‘He’s wearing the livery of Hastings, madame!’ her son’s voice broke in on her troubled thought. ‘Look. Or, a maunch gules.’
‘Is it, Ned?’ she said absently, although normally she would have been impressed by the boy’s erudition. The rider had dismounted and Richard quickened his pace to meet him.
‘I’ve never seen it before,’ Edward continued eagerly, ‘but I have it in my manual.’ It was indeed an unknown sight in Wensleydale, the livery of the King’s chamberlain, Lord Hastings. Richard was talking to the courier now, and even at a distance of twenty yards Anne saw the way in which her husband was suddenly still. The messenger went on speaking and Richard remained rigid with his back to her until, apparently in the middle of a sentence, he turned on his heel and walked rapidly towards the steps of the keep. Hastings’ man remained irresolute, watching the Duke until he disappeared within the keep, and then decided to follow him. There were few people about to witness the incident. A groom came forward to take charge of the hardridden horse which stood trembling with its head low where its owner had left it. Anne met Katherine’s eyes and was dismayed to find in them the same dread that was in hers. At a slow pace which pretended that there was nothing amiss, they went after the Duke. He stood by the ring of stones in the centre of the great hall where the firewood lay ready for kindling in the evening; a page was leaving him at a run, but Richard did not move. Although his face was only a blur, Anne had no need to go closer to read it. She had seen him look so before.
People were beginning to congregate in the hall, scenting news, and they stationed themselves in clusters around the walls, as if for protection, hardly speaking, their eyes only turning in enquiry from their fellows to their silent lord. Gentlemen, pages, cooks, scullions; they waited for the announcement, and none of them had the courage to ask for it. Only one of the hounds, distracted from its private business by the tension, trotted up to the Duke, looked up at his unresponsive master, curled up at his feet with a bored sigh and closed its eyes.
Anne was pinned to the spot like the others by the swollen silence, her hand in her foster-daughter’s, and perhaps they might have remained there in ignorance until dark if her son had not stepped forward, still carrying his silver-mounted mazer. He looked up at his father, much as the hound had done, and asked, ‘What has happened, sire?’
Starting at the clear treble, so carefully controlled that there was no anxiety in it, Richard met the boy’s eyes and then his gaze travelled beyond him, round the apprehensive ranks of his household.
‘The King is dead,’ he said. A shocked murmur like a cold wind ran through the hall. ‘His son the Prince of Wales is now our sovereign lord. My royal brother was pleased to appoint me by his will as the new King’s protector during his minority.’ The wind rose again, confused, agitated, uncertain, and once more Richard’s voice cut across it decisively. ‘There will be a mass sung after Vespers for the health of King Edward’s soul.’ Immediately he made for the door of the great chamber, and certain of his gentlemen detached themselves from the crowd as at a given signal and made after him.
Those with no task to perform were left with their bewilderment, aimless movements and half-finished phrases, not knowing what to think or what to do, only that something of more moment even than the passing of a great king was come upon them. Anne did not speak or move, except to draw Katherine closer to her side. Her understanding of the cataclysm was no more than the attendants’ and menials’ who milled unhappily around her, but her knowledge was far deeper. Edward came back to them, his fair face troubled.
‘My royal uncle was so strong... I thought he would live for ever. Why should God take him now?’ He had seen the King his namesake only once five years ago, but that glimpse, fed by Richard’s devotion, had created a hero in the boy’s mind to stand beside his father in the ranks of greatness.
‘God’s purpose is beyond our reasoning, my lord,’ said Katherine piously.
‘Beyond reason …’ Anne’s heart repeated, and longed with fruitless intensity for the idyllic ignorance of an hour before, the butts and the sunshine and her son’s winning arrow, and for that to be made eternal.
It was too terrible to be thought of, and with her old childish habit she pushed it all away into the future and disregarded it. Even the mass for the dead King was to her a memorial of a man who had always unsettled her, yet whom she had learned to respect and trust for her husband’s sake; nothing to do with Richard and Ned and their life together at Middleham. But the thing thrust itself on her at length, when Richard came to her chamber very late from a council meeting hastily called. Expecting to find her asleep he had not brought a light. For a time he paced to and fro in the sinking glow of the fire, stopping occasionally with his foot on the hearth-stone to gaze searchingly into the embers.
Through the drawn-back curtains on that side of the bed Anne lay and watched him. At length she said quietly, ‘You will be leaving soon?’
He looked across at her in the darkness and answered with the same neutrality, ‘Within the week, if affairs can be arranged in the time. I must be in London to receive the new King when he comes from Ludlow. And no doubt everything will be at sixes and sevens. I shall be needed.’
Needed... through the night her silence cried out to him, And we need you too. All she said was, ‘Strange that my lord of Hastings should send you word.’
He came to sit on the bed, seeking and covering with his own the clenched hand that lay on the coverlet. ‘Not really. He must regard himself as temporarily responsible for the administration - and the Queen Mother would not waste a messenger on me.’ That was very true; the rapacious Elizabeth Woodville, backed by her tribe of grasping kinsfolk, had no love for the Duke of Gloucester, especially since he had accused her openly of poisoning King Edward’s mind against his brother Clarence.
‘Will she make mischief, Richard?’
‘She will have no means. Edward did not mention her in his will.’ The name of the dead King killed their stilted efforts at conversation. A long dragging while they remained still, contemplating or not contemplating the doom that had fallen on them. When Anne spoke again, it was to take refuge in the past.
‘I am glad that Ned won his mazer. He has practised so hard.’
‘Yes, he has a flair for archery. But he must learn to loose more swiftly; at present he’s wasting his energy in the aiming.’
‘He will learn.’ There was no safety in words, for this topic also led towards the prospect which sooner or later they would be forced to face - the tearing apart, in one direction or another, of their little family. In the renewed silence, loneliness greater than she had known since before her marriage weighed upon her, and only the contact with Richard, and his barely visible outline, kept it from crushing her. The need for his closeness, for the physical pressure of his arms about her and his body upon hers, rose into desperation; it was the one thing that would blot out what had happened and what would happen. Unable to contain herself longer, she whispered, ‘Richard, please ...’ His grip tightened and he leaned forward as if to read her face in the dark. ‘Make love to me.’ He said nothing, but gathered her to him, wrapping her inside his bedgown. They laboured hard to expel from that night the demons of the past and future, and in the harmony of two hearts and bodies long attuned they achieved it. Afterwards, when it was nearly dawn, it was he who lay in the shelter of her arms, as if she were protecting him.
There followed the most wretched week of her life - the most wretched because, with the clarity of eleven years’ happiness at Middleham, she could see exactly what was being shattered. To lose what she now enjoyed was ten times worse, she felt, than the miseries she had suffered in France and London. With his usual efficiency Richard set about preparing for the journey south. The activities which had as far back as memory reached caused Anne’s heart to sink set the castle thrumming. John Kendall was often closeted with the Duke, and the resultant letters were borne towards all corners of Yorkshire summoning the lord o
f the North’s retainers and friends to the rendezvous at York, and farther also to the young King’s governor Lord Rivers at Ludlow. Messengers came the other way too, and one arrived wearing the same red sleeve on a gold ground that had begun it all. There was no noticeable stepping-up of the preparations, but Richard looked more withdrawn at dinner and Kendall was with him for three hours in the afternoon.
Anne’s suspicions were apparently well founded, he told her that evening, pacing restlessly as he was apt to do these days when they were alone. Queen Elizabeth was showing signs of trying to seize the regency for herself.
‘My lord Hastings urges me to come quickly,’ Richard said, ‘but I have no means of telling whether he sends the plain truth, or whether he distorts it from jealousy of the Queen. If only word would come from the council.’
‘If there’s danger, Richard, should you not muster an army to go with you?’
‘An army? There’s no need for one. There was bound to be confusion with my brother dying so suddenly - the factions at court would waste no time in springing at each other’s throats.’ The unaccustomed cynicism of his tone held the knowledge that soon he would be among them, and responsible for reconciling them. Then, returning to his normal decisiveness, he went on, ‘They will respect my authority when I arrive. I have written to the Queen, and to the council expressing my readiness to perform my brother’s will. And I warned them to maintain the peace and the law of the land in the interim.’ There seemed to be no doubt in his mind that, two hundred miles away as he was, the Queen and the royal council would obey him. He bent to trim a smoking candle, and in its sudden light Anne saw confidence in his face beneath the strain of still-fresh grief. It came to her, with a new awareness that was frightening in its disloyalty, that he was being naïve. He had been too long away from the deadly duplicities of Westminster, and perhaps his natural optimism had underestimated them. She, who had not set foot in London since her marriage, had not forgotten, and she was no optimist.
Yet the next day another courier brought an offer of aid which apparently reinforced Richard’s confidence. A powerful ally, placing himself and an armed band of followers at the Protector’s disposal: the Duke of Buckingham. Anne had scarcely heard of him, never met him; he had shown no earlier signs of friendship to the Duke of Gloucester. Richard sent a grateful acceptance, and said that his support was a straw in the wind.
Robert Percy remarked drily, ‘I would that all straws were as mighty!’ and everyone laughed. But in Anne the chill sense of danger continued to grow.
When all was ready for departure Richard had still received no formal summons to assume the Protectorship, and he determined to leave without it, sure of its meeting him on the road. Anne had said nothing to hold him back, and neither had mentioned the place of herself and their son in his plans. With a lesser trust in him she would have thought he had forgotten them. Even so, not until their last night did he speak, suddenly, out of the darkness of their quiet bed, and she knew that their separation had been one of the hardest decisions weighing on him, this past endless, pitifully brief week.
‘Anne. Will you come to me, when I send for you?’
‘Yes, Richard,’ she said, but after a pause, ‘What of Ned?’
Although he did not answer at once, it was not because he had not considered it before. ‘It will soon be summer. If he’s well enough, and you judge he can stand the journey, then bring him too. But his health must be the main consideration.’
It was unfair of him, to pass the choice to her. She almost protested, and acknowledged as she drew breath that he could do no other, so she merely said, ‘Of course.’
‘I shall send as soon as the situation is clear. We can live at Crosby’s Place. It’s a beautiful house. I hoped I might show it to you one day ... although not in such circumstances.’ He groped for her hand and, finding it, crushed it in his. ‘I shall need you, dear heart.’
So he rode away, and she found herself, bewildered, surrounded at his departure by a jubilant throng. Wrapped in her own forebodings, she had lost touch with the temper of the household. Mourning for their late King had been sincere, and it was still manifest in the absence of gay pennants, the black garb of Richard’s train. But now they had put off their sorrow, and sent their lord on his way with shouts of goodwill that pursued him along the road through the sweet spring air. What to Anne was a journey of peril and dread was to them a journey of triumph. The Duke of Gloucester, friend and benefactor to all the North Country, conqueror of the audacious Scots, was given his rightful place as defender of the new young King and ruler of England in his name. The henchmen, who had been left behind, were the shrillest in their delight, and as soon as the twist of the hilly road took the Duke out of sight, they must rush with a tattoo of flat feet for the battlements to watch him further. Edward, caught up in their enthusiasm, would not be left behind, but as he sped away he threw over his shoulder, ‘Mother - Kate - you must come.’
Wishing he would not run, wondering why they were all so merry at such a sad farewell, she followed, with the more energetic of her ladies. In small heaving knots, the boys jostled for places in the embrasures, except that they made way without complaining for Lord Edward, although he had gained the parapet last. Yet even when Anne joined them, minutes later, she could tell from the heaving of his shoulders how the climb had tired him. Sick at heart she stood behind them, hearing their comments and the yells they still sent uselessly after the distant cavalcade through dulled ears, until a soft furtive sound beside her took her attention. Obedient as always to her half-brother, Katherine had come too, but she was far from joining in his sentiments, or those of her full brother John, who was leaning perilously far over the battlements in his excitement, and having to be restrained by his companions. She was crying quietly. To find her own mood echoed in another stirred Anne’s misgivings more deeply.
‘What’s the matter, Kate?’ she asked in an undertone, barely audible above the din before them. The girl brushed her cheeks with the back of her hand in a swift guilty gesture, and shook her head. ‘Nothing, madame.’
‘Then why are you weeping when everyone else is so joyful?’ Anne did not really want the answer, but Katherine was an honest child.
‘I’m afraid ... that he won’t come back.’ The same fear, spoken aloud, stabbed deep into Anne’s belly.
‘That’s nonsense. Of course he’ll come back.’
‘Oh, for visits. But he will never live here again. It will never be the same.’ Pierced by her truth, Anne bitterly regretted making her utter it.
The henchmen returned after dinner to their training, their vaulting and archery and Latin, and the castle fell into the routine which had never been disturbed for more than half a day at a time. Yet an ear was kept cocked for news, anyone riding in through the gatehouse was regarded with more than common interest. Anne’s spare time hung heavy on her hands; she divided it between watching her son at his exercises and kneeling in her stall in the chapel. The old refuge of the rosary helped to fix her mind on the higher good of Richard’s soul, but then as she had no real fears for his right conduct, her prayers would slip into asking instead for his deliverance from enemies and false friends, and his safe return to her in Wensleydale. She knew the petitions were in the wrong spirit, but she had long ago despaired of influencing God with her puny supplications.
Often she would share the chapel with her mother, who never stayed less than an hour, and sometimes for as long as three. At first, finding the drab figure motionless in a corner, except for the busy fingers on the beads, she imagined the Countess had also come to pray for Richard. But that was foolish. Upon reflection, she realised that ever since her arrival at Middleham nearly ten years before, when she had not been at her embroidery frame she had been here, solitary and unobserved except by the chaplain. Interceding, perhaps, for her husband, and lately for her elder daughter - or simply thinking the thoughts which no one had ever fathomed, or indeed tried to. With a rush of pitying revulsion, A
nne wondered if the Earl had ever really had need of his wife, except as the bearer of his children. And with another little flood of emotion - of love, of pride, of uneasiness - she recalled Richard’s words to her the night before his departure, ‘I shall need you, dear heart.’
The news which filtered up from the south was contradictory. Northampton had been the meeting point for Richard, Buckingham, and the new King’s train, and apparently young Edward was peacefully on his way to London escorted by the two dukes. Then a few days later a gentleman on a mission to Pomfret for Richard came on to Middleham with surprising tidings. His task had been to deliver to Pomfret under guard Lord Rivers, his nephew Lord Grey, and the Prince of Wales’ chamberlain from Ludlow, Sir Thomas Vaughan. No, there had been no fighting, no bloodshed, he replied to Anne’s anxious enquiries. He could not tell her what justification the Duke of Gloucester had had for committing such powerful men to prison, but my lord of Buckingham had been in agreement. That was all he knew. Buckingham! From the obscurity of his stronghold in the Welsh mountains, he seemed to have leapt in one skilful bound into the heart of Richard’s counsel. Her instinct was to distrust him, and she prayed that until his intentions were clear her husband would do so too
A note written at St Albans on Holy Rood Day by John Kendall with Richard’s sprawling signature told her merely that King Edward V would enter his capital on the morrow, yet the messenger spoke of rumours that the Dowager Queen was fortifying the city against them, that she had seized all the late King’s treasure, and that her brother Sir Edward Woodville was in possession of the fleet. It seemed impossible that Richard should assume the Protectorship without opposition, and Anne lay sleepless night after night, revolving endlessly the various hazards that he might even now be confronting. When he went to France with Edward IV’s great army, to revive his ancestors’ claim to the throne of King Louis, when he invaded Scotland and took Edinburgh, she had suffered far less. It was because as a soldier he faced dangers that he understood, the straightforward trial of strength and skill in deployment of forces and conditions. In London he had to deal with the tactics of men, and of a woman in particular, which would be utterly inscrutable to him. Had she been with him in France or in Scotland, Anne would have been useless, a liability, but in London she felt that she could at least warn him not to trust too much, if he would only send for her.
The White Queen of Middleham: An historical novel about Richard III's wife Anne Neville (Sprigs of Broom Book 1) Page 28
