Fortune's Wheel

by Rhoda Edwards

  ‘I can’t understand your eagerness to go among those barbarians, Dick. The Scots are an evil race, but those people on my side of the Border are near Scots themselves; and even worse!’ King Edward said this cheerfully, for he was glad to have someone who wanted to take on the unruly north. ‘You’ll have a rough ride, you know. Aside from all the old Lancastrians, the villains and cattle thieves, you’ll find some hard men in high places in the towns. They won’t take kindly to royal infants being thrust upon them!’

  Richard grinned up at him. ‘They’ll have to take what they find. Do I look such an infant? I feel as if I’d seen a hundred years in your service already.’

  The King looked him up and down for a minute and ceased to tease. ‘No,’ he said, ‘you don’t — far from it, and the fact is a great relief to me. Being in my service has put more years on you than I’d care to see, but in this case it’s an advantage. You’ll soon learn hard bargaining and straight talking in the north. Meanwhile, you can cut your teeth on Fauconberg. He’s a tricky, loud-mouthed nasty little man, and I doubt if he’ll keep his pardon and safe conduct till Christmas.’

  ‘He may be useful. One pardoned Neville is more to our advantage in the north than all the dead ones.’ Richard opened the casement to let out a huge bumble bee which was trapped. As it lumbered away, too heavy for its wings, the sun-warmed air brought in the scent of lavender and sewers together, and a deafening screech from a peacock. He shut the window hastily.

  ‘His trouble,’ King Edward said, meaning the peacock, ‘is too many wives.’ This gave Richard the chance he had been waiting for.

  ‘I want one,’ he said.

  ‘What! A little peahen!’ King Edward roared with laughter.

  ‘No.’

  ‘You’re trying to tell me you want my permission to take a wife?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Well, it’s to be expected. Though you’ve done well enough without one. You’ve got a little daughter, haven’t you? And there were some mysterious assignations in Bruges. You were missing from the Gruuthuse table most evenings towards the end…’

  Richard was becoming red in the face.

  ‘I want your permission to marry Warwick’s daughter.’

  ‘What?!’ One could not say that King Edward let out a bellow of rage, but it was scarcely a shout of pleasure. ‘You wait until the very last moment, before you disappear into the wilds of the north for months, to ask me this, when I have no time to think about the answer. On the face of it, I don’t like the idea. You’d be more use to me if you made a foreign marriage. Why, of all the wealthy young women in this realm do you want the widow of my enemy, the daughter of the man we have destroyed? Do you know if she’s carrying? Or hadn’t it occurred to you that it might be an inconvenience that your prospective wife may be going to produce an heir to the House of Lancaster? By all the saints, Richard, I thought you had grown up ahead of your fellows, but now I’m not so sure!’

  ‘There are advantages,’ Richard said stiffly. He had expected a reaction of this kind.

  ‘Then you had better tell me what they are, because I can’t see any!’

  ‘The Neville lands in the north. And you said I’d be having a rough time up there — if I were married to Warwick’s daughter the people might take to me more kindly. You’ve never lived there; the feeling for Warwick — and for Montagu — was very strong.’

  ‘Hm. You may have something there.’ The King paused and swatted at a fly, diverting his irritation. ‘But not much. For God’s sake, Richard, you’re half a Neville yourself — you don’t need the girl. As for the lands, well, with Warwick’s wife refusing to come out of sanctuary, and the girl safely in a nunnery, you have no need to worry about being unprovided for. You can have — within reason — whatever of Warwick’s lands you care to ask me for. And you’d better not forget George in all this. I’m not having you stirring him up and making trouble for me to deal with.’

  ‘I wouldn’t dream of encroaching on George’s rights.’

  ‘Hm. Your ideas of George’s rights — and mine for that matter — are very different from his.’

  By now, King Edward had begun to recognize a mulish streak in Richard, which he did not often see.

  ‘Richard, leave it with me,’ he said reasonably. ‘I won’t give you the answer no, now. But I can’t give you my unconditional approval either. Leave it until you come back to London, then we can discuss it again. I doubt if I shall like it any better, but I shall have had time to think about those advantages you seem so tempted by. And we will know one way or another if the girl is carrying. If she is, then I have a lot more thinking to do.’

  ‘May I have an answer by Martinmas?’

  ‘Of course. If you’re back by Martinmas. Dick, you’re going to be up and down the north road on my business so often you’ll have a sore arse.’

  ‘It’s had too much practice for that,’ Richard said with feeling, and smiled, glad that he had not had his request turned down flat, and that he had not seriously displeased his brother.

  As he rode out of London on the north road the following day in the garrulous and not very trustworthy company of Fauconberg, Richard weighed once again the advantages to be gained by marriage to Anne Neville. He was fully decided now to settle and make his life in the north. He felt at home there, and it would put a couple of hundred miles between himself and the Woodville tribe. He knew that as he grew older, he would become even less able to tolerate their arrogance and greed. It would be safer to avoid quarrels by being absent from court most of the year. If he were to take Warwick’s place as good lord to the north, Warwick’s daughter would be the best wife he could choose. Also, she was entirely the sort of girl he would like for a wife. She was very pleasing both in personality and appearance, and not a stranger. If, as the King would rather, he made a useful foreign marriage, he might be saddled for life with a shrew or a lump of dough, who would only drive him to adultery and make his life in the north twice as difficult. The more he thought about Anne, the more determined he became to have her. He remembered all the absurd occasions from childhood when she had come to his notice, and his thoughts made him smile to himself. Perhaps these shared things would make it easier to become a successful husband.

  *

  With the coming of the month of July, the thing Anne dreaded and Clarence waited to hear, seemed confirmed. The weather had become exceptionally humid, and London sweltered. Behind the walls of the Erber, in the rose gardens, it was more tolerable, but smells came over the walls and troubled the inside of the house in places previously clean. Instead of wholesome bees, there were blowflies among the roses. While Clarence was busy, Isabel led a very quiet life and watched her sister. Anne had now missed twice. This fact was reported to Clarence, who said, ‘This must not go beyond our two selves. Not even her maids must know, yet.

  ‘I am hoping to be able to persuade my omnipotent brother that Ireland needs me. We may depart for Dublin, taking your sister with us before the child is due, so her condition may be hidden. Once in Ireland the child can be kept secret until I think fit.’

  ‘What if it’s a girl?’ said Isabel, looking round-eyed at him, amazed at his daring.

  ‘Lose it in the Irish bogs!’ George said flippantly. Then more sensibly, ‘There is no lack of convents of nuns either here or in Dublin.’

  ‘But my sister may not wish to enter a convent.’

  ‘You’ll have to weigh your sister’s wishes against your inheritance, Isabel. My brother Richard wants to marry her. He asked the King’s permission on the day before he left to go north. It’s as much in your interests as it is in mine to keep her from him. The King doesn’t like the idea, and I believe he may take my part — he doesn’t want to break the spell of brotherly love!’ George began to crow and cackle with outrageous laughter.

  Later, Clarence talked to Anne herself and succeeded, as he intended, in frightening her almost out of her life, so that she might be prevented from crying for help from other
quarters.

  ‘We think it best, Anne,’ Clarence said, in an unusually avuncular role, ‘that you remain with us now, for your own safety. The King suspects your condition. I have done my best to persuade him against it, but he seems determined to have you safely housed in the Tower until he knows what your confinement has brought forth. I am beginning to fear he may even go so far as to send men to raid my house and carry you off. He has only held off so far because we are now reconciled and he wishes to show me friendship. Thus, you realize how important it is that confirmation of his suspicions regarding you shall be kept from him, and from anyone else who might inform him.’

  Anne stared at him, with eyes he thought like a frightened rabbit’s, and which he avoided. Pleased with the effect of the first part of his speech, George drained his cup of wine to help him over the second part.

  ‘The Tower,’ he said. ‘You know what happened to Henry of Lancaster in the Tower. My brother the King, I’m willing to admit, is not a bloodthirsty butcher, but he knows how to act for his own safety. Do you think a grandson of Lancaster has more chance of life than the grandfather? There are plenty of ways — that might not be construed as murder.’

  Immediately, Anne saw herself being pushed downstairs at the Tower — ‘Tripped over the step, your Grace!’ — or frightened by the lions, or fed evil herbs in her food, so that she might miscarry, and rid the King of his trouble. Clarence was right; he would not need to wait for the child to be delivered. There began in her the wish to defend the helpless unborn creature everyone fought over. It was her child, within her, no matter if the father were unloved and unmourned.

  When Isabel wanted to be entertained in the evening and asked her sister to play chess, Anne played so badly that it was as easy to take the men from her as apples off a tree. Anne watched her last pawn, a pathetic little knob of ivory, whipped away by her sister, and could bear no more.

  ‘I’m not worth a pin to you!’ she said, her voice unsteady with anger and misery. ‘No more than the least one of these pieces. What shall I do? Dear Lord Jesus, what shall I do?’ And before Isabel could get a word out, Anne had snatched up the chessboard and scattered the red winning men all over her sister. Then she dissolved into tears.

  Isabel had experienced before a similar display of impotent rage from Anne. It made her feel nervous, because she did not know what to reply. Usually she felt superior to Anne, but now her meek little sister had thrown the chessmen at her head. She picked a rook out of her lap and said, ‘You’ve a little devil of temper always hiding in you, Anne.’ Isabel sounded injured, but Anne was crying so noisily, she did not seem to hear. Isabel handed her an extra handkerchief in silence.

  Then she said, ‘George won’t harm you, Anne. We want to do what is best for all of us.’

  ‘Harm me! No, I don’t expect he will, I’m too useful at the moment — or what’s inside me is! He wants a little heir of Lancaster to use against his brother the King. He’s not finished plotting, has he, Isabel? If you love him, as you say, you’d better try to stop him, before you both end in bad trouble!’

  Isabel, amazed that her younger sister had read her husband’s intent more clearly than she had, began to be a little afraid. George’s plans, always so attractive, like bright rainbows, might prove as evanescent.

  Anne, weeping no less because she knew she had taken childish measures against her sister, suddenly found the answer to her own wails of helplessness. There was only one way — to escape from the Erber and Clarence’s custody, to escape from the King and all his relatives and friends, and disappear into London.

  *

  The silkwoman came to the Erber every week to collect orders for fine sewing and such items as trimmings for gowns. Sometimes she came more often, when the Duke or Duchess had special requirements. Mistress Ellen Langwith had no cause to love the Duke of Clarence. Her brother had been a man-at-arms killed in the Lancastrian Earl of Oxford’s service, but business was business. She was the best silkwoman in London, who in her time had made shirts for the King.

  In the silkwoman lay the only chance that Anne could see of salvation. If she could find some means of persuading Mistress Langwith to take her from the Erber disguised as a servant… It must be done without revealing her identity — no one would dare to meddle on her behalf if they knew who she was… She supposed that Mistress Langwith might give her employment. Sewing was the only accomplishment that she could offer to the world that might provide a means of support. She would have to support herself somehow. Beyond that, she supposed nothing.

  Either Anne was cleverer and more plausible than she could have imagined herself to be, or she looked so little like a person who was the Duchess of Clarence’s sister that the silkwoman was easy to hoodwink. She swallowed Anne’s halting explanation of herself as the young widow of one of Warwick’s retainers, persecuted by the Duke of Clarence for one pitiful scrap of land, and agreed to take her out of the Erber disguised as a servant. There were about two hundred of Clarence’s dependants about the place; Anne presumed that Mistress Langwith knew of the presence of her real self in the house, and that it was only by luck that she had not been recognized. It was amazing how easy it seemed to be to shed one’s rank with one’s rich garments.

  When the day of the silkwoman’s next visit came, Anne walked out of the gates of the Erber in the servant’s clothes which had been brought in for her, without attracting even a second glance. The most difficult part had been the evasion of her sister and those set to watch her inside, not the escape itself.

  Anne had given no thought to how they would reach their destination — the silkwoman’s house and shop somewhere off Friday Street, near St Paul’s. They went on foot. Anne had never walked through the streets of London before. It was as frightening as any of her previous experiences on land or sea. Yet Mistress Langwith went briskly along, her pattens clattering importantly over cobbles, broken paving and lumpy dirt, as if she owned the city. When doing business in great households, she had seemed such a gentlewoman, low-voiced and self-effacing. Now her voice, when addressing carters who got in her way, or pedlars nudging her for custom, was loud and sharp with a wit Anne only half understood.

  The people in the street all behaved as if they owned it, barging roughly along, not caring who was shoved aside. The shopkeepers’ impudence, in popping out of their doorways to all but drag inside the unwary, Anne had heard of, but she had never expected to feel them clutch at her own elbow. She hated to be touched and importuned in this way. The raucous bustle of London assaulted her eyes, ears and nose. Your eyes had to dart constantly hither and thither in case people were about to run into you, or you were going to step in something disgusting — though this was difficult to avoid — or even to put your foot in a hole and trip up.

  Though the day was hot and the city sun-drenched, it was impossible to get a glimpse of the blue sky, because the houses so overhung the streets, and the sweltering stinking air was sealed as if by a lid. In the faces of many of the hurrying people lay an anxiety beyond the ordinary hot and botheredness of those at work on a summer day. Mistress Langwith pursed up her lips and shrugged; there was plague about, she said, and getting worse every day. Anne wondered if when they got to the sewing shop, she would be able to wash as frequently as she was used to do; she hated being hot, and she was getting hotter at every step. There was always plague to be frightened of in London in summer, and it seemed more frightening out here in the streets than when one was living behind the walls of a great house, though even then the infection found its way in.

  Anne could not tell in which direction they were walking. Mistress Langwith surged on. Not far, she said, as they came out into Candlewick, then up Budge Row and Soper Lane to Cheapside. Anne knew that she had been to Bulstrode the draper’s in Candlewick; now she could not even recognize the shop in the crush. Budge Row had a distinctively rancid, foxy stink which made the skinners’ shops uninviting. Bundles of furry shapes with heads, legs and tails still on hung on hooks
in the doorways, with dried sightless eyes, wrinkled like raisins. Until they emerged into Cheapside, Anne might have been walking through a maze. It seemed a long way, for she was unused to walking far in pattens.

  Down the broad highway of Cheapside Anne had ridden in King Edward’s triumphal procession, a prisoner, while the Jesus bells of St Paul’s had pealed for her humiliation. Now the street was its everyday crowded self, jammed with wagons, the shops no longer decorated in the King’s honour. Cheapside, though far from being paved with gold, came very near to being walled with it. There were getting on for fifty goldsmiths’ shops lining the street between the water conduit at the Standard and St Paul’s, all with open fronts where mounds of shining plate were always on display. Here the nobility came to buy. Some of the younger, more raffish of them were buying now, and causing a disturbance in the street. The wheels of two wagons had managed to become locked in the press, and the carters had climbed down to abuse each other and sort out the tangle. They got in the way of the lordly party sauntering past the shops, and foul language passed freely between everyone.

  Anne glanced fearfully in their direction. The roistering young lords looked too elegant to set foot in a London street, but their language matched the draymen’s. Their arrogance and ill manners were not much different at the King’s court.

  ‘Rotten apples will fall!’ Mistress Langwith said, as they made a detour to avoid the incident. Anne glanced at her and saw her contempt. She did not volunteer the information that one of them had been the Queen’s son.

  ‘Not far now, my dear,’ Mistress Langwith said, slowing her pace to accommodate Anne’s flagging steps. ‘Just passing into Bread Street Ward, where I live.’

  They had come to Friday Street and turned down it, behind the goldsmiths’ shops, when her new mistress grasped Anne’s arm and hustled her past the entry to an alley, urging her to look the other way. It was too late; she had already seen. A woman, ragged and filthy, was lying on the ground in the alley mouth, groping feebly, as if to catch at the legs of passers-by. Black vomit drooled down her chin. People had begun to die of plague in the streets, even behind the houses of the great merchants, the rulers of London.