This Sun of York

by Susan Appleyard

  He paused to glance at his betrothed, whose face was the colour of the apple blossoms, whose mouth had fallen open, whose blue eyes were blankly staring as if she hadn’t understood a single word he said. “Ah, I see you thought you were marrying a wealthy man.”

  “You have…overwhelmed me,” Anne said faintly. How had she ever thought him handsome? Now she saw that his eyes were small and set too close together and that his upper lip often lifted in a sneer. Furthermore, his hair was a mousy brown and receding at the temples, and there was a gap between his two front teeth.

  “Of course. We’ll talk about this and many other things later.” He scratched his nose. “In spite of your odd ideas, I want you to know that you are pleasing to me. I foresee an agreeable life together.”

  A sudden, blessed rain shower cut short the visit and allowed Anne to make her escape. When he had departed, all she wanted to do was to run to her room and burrow herself into a hole until the world came to an end. Or she died. Or he did. Passing the solar, she heard her mother’s voice and rushed inside, skirts clutched in hands, eyes full of tears but not yet falling.

  “I won’t marry him!” she cried. “He’s hateful! Loathsome! Vile! I won’t marry him, and you can’t make me!”

  Cecily looked up from her sewing, a frown gathering between her brows. “Whatever is the matter, child?”

  “You must get Father to break the betrothal. Please, Mother!”

  “You’re being ridiculous, Anne. Your father wouldn’t think of breaking the betrothal, even if there were an excuse, which there isn’t. I’m sure you know that a betrothal is binding in the eyes of the church and cannot just be set aside on the whim of a young girl who doesn’t know what’s good for her. Now, enough of this nonsense. You cannot know Exeter well enough after one meeting to judge him. You must trust the judgment of your parents.”

  Anne shook her head so violently that her hair swirled about her face. “I won’t marry him. I won’t!”

  “Of course you will,” her mother said gently, but so firmly Anne understood there was no hope of reprieve.

  She ran out again and made it to her chamber before the tears spilt down her face. Throwing herself down on the bed, she cried as she had never had reason to cry in her life before, anguished, outraged, without restraint. She refused to join the family for supper, and no one forced her. The maids undressed a puppet with swollen eyes and stiff limbs that occasionally emitted a wail of despair, washed its face, brushed its hair, and put it into the bed it shared with Elizabeth and Margaret. The younger girls, who had caught some whiff of what was going on, immediately put their arms around her, which caused a fresh rush of tears.

  “What can you do?” Elizabeth whimpered when the tears were finally spent, and little Meg had fallen asleep, still embracing her oldest sister. Elizabeth was crying, too, but she was incapable of feeling anyone else’s pain; her tears were for Elizabeth. It had all been so romantic and exciting, what with the choosing of jewels and fabrics to make new gowns and all the visitors and gifts arriving every day. Even she had a new gown. Anne’s was the precursor of her own wedding, but now it was spoilt. It had turned into a horrible business because Anne was crying and her bridegroom was an ogre. She wondered if Suffolk might turn out to be an ogre, too.

  “I don’t know, but I won’t marry him! I won’t! I won’t! I won’t!”

  Easily said, but no matter how desperately she searched, Anne could find no avenue of escape. Her parents were not cruel people, nor indifferent, and in affiancing her to Henry Holland so many years ago they had done what all parents did in seeking the best alliance for their offspring. He had been only seventeen at the time and dominated by a harsh father who was only two months from death. Her parents could not have known that he would grow into an insensitive, self-absorbed, complacent, graceless pinch purse! And if they had they would still have proceeded with the betrothal because there was nothing in that list of repulsive characteristics to offend anyone but the woman condemned to spend the rest of her life with him! An ogre, she had called him. But in reality, he was just a man of his times.

  When she’d been younger, just earlier that day, she had assumed the world to be a kind place, where her future husband somewhat resembled her father, who would dote on her. How could she find any happiness with a man like Exeter? The very idea of marrying him terrified her. But no matter how frantically she searched she could find no way out. Her mother, a woman fortunate enough to have married the man of her choice, might feel some sympathy, but she would keep it well hidden. She would expect her daughter to do her duty, to marry the man they had chosen for her and do her best to make him a good wife. And if she resisted, as other girls had, her mother would agree to and assist in any punishment required to bring about her capitulation.

  There was no escape. She would just have to make the best of it, as others had done before her. When the dressmaker came two days later for a fitting of her wedding gown, Anne appeared, pale, listless, moving like a puppet.

  Chapter 9

  September 1454 – Baynard’s Castle

  The bride looked pale but lovely in her gown of gold and rose, liberally sewn with seed pearls. Her beautiful blonde hair tumbled down her back in a softly waving cascade, crowned by a chaplet of white roses and lilies. That hair would never be seen in public again, for the church taught that women’s hair inflamed men to lust, which is why condemned harlots always had their hair cropped as part of their penance. Once married, a decent woman’s hair was revealed only to her husband and her maids. Anne’s face was pale as bleached cloth, her blue eyes concealed behind lowered lids. It was clear that she had inherited some of her mother’s composure, for there were neither tears nor smiles to indicate to the guests how she felt about the marriage. The groom was as always richly dressed in a doublet of burgundy, resplendent with jewels. Many commented what a handsome couple they made.

  The day went by in something of a blur for Anne. She had been sleeping extremely poorly during the last few nights with the result that she had violet shadows under her eyes. She did find the pluck to make one last meaningless little protest: When asked if she would have Henry Holland for her husband, her dramatic pause lasted long enough to cause a murmur among the guests that almost drowned out her whispered response when it finally came.

  At the wedding banquet, she downed two cups of unwatered wine in quick succession.

  “Oh, I feel sorry for our little cousin. She’s trying to be brave about it, but she’s very unhappy,” the Countess of Warwick said to her husband when Anne was within earshot. They often came to visit at Fotheringhay, so Anne knew them quite well.

  She looked their way and saw that the countess had a hand fastened on her husband’s arm as if to hold him at her side. Everyone knew that whenever she was on her knees, she never failed to thank God for giving her the most wonderful husband in the world. It was nauseating how she doted on him, quoting him as frequently as a preacher quoted the Bible. Warwick couldn’t be left out of a conversation though he were miles away.

  “Cousin,” the countess said, “let me embrace you.”

  Having received a genteel kiss, and a more robust one from Warwick, Anne appropriated another cup of wine and carried it swiftly to her mouth. Already the idea of marriage to Exeter was beginning to seem less intimidating. The countess captured her other hand and hugged it to her bosom as she reminisced about her own wedding day, how wonderful it all was and how fortunate she felt herself to be.

  “Planning on drinking yourself silly, sweetheart?” Warwick asked when his wife’s meandering along the byways of the past allowed him a chance to interrupt.

  “Yes, actually.”

  “Sounds like a fine plan to me.” Lifting his own cup, he tapped it against hers and buried his interesting nose in its aromatic depths.

  “I know how some women adore telling tales of all they suffered on their wedding nights,” said the countess confidentially. “If you have been exposed to such tales, my dear, I urge
you to put them from your mind. You may well be as fortunate as I. Tonight you may make memories that you’ll cherish for the rest of your life.”

  “I can hardly contain myself,” said Anne, and the earl chuckled.

  Excusing herself, she wandered away to greet her aunt, the Duchess of Buckingham, who was talking to her mother.

  “I wish I could believe that she’ll be happy with him,” she overheard her mother saying.

  “She has a buoyant nature. She’ll be all right.”

  “It’s just that…”

  “What?”

  “I still feel she’s too young.”

  “Naïve, you mean. But weren’t we all?” A phlegmy laugh had rumbled out of Aunt Anne’s deep bosom before she gave Cecily a nudge to alert her to Anne’s presence.

  The great hall was filled with noble guests in their finest velvets and brocades, trimmed with costly fur according to rank, and flashing with jewels in the many candles and torches that filled the hall with light and heat. Many of them were Nevilles, of both branches, as Exeter’s sister was married to John Neville of the senior branch. His mother, released from earthly care shortly after giving birth to him, had been a Stafford, sister to the Duke of Buckingham. The Duke of York’s only sibling, Isabel, was there with her husband the Earl of Essex, brother of the Archbishop of Canterbury-elect, Thomas Bourchier. There was also a smattering of churchmen, including her Uncle Salisbury’s third son and Warwick’s brother, George Neville who, at the scandalously youthful age of nineteen, had become Chancellor of Cambridge. Anne had heard that his father had bought the post for him.

  Salisbury was behind the high table with her father and a couple of young knights, putting the Neville spin on the fight at Stamford Bridge.

  Anne was seized around the waist and had her cheek bussed by her brother Edward, Earl of March, who had his own household at Ludlow in the Welsh Marches with their brother Edmund, Earl of Rutland. They were twelve and eleven respectively, beautiful boys, fair of hair and blue of eye, tall, markedly intelligent for their ages and exuberant. Their arrival, as it did whenever they came to Fotheringhay for Christmas, enlivened the staid ducal household and raised the spirits of everyone in it a notch or two.

  “Come and dance, Sister.” Edward grabbed her by the hand and towed her along behind him as he lunged through the crowd toward the space cleared for dancing. He was already as tall as most grown men.

  At one end of the hall, thrusting out above the high table was the minstrels’ gallery. The Duke’s fool had entertained during the banquet, making the bride blush with age-old jokes that still had the power to provoke unreasonable hilarity from the guests. Now it was the turn of the minstrels, and they were playing music to accompany the most fashionable dances of the time. Servants had cleared away all but the high table, and the celebrants gathered in clusters at the sides of the hall leaving the centre clear for dancing.

  I may never dance with my brothers again, Anne thought mournfully. I may never be allowed to go to Fotheringhay for Christmas.

  Edward was ungraciously elbowed aside by Edmund, and he, in turn, had to yield the field to Exeter. Anne sent an urgent message to her foggy brain to sober up immediately.

  He gave her a gap-toothed smile. “Are you enjoying yourself, Madam?”

  “Yes, thank you, my lord.”

  “I should have no objection if you were to organise entertainments in our hall from time to time.”

  “Thank you, my lord. I shall look forward to it.” He too must be drunk, she concluded, for this did not accord at all with his self-proclaimed miserliness. Come to think of it, his eyes looked funny – or was it her eyes?

  The next thing she clearly recalled was leaning unsteadily against the column of an arch and looking around for a server to bring her wine. Her sisters were holding her hands, not for any particular reason but because they believed she needed all the consolation they could give her.

  Nearby, the Duke of Buckingham was saying to someone, “Trepanning involves drilling a hole in the patient’s skull to allow the escape of evil humours.”

  “Oh, that must hurt!” Elizabeth winced, as her imagination touched upon the awfulness of having a hole bored in her skull.

  “Who’s being trepanned?” Anne asked, trying to focus.

  “The King, you goose! Except that, the Queen won’t allow it.”

  “Why aren’t you in bed?” Anne asked Meg who shuddered at the very thought of such suffering. Anne glanced at the windows. “You both should be in bed. It’s dark already.” And soon…

  It was that time in the evening when the guests had imbibed too liberally of the free-flowing wine, and tongues were loosened, resentments flared up, and guests forgot to mind their language. Elizabeth cut her protest off abruptly at the sound of angry voices nearby. There was a disturbance across the hall. The dancers froze in their formations, and the music died away as one at a time the minstrels silenced their instruments.

  “Oh no,” Anne murmured and began to thread her way across the hall as she saw Exeter and Warwick confronting each other.

  Into the sudden hush, Warwick’s voice rang out like a clarion call. “I said, you put me in mind of that old saying about making a silk purse out of a sow’s ear. No amount of finery will ever hide the fact that you’re a boor.” Brothers, uncles and cousins surrounded him, jeering and hooting at his sally.

  “On the other hand, put you in sackcloth and the world would still know you for an arrogant prick!” Exeter shot back. His two bastard brothers, both hulking brutes, flanked him. With his shoulders hunched forward, his close-set eyes peering myopically from under his brow, his jaw thrust out pugnaciously, he resembled nothing so much as a boar about to charge.

  “Breeding will always show true,” said Warwick, admiring his fingernails. One of his kinsmen whispered something in his ear, and they both laughed.

  “What was that?”

  “He merely remarked that you are a colossal fool and come from a family of colossal fools.” Warwick smiled pleasantly, ignoring his wife who had once more clamped herself to his side.

  Exeter lifted his lip in a snarl. “Interesting observation, coming from a man who has a genuine idiot in the family. How is Lord Latimer these days?”

  The Nevilles gasped in unison, though the barb wasn’t a particularly good one, as it was true.

  “You should visit him sometime. I’m sure he’d welcome the company of another mental defective!”

  The heated exchange had now caught the attention of York who, hastening toward the antagonists, bumped into a server, sent the man sprawling and hurried past with barely a glance. Pushing his way through the circle of spectators, he put himself between the two men just as Exeter began his charge and Warwick’s hand went instinctively to his hip. No sword there, but a little eating knife with a lethal point and a sharp edge. Exeter cannoned into his father-in-law, who only kept his feet with the aid of the Nevilles, and the Bastards hauled their furious brother back.

  “Not in my hall, by God!” York bellowed, shaking off the supporting hands.

  “He started it!” Exeter said petulantly. So puerile was the remark that Warwick burst out laughing again and his band of Nevilles joined in.

  “Enough!” York swung round on his son-in-law. “Go home! You’re a disgrace! Take your wife and go home!”

  The hall was totally silent. Even the servants were stilled in mid motion as if turned to stone. The latter were the first to start moving again. Everyone else watched as Exeter, red with rage, strode to where his wife stood with her two little sisters and saw how she shrank away as he grabbed her by the forearm and hauled her behind him toward the door. One of the Bastards flung it open, and everyone saw that last piteous glance Anne threw toward her mother before she was dragged out into the night and the door closed behind her with a resounding clang.

  At that moment Anne was aware that a profound change had come over her. It was not that she was instantly sober. It wasn’t even that in crossing from the br
ightness of the hall and the gay company of all who loved her, into the darkness of a courtyard lit only at intervals by a few flares, waiting among strangers for her carriage, she had in fact left childhood behind, and was now a woman, a wife, and a duchess. It was something more profound than that. It had to do with the fact that no one had come to rescue her, and she hadn’t even known until that moment that any ridiculous tiny particle of her being hoped for some kind of intervention. But the door to Baynard’s Castle had slammed behind her, literally and figuratively. Her family had left her to her fate knowing it would be a harsh one, while behind that closed door they would chatter about the incident for a while and the celebration would go on. The minstrels would continue to play; the dancing would continue; her father and Buckingham would discuss the political situation; Salisbury would tell war stories, and Edward and Edmund would needle each other. While she stood in the cold and the dark among strangers, feeling… Feeling what?

  Exeter said nothing to her. When his horse was brought, he vaulted into the saddle, rowelled the beast cruelly and charged out of the gate like a dark thunderbolt, followed by the Bastards. The carriage was slower in coming. Anne climbed in and sat down. Jane and Eleanor, the Bastards’ wives, sat opposite. They didn’t seem bad sorts, but they couldn’t help her. There was no one now to shelter and protect her, to guide and advise, no one even to confide in. She was alone, except for her husband. Perhaps they would never achieve the closeness and harmony her parents were blessed with but, surely, surely, there was yet some hope of happiness. And it was that knowledge that truly made her a woman, that kept her tears back and produced a fierce determination that no matter what the future might bring, she would make the best of it.