The White Queen of Middleham: An historical novel about Richard III's wife Anne Neville (Sprigs of Broom Book 1)

by Lesley Nickell

  ‘You surely didn’t imagine that I was going to lie with you? Let that French fox believe it if he will, and report it to whom he will. I’m not going to waste my seed on an earl’s younger daughter for his benefit, or his employers’.’ Anne caught her breath, and he took up one of the candlesticks. The pale light flowed over his hard young face. ‘Yes, I’m going. Don’t expect me to share your bed again. We have been forced to keep this bargain, but there is no guarantee that Warwick will keep faith. He’s too fond of power to be trusted. When we have taken England from him, I must be free to mate according to my station.’ His mother’s imperious voice, instilling statecraft, echoed behind his own.

  ‘Anyway,’ he added, and now he was all arrogant young man, ‘I doubt if I’d find much pleasure inside you. Or get a healthy son on you, to judge by your sister’s achievement.’ He stalked off to a low door in the arras, and the tapestry fell soundlessly behind him.

  The wave of humiliation that engulfed her was so powerful that she thought she would die of it. Sleep was long in releasing her.

  It was no secret, she was sure. The Prince had been acting on orders in leaving her, and not only de Josselin would have guessed the truth. Her waiting-women, for instance, dressing a grey-faced bride the morning after her wedding, had not needed to strip the bed to read the situation. Their attitude to her, outwardly more obsequious, was slyly charged with a sort of triumph. Throughout the court it was repeated, especially among the English ladies in Margaret’s train. Some had been with her for years, living in penury and exile because their husbands or fathers had fought for Lancaster and had rejected or been refused the victorious Yorkists’ pardon. Small wonder that they were hostile to the girl who had come to take the highest place among them, richly clad and provided for by the lord who was the author of their hardship. Small wonder, too, that when she was virtually repudiated by her husband at the outset of their marriage, they should rejoice in it. And so the confirmation of her status made her life even more comfortless.

  Edward no longer ignored her. He seemed in a contrary way to believe that he had asserted himself; he shed his diffidence and became quite jocular towards her. The jesting remarks he made were usually at her expense, or that of her father. Anne could not tell if these refinements of behaviour were authorised or not. Since the Queen maintained her lofty indifference, she was inclined to think that they were his own invention. Her only defence was to pretend she neither heard nor felt the pinpricks. At night she lay alone in the ceremonial bed, and its privacy was some small compensation for its shame.

  Before long they were heading north-east for Paris. There was no welcome for them in the sullen winter towns on their route. The Prince, riding through streets full of citizens busily intent on their own doings, clenched his hand on his rein and muttered, ‘When I am king France will be mine again, and then they shall show me some respect.’ Anne caught a glimpse of the dark brows drawn together and the bitter line of his mouth, and trembled for the towns if they should ever surrender to his mercy. They paused in Paris, and then pushed on towards the north. She did not need the ubiquitous de Josselin to inform her that they were making for the coast and England. At Dieppe they halted, within sight of the dull slaty sea, and waited.

  For what, nobody seemed to know. Over the Channel, the English had submitted to Warwick’s rule in the name of King Henry. All Margaret had to do to regain the throne she had fought for through ten tireless years was to cross those few miles of sea and accept it. But she did not. There was no sign of their embarking, and after some weeks of busy aimlessness the whole company moved inland.

  The itinerant life continued through January. Margaret paced between the towns of Normandy as a man would pace a room, impatient to be doing and yet lacking the resolution to do it. Her court trailed after her, spirits dropping and tempers rising with each depressing day. De Josselin was overtly displeased. He reported to Anne in the Queen’s presence with deliberately raised voice that the Duke of Burgundy had received Edward of York and the Duke of Gloucester in Bruges, and that he had promised troops and ships to them. The fact that the Duke of York - as he was known in Lancastrian circles - might be preparing to invade England did nothing to stir his greatest rival to positive action. One person at any rate had no doubt of the reason.

  ‘It is your father’s fault.’ The Prince threw it at Anne during dinner. She put down her knife, sensing unpleasantness to come. ‘He should have come to meet us.’ She was stung into defence of her father, who had never failed to accomplish his purposes, however extraordinary they might be.

  ‘My lord Earl is holding London for you, sire. He can’t be in two places at once.’

  A little taken aback at being answered at all, Edward said defensively, ‘Then he should send one of his brothers. We can’t cross the Channel without an armed escort, not with the Burgundian fleet at sea. Besides, it’s not right for the Queen of England and the Prince of Wales to sidle into some port without proper preparation for our welcome. We should be given a royal reception.’ His eyes flashed a challenge to his wife, but she was intent upon the wine in her goblet.

  ‘I’m sure my father knows his duty in honouring you, your grace,’ she said quietly. It did not occur to her to include herself in the royal reception.

  In February they came to rest at Honfleur. The ships collected again in the harbour; some stores were embarked, and even a few of the men-at-arms. But once more the Queen delayed. Officially, a contrary wind was holding up the sailing. March came, and with it news that the Duke of Burgundy was fitting up a fleet at Flushing for King Edward’s return to England. Serious strife erupted at the centre of the exiled court. The Queen and the Prince were closeted for hours with their advisers. When they emerged, an aura of frustration clung heavily about them, the royal pair with their mouths set in similarly obstinate lines, the counsellors glaring at each other or at the floor. The impatience of the lords was echoed through the lower orders. Several soldiers and one gentleman were killed or wounded as they vented their overwrought feelings in street fights.

  And the silent persecution of the Princess of Wales intensified. For some reason that nobody could quite fathom, the Earl of Warwick was to blame for their present detention. Because the culprit was out of reach, his daughter was a convenient scapegoat. If she had not been to some extent inured to her treatment the new wave of resentment directed at her would have been very hard to bear. Instead, she too began to long for England. Since Valognes she had not dared to look to the future; she expected little from it now. But at least her father was in England. What he could do to improve her lot she shied from considering: recognition of her marriage would only mean the worse evil of consummation. It would be enough that they stood upon the same soil. Her faith in him still survived.

  Finally it was Margaret’s hatred of Edward of York that drove her to the ships. While she squabbled with her advisers and rode restlessly along the quayside where the ships lay idle, the Yorkist armada sailed. Whatever her doubts, her conflicts of pride and ambition and fear, to which only her son had the key, she could not endure the thought that the usurper should return before her. On the same day that the news came to her, she ordered embarkation in a passion which swept away her vacillation. The Prince was jubilant.

  ‘I thank the saints that we have waited till now,’ he said to his mother, his dark eyes glistening. ‘Please God there’s a chance that I may meet the archer’s bastard in battle, and kill him myself.’

  ‘Please God it will not come to that,’ retorted the Queen. ‘If there is any justice in heaven, he will in truth be drowned this time.’ Anne was perplexed by the exchange until she worked out that the archer’s bastard must be King Edward. She had heard her husband called a bastard by the Duke of Clarence, but she had not realised that the mud of scandal was flung so liberally.

  The new alacrity of its leaders was not enough to launch the expedition immediately. Some of the soldiers were scattered around the neighbourhood, pilfering, poaching,
or just wandering; many of the seamen had gone home, and it took time to muster them in Honfleur. It was a week before the Lancastrian fleet left the harbour. And once they were in open water, they were struck by the full force of the excuse which had kept them so long in Normandy. The wind which had blown Edward of York from Flushing to Cromer in one day kept Queen Margaret at sea for three weeks.

  They landed at last at Weymouth on Easter Day. A feeble advance guard of the Lancastrian leaders attended Confession and High Mass in the parish church. Above them, after a long delay and remonstrance with the mayor of the town, the bells were pealing a belated welcome to the Queen of England and the Prince and Princess of Wales. The weather-beaten ships were still straggling into the harbour when they learned of the reason for Weymouth’s frowardness. It was news that struck hard at the morale of the storm-tossed travellers, and turned Margaret of Anjou white to the lips with fury. While they had been drifting with the wind about the English Channel there had been a revolution in the state of affairs in England. Edward of York was ranging the Midlands with a powerful army at his back; deserted by his son-inlaw Clarence, the Earl of Warwick was last heard of besieged in his city of Coventry.

  How this appalling situation had come about was obscure, but the Queen did not wait to find out. Quartering herself at Cerne Abbey, she threw herself into a frenzy of activity. The Prince was always at her side, or running errands for her, his normally sullen face transfigured with the desire to do her service. Yet Anne noticed that although he was turned seventeen, he never took any initiative himself. Perhaps, belying his looks, he had a little of his father in him after all. It was not likely to endear him to his wife at this late stage. No one talked of King Henry now; only of revenge upon his usurper who had so disgracefully beaten all odds to contend once more for the crown.

  The Queen and her train were on the quay, supervising the unloading of a small cannon, when a horseman joined them, so travelgrimed that his livery was indistinguishable. He went straight to Margaret, urging his horse unceremoniously between her and the gentleman she was speaking to. Anne was too far away to hear what was said, but she saw the Queen start forward as the man delivered his message, clutching at his saddle-skirts as if for support. The next moment she glanced over her shoulder, swiftly, almost involuntarily, and straight at Anne; the messenger’s eyes followed hers. As if she were being immersed in icy water Anne felt herself being drawn into their conference. And by some trick of the fitful breeze, a few scraps of it drifted to her ears.

  ‘... at Barnet,’ said the man, ‘... and his brother the Lord Montagu.’ In answer to a question from Margaret he shook his head: ‘… no doubt... dead.’

  When Margaret had finished with him she gestured him towards her daughter-in-law. He went down on one knee before Anne where she stood stiffly beside a coil of hawser, and told her that the Earl of Warwick had been defeated and killed by Edward of York at Barnet north of London on Easter Day.

  She looked over his head at the dim shape of Portland Bill, hunched in the sea fret, the oily water lapping between hull and quay, the squat cottages creeping up the cliff. These could be no less real than her father. If they still existed, then so did he. She knew the news was not true.

  3: INTO LIMBO

  They dressed her in black, though Warwick would have told them that it was a colour unbecoming to her complexion. Mass was said for his soul by the Queen’s chaplain, and she could

  not take the words seriously. Prince Edward was beside her, representing his mother, who had kept her chamber. At the end he said to her, ‘You’re not weeping, madame. Are you not grieved for your lord father?’

  She turned her head and met his eyes steadily. ‘You told me a lie before. Why should I believe you now?’

  His gaze wavered, uncertain of her meaning, and then his jaw tightened and he said, ‘As you will. The Queen my mother has taken it ill, but for myself, I’m glad he’s gone. Now we can win our own victory over the usurper, and share the glory with no one.’ Anne disdained to reply, thinking of how his young bravado would soon quail before the cool regard of the Earl of Warwick.

  The army marched; Anne went with it. Her interest in its progress was minimal. Along the roads the hedgerows were showing green, and at any moment her father would appear under the red and white banner of the bear and ragged staff. She did not notice the new grimness in the Queen’s expression, the desperation with which she flogged her forces northwards to meet the promised Welsh reinforcements. Peasants ran away from them, the streets of the towns they entered were strangely deserted; there was no resistance and no enemy. Anne fancied that the Lancastrian fleet had sunk in the Channel

  - they were all in Purgatory and it was their ghosts the people fled. The Earl would wait in vain for their coming, and perhaps he would make Clarence Henry’s heir, and Isabel would be Queen after all.

  Anne herself might indeed have been a ghost for all the notice taken of her. The pretence that her husband slept with her was abandoned; she like the other ladies lay nightly on a pallet in whatever chamber was allotted to the Queen. By day she rode with them, somewhere in the heart of the Lancastrian army, and even the hostility was gone. They had forgotten her. She gazed at the springing countryside and reflected that if she left the column and went to seek her father nobody would be the wiser; but she felt it was too much trouble.

  Insulated by her separation, she did not share the apprehension which stalked the Queen’s forces. Few volunteers were joining them, and reinforcements were slow to come in. Before they reached Bristol they learned that Edward had left London with his two brothers and an army fully reconstituted after its losses at Barnet. Captains and ladies, recruits and men-at-arms, knew the legendary speed of his marches, and the pace of their own journey quickened, despite the dragging feet of the infantry and the drooping heads of the horses. Margaret and her son rode up and down the column shouting encouragement, assuring their men that all would be well once they crossed the Severn at Gloucester and joined with Lord Pembroke in Wales.

  Anne too was deadly weary, but she had seen it before: the menace of the swift golden warrior over the nearby hill, the fear that spurred them along the road, the hope that safety lay round its next turning. Perhaps Warwick was waiting to take King Edward in the rear, which was why he had not made himself known to his allies before?

  At Gloucester their unimpeded progress met a check. Margaret’s scouts came back to report that the city had closed its gates against them. Outwardly undismayed by the foiling of her plans, the Queen addressed her demoralised men.

  ‘The usurper thinks to prevent us from crossing Severn,’ she cried, the resonance of her accented voice reaching far back into the ranks. ‘He may have cowed his good people of Gloucester, but he has no power over those who serve the true King. We will go on; there is another bridge in a short march, at Tewkesbury.’ Then she wheeled her horse and kicked it into a tired canter, defying her troops not to follow her lead.

  It was late afternoon before the tower of Tewkesbury Abbey was sighted. The army shuffled to a standstill again while scouts went forward and the Queen conferred with her captains. Men-at-arms dismounted and threw themselves on the grass which grew lush and damp between the two roads from Gloucester. They were too tired now to fear the enemy.

  A page in the Duke of Somerset’s livery was zigzagging through the scattered troops, rounding up the Queen’s ladies like a sheepdog. He brought them to a house off the road; wagons were being unloaded and the baggage carried inside. In a long low upstairs room Margaret and her commanders stood round a crude map on a table. As Anne was led through they were wrangling fiercely.

  ‘There’s no time to cross with York less than ten miles away.’

  ‘Under correction, my lord of Somerset, if we begin now the army could all be over by midnight. Edward will not attack before dawn.’

  ‘My men are weary, sire,’ said the Queen. ‘They must have rest.’

  ‘My lord of Wenlock is familiar with the habi
ts of the usurper,’ Somerset broke in sarcastically, ‘and in a mighty hurry to run away from him.’ There was a rattle of steel as Wenlock laid his hand on his dagger, and glancing back from the far end of the room Anne saw Margaret move swiftly between the two glowering noblemen. A leather curtain dropped over the scene, but her voice still penetrated.

  ‘None of us is afraid of the usurper. We shall face him and fight if he challenges us.’

  ‘Yes, it’s time he was taught who is master in England,’ the Prince added hotly. There was a chorus of agreement, and the conference sank below hearing.

  The ladies were all asleep, fully clothed on their pallets; Anne was beyond fatigue. She sat hugging her knees while the blue square of sky in the dormer window and the sounds of bivouacking faded. Next door the council of war went on and on, voices rising and ebbing in the growing dusk. Anne did not think she could rest in such proximity to a man like Lord Wenlock, the Captain of Calais who had so treacherously kept them from landing when Isabel was in labour. He had been the cause of Anne’s ordeal and her sister’s suffering, and he had betrayed the Earl of Warwick. What kind of success could Margaret expect when her army was led by such men?

  She lay down and closed her eyes, but sleep was nowhere near. When she next turned her head towards the leather curtain, light was trickling round the edges from a candle in the room beyond. The conversation had ceased, but it was still occupied, for a board creaked regularly as if someone were pacing up and down. There was no sound of the fall of boots, and Anne suspected that it was the Queen who walked to and fro, like her daughter-in-law unable to find any repose.