Fortune's Wheel

by Rhoda Edwards

  Below deck, the Countess ordered her servants about ineffectually. As most of them had much experience of embarking on ships, and of the stowing of gear into impossibly small spaces so that what was required should not be at the bottom of the pile, things went on as usual without much heed being paid to her. When they had finished, however, it was evident that the ship was too small. The cabin which the Countess and her daughters were to occupy might allow the entry of six persons crammed together like red herrings, but allowed only half of them to sit at one time. Anne knew her mother was terrified that the travelling from Warwick, the jolting about in a lumbering chariot, and the sea voyage, might send Isabel into labour before her time. The Countess’s own experience of childbirth had increased her fear. Like she had been herself, Isabel was queasy in pregnancy, prey to all sorts of fears, her small-boned body overtaxed. However, the journey now to Calais was short, and the Countess hoped that if the weather held there was every chance of her daughter being settled on dry land and having a week’s lying-in before the child arrived.

  The largest and most comfortable space in the cabin was of course given to Isabel. Anne looked at her sister, who was lying back on all the cushions and bolsters they could muster. She was doughy pale, her small, even features marred by puffiness. The mound of her belly seemed enormous in proportion to the rest of her. Surely she wouldn’t get any bigger in the next four weeks; She had the look of a bladder ready to go off pop. Anne thought: supposing I look like that with a baby on the way when I am married? How could her father demand that she marry and risk carrying Edward of Lancaster’s baby? What would he think when she was bloated with poor crazy King Henry’s grandchild until it looked as if she’d need a wheelbarrow to carry the thing? She told herself every day that Queen Margaret would refuse to hear of it. Margaret of Anjou, her father had once said, was as obstinate and proud as the Pope’s mule. In the matter of this marriage, Anne could expect no support from her mother, whom she knew to be frightened of Queen Margaret, and who would never speak out against her husband’s wishes.

  Anne sometimes, not very often, felt sorry for her mother. The great Earl of Warwick, whose father had sired four sons and six daughters, and his grandfather Heaven knew how many of either, had only two little daughters as heirs. Maybe it was because her mother felt useless and ashamed that she was so useless. Also, she seemed never able to forget that she was two years older than her husband, and in consequence looked it. That insipid fair colouring was unfortunate, and the very fine hair so pretty in young girls became faded and wispy on ladies of forty.

  Isabel looked like her mother, especially now, when she was unwell. Clarence seemed to like her very much, and spent prodigally on jewels and fine clothes for her, so that her adornments almost, but not quite, matched those of his brother’s Queen. He did not run after other girls — at least not yet. Anne found her brother-in-law as changeable as the weather, and not easy to know. He took no more notice of her than of her sister’s shadow.

  Clarence came below deck to see his wife and found her in no state to take much notice of him. She kept dropping into a doze, which was disconcerting. He had begun to look scared and mutinous. He had better keep out of her father’s way, Anne thought. Warwick tolerated no mutiny from anyone of either sex, on board ship or on land. If Clarence got in the way of the crew, then royal Duke or not, he could expect to be sent scuttling with an angry blast on a whistle.

  Anne, desperate to escape the stifling, lantern-lit cupboard of the cabin, said, ‘My lady mother, may I go up on deck now? It’s so stuffy here.’

  ‘Yes — no. Anne, you will be in the way up there. It’s too late. I want you here.’ The Countess was flushed and flustered. Wisps of greying hair escaped from her cap.

  ‘I feel sick.’ Anne fully meant to sound both pathetic and threatening. ‘If I could breathe some fresh air…’

  Her mother gave way. She did not want people being sick in the cabin just yet. Anne had never been ill on a ship; that she should start to feel squeamish on a night of comparative calm was annoying. Sometimes her mother suspected in Anne a contrariness which needed firmer handling than she felt able to give. It was useless to expect any aid from her father; the Countess dared not trouble her husband with his daughters’ problems. She looked distractedly around, hoping to make a little more space in the cabin. ‘Would your Grace take your sister on deck for a little while. Isabel needs sleep.’

  Clarence did as his mother-in-law said, with none too good humour. He went up the steps first, then leaned down to give Anne a hand, but she preferred to keep both hands to herself, using one to hoist herself up and the other to cope with her skirts. She hauled herself out into the fresh salt air with relief. It was a moonlit night, but horn lanterns hung everywhere. The ship’s three masts were heavy with sail. Her father was probably up there in the poop, where there were even more lanterns and men. Whatever else had been forgotten, the Earl of Warwick’s streamer had been hoisted from the main mast head, the wind tugging it to point the way to France. The bear and ragged staff meant that the Captain of Calais and master of the Channel was at sea again and did not hide the fact, though he had been proclaimed a hunted rebel.

  ‘The shipmen steer by the Seven Stars,’ Anne said to her brother-in-law, who stood staring over the side to starboard at the land. ‘My father’s men always call them the Little Bear, for good luck — the Bear in the sky will guide his brother on the sea.’

  ‘They should fly the royal arms of England, and the black bull of Clarence. I am on this ship.’ George sounded petulant.

  Anne nearly opened her mouth and said, ‘But you’re a passenger, not the commander!’ but stopped in time. George was so easily offended; he could cut off his flow of good humour and fun very suddenly. Anne thought that when he was a little boy, he might well have stamped his feet and had tantrums.

  Footsteps approached down the deck, and her father joined Clarence at the rail. The master and his mate waited at a respectful distance. Warwick said, ‘Your Grace, when we leave Dartmouth I intend to sail for Southampton. My ship the Trinity lies at anchor in the Hamble river. I am loath to leave that prize for Edward. There are so few ships of over three hundred tons burden in England that I’ll not let mine fall into Woodville hands!’

  ‘My lord, is it necessary for us to put in at Dartmouth? It will delay us.’

  ‘George, it is necessary for us to have every ship we can lay our hands on. Remember, we are coming back.’

  Clarence said nothing in reply to this. Anne thought that he was thinking of when they did come back, when Henry VI was King again, and not him, King George, as her father had originally planned.

  Warwick turned his eyes upon his younger daughter. ‘Anne,’ he said, ‘bed.’

  Anne, obedient as a little dog, went below, standing for a moment with her head sticking out of the hatchway. Her father went back down the deck, lightfooted and sure as a sailor on his own ship. He was always relaxed on board ship; even now, a fugitive, he looked confident, like a cat strolling round his territory.

  When Anne woke, the ship was moving. It must be morning, and they were leaving the river Dart on the outgoing tide. She lay quiet, for her mother and sister were not yet stirring. Isabel was snoring slightly, as she had begun to do as her pregnancy advanced. The stuffy cabin was enough to make anyone snore. The place Anne slept in was so small that she had to curl up with her knees almost touching her chin. She lay looking up at the figure of St Anne with the child Mary, which she had hung there; it went everywhere with her. She needed their help now. Not that on her father’s ships she had ever been worried that they might sink. Her father had his own book of navigation, like most captains, which listed all the landmarks, depths and tides of the English, French and Breton coasts. He could have sailed the ship through Channel waters as well as the Exeter master. He had to do that once; he had acted as helmsman from Exmouth to Calais, helping King Edward to escape his enemies.

  They heard Mass in her father’s cab
in. A corner had been made to serve as a chapel. The chaplain himself had to sleep on a mattress in a space suitable for a large dog. Warwick’s chaplains had to get used to this. Then a cogboat was lowered and the Earl was rowed away to board one of the other ships. The carvel of Exeter stood off the Isle of Wight while Warwick sailed to the mouth of the Solent, hoping to slip in to collect his great warship the Trinity. The next day he came back, and there was one less ship in his company. Everyone had expected to see the painted sails and high poop of the Trinity, but it was not there. Anthony Woodville, now Earl Rivers and eager to avenge his father’s death at Warwick’s hands, had come boldly out of Southampton and driven the Earl’s ships away, capturing one of them and all the men in it. Warwick raved of how the upstart Anthony had pirated his best ship, which was not really true, as Woodville had only been doing his duty to King Edward.

  On Palm Sunday, they came within sight of Calais. All that remained of the great English conquests in France was a few miles of marsh and sluice more fit for frogs than men, the two fortresses of Guines and Hammes, and this town, built where no sane nation should have built a town, on treacherous sand. The sea was a more expensive enemy to keep at bay than the French. From it, Calais looked impressive. Nearly a mile of high defensive wall stretched between the castle and the Beauchamp Tower, and the wall was studded with gun-holes; each one had shutters painted with the cross of St George. Behind the wall were the steep tiled roofs of houses, the towers of the two churches and the Woolstaplers’ Hall. The church bells’ pealing came to them over the sea as close as if they walked in the streets. In front of the wall, dozens of wool merchants’ ships were moored at the quay and jetties. Nearer still, on Rysbank, the sandspit that enclosed the harbour, the tower fort bristled with guns. The shutters were open, and the muzzles poked menacingly forth. The Earl of Warwick was proud of the defences of Calais; he had seen that the guns were the newest and best that German or Flemish smiths could forge, and there were nearly two hundred of them, of iron and brass.

  When his ships had anchored, Warwick sent men in a boat to warn his Lieutenant, Lord Wenlock, of his arrival. Before they had time to row back, Calais fired its guns. Anne first noticed that the red and white crosses in the walls had disappeared. Then came the crump of firing, the belches of smoke, the fountaining splashes as stone balls plunged into the sea within a hundred yards of the ship on which stood the Captain of Calais himself. The men came back, rowing for dear life, and as they shinned up the rope ladder, they looked frightened. This was because they brought the news that Warwick’s Lieutenant had refused to admit him to Calais. The King’s proclamation had already arrived there, and Lord Wenlock dared not ignore it, for the town was full of King Edward’s men, over whom he had no control.

  ‘Wenlock is in his dotage!’ Warwick raged. ‘When I put in to Calais I’ll have his head!’

  It did no good. Rysbank tower opened fire, and this time the shots fell alarmingly near to Warwick’s ships, and they had to withdraw. Once out of range, he downed anchor again and prepared to wait for Wenlock to change his mind. Below in the cabin, Anne saw her mother’s face become more frightened than ever, and Isabel’s dissolve into stark terror. The Countess was alarmed enough even to challenge her husband.

  ‘Richard, you see your daughter’s condition. What will we do if the baby comes? Surely Wenlock cannot refuse to allow us ashore, at least?’

  Warwick turned on his wife a glance of barely concealed contempt, for her meagre understanding of their situation. ‘Whether Wenlock refuses or not, how can I allow you ashore, here? I cannot send hostages into the hands of my enemies. Do you suppose that you would be anything but prisoners? You’d probably be shipped straight back to England.’

  Anne was astonished that her mother found the spirit to retort. ‘King Edward,’ the Countess said, flushed and trembling, ‘would do your daughter less harm than any more tossing about on this ship!’

  To this show of defiance by a usually submissive wife, Warwick made reply by turning his back and striding off to the other end of the ship. Isabel began crying hysterically and said that her father did not care what happened to her and her baby, now he no longer wanted George to be King. But neither she nor Clarence dared say this to his face.

  They stood off Calais for several more days. Warwick sent more messages to Lord Wenlock, but the answer was always the same. Listening to the fulminations of both her father and her brother-in-law — for Clarence was indignant that Wenlock dared treat him no better than Warwick — Anne wondered how much longer they intended to wait. It was becoming increasingly uncomfortable on board for the women. Anne disliked going for days without washing adequately, and it was a struggle to extract fresh clothes and linen from the wedged mass of their baggage. Worse were the arrangements for their bodily needs; the sailors used buckets on ropes to sling in the sea. Anne’s discomfort increased because her time in the month had arrived. Her mother kept reproving her for snapping.

  The chaplain, not for the first time during his service with Warwick, prepared to celebrate Holy Week at sea. The cook put lines over the side and brought up fresh fish, which was their only relief. Anne had watched with distaste when horrible great stockfish had been brought on board at Exeter, dirty linen colour and hard as boards, looking like hides hung up to dry.

  Soon the men were able to forget their predicament in action. A band of ships belonging to Thomas Neville, the bastard son of Warwick’s uncle Lord Fauconberg, managed to join them. He was a fierce, jaunty little man, who loved nothing better than acting the sea reiver, and was the only person Anne had ever seen treat her father to a conspiratorial wink. He had slipped away from King Edward’s fleet, believing that Nevilles should stick together. He announced that a fleet of Burgundian merchant ships was approaching, and what better opportunity for seizing some valuable plunder? They’d make a living on any sea, Fauconberg boasted. Together, Nevilles would show King Edward and Duke Charles that no one, English or Fleming or French, could beat them.

  While the Earl and his cousin indulged in their successful piracy, a storm blew up. This was not severe enough to endanger the ships, but it was enough to do what everyone had dreaded since they had left Warwick. Isabel went into labour.

  Whenever the ship pitched or rolled, anyone who was not holding on to a fixed part of the cabin was hurled from one side of it to the other. The women pressed round Isabel, trying to keep her squeezed in a more or less stationary position with their own bodies. The baggage was tumbling about, thud-thudding from side to side. Anne shut her eyes and hung on to a wooden post with both arms. Each wallow of the ship banged her body against its squared side. When Isabel let out the first shriek, she opened her eyes. Her sister was being sick, partly into a basin held by the midwife. It was dark in the cabin, the lanterns lurching about and spluttering out, and the shadows opening and shutting like huge jaws. The noise the ship made was terrifying; it creaked and groaned and ground its teeth as if it were about to fall apart.

  One of the midwives, feeling about among the bedclothes, said to the Countess, ‘It’s the waters, madam! The child is coming. There’s no stopping it now.’

  Anne saw that her mother was almost speechless, and reaching hastily for another basin. The women turned and shooed the Duke of Clarence out of the cabin. No man could possibly be allowed anywhere near a childbirth. Not that George had been able to do much in the way of holding his wife steady, he too often needed to resort to a basin himself.

  ‘Lady Anne,’ said the one midwife who was not also being sick, and thus likely to be left in command of the situation. ‘Will you pop your head out and ask someone to tell the cook to boil water — as much as he has pans for.’

  ‘Blessed Mary, help me in my need,’ wailed Anne’s mother. ‘My lord husband is pillaging while his daughter suffers! I will send to Lord Wenlock again.’ The Countess was beside herself. Anne had never seen her really angry before. ‘Surely the cowardly old man cannot refuse us in this extremity?’


  It’s too late, Anne thought, as she moved obediently to the hatchway. The sailors cannot launch a boat in this, and how can we move into harbour — the wind is against us. By the time we’d got Isabel on land, everything would be over. She was very glad to be able to put her head out in the air. She was luckily not being seasick herself, but the smell of other people’s vomit was — ugh — enough to ensure that she would be if she stayed below much longer.

  Anne sent a scared-looking sailor lurching along the deck to the cook. Outside, the wind was still blowing a gale, but the rain had stopped. Huge clouds were bowling through the sky, toppling over each other in a race to reach England.

  She forced herself back in to the cabin. She never knew how long Isabel’s labour lasted. No one had so much as glanced at the hour glass, which had smashed in the storm anyway.

  ‘Push him out, my lady!’ roared the midwife encouragingly. Anne understood why it was called labour. She dug for towels and sheets in the baggage and passed them to where they were most needed. Ever afterwards, Anne would shiver at the sound of ripping linen.

  The baby was born dead.

  ‘It’s a boy,’ someone said hopelessly.

  The woman stood holding it, her arms bloody to the elbow. The baby was all red and shiny. Anne’s stomach threatened at last to escape her, though the ship had become steady, unnoticed. The women washed the baby, and the Countess wrapped it in the Chrisom cloth. It was a perfect child, not too big or too little. Fair duckdown gleamed on the applesized head. It should have been alive.

  Isabel was still pouring blood. They kept stuffing dry towels between her legs. There was a hideous pile of sodden sheets and towels growing on the floor, dark, like liver. The cabin stank so foully it had become unendurable. Anne turned about and without a word struggled up the steps and out of the hatchway. No one noticed her going. Once on deck, she leant over the rail and was sick. She trembled and cringed, heaved and hiccupped, tears spurting from her eyes, though she was not aware of actually crying. The picture of Isabel, pretty, fastidious, Isabel, with her knees up and straddling and all that stuff splurging out, screaming and, between screams, vomiting into her own hair, had been like something that only happened in Hell. Anne had seen her own dogs, and a mare, give birth, but that had been easy in comparison. The bitch had seen to most of the clearing up herself. Animals made very little noise, too. Anne was not the first to be brutally enlightened. Plenty of girls of thirteen had babies.