On an afternoon of February, unseasonably mild, Anne was permitted to walk for a little while in the garden of the guesthouse. The birds had performed their Valentine’s rites and were bustling about their spring duties, and the bare trees were loud with them as Richard made his way to join her. Two ladies, lent by his mother the Duchess of York to attend Anne’s convalescence, gossiped quietly, but Anne stood by an almond tree that was thrusting forth early pink buds, and stared down at the ring of crocuses that encircled the trunk. She looked at him unsmiling as he took her hand with his usual brief pressure.
‘The spring last year,’ she said in real distress, ‘where did it go? I saw none of it. And the summer. I remember nothing. Only heat and cold.’
He kept her hand in his and said, ‘I don’t know. But this year, I promise, there will be spring and summer. In Wensleydale. If you are willing, we shall be married next week.’ She raised her eyes from the golden flames licking from the winter earth to the pale sky between the almond twigs. Then she turned to him.
‘Yes. Yes, that would mend everything.’
It was a modest wedding, celebrated in the privacy of the royal chapel at Westminster. They had sent to the Pope for a dispensation, since they were strictly within the prohibited bounds of kinship, but Richard brushed aside the formality of waiting for it. Since Anne was not yet in the best of health she was grateful for the lack of ceremony, although she shrank nervously from the information that the King would be there. She had not outgrown the dread of the golden giant of her childhood. Yet now he was to give her away as a bride. His intimidating bulk had grown no less, his costume out-glittered the burnished gold of the sacred ornaments, and he tucked her hand most familiarly under his elbow as he led her to the altar.
But he led her to Richard, and fixing her gaze on the slight figure who awaited her, his back stiff with the solemnity of the occasion, her mind was emptied of any other consideration. Now they were side by side, and she could just see his grave profile lifted to the crucifix. Although he seemed to take no notice of her coming she felt the awareness in him and was glad. Not until their hands were joined by the priest did he look at her, and then she was afraid. Such sincerity, such intensity that it was almost grief. His voice shook as he made his vows. She began to repeat her own, those words she had spoken before at Amboise in hollow mockery of their sense, and she saw in Richard’s eyes what it would mean to fulfil them.
She was appalled; she was too weak, she had not the courage to follow where he would lead, to cleave to him in the teeth of destiny. Her responses faltered, and she hovered on the brink of a headlong flight back to St Martin’s and the security of God. But the light clasp tightened, forcing her again to meet his eyes. They smiled at her, steadying her erratic heartbeat, and she continued with her promise to love, honour and obey until the parting of death. As the wedding ring came finally to rest on her fourth finger, she smiled back fearlessly at her husband.
Richard had used the slight irregularity of the marriage to insist upon a minimum of revelry. He had watched Anne suffering through formal banquets as a child, and had no wish to inflict any more on her on this of all days. So, much to the disappointment of King Edward, who would have delighted in lavishing merriment on his favourite brother’s nuptials, there was a quiet wedding-breakfast in the Duke of Gloucester’s apartments attended only by those present at the ceremony. Music in the gallery was provided by the King’s singers, and only now and again were their chansons drowned by a shout of laughter from their royal master.
As soon as he decently could Richard thanked his guests and sent them, with the utmost tact, on their way. His anxious eye on Anne told him that she was already fatigued. The Duchess of York raised her daughter-in-law with cool kindness, speaking her blessing on her future like the benediction of an abbess. In her awe Anne kissed her ring as if she were indeed her mother in God instead of in law.
Edward was the last to leave, and he prevented her from kneeling and enveloped her in his scintillating embrace. As she emerged, panting a little, he said to her husband, ‘You know, Dickon, she still doesn’t trust me.’ Moderating his voice to its most gentle, he turned back to her. ‘Anne, dear maid, if you knew how much I pray for your happiness yours and Dickon’s - I think you would have to trust me.’ He kissed her quickly on the cheek, and departed. For the first time, Anne’s heart warmed a little towards him. Once, he had disturbed her childhood; later, she had dreaded him as a rival for Richard’s devotion. She understood now, in the light of her own security, that that devotion was not one-sided; she could forgive much to anyone who loved Richard.
There were old friends among the small circle of intimates remaining in the Duke’s solar, although they needed to be reintroduced. Frank Lovel, his fair boy’s face lengthened into a man’s, but his hair still unable to decide which way to lie down; John Wrangwysh, taller, more silent; Robert Percy, his belligerence tempered by war in earnest into rather wry restraint. In remembering and placing their boyish characteristics and tracing them through to their present personalities, Anne was absorbed without having to be involved. They did not ignore her; it would have been difficult with their lord sitting on a stool by her knee; but they included her without expecting her to exert herself in any way. It was as if she had never left their company. The years that lay between dwindled to nothing. Her tensions of the early morning were soothed away by the even flow of the conversation and her husband’s nearness. Soon her eyelids were drooping, and the drift of voices was only a pleasing background. When she next looked up, they had all gone except for her two attendants and Richard. Rising from his stool, he helped her to her feet. ‘Time for bed.’ Dropping a kiss on her wrist, he delivered her to the women.
They had wrapped her in the bedgown which was a wedding gift from Richard: full and fleecy-lined, of pale blue velvet trimmed with white fur. After many months of privation she had declared it to be too splendid for her, but he had reminded her of that blue gown which she had worn as a little girl, and asked her to wear this for his sake. Her hair, tangled during the day, had been brushed again, straight down her back and over her shoulders, until the ends flew and crackled; her hands and feet had been bathed in rosewater. Then they had left her, melting into the winter night. She stood by the fire, gazing dreamily into its golden heart, the sensuous comfort of warmth and safety lapping her round. The tiny crack of the flames intensified the peace. So the quiet closing of the door and the soft footfall roused her a little to wonder why one of her women had returned. But it was Richard. He came over to the hearth, and resting his elbow on the overmantel he too contemplated the fire. An inexplicable tremor of disquiet ran through her tranquillity. She knew that there was a restraint between them, and that he was searching for something to say. Finding it, he spoke stiltedly, not to her but into the fire.
‘I’m glad you accepted the gown. The hue becomes you so well. I chose it on purpose, Anne.’ Suddenly there was her name, in the intimate tone that never failed to move her. He had turned to her now, his brown eyes deep in the subdued light. Her restraint melting away, she went to him and he took her in his arms. This was all her desire, to be encompassed by such tenderness, to be so shielded from the rawness of life that it could never hurt her again. Through the sweetsmelling darkness of velvet and musk, his hand moved softly over her hair, caressing her as the sun had caressed the fur of the little cat in the cloisters of Valognes. He tipped up her face and kissed her brow, and then her closed eyelids, and the tip of her nose, and her lips, and with a firm gentle gesture he pressed her cheek again to his shoulder. She snuggled closer.
She could blissfully have died thus, and indeed time ceased to matter; she had no consciousness of its passing. But she became aware, at some point in her eternity, that Richard had changed. He was no longer at rest. And she caught the sense of the words he was murmuring.
‘We must go to bed.’ Coming back by degrees to the candlelit chamber, she found her husband holding her by the shoulders, and the fire
sinking to embers. ‘Will you let me be your handmaiden?’ he said lightly, and unfastened the girdle of her gown. She was quite back in her bedchamber now, her feet in the fur of the rug, one of the candles guttering, the air chilly as the layers of rich stuff slipped from her. ‘You’re shivering,’ said Richard solicitously. ‘Into bed before you take a fever.’ And he turned back the sheet and plumped the pillows and helped to make her comfortable, for all the world as if he were her old monk at St Martin’s.
But he was not, and when he had snuffed out every candle but one, instead of leaving her to sleep he came back after a moment divested of his dark red gown and joined her in the bed. Anne lay in suspended animation; somewhere very close still was that beautiful state from which she had barely emerged, but beyond it lurked another possibility which was slowly, inexorably, possessing her. Richard drew together the heavy gold hangings on his side of the bed, and smiled across at her reassuringly. They were alone in a tiny chamber with brocade walls, lit softly by the single candle. All the security in the world should have been contained there. Yet instead there was this monstrous growth of dread, within and all about her. As Richard leaned over to put out the candle it came horribly to birth. The curtains at the foot of the bed were stirring. Anne flung herself into a sitting position.
‘Is anybody there?’ she called in a high strange voice. Swiftly Richard was with her, his arm round her.
‘What is it, Anne? No one is there.’
‘Yes,’ she whispered, starting eyes fixed on the join of the curtains. ‘He’s there. Watching us.’
‘There’s no one,’ repeated Richard firmly, and with the decision of a practical man he demonstrated it. All the curtains were drawn back, each corner of the chamber illuminated in turn, and then the doors bolted. Coming back, he stood beside the bed in his nightshirt, candle held steady, and said once more quietly, ‘You see, there is no one here but us.’ Then he closed the bed-curtains again and returned to his place with Anne. She was scarcely less rigid against his chest than she had been before. ‘Who did you think it was, dear love?’ he asked very gently, and for a long while he had no more response than a slight shaking of her head.
At last, as he persisted, she murmured, ‘He was sent to spy on us. De Josselin.’
‘De Josselin?’ Richard spoke the name as if it was completely unknown to him, but then he remembered. ‘King Louis’ agent? But he’s not even in England, Anne. He was recalled by his master as soon as … your father died. I believe the King is employing him now on missions to Milan. You have no cause to fear him, of all people.’ His rationality made some impression on her. She was trembling now.
‘No, not this time. Before. He was there. And my ... the Prince ordered him out.’
Richard comprehended, and swallowed down his disgust, for his wife was in a pitiable enough state without his becoming upset. ‘That was last year. You don’t suspect me of playing you so false, do you?’
‘No. No, not you. You would never leave me, would you?’
She had gone beyond him again, but he held her more tightly and said, ‘Of course not. You can trust me, Anne.’
‘Yes.’ She realised that she had been subject to an hallucination, but the terror of it was not all dispersed. It was not only that manifestation on her first wedding night, not only the humiliation of being abandoned in her marriage bed. Without her noticing, Richard had eased her down on to the pillows, and he began almost imperceptibly to caress her. What had happened on that night when she was Prince Edward’s bride was a mystery, and perhaps for his own peace of mind it should remain so. The thought of Anne’s being defiled in any way was insupportable. But it had hurt her profoundly, and there was only one way to heal her: to extinguish its image for ever with his love. She was still trembling, but she had relaxed and he was encouraged to believe that the worst was over. Tenderness for her vulnerability rose in him, and he snuffed the candle with one hand without taking the other from her hair.
She was allowing herself to be gentled like a nervous horse, and the sweet oblivion was creeping over her again, obliterating ugly memories, when she became conscious of his fingers inside her shift, touching her breast. The sensation was oddly pleasurable, yet it did not soothe her as his other caresses had done. His fingers were stroking lower, beneath the coverlet, and then fumbling for the hem of her shift. She opened her eyes on darkness, and was suddenly and coldly awake. Sensing it at once, Richard stopped.
‘What is it, dear heart?’ he asked, but she could not tell him. He tried to go on, but there was no response. Her softness, her earlier yielding to his embrace, had disappeared, leaving her an inanimate body under his hands. It was out of his experience. He had not expected to rouse her as quickly as Marja, but he had not foreseen this, and he was at a loss. As for Anne, how could she explain that all his dear familiarity had in that instant become alien, so that they were no longer his caresses? Other people drifted near her, and they were smiling slyly down at her: Isabel, King Louis, de Josselin, and, more distinct than the others, the Duke of Clarence. Vivid little scenes from her past were re-enacted in her head, irrelevant, nonsensical, and yet each of them was more real to her than the shadowy husband who strove to reawaken her body and to reach her absent mind.
In the end, he left the bed again to fetch the flagon of wine and two goblets placed by some thoughtful attendant on the table. Pouring a cupful for Anne, he made her drink it all before he took his own, although he needed it more. Dispirited and physically weary, he had used every blandishment which Marja had taught him, and more that he had discovered himself, and to no avail. Even so, his tenderness for her remained constant. In the rekindled candle flame her face was so pallid, the hollows in her cheeks so pronounced, that he was in danger of weeping for her. They spoke very little, but once more he had submerged the lover in the nurse. And she, obediently swallowing her second cup of wine, wondered that the Richard she knew had reappeared.
So it was through a haze of alcohol that Anne lost her virginity. She remembered nothing of it afterwards except Richard showering kisses on her and muttering, ‘I was first, and I shall be best, I promise you, sweetest Anne.’ He also was rather drunk.
Waking in a frosty dawn, she found her husband propped on his elbow beside her, watching her anxiously.
‘How is it with you this morning?’
‘I have a headache,’ she said.
‘Is that all?’ Puzzled, she answered that it was, and a brief grin flashed across his sombre features. ‘Then there’s hope for the future,’ he said, with which cryptic remark he kissed her and rose to don his bedgown.
She did not see much of him that day. They had agreed while she was still in sanctuary that they should travel up to Yorkshire at the earliest opportunity, and there were many things for Richard to attend to. But Anne had no time to brood about the events of the night, for to her surprise she was constantly in demand. A stream of visitors asked for audience, and they bore with them wedding gifts and good wishes from the most unexpected quarters. An alderman from Warwick, her birthplace, brought the duty of his corporation and a chest of carved Arden oak; the Staple of Calais sent a self-assured merchant with a length of fine woollen cloth; and there were others, of more or less importance. She did her best to receive them courteously and with gratitude, although she was unsure of herself in the presence of so many strangers. All her life she had been surrounded by homage, yet never before had it been paid directly to her in her own right, and she did not know how to accept it. And of course it was not she that they were honouring, but the King’s brother, the new lord of the North. She was acting on behalf of her husband, and the thought of even that responsibility made her quail. Anne Neville had been a cypher or a nobody. The Duchess of Gloucester was the third lady in the land. The Duke of Gloucester returned in time to take supper with his wife, and found a slightly bemused Anne, picking at her pigeon pie.
‘All those people,’ she said with awe. ‘How they must love you.’
‘Perh
aps.’ He signed to a page to replace the uneaten pie with honey-cakes. ‘I am a craven to go abroad on business and leave you here with the diplomatic duties. Did they tire you?’ She denied it, but not very emphatically, and Richard frowned.
‘We could say you were unwell, that you must keep your chamber for a few days...’
‘No! I’m quite well. Simply unaccustomed to such things.’ He must not think that she had failed him through inadequacy, on the very first day.
He was satisfied, because he nodded, and said, ‘Well, I have brought a little compensation for you.’ One of his henchmen came forward, and he took a box from him and laid it in Anne’s lap. There were holes in the lid, and with a child’s curiosity she held her breath as she opened it. The lining was blue satin, and in the soft nest of the interior was a white bundle of fur with ears. As the light fell on it the bundle uncurled, thrust out one small paw with all claws spread, and opened a rose-pink mouth in a miniature but gigantic yawn. Anne could only gasp, and at length her husband picked up the kitten and placed it, limbs sprawling, in her arms.
‘Its dam came from Persia,’ he explained. ‘And the scoundrel who sold it to me swears on the tomb of his fathers that she was the Queen’s pet cat. So you hold the child of a queen’s queen.’ Anne would not let it go. The miracle which had happened all those years ago, when the half-dead alley kitten had begun to purr in her hands, had happened again. The tiny pink nose pushed against her own, the violet eyes closed in ecstasy, and the triangular tail stood erect as she tickled its chin. There was no question about its name. Kat slept in its mistress’s chamber and was appallingly spoiled, which being a royal kitten it took as its due.
The White Queen of Middleham: An historical novel about Richard III's wife Anne Neville (Sprigs of Broom Book 1) Page 22
