The argument that followed had been brief, low-voiced, constrained of necessity by their awareness of others within earshot. Richard had been surprised by her reproach. She was too protective of the boys, he said flatly, treated Ned as if he’d bruise if breathed upon. Anne had denied it with unwonted sharpness, all the more nettled because she knew his accusation was grained in truth, and, on that sour note, they’d departed for York. Johnny had ridden his pony until he swayed in the saddle with fatigue, secretly grateful when Anne at last told him to join Ned in the horse litter. She and Richard had gone to bed as overly polite strangers, and this morning she was plagued by vague regrets.
But it seemed that her talk with Richard would have to wait, and she signaled for a torchbearer to accompany her into the church. There, in the Chapel of St Catherine, Virgin and Martyr, she lit a candle for her sister’s recovery; it was nigh on three months now since Isabel had given birth to a second son, and by all accounts, she was still quite ill.
By the time Anne emerged from the church, dusk had descended over the friary grounds; all was quiet, cold, muffled by the swirl of softly falling snow. Before returning to the chambers set aside for her use, Anne chose to check on her son.
Ned and Johnny were in bed, napping under thick fox-fur coverlets. At first glance, Anne thought both boys were asleep. But a closer examination raised some doubts. Ned was sprawled on his stomach, had both arms wrapped about his pillow as if it were a sled. But Johnny’s lashes were quivering suspiciously, and, as Anne leaned over the bed, she saw the coverlets move, ripple strangely. She leaned closer, saw a black nose and silvery whiskers poke free of the sheets. Johnny’s eyes flew open, flicked guiltily to the puppy and up to Anne’s face. He looked relieved when she grinned; grinning back, he stopped trying to stuff the puppy under the covers, let it come up for air.
Richard had been six when he first came into Anne’s life in the spring of 1459. Johnny would be six in less than three months and so looked like his father at that age that Anne’s heart went out to him. He was a shy soft-spoken child, unlike Richard in that his face rarely served as the key to his thoughts.
What exactly were Johnny’s thoughts? Anne often wondered. Did he miss the mother he saw so seldom? He gave every indication of being very fond of Ned; was he aware yet that he was different from his little brother? His future held promise; a bastard he might be, but a royal bastard, nonetheless. Yet when her brother-in-law the King bestowed an earldom on Richard’s son, the title would go to Ned, not to Johnny. Johnny was still too young for that to matter, but it would not always be so.
Anne leaned over impulsively, dropped a kiss on the tip of Johnny’s nose. He looked surprised and then pleased; unlike other boys his age, he never feigned indifference or aversion to kisses and hugs. Johnny thrived on affection, invariably responded to Anne’s overtures with such eagerness that she suspected the little boy understood more about the stigma of his birth than was generally believed.
Véronique and the newest of Anne’s ladies were awaiting her as she entered her bedchamber. Joyce Washburne was a buxom young woman with eyes like emeralds, a wide sultry mouth, and an incongruous scattering of unfashionable freckles. She had an infectious easy laugh, an impish sense of mischief, and Anne had become quite fond of her in the months since Joyce joined her household.
As Joyce unpinned Anne’s headdress, Anne noticed a thick leather-bound book lying in the midst of her vials of perfume and bath oils.
“What’s this, Joyce?”
“Your lord husband left it for you, Madame. He said to tell you that he’d marked the passages you’d be most interested in reading.”
Mystified, Anne picked up the book, noting without enlightenment that it was The Canterbury Tales, and opened it where indicated. A moment later, she burst out laughing. Richard had marked for her “The Clerk’s Tale,” which had to be the definitive account of a dutiful submissive wife, a wife so patient and passive that no matter how heartlessly her husband tested her love, she voiced no complaints, endured the loss of her children, endured divorce, meekly endured all with fair loving words and devotion even a dog could not hope to equal.
Anne’s spirits lifted, for there could be no surer sign that Richard harbored no grievance than this, that he should be teasing her about the saintly simpleminded Griselda, such a woman as who’d lived nowhere but in the wistful imaginings of men.
She was reading some of the less likely passages aloud to Joyce as the girl brushed out her hair, when Richard came into the chamber.
“My love, you be just in time. I was about to read to Joyce what the Lord Walter did demand of poor Griselda ere he would take her to wife.”
As she glanced up to get his response, their eyes met in the mirror. Anne’s breath stopped and she swung around to face him; the hairpins she’d been holding on her lap rained to the floor, sank into the rushes. The book, too, slipped unheeded from her grasp.
“Richard, what’s wrong? What is it?”
Strangely enough, she never thought of war, thought neither of the Scots nor of the French. Her fears were personal, not political. Nor did it occur to her that it might be Edward. She did think, however, of the aging Duchess of York, and she repeated huskily, “Richard, what is it? Tell me, please….”
He crossed the space separating them, put his arms around her, and she understood. The grief was to be hers. Her mind raced, too fast for coherent thought, in instinctive inventory of her loved ones. Her son, safe asleep under Mistress Burgh’s vigilant eye. Her mother, supping with Alison and John Scrope at their York manor house just a stone’s throw up Ald Conyng Street. Véronique, gone to fetch a deck of playing cards but moments before.
“It’s Bella, isn’t it?” she whispered.
Isabel’s son had been born at Tewkesbury on October 6. On November 12, she had been brought in slow easy stages back to Warwick Castle, where she’d died three days before Christmas. Within ten days, her infant son, too, was dead. On January 4, her body was returned to Tewkesbury to lie in state for thirty-five days. She was twenty-five, left a three-year-old daughter and a son not yet two.
The death that shocked Europe, however, had occurred on the fifth of January in the snow before the besieged town of Nancy. It was there that the army of Charles, Duke of Burgundy, had gone down to a devastating defeat before the forces of the Swiss and Duke René of Lorraine. The Burgundians had been outnumbered by almost four to one and the ensuing slaughter had been merciless. Two days later, the body of Charles himself had been discovered embedded in the frozen ice of St-Jean’s pond, stripped naked by looters, partially eaten by wolves.
The political implications of Charles’s death were enormous. His twenty-year-old daughter Marie was now Duchess of Burgundy, the greatest marital prize in Europe, and in the uneasy eyes of the English people, a lamb to be led to French slaughter. The Treaty of Picquigny notwithstanding, Edward was no less alarmed than his subjects. However little he did mourn Charles, the last thing he wanted to see was the fleur-de-lis of France flying over Bruges and Dijon. A great council was hastily called for mid-February to deal with these disturbing developments.
It was nearly midnight as Richard and Anne rode through the gateway and into the precincts of the Benedictine Abbey of St Mary the Virgin at Tewkesbury. Word had already been sent ahead to Abbot Streynsham to expect them; within the Abbot’s lodging, they’d find food, wine, and warm beds. Anne’s tired body ached for all three, yet she found herself drawing rein at sight of the round Norman arch of the Abbot’s gatehouse.
It was three months shy of six years since she’d ridden through that gateway, but it could have been yesterday, so vivid were the memories that suddenly assailed her. She struggled momentarily with an irrational urge to go elsewhere, to lodge for the night at the Black Boar Inn they’d passed on the outskirts of town. She did not want to stay at the abbey, did not want to remember the last time she’d sheltered within its walls.
“Anne?” Richard had reined in beside her. Accura
tely interpreting her reluctance, he asked, “Would you rather go elsewhere?”
She shook her head. “No. But…but I would like to go first to the church.”
Much to her relief, he acceded to her request without comment, seemed to understand, as well, when she declined his offer to go with her. She watched as the rest of their party passed through the gatehouse, and then turned her mare back toward the great abbey church of St Mary the Virgin.
Dismounting before the north porch, she gave the reins to the man Richard had ordered to accompany her, told him to await her there. Inside, all was dark, eerily still, and she had a sudden childish impulse to call the man in to her. To guard against her ghosts? Mocking herself, she raised her lantern up and moved resolutely down the empty, shadowed nave. Light glimmered from the door in the rood screen that separated the nave from the choir, and she was drawn instinctively toward it.
As she expected, it was there that she found her sister. Isabel’s coffin was draped in heavy velvet folds; above it rose the wooden framework of the herse. The herse canopy was emblazoned with the arms of Beauchamp and Neville, and half a hundred soaring white candles encircled the coffin, crowned the canopy roof with pinpoints of amber flame. From dawn till dusk, black-robed Benedictine monks would be kneeling before the coffin, softly chanting the funeral offices, vigils, and Masses for the soul of Isabel Neville. Now, however, the church was deserted, echoed only to the sound of Anne’s footsteps as she approached the herse. Not for two hours yet would the monks file sleepily into the choir for Matins. Until then, Anne was alone with her sister.
George had ordered no stone effigy for Isabel and Anne was glad. She did not want to look upon the lifeless marble features of a face she loved. Tears stung her eyes, and, kneeling by the candlelit coffin, she began to pray for her sister’s peace.
When she heard the sounds of a man’s tread, she assumed it was her servant coming in to warm himself, or perhaps a monk sent to see that the burning candles posed no threat of fire. She didn’t look up until the steps came nearer, glancing over her shoulder with a frown, resenting whoever it was that had come to intrude upon her farewell to Isabel.
A man stood framed in the doorway of the pulpitum screen, a swaying silhouette in the dark void that lay beyond the coffin. Kneeling in a circle of light, Anne suddenly felt uncomfortably conspicuous, and it was this that lent an uncharacteristic sharpness to her voice as she demanded, “Who are you to be here at such an hour? Know you not that it be past midnight?”
As he moved toward her, she lifted up her lantern and then gasped at the light’s revelation. For a moment, logic fled and common sense was forgotten; she felt only fear, familiar physical fear that knew no reason. She froze, staring up at her brother-in-law, knowing with appalling certainty that all connections had been severed between her body and brain, that she could no more rise from these icy tiles than she could force a scream from her constricted throat.
George was looming over her now; he was, she saw, none too steady on his feet.
“Bella?” It was little more than a whisper, was slurred with some dreadful emotion that was both horror and hope.
Anne was stunned; her resemblance to her sister was superficial at best. He’s blind-drunk, she thought, and then, Pray God that be all it is! But as suddenly as it had come, her panic was gone. She need not fear this man. She was no longer fifteen years old and helpless in his hands. She was Richard’s wife, and if he as much as laid a hand upon her, she’d scream the whole blessed abbey down.
“Not Bella, George, Anne,” she said and found to her chagrin that her voice was not as steady as her resolve.
“Anne,” he said, as if the name meant nothing to him. But he reached down then, extended his hand toward her. She stared at it with distaste, feeling the same aversion to touch him as she would to touch a snake. But she didn’t want him to know that she still feared to be alone with him, wouldn’t give him that satisfaction, and so she reluctantly put her hand in his, let him assist her to her feet.
Some of her panic threatened to come back upon her then, though, for he tightened his hand on hers when she tried to pull it from his grasp. Even as drunk as he was, he was far stronger than she, and her breath quickened painfully.
“Don’t go,” he entreated. “Stay awhile…till the monks do come.” He peered down into Anne’s face, said earnestly, “I don’t want to leave her alone, you see. But it’s so lonely here by myself…so lonely….”
Anne was thoroughly unprepared for the pity that now knifed through her. She didn’t like it, reminded herself fiercely that he, of all men, was the least deserving of pity or compassion.
“I should think I’d be the last person you’d want with you.”
“Why?” he asked vaguely, and she saw then that he hadn’t truly realized who she was. She was a familiar voice, a hand to hold in the dark, and that was enough, was all he needed or cared to know.
He’d released her hand, leaned back against the herse. It was not meant to brace a man’s weight, and the wood creaked ominously. As Anne watched in concern, he crooked an arm around the post, slowly slid to the floor by the coffin. His head lolled back and his hair came dangerously close to the nearest of the candle flames, wrenching from Anne an involuntary cry.
“My God, George, watch what you do!”
“She suffered so…” he mumbled, staring up at Anne with blind blue eyes. “She couldn’t breathe, and when she coughed…when she coughed, she did bring up blood.” He shuddered, repeated dully, “So much blood….”
Anne made a choked sound, shoved her fist against her mouth. The candles had begun to blur, were swimming before her in a haze of tears. She backed away, had gotten as far as the pulpitum screen when George leaned forward, and, dropping his head into his hands, began to weep.
Anne came to an uncertain stop. She couldn’t bring herself to go back, to try to offer him comfort. But she couldn’t bear the sounds he was making, gasping strangled sobs that shook his entire body. She stood irresolute, drying her own tears with the back of her hand, and then she heard her name, whirled about to fling herself into Richard’s arms.
It took her several moments to convince Richard that she was truly all right, that her tears were for Isabel. Only then did his eyes move past her to the slumped figure huddled before Isabel’s coffin. She saw on his face much of her own ambivalence, saw he was reluctant to recognize George’s pain and yet not able to walk away from it. He swore under his breath and, handing her his lantern, crossed the choir toward his brother.
As Anne watched, he bent over George, spoke too softly for her to hear. George’s sobs seemed to be subsiding; the face he raised now to Richard was flushed, tear-stained, and puffy.
“Dickon?” His voice was thick, uncertain, as if he no longer dared trust his own senses.
“You cannot stay here all night, George. Let me help you up and we’ll go back to the Abbot’s lodging together.”
Anne was somewhat surprised when George docilely did as he was told, accepted Richard’s supporting arm and lurched to his feet. But even as she breathed a sigh of relief, she saw George’s face change, saw his eyes slit, focus on Richard with sudden sobering intensity.
“What are you doing here?” he demanded. “Did Ned send you to spy on me? He did, didn’t he? I should’ve known!”
“For Christ’s sake, George! You know better than that!”
“I suppose you’d like me to believe you care?” George had jerked free, reeled back against the herse. “Well, I’m not so much a fool as that, Little Brother! You be no friend to me, Dickon, and well I know it. Think you that I could ever be so drunk as to forget that?”
“Have it your own way,” Richard said tersely, and turned away. He didn’t look back, but Anne lingered a moment longer before following him from the choir. Unclasping her crucifix chain, she stepped forward, brushed past George, and laid the crucifix gently on the velvet draping her sister’s coffin.
“You’d best sit down, Dickon,
given what I do have to tell you. It seems our idiot sister thinks she has the perfect solution to the problem now posed by Burgundy. Her stepdaughter Marie does urgently need a husband and since Brother George is now conveniently without a wife…well, need I say more?”
“She wants George and Marie to wed? My God!” Richard was first incredulous and then appalled. “Has she lost her mind?”
Edward mouthed a particularly profane oath, said in disgust, “Where George is concerned, her common sense does desert her entirely. Can you imagine George as Duke of Burgundy? Holy Mary, preserve us!”
“Meg didn’t mention this to George, did she?” But it was a forlorn hope and Richard knew it even as he voiced it.
“What do you think? And I needn’t tell you his reaction. One would swear him already anointed and crowned!”
“Ned, you cannot allow such a marriage to take place. George…George is too unstable; God only knows what he might do should he ever have power like that.”
“Oh, I suspect we both know what he might do, Dickon; you’re just squeamish about saying it plain out, that he’d be all too likely to make another grab for the English crown, and this time with a Burgundian army to back him up. Well, you needn’t worry, Little Brother. The day I’ll see George as Duke of Burgundy will be the day Holy Church does see me as a worthy choice for sainthood!”
“Have you told him you forbid the match?”
“Not yet.” A sardonic smile briefly tugged at the corner of Edward’s mouth. “Should you like to be there when I do?”
“I think not!” Richard said hastily. “In fact, I’d as soon not even hear about it, afterward!” He accepted a cup from an unobtrusive servant, said, “Ned, be there any chance Marie might accept him? For, if she’s willing, your refusal would count for nothing with George. It wouldn’t be the first time, after all, that he did wed without your permission.”
The Sunne in Splendour Page 75
