“Thank you, good brother,” said Anne, with a wry little smile. “I can assure you I will be on my best behaviour and will bring no disgrace to your order.”
The monk gestured behind him; across the courtyard, I could see the quadrangle of the cloister and the night-shrouded outer buildings that formed the sanctuary enclosure. “Madam, I will guide you to the Dean that he may approve your stay.”
Anne nodded but suddenly paused. “Good brother, may I not first say farewell to my…friend?”
The monk glanced at me, noting for the first time my fine clothes, the jewelled badge upon my hat. His eyes widened almost imperceptibly, but a monk who dwelt in such a place was used to keeping his expression neutral and his mouth firmly shut. He nodded and shuffled a few feet away, waiting discreetly behind a moon-bleached pillar.
“Thank you, Richard.” Anne dismounted and stood within the shadows of the gateway, a little figure with her hair unbound and mussed like that of some hoyden. “You have done much for me this day.”
“Anne…” Impulsively I caught her hand, twining her cold fingers through mine. “Anne….before you go into sanctuary, I must ask something of you. Anne…”
I could barely get the words out and was grateful that night was dim enough to hide the colour flaring in my cheeks. “Anne, forgive my bluntness, I have no tongue for niceties…but will you marry me?”
“Yes,” she said simply, and then she disentangled her hand from mine and walked proudly and silently into the sanctuary of St Martin-le-Grand.
Over the new fem weeks I returned to St Martin’s to check on Anne’s comfort and to tell her exactly what had been happening between me and George, and how the King was on our side. However, we could not marry until her inheritance was sorted, and George was going to make life as difficult as possible in that regard.
Anne and I sat together on a stone bench in the monks’ garden. A monk was lurking in the cloister, watching us carefully to make certain we were not going to commit any vice. As a promise of marriage was binding, many couples did swiftly consummate their union before vows were spoken, and I would be a liar if I said I did not wish to take Anne to bed without delay, but it was not going to happen. Not just because of our monkish moral guardian but because if the fight over her lands lingered on, it might end up an embarrassment. I would not want Anne put to the shame of emerging from sanctuary with her belly big with child. The gossips of London would give it no rest for a hundred years.
We did finally kiss in the garden, amidst the herbs and with the smell of earthy soil rising around us; Anne shy and trembling, me with more ardour, and she briefly let me slip my hands under her cloak and caress the sweet curves of her through her garments.
“I will be meeting with George soon, my darling,” I said. “Soon I will have you out of here, and we will be properly wed.”
“I despise George.” She stared at the ground. “Why is he so spiteful? He never told me you came to l’Erber to see me. He told me you had…hundreds of women, just like Edward….like the King.” She swallowed in embarrassment. “Richard, have there been hundreds of others?”
She looked so earnest and so miserable, I was tempted to laugh. I chucked her chin. “No, my lovely, not hundreds, nowhere near.”
“But some.”
“Yes. I am but a weak man, like most men.” I sighed. “Anne, there is to be no falseness between us, do you understand? So I will tell you now, I have two bastard children, John and Katherine. They are fine babes and I have given them my name and sworn to look after them. Once my household is established, I want to make a nursery where they will be well taken care of and schooled. They are of Plantagenet blood, and I am not ashamed of them.”
She was silent for a moment, digesting my confession. Then, “Two…Is their mother beautiful?”
“Mothers,” I said softly. “And yes, both were.”
“Oh.” Anne stared at her folded hands; she blushed.
“Anne…” I touched her cheek. “They are in the past. I swear to you, I will be as faithful as I might. It is not easy when one is away as men must often be, but I will pray to St Anthony for chastity and try my hardest, I promise you.”
“All we can do in our lives is to strive for goodness and repent of our sins,” she said. “I can ask for no more.”
“Yes.” I drew her against my shoulder, kissed her upturned mouth; I saw the monk cast us an evil glare as if he expected us to fornicate on the bench at any moment. Or perhaps he was disappointed that we did not.
“Richard…” Anne opened her eyes wide; they reflected the blue of the heavens. “I…I must speak of other things to you. Tewkesbury. The Prince of Wales…”
I stiffened. At least she did not call him ‘my husband.’
“It was a great victory,” I said dully, not wishing to speak at all of her former position, her short marriage to my enemy. I had a hundred questions I wished to ask her….but they would be unseemly and inappropriate after what she had experienced.
She must have seen my expression become troubled, for she then shook her head. “No, no, forget my words, Richard. Nothing needs to be said. The battle is over; the past is the past…”
“I must go now.” I stood, took her hand, pressed it to my lips, let them linger a moment. “Tomorrow I am to meet with George and the King. Wish me well, my darling. If all goes well, soon it will be our wedding day.”
“I will pray for your success,” she said, and she rose and walked swiftly back into sanctuary with the watchful monk tailing after.
I thought George might soon relent in his obstinacy over my marriage, seeing that I had thwarted his plans and rescued Anne from the tavern. How wrong I was. He was angrier than ever, calling me every name under the sun and even hinting that I must surely have taken advantage of Anne. What I had thought might take a day or two of reasoned argument turned into a week, then two. The fact that Edward had just granted me lands and manors once belonging to the Earl of Oxford made Clarence even more furious and unwilling to debate.
He refused to talk with me alone, and then even in the presence of the King. Such was George’s disdain that Edward decided to call a council and have us argue our individual cases before outsiders; I hated this with great passion, for I lacked George’s eloquence when speaking.
However, George’s envy and wrath was so great, it made his tongue falter and his mean spirit become apparent to all who heard him. Men looked upon me with favour, and shook their heads over George’s stubbornness…but even so, the council suspended judgment on our case. No one wanted to gain the enmity of either Clarence of Gloucester.
The news of the council’s indecision sent me storming in a fury back to my lodgings at Baynard’s. How could they even have any doubt of who was right and who was honourable between my brother and me? George had sent a Dowager princess to a bloody tavern by Christ’s Nails!
Miserably I slumped in a window seat at my mother’s castle, staring out at a sprinkle of snowflakes falling silently from the sky. All of London looked grey; the castle walls, the house on the riverbanks, the great river itself. Grey…dead…cold. It was nigh on Christmas; I had hoped to be heading north to Middleham by now, with Anne as my bride. All I had to look forward to now was Edward’s court celebrations, which, full of proliferating Woodvilles, did not hold much appeal.
There was no helping it, however. I visited Anne as much as was decent, and she was patient and made no complaint, although her Christmas in sanctuary looked like it would be even bleaker than my own.
And so Christmas came, with heavy snow, screaming winds and icicles hanging like daggers from the roof-ledges, and I joined in with Edward’s festivities as I was expected to. Dressed in my finest doublet, gloves and shoes, I sought out Eltham palace, where Ned had retired for the season, the palace being one of his favourite residences around London.
Eltham was a little less than a league from Greenwich, and situated on the road to Maidstone. Once a bishop’s palace of old, it had long since been
appropriated by the crown and each monarch had left his mark upon its structure. Edward was no exception—he was busily renovating the Great Hall to his own taste.
Stepping into the half-finished Hall, decked with green holly and ivy for the season, I could not fail to be impressed. A false hammerbeam roof soared overhead, while more than twenty windows with cinquefoil heads emitted as much light as could be expected in the darkling winter days. There was a minstrel’s gallery, half-constructed, and a high dais with elaborately carved exits to the royal apartments, one for the Queen, and one for the King. The Rose en Soleil blazed above one doorway, and again on glass and on woodwork.
Ned was sitting on his high seat under a canopy set with silver stars, looking exceedingly jolly in a long robe lined with ermine; the Queen, next to him, wore her usual slightly bored and disdainful expression…and a henin that towered like a cathedral spire, quite the most impressive (and faintly ridiculous) one I had ever beheld.
Taking my place, servants brought water in a ewer so that I might lave my hands before dining. The salt cellar was rolled in on wheels and set before the King while trumpets blared. The place heaved with jugglers, tumblers, and maskers, troubadours, fire-eaters, and stilt-walkers; while the rafters rang with the sounds of rebec, viol, fiddle, dulcimer, and psaltery. Bagpipes squealed like stepped-on cats. Drumbeats made the very floor shake.
The tables before me were groaning under the weight of culinary delicacies—swan basted in saffron, mince pies shaped like the crib of the infant Jesus, a confectionary fashioned into a glittering white castle. I danced with the fairest women in attendance and kissed one beneath the mistletoe bound in the doorway, but shook my head and pushed her gently away when she tugged me towards the darkened corridors outside. I was deeply mindful of my promises to Anne.
Thinking of Anne and how she could have been at my side and wasn’t made my mood turn sour. I ate with bad graces, gulped down wine, and watched Edward get drunk with Hastings and the Stanley brothers who I despised, having had bad blood with them over Hornby Castle when I was younger. Soon the drink had rushed to my head, and while the others hooted and laughed like mad men, I became morose and tetchy.
I could hear Anthony Woodville’s voice droning on and on and on as he tortured some awestruck onlookers with his poetry. Near him, a bagpipe player was making a diabolical squealing with his instrument, the sound stabbing into my skull like a dagger. George was out on the floor dancing with Isabel, which made me even more moody. He seemed to be gloating, turning to flash me a savage grin every now and then.
Eventually he left Isabel and drifted towards me. “I thought you did not want to talk to me.” I looked straight ahead, refusing to meet his eyes.
“I just wanted to wish you merriness at the time of Our Lord’s birth,” he retorted. “Nothing so wrong about wishing my brother that, is there?”
“Coming from you, George, yes, there is!”
“Still moping over Anne Neville, brother? Surely, you know you cannot win. You will never have her as long as I have any say in it. Even the council did not agree with you about her.”
“They didn’t agree with you either. How many of them did you pay off, George? I know what you’re like!”
“Find someone more suitable. It’s not hard for you, for reasons I will never understand. Hell, you already have two bastards…that we know about.”
“Bastards they may be, but at least my children are alive!” Eyes flashing, I spun round to face him. It was a cruel jibe, for his first and only child thus far had been born dead on a ship outside Calais harbour. Such viciousness was unworthy of me, but a burning urge to return some of George’s vitriol spurred me on.
He went white. “I will not forget your words!”
“Nor I yours!” I rose and exited the Great Hall in haste before I did something I would regret. Behind me, the bagpipe was still wheezing on, the hurdy gurdy churning.
Outside, with snow skirling round the tips of my boots, I put my head in my hands and groaned. When would this torment never end? I had been given titles, I had been given manors…but suddenly it all seemed futile and empty. One thing I could not have. One thing. One girl.
Frustration and anger ate at me as a rat gnaws the foundations of a house. And for me, that rat was George of Clarence.
Edward had endured enough from both George and I. He ordered us to meet with him at Sheen, to settle the problems of Anne and Isabel’s inheritance for once and for all. George arrived, sulky and dishevelled; casting me evil looks from under lowered brows; I, wearing funereal black, stared back at him, unwavering, with my own displeasure apparent. We circled each other, almost like two beasts, getting the measure of each other. We were alone, in one of the vast hallways of the palace; Edward had not yet risen for the day (he had brought Elizabeth to Sheen with him and we both knew that meant he would be late abed).
“Why do you continue in this manner, George?” I asked. “The King is on my side. You owe me this, I would say. I always spoke well of you to the King while you…were occupied elsewhere.”
“Oh noble, loyal Richard,” sneered George, looking me up and down. “You were always the same. Sanctimonious little prig. Edward always favoured you, you ran around him like a puppy.”
“Well, Margaret favoured you. And our mother. God in His heaven only knows why. You weren’t nice to either of them.”
“They can see my quality.”
I started to sputter with mirth. George was not jesting. He truly believed his own words
“What are you laughing at?” George’s eyes narrowed dangerously; I saw his hands curl into fists.
“If I am a sanctimonious prig, well you must be the most arrogant, thick-headed, brain-boiled dunce I have ever met! The fool of the Plantagenet line. A spurgalled, surly coxcomb.”
I knew I was overstepping myself with George; his temper was infamous, but my own frustration and anger was beginning to boil over.
George’s jaw dropped at my insults, and hectic colour flooded his cheeks. “You will never have Anne Neville,” he snapped. “Never. I shan’t permit it. You will not take my…Isabel’s lands, and you aren’t having that little bitch, though you are both so whey-faced and smug you certainly are well suited! What can you give her anyway, Richard, after she was married to a Prince? You cannot give her a throne. And he was a strapping handsome fellow, unlike my puny, crookbacked brother…”
That was one insult too many. I flung myself at him, my fist sailing towards his startled face. “Christ, Richard, I did not mean…” He tried to squirm away, but my hand smote him under the chin. His head snapped back and he staggered, falling against the wall and taking down a tapestry of a hunt scene.
“Get up!” I snarled. “If it is war you want, George, it is war you will get.”
His own anger flared once more and he sprang up from the floor. Bellowing like the bull that was his emblem, he charged straight at me. I dived in to meet him, grasping the front of his doublet and swinging him around. I stared up into his flushed face, only inches from mine.
“I could kill you, brother,” I snarled. “I was always the better fighter and you know it. I spent time in training while you spent time drinking!”
For the first time, perhaps, he realised how serious I was; that his obstinacy and taunting did not quench my desire to marry Anne, but fueled it instead. “Richard, we can talk about this…”
“I though you had nothing more to say.” I struck him across the face; he fell back a step. “That you would never agree at any price.” I struck him again, leaving a crimson mark on his cheek. “I assumed you would sooner die…”
“Get the hell off me, you bastard!” Recovering from my last blow, he rushed me, and suddenly I saw he had his dagger in his hand.
“Don’t be a fool!” I caught his wrist, twisted. George screamed.
At that moment, there was an earsplitting roar behind us in the corridor. George dropped his dagger with a noisy clatter and we both turned.
Edward was storming towards us, only half-dressed, his shirt barely laced to his parti-coloured hose. His hair was wild and dishevelled and his chin unshaven. He was furious. In fact, I had rarely ever seen him so angry.
“Your Grace, Edward…I…” I stepped in front of him.
“Shut up, Richard!” He grabbed me by the shoulders, lifting me right off my feet, and flung me halfway down the corridor. I hit the wall, yelped in pain as my twisted spine struck stone, and then slumped to the flagstones, winded and gasping.
George fared worse. Edward spotted the dagger on the floor and his face turned the colour of a damson. I had heard legends some of our esteemed Plantagenet ancestors rolling on the rushes and frothing when they were in a temper; in that moment I feared Ned might do the same.
Instead, he bellowed at George, “Clarence, I have had enough. Enough!” He threw a mighty punch, landing hard in George’s stomach, and my brother fell to the floor in a writhing heap. Ned grabbed him by the scruff of the neck, dragged him up, hit him again. “So, what have you to say, George?” he shouted. “Tell me what you have to say! And it had better be the words I want to hear!”
“I say,” gasped George, dangling before the enraged King of England, “that Richard will have his lady, my sister-in-law, but…” Even now, in his precarious position, he held some defiance. “I will part with no livelihood!”
Edward rolled his eyes, but his anger was beginning to abate. Normal colour returned to his suffused face. “Much more seemly, Clarence, if not the perfect answer. Now, I will return to readying myself for the day, and then we shall meet, and finish this businesslike civilized men.”
I, Richard Plantagenet: Book One: Tante le Desiree Page 13
