The White Queen of Middleham: An historical novel about Richard III's wife Anne Neville (Sprigs of Broom Book 1)

by Lesley Nickell

  Anxiety was joined by puzzlement in his sallow face. ‘He?’

  ‘Our brother the Duke.’

  ‘Why ever not?’

  How could he know nothing of her confinement, of the slurs which George had cast upon his conduct? She had not listened to Isabel’s explanation and her brain could formulate only a crude summary. ‘I don’t know, but Isabel says it is something to do with my mother’s property. It belongs to him and he thinks you want it.’ She so needed him to deny the allegation with vigour that she hardly heard what he said next. Nothing to do with George and Isabel, he said. Only with you and me. His grasp strengthened, and through that as much as through her ears she understood the purpose of his visit.

  ‘I have the King’s good will and I’ve come to ask you to marry me.’

  It could not be true. The brown eyes looking into hers were so earnest that he could not be mocking. The pattern of words was repeating itself all round the room and inside her head, cutting her off from him in a surge of sound. Then his arm was round her shoulders, the warm flesh pressing through her sleeve and driving away the faintness. Her ringing head was supported against his breast and she knew that there she could sleep.

  ‘Will you, Anne?’ Her name again, spoken in the gentle intimate way which no one else had ever matched.

  ‘Oh, my lord, it is the only hope I have left.’ His heart was beating steadily beneath her temple, restoring her senses with every stroke. She saw with sudden wonder how the sun flooding into the room from the window behind them defined their mingled shadows on the floor as delicately as an artist. The downtrodden rushes were given a glossy distinction by its generosity. A gleam of white among them caught her eye. It was a corner of the letter she had written to Richard. The world of her imprisonment crashed in upon their fools’ paradise. She disengaged herself, and felt with anguish his reluctance to let her go. ‘But I can’t accept. I must ask his consent for everything I do ...’ There was not only her own danger to consider, but his as well. Thick-tongued in her haste she tried to warn him, but there was only troubled incomprehension in his face. His sole response was to take her hand again.

  Her efforts were fruitless. Clarence was there, timing his entrance with diabolical precision to destroy her newborn hope. And his anger was directed, incredibly, against his brother.

  ‘How dare you invade my house in this manner?’ The acrid scorn of his presence was appalling, and although Anne sensed that Richard was stiffening to her defence, she knew helplessly that his strength was not enough. He had no weapons against the kind of words that George was flinging at him. Her mind rejected their meaning, but their harshness tore into the softness of her heart so recently opened to Richard. When he rose to Clarence’s challenge she was desperately afraid for him. He was answering evenly, his voice conciliatory, and yet he could not disguise the underlying pain from either of his listeners.

  ‘I want nothing of yours, brother. And I sent my man to inform you as soon as I arrived. Anne is my sister-in-law and I was not aware that I required permission to visit her. She is not a prisoner.’ The way in which he said it seemed to clamp the fetters more securely on her wrists.

  And of course it was no use reasoning with Clarence. As he had twisted Richard’s concern for Anne into self-seeking, so he placed a base construction on his visiting her. Too agitated to follow their arguments, she could see too clearly how Richard was losing ground, hamstrung by sincerity and natural affection, before the ruthless onslaught of his brother. She was the battleground over which they fought, the trampled and disregarded centre of contention as she had so often been before.

  But abruptly she was converted to a combatant. Richard was drawing her forward, asking her opinion. Did she want to be his wife? Her heart leapt into her throat in terror; her limbs were suddenly emptied of sensation. She had already given him her answer, but that had been safely within the circle of his arms, not under the searing glare of the Duke of Clarence’s animosity. To deny him now would be despicable; she had only to stand with him and speak her heart before one witness, however hostile, and church law would have bound them indissolubly. George stood over them, reducing them to naughty children caught out in mischief. Resistance would be risible. And when Anne felt a tremor running through Richard’s hand, she was lost.

  ‘Well, Cousin Anne? Do you want to be the Duchess of Gloucester?’ A brief beautiful vision of herself as Duchess of Gloucester flashed before her and was swallowed in panic.

  ‘If it pleases you, my lord.’ Her surrender was made more bitter by the immediate pleasure it brought to Clarence’s expression.

  ‘There you are, Richard. What better evidence could you want? Anne has placed herself voluntarily under my protection. Would the King force a young lady to give her hand against her expressed wishes?’ Anne could not tell whether her trembling took its violence from Richard’s or her own humiliation. But Richard broke out at last into anger, cutting across his brother’s light insults with scarcely articulate protest. He did not continue for long, as he realised what Anne had already known. Clarence had annihilated them. What was more, he now had his own witnesses. Dimly she made out the discreet stealth of servants in the doorway, and through her link with Richard she shared his shame. Off-handedly Clarence ordered the attendants away, retaining his wife who had somehow been among them.

  ‘Take your sister to your chamber and make her lie down. She has been unduly excited.’ Isabel approached to obey him, too frightened to show any sympathy. As long as she had hold of Richard’s hand, Anne had not quite given up the shreds of hope; they were not yet physically parted, and she still clung remotely to her dependence on him. But his grasp loosened, and without a word or glance he let her go. She left her remaining strength with him, and could not have moved without her sister’s support.

  Now it was worse than before. To have been within a breath of escape and herself to have thrown it away was sufficient sin to cut her off from God as well as Richard. She lived again and again the one moment of decision that life had offered her and which she had been too craven to accept. If she had complained against her fate before, at least she had not been to blame. Not until she brought herself to confession of her failure did she find, hardly relief, but a use for it. We are all nothing before God, the chaplain declared, and anything that brings us nearer to the knowledge of our utter insignificance is a step towards sanctity. Brooding upon his advice afterwards, Anne began to wonder if through what appeared to be such defeat God had not actually spoken at last. And she also wondered why she was not filled with exultation.

  Richard took refuge in action. The Scots were making trouble on the Border and the King despatched him to deal with them. To be in the saddle again and commanding an army lifted his London despondency. Edward had insisted on a reconciliation with Clarence before he left, and with his face to the North he could believe in George’s professions of good intentions. But as the distance lengthened between him and his disappointment, he began to lose his certainty. George might assure him that he was concerned only with Anne’s happiness, that she was still too overwhelmed with grief for her father and husband to be fit for such a step as marriage. He had waited so long in patience, had come so near to his heart’s desire, that this check was hard to take. His depression grew as he crossed into Yorkshire. Not often did he allow himself to dream, but he had in unguarded moments visualised himself coming back here with Anne, to the place where they had lived as children. During that calamitous interview he had had no chance to tell her that, together with Warwick’s other Yorkshire estates, the King had given Middleham to him.

  At Doncaster his captains noticed his low spirits. Several had known him since boyhood, and expected to see their lord in good heart so near to Wensleydale, and to their meeting with the Scots. Reticent as he was, he directed the billeting of his men with his customary efficiency; only tighter lips and a terser manner manifested the mood within. The sympathetic glances of his friends made Richard restive. He did not want to
confide in them, and busied himself unnecessarily with routine work. It was while he was doing the rounds of the billets, going from house to house through the dark wells of Doncaster’s evening streets, that he decided to ride to Pomfret. Taking half a dozen men he departed at once, leaving word that he would rejoin his troops tomorrow on the road to York.

  He set a hard pace during the two hours to Pomfret, for one who had ridden all day. His companions were soon strung out behind him, which gave him the solitude to think, not of the past as he had been doing, but of the night to come. Marja was at Pomfret. She had followed him over from Flanders and he had installed her at the castle to await the birth of their child. During the amazing triumphs of the past few months he had had no time to communicate with her; he did not even know if she was yet delivered. The rhythm of the horse beneath him and the anonymous grey of the road in the light of a waning moon enclosed him in a cocoon of memories and hopes. He tried to reckon when the child was due, counting on his fingers from the proud night, so short a space after their meeting, on which she had told him that she had conceived. His first impulse had been to run to Edward and announce the success of the experiment which he had instigated, but Marja restrained him, pointing out that no doubt the lord King was engaged on business of his own and that she did deserve a little of the credit herself. So, when he had made sure carefully that it could do no harm, he made love to her instead.

  The warm smoothness of her limbs clinging round his naked body, the heat they had engendered even in the chilly depths of the Flemish winter, made his flesh stir yet, fleeing though he was from the ruins of his suit to Anne. Marja had always roused his desire so easily, which must have been one of the reasons why Edward, connoisseur of women, had chosen her for him. Not only for that, but also because she was a widow, young, well-born, even-tempered. Edward had gone about his task seriously. He had been positively scandalised when he had, with much tact and some ruthlessness, rooted out his brother’s shame.

  ‘A virgin at eighteen, Dickon! You’re a disgrace to the family. Why, I tumbled my first girl at twelve, and as for George ...’ Richard had no real excuse to offer, so the King had taken him in hand, silencing his feeble protests with the succinct statement that it was his duty to the country. If Anne had still been free, wherever she was, Richard might have held out against having a mistress foisted on him. But she was at Angers, betrothed to Edward of Lancaster, so far beyond him that the question of disloyalty hardly arose. Besides, she had returned his token.

  And Edward always knew best. His first sight of Marja van Soeters daunted him more than the waves of the North Sea as the Yorkists had embarked in their cockleshell boats from Lynn. So calm, so beautiful, so unassailable. Yet there had been too that fluttering in the loins which he had not felt so powerfully before towards any other woman. And when they were alone and she began to remove her clothes, quietly and without fuss, and then had come to him nude with her cool friendly smile and stripped him with the same practicality, he had realised that she was not unassailable at all. Now, Richard looked into the night ahead and smiled back at her, and forward, for he did not think that their four-month separation would make any difference to their ease. He, who had always expressed himself with difficulty, had found himself speaking to his mistress without reserve. With others his diffidence was unchanged, but privately with Marja he had spoken of things that he was scarcely aware even of thinking.

  He was at Pomfret well before midnight, reassuring the alarmed gatekeeper that there was no emergency, the Scots were not invading, and he was simply on personal business. The sleepy castle exhibited the same sort of mild panic at the unheralded visitation of its new lord, but in Marja’s chamber the peace was unruffled. She was in bed, suckling a very small baby, whose arms waved in vague content from the swaddling bands as it fed.

  Suddenly shy at her very lack of surprise, Richard hesitated. Marja smiled, and said, ‘My lord. How thoughtful to arrange for your visit to correspond with mealtime.’ At that he came forward to take the hand she had freed without disturbing the nuzzling child. She had not seen or heard from him for nearly five months, but she made no demonstration beyond her usual cordiality. He looked down at her, knowing that he did not need to say anything until he was ready. Her dark red hair was braided for the night, and one plait lay between her breasts, in startling contrast to her clear skin. His eyes were drawn to them, awed by the way in which the milk had swelled their remembered contours and darkened the pink knot of her exposed nipple.

  ‘I saw no need of a wet-nurse,’ Marja answered his unformed question. ‘And I am following the example of our dowager Duchess in Burgundy. His grace the Duke seems to have flourished on his mother’s milk, and I think this little one likes it too.’ As she talked she detached the baby from one breast and transferred it to the other. The child did not open its eyes, but clutched at the plait as it passed. Firmly anchored to its mother’s hair, it resumed sucking. ‘She’s not very pretty, is she?’ Again, she was putting into words the half-wondering, half-repelled reaction of Richard to the screwed-up scarlet face and scanty tuft of dark hair that were all he could see of his firstborn.

  ‘She? A girl?’

  ‘Yes. And before her time. I was riding too vigorously in the hills.

  But she was no trouble.’

  ‘I didn’t know. I would have sent some wine ... or ...’ He felt he

  ought to apologise for allowing her to go through the hazards of

  confinement without giving her a thought.

  ‘No, my lord. I didn’t expect it. You’ve been occupied in winning

  your royal brother’s kingdom back for him.’ She smiled again at him,

  sidelong, for she had understood without his explaining how strongly

  burned his passion to serve King Edward.

  Immediately he was at ease. Sitting beside her on the bed, he

  touched the baby’s soft head and said, ‘Have you named her?’ ‘Katherine. I hope you approve. But I had to call her something.’ ‘Yes, it’s a very good name. Are her eyes open yet?’ he asked with

  the seriousness of a man who has had more dealing with hound

  puppies than with babies.

  ‘Oh, yes, during the day,’ Marja answered with appropriate gravity.

  She knew better than to laugh at him. They fell silent, and Richard

  watched his mistress and his daughter, trying in vain to believe in the

  connection between the blind springing moment of conception and

  this tiny, busy, somnolent creature. When she had finished, Marja called

  her attendant and the baby was replaced, sleeping soundly, in her crib.

  Sending the woman to her own bed, she settled her white wrap round

  her shoulders and regarded the Duke of Gloucester intently. ‘What troubles you, my lord?’

  He was taken aback, for he had thought himself unusually

  contented. ‘Why do you say that?’

  ‘There is a frown behind your eyes.’ Sometimes the flaws in her

  fluent English improved upon the original. Disarmed by her perception,

  he prevaricated no further. As he had probably intended, he told her

  everything: the finding of Anne, the wooing, the pledge, and then the

  veto from that most cruelly unexpected direction. She listened quietly,

  and at the end she pondered a little before asking, ‘Is there a reason

  for your lord brother’s objections?’ Richard shook his head hopelessly. ‘None that I am aware of.’

  ‘And - forgive me - you are sure of the Lady Anne’s wishes?’ ‘I know her,’ he said simply.

  Yes, he knew Warwick’s daughter as he would never know her,

  Marja reflected, however intimate their relations and frank their

  discourse. She had no illusions about her place in Richard’s heart; from

  the way he had talked of Anne, in Flanders and just now, it was clear

  that his marria
ge would be the end of any liaisons. And she was fond

  enough of her lover to view the prospect with deep regret - not because

  of loss of prestige or the fear that he would abandon her, but for his

  own strange, earnest, innocent sake. He was gazing at her now with a

  kind of dumb trust, as if she were an oracle who could be relied upon

  for a comfortable prophecy, and she hated to disappoint him. ‘It is some caprice of your brother’s,’ she said finally. ‘He must

  relent, if he has any love for you.’

  ‘Oh, yes, he said as much before we parted,’ agreed Richard, eager

  to excuse Clarence in his own eyes as well as in Marja’s. ‘I shouldn’t

  be so low-spirited. It’s foolish of me to fear the worst - and to burden

  you with my troubles, too, when I should be giving you thanks for

  yours.’ Foolish or not, his bravery was turning to bravado. ‘It was just

  ... You see, I had waited so long, and then it seemed that God had

  granted her to me at last ... and to lose her ...’ He spoke through stiff

  lips that were striving not to tremble.

  ‘You haven’t lost her,’ Marja said gently. ‘She has promised herself

  to you. You will come together when God pleases.’ What she had

  meant as consolation brought forth the tears he had been trying to

  check. Appalled by the breakdown of a young man who had always

  before, even in the throes of love, retained a certain self-command, she

  reached out and brought his head down to her bosom. Stroking his

  hair and crooning endearments in Flemish, she was no longer mistress

  or counsellor, but a mother soothing her injured child.

  Yet the child was barely six years her junior, and as his sobs

  subsided she became aware less of his distress than of the weight of

  his head where it lay. Still without calculation she found his hand and