a handkerchief, watched with troubled dark eyes. The mother she remembered had retained a certain fragile prettiness well into her forties. Anne saw now what a toll the past two years had taken. Widowhood and sanctuary had greyed Nan’s hair, thickened her waist, and faded the blonde prettiness into a colorless and hesitant middle age. Anne looked at the fluttering uncertain hands, the soft bewildered mouth, and moved away from the cradle, toward her mother.

  “Here, Mama,” she said. “Would you not like to hold your grandson?”

  Nan stood in the entranceway leading into the great hall, staring down at the chaos in the inner bailey, where Richard was seeking to soothe his fractious mount midst a dozen or so barking dogs. Nan felt a lump rising in her throat, felt the remorseless pull of memory. So it had always been when the Earl of Warwick came home to Middleham. The same confusion, the same excitement, and she, too, had so often done what Anne was doing now, descending the steep steps of the keep so rapidly that she seemed in imminent danger of becoming entangled in her own skirts.

  Richard reined his stallion in at the base of the stairs just as Anne reached the bottom; he slid from the saddle and into his wife’s welcoming embrace. Nan watched, while calling to mind a score of such scenes witnessed within these walls when Warwick’s Ragged Staff had floated above the keep. It hurt, but not as much as she expected.

  Anne gathered up several cushions from the window seat and, carrying them across the bedchamber, deposited them on the floor by the bathing tub. The bath water was pleasantly scented with costmary, rose about her in clouds of aromatic steam. She parted the tented curtains and settled herself on the cushions so she could talk to Richard while he bathed.

  Stirring up small ripples and eddies with an idle finger, she rested her cheek against the padded rim of the tub, waiting for him to dismiss his body squires. She was sure he would, for they’d had no time alone yet and she knew he was no less impatient than she for privacy.

  As soon as the door closed, he leaned over, kissed her the way she’d been wanting him to do all afternoon.

  “Jesú, but I did miss you, Anne!”

  “I missed you, too,” she said, and then smiled at the understatement. Rising to her knees on the cushions, she knelt beside the tub, reached for the soap.

  “Shall I help you?” she invited, and he grinned.

  “I thought you’d never ask!”

  This time she was the one to kiss him. “Thank you, love, for what you did say to my mother…about this being her home. I fear I wasn’t as generous.”

  “You quarreled?”

  She nodded. “I regret we did. I’ve been telling myself that I do bear her no grudge, Richard, but that’s not as true as I would like it to be. She had only to make mention of…of what I’d sooner forget, and I did flare up like kindling. I cannot help it; I still feel that she failed me when I did need her the most.”

  “You shouldn’t feel guilty about that, Anne; she did.”

  She’d been soaping his back, now began to lather his chest and shoulders. “I was thinking that I might be able to persuade Isabel to visit us after her babe is born. Perhaps she’ll be more amenable to a reconciliation with Mother once she does have the child she so wants.”

  Richard caught her hand, held it still against him. “Sweetheart, you’d best face the truth, that it’d take nothing less than a genuine miracle for George to let Bella come to Middleham.”

  Anne’s face shadowed. “Yes, you’re right. I just wasn’t thinking….” She squeezed the soap so tightly that it slipped from her fingers, sank from sight. “There’s no end, is there, to the misery George does manage to stir up. My mother would have been freed from Beaulieu months ago had it not been for him and his accursed lust for lands not his.”

  “Let’s not talk of George. Whenever I do, I find myself thinking of the arguments to be made for murder!” He brushed her hair back from her throat, explored it with his mouth until she shivered with pleasure and George was forgotten.

  “Be you sure, sweetheart, that you do want Johnny here with us? I don’t want to be unfair to you….”

  She nodded, and when he kissed her again, she returned his embrace so wholeheartedly that she only belatedly became aware that her hair was trailing in the bath water.

  “Oh, love, look at me! I’m soaked!”

  She gazed ruefully at the dripping strands, the water stains darkening the bodice of her gown, but made no protest when he drew her to him again. By now they both were laughing, but when she lost the soap again, the hunt for it took on such interesting dimensions that amusement was not long in giving way to urgency.

  In the first weeks of their marriage, Anne had been shy in their lovemaking. She still found it easier to show her passion in the soft intimacy of darkness, within the quiet and curtained privacy of their marriage bed. Now it was midday, the chamber was bright with summer sun, and the trestle tables were already being set up in the great hall, chafing dishes and trencher plates being taken from the cupboard. But Richard had been gone for fully a month, the first time that they’d been apart since their marriage, and their lovemaking had, of necessity, been limited during the last stages of her pregnancy.

  “Tell me again how much you missed me,” she murmured, and laughed when he said,

  “I’d rather show you.”

  He was kissing her throat again, and she tilted her head back so that his mouth could wander at will, sliding her hands up his chest, delighting in the touch of warm wet skin, the fragrance of costmary, the sudden huskiness in his voice as he said her name.

  “Why don’t you,” she suggested softly, “hurry and bathe?”

  He played with the wet hair that fell forward across her breast, pulled the damp silk down still farther to caress the soft curve thus exposed.

  “I’ve a better thought than that. Why don’t you join me?”

  He saw her eyes widen. She blushed, looking both uncertain and intrigued. He laughed, loving her for that, for blushing, and for what she was doing now, reaching around behind her to untie the lacings of her gown.

  “Here,” he said. “Let me help.”

  “I thought,” she said, “you’d never ask!”

  4

  London

  November 1474

  For hours, the wind had been rising on the river, and shortly before noon, the sky began to darken. Rain was pelting the windowpanes, in sharp staccato bursts quite unlike the usual lulling rhythm of falling rain. Sleet as sure as Adam’s Sin, Will Hastings thought, and smiled; there were few comforts more pleasurable than lying abed in the languorous afterglow of lovemaking, listening to the futile fury of wind and rain against stone and timber.

  “Will! Look, love!”

  A crystalline soap bubble rose into the air above the bathing tub, then another and still another. Through half-shut eyes, he watched them drift ceilingward, reflecting the light of the wall cressets as if each one had a miniature candle flame imprisoned within.

  “You’re such a child, sweet. That bubble-blower was a toy meant for my sons. I scarcely had you in mind when I picked it up at the Smithfield Faire!”

  “Well, you didn’t know me last August, Will, else you might have gotten one for me, too,” she pointed out reasonably, and he grinned. She shared the normal feminine taste for jewelry and costly perfumes, but she was the first mistress he’d ever had who was capable of getting pleasure from trifles, too.

  She looked appealingly disheveled: honey-colored hair was defying ivory pins, stray strands curling damply at the nape of her neck, loose wisps slanting rakishly over her eye, tickling her nose. He watched her push impatiently at it; she was the most unselfconscious woman he’d ever known, her lack of vanity all the more surprising to him in light of her undeniable physical charms.

  Not that she was beautiful, not like the
Woodville bitch. She couldn’t hold a candle to Elizabeth; he freely conceded that. And yet there was something about her that got to a man. Her laugh. Her dimples. The most kissable mouth imaginable. High firm breasts, now gleaming soft and wet. Watching her balance a shapely leg on the rim of the tub and lather it lovingly, he smiled, knowing she was being deliberately provocative, and yet feeling desire start to quicken again. Perhaps that was the true secret of her appeal, the real reason why he found himself so unexpectedly besotted at age forty-three with this child-woman of twenty-two, this plump pretty little wife of a London mercer who could make him feel as if the twenty years between them mattered not a whit, who could make him hot to have her twice in an hour’s time, with an eagerness he’d not known for years, an urgency he’d almost forgotten.

  “Where’s your wife?” she queried now. In another woman, he might have taken it as malice; with her, he knew it to be no more than simple curiosity.

  “At Ashby-de-la-Zouch in Leicestershire.” Unable to resist adding, “Like this house, Ashby was given to me by the King’s Grace.”

  Her eyes were long-lashed, a deep blue-grey, so wide-set as to give her an altogether spurious air of innocence. They widened now at mention of the King; he’d known they would, enjoyed indulging her with intimate confidences of the Yorkist court, the Yorkist King who was his friend.

  “Will…is the King back yet from his tour of the Midlands?” she asked, somewhat shyly, for she was not yet accustomed to making casual conversation about her sovereign as if he were someone she knew personally.

  Will nodded. “He’s been back since the sixteenth. A right profitable excursion it was; he raised a fair sum and by way of benevolences, too, not loans that need be repaid.”

  She looked blank. “What be benevolences?”

  He laughed. “A polite term for highway robbery! It does work like this. The King summons one of our wealthier citizens to the royal presence, greets said citizen with flattering warmth, bedazzles with the royal charm, and then expresses his confidence that said citizen will be well disposed toward making a voluntary contribution to the royal treasury…a rather large contribution, needless to say. Not surprisingly, sweetheart, most do prefer to turn out their purses rather than turn down their King!”