I, Richard Plantagenet: Book One: Tante le Desiree

by J. P. Reedman

  Within days, the inheritance was settled, at least in part. George sat down at the table with Edward and I, and most magnanimously agreed (I lie here, he was as surly as Hell throughout) that I should have Middleham and Sheriff Hutton…which of course the King had already granted to me months ago. How generous of George to allow me to keep what I already owned!

  George got the earldoms of Warwick and Salisbury; and I rendered to him the office of Great Chamberlain, which brought the first smile to his face I had seen in weeks. I got Warden of the Royal Forests beyond the Trent in exchange; a lesser position, but closer to my holdings.

  It took longer than I wished for all the documentation to be finalised, with no chance of withdrawal or dispute, and there were other considerations and preparations to be made, none of which was swift in the process. At the same time, Edward asked me to sit on his council; a great honour and one I could not refuse…but still. I was like a horse champing at the bit, eager to marry Anne and be off to Middleham.

  Spring was slipping away and summer coming in with hot days that seemed unbearable in the teeming bustle of London. The sky was deep blue, almost royal purple in its depth of colour, but below the burning sun, the Thames stank as it shrivelled in its bed, leaving piles of ordure and even carcasses open to the gaze, while at night a fuggy haze rose up, bringing pestilence and illness. Everyone seemed short-tempered, drained by the flare of heat—not least of all me.

  I invited Francis Lovell from his manor in Oxfordshire to keep me company, and he tried to ease my frustration and boredom. In my chamber near the Baynard’s gardens, where a faint hint of coolness drifted through the door, we played backgammon, dice and chess.

  Usually passing fair, my chess skills were truly awful on this occasion, my concentration wretched and my analytical skills poor. In a fit of pique worthy of George, I flung out my arm, hurling the chessboard and pieces to the floor. Kings and Queens scattered on the flagstones; Francis’s hound grabbed a King in its teeth and began to chew upon it.

  Francis looked at me with raised brows. “I am sick of London!” I snapped at him, rising and pacing back and forth.

  “And you want your woman…” He smiled wryly.

  “Yes!”

  “I am touched.”

  I cast him a glare. “Don’t mock me, Frank! I have lived like a monk these past months because of her! How would you like it if you were separated long months from your Anna.”

  He reddened and stared at the floor. “I fear she prefers my absences.”

  Surprised, I stared at him. I had always assumed he had been fond of his bride, Anna FitzHugh, for he had never given any indication otherwise. A good match, bringing him land and money, Anna was Anne’s cousin, though they were not close. Locked in my own troubles, I had failed miserably to see Frank’s.

  “Ah, Frank, forgive me, I am a thoughtless fool…I had no idea it was not well between you.”

  He shrugged. “So it sometimes happens. Our wives are chosen for us, and with luck, affection will grow, but it has not happened between Anna and me and sometimes…it is Hell. I envy you, Richard; lands and a girl of your own choosing.”

  “But these delays…delays. I feel I am going mad.” I stalked around the room nervously, wrest my mangled chess piece from the jaws of Lovell’s dog.

  “But your dispensation to marry is not through anyway, is it?” Francis asked. “From the Holy Father in Rome?”

  I shook my head. “The first dispensation for our blood affinity was obtained by Warwick long ago, when he planned for his two daughters to marry two royal Dukes. It is the second dispensation I wait for, for affinity that has come about due to Anne’s marriage to Edward of Westminster, who was kin to me.”

  “You could have a long wait,” said Francis. “These things take time, do they not?”

  “I will not wait!” I said sharply. “As soon as I may, we will marry. The dispensation will come in time.”

  “A risk, Richard.”

  “One I’m willing to take!”

  “No wonder you feel so wretched if you are so possessed by wanting this girl.”

  “I am wretched…I feel I’m going mad! Francis, ah…to be away from this accursed heat!” Frenziedly, I splashed water from a ewer onto my face. Sweat was trickling between my shoulder blades. I would need the bathman in tonight.

  “I think you better go get your Anne very soon,” Francis said with a wry smile.

  CHAPTER SEVEN: ONE DWARF AND A WEDDING

  On July 12, I went to St Martin’s. Quiet and demure, Anne was waiting for me, clad in a blue silk gown. It matched the colour of her eyes. She wore her hair covered, because we would pass through the streets in full view of all, and she was no longer a maiden but a widow.

  I took her from that place of sanctuary and brought her on horseback to the palace of Westminster, where with heads bowed respectfully, we entered the candlelit gloom of St Stephen’s chapel. Without ceremony, without hordes of onlookers, it was just the two of us, the priest who would wed us and several witnesses from my household.

  As we were both born of high station, we did not have to marry outside the door and were permitted to approach the altar. The Rood rose before us behind its ornate screen. I thought of how, years before, another Richard had married his wife Anne in this very place—King Richard II, who met his doom in Pontefract, his right of kingship usurped. However, in his short life chroniclers say he knew joy with his Anne, and likewise I hoped I would be happy with mine…and end my days in a happier estate than that ill-starred Richard.

  I glanced over at my blue-clad bride; her little, heart-shaped face was white and solemn. We prostrated ourselves before the altar and the attending priest, an old, slow-moving man with a cloud of snowy hair and a saint’s calm visage, veiled our heads in a pall of Lucca cloth, laying on top of it a cord of purple and white.

  In a voice that rang through the pillars and up into the vaulting, he intoned the words of the matrimonial ceremony in perfect Latin; I listened attentively, the beauty of the words and their meaning overwhelming me, filling me with awe.

  It was more than merely having the girl I desired; together we were fulfilling destiny, God’s plan for men and women both of high and low estate: “So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them. And God blessed them. And God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth.”

  The priest removed the veil from above our heads, and I turned to Anne, in her blue silk, lit by the light funneling through a narrow trefoil window. It was time to speak the oath that would bind us together, man and wife, one flesh in the sight of God.

  “I, Richard Plantagenet take Anne Neville to be my wedded wife, to have and to hold from this day forward, for better for worse, for richer for poorer, in sickness and in health, till death us depart, if Holy Church will it ordained; and thereto I plight thee my troth.”

  Anne took a deep breath; I could see she trembled. Her voice low, halting with nervousness, she made response to me with the similar words spoken by the bride. Reaching out, I took her hand; it was warm and damp. I slipped a ring upon her finger and…it was done.

  Without fuss, without pomp, we were married.

  The moment we left the chapel, stepping out into the bright sunshine and noise of the nearby streets, I wanted to escape from London. I did not wish to spend my wedding night there in the heat and the reek; rumours abounded that pestilence—plague—had indeed come to the city, drifting in with the heat waves.

  “Anne, would you be angered if we made swift preparations to head north?” I asked my new wife. “I know it is irregular to rush at such a time…but the city presses in on me, taking the very breath from my lungs. God’s teeth, even the wind refuses to blow here and carry the stink away!”

  “I will do as my husband wishes,” Anne said. “I, too, wish
to be away; I have spent too many days locked behind the sanctuary walls, hearing the incessant noise and bustle of the streets beyond. I long for quietude… for peace. For no more war. No more death.”

  I gazed at her, suddenly remembering what she had been through in her young life. I too had borne many griefs but it was different for a girl. As a man, at least most of my decisions were my own. For Anne, the decisions were those of her father, her first husband and his kin. I tried not to think of the dead Edward of Westminster, whom I had seen hacked to a pulp on the field of Tewkesbury.

  “I will send out orders to make all ready. No dallying, no delay. You must have women to attend you, however; my mother will doubtless assist in that regard.”

  “I do not care if there are no women to serve me,” she said stalwartly. “I just want to be away from London…and to feel fresh air upon my face! Let us go, Richard! Let us go!”

  As the bells above rang out, we went, the open road and our true home calling.

  We decided to spend our first night as man and wife in the Berkshire village of Stanford in the Vale, a manor that belonged to Anne’s mother, Anne Beauchamp. Although Warwick’s lands had been divided, the Countess’s holdings were still not entirely settled, as she was still locked away in sanctuary. Anne had visited Stanford as a child and thought we would be welcome there.

  Some days before, I had informed Francis at Minster Lovell that by the time my messenger reached him I would be wed, and Anne and I would halt in Stanford before continuing on to Middleham. The village was close enough to his Oxfordshire estates for him to ride in; I hoped he could free himself from his duties and meet us there to celebrate our marriage. His return messenger brought happy tidings that Frank was coming from the Minster with a small contingent of friends and well-wishers; his lady-wife, Anna FitzHugh, would bring her own ladies to wait upon the bride, her cousin Anne. Attended by only a select group, it would be a quiet feast compared to most nuptial banquets, but like our private wedding, it was what we desired, free of the critical gaze of the Woodvilles and the inappropriate behaviour of George.

  The manor house stood in the heart of Stanford, across the green with its lich-path and tall market cross. Wrought of golden stone, it bore a tall, peaked roof, old-fashioned lancet windows and a large solar. A high outer wall ringed its gardens, where herbs grew in abundance and apples dripped from the branches of trees. The church of St Denys was visible through a turreted gate in the back wall, its lean spire poking at the sky.

  As we rode over the green, the villagers came rushing out to see us…or rather to see Anne, for she was Warwick’s daughter, and the Earl had long connections there through his Countess. Such was his popularity in the past, I worried there might be resentment due to his defeat and death, but as it turned out, like at Middleham, I was cheered with nearly as much gusto as my new bride. How soon men forget loyalty to a lord when he is dead!

  Anne behaved with great graciousness as the people of Stanford emerged from their cottages to offer up gifts, and I was truly proud of her and certain my instinct about her fitness as a wife had been correct.

  In the manor house, the banquet was being prepared in the kitchens; we could hear pots and pans clanging and the cooks shouting at menials in a panic. We had barely had time to refresh ourselves, to wash our hands and faces and change our clothes from the dust of the road, before guests began to arrive—noisily filling the hall and milling about.

  While the ladies my mother had loaned to Anne attended to her garments and hair, I went to greet the celebrants dressed in my finest. I had chosen a russet doublet with a very short skirt; it tightly clung to my body save where I had padding inserted to even my shoulders; my hosen was dark burgundy, even tighter than my doublet, and I wore a matching chaperon hat, even though they were beginning to fall from fashion. The most expensive Cracow shoes money could buy gleamed on my feet, their long tips capped in silver.

  “Ha, Richard, look at you!” said Francis as we kissed each other’s cheeks in greeting “Not the rag-tag lad I remember from Middleham. Anna, do you remember my Lord of Gloucester?”

  I looked over at the girl he had married aged six. She stood apart from him oozing misery; by Christ, she would have indeed made a better nun than a wife by the sourness of her face. We must have met before at some time, being Lord Fitzhugh’s daughter and a northern girl, but clearly, I had paid her little heed for I recalled her not at all. Small, with round, suspicious eyes and skin the colour and consistency of porridge, she stood in a simple brown gown with little adornment, despite her husband being one of the wealthiest young men in England. Poor Frank.

  She dropped a curtsey and mumbled a curt greeting that was barely polite. I got the feeling she was one of those women who, although committed to her duty, hated men—all men. Then she placed her hands on her hips, raised her weak chin and said boldly, “I have brought my own ladies to attend on Cousin Anne and prepare her for what is to come tonight.”

  “For what is to come?” I could not help but utter an indignant response. “Lady Lovell, you make it sound as if I am going to torture her! I assure you, it is not pain that will make her cry out tonight!”

  Anna Lovell flushed fiery red, which worsened her complexion. Frank reddened too. “Anna!” he hissed at her. “You have insulted the Duke. Apologize at once.”

  She looked mutinous and I shook my head. “It was just a jest, I’m sure.” I was not about to take offense on my wedding eve. “Lady Lovell, you may take your women…” I eyed her ladies, a brace of dames equally sour as she, “to your cousin, the Lady Anne. She is upstairs with my mother’s women.”

  Anna and her axe-faced crones marched toward the stairs, and I stared across at Francis in pure sympathy. “It won’t be like that for you, Richard,” he said quietly. “I am certain of it. But let us say no more of such things…I have a surprise for you. Guess who has come to attend the wedding feast?”

  “I know not…Who?” I glanced around eagerly.

  “Rob Percy!”

  “No! All that way! Where is he?”

  At that very moment, Rob burst in through the door, grinning from ear to ear. “Just seeing to the stabling of my horse. Ah, it is good to see you, Dickon…your Grace, that is, my Lord of Gloucester.”

  “Rob!” I clasped him in a huge embrace, as well as I could, for he was taller than I: a friendly-faced man several years my elder, with windswept dark hair and an open smile. We had been together at Middleham, and along with Francis, we had driven our tutors and trainers to distraction as we learned both courtly and knightly ways—dancing, hawking, weapons training, horsemanship. Hardly a week went by without one of us getting a sound beating or having his ears boxed for some misdemeanor. Despite being eldest, Rob was probably the worst behaved of the three of us; by the time he finished his training, his arse must have resembled a slab of raw beef from all the birchings he had received.

  “God…” I could not help but remember his misadventures and burst into laughter, “do you remember that time you wanted to see how far you could piss and you did it out the castle window and it hit George’s Neville’s robe just as he came riding in? Warwick was furious!”

  “My backside will never forget just how furious he was!” chortled Rob. “I thought I was going to die…of embarrassment, if naught else! Fine for you little brats to get a whipping, but I was near enough a man grown and there were my red, raw buttocks on display to the world!”

  The main chamber of Stanford manor was filling with people now and the aroma of the cooking food hung thick in the hot summer air. I retired to my chair, set upon a small dais, and seats were taken around me. Trumpeters blew a fanfare and then my bride, surrounded by my mother’s ladies and unlovely Anna’s, entered the Hall.

  Anne had changed into a cream gown beaded with seed pearls; curlicues of tiny rubies sprayed across the bodice. On her head stood a short, square headdress fitted over a heart-shaped roll. She may not have had the famous beauty of the King’s wife, Elizabeth Woo
dville, but in that instant, with the light from the cressets spilling over her, she seemed as fair as Guinevere or Helen of Troy…at least to my dazzled and joyous eyes.

  She sat beside me, quiet, graceful, eyes downcast in wifely modesty, while the food was carried from the kitchens on silver platters—roast goose, capons and quail, succulent lamb and beef. Herring and salmon had been brought in from the distant coast near Southampton, and trays of oysters soaked in almond milk. I eyed the oysters with interest; it was rumoured that they made a man rampant in the bedchamber for many hours. However, gazing out the corner of my eye at my demure bride, I doubted I would have need of any such props.

  The evening passed swiftly. Voices buzzed, food was devoured; dogs guzzled the leavings. I had hired musicians in London days before our departure, and they had travelled to Stanton with us; the smoky air of the hall was full of the sounds of the shawm and the rebec, of flutes and dulcimers. A singer sang a plaintive love song, and there was…a dwarf.

  I frowned. I had not hired a dwarf!

  I stared perplexed as the ugly little fellow in his multi–coloured, dagged tunic cartwheeled across the front of the table, nearly knocking my goblet of wine into my lap. “A dwarf? Who brought the dwarf?”

  Rob Percy smirked and held up his hand.

  The dwarf winked rather evilly at me and waved a pig’s bladder, while cracking a ribald joke about a bishop and a sheep.

  I decided he could stay.

  Many hours later, the wine was flowing freely. Fair and dignified, Anne rose from her seat and retreated with her ladies to the upstairs chambers to prepare for the bedding. Francis’s ferocious Anna was snapping at Anne’s heels like a terrier, looking disapproving of the whole feast and its reason. There was hooting and loud laughter from the young men gathered in the hall, all of whom were by now quite intoxicated.