The Uncrowned Queen

by Posie Graeme-Evans

  Jacquetta shook her head. “Really, Elizabeth, you were not brought up to be so poor-spirited. This is a marriage of convenience only. It will mean nothing at all when Edward returns; it won’t be worth even this.” The duchess held up a hank of red embroidery silk. “Expensive, decorative, but, in the end, only embroidery, nothing of substance. You’ll see. Have faith.”

  Elizabeth leaned forward and poked savagely at the fire. The logs collapsed and threatened to roll out onto the flagged hearth. The queen kicked at them just in time. Flushed from her exertions, she plumped back into the chair, staring moodily into the flames. Then her expression lightened.

  “I wonder if they burned Anne de Bohun, in the end? At least that was a bit of good news: the monk denouncing her on Christ-mass day. Just what she deserved. It must have been so very embarrassing. Rivers was quite naughty about it all when he wrote.” She giggled and flashed a glance at her mother. “I always thought she was a witch, you know.”

  Jacquetta’s tone was caustic. “Unlike you, you mean? Or me.”

  Elizabeth was shocked. “Mother, how can you say such things? It’s dangerous.” And then she laughed, long and loud. “Gone. She’s really, truly gone. At last. Gone for good!”

  CHAPTER FIFTY

  Herrard Great Hall. It had only been a name, something she’d seen written on parchment, but now, at last, as the battlements rose up from behind the trees, she understood. Anne de Bohun had come home, truly home. To her mother’s house. The house she had never seen.

  It was late February of the year of our Lord 1471 and it was fiercely cold, yet this afternoon, as the sun began its slide to the west, long, pale light silvered the black trees and the surface of the road sparkled. It was ice, but it looked like diamonds.

  She’d not known, not understood, how much she missed the wooded depths of England since she’d been away, but as Anne sat in the body of the cart behind the yoked oxen, the clean smell of the winter forest restored her soul to childhood.

  “Edward! Wake up. Look. We’re home. We’ve truly come home.”

  Anne de Bohun’s son, worn out by the excitement of their long journey from London, was cuddled up asleep in a nest of rugs behind Anne’s plank seat. He’d hated to miss even a moment because each turn in the track brought places and sights and sounds he’d never experienced before, but, this late in the day, the wayfaring had finally made him drowsy. Now he was awake in an instant. “What?” He sat upright, flushed from sleep, as the wagon lurched to a stop.

  Anne climbed down and stood on the hard roadway beside the bullocks’ heads. She turned back to look at little Edward. “Come with me. We should see this together. Just the three of us. Deborah?”

  During the long miles that Anne and her party had covered since first light, Deborah too had fallen asleep, slumped against and between piled-up coffers in the second cart. She startled awake, finding her henin askew over one eye, with its sarcenet veil nearly blinding the other.

  The little boy, scrambling down into his mother’s arms, laughed. “Deborah looks funny!”

  “It’s very rude to laugh at old ladies. There’ll be terrible, terrible trouble and you’ll have seven years’ bad luck. Tell him, mistress.” Deborah’s smile belied the severity of her words as Anne helped her down from the dray. The three men that Mathew Cuttifer had supplied to guard the women, the boy, and the carts relaxed in their saddles.

  Edward giggled; he’d heard such threats before. “Seven? Bah! I’ll be big when I’m seven and I’ll chase all the bad luck away!” The triumphant flourish of a wooden sword by the small but doughty warrior left them in no doubt of his determination in the contest to come. Even the phlegmatic bullock drivers, Wat and Crispin, joined in with the laughter of the Londoners from Blessing House. The men watched the little boy prancing happily between the women as they walked on down the track toward the gap in the trees.

  Wat Anderson shifted his aching buttocks on the seatboard of his cart and stretched his arms and shoulders. He yawned and got down into the roadway, scratching. Crispin, too, got down from the second dray to stand beside his lead bullock, Davey. Perhaps he should hobble the animals if they were to wait for a while? He patted the placid creature between the ears. “Hungry, Davey-boy? So am I. Anything to eat, Ned?”

  Ned was one of Mathew Cuttifer’s town servants. He sighed as he slung a leg over the pommel of his saddle and jumped down to the roadway, joining his mates. “There’s ale, but we finished the bannock a while back.”

  He unhooked a leather bottle from his saddlebow and turned to the others, waving the flask. Ale, even one small flask among several, was a powerful pleasure at the end of a hard, cold journey. A good swallow each was all they got, but in winter men are opportunists. The big old house at the end of the road would have more, much more—cauldrons of it, surely. Home-brewed ale. And, perhaps if they were lucky, a pretty alewife. Good ale, a pretty face to look at, and clean hands to serve it up in a nice warm kitchen—these four made up for much. The men stamped their feet, hoping to shock some blood into their frozen toes. What was keeping their mistress?

  “There’s no one here. The place is empty. And it’s huge.”

  The two women and the boy were staring up at the walls of the house in front of them, intimidated. It was mellow stone, to be sure, but the walls were very high. And with castellated tops. There was a dry moat—now a wide, puddled ditch—and the front of the house presented a blank face except for arrow loops and a pair of massive gates.

  “I thought it was a hunting lodge?”

  Anne nodded slowly. Deborah was right: the king had told her that Herrard Great Hall was a former royal hunting lodge with its own chase. “Yes. It was. But I think it must have been a fortress once.”

  Deborah held out her hand to the little boy. “Stout walls are no bad thing in these times. Come, Edward, let’s explore.”

  Chatting loudly to subdue the silence, the two women each held one of Edward’s hands and, picking up their skirts, marched across the drawbridge that spanned the moat. Creeper twining through gaps in the boards beneath their feet said it was a long time since anyone had raised or lowered this particular form of defense. Their footsteps echoed beneath them.

  Anne felt a sharp tug on her skirt. She looked down at her son. “How do we get in, Wissy?” he asked.

  Anne laughed from nerves and the oddness of this homecoming. “Well, we have a key, my darling.”

  She thrust a hand into the pocket-bag at her waist and withdrew it holding the biggest key that Edward had ever seen. His eyes widened with astonishment. “Let me see.” When she placed it in his hands, the length of the key shaft spanned both the child’s palms. It was old and black and cold.

  “Let’s see if it fits.”

  It was hard to find the keyhole in the outer gates—they were massively iron-bound and studded with black boltheads in an intricate pattern. Then Anne smiled, relieved. Within the shape of one of the two great gates there was the faint outline of a smaller door: the long slant of late afternoon light showed it to her. “Ah. See here—there’s a little door within the big one. And there’s the hole for the key. See?”

  It was cleverly disguised, for the hole itself seemed at first glance merely a part of the pattern—the pointed end of a long curling leaf of iron. Once found, the key, massive and cold, slid home easily, but Anne could not engage the mechanism of the lock. She jiggled the key, withdrew it, put it in again, and tried once more. Finally, she was rewarded. A satisfying click told her the teeth of the key had married with the workings. It was nearly seized from long disuse and lack of oil, however, turn it did.

  “Let’s see what’s on the other side of our gate, shall we?” Anne spoke loudly. She wanted her voice to be heard by this old house. Using the key like a handle, pushing and then pulling hard, she found that the door opened outward, after protesting on its hinges. The new lady of Herrard Great Hall nodded approvingly. It made sense for a door to open outward, rather than inward. Harder for invaders
to force their way in… now, why did I think of that? Anne shook her head. The watchful atmosphere of this place was getting to her. Ducking her head, she stepped through the opening.

  “What can you see, Wissy?” Little Edward had a penetrating whisper and it made Anne laugh as she popped her head back out through the open door.

  “Come and see for yourself!”

  She disappeared through the door and the child looked doubtful, but then caught Deborah’s encouraging smile. He smiled too. “Here I come!” he shouted, and jumped over the small step at the bottom of the little door, ready to run into this new world. But then he stopped, his mouth a perfect O of astonishment.

  Anne was standing beneath a naked oak in the middle of a huge paved space, open to the sky. So ancient, so enormous, its branches reached out like old and comforting arms to welcome the weary traveler.

  “Have you ever seen a better tree for climbing?”

  Whooping, the small boy hurtled across to Anne. “Help me, Wissy. Help me up!”

  As Deborah joined them, Anne cupped her hands to boost Edward up to a large burl. From there, Edward could scramble into a natural place for a small boy to sit and survey his kingdom: the junction of two thick branches as they left the central bole of the tree.

  “You can stay there for a little while if you like. But don’t climb higher, please.”

  Edward pouted. “But it’s easy. Very safe, really.” He nodded earnestly.

  Anne smiled as he wheedled. “It’s safe to climb while I’m here with you, or Deborah. When you’re bigger you can climb by yourself, as much as you like, but not just yet. But from today on, this can be your own tree. We’ll make sure our friends all know its name: Edward’s tree.”

  “Mine? Just for me?” Edward was nearly glowing with happiness.

  “Yes, just for you.”

  “What do you think of this place, Anne?” Anne switched her attention from the boy to her foster mother. “I’m not sure. It’s very quiet. Perhaps, after the life we’ve had, silence is no bad thing. It’s odd that there’s no one here, though.”

  Deborah shivered. The sun was westerning, casting cold shadows into the central courtyard as it dipped behind the walls. “It’s long indeed since any soul has lived here. Or that’s what I’m thinking.”

  Anne cast a speculative glance around her new domain; there was much to see. The forbidding exterior presented a blank face to the world outside, but inside, all around them, on all four sides of the interior central ward, Herrard Great Hall showed itself to be an ancient, well-fortified house. In its own massive way, it was even beautiful in the last light from the red winter sun. It would take time to explore, however, for clearly there were many rooms piled up three and four stories high on all sides.

  “Hello? Is anybody there?” Anne’s voice was caught and thrown back at her from the walls of her home.

  No one answered.

  Anne and Deborah looked at each other. Each repressed what she really wanted to say.

  “Very well. There is much to do if we’re to sleep warm tonight. We can explore properly in the morning. Deborah, would you go back to the men, please, and ask Wat and Crispin to bring the bullock drays? Meanwhile, I’ll open the great doors to let them all through. Edward, come down now, please. We have work to do.”

  For once, there was no dispute from Edward. He slid down the trunk, hand over hand, and allowed himself to drop into Anne’s arms before running after Deborah, calling excitedly, “Wait, Deborah, wait for me!” Anne hurried back to the great gates after them. Seen from the inside of the courtyard, the house-side, there was no portcullis and the doors themselves—her gates—were easily unbolted. It was just a matter of levering the long iron bar—the width and thickness of a man’s forearm, it spanned both doors—up and out of the keepers, and then turning the giant iron ring that lifted the actual latch. She’d expected the doors themselves to be hard to haul open, but when she braced herself to pull the first one back she was surprised that it swung so easily. Deserted as the place seemed to be, someone had kept the hinges of the great doors to Herrard Great Hall well greased. What did that mean?

  And then Anne de Bohun surprised herself. She was happy, really consciously happy, and that was something she’d not felt in a long, long time. Questions and uncertainty were for tomorrow; for now she was standing inside the opened doors of her mother’s house—her house—and waving their escort and the bullock carts past, into the inner ward. The men were cold and exhausted, as she was also, but it wasn’t hard to be cheerful when the world felt so pregnant with possibilities.

  “Take the drays over there, Wat. I think there are stables. We’ll only unload what we need tonight. You’ll see, we’ll have everyone settled in no time.”

  There were a number of doors, big and little, in each face of the buildings. Anne waved toward the one that was closest as she hurried in front of the men.

  This door was not locked and it too swung open easily. Behind it was a range of rooms, each opening out into the next and all mostly empty, though one or two contained wooden racks on which were placed bulging sacks that had been neatly sewn closed.

  “Storerooms. Excellent. Produce from our own lands? Wat, Ned, can you help the men and Deborah stack everything we need from the drays here for the moment? I’m going to look for the kitchens.”

  Leaving Deborah to supervise the men, noisily seconded by her small, excited son, Anne passed through one empty room and into another. One had a large stone sink. The scullery, thought Anne. The kitchen must be close. A flagged passageway led her to another door, over-wide and studded with iron nailheads. Lifting the latch, Anne pushed it open and found what she was looking for.

  The kitchen was vast—far larger than that of her farmhouse in Brugge and nearly as big as Mathew Cuttifer’s kitchen at Blessing House in London. Three fire mouths lined one wall, the smallest partially closed in to make an oven, the others big enough to roast an ox. Anne shivered. The kitchen was cold and smelled of old smoke. Time to bring life and human noise back to these empty rooms.

  “It’s nearly dark. Here, take this. I thought moving in deserved it.” Deborah had brought light—a precious wax candle for Anne and an oil lamp for herself.

  “Deborah, I think we should all be in here tonight. We can sleep by the fire. We can feed everyone here too, and it will be warm.” Her foster mother nodded and bustled back the way she’d come, calling out, “Wat, Crispin, Ned, my mistress wants the trestle board here, in the kitchen. And while you’re about it, I’d like the greatest of the coffers also. It has our pans in it and my big three-legged pot. The black one…”

  Grumbling from the men—no alewife, it seemed, and no house ale either in this deserted place—and the excited yells of one small boy came distantly to Anne. She had questions, so many of them, chaotic questions bred by exhaustion.

  She closed her eyes for a moment and found herself praying. “Those who were here, those who are here now, help me. This is my mother’s house, but it’s my home, too, and the home of my son. Bless us. Keep us safe. Watch over us and give us rest in this night to come. I ask this in the name of the Mother of us all.”

  Opening her eyes, she held her candle high. There was a small window pierced through the thickness of the wall and Anne set the light down on its ledge. The flame was doubled by the panes of rare green glass and she felt better. She lit straw from the candle and thrust the burning wisps into a quickly assembled nest of oak twigs on the hearth. They caught satisfyingly and light bloomed from the fireplace, banishing shadows into the corners of the room as Deborah and the men brought more of their goods into the kitchen.

  “Things could be worse, mistress. At least this place has been swept regularly and I think the roof’s sound. I can’t smell damp either.” Deborah was loudly cheerful for the men’s benefit.

  “Yes, it does seem sound, this house. Food, warmth, and sleep is all we need now and then we will see…”

  “See what, Wissy?”

 
Anne smiled at the small boy proudly staggering into the kitchen under the weight of his own possessions.

  “Why, we shall see where all the people are, Edward. They can’t be very far away.”

  Anne’s eyes met Deborah’s over little Edward’s head.

  Let it be that their neighbors were friends.

  CHAPTER FIFTY-ONE

  A cold coming and a wild landfall at Ravenspur was all that Edward Plantagenet had when he landed on the Yorkshire coast in the howling storm that had scattered his ships.

  It was mid-March and in this bleak part of the world—the estuary behind the hook at the mouth of the Humber—there was little habitation to observe the return of the former king. The nuns at the small, prosperous convent of Our Lady of the Sands heard the news of the arrival first, and that was only because Beck, their idiot carter, whipped his one poor horse through the gate of the convent, gobbling, “Men! Horses and men! And boats. Run, sisters, run. The Norsemen, the Norsemen! They’ve come back!”

  Beck upset the geese with all his shouting and so frightened the sister sacrist that she rang the bell with all her strength for over an hour after matins, vainly hoping to warn the countryside around. Terror, inflamed by the bell, propelled the other sisters of Our Lady of the Sands in a flapping huddle to their Mother Superior as she prayed in the chapel, disturbing the air of that holy place with a rising and scandalous babble.

  “Mother, Mother, what shall we do? Can it really be the Norsemen?”

  Mother Elinor, abbess of the convent, was as alarmed as her sisters, yet, for their sakes, would not permit them to see her panic.

  “Do? We must pray, of course. But first, bar the gates with all we have that’s heavy!”

  Edward heard the wild clamor of the distant bell and saw where the sound came from—a cluster of gray buildings surrounded by a stout wall. He was being rowed ashore, with William Hastings, from the Anthony, his borrowed flagship now moored inside the wide mouth of the river. The wind was dropping and the ship rode easily at anchor, in contrast to the bucking, gut-churning ride they’d had when she’d crossed the treacherous bar beneath Spurn Point.