“There. And there. And there!” He sang the words and, godlike, the wave of ecstasy took him, open-eyed; his gaze burned Anne’s face as if written there was the meaning of all that was, and all that had ever been. Then his intensity caught her up and they rode it down together, plunged from light into darkness and such joy as they dissolved into each other while their bodies slowly withdrew from the clamor, the tumult, of the senses.
Anne was silent as the king lay curled around and beside her, panting; her body cooled and the rose flush subsided, though her chest rose and fell like a runner’s.
Edward suddenly chuckled.
“What?” Anne stifled a yawn as she said it. The temptation of sleep was immense.
“They wouldn’t have you now.”
“Who?”
“The sisters. You pray for different things, it seems to me. And in very different ways!”
Anne opened one eye and giggled. “So do you, oh most Catholic and holy king.”
“Wholly yours, my darling. This king is wholly yours.” Softly, very gently, he kissed her. As softly, she kissed him in return. She had chosen.
“Are you there, Mother?”
The queen remained in her bed behind closed curtains. This was most unusual for it was late morning, well past the time for mass. The small crowd of women ranged around the bed dared not speak and looked at Duchess Jacquetta in mute appeal.
Clearing her throat nervously, the duchess spoke up. “I am, Your Majesty. Good morning. Did you sleep well?”
“I did not. I’m ill. Very ill.”
The ladies looked downcast and the body-servants exchanged frightened glances. Once more they gazed beseechingly at Jacquetta. She sighed. Very well, she’d take responsibility.
“Shall we fetch you a doctor, daughter?”
“No! I want no doctors about me. They’ll make it worse. I want you. Come here!”
Imperious, querulous. Two bad signs. Two very bad signs. Duchess Jacquetta moved to the bed with tiny, graceful steps. Her face was calm but those among the ladies who knew her best saw the convulsive grip of one hand on the other.
Hesitantly, the queen’s mother pulled one of the embroidered bedcurtains slightly aside. It was dark inside the cave they created.
“Daughter? I can’t see you.”
“Am I a beast in a cage, to be peered at? A bear? A lion perhaps?”
The duchess ducked as a bolster sailed past her shoulder and landed on the floor. The ladies and the servants gasped and backed away.
“Well?”
“Now, my dear child, calm yourself.” The wrong thing to say. The duchess knew it as soon as she voiced the words.
“Calm? Calm myself!” Another bolster was followed by a pewter necessary pot; its contents flew everywhere. This time the queen’s mother did not duck quite fast enough.
“Oh!”
“What did you say?” The queen’s white face appeared between the curtains. Dark circles beneath each eye, cracked lips, and wild hair. Where was the beautiful Elizabeth Wydeville today?
“You stink! Go!”
Duchess Jacquetta had been bred in courts. Descended from the greatest nobility of France, she had seen much, and done much, in a comparatively long life. Little had the power to move or shock her. But this was uncontrolled savagery; and she had bred the monster in this bed, created it from her own body. Tears swelled and burst from her eyes as the queen’s mother hurried from the room, leaving an appalled silence behind her.
“Well? What are you staring at? Clean up this mess. I have changed my mind.” Elizabeth Wydeville’s voice was an ominous growl. Dread spread softly through the room.
“Yes, Your Majesty.” The duchess of Portland spoke, a slight quaver in her voice. She was the lady of most senior rank left in the queen’s rooms. It was her duty.
“Yes me no yeses. I will dress. Now. Ill as I am. Then you will bring William Hastings to me. Immediately. Do you understand?”
Mute, the terrified women curtsied and then scurried forward to the bed, hearts hammering, some to clean (the body-servants) and some to display clothing for the approval of the queen-consort (the ladies). Dress the queen! Dress the queen! Hurry! Find the chamberlain, find the chamberlain! Quickly. Quickly! Quickly!
At the heart of this storm of sudden, earnest activity the queen sat silent and brooding. Her rage was gone and in her heart was a stone. The king had not returned; he had not returned all night.
Anne de Bohun was to blame.
CHAPTER SEVENTY-THREE
“Your Majesty?” William Hastings advanced two paces toward the Presence chair and flourished a bow to the queen. Another two paces, another bow.
“Stop!”
William looked up, startled. “Stop this. You’ll be all morning getting here.”
For one bright moment the chamberlain thought the queen had made a joke, but a quick glance at Elizabeth Wydeville’s somber face and he squashed that happy thought. The queen’s eyes had a dangerous hot glitter. William knew the signs and knew what to do. He moved forward faster, as gracefully as he could, and knelt on one knee at the foot of the dais.
“Your Majesty is radiant this morning.” A gallant lie, but gallant lies were useful things. Would the queen acknowledge his sally? No. Elizabeth, now that he saw her face at close range, actually looked close to tears.
“Tell them to go. All of them.”
William stood and surveyed the crowded Presence chamber. From the queen’s expression, the court could sense something was brewing and, almost without him seeing them do it, as a body they were creeping closer and closer to the Presence chair, just in case there was something juicy to pick up on as the chamberlain spoke with the queen. William clapped his hands sharply and there was an audible mutter. Dismissed! And just as things were getting interesting.
The chamberlain ignored the whispers and the smothered sighs of disappointment. He waited patiently until it pleased the queen to speak. The great doors closed on the last of the court; Elizabeth beckoned Hastings forward.
“Did you find her?”
Hastings had prepared himself for this conversation, had thought carefully of what he needed to say to gain the best advantage from this awkward situation.
“No, Your Majesty, I did not. The Lady Anne de Bohun had already left her home.”
The queen did not seem surprised. She nodded and slumped a little in her chair, which confused William momentarily. Could news have traveled this fast from Somerset?
“And? What else?”
The chamberlain smiled confidently. “Your Majesty, I know where she is.” The queen stared into William’s eyes. She beckoned him again. He stood on the lower step of the dais; she waved him closer still. Now he stood beside her Presence chair.
“So do I,” she whispered in his ear, a tickling sensation. In suppressing the urge to scratch his ear, William was distracted and completely unprepared when Elizabeth screamed, “He’s with her now. He’s been with her all night!”
The sheer volume of sound nearly made the chamberlain fall backward. Automatically, he put out a hand to save himself and his fingers closed around one arm of the queen’s chair; the arm on which the queen was leaning.
“Don’t touch me. How dare you!”
Elizabeth was furious and William was bewildered and confused. And shamed. The queen’s person was sacred, not to be touched by unconsecrated hands.
“Forgive me, Your Majesty!”
William stumbled to the floor and knelt, head bent, to hide his flaming face. There was silence, though Hastings was certain his heart had migrated to his mouth and, if he opened it, the queen would hear its agitated thud.
“What am I to do, William? The king loves that woman. He will abandon me. Send me to a convent.”
She never called him William. Cautiously, the chamberlain raised his eyes and saw something remarkable. The queen was actually crying in front of him, oblivious of appearances. He’d never seen her cry before. The tears fell in a minor torrent
, dropping onto the fingers she’d twisted together in her satin lap, dripping from the ends of her nose and her chin. They were real tears, not decorative in the least.
William held his breath. This was, potentially, an opening to the first big realignment of power and influence since the king had returned. The high chamberlain of England recognized his moment and seized it. “Your Majesty, I agree that the Lady Anne is a problem, for the king and, potentially, for the country. But do not despair. Later today there is someone I believe you should meet. Someone with much to tell us about the Lady Anne de Bohun…”
CHAPTER SEVENTY-FOUR
When Anne awoke, most of the morning had fled, but she decided she’d dispense with anxiety and fear. Enchantment was the ruling force in her life now—enchantment conjured by the king, her lover. Edward Plantagenet had caused a bower to be created for her and she had become the lady of this place. For the moment she dwelt within a tower surrounded by a garden, just as the Romances described. Anne decided she would explore this new domain while the king was away.
First, however, she should dress. It would not be decent to remain naked and in bed for the whole day, though it was a tempting and luxurious thought. Anne sat up and wrapped one of the delicate sheets around her body. She was surrounded by beauty and opulence such as she’d never seen before; it was intoxicating. But luxury was a close companion to sin, was it not?
Stretching to banish the thought, Anne stood and walked to a latched casement, the sheet trailing over the rushes behind her. But the glass panes were thick and leaf green and the outside world was oddly distorted when she tried to look through them. What did the garden truly look like from this height? Pushing the casement open as widely as she could, Anne looked down on her secret realm, the sun shining full on her face like a blessing.
The garden beneath and around her tower was thickly wooded and contained within it a high wall though, on one side, it appeared to finish at a natural rockface half hidden in trees. It was a lavish amount of otherwise empty land this close to Westminster; almost a nobleman’s park.
Directly below her window there was a small building with a sharply pointed roof, from the highest part of which a thread of smoke arose, wavering, into the still air. A kitchen?
Anne yawned. And laughed. If she was to be the lady in the tower for a day while she awaited the return of her lover with the sunset, surely she must wash and dress suitably? But she would need help. And clothes. What about clothes? All she had was the dress she’d worn yesterday, now lying abandoned on the floor.
The white dress, the dress embroidered with pearls. Where was that? As she thought about it, and remembered what had happened when she’d arrived the previous night with the king, Anne blushed, though there was no one there to see her embarrassment. Ah yes, that dress also, that beautiful, enchanting garment—it, too, had been abandoned.
Then something caught Anne’s eye: a delicate silver hand-bell was beside the bed she’d lately left. Curious, the girl stooped down and lifted it; rang it experimentally. It took only moments after the clear sound shivered through the air for light, hurrying steps to be heard outside the tower room: a woman or a child, perhaps? A hesitant hand knocked at the door.
“Enter.”
The door opened slowly and a woman’s black-veiled head peered through. A moment, and the body of the owner of the head arrived behind it, bowing.
A nun? For one mad instant Anne thought a professed sister had been sent to her, but when the stranger raised her head, Anne saw the truth. A widow: that explained the black dress, the white wimple. Swallowing her embarrassment, Anne smiled pleasantly. “I should like to wash and then to dress. Can you help me?”
The woman nodded enthusiastically and smiled, though her eyes remained respectfully fixed on the floor.
“What is your name?”
The woman opened her mouth and pointed; there was only a wriggling red stump of flesh where her tongue should have been. She was mute.
“Oh. I am so sorry.” Anne was shocked, but the woman smiled at her readily enough. She pointed at the bell in Anne’s hand and mimed washing and dressing.
“Yes. Yes, I should like that, if you can help me? I need to find a dress: it’s white and…”
The woman nodded vigorously and hurried from the room. A moment later, she returned with the lovely garment laid reverently over her outstretched arms. Carefully placing it on the disordered bed, she led Anne to a stool near the window and, leaving her there, mimed that she was going to fetch water.
Anne watched her go and shivered, though the sun streamed through the window, bathing her in warmth. Was this woman’s guaranteed discretion part of the price of her love for Edward Plantagenet, and his for her? Perhaps kings thought differently about the human cost of love. Perhaps they did not count the cost at all.
“I don’t remember you. When were you at court?”
Elizabeth Wydeville was back in control. And not especially impressed by what she saw. Bone-thin and pale, the monk standing before her Presence chair was dressed in the robes of a Dominican, but robes so elegantly made, from such fine wool dyed a deep and lustrous black, that Brother Duckshit himself would not have disdained to wear them. The man raised haunted eyes.
“I was your physician, sister-queen. I brought you the blessed Girdle of the Holy Mother of Christ when the pain was too great at the birth of your eldest daughter, the noble Lady Elizabeth. And when it seemed that you might die, I helped the princess out of your belly and watched you cry when you saw the baby was a girl-child.”
The queen, already astonished at being addressed as “sister-queen,” choked on an indignant breath. “How dare you! Guard!”
“No, Your Majesty! Let him speak. Please. For the sake of the king. And your kingdom.”
That stopped Elizabeth Wydeville. She lowered herself into the chair once more, alert. Very alert.
“Well, Hastings? Why must I listen to this… to this creature?”
“Because what he says is true. He was your physician. Moss was his name then. But now, Your Majesty, this man, our holy brother as he now is, can deliver the king from the sorceries of Anne de Bohun, with your help.”
“Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live.” The monk murmured the words softly, his eyes fixed on the queen’s.
Acid rose high in the queen’s throat. How did he know? “These are pernicious rumors. The court is full of envy at the restoration of my husband. They slander me to wound him.” The queen’s voice shook and her hands gripped the arms of her chair. If she had to stand now, she would fall; of that she was certain.
Hastings was aghast. “No, Your Majesty. This man accuses the Lady Anne of witchcraft.”
The monk nodded with great solemnity and signed a cross in the air between himself and the queen. “Foul enchantment has made the king blind to his mortal sin of lust. This woman, who calls herself Anne de Bohun…” His face twisted and he wiped his mouth as if he’d fouled it by saying the name. “This succubus in a girl’s shape has attached itself to your husband’s soul. She will destroy him, as she destroyed me, and the kingdom also, unless…”
He was ghost pale and so sincere the queen’s terror bled away. Relief took its place. “Unless what, Brother?”
Spittle had gathered at the sides of Brother Agonistes’s mouth; unconscious of protocol, he wiped it onto the skirts of the fine new habit supplied by the chamberlain, the man who’d also insisted he wash before talking to the queen. Vanity. Vanity! But soon, all such things would pass away in these end times.
“Unless she is given over to the Church. With your help, and that of the chamberlain, I shall remove her from this kingdom. Remove her to France, where, this time, she will be burned, most assuredly. To save her soul.” He added the last with great certainty.
“Amen,” whispered the queen. A brilliant solution. If only she, herself, could be kept out of it.
“Amen,” echoed the chamberlain, without even a twinge of concern. In the end, he was a pragmat
ist.
“Let it be done, Lord Hastings. Let her be taken away. For the good of the kingdom and the salvation of its king. This woman has broken the terms of her exile.”
Impulsively, Elizabeth pulled from her finger a large, square-cut emerald ring set among pearls. “Sell this. It will buy the help you require to escort this woman from our kingdom.”
And, thought William Hastings, it would buy an excellent set of false documents as well.
The queen stood as she gave the monk her ring. “You are about God’s holy work, good Brother. It is my duty to assist you by all means possible.”
Brother Agonistes bowed. Surely his master, Louis, his brother-king, would be glad when he presented the woman to him for judgment. At one stroke, his will would be accomplished on Earth as his master’s was in Heaven. Edward Plantagenet would suffer greatly for his sins in the woman’s absence. The English king would be mortified by grief—especially once he heard of the woman’s fate—and yet his soul would be exalted in the eyes of the Lord by this suffering. Righteous punishment, righteously endured, was the path to salvation. That was God’s will for all his creatures.
On a signal from the chamberlain, the monk bowed with the remembered grace of a courtier and backed from the Presence chamber. But before Hastings could follow, the queen beckoned him closer.
“I’ll not be associated with this, will I, Hastings? Not in any way?”
The chamberlain shook his head, his face carefully neutral. “Associated with what, Your Majesty? As far as I know, we have been greatly edified by the prayers of a very holy man. A great sinner who has surrendered his will to God. To the very great profit of all our souls.”
The queen waved her hand, dismissing the king’s high chamberlain. She sat in the empty Presence chamber, silent and, for that rare moment, entirely alone. Would it really be over? Could Anne de Bohun be dismissed from her life, and Edward’s life, so very easily? Quickly, she kissed the crucifix that dangled between her breasts, seeking reassurance. Her anxious breathing slowed. Yes. She was sure of it. She was about God’s work—saving a Christian marriage. Her own. She was the reconsecrated queen-consort of England. She had a right to defend what was hers. And God was on her side. Why else would he have sent her the monk?
The Uncrowned Queen Page 40