Serena nodded. ‘I’d like that.’ She reached up to kiss his cheek, feeling the slight roughness of stubble against her skin. ‘I’ll see you tomorrow,’ she said, backing away before she gave into the impulse to kiss him again. ‘Goodnight, Jack.’
The warmth engendered by the kiss lasted her until she reached the main road. She felt fine for as long as she was driving under the streetlights’ glare but as she left Burford behind and the road took the ridge above the River Windrush, the darkness closed in around her. She was tired and she felt suddenly lonely and afraid. There were so many thoughts, doubts and fears spinning around in her mind. She didn’t want to think about any of them. Suddenly she wished sharply that the police would simply tell her it had all been a mistake, that Caitlin had died of natural causes and that there was a simple explanation for her burial place within the church. That way, Serena was sure, she could forget everything else, persuade herself that her grandfather had been talking about things that made sense only in the world of his mind…
She turned down the hill towards Minster Lovell and the road narrowed and the trees closed in overhead, forming a tunnel of darkness. She was glad to reach the bridge where the sky opened up again and the water meadows stretched away to her right, the lights of the village pricking the night. Some creature caught the edge of the headlights and scuttered away to safety and Serena released a shaky breath, easing her fingers on the steering wheel. What was she expecting to see – the ghost knight racing her to the bridge, the grey lady flitting across the road, the ghostly dog stalking through the fields beside the river? She felt incredibly tense. She turned into the pub car park and relief washed over her to have reached safety. As she eased her car into a parking space the headlights cut an arc through the darkness, catching the edge of the ruined hall across the field and sending shadows racing across the lowering grey walls. Serena caught her breath. The light momentarily dazzled her, bouncing back from the stone, and she raised a hand to shield her eyes.
Then, in the same way that it had happened when she had seen Luna running through the ruins, she had a flash of returning memory. The cloudiness in her mind seemed to vanish, like the wind blowing away the mist, and she was back eleven years earlier, watching through the dark as a woman slipped through the shadows of the ruined hall and disappeared.
Serena sat quite still in the darkened car whilst the memory threaded through her mind, image after image, joining up at last to make a whole picture. She remembered Lizzie saying a few days ago in the café that Caitlin had been no saint and perhaps she had had a secret life. She remembered the shadow of doubt that had crossed her mind then because Lizzie’s words had stirred up something buried deep in the lost memories of that last day. Now, at last, she knew what it was.
She had floated back to the manor that afternoon after seeing Jack. She’d wanted to find Caitlin and tell her all about it, but her sister was still out with Leo and her grandfather wasn’t at home either, so she had kicked about the house, her mood gradually deflating. Her grandfather had come back at teatime and they’d eaten salad together – it was too hot for anything else – and Serena had covered for Caitlin, who had later come back smelling of smoke and alcohol and disappeared off to their room.
‘Leave me alone!’ Caitlin had said when Serena had followed her into the bedroom to ask what was wrong. ‘You wouldn’t understand. You don’t understand anything.’ And she’d thrown herself down on the bed and turned a shoulder to her sister.
Looking back, Serena felt a sharp pang of loss for both of them; for Caitlin whom she could see now had been struggling with late adolescence far more than anyone had realised, and for herself who had drifted away from her twin by slow degrees without even noticing. When she had gone up to bed a few hours later, Caitlin was asleep – or pretending to be – and they hadn’t spoken. They had never spoken again, because when she awoke, Caitlin was gone.
Serena felt oddly calm. There was no shock, no trauma as her amnesia finally receded. She ran carefully through everything in her mind again so that there was no likelihood of her ever forgetting it again. She fitted together each piece. She thought about how she had felt. She thought about Caitlin.
And then she cried, sitting in the car, looking out over the place where her sister had vanished, fierce, salty tears for what she had finally remembered and what she had lost.
Chapter 18
Anne
Minster Lovell, June 1483
King Edward died suddenly in the year fourteen eighty-three. We knew, of course, Francis and I, that his marriage to the Queen had been invalid and the children illegitimate. We had seen the proof at Ashbury years before and knew that in law his eldest son Prince Edward could not inherit the throne. We had held our peace on the matter and been richly rewarded over the years. Francis had been made a viscount and was the right-hand man of his friend Richard, Duke of Gloucester. Now King Edward V had inherited and Gloucester was Lord Protector I thought very little would change. I understood nothing.
The day that Francis told me that Gloucester was to take the throne was the day he smashed our existence to pieces. He had ridden from London where the court and the city were in turmoil. I was in the potager garden at Minster Lovell when he came; it was late spring and the raised beds were groaning with the promise of a good crop. Already the colours of the peas and beans and cabbages were showing amongst the rich earth.
I had been unwell that spring. At first, I had hoped I was with child. After seven years living as husband and wife I had begun to despair quietly. I was surrounded by sisters, cousins and friends who had growing families. I felt a failure, the barren wife, the butt of jokes, good for nothing. Francis never reproached me yet our very silence on the matter seemed to drive me further away from him.
My mother, famously fertile, had been unconcerned when I had first sought her advice, a year after my removal to Minster Lovell.
‘You are young still,’ she counselled. ‘Do not let it concern you. There is plenty of time.’
Six years on and she was not so sanguine. She recommended a powder of mugwort and marshmallow root, and enquired delicately whether there was anything wrong with Francis. I thought not, though I had no means of comparison, and that spring my hopes were raised when I missed my courses for two months. I prayed fervently. In private moments, I even clasped the lodestar to my breast and begged for a child, hoping that the holy relic would help me.
‘I want a child,’ I whispered. ‘Give one to me.’
However, it seemed it was not to be.
Francis came straight from the stables that day, striding into the garden and pulling me into his arms. I had turned at his step and my face, I know, had lit with happiness for even now my heart speeded each new time I saw him. But he did not speak. He kissed me and I sensed something in him I had not known before, a desperation and a conflict I could not understand, as though I was his last bastion against something terrible. When he released me, I raised a hand to his cheek.
‘What is it?’ I asked.
I had heard a little of the troubles that had followed the death of the King. I knew that Elizabeth Woodville and her faction had not told Gloucester he was named Lord Protector in the King’s will and that it had been left to Lord Hastings to send word to him in the North. Matters had only worsened when Gloucester had arrested the new King’s escort at Stony Stratford and the Queen had taken the rest of her children and fled to sanctuary in Westminster Abbey. It felt to me as though King Edward’s death had pulled a thread and now the entire tapestry was unravelling.
‘The Woodville faction will not relinquish one iota of their power or influence unless they are obliged to do so,’ Francis had said at the time. ‘Gloucester is legitimately named Protector of the Realm and yet they will not support him.’
There was a legacy of mistrust between the two camps that could only augur badly for the future, I thought. Even as the new King, Edward V, was housed in the Tower of London, preparing for his coronation, it felt
as though winter was coming rather than summer. Something was badly awry. I felt it and shivered deep inside.
Francis took my hand and led me over to the seat in the shelter of the garden wall. The stone was warmed by the sun and it was pleasant here but the cold was already within me and would not be banished.
‘Gloucester is to take the throne,’ Francis said bluntly.
I gaped at him, thinking that I had misheard. ‘What? Why?’
‘It is the only way to keep the peace,’ Francis said, and it sounded as though he was rehearsing words that he had repeated over and over in his mind in the knowledge he would need to hold fast to it forever more. ‘Only Richard is strong enough to hold the kingdom together. A boy king cannot rule the factions that threaten us.’ He looked down at our entwined hands. ‘Besides, you and I both know… the King’s marriage to Elizabeth Woodville was never legal. His children are illegitimate and his son cannot rule.’
I jumped up. ‘It was legal enough for no one to mention it when King Edward was alive!’ I said.
‘Anne,’ Francis said. He spread his hands in a gesture of pleading. ‘That was different—’
‘It was expedient, no more than that,’ I said cuttingly. I felt such rage that I could not understand it. Somehow it was tied up with the despair I had felt three days before when I saw the spotting of blood that indicated I was not to bear a child, not this time, perhaps not ever. I thought of the Queen in sanctuary with her children. What would become of them, denounced as bastards, their inheritance betrayed? They had lost their father and all the security they had known. Soon they would lose even more.
I pressed my hands together hard to still their shaking.
‘Is Gloucester to make their illegitimacy public, then?’ I demanded. ‘Did he keep Eleanor Butler’s marriage lines all along so that he could claim the throne? Is it to be the basis of his usurpation?’
Fury flared in Francis’ face. ‘You are not to call it that,’ he said. His voice was low but his tone was colder than I had ever heard it before. ‘How can you not understand? Gloucester is the only one who can rule. You yourself said as much when we were in Ashbury. You said we needed a strong king with a son to follow him! Now that Edward is dead, Gloucester is such a man.’ His shoulders slumped. ‘Prince Edward is no more than a child, a mere twelve years! We all know how badly it goes when a child sits on the throne. Besides, he is sickly and like to die—’
‘Oh well!’ I could not help myself. ‘That makes the matter perfectly acceptable then! Perhaps his little brother will oblige Gloucester by dying too! Where is he now, Richard of Shrewsbury? Still with his mother, I hope, as befits so young a child—’
I stopped as I saw something furtive in Francis’ expression, his gaze sliding away from mine as though there was something shameful he could not bear to reveal. But it was too late. I had guessed.
‘No,’ I said, and it came out as a whisper. ‘Do not tell me that Gloucester holds both Princes.’
‘Richard is in the Tower with his brother,’ Francis said.
‘Dear God, no.’ I wrapped my arms about myself. ‘That cannot be right.’
‘It is for their own safety,’ Francis said. He made a gesture of exasperation. ‘What are you suggesting, Anne? That Gloucester would harm his own nephews? He would never do such a thing. You know him for a fine and loyal man! How could you imagine it?’
‘I only know that this is wrong,’ I whispered. ‘The Duke of Gloucester should not take the throne.’
Francis leaped up and turned away from me as though he could not bear to look at me. Desolation swept through me and with it a kind of fury that Richard of Gloucester could do this to us, demanding Francis’ loyalty and in the process weakening forever the ties my husband had to me. I understood well enough how we had got here; Francis and Richard had been friends in childhood and those bonds, forged through rebellion and blood, were so often the strongest. And Francis was the most loyal of men, the most constant. I knew that and loved him for it. Yet now, that very loyalty drove a wedge between us.
‘What does Will Hastings think of this?’ I asked, striving to calm our quarrel. Hastings, the late King’s Lord Chamberlain, was a man whose counsel I admired for he was strong, and able and far-seeing. I could not believe he would support Gloucester’s bid for power.
There was a silence, then: ‘Hastings is dead,’ Francis said.
‘What? No!’ I almost crumpled to the ground, but managed to steady myself, my fingers digging into the warm wood of the bench to keep me upright. ‘How?’ I asked. But I already knew. He had opposed Gloucester’s will.
‘Oh, dear God,’ I said again, half to myself. ‘Francis…’ I looked at him. ‘This cannot be right,’ I repeated dully. ‘Did King Edward ask that his brother take the kingdom after he was gone? He did not! It is Gloucester’s role to protect, not usurp!’
‘It is the right thing to do!’ Francis spun around on me. ‘Gloucester served his brother loyally and well and now he does what is best for England—’
I put my hands over my ears. Probably it was childish but I could bear to hear no more of his twisted logic. Perhaps Francis was right, if one looked beyond personal allegiances to the greater good. I knew as well as any that the rule of a minor brought little but trouble. Even so it stuck in my throat that a man who had been lauded as just and fair could now take so greedily for himself.
‘You will be telling me next that Gloucester does not want to be king,’ I said, ‘and is only doing that for the greater good as well.’
I walked away then. The tears blurred my eyes and clogged my throat. Each step felt like a step onto ever more uncertain ground and each moment that Francis did not come after me felt lonelier than the last. I was at the gate when I heard him behind me and I turned to face him. We stared at each other over what was suddenly a yawning chasm. I felt shock and horror that we had been driven so far apart, so fast.
‘Anne,’ Francis said. Once again, he drew me close to him and I did not resist. He rested his cheek against my hair, and I felt the misery of the world ease a little for surely if we were united all would be well.
‘I am sorry,’ he said. ‘You have ever been my guide and my conscience, Anne.’ He took a breath. ‘But now… I have to do what I feel is right.’ He let me go. It felt very final. I stood alone, feeling cold, and searched my heart to see if there was a way that I could simply forget what had happened between us; carry on as though it had never occurred.
Perhaps Francis hoped for that too, yet the distance between us suddenly seemed unimaginably great. I felt despair and blinked back the tears from my eyes.
‘Will you accompany me to London?’ he asked me formally. ‘We should be there for the coronation.’
I knew then that there was no way back. I had to either betray him or my own principles. I was his wife, bound to obey and I did not want to put us to the final test and force him to order me.
‘I will accompany you,’ I agreed.
He nodded. ‘Your cousin Anne asks to be remembered to you,’ he said, very carefully. ‘She desires you to become one of her ladies-in-waiting when she is queen. Both your mother and your sister Elizabeth have accepted the honour.’
I hated them all then. I hated my mother for her Neville arrogance and her lust for power, and my sister for following her example. I hated my cousin Anne for choosing her ladies-in-waiting whilst the widowed Queen was hiding in sanctuary and Richard of Gloucester’s enemies were barely cold in their graves. And I hated Francis for following Gloucester’s star out of a loyalty I could only feel was blind.
‘I shall not do that,’ I said steadily. ‘I shall never do that.’ And I turned my back and left him there amidst all the fresh promise of the summer.
King Richard III came to Minster Lovell Hall on his royal progress that summer and from there we all travelled through the Midlands and up to York. There was so much pageantry, so many feasts and entertainments, but they masked an ugly truth, which was that the country was
not content with the usurper. There were men who plotted to free the King’s nephews from the Tower of London, and to take the widowed Queen and her daughters from sanctuary. Rebellions blew up and were put down. Rumours spread like a plague. I felt as though we were skating, not on the thinnest of ice, but upon nothing but smoke.
The endless politicking masked another ugly truth as well, which was that my marriage to Francis was little more than a hollow shell now. We were always together at court yet never spoke of anything of significance. I wore the gowns of fine blue and crimson velvet and of white damask, I smiled and danced and played and sang, and all the whilst I waited for the quicksand to swallow us as it had so many others who had once been as close to the King as Francis was now.
My mother took me to task. ‘I do not understand you, Anne,’ she complained. ‘Your husband is the Lord Chamberlain and there is no man higher in royal favour. You have the world at your feet. Why must you be so dull about it? You do not even have the excuse of babes to distract you. You waste those chances that are yours.’ She looked at me with her blue Neville eyes as though I should be grateful to be childless when she knew that it had snapped my heart in two.
That winter of 1483 we celebrated Christmas at court with much good food, wine, laughter and dancing, even though – or perhaps because – the late King’s eldest son, Edward Plantagenet, had died of plague in the Tower of London. Richard felt more secure on the throne than he had for a very long time.
‘You are mistaken,’ I said coldly to Francis, when, unusually, he confided as much in me. ‘Edward’s death changes nothing. The Queen has another son and any number of daughters, and have you forgotten the Duke of Clarence’s son too? Does he not have a better claim to the throne than his uncle?’
We stared at each other in mutual dislike and mistrust until Francis shook his head and turned away from me. ‘You are damned obstinate, Anne,’ he said. ‘Why can you not bend even a little to try to meet me?’
The Last Daughter Page 24