He passed a hand over his face and looked back at the bed. The Countess sat at her daughter’s side in a tapestried chair, her back to the windows. Sunlight illuminated her figure from behind and her face would have been in darkness but for the light of the candles. She lifted her eyes to him and he saw his own torment reflected there.
He moved to the bed, only vaguely conscious that the Countess rose as he did so, that the doctors retreated, the servants slipped away. He absorbed all this in slow motion, for time had lost its measure. At Anne’s bedside, he took a seat and reaching over the velvet coverlet, clutched one cold hand in both of his. Her breath came in short, laboured pants. He tightened his hold and deepened his own breathing, in order to breathe for her, to keep her alive with the vital force of his own body.
Sensing his presence, she opened her eyes. She tried to speak. He bent his ear to her lips. A whisper of ice touched his cheek.
“Sing to me—” she gasped, fighting for breath, “of the North—”
Emotion threatened to overwhelm him. His lips were parched. With difficulty he forced them to move, to form the words. The song, slow at first, gathered force and flowed freely from his soul. He sang of the deer, the twilight, the wind and the water; the song he’d always carried in his heart and never had time to pen:
Aye, aye, O, aye the winds that bend the brier!
The winds that blow the grass!
For the time was may-time, and blossoms draped the earth…
Wine, wine—and I will love thee to the death
And out beyond into the dream to come…
She calmed. Her lips curved into a smile. Time hung suspended. He watched her, grateful for each peaceful breath, for the absence of pain. Gladly would he sit here forever, if that were the only way to keep her with him. She gave a moan. Ice spread through him. “My little bird, what is it?”
“I will wait—” she said, each word dragging forth with pain, “for you… in heaven.”
Words from the letter beneath the chestnut tree. Richard bent his face to hers, brushed her hair and cheeks and brow with his lips. “My love,” he whispered, “my dearest love…”
A voice at his shoulder said, “Sire, ’tis time.” He looked up. Archbishop Rotherham stood in his gold and white robes, the Holy Book in one hand, a jewelled crucifix in the other. Richard’s heart pulsed in his ears and a rising pain choked off his breath. His agonized cry pierced the chamber. “No—!”
“Sire,” said the Archbishop, “the last rites must be performed.”
Richard stared up at him, but his face wavered in and out of focus, hurting his eyes. He shifted his frantic gaze back to Anne. “It can’t be time. Not yet, not yet!” Never. If she received extreme unction, she would leave him.
“I pray you, my lord. The Queen must not die unshriven.”
Die. The dread word he had denied all these months echoed through him, a loud, distorted, evil drumbeat: Die, die, die… He tightened his grip around Anne’s frail body and laid his head against her breast. Through his own heavy breathing, he heard her whisper, “I pray you, Richard…”
He lifted his head and looked at her. Her eyes were scarcely open, her small nose pinched, but her expression told him what she had no strength to ask. He reached out to the curtain for support, struggled to his feet, but his unsteady legs buckled beneath him and only the gentle arms of Anne’s mother held him so that he did not fall. “Come, dear lord,” said the Countess, her face wet with tears.
Barely able to breathe, Richard looked up at Rotherham’s dry countenance. “Hurry, I must be with her when—”
The Archbishop inclined his head. Leaning on the Countess’ arm, Richard dragged himself from Anne’s chamber.
~ * ~
Though it seemed an eternity, it was only a short while later when the Archbishop opened the door of the chamber. Richard rose stiffly, heavily, made his way to Anne. Her eyes were closed; she was barely breathing. He knelt at her side. The monks resumed their low chanting.
“Richard…” she murmured feebly.
“I am here, Flower-eyes,” he said, brushing her damp brow with his lips. “I won’t leave you, Anne… I’ll never leave you.”
“Elizabeth… she loves you,” she said, straining for breath. “Where… there is… love… life… can be born… anew.”
“Hush, Anne, hush.” He took her cold hand into his own. Through ashen, quivering lips, he whispered, “I want only you. Anne—stay with me—stay, I beg you!” Anne opened her eyes wide and looked at him. Pure violet, those eyes. Lit from within with a golden light. “No need for tears, my beloved Richard,” she said in a strong, clear, steady voice. He gaped at her with astonishment. Hope flooded his breast; a smile broke across his face. She would be well! God had heard his prayers! He would work a miracle after all! “Flower-eyes, my Anne—” he cried joyfully.
She lifted a hand, touched his cheek.
“I shall see Ned,” she smiled, the light dimming from her eyes. Her hand fell limp.
“Anne!” Richard cried in panic. “Anne—!”
Silence.
His head on her breast, he clung to her with a choked moan. Only he heard her last words, her final breath; faint, falling away, like an echo along a distant passageway fading into deepest night, “Oh, Richard,” she sighed. “’Tis beautiful, Richard…”
But for Richard there was only anguish and pain so excruciating that his entire body vibrated with it. He didn’t see the Archbishop lift his great jewelled crucifix and make the sign of the cross over Anne’s body; didn’t hear him intone “In Manus Tuas, Domine—” then break off to look up at the window and gape at the sky. He didn’t see the monks lift their heads and follow the Archbishop’s gaze or hear the gasp of horror that ended their song. He didn’t see the servants who knelt in prayer cross themselves for fear. All he saw was Anne, lying on the bed, pale as a marble effigy and as still, in a room gone suddenly dark and silent and cold. All he felt was that a shadow had fallen across his shoulder, that ever more for him it would be night. He knew it was noon, that the day had been bright when he had entered, but there was no light anymore, only a dismal gloom lit by the flickering light of candles, and a strange, eerie silence. No birds sang; no church bells pealed; there was no sound from man or beast.
He lifted his head, turned behind him. Everyone, including the Countess and the Archbishop, stood immobile, their faces uplifted to the heavens. He pushed himself from his knees, moved to the window. Outside, snow covered the trees and garden wall with glaring whiteness. He felt the cold as if he were part of the landscape, a thread of water hanging frozen from the bare tip of a branch, immobile, going nowhere. He looked up, stared at the sky.
The world was as black as night, and where the sun had shone, only a shadow remained. The mighty sun had been darkened by the Hand of God.
His breath caught in his throat. This was God’s answer to him! He buried his face in his hands.
A low, sweet voice broke through the horror. “So many angels came down to guide her to heaven,” the voice said, “that their wings darkened the sun.” He heard them through his shattering grief and they sounded to him like a melody plucked on a harp. Who was there who could give such comfort? He dropped his hands from his face. Elizabeth smiled at him through her tears, though her heart broke to look at him. Pain was carved in merciless lines across his brow, at his mouth, around his eyes. Jesu, but he had aged ten years in an hour. She went to him, touched his sleeve, “She has been rescued from this dark world, my lord. God has one more angel at His side this day.”
They looked for a long moment into each other’s eyes and between them lay their love for Anne and all that they had shared. Richard took a step forward mutely, collapsed against her and smothered his face in her shoulder. Her arms went around his head and she held him like a suffering child.
With tears streaming down her cheeks, the Countess turned away and the servants bowed their heads, sniffling. Only Archbishop Rotherham remained aloof, dry-eyed,
gazing sourly on them, his face contorted with disgust. First the King had dressed his niece like a second queen at Yuletide. Then had come the shocking stroll in the garden. Now they embraced for all the world to see. They were like lovers, King Richard and his niece. Never, in all his years, had he thought to witness such a scandalous sight. He drew himself to his full height, swept with an icy resolve. Tudor had to be informed.
~ * ~
Chapter 22
“But how to take last leave of all I loved?”
Beneath drizzling grey skies, the funeral procession wound its way from Westminster Palace to the Abbey. Anne’s bier, covered with black and white velvet and drawn by four black horses, rumbled slowly across the cobbled court, escorted by four knights bearing torches. For once the eternal church bells hung silent and there was no sound but the hoof beats of the horses, and the weeping. Anne had much endeared herself to the poor by her acts of charity and goodness, and the common people had come in great numbers to pay their last respects. Pressed against the walls and gates, they watched the solemn cortege.
With dragging steps, clothed in plain dark saye without girdle or trimming, bareheaded and unadorned by any jewels save Anne’s small sapphire ring, Richard walked behind her coffin, remembering their coronation when she had walked behind him. Just twenty months had passed between. There had been hundreds of candles and tapers, then as now. Monks had chanted, then as now. The Archbishop had led the procession; the lords and ladies had followed from the Palace to the Abbey.
Then as now.
Searing pain shot through him. To safeguard the two he loved best in the world, he had taken the Crown, and paid for it with their lives. A line from King Arthur came to him: And I am blown along a wandering wind, and hollow, hollow, hollow all delight!
He shuffled forward.
Inside the Abbey it was dark and cool. The smell of burning incense filled the nave and curls of smoke wafted to the gold bosses on the soaring vaulted ceiling, misting the air and lending a sense of unreality. The monks’ chant rose in volume and their song resonated against the stone floor and soaring arches. Slowly the funeral procession wound along, torches flaring, past the shadowy Sanctuary and the High Altar, past the tombs of other Plantagenet kings of England: the Henrys, the Edwards, the Richards… He didn’t glance at Henry V’s tomb and painted wood effigy of silver and gilt, erected to his memory by his widow, Katherine of Valois, Henry Tudor’s grandmother, but at the tomb of Richard II he looked up at the carved marble figure.
It was a mild, child-like face with winsome curls that had sown the seeds of the Wars of the Roses between Lancaster and York. For nearly a hundred years England had paid in blood for his murder. The realm had thought the dynastic struggle ended with Henry’s death; it had not. Edward had thrown away the gains by marrying a Woodville—
No, Richard corrected himself. By marrying Bess Woodville. Anne had pointed out the difference, and Anne had been right. He had hated all Woodvilles because of Bess; had blamed them for the ills that had befallen him, the Nevilles, and England. But no longer. Elizabeth was part Woodville. If only Edward had married someone like Elizabeth.
An ache for the past, for all that was, was not, and might have been, descended on him with crushing force. He shut his eyes and forced a long breath. When he opened them again, he found himself gazing at the effigy of Richard II’s queen. Anne. Richard II had buried his Anne in a frenzy of grief, they said. He tore his gaze from the soft face and bit down against the wrenching of his heart. History had a brutal way of repeating itself. He dragged himself forward.
Near the south door leading into the shrine of Edward the Confessor the procession came to a halt. There, in that place with its carved stone screen and gold feretory, he and Anne had knelt together to be crowned. Now her tomb yawned open before him, a cavernous marble pit set on a stone bier. The monks raised their voices to chant the solemn masses and dirges of the Requiem. When it was ended, Archbishop Rotherham stepped forward, opened his psalter, and droned the Pater Noster.
Richard stared at the unyielding stone and felt he would strangle on the pain in his throat. In his mind’s eye he saw the child Anne, who had taken him to her little injured owl and run up the grassy slopes of Middleham with him, laughing… Anne, untroubled and teasing, on the cusp of maidenhood, waiting for him beneath the boughs of the old chestnut tree. Anne, the young bride, riding pillion as they tore over the thundering River Tees and made love in the tender grass…
Anne was gone, vanished like the beautiful sparkles of hoar frost he had taken for diamonds in the sun as a child. Into that blackness, she would be sealed forever. Anne, who had shared his dreams and his youth and his beginnings. And so many of his endings. Oh God, God—
Raw, primitive grief overwhelmed him and the last shreds of his iron will, which had held him together through the batterings of his childhood, through his exiles and the wars, through the loss of all his kin and the death of his only child, ruptured like old silk sliced by a sword. His shoulders trembled and the tremors became heaves; choked sobs assaulted him and scalding tears blinded his eyes. Standing at the foot of Anne’s tomb, surrounded by his nobles and the prelates of his realm, Richard broke at last and, covering his face with his hands, he wept.
~ * ~
Chapter 23
“Accursed, who strikes nor lets the hand be seen!”
In his chamber at Westminster Richard turned away from the window, ready to meet his councillors waiting for him in a council room off the south court. He had shut himself away for a full week since Anne’s death, but the moment he had dreaded could no longer be put off. The time had come to resume his duties, and rule alone. Alone… A line from Malory came to him: The goodly apples, all these things at once Fell into dust, and I was left alone And thirsting in a land of sand and thorns.
Silence pervaded the halls as he made his way down the stairs, through arches, past pillars, across the court. An icy wind blew from the river, tearing at his mantle and beating him back. He hunched his shoulders and fought his way forward with determined strides. It was quiet in the Palace cloisters. Sombre dress and solemn faces met him everywhere. Even the dogs seemed to have sensed the mood in the castle and lay quietly watching. He turned a corner, pushed open the door, and entered. A tapestry protected the chamber from the draft. He thrust it back. Candles burned in silver sconces on the long gleaming table but failed to pierce the gloom. Silence here, too, and grave faces. He threw his gauntlets on the table.
Ratcliffe came forward, handed him a placard.
Richard’s councillors watched him anxiously as he read. Jewels flashed on his fingers, around his crimson collar, and on the turned-up brim of his hat, but for all the magnificence of his elaborate royal robes, he looked terrible. His face was sickly pale, his mouth tight and pinched, and beneath his bloodshot eyes ran deep black circles. It was clear that he had slept little since his queen’s passing. And there would be no respite. Within days of her death, placards had appeared on St. Paul’s and the rumour had reached the far corners of England that King Richard intended to marry his niece. Against their will, the royal council had no choice but to confront him with it.
Richard looked up. His hand trembled as he laid the placard down.
“Sire, you must deny this, deny that you ever considered such a step,” Ratcliffe said. “Not only is such a marriage impossible—the Pope would never grant a dispensation—but to marry Elizabeth of York would give the lie to your title as King. If she is legitimate, then so are her brothers—” Ratcliffe hesitated. “My lord, there is talk that you poisoned the Queen in order to wed Elizabeth of York. Unless you deny this marriage rumour, even the people of the North will turn against you. Queen Anne was much loved in York.”
Richard stood immobile and it seemed to the men around the council table that he didn’t comprehend. Then without warning, he crashed his fist on the table, nearly toppling the heavy silver scones. “That vile bastard! That lying, scheming Tudor! Is there nothing he’
ll not say, nothing he’ll not do, to steal the Crown of England for his bastard head?” His eyes glittered. He seized Ratcliffe by his doublet. “Do you believe Tudor’s lies, Ratcliffe? That I schemed for the throne? That I murdered my brother’s sons? That I poisoned Anne?” He thrust him back. “And you, Catesby? Rob? Conyers?—Aye, and you, Francis?”
Everyone shrank back; once before a man had died in the face of such rage.
“Sire,” said Francis through parched lips, “you cannot doubt us?”
“Why?” Richard swung on him. “Wasn’t Caesar murdered by the one he loved best? Didn’t Buckingham aim to destroy me? Why should you be different? Why should any of you? Treason is in the air. It hangs like ripe fruit, ready for the picking and tempting all! Tell me that lies and betrayal are not the swords and shields of Tudor’s war! Tell me chivalry isn’t dead! Tell me there’s still loyalty in this world—in this stinking, rotten charnel house of a world… Tell me that!”
Silence. The March wind howled outside and rattled the windows.
Richard rammed his fist on the table again. “Lying bastard… Foul, lying bastard!” He kicked chairs over and pounded the table until his knuckles bled. Depleted, he slumped into a chair and let his head drop to his chest.
Everyone watched helplessly, wanting to comfort but finding neither the courage nor the words. It was Francis who finally went to him. “My lord, we are not traitors,” he said softly, dropping to a knee, “none of us—not Rob, Catesby, Ratcliffe and I, nor Brackenbury either, not Conyers nor Scrope of Bolton and many others you know well. They’re all good men and go back a long way with you… Live pure, speak true, right wrong, follow the King—”
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