Strange, this reluctance that some men had to spill a woman’s blood. Ned had shared it, too, would no more have sent a woman to the block than would Richard. Though there was a certain logic to Richard’s forbearance. He needed Stanley; it was as simple as that. And because Stanley had shown himself loyal under fire, Richard had seen that he was well rewarded for it. He’d been given the constableship, given, too, the lifetime use of his wife’s forfeited estates.
Ned had faced much the same problem; what to do with Stanley? The man was a weathercock, went whichever way the wind blew; in one year alone, he’d changed sides no less than four times. The trick, Ned had discovered, was to make it worth his while to be loyal. He’d made Stanley a member of his council, named him as Steward of the Royal Household, and it had worked; for more than twelve years, Stanley had faithfully done Ned’s bidding, stuck to Ned like glue. So it didn’t surprise Elizabeth any that Richard was trying the same tactics. And it might well work for Richard as it had for Ned. That is, provided nothing happened to undermine Richard’s hold on the throne. There were men who reacted to weakness like wolves to the scent of blood, and Stanley was one of them. So Ned had believed, and whatever Ned’s other failings, he’d been a shrewd judge of men.
And so what now? Tudor? Even if he found the backbone to try again, what chance would he have to defeat Richard in the field? And what if he did, if he somehow managed to get the victory? While Buckingham lived, he and Tudor would have canceled each other out. But now…by publicly vowing to wed Bess, Tudor had committed himself to nullifying the plight-troth, and what then could she expect for Edward? For Dickon? That she knew well enough. In pledging to make her daughter his Queen, Tudor was passing a sentence of death upon her sons; he’d have no choice.
No, whichever way she looked, she found only blind alleys, locked doors. What could she do except come to terms with Richard? And what had she left to bargain with? Her daughters were still his kinswomen, but how much did that truly matter to him?
No, she mustn’t despair. He did want them out of sanctuary. It had to be an embarrassment for him, if nothing else. It was in his interest, too, that she should come forth with her daughters. She must remember that, somehow turn it to her own advantage.
By the hearth Cecily and Bess were playing an indifferent game of chess. Snow had glazed the windowpanes, and all Elizabeth could see of the inner court was a blur of white.
“Madame?” John Nesfield stood in the doorway. “Madame, His Grace the Duke of Norfolk be without.”
Elizabeth’s lip curled. “Whatever else be said of your uncle, girls, there is nothing paltry about his payoffs!” she said bitingly, and felt no surprise whatsoever when Bess at once took issue with her.
“Mama, that’s not fair. You know the duchy of Norfolk should have passed to Jack Howard two years ago. Our Dickon held it only by right of his wife, the little Mowbray heiress, and when that poor child died, it ought to’ve gone to Jack, and would have had Papa not gotten parliament to vest title in Dickon.”
“Have a care, Bess. That remark could be read as being critical of your sainted father, and we’d surely not want that, would we?”
Bess flushed, but Elizabeth gave her no chance to speak, snapping, “No back talk, not now. Go look in on your sisters, both of you. I shall want to receive Howard alone.”
“But I want to talk to Uncle Jack, too!” Bess protested. “We’ve seen no one from outside for weeks and weeks, and I want to hear what he has to say.”
“Me, too, Mama,” Cecily chimed in. “Please let us stay.”
Elizabeth had no time to argue, for at that moment Nesfield escorted John Howard into the chamber. Elizabeth’s eyebrows rose, for she recognized the man with him as Sir Robert Brackenbury, Constable of the Tower. Rising unhurriedly to her feet, she tried to conceal her excitement, her conviction that these men must be here on Richard’s behalf, that they must have been authorized to make her an offer. But then she gave a surprised gasp.
“Katherine!”
Katherine pushed back the hood of her cloak. “Lisbet. Oh, Sister….”
Elizabeth’s smile faded. “Katherine? Be you all right? You look ghastly, in truth!”
Katherine had yet to move, and Elizabeth’s eyes flicked past her, to the silent men. All her expectations had been dashed at sight of her sister. It didn’t make sense that Katherine should be here with these men. Something was wrong; one look at Katherine’s face told her that. Their faces, too, warned of a coming grief. Howard was even grimmer than usual, and Brackenbury…well, he had the look of a man with a gnawing pain in his vitals. Elizabeth’s fear was purely instinctive, had not yet reached a conscious level of awareness; she knew only that her mouth was suddenly dry, that sweat was trickling down her ribs, and whatever they’d come to tell her, she didn’t want to hear.
“Lisbet, I don’t know how to tell you…. Harry, he…he wanted to be King. So much that nothing else mattered. He made sure that the men taking care of Edward and Dickon were his, and then he…he…Oh, God. God help me, but I can’t….” Katherine’s voice broke on a sob. “I can’t….”
“Madame…. Madame, I blame myself.” Brackenbury sounded scarcely more coherent than Katherine. “I have children of my own, and had I even suspected for a moment, I’d have posted guards around the clock, God’s blessed truth….”
Elizabeth took a step backward, and then another. “No,” she said, very distinctly. “No, I don’t believe you. I don’t…don’t want to hear any more. I don’t.”
Cecily stood very still, staring at her mother. Bess alone moved, turning instinctively toward the man who’d been her father’s friend.
“Uncle Jack? I don’t understand. What doesn’t Mama believe?” She tried very hard to keep her voice steady, tried and failed.
Howard came forward, caught up her hands within his own. “It be bad, sweetheart. As bad as it can be.”
As if in a dream, Bess saw that this seasoned soldier, this man who’d won such success at the point of a sword, now had tears in his eyes.
“It be your brothers, Bess. The lads be dead.”
18
Westminster
February 1484
Anne settled herself deeper in her husband’s bed, drew the coverlets up under her chin. The bed-curtains screened out the light but not the noise, the sounds Richard’s attendants made as they moved about the chamber. Of all that Anne hated about her queenship, the utter loss of privacy was the worst. Sometimes it seemed to her that the only times when she and Richard were ever truly alone were when they lay together at night in his huge canopied bed of state. And even so natural a sharing as that presented problems undreamt of at Middleham.
After sharing a bed for more than eleven years, it was unthinkable to them both that they should now sleep in separate chambers. How unbearably lonely that would have been, Anne thought, to have Richard come to her bed only when he wanted to claim his marital rights. Sharing a bed was surely one of the greatest joys of marriage. To be able to feel Richard’s warmth beside her as he slept, to lie drowsily within his arms, listening to the reassuring murmur of his voice in the dark. To miss all that…. How sad for Ned and Elizabeth, for all those bygone Kings and their unloved Queens.
At first Richard had come to Anne’s bed, but it soon became apparent that it was easier for her to come to him; there weren’t hours enough in his day, and all too often he worked late into the night, not coming to bed till long past midnight. Anne sighed, raised herself on her elbow to tug at her hair; she’d left it invitingly unbraided tonight, suggestively spread out upon the pillows in the way Richard liked. He was somehow going to have to learn to delegate authority better; that had always been a weakness of his, she knew. But it was an indulgence the Duke of Gloucester could afford, the King could not.
Surely it was after one by now? Was Richard ever coming to bed? It must not have gone well with Elizabeth. Jack Howard had gone that evening to the Abbot’s lodging to make Elizabeth yet another offer, t
o strike a bargain that would free her daughters to take their rightful place at court. It didn’t surprise Anne in the least that Elizabeth was still balking. Any other woman would surely have come to terms months ago, would not have subjected her daughters to the discomforts of sanctuary in the first place. But Elizabeth would ever come first with Elizabeth. Anne felt a twinge of remorse at that last, knowing she should have more sympathy for a woman who’d suffered the most devastating of all griefs. For Blessed Lady, what could possibly be worse than to lose a cherished child? And surely even a woman as selfish as Elizabeth must have loved her sons.
Jesú, but what was keeping Richard? Thank God All-merciful that they’d soon be on their way north. Just twelve days, twelve interminable days, and then they’d leave London and its griefs behind, breathe air pure and sweet again, untainted by smoke and soot and unspoken suspicions. A lovely, leisurely progress northward, Cambridge and Nottingham and Pontefract, where Ned would be awaiting them, and then on into York. Pehaps even home to Middleham for a time…
Richard slid into bed, bracing himself for the icy shock of the sheets against his naked skin. But then he felt Anne’s arms about him, felt a body that was soft and warm, molding itself into his, and he moved gratefully into the caress, legs entwined, bodies fitting together in that perfect physical harmony that even now, even after so many years, he had yet to take for granted. Her hair was free, spilling over them both, tickling his back, his neck, and he shifted slightly, sought her lips.
“You shouldn’t wait up for me, ma belle, not when it gets late like this.”
“Just count your blessings,” Anne murmured, felt his mouth move against hers in a fleeting smile.
“You are a blessing, in truth you are, and if I didn’t have you waiting for me like this each night….”
“Hush, love,” she whispered. “Not now. Not now….”
But it wasn’t as satisfying for either of them as she could have hoped. Richard was too tense, never fully lost himself in the intimate pleasures she sought to give him, and although he’d gained physical release, she knew the cares he’d brought to the bed weighed no less heavily upon him now than before their lovemaking. They lay in silence for a time, breathing in slowing unison, not yet willing to move apart, while Anne debated with herself whether she could better serve his needs by keeping silent.
“Richard, what be wrong? Is it still Elizabeth?”
“Ever Elizabeth,” he corrected her grimly, and for the first time she realized just how angry he truly was.
“Surely she didn’t spurn your offer?”
“No…not exactly. But she gave Jack Howard a message for me. She said to tell me that she doesn’t deal with intermediaries. ‘Tell him,’ she said, ‘that if he wants his nieces out of sanctuary as much as that, then he can damned well come himself.’ ”
Bess was standing at one of the east windows in Abbot Esteney’s refectory, gazing out into the inner court. A light snow had powdered the ground earlier in the evening; she thought she could still see flakes drifting downward, but it was too dark to tell for sure. She was turning away when an amber glow caught her eye, and pressing her nose against the pane, she made out the figure of a man emerging from the passageway that led into the cloisters. As he crossed the courtyard, light from his lantern illuminated his face, and Bess recognized Sir Robert Brackenbury.
Brackenbury had come often to the Abbot’s lodging in the past eight weeks, had spent hours talking with Bess and Cecily, and if he could not assuage their grief, he at least had cared enough to try; Bess was grateful to him for that. But never had he come at so late an hour. She had the door open before he’d reached the stairs, ushered him quickly into the chamber.
“Sir Robert, is something wrong? Has something happened?”
He gave a surprised shake of his head. “No, nothing be wrong. I’m here to fetch your lady mother. The King awaits her now in the abbey, as agreed upon, and I am to…You didn’t know? She didn’t tell you?”
“My uncle? Here? No…. Mama told me nothing.” Bess was too shocked for pride, too shocked even for resentment that her mother could have kept this from her.
“Sir Robert…don’t go to my mother just yet. Can you not wait a few moments? Can you not give me that time?”
“My lady…I would if I could, believe me. But the King’s Grace be awaiting her even now. If I were to delay…”
Bess reached out, touched his hand with her own. “A fortnight ago I celebrated my eighteenth birthday,” she said quietly. “For seventeen of those years, I had the right of command. Now I can only ask, can only entreat you, Sir Robert. Do this for me…please.”
The Chapel of St Edward the Confessor lay to the east of the High Altar. It was the most sacred part of the abbey; here, before the golden shrine of the eleventh-century King canonized as a saint, Richard and Anne had knelt and made offerings on the day of their coronation. Here, too, were the royal tombs of England’s Plantagenet past. No less than five Kings and four Queens had been laid to rest within the shadowy splendor of the Confessor’s Chapel, and Richard found himself alone with the dead of his House.
The silence was absolute, eerie, the only illumination coming from the erratic flickerings of his torch; he’d found a wall sconce for it, and it spilled subdued light into the surrounding shadows, cast a reddish glow upon the gleaming marble monuments, upon the effigies of alabaster and gilt. It was not a place Richard would have chosen of his own accord; he wished now that he’d insisted upon another site for this meeting he looked to with such aversion.
Ill at ease and unwilling to acknowledge it, he stripped off his gloves, began a restless pacing that had no purpose but the passing of time. Before him was the mausoleum and chantry of Henry V. Victor of Agincourt, England’s greatest soldier King, he’d sired a son who yearned only for his prayer books and peace of mind, the hapless Harry of Lancaster. Harry, who’d marked out his burial site here within the chapel, but had been laid to rest with the monks of Chertsey. Where, rumor had it, miracles had begun to be performed before his tomb.
Richard shook his head in bemused wonder. How explain people who called Harry simple while he lived and saint now that he did not? And yet it had bothered Ned not at all. He’d just laughed when told of these so-called miracles being attributed to Lancaster, drawled, “As I see it, Dickon, that be a fair enough exchange. I’m willing to have men call him saint, provided that I be the one they do call King!”
It was a memory to give Richard pain, as did so many of his memories of his brother. He hastily put it from him, stopped before the marble tomb of the King who bore his own name. Richard, second of that name to rule England since the Conquest. Richard, whose downfall had so shaped all their lives, for in his dethronement lay the seeds of thirty years of Yorkist-Lancastrian strife. His was a double tomb; he’d been buried with the woman who was his first wife, his only love. So grief-stricken had he been by her sudden death at twenty-eight that he’d ordered the palace in which she died razed to the ground. Within six years, he, too, was dead, starved to death at Pontefract Castle, and England had a new King; the Lancastrian dynasty had begun.
Richard stood motionless for a time, gazing at the gilded effigies of this ill-starred Richard and his Queen; they had been depicted clasping hands, at the King’s own request. Richard knew, of course, that his was thought to be an unlucky title; only twice before had a Richard ruled England, and both met violent ends. Nor did the more superstitious of Richard’s subjects find comfort in recalling that he shared with this dead King more than a name; the queen Richard II had so loved had been named Anne.
Richard had no patience with people who claimed to see ill omens in every gathering of clouds, who foretold coming death in a dog’s howling, calamity in a shadowed moon. It had never before bothered him that this other Richard and his tragic Queen should have borne both his name and Anne’s. But standing here now, alone in the hushed, darkened chapel, what had been no more than coincidence suddenly seemed fraught with foreb
oding, served to make even more oppressive an atmosphere already heavily laden with tension.
What had possessed Elizabeth, that she should choose such a site? Granted, it was private. It was also uncomfortable, cold, and unnerving. Was that what she had in mind? A subtle way of stacking the cards in her favor? Doubtlessly, too, that was why she was late, would keep him waiting as long as she dared. Well, he’d give her five minutes, no more, and then he’d go, he promised himself, knowing all the while that he wouldn’t. That he was here at all was in itself a concession of sorts, and Elizabeth knew it as well as he.
It was nothing he heard; the chapel was still enveloped in silence. Rather, it was a sixth-sense awareness that he was no longer alone. He spun around, too fast, his eyes searching the dark. At the east end of the chapel, a stairwell led up to Henry V’s chantry. Was it his imagination, or was there slight movement in the shadows? Furious with himself for having so nakedly betrayed his unease, he said sharply, “Elizabeth?”
He could make out now the lines of a woman’s skirt. She stepped forward, and very slowly descended the two steps into the chapel. Torchlight played upon her hair; it was coiled neatly at the nape of her neck, stray strands of honey-gold curling about her face. Not Elizabeth. Bess, his niece.
In her haste, Bess had not taken time to fetch a cloak, and she was trembling visibly, numb with cold and confusion. At sight of Richard, she’d frozen in the stairwell, swept by memories unbearable in their intensity, a desperate yearning for a past that was gone and forever beyond recall.
“Where’s your mother, lass?” Richard asked, and his voice sounded strange even in his own ears.
The Sunne in Splendour Page 107