Anne O'Brien

by Virgin Widow (epub)

  The Countess was made of sterner stuff. Seeing me hesitate in the doorway, she pounced with impressive speed and pulled me into the cabin. ‘No, you don’t. I shall have need of you.’

  ‘There’s no room—’

  ‘Anne. Be still. Your sister needs you.’

  I feared that I would be the last person to soothe my pain-racked sister. Isabel merely tolerated me. We had always fought—I suspected we always would. But pity moved me at her wretched plight. ‘We cannot land.’ Adopting a martyred expression, I recounted to the Countess the gist of the conversation as I stepped over to replace Margery at Isabel’s side.

  ‘Ha! As I thought. Perhaps it’s too late anyway.’ We staggered and clutched as a rogue wave lifted the boat from prow to stern. I covered my mouth on another surge of nausea, the clammy sweat chilling me in the hot air.

  ‘Breathe deep, daughter. I can’t deal with two of you sick. Sit with Isabel, hold her hand, talk to her.’

  ‘What about?’ I looked to the Countess for guidance. There was a fear here in this cabin. Sharp and bright, it suddenly overwhelmed me.

  ‘Anything. Encourage her, distract her if you can. Now, Margery, let’s see if we can bring this child safe into the world.’

  Three hours later we had made little progress.

  ‘We need the powers of the Blessed Virgin’s Girdle here, my lady,’ Margery whispered as Isabel’s whole body strained.

  ‘Well, we haven’t got it and so must do what we can without!’

  Sniffing, Margery resorted to the age-old remedy of a knife slipped beneath the pallet to ease the pain and cut the birth pangs, adding a dull green stone for good measure. ‘Jasper,’ she whispered.’It gives strength and fortitude to ailing women.’

  ‘Then we could surely do with such powers this day. For all of us.’ The Countess did not stop her, but decided on a more practical approach.

  ‘Find the kitchen, or what passes for one, wherever it may be in this vessel, Anne. Tell the cook I need grease. Animal fat. Anything to coat my hands.’ The Countess leaned close, speaking to me as an equal in age and knowledge, with a foreboding that she no longer made any effort to hide. ‘The child is taking too long. Isabel grows weaker by the minute and the child’s not showing.’

  I raced off, returning with a pot of noxious and rancid grease—from what source I could not possibly guess.

  ‘Don’t stand gawping, Anne. If nothing else, pray!’

  My mother astounded me. Stripped of all her consequence along with her veils, skirts and under-robe tucked up, hair curling on to her neck in greasy strands, she was as rank as any common midwife, yet as awe inspiring as the most noble lady in the land.

  ‘Who shall I petition?’ I asked. Praying seemed to me a tedious affair when all around was fear and chaos.

  ‘Pray to the Virgin. And St Margaret—chaste and childless she may have remained, accepting death as the lesser of evils, although I cannot agree with her, but during torture she experienced all the pain of being swallowed up and spat out by a dragon. An unpleasant experience not given to many of us. Pray to her.’ She hesitated a moment, then held my eyes in a fierce stare. ‘But before you do, fetch the priest.’

  I did not need to ask why.

  The next hours were the most horrifying of my young life. Enclosed in that cabin it was difficult to tell when day passed into night, night into day. Candles were replaced as they guttered, food was sent in to us that we did not eat, until it was all over, except for the hot reek of blood and sweat and terror. There was little else to show for it. Isabel lay as pale and drained as whey cheese. The Countess knelt beside her, exhausted, whilst Margery fussed and fretted with pieces of soiled linen. The bones of my fingers were crushed as in a vice where Isabel had hung on in the worst of her pain. I had repeated every prayer of petition I knew, as well as a good many impromptu offerings, until my voice was hoarse and at the end I drooped with fatigue. But all we had was a poor dead baby. The grease to slick the Countess’s hands and ease the child into the world and the dire experience of St Margaret with the dragon saved my sister, but not the child. A poor weak creature smeared with blood and slime that managed to utter a cry little stronger than a kitten, then left this life almost as soon as it had entered it.

  A girl. The priest, Father Gilbert, our own Neville priest who had come with us in our household, hustled in from where he had waited all this time within call, baptised her at the bedside to save her immortal soul and to free her from slavery to the Devil. I think we pretended that she was still alive when the water touched her forehead. It would have been too distressing to accept that her life had passed and so her soul was lost to God as well. Anne, she was called, because my mother’s eye fell on me as I would have shrunk from the room at the end to find some solitary space in which to shed the tears that now would not be restrained in my weakness. Her eye fixed me to the spot, where I stood frozen as the priest touched the unresponsive face with holy water from the little vial. Isabel watched glassy-eyed as her daughter was washed and wrapped and finally given into my reluctant care in my role as messenger.

  ‘Take the babe to the Earl,’ the Countess instructed, touching the waxen features with fingers that were unsteady. ‘He will know what to do.’

  Such a small weight. The child lay in my arms as if she slept toil-worn from the excesses of the event, the skin on her eyelids translucent. Her fingernails were perfect too, but too weak to cling to life. How could I not weep as I carried the burden on to the deck? To my father, my mother had said. Not to the Duke of Clarence.

  I stood before them where they waited for me, as if I were offering a precious gift.

  ‘Is it a boy?’ Clarence asked.

  ‘No. A girl. And she is dead. We called her Anne. She has been baptised.’ I knew my tone was blunt and unfeeling, but I dared do no other. Nor dared I look at him. Too many feelings crowded in, not least my hatred for this man who cared nothing for my sister other than the inheritance that came with her name. The power of her Neville family connections that would buy him support and, as was his ambition, the throne of England. If I had allowed it I would have sunk down to the rough decking and howled my hurt and disillusion, like one of my father’s hounds.

  ‘Perhaps next time it will be a boy.’ Clarence turned away, disappointed, uninterested. He did not ask about Isabel’s condition.

  My father saw my distress. With a brusque gesture that held his own grief in check, he pulled me and the sad bundle close into his arms. ‘Isabel?’

  ‘She is tired and weak. I don’t think she understands.’

  ‘We must thank God for your mother’s skills. Without her we might have lost Isabel too.’ He lifted the child from me with great care. ‘Go back. Tell your mother. I will send the child’s body to Calais with Captain Jessop here.’ I became aware that the Captain had returned and was awaiting instructions. ‘I will ask that she be buried with all honour at the castle. She is very small and barely drew breath, but she is ours with Neville blood in her veins. Wenlock will see to it.’

  I nodded, too weary to do or to think anything else.

  ‘Tell her…tell your mother…I was wrong. I should never have put to sea.’

  ‘I don’t think it mattered, sir.’ I rubbed my eyes and cheeks on my sleeve. ‘If any should take the blame it should be the Yorkists. King Edward who drove us on with fear of capture. King Edward is to blame.’

  And Richard, my Richard, who has stayed loyal to his eldest brother and is now my enemy whether I wish it or not.

  I gave the bundle into the Earl’s keeping, and left before I could see it carried over the side.

  There began for us a long and distressing voyage west along the coast from Calais. The winds and tides did us no favours and there was an uneasy pall of death over the ship. Isabel regained her strength, enough to sit in her chair or walk a few steps on deck, but not her spirits. Clarence did not endear himself. He remained brashly insensitive, rarely asking about her, rarely seeking her company, t
oo concerned with the instability of his own future now that he was branded traitor to his brother. The Earl and Countess held discussions deep into the night. I knew it was about our future plans, where we would go now that Calais was barred to us. We could not return to England unless we had an army at our back—that much I understood. All my father’s wealth was not sufficient to fund such an enterprise. If we returned to cast ourselves on King Edward’s mercy, we would all be locked up. Without doubt heads would roll. The line between my father’s brows grew deeper as his options narrowed. Not yet knowing what they were, still I realised that they were distasteful to the Earl and to the Countess. As for Clarence, he did not care, as long as there was a golden crown for him at the end.

  I spent much time on deck, leaning on the side of the vessel to look back over the grey water that would separate me from all I had known, the security of my home at Middleham, my privileged life. And from Richard, who filled my thoughts even when I tried to banish him. Windblown and dishevelled, damp skirts clinging to my knees, I was as silent and sullen as the weather. Until the Countess took me to task and sent me off to keep my sister company.

  ‘Go and talk to Isabel. And if she wishes to talk to you about the child she has lost, do so. For her husband surely does not.’

  Her less-than-subtle criticism of despicable Clarence spurred me on. Without argument, I allowed Isabel to weep out her loss on my shoulder and told her that surely everything could be made right once we had found a landing. I hated my empty words, but Isabel seemed to find some solace there.

  Sometimes it seemed to me that we would never find a safe haven.

  The Earl made his decision. On the first day of May, when the sun actually broke through the clouds and shone down on our wretched vessel, we reached our goal and anchored off the port of Honfleur in the mouth of the great river that flowed before us into the depths of France. Standing at the Earl’s side, I watched as the land drew closer, as the sun glinted on the angled wings of the wheeling gulls. For the first time in days my spirits rose from the depths.

  ‘The Seine,’ my father explained, but I already knew.

  ‘Do we land here? Do we stay in Honfleur?’ I was fairly sure of the answer. There was really only one destination possible for our party.

  ‘No. We go on to Paris.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Why, indeed, my percipient daughter. It’s a question I ask myself in the dark hours.’ The Earl laughed softly, but it held an edge that grated on my nerves. ‘It has been an unpalatable decision to make.’

  So much I knew. Although I might anticipate the wealth and the luxury of the French Court—I had never been there, only heard of its sumptuous magnificence under the open-handed rule of King Louis XI—my father was not taking us there for the comforts of the feather beds and the culinary delight of roast peacock served on gold plate. We had all of that and more in our own home in London, Warwick Inn, where foreign ambassadors were sent to us to be impressed.

  ‘What choice do we have but to go to the French Court unless we wish to roam the seas for ever?’ he asked of no one, certainly not expecting an answer from me. ‘We are going to throw in our lot with Louis.’

  ‘Will he help us?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  A brutally honest answer. But why wouldn’t he? I knew my father had worked tirelessly for an alliance between King Edward and Louis. That Louis had always had a strong regard for the Earl, addressing him as my dear cousin Warwick despite the lack of shared blood.

  ‘Can you not persuade him?’

  It caused the Earl to glance down at me, his preoccupation tinged with amusement. He smiled. ‘Yes, perhaps I can. I think he will help us, simply because it is in his French Majesty’s nature to find some personal gain for himself in doing so. I can accept that. Don’t we all snatch at our own desires out of the miseries of others? But…there’ll be some hard bargaining. I wager I’ll not like the result.’ He took a deep breath as he must, before he could tolerate his decision. I thought he might choke on the necessity of it. ‘Beggars can’t choose where to put their allegiance.’ I could sense his sour disgust in the salt wind that caused both of us to shiver. Suddenly age seemed to press heavily on him. His dark hair, almost black, and so like my own, might gleam in the sun, but flecks of grey told their own tale.

  ‘Will we be made welcome?’ I still wanted to know.

  My father turned back to search my face with a quizzical stare. It was a strange look, full of careful calculation. ‘Yes, I think we will,’ he murmured, eyes widening as if a thought had struck home.’ You will be made welcome, my daughter, at all events.’

  ‘I? What does King Louis know of me?’

  ‘Nothing yet, other than that you are my daughter. But he will not turn you from his door.’

  I did not know why, nor did I ask further, coward that I was on this occasion, subdued by the events of those moody past days. I was a younger daughter who had once been betrothed to Richard of Gloucester. And had rapidly become undesirable as a bride and so was promptly unbetrothed when my father had taken up arms against Richard’s brother, King Edward. Now I was a hopeless exile. I could not imagine why the French King would give me even a second look. But the skin on my arms prickled with an unpleasant anticipation.

  Now, without words, I followed the direction of the Earl’s appraisal of the French coast, where the grey waters of the vast river-mouth opened up before us. The rain-spattered land was as bleak and almost as unfriendly as the shores we had just left. I tried to see it—and us, our present situation—through my father’s eyes, and failed. The Earl of Warwick, powerless and well-nigh destitute, his lands confiscated, his good name trampled in the bloodstained mud of treachery.

  How had it all come to this?

  Chapter Two

  1462—Middleham Castle,

  North Yorkshire

  DESPITE my lack of years, I knew that I was an important person. I had always known that I was important. I was told as much by my sister Isabel when I was six years old. Or at least she had informed me from her heady and condescending height of eleven years that I might be important, but not as important as she was. Which was a typical calumny by my sister. Stated with overwhelming conviction, but with imperfect knowledge and little truth.

  Isabel was five years older than I. Five years is a long time at that age. So with all that wealth of experience and her acknowledged position as the elder child of the powerful Earl of Warwick, she lorded it over me. She was tall for her age with fine light hair that curled at the ends, fair skin and light blue eyes. She looked like our mother, and our mother’s father, Richard Beauchamp, so I was led to believe, whereas I favoured the Neville side, to my detriment as I considered the comparison between us. Slight and slimboned with dark hair—unfortunately straight—dark eyes and sallow skin that did me no favours in cold winter weather. It was generally accepted that I would not have my sister’s beauty when I was grown, nor would I grow very tall. I was small for my age and wary of Isabel’s sharp fingers that pinched and poked.

  We had had an argument over the ownership of a linen poppet dressed in a fine Court gown fashioned from scraps of old damask. It had been stitched for us by Bessie, our nurse, with embroidered eyes, black as the fire grate, and a pout of berry-red lips. The hair had been fashioned of wool and was black and straight beneath her linen veil. Because of her resemblance, I claimed stridently that the poppet was mine, but the squabble ended as it usually did with Isabel snatching it from my hands and holding it out of reach.

  ‘You’re cruel, Isabel. It was given to me. It was made for me.’

  ‘It’s mine. I’m older than you.’

  ‘But that does not mean that you are cleverer. Or that the poppet is yours.’

  ‘It means I am more important.’

  I glared, fearing that she might be right. ‘I don’t see why it should.’

  Isabel tossed her head. ‘I am my father’s heir.’

  ‘But so am I.’ I did not yet
understand the workings of the laws of inheritance. ‘My father is the Earl of Warwick, too.’

  She sneered from her height. Isabel had a very fine sneer. ‘But I’m the elder. My hand will be sought in marriage as soon as I am of marriageable age. I can look as high as I please for a husband. Even as high as a Prince of the Blood.’

  Which was true enough. She had been listening to our servants gossiping. The phrase had the smack of Margery at her most opinionated.

  ‘It’s not fair.’ A last resort. I pouted much like the disputed poppet.

  ‘Of course it is. No one will want you. You are the youngest and will have no inheritance.’

  I hit her with the racquet for the shuttlecock. It was an answer to every difficulty between us. She retaliated with a sharp slap to my cheek. Our squawks echoing off the walls of the inner courtyard brought our mother on the scene as well as our governess, Lady Masham, and Bessie. The Countess waved the women aside with a sigh of long-suffering tolerance when she saw the tears and my reddened cheek and swept us away to her parlour. There she pushed us to sit on low stools before her. I remember being suitably subdued.

  The Countess knew her daughters well. She preserved a stern face against the humour of our petty wilfulness as she sat in judgement.

  ‘What is it this time? Isabel? Did you strike your sister? Did you provoke her?’

  Isabel looked aside, a sly gesture as I thought. ‘No, madam. I did not.’

  I knew it! She thought I would be similarly reticent. We had been lectured often enough on the sin of pride and she would not wish to confess to the Countess the nature of our dispute. But the hurt to my self-esteem was as strong as the physical sting of the flat of Isabel’s hand and so I informed on her smartly enough. ‘She says that she’s more important. That no one will want me for a wife.’ The hot tears that sprang were not of hurt, but of rage.

  ‘Nor will they!’Isabel hissed like the snake she was. ‘If you can’t keep a still tongue—’