“And if I choose not to pardon you, my lord?”
“Then, dear lady, you’ll leave me no choice. I shall command you to pardon me, for I am King and you must do as I say.”
Laughing, they turned their heads from one another. As they did so, their smiles died on their lips. At the back of the hall, coming towards them, was Anne’s mother. Clad in a black robe and mantle, unadorned by jewellery and leaning on a retainer’s arm for support, she dragged herself forward, her face contorted in anguish. Her dark figure contrasted so strangely with the glittering jewel-coloured silks and velvets of the other guests that it struck an unnatural note, like a sweet melody foully ended by a loud, jarring chord. The minstrels ceased their song and a hush fell over the hall. The guests stared, opened a path for her. Slowly, so slowly they didn’t realize they’d moved, Richard and Anne rose from their chairs, their eyes riveted on the Countess, a single thought on their minds.
Ned!
She had never left Ned’s side in all these ten years.
The Countess stood before them, eyes filled with tears, mouth working with emotion. “Ned,” she finally managed, “our beautiful boy… is dead—”
“No!” moaned Richard through bloodless, trembling lips. He stepped back and his chair crashed to the floor. “No! O God, God, no—” Thunder exploded in his mind and broke into a tumult that threatened to bring him to his knees. He covered his ears but the din rose to a crescendo of intolerable pain. He staggered to the wall. Reaching out blindly in his agony, he caught the cold stone mantelpiece as his knees gave way.
Anne felt as if her blood boiled in her veins. She let out a long, guttural half-human wail and, driven by a pain of excruciating agony, fled down the dais, a quivering madwoman, running from wall to wall like a cornered animal until there was no breath left in her. With wild eyes she cast about, but there was nothing but blackness all around. Unable to see where she was, where she was going, she put out trembling hands before her and fumbled forward. Her knees collapsed beneath her and she felt herself falling down, down, down… into a deep, dark well without hope and without end.
~ * ~
Anne lay in her bed in a deep, drugged sleep, dreaming of gargoyles. But now it was not her father who stood wavering on the steeple, begging for the help she could not give, it was Ned. And now, the laughing, fiendish gargoyles were not Marguerite d’Anjou, but bore the narrow, wolfish face of Margaret Beaufort. Anne tossed wildly and cried out for Richard. She dimly heard him answer, but why did he keep saying, “Forgive me,” and where was he? She couldn’t see him…
Sleepless in his chair, and transfixed by pain in his breast so heavy and acute he could barely move, Richard held Anne’s hand, keeping vigil at her side. Flooded by memories, each a dagger thrust to the heart, he stared at her. Stared at her, and saw Ned, sleeping in his cradle, tiny fists on his pillow… Ned, at two, chasing yellow butterflies along the grassy hills of Middleham… Ned, Prince of Wales, walking solemnly in the procession at York…
Ned was gone.
Richard gasped for breath and closed his eyes. Was it the judgement of God? Had God taken his son because he had taken a Crown from his brother’s son? Anne had never wanted the Crown. From the beginning she had feared it. “Forgive me, Anne,” he murmured. “Forgive me—”
Along with the physician and the servants ministering to the King and Queen, the Countess moved about the gloomy chamber like one risen from the dead, bringing food and drink, which was returned untouched. She had been orphaned; she had been widowed. She had buried a daughter and lived to see the destruction of the great House of Neville. But nothing she had endured compared to this; this shattering grief. She had raised Ned from babyhood, had known him as she’d never known her own children, had loved him as she’d never thought she could love anyone in this world. Now he was gone.
Her eyes touched on her daughter asleep in the curtained four-poster bed and moved to Richard, whose silent grieving she found harder to bear than Anne’s tears. How much worse it was for him, she thought; to be a king, to lose an heir; to go on with kingly duties as though nothing had happened. He had put aside those duties for two days now, but soon they would clamour for his attention. Pity tugged at her heart. He looked slovenly, unkempt; not much like a king at all or even the old fastidious Richard she knew. For two days he had not shaved or bathed, and his white shirt, dingy and stained with perspiration, hung open at his neck. The stark pallor of his face heightened the darkness of the growth shadowing his chin as his stricken grey eyes stared mutely at Anne. Sometimes his lips moved, but she couldn’t make out the words.
She brought her gaze back to her daughter. Anne’s brow was feverish, her cheeks stained with dried tears, her lids purple and discoloured. The Countess drew in her breath. It wasn’t only their child they had lost. They had lost their future and their hope. In silence she reached down, drew a blanket over Anne’s shoulders, and mopped her damp brow. She took a cup of water to Richard and forced him to sip. Gently, hesitantly, she touched his sleeve. “My lord, it has been two days… we must go to Middleham.”
~ * ~
Middleham, Richard thought, gazing at the castle that rose up before him. Middleham…
It was the sixth of May. Ned’s birthday. The child whose hand he had held in the darkness was gone.
Sunlight filtered through an opening in the clouds like rays sent from heaven, illuminating the black-draped castle in a strange light. He remembered its pearly glow the first time he had come to Middleham and met Anne. He had been nine then. Ned’s age. It had been May then, too.
He glanced behind him, at the litter bearing Anne. The trip from Nottingham had been ponderously slow and taken a week, for Anne was very ill and could not travel more than two or three hours a day in the bumpy litter.
The Countess appeared at his side. “How is my lady?” he asked.
“As well as can be expected, my lord,” the Countess replied. She bit her lip, and didn’t add, for a mother who has lost her only child; for a woman who can never bear another.
Richard looked back up at the castle. “Middleham… ’Tis a place where I was always happy.” He stiffened his back and tightened his hold on the reins as they began the ascent to the castle. The portcullis creaked open. Followed by his dark-garbed retinue, he clanged over the drawbridge and passed through the arched stone gateway into the castle. Servants, friends, and nobles stood in the courtyard in sombre dress and countenance. He was conscious of an eerie stillness as he approached, then they bowed and curtsied and there was the rustle of fabric and jingling of chains. Here and there he heard sobbing. His mind turned back the years to the glittering gaily-garbed, smiling courtiers who had gathered to greet him the first time ever he came to Middleham. There, on those steps ahead, at the foot of the massive stone Keep, had stood the great Earl of Warwick and his brothers, George and John Neville. “Welcome to Camelot, fair cousin,” John had said, winning Richard’s heart with a smile framed between two dimples.
Richard blinked. The ghosts vanished.
Slowly, inexorably, his eye crept from the steps of the massive ivy-mantled Keep up to the highest window where two swallows pecked in the vines, building a nest below the black-draped stone sill. There, in that peaceful, sun-drenched chamber above, Ned had been born.
There, he had died.
Birds chirped; the wind rushed through the trees with the same rustle it always had, carrying the scent of fir and beechnut that Richard remembered so well. But there was also something else. He sniffed the air. Something faintly pungent and disturbing; a fume that grew stronger the nearer he approached the Keep. White Surrey snorted. Richard turned his head to his left, towards the chapel where Ned lay.
His heart twisted in his breast.
It was the sickly-sweet smell of incense, and it did little to mask the violent, putrid stench of rotting human flesh.
~ * ~
Chapter 13
“Sing, and unbind my heart that I may weep.”
There was no relief for Richard and Anne. Ned had died, and neither of them had been with him. Even harder to bear was the knowledge that he had suffered. Anne sat in a carved chair on the dais in the great hall clutching Ned’s worn velvet blanket while Richard stood stiffly at her side, white-knuckled and unmoving, his face ashen. Together they listened to a procession of doctors, clerics, and servants who related the terrible details of Ned’s passing.
He had fallen ill with a bellyache in the middle of the night on Easter Monday after a pleasant dinner and evening of music, and the doctors could do nothing for him. He was in great pain to the end and had cried out for his mother. Anne swayed in her chair. He had died two days later.
Richard had to practically carry Anne from the room, for her legs trembled so that she could barely stand. In their bedchamber where Ned used to play chess with them and read poetry, his love-child Johnnie sat with Bella’s Edward by the empty fireplace. Eyes red-rimmed, their cheeks tear-stained, they stroked Ned’s dog, Sir Tristan, as Gawain and old Roland looked on. Even the hounds mourned Ned, for they lay silent, chins flat on the cold tiled floor, a knowing, sorrowful expression in their eyes. In the corner where Richard’s suit of armour hung beneath a tapestry of the Siege of Jerusalem, Maggie, his niece, and Katherine, his natural daughter, knelt at the black-draped prie-dieu together.
When Richard and Anne reached the threshold of their room, they halted. Directly ahead, in full view of the window, stood the tall elm where Ned’s archery target still hung. The boys rose slowly, followed their gaze, saw the tree. Their faces crumpled. Young Edward ran to them, threw his arms around Anne’s skirts. “L-Lady a-aunt,” he cried in a strangled voice, unable to control his stutter, “w-w-why did N-Ned have to go? D-Did God n-not k-know I w-would have g-g-gone for him?”
Anne sank to her knees, bursting into tears. She clasped her sister’s child to her breast and opened her embrace to young Johnnie, who rushed to her. Kate and Maggie ran to her, too, and Richard knelt and put his strong arms around them all. Together they huddled on the floor, all weeping, except for Richard, who stared over their heads with a blank expression, while the Countess drooped against the stone wall, tears pouring down her cheeks. Coming upon this scene, King Edward’s daughter, Elizabeth, with aching heart and a depth of pity, shut the chamber door.
~ * ~
As Ned’s funeral cortege clanged over the drawbridge of Middleham Castle and wound down the hillside, Richard looked back one last time; a long lingering look. White clouds sped across the blue sky, whipped by the roaring wind. Birds squawked, leaves rustled, and the bells of Jerveaulx Abbey chimed over the dales. His throat constricted. He would never return. Middleham, always his joy, was now forever draped in black. He jerked his reins and spurred White Surrey into a downward gallop.
Ned was taken to Sherriff Hutton to be buried near his young cousin George Neville. Anne had not wanted him to be alone. On May 24th, as bells tolled across all the North, his little body was laid to rest in the north chapel of the parish church of St. Helen and the Holy Cross, across from George, whom he had loved so well in life.
In their bedchamber that night, Anne was again tormented by her dream of fiendish gargoyles. As they had done since Ned’s death, they bore Margaret Tudor’s face. This time her yellow eyes blazed with triumph, and when she laughed, her lips formed a word: Poison!
Anne bolted upright, chest heaving. “Poison! It was poison!”
Richard sat up beside her and put his arms around her trembling shoulders. “Hush, dearest, you’ve had a bad dream.”
“No!—’Tis the truth!” She turned wild, feverish eyes on him. “We didn’t see it before! We didn’t see it because we couldn’t let ourselves see it! Ned was poisoned. Poisoned—” She broke off with a choked sound.
“No, cannot be! Ned was but a babe. No one would do such a thing.”
“Tudor would do it,” whispered Anne in a strange, hoarse voice. “For the love of the Crown for the love of the Crown for—”
Richard slapped her. She stared at him, mouth agape. He looked at her mutely. Then he gathered her in his arms. She clutched at his chest, but there was no comfort this time. Unable to breathe, she pushed away, lay back against the pillows.
Richard gazed into the darkness. Hutton’s words on the eve of Buckingham’s execution echoed in his mind. There is nothing Tudor will not do to gain his end. Horror, chill and black, numbed him, and for the instant that he believed, he felt as if he had fallen into a lake of burning ice. No, cannot be! He flung back the velvet bed curtains, rose from bed. He went to the window and looked up at the dark sky.
Had he taken a Crown to which he had no right? Had God punished him by taking Ned? Was it Tudor’s poison, or God’s retribution? Or merely cruel fortune? He passed a hand through his hair and bowed his throbbing head.
~ * ~
The North mourned with them, but in the rest of England men murmured that Ned’s death was divine retribution. Had he not died on Easter Monday, a year to the day of King Edward’s death? In the taverns, the blacksmith shops, on the farms and in the manor houses, people crossed themselves and muttered that never before was the hand of God seen so clearly. Some who had not believed Richard had done the princes to death before, were persuaded now.
Richard was not told what his people said, but he knew. He had heard the whisperings in the castle, read the condemnation in the eyes of the villagers and townsfolk the nearer he rode to London. Even harder to bear was the mute pity on the faces of those who believed Ned had been poisoned. Out of nowhere had come this rumour, to be added to the rest.
Richard closed his eyes, let the steady clippity-clop of horses hoofs fill his head and numb his senses. John Neville’s words of long ago came back to him: Don’t look back. In last year’s nest there are no eggs.
That had been good advice once, had kept his face turned to the future. But where was the future now?
He threw a glance back. Anne’s litter wobbled along behind him. His heart twisted in his breast. It was August, three full months since Ned’s passing, and Anne was ailing, unable to ride, with scarcely enough strength to sit up. It was no wonder. She didn’t eat, didn’t sleep. He had removed her from the oppression of Middleham as soon as he could and taken her to Barnard’s Castle, but to no avail. Next, he moved her to York, where the townsfolk had surrounded her with an outpouring of love, then to the hills of Pontefract where the air was cool; then to the sea at Scarborough, where it was fresh. Nothing had helped. Since Ned’s death they had not made love, not laughed. There had been no music, no joy to be found in the cold, hollow world.
Sounds of coughing came from the litter and he saw the Countess, Katherine, and Elizabeth exchange anxious looks as they rode together beside Anne’s cart. He bit his lip, turned away. What if God took Anne? Then he would face a lightless future, pointless and irrelevant. His throat tightened. Where had he gone wrong? The image of the inn at Stony Stratford rose in his mind’s eye. He saw Buckingham arrive, swing his long legs over the bench, heard his merry laughter. He saw the dimly lit room and young Edward carefully scratching out his name and Buckingham adding his motto and signature below. What should I have done differently?
Maybe there had been no right choice.
His throat ached. He’d taken the throne with the consent of the people to save the land from civil strife. Now men condemned him for it, said he had coveted it all along. That he, Richard, who had always remained steadfastly loyal to family, had murdered his brother’s sons for it. Those lying rumours had fuelled Buckingham’s rebellion and torn him from Ned back to London. And Ned had died, without his ever seeing him again.
Those lying rumours, spread by Henry Tudor.
Tudor. The word rattled in his head like an adder. Tudor was the source of their misery. That whoreson had spread the vile rumour that Ned’s death was divine retribution. Perhaps he was responsible for Ned’s death… Poison…
The thought writhed inside him like a maggot. He shuddered, drew
a sharp breath. He could not—would not—believe such a thing! But Anne did. Her conviction that Tudor had poisoned Ned was destroying her. Of all Tudor’s wicked cruelties, this was the worst, God damn him!
Richard clenched his fists around White Surrey’s reins. A vision of Hutton’s face rose before his eyes, lips forming a single word: Lucifer. He blinked. Aye, Tudor might well be one of Lucifer’s own, for he did have unholy luck. After months of naval warfare, Howard and Brampton had managed to force Brittany to sue for peace. As part of the agreement, Tudor was to be returned to England, but Tudor, well served by either friends or fortune, had galloped across the border into France, his pursuers hard on his heels, and had reached France barely minutes ahead of them.
Richard had signed the truce with Brittany anyway, and tried to make a treaty of amity with France, as he was doing with Scotland. But France, though weak and divided by the problems of a minority reign, was united against him. They thought him an enemy of the realm, a notion bequeathed them by the Spider King. Louis had never met a man he couldn’t buy, and he’d never forgiven Richard his defiance at Amiens. From beyond the grave he was making him pay. And so, France received Tudor with a hearty welcome and promises of aid. Richard’s spies had sent word that he would invade England in the spring with a French army at his back.
London loomed against the horizon. Richard drew in his reins, stared mutely at the line of city wall, towers, steep roofs, and bridges that he had always hated. At the winding river crowded with boats, barges, and ships. At the dingy grey skies.
London, where the sun never shone.
He glanced back at Anne’s litter and turned away with a heavy heart. He had the worries of a kingdom in which to bury his grief, but where would Anne find comfort?
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