by Sandra Worth
Only days later came news that was shocking and unpleasant. Late in April the Archbishop had been removed to the Tower, placed aboard a ship the next day, and sent to Calais. From there he had gone into imprisonment in the fortress of Hammes Castle, there to remain at the will of the King. Edward had seized his bishopric, made a crown out of the gems in his mitre, and given the Archbishop’s other jewels to his son Edward, the Prince of Wales.
The Countess caught her breath, half-rose from her chair on trembling legs. “Of what is the Lord Archbishop accused?” she whispered.
“Of communication with the Earl of Oxford, my lady,” said Richard.
“But Oxford is our brother-in-law!” exclaimed the Countess.
“He’s also a bur in Edward’s saddle. He’s sworn to bring down the House of York and is financed by Louis and the Hansards to make raids on Calais.”
“A crown out of a mitre—I see the queen’s hand in this. Lord Richard, I beg you to help him. Hammes Castle, ’tis a harsh place—he cannot survive!”
Richard took her hand. “My lady, you know I’ll do all I can.”
~*~
At the King’s call, Richard arrayed a small force in Yorkshire and led them south. The Earl of Oxford was a serious threat and Edward wished to be prepared. As he reached London, Oxford seized St. Michael’s Mount and was seeking to rouse Cornwall against Edward. Richard found Edward in a foul temper at Westminster and in no mood to listen to entreaties on Archbishop Neville’s behalf.
“Brother, I am done pardoning him! If I could put him to death, I would—Hammes shall do it for me, and good riddance to him. He has been a traitor and now he’s a spy. He’s fed Oxford information to help France. That infernal Louis has been using Oxford and the Hansards to make trouble for England, and Neville is in the thick of it all! As if that’s not enough, he’s been stirring George against me.”
“George needs no stirring, Edward.”
“True, true. But in any case Oxford now has one ally less without Neville. George is enough, by God! Oxford’s seizure of St. Michael’s Mount has encouraged him to array his men— against you, he claims—but I’m not deceived. ’Tis the crown he wants. He calls me bastard behind my back and gives out that I’m the son of an archer and he’s rightfully king!” Edward upended a table, and a bowl clattered to the ground, sending a load of apples bobbing across the tiled floor. He threw himself into a chair, and bowed his head in his hands.
Richard rested a hand on his shoulder.
But Edward was fortunate. Neither Cornwall nor Louis responded to Oxford’s call—Cornwall, because the people had had their fill of dying in battles, and Louis, because he was facing the threat of war from the Duke of Brittany. George, unwilling to commit himself to a lost cause, decided to wait matters out with his small force. Soon Oxford was forced to surrender for pardon of his life only. Edward sent him to Hammes Castle.
In the antechamber of his bedroom, Edward gave a laugh. “Let Oxford keep his friend the Archbishop company. Maybe they’ll kill each other and save me much trouble!” He toasted Richard with a cup of wine and plopped a handful of green grapes into his mouth from a gilded bowl. He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and grinned. “At least I’m not alone in my misery. Louis has his share of problems. Francis of Brittany claims Louis poisoned his brother Guienne and he threatens war.” He chuckled, gave Richard a hearty slap on the back, and lowered his voice to a conspiratorial whisper. “’Tis my turn to have fun at Louis’s expense—I shall send archers to help Brittany. Now, about George…” He took Richard by the shoulders. “He wishes the question of the division of lands to be reopened between you. This time shall be the last, I swear it, brother! This time I’ll have Parliament ratify the agreement.”
Richard closed his eyes. Was there no end to this strife? “I shall never give up Middleham,” he said. Middleham was not merely his home; it was his refuge in this battering world of dissension and greed.
“You shall have more than Middleham, by God! That viper shall not seize all from you. I give you my word.”
“Edward…”
“Aye, brother?”
“Archbishop Neville… will you release him into my keeping?”
“Your request,” Edward said after a long pause, “will be considered.”
With that to comfort him, Richard returned to Middleham. And there, with Anne and the Countess, he spent a blessed Christmas.
Decorated with greenery, bouquets of dried flowers, pine-scented rushes, and hundreds of candles and tall burning tapers, Middleham Castle had never shone so festive and bright, not even in the days of Warwick the Kingmaker. For in those days there were still war troubles to touch them; now there was only George, and he seemed very far away this Christmas. Feasting, carols, mummery, and dancing filled the halls from snowy mornings to dark nights, and laughter rang louder than church bells. Richard and Anne were always together, hands clasped, for there was much joy to celebrate.
Anne was with child.
~ * * * ~
Chapter 46
“The birds made
Melody on branch and melody in mid-air.”
All during the blessed months of her pregnancy, life unfolded for Anne like an heirloom tapestry lovingly stitched in jewel colours, detailing joyous intimacies and many a tender mercy. Friends came visiting bearing gifts and laughter. There was Francis, who journeyed from Minster Lovell, his home in Oxfordshire, and there were the lords Scrope of Bolton and Scrope of Masham, and Greystoke, who lived nearby and dropped in frequently. There was Richard’s sister Liza, Duchess of Suffolk, and her ten-year-old son Johnnie, Earl of Lincoln, whom Richard nicknamed Jack and grilled fondly on poetry, for in Jack’s veins ran the blood of Geoffrey Chaucer. On one occasion when young Jack gave the correct answer, Richard rewarded him with the prize of a hound, born to a litter sired by Percival, who had passed the years of strife safely within the walls of Middleham and now had reached the venerable age of ten.
There was one who came and brought a special joy: John’s wife Isobel, Lady Montagu. She arrived hand-in-hand with her seven-year-old son George Neville, the little Duke of Bedford, and her eyes never left the boy. She had married again, as widows are obliged to do unless they take the veil, and had borne two more children in the intervening three years. Anne thought she looked too thin and a trifle weary, though Isobel assured her she was well enough.
But there was one who came not.
Anne had not seen Bella since that terrible night George had deposited Anne in the kitchen of the house on Lombard Street, and she felt her sister’s continued absence keenly, like a rip in a perfect tapestry.
Sitting in the window of her solar in the early evening as she embroidered a blanket for her baby, Anne’s needle hovered in the middle of a stitch. She missed Bella, especially now. There was so much to share. The blanket, which bore her baby’s coat of arms of the Neville saltires and Richard’s fleur-de-lis, could as well have been designed for Bella’s son, two-year-old George, whom she’d never met. He, too, was half Neville and half Plantagenet, like her own unborn child. She swallowed on the knot that came to her throat and drove her needle and its load of scarlet through the velvet. The minstrel in the corner began a lullaby on his flute, and a tiny voice spoke in her head: Don’t let morbid thoughts blight your happiness—who knows what the future brings? Servants appeared to light the tapers and brightness flooded the chamber. She cut the thread and knotted it firmly. “How do you like the blanket, my lord?” She glanced at Richard, poring over papers at his desk, and held it up for his inspection.
Richard lifted his head. Griffins and crosses, lilies and leopards, danced brightly across the white velvet in silvers, golds, and shades of reds and blues. Below Anne had embroidered his motto, Loyaulte Me Lie, Loyalty binds me, and the motto of the Nevilles, Ne Vile Velis. Wish nothing base.
“Splendid, my love.”
“Can you not come and sit beside me?” Anne patted the wine silk cushion where she sat. She wishe
d Richard didn’t drive himself so hard. “The sunset is lovely.”
“I must finish, dearest… To think tomorrow is the first of May—how time does pass! It seems we were only yesterday celebrating Christmas.”
“And such a lovely Christmas it was. I never would have guessed there was so much happiness in the world.”
Richard laid down his quill pen with a sigh. “If only there were not so much work.”
“You’ve been up past Matins these three days. What’s so important?”
Richard heaved a sigh and sank back in his chair. “Percy.”
“I thought your troubles with him were over when you formed the Council of the North… He swore to recognise your superior authority, and I know you’ve been considerate with him. ’Tis not in your nature to be otherwise. So what can the matter be?”
“I try not to offend him, but there’s still friction between us. He resents me. On occasion I’ve had to step in and reverse a decision he has made. As I am doing now…” His voice faded away wearily.
“Tell me,” Anne pressed.
“The city of York discharged one of their clerks, and the man went to Percy, who reinstated him. The city appealed to me. I looked into the matter, and I had Edward’s own lawyers examine the case as well. The man was abusive and incompetent. York was perfectly within its rights to dismiss him. I shall have to rule against Percy. Once again.”
“Why would he resent it when the King’s officers found for the city? Surely he does not intend to be unjust?”
“The Percys have been all-powerful in the North for a hundred years and don’t take kindly to others clipping their wings, whether for right or not. Besides, justice is not to him what it is to me.”
Anne laid down her needlework. Richard’s qualms over Percy had touched her, but the pride she took in him had stirred her more deeply. She gazed at her husband, finding him better looking than ever before. Gone was the diffidence of childhood and the fear she used to see in his eyes. Gone the sad set of his mouth. His grey eyes had the sheen of purpose, and his skin, bronzed by wind and sun, no longer contrasted starkly with his dark hair. He had gained weight, so that his nose did not dominate his otherwise well-proportioned face, and the lines about his mouth and eyes, which had once etched his face with care, now served to mute his youth with strength. He exuded energy and princely authority in his red and gold doublet, and in spite of his present mood, there was a new contentment to him.
“I hope our babe is a boy, and is as handsome as you, and as clever, and as generous, and as brave, and as princely, and as good,” she mused dreamily.
“I hope so, too,” replied Richard. She stared at him in astonishment. Arrogance was unlike him. Then she saw his smile and they both burst into laughter. She pushed from her window seat with effort and waddled over to him slowly, for she was nine months with child. Standing behind his chair, she clasped her hands around his neck and laid her cheek to his.
“’Tis no mystery why I love you, Richard,” she said, giving him a kiss on the cheek. “’Tis for all those virtues, and one in particular…” She gave him another on the tip of his nose. “You care for the poor and wretched who have no one to speak for them.” As always when recounting Richard’s virtues, she remembered George, who was as different from Richard as Cain from Abel. How Richard had turned out so opposite was a mystery she couldn’t fathom, any more than she could count the drops of water in a well. “Of all the nobles, you’re the only one willing to champion them, though they can offer you nothing in return. I know what they suffer. I’ve walked in their shoes, but you have not… So how is it you are as you are?”
Richard slid her carefully onto his lap. Though her body had become too unwieldy for comfort, her face was radiant in its beauty. Pregnancy had heightened her colour, and her cheeks, which had always been a touch pale, reflecting her frail health, now blushed with rose like a May morning. Her lips were the colour of berries, and her violet eyes shone with joy and blessed expectation. He placed an arm around her shoulder, the other on her stomach, where he might feel the baby kick.
“When I was a boy, I saw an innocent man hung…” He blinked to banish the painful memory that rose before him. “So when it falls in my power to help, I cannot turn away. Besides,” he added on a brighter note, “I learned from your father, and John.”
“If my uncle John were earl of Northumberland, you’d not be troubled so.”
“He was a true knight.”
“Much like you, Richard. You might have been born brothers.”
Richard winced. “In many ways, we were.”
“I never thanked you for what you did for his Isobel.”
A silence fell. Richard stared into the blue twilight, his mind tumbling back to the first time he’d seen Lady Montagu after John’s death. It was in August, nearly three years earlier, that Lady Montagu and John’s squire had come to him in Bamborough on the Scots border. Richard had received his visitors in a tent and had been so swept with memory he had been unable to say much. The squire had knelt at his feet, and Lady Montagu had given Richard the ring he’d once given John. Her eyes were red with weeping, and emotion so threatened her composure the squire had to speak for her.
“My Lord Duke,” George Gower had said, “on the eve of the battle of Barnet, my master gave me this ring and said I should take it to my lady if anything… if anything happened to him. He told me to have my lady bring you the ring… for you would understand.”
In the light of the high lancet window, the sapphire had shone with the colour of John’s eyes: deep and calm as the sea on a gentle day. Richard had a sudden vision of John sitting with him on the rocky cliff at Barnard’s Castle, hugging his knees and smiling, his tawny-gold hair whipping in the wind, and again he’d heard him say, “We younger sons… have no say in weighty matters…”
“Dear lady,” he had replied, “ask, and it shall be granted.”
Richard came back to the present abruptly. He smoothed the folds of Anne’s silk chamber gown around her swollen stomach and felt a small movement that might have been the baby. All Lady Montagu had requested was the wardship of her four-year-old son George. Now that his father was dead, the boy would have been granted to someone else for the few pounds of income he held in his own right. He took Anne’s hand into his own. “Is your lady aunt happy in her new marriage?”
“Happy? Nay, my lord, she loved my lord uncle too much to be happy again, but Sir William Norris is a good man and kind to her. In that much, she is happy.”
“At least she has made a splendid marriage for her daughter Lizzie. Lord Scrope of Masham is a fine man, and a wealthy one.”
“He must have loved Lizzie very much, for he married her though she was penniless.” Anne smiled meaningfully and moved to kiss him, and froze. A gasp of pain escaped her lips.
With Anne’s weight in his arms and fear at his heart, Richard struggled up from the chair. “Is it time, my dearest?”
A hand to her back, Anne looked at him with frightened eyes. “It is, my lord.”
~ * * * ~
Chapter 47
“And tho’ she lay dark in the pool she knew That all was bright, that all about were birds Of sunny plume in gilded trellis-work.”
Richard strode down the hall, creaked the door open, and went down the circular staircase and into the dark garden without realising he had moved. A light shone in Anne’s room high in the round tower. He stared at the window, wondered why he was outside, turned on his heel, and went back.
In the torch-lit antechamber, the physician, a greyfriar with a silver and crystal rosary dangling from his waist, waited outside the birthing chamber, ready to advise the midwife. Through the door came screams so terrible Richard could scarcely bear the sound. His eyes flew to the friar’s face.
The physician said kindly, “My Lord Duke, ’tis normal.”
“But it has been hours!”
“’Tis always so. I pray you retire to the hall, my lord. We will send word when it’
s time.”
Richard left reluctantly, with many a backward glance as he went down the passageway, and hesitated when he caught sight of the Countess’s weary face leaving Anne’s room. Anne wasn’t visible but he glimpsed a tiring woman carrying away a basin of dark liquid that he knew was blood. The door closed. He slipped around a corner, sagged against the wall, and loosened his collar. He took a deep breath. Battle had not affected him so, when men stood with their bowels hanging out of their bellies, yet this…
The Countess did not see him as she passed. He leaned out and grabbed her arm. “How is my lady?”
She looked at him and bit her lip. Taking his elbow, she led him back around the corner. “The birth is difficult, my lord. She suffers much. I fear for her. She is delicate, as you know.” She avoided his eyes. “The midwife says…”
“Aye?” Richard managed. “Aye?”
“The midwife says…” Her voice cracked. “She says she may not be able to save both child and mother… You will have to choose.”
Richard felt as if a black wave rolled over him. “I—I— Anne…” he cried through parched lips, stumbling out towards Anne’s room. The Countess seized his arm. “My dear lord, you cannot go in there!”
He turned wild, bewildered eyes on her. “Anne…”
“Anne is frail, and childbirth difficult. We must pray for her and the child. ’Tis all we can do.”
He laid his forehead against the cold stone. The Countess rested a hand on his shoulder. “All unfolds according to His will,” she said softly. “Therein must lay our strength.” She pushed her crumpled handkerchief back into her sleeve and lifted her chin. “Now come, my lord, and take some rest. You have a decision to make.”