And, then, at last, yes, preceded and enveloped by wave after wave of the deep roar of many voices, there came the procession of barges drawn along the canal by huge and patient horses — braided, polished, hung with precious trappings of silver and gold — led by young men, each more handsome than the next, in white tabards emblazoned with the red bear of Brugge.
The first three barges were filled with minstrels, puce-faced with the effort of making themselves heard above the din. Then came three more filled with very young girls, selected for their beauty, all dressed in white and green, long hair crowned with wreaths of white roses and ivy — singing a continuous, plangent epithalamion to marriage and scattering white petals on the water. Immediately behind them came a barge of state, the largest, brightest of all; the carved arms of England linked with those of Brugge, and everywhere, on all its surfaces, C & M linked together as a device.
There was a raised dais in the stern of this last barge and there, dressed in red and gold, was the new bride, the new duchess, the Lady Margaret of England, smiling, waving, throwing flowers to her delighted subjects as she sat beside her new husband, the duke. A glowingly handsome couple, and it was well noted by the crowd how pleased in each other they seemed.
Anne smiled ruefully when she saw the new Duchess of Burgundy. Today there was very little left of the handsome, difficult girl she remembered who’d fought so often with Elisabeth Wydeville, the queen. This was an assured, beautiful young woman, conscious, in her new and splendid scarlet and gold dress, that she’d come to fulfil a destiny which now seemed much less onerous than it had before.
Then there followed another great barge with the king’s mother, Cicely, Dowager Duchess of York, mother of the bride, seated beside a tall man with broad shoulders who was laughing, and waving to the citizens of Brugge as they screamed and threw flowers in a blizzard of white, and red, green and gold and blue.
And when Anne looked down, pealing bells clamoured in her mind and the world slowed. The man who had filled her dark nights, her dark dreams for so long, Edward, was turning his head slowly, slowly, white teeth glinting, red mouth smiling. Edward. The father of her son. Edward, the King of England.
He too was dressed in cloth of gold, but green sleeves and a green flat cap surmounted by a light crown honoured the day and the new love he hoped would grow between his sister and her new husband. Green — there had always been green between them.
Anne fingered the emeralds amongst the pearls lying around her own neck and, before she had time to think, time to curb instinct in any way, unwound the jewels and watched herself throw them, seeing the priceless rope of gems land in that golden lap.
And watched as Edward the King looked up for the source of this unexpected, precious bounty.
‘From the merchants of Brugge to the King of England.’
It was her voice, she heard herself say it, saw that it cut through, knew that he had heard.
She would remember that look all her life — when his eyes locked to hers as he stood up in the barge, searching for the owner of the voice. From shock, she said nothing more. From shock too he was mute, but he saw her, saw her face.
And as the barge swept by beneath her windows, he stood and watched her until nearly the last moment, then he bowed. To her. And she bowed back. There was a buzz all around her, she heard it, but it made no difference to Anne de Bohun. It had begun again.
Chapter Twenty-Three
The city was in ferment. After the first ecstatic welcome to the Duchess Margaret and her triumphal, painfully slow progress through the streets so that as many of her new subjects could see her as possible, all the Bruggers were avid for gossip — how had the first meeting been between their duke and duchess, and how had the wedding service gone?
There was good reason for all the giddy pride and interest. The bride herself was much approved of, and not only by the people. Duke Charles himself was in barely contained fever now to have the wedding banquet out of the way, for when he had first seen her, first looked into her eyes, something hot had flicked from him to her. He could feel it in her hands as he reached down to help her from the deepest of curtseys. They’d been shaking. He’d pressed them secretly for reassurance. And she’d smiled up at him.
The long mass before both court parties in the packed cathedral at Damme had made the new duchess dizzy and exhausted, but the noise of the city and its citizens, their clamorous demonstration that they were determined to love her, was restorative. As was the warmth of this man she had never met before.
Well might Duke Charles be warm to her. From what he could see of her body, she was well made, better than well made. Nearly as tall as he was, but with such a face — not just glowing youth, real beauty — and such a strong spirit that her schoolgirl French and complete lack of Flemish would not matter once they were in bed together. It would please him greatly to match his body to hers, breast, belly and thigh. He sighed luxuriously at that thought, felt the blood begin to itch.
And for her part she’d seen a man whose strongly made body — excellent shoulders, flat belly, long, strong thighs — affected her more than she understood.
During the rich tedium of the mass, he’d smiled at her, looked deep into her eyes and winked! And then, breath had deserted her when her hand was first placed into his by her brother, the king, in front of the archbishop of her new city. And he’d certainly made her blush when he looked happily, and not very discreetly at her breast as he swept down into a deep bow at the conclusion of the service whilst whispering compliments, in slightly awkward English, about her peerless eyes, her charming teeth, her lovely hair. He was comical and he knew it. She could not help smiling, quite broadly. And he smiled back at her. That delighted everyone from his court. And hers.
Her ladies in the cathedral had seen the exchange also, and even her mother, Duchess Cicely, had not rebuked their ribald sallies as they dressed Princess Margaret for the wedding banquet that evening. The duke would plainly be a demanding husband, they giggled, and this warm and brilliant wedding night would surely be guaranteed to exhaust both groom and bride. Their young lady must be well supplied with strengthening drink at the wedding feast in anticipation of such a handsome, well set-up husband!
Only Edward was silent as he too was dressed in his suite of opulently furnished rooms, his mind working on many levels simultaneously: the politics of this visit, the pleasures of old friendships to be renewed — and Anne.
He closed his eyes as they dropped the clean linen over his lightly sweating skin and he replayed the images of the day. As King of England, intent on cementing an alliance between his kingdom and Burgundy, he knew it was his task to prepare himself mentally for the evening but he was still shocked by that moment on the canal when the skein of pearls and emeralds had landed in his lap. Still shocked. Then, to look up and see her face. It must have been her, Anne?
He was haunted now, so eager to see her, to touch her, so afraid he was wrong. Had he hallucinated her face onto another woman’s because the magic of this wedding day cast glamour over reality? He shook his head, almost groaned.
Edward forced himself to concentrate as he reviewed the day, to prepare himself for the politics of the night. After the final, triumphant entry of the English court party into the Prinsenhof — he ceremonially advancing with his mother on his arm, step by step in time to the music of tabors, pipes, flutes and drums, to where the new bride and groom were waiting on a dais outside Duke Charles’ palace surrounded by the Burgundian court — Edward had been conducted by the duke himself to this opulent suite, so familiar from his boyhood, to prepare for this evening’s wedding feast.
Elaborate and warm courtesies had been exchanged by both the duke and the king — presents given and received. Every mark of honour from each side to the other and compliments: on the beauty of the princess, the dignity of Duchess Cicely, the magnificence of their welcome.
Meeting Charles again, Edward remembered the time he’d spent at the Burgundian court
in Liege, and in Brugge; he the younger, Charles the elder getting them both, very willingly, into endless games and scrapes. Charles had been a good teacher in the tilt yard too, finding ways to give Edward confidence to trust his natural timing and hone his focus so that, when he fought, Edward thought of nothing else but the next blow, the next feint. It was to Charles that he owed the steadiness he still had in the lists. Edward the King smiled; he would enjoy the play-contest that was to come in the next ten days of celebration — perhaps he could show his erstwhile tutor a few new tricks.
His belly contracted. It was not the thought of jousting which caused it. He could not deny, or suppress, the image of Anne’s face looking down at him from the casement above.
It must have been her. She looked barely older than the last time, though a year and a half had passed. So many questions to ask — what was she doing here? What did she feel for him now? No matter what his duty, no matter how late the feast, he would find her, tonight.
Impatient to be done with the dressing, Edward strode over to the casement and flung the windows back, trailing body servants desperate to smooth his hair and finish buttoning the tight black velvet jacket he must wear for tonight’s wedding feast under a full robe of scarlet cloth of gold lined with ermine.
God knew, the weight of all that material was a trial, for though Edward’s dress of state was artfully made, velvet on such a warm night was tiresome, not to mention cloth of gold! Edward closed his eyes again, dreaming of the pleasure he would feel later, when he could strip the heavy cloth from his body, feel the warm air on his naked skin.
He stretched luxuriously, disrupting the hair brushing, the primping once more. ‘Where’s Dickon? I’ve had enough of this!’ His valet had hurried to fetch his light crown, it was the last thing required, then Edward would be fully arrayed.
The sounds of Brugge celebrating were everywhere on this still, hot night — happy shouts, hurrying feet and laughter. Edward smiled briefly. Heat. There were many kinds of heat. He looked down the canal towards the bend he could just see in the distance. That was where it had happened: that great house set back from the curve — there. He’d seen her in the upstairs room — she’d thrown him the rope of emeralds and pearls.
‘The jewels that were thrown to me today. Where are they?’
Just then, Dickon, his chief body servant hurried back with the light ceremonial crown of England, for his master. ‘Sire, I have them safe.’
‘I’ll wear them.’
There was complete silence in the room. Looking out at the dark water, Edward knew what they’d be thinking. The queen would be furious when she heard that Edward had chosen to wear jewels thrown to him by an unknown lady on his first night in Brugge. But the queen was in London, without him. He’d won the contest at Battle Abbey.
That made him smile again. For once, he’d outwitted Elisabeth, though she’d sought to please him in every physical way she knew the night before they’d left. He’d enjoyed himself immoderately, and left his refusal to change his mind until the very last moment — so she’d been icy when he’d embarked.
Thinking of that moment, in the biting wind of the dock when the queen had turned him a very cool cheek, the king swung back, away from the window and saw their faces. He laughed out loud and those who heard him were astonished. He sounded so free, so young. They hadn’t heard him laugh like that for, well — Dickon said it later — the king only laughed like that when he was in love.
Anne stood perfectly still in the middle of the solar as Jenna and Deborah laced her tighter and tighter into the dress. Her body felt insubstantial, light-filled. And her mind. Perhaps her fiercely elevated pulse was to blame for the strange way the world appeared tonight.
Time was fleeting, though, and downstairs her barge waited by the water gate, but Anne was clear — she would arrive as late as she decently could at the Prinsenhof for the wedding feast tonight. It was time to make an entrance, time that she shed some of the anonymity and mystery that she’d so carefully wrapped around herself and her life.
And, even though she tried to banish the thought — fearful of presuming too much — tonight she knew she would meet Edward again. It would be his doing, not hers. She was certain of that.
Therefore she was calm, patient and attentive to the last rituals of preparing. It was lucky that at dawn, when none of them had known what today held, Deborah and Jenna between them had washed Anne’s hair with sweet rosemary water to enhance the deep lustrous bronze, drying it first with bleached linen in the sun of her heber, before polishing it with silk cloths.
Now it was braided high on her head in a thick, glossy crown — a foundation upon which to fasten her elegant henin embroidered with gold thread and pearls. Veiling as fine and light as sea mist floated from the peak of the headdress almost to the hem of her gown; the most insubstantial of cloaks moving gracefully with every movement, every slight flutter in the air surrounding her body.
Anne herself had designed this dress and they had carefully dropped it over her naked body a moment or two ago; tonight’s heat meant she would not wear an undershift. Deborah held her tongue — it was not fear of Anne’s catching cold that concerned her.
The dress was very simple, cut from a volume of the finest of gossamer silk and like Anne’s headdress it was deep topaz green-blue, the colour of her own eyes. And unlike the heavy dresses most often worn at court, which moved so stiffly, it was cut to flow with every movement, the material falling like water from a belt jewelled with emeralds caught up high beneath her breasts. The sleeves were simple too — scandalously so — tight, unadorned, except for buttons made from pearls, which closed them from wrist to elbow.
As Anne moved, light caught the precious, strange material and it seemed to change colour: peacock hues, gold, even rose pink, flushed through the folds of the fabric.
Jenna, astonished at the mysterious, changeable beauty of the garment, crossed herself, hoping no one saw; to her it was a garment fashioned by magic, a dress that only a witch might wear.
Anne, standing quietly as Deborah made the last, careful adjustments to her veil, felt breath catch in her throat. Unconsciously, she turned her head and caught the last movement of Jenna’s hand. Something icy touched her as the girl looked up, and then glanced quickly away, guilty, as she hurried into the shadows of the room, stooping to pick up discarded garments, setting the room to rights.
‘Shall I tell Maxim that Mistress Anne will be ready for the barge soon?’ Jenna addressed the question to Deborah, but she sounded breathless, panicky.
Deborah, preoccupied, waved an absent yes, but Anne fixed concerned eyes on the girl as she scurried from the room; then she too was distracted — a sudden gust of sound swept down the canal, the high whinny of trumpets, cheering, shouting, laughter. The guests were arriving at the Prinsenhof — the wedding night was beginning.
‘Something wrong?’ Deborah had felt Anne stiffen under her touch. ‘Nothing,’ but there was — Anne was reluctant to give it words, this uncertainty.
‘You’re finished. Or rather — I’m finished.’ Deborah stepped back and looked critically at her handiwork. Strange and rueful thoughts flowed through her.
Anne smiled at her. ‘There, dear friend. Don’t be concerned. You’ve spoken about the fates to me often enough. Do you think the spinning women are weaving me happiness tonight?’
Deborah gently touched the veil one last time, one last tiny adjustment that only she could see. ‘I cannot tell, so I will not lie to you. But I will pray.’
Anne walked quietly to her door, the trailing silk whispering over the tiles. ‘Which gods will you pray to, Deborah?’
The last words floated on the air as Jenna returned to open the door for her mistress. Perhaps she heard, perhaps she did not. Perhaps it was all too late, and at some very deep level, all three women in that room, that night, knew it.
Chapter Twenty-Four
Hans Memlinc had excelled himself. He and a band of his brother artists �
� including Jan Van Eyck, his great rival and friend — had been commissioned by Duke Charles, not only to decorate the whole city as his bride arrived, but also to provide built and painted backdrops for the endless entertainments at each of the wedding celebrations to come.
Their greatest triumph was in the creation of a sumptuous tent-like hall to house the wedding feast, a structure made by roofing the duke’s new tennis court — a novel, imported sport to which he was recently, most expensively, addicted — with a vast piece of painted, gold silk. The walls of this extravagant structure, a noble chamber almost as high as it was wide — and it was very wide — had been draped in deep blue silk and swagged and gathered between enormous displays of white roses for the white rose of York, Princess Margaret, the bride.
Fat wax candles burned in bunched sconces and flickered from brass candelabra, dangerously close to the tented ceiling — so many brilliant little suns it seemed like day.
The tent-hall itself sat proudly on a terrace above the canal, the same canal on which Anne was now being rowed towards the landing. A broad, noble flight of steps led upwards from the water towards a wide bank of glassed doors, flung open along the entire front where the hall faced the canal. She could see the people processing to and fro behind them; the doors themselves were a fashion imported from Venice and had caused much controversy because they were more expensive than cannon to make. Largely constructed from surprisingly large pieces of pale pink glass, tonight they came into their own, thrown open to the warm evening air; now the Bruggers were proud of how much they had cost, the faces of their English guests said it all — who had ever seen that much glass, in one place, ever before? Truly this was a wealthy city.
Anne’s was one of the very last barges to arrive at the water stairs and yet it took some time for the press of people ahead of her to step onto the landing beside the canal. Patiently Anne waited — anxiety mounting, until at last her men were able to dock.
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