‘Bishop Stillington came today to reveal a secret to me. He has long kept it close because of the damage it could do if known. But now he is convinced that it is more dangerous to be silent than to speak. Queen Elizabeth was not my brother’s legal wife. The bishop affirms that he officiated at a troth-plight between King Edward and... another lady some years before his marriage to Dame Elizabeth. The lady is now dead, but it makes no difference to the status of the children - of Edward and the Duke of York and the girls. They were all born out of wedlock. Illegitimate.’
For an age he went on walking to and fro, before Anne could ask levelly, ‘You don’t believe him?’
‘He is a man of God. There seems no reason why he should invent the tale.’
To curry favour? A mouthpiece of Buckingham or Hastings or someone wanting to provoke Richard into treason? A muddleheaded churchman who had confused his canon laws? Her mind darted about, seeking to evade the conclusion which was rolling towards her and Richard to crush them with its mighty weight.
‘I think he told George,’ remarked Richard in that dry precise voice that was terribly familiar to her, ‘and that was why Edward killed him.’ George had always wanted to be a king. And perhaps his elder brother’s guilty secret, blabbed to him injudiciously by the Bishop of Bath and Wells, had revived his hopes to a flowering when he was already rotten with their decay. A deadly flower. And what was kingship but a deadly flower? Holy Henry VI, murdered only because he was a king; Edward IV, cut off exhausted at forty years old; Edward V, title shaken to the roots after only two months of reigning. And what next? She would let herself think no further. But Richard was saying it, gently.
‘I am the next heir, Anne.’
‘No, you’re not. What about Clarence’s children - the Earl of Warwick and Lady Margaret?’ He had stopped pacing and stood looking down on her, his hands thrust into the sleeves of his gown. Slowly he shook his head.
‘The attainder on their father debars them from the succession. There is only me.’ With the rushlight between them she could see far into his eyes, and they were full of abhorrence.
Drawing from him some kind of reassurance she dared to ask, ‘What will you do?’
‘I don’t know. It is not a thing to be decided hastily. I must weigh it with great care, consult the council, take advice—’
‘You’ll tell them?’
‘I can’t keep it entirely to myself; it’s too important. One or two at first, that I trust most. Buckingham, of course.’
Hot words formed themselves. Why Buckingham? Who is he to arbitrate on your destiny, and England’s? But she only said, ‘And my lord Hastings?’
‘No.’ Short, clipped. ‘No, I shall not inform him yet.’ As though to shake off the thought, he went to the window and opened the shutters. A watery light flowed into the room, as yet too feeble to awake any colour in the chamber. The framed square of sky was grey as a pigeon’s breast; a single bird winged black across it. Richard gazed out at the haphazard roofs and chimneys of the city; Anne, suddenly overcome with weariness, closed her eyes. Some time later, she felt him removing the shawl and easing her beneath the bedclothes. The growing day found glints of peacock in his gown as he threw it off and lay beside her.
‘Be sure, dear heart,’ he said, ‘that I shall be prudent. And I shall do nothing against my conscience.’
Nothing against his conscience. Perhaps ironical demons, lurking outside the window, had laughed at his certainty. In the next few days, the inflammable secret of Bishop Stillington was pushed aside by a more explosive occurrence. On 13 June London was shaken out of its complacency by a sudden flurry of rumours. Messengers galloped fulltilt through the streets, knots of goodwives and apprentices gathered at their doors, men made sure that their swords and pikes were near at hand. At Baynard’s Castle, waiting on her mother-in-law the old Duchess of York, Anne sensed the unrest in the air.
Soon it was over, the wild tales of armed risings and murders quashed, the citizens going about their work again, and all that was left was the fait accompli.A treasonous plot against the government had been disclosed to the Protector, in which the prime mover was William, Lord Hastings. He had been arrested at a council meeting in the White Tower, and beheaded shortly afterwards.
When Richard returned that evening he was cold and unapproachable. As if a wall stood between them Anne could make no contact with him. Although she was appalled, as much by the precipitancy of his action as by its brutality, she could not condemn him for it. By the thin line of his mouth and his mask-like face she knew how profoundly he was shaken. Hastings had been the pattern of loyalty to the Yorkist cause, and now without warning he had betrayed it. Richard’s violence was a measure of anguish. The gentlemen of his household did not engage in their usual after-supper pastimes - gossiping, music, card-games. They sat separate, silent, avoiding each other’s eyes. Several, those with homes to go to in London, had excused themselves. Fleeing to her chamber, Anne found the same unease among her women. Richard did not come to her.
For some reason that he did not explain, he decided to go and stay with his mother at Baynard’s Castle. She let him go without protest, consoling herself with the certainty that he would have taken her were it not for an imminent arrival at Crosby’s Place. Isabel’s son, the Earl of Warwick, was coming from the country to live under her care. Pitying the orphaned boy, she had suggested it herself. ‘He will be company for Ned when he is in London,’ she had said. But the prospect of another child’s presence brought back to her sharply the absence of her own son. Richard needed her so little that he was sleeping over the other side of the city. What right had she to be fostering her sister’s child when hers was abandoned in Yorkshire? Perhaps she would ask Richard if she could go home soon ... just for a visit. Her head ached so much in London... and she was sure that now the days were long Ned would be practising too late at the butts.
The young Earl was another Edward, and of an age with his cousin, but that was about all they had in common. Wiry and sudden, Warwick seemed to have imbibed no idea of discipline from his tutors in the country. He never walked when he could run, and he never attended a Latin lesson if he could truant from it. Yet in authorising whippings for him, which she had to do several times within the first few days, she found no resentment in him. Like a dog, he cowered and whimpered at the punishment, and ten minutes after he was frisking again. At first he puzzled, then he charmed her. He was a diversion, even when he shocked her by rushing unannounced through the audience she was giving to Lady Howard; her spirits were refreshed when she saw him from a window playing football with the pages in the courtyard. Yet she suspected that Richard would not approve of his nephew’s wildness. Perhaps the best place for him was at Middleham with their Ned, where he could learn manners and still be a boy. Richard might let her escort him there. Yet she would miss the clatter of his feet and the sudden stream of questions he would direct at her so unselfconsciously.
‘When shall I see my cousin the King?’ he asked often. ‘I should like to know if I can shoot farther than him.’ She thought of the eldest of the three cousin Edwards, whom she had visited in the Tower, wrapped in cold and suspicious dignity, and doubted if he would approve either of Warwick’s levity.
One morning Edward of Warwick asked, ‘At the coronation, shall I bear the King’s train? Will he make me a duke like my father?’ Anne answered at random, for it had come to her that talk of the coronation had diminished since Richard went to Baynard’s Castle. Preparations were still going forward, she had assumed, in other places, but it was strange that they should be spoken of less as the event drew nearer, and not more. The eager young face before her blurred into insignificance, and soon Warwick gave up, and went away to wheedle some strawberries from the pantry.
The next day Richard sent for her. It was bright and warm, there was no excuse for a litter, and so she rode through the busy streets to Baynard’s Castle. The people, pressed back by her escort, pressed forward again after her to s
tare, and sometimes to cheer, for by the white boar liveries they knew her as the Protector’s wife. There was no comfort for her in their acclaim; the shouts made her feel more exposed, more of a fraud. Some among them must surely remember, especially here by the waterside, the degraded girl called Nan who had been herded to mass at St James de Garlickehithe every Sunday with the other menials of Francis Twynyho the grocer. She averted her eyes from the house façades of the Vintry, with a superstitious dread that a glimpse of one particular house would prove a terrible omen.
There was no need for omens. The moment that Richard met her in a room overlooking the river and took her hands she knew what he would say.
‘I have decided, I must take the throne.’ Such naked words, but he was gripping her tightly, as if to sustain her against their effect. She did not move or reply. ‘It is my duty. The country will never accept a bastard king - not while he is a minor.’ His explanations sounded in the ears of both more like an excuse.
‘What will become of him?’ Her thoughts rested for a moment on the proud and lonely boy in the royal apartments of the Tower.
‘Nothing. What should happen to him? He and his brother and sisters shall be treated with all courtesy.’
Anne recognised the faintly pedantic style that Richard adopted when he was unsure of himself, and she said, unable to prevent herself, ‘Is there no other way?’
‘None.’ He lifted his chin, and his face was calm and resolved again. Leading her to a window seat, he made her sit down. Now she understood why he had moved here to his mother’s house: in order to wrestle with his conscience uninfluenced by Anne’s presence. But her opinion carried no weight with him, nor ever had on matters of any consequence.
‘Tomorrow the Lord Mayor’s brother Friar Ralph will preach a sermon at Paul’s Cross in which he will set forth my claim to the crown.’ Richard was standing before her, awkwardly agitating the ring on his little finger. ‘1 shall be there to witness it, with Harry and Howard and the rest.’ Remotely bitter, Anne wondered if he had isolated himself from Buckingham’s influence during his time of decision. In the past week he had progressed from ‘Buckingham’ to ‘Harry’. ‘There will be a large concourse of people also, and by their reaction we shall proceed.’
‘And if they reject the claim ... ?’
‘I shall go no farther. But our agents report that the citizens will be favourable.’ It was like a speech to the Parliament House, by a public Richard whom she had hardly known in Wensleydale, only occasionally in York, but whom she saw far too often in London.
‘What does your lady mother say?’
‘Nothing.’ Richard relaxed into a smile and put his foot on the window seat. ‘She’s a woman of few words unless she is in a rage - so I suppose we must be thankful for her silence. Will you stay to dinner, love? And tonight?’ In spite of everything, she answered his smile.
The citizens offered no objection, and four days later Anne became a queen.
2: A NORTHERN TRIUMPH
The heavy mass of cloth-of-gold engulfed her for a moment, and as it slid into place, guided by the tirers’ hands, its rustling was augmented by a murmur of admiration from her attendants. For
the first time in more than a century the Queen would share the King’s coronation, and Peter Curteys the Keeper of the Wardrobe had risen to the occasion. But while the women stooped about her to adjust the shimmering stuff and pin the hem, the Queen remained conscious that the admiration was not universal. There was a gaze on her which did not waver or change. Anne was exposed now to many eyes, unfamiliar stares in public and private of curiosity, wonder, envy, but none as disturbing as this. She knew whence it came, and she could rarely escape from it.
Baroness Stanley stood shadowed by the hearth, slightly apart from the other attendants; she did not encourage contact with the ladies of the new court to which her husband had brought her. She affected to despise them all, and more than any other she despised the Queen. Her still, white features, drawn ascetically, expressed none of this, but Anne, so quick to scent disapproval, had read it soon enough. Why, she thought at first, I never did her wrong? I never saw her until a few weeks ago. And she asked Richard, who told her that Margaret Beaufort believed Anne to be usurping her place by virtue of her descent from John of Gaunt.
‘Her son Henry Tydder waits over in Brittany for a chance to press their claim. The Lancastrians and the Woodvilles are rallying to him.’ Richard said it lightly, as if he thought it a faint threat.
His unconcern did nothing to diminish the malevolence of the Baroness’s eyes. Clad in the magnificence of her coronation robes, Anne felt it beat upon her more strongly than ever, nullifying the warm voices of her friends, dimming the sunshine from the wide window. And the injustice of it leapt up in her throat. She did not want to be a queen. With glad tears she would have surrendered her cloth-of-gold and her diamonds and pomp to the woman who coveted them. If Margaret Beaufort could only guess how little her rival was worthy of the throne, how much she yearned to run away from London, back to Yorkshire and her son and her past with Richard, then surely she would pity and not hate her.
Master Curteys was holding a full-length mirror before her, begging her with a hint of pride in his old-young face to look at his creation. She looked, and she fancied that the basilisk stare of the Baroness had turned her to stone. By a trick of the sun on the polished steel there was no colour in her reflection. A pale face and pale hair, pale robes and pale hands clasped at her breast. No, she was not a statue, but an effigy in alabaster. A white queen who lay motionless and unfeeling on her tomb. And the whispers around her said, ‘They should never have made her Queen, she was not strong enough; she abandoned her son and she failed her husband, and when she died he wept for her.’ Then the whispers grew to shouts and there was an arm around her waist, a hand anxiously pulling at her collar of pearls. The mirror had turned and the gold and silver glittered again, and beside her she saw Margaret Wrangwysh.
‘Dear madame, is it too heavy for you? Are you faint?’ ‘A little. It’s nothing, Meg. The room is hot.’ But by the hearth the room was cold and darkness gathered still. She shivered as they disrobed her, but when the gown was borne away she would not rest as they urged her. She must tell Richard.
He was dictating to Kendall in his closet, and although she broke in upon him halfway through a letter, he glanced at her once and said quietly, ‘Thank you, John. I shall call you.’ The secretary gathered his quills and went without a word. Richard brought his chair for her, but she would not sit down.
‘You cannot be King, Richard.’ She was still shivering, but her voice was steady. ‘It will destroy us.’
‘Why should it, love? If we do our duty there’s no reason why we shouldn’t rule for many years.’ Hiding his anxiety about her, he answered her equably.
‘No. It will change you. You’re changed already. And I am too weak.’
‘I don’t believe it. You’ve never failed me yet.’
‘Not yet. But I shall. Find someone else, let someone else be King. Even Henry Tydder. Let him and his mother see how it is, but not you.’ She was losing her semblance of reasonable argument, and he took hold of her shoulders.
‘Anne, that’s impossible, and you know it. I’ve taken up this thing now and I can’t just abandon my obligations.’
‘And what of your obligations to me? And to our son?’ It was her trump card, and she threw the challenge before him of the terrible destiny he was thrusting upon the delicate child at Middleham.
‘I think of Ned constantly. If it were not for him I should have hesitated longer. He is our future, and England’s security. When I’ve made the country strong and peaceful again, as it was in my brother’s day, it will be Ned’s task to keep it so. Think, Anne. We shall rear him as ruler of the North, as I was. He’ll learn his kingship there, where everyone knows and loves him. And in time’s fullness he’ll take my place.’ She knew then that she was lost. Their son was to be another sacrifice to the insatiab
le crown of England. In the loneliness of discovering how far divided from hers was Richard’s vision of the future, she began to cry.
Always, on the rare occasions when she had done so before it had brought Richard to her, penitent for causing her grief, eager to offer consolation. But not this time. He was staring at her coldly, almost with distaste.
‘Control yourself, madame. This is no time for hysterics.’ Shocked out of her tears she stared back at him, seeing what London and the struggle for power was doing to him. ‘I realise you are under strain. This has been a precarious month for both of us. But, God willing, the worst is over. The mischief-makers have been removed, England knows its allegiance. And I know mine.’ At last he moved to her and his expression softened. ‘You must remember yours too. To me, as always, and now to the country also.’ With a sob she put her hands over her eyes but he forced them away, speaking on quietly and inflexibly. ‘You can do it, Anne, as you recovered your health for me at St Martin’s, and gave me a son, and learned to be a Duchess. You can be a Queen. All it needs is the will.’ Not her will, but his. She would obey him, not with gladness, but because there was no other way but with him. She bowed her head and he kissed her brow.
‘Now, dear heart, go and rest before supper. You must save all your strength for the coronation. It will be a hard day.’ Leading her to the door he stopped.
The White Queen of Middleham: An historical novel about Richard III's wife Anne Neville (Sprigs of Broom Book 1) Page 30
