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

by Lesley Nickell

  They went early to bed, and this time there was no preamble. Richard put out all the candles, drew the curtains and gathered Anne into his arms.

  ‘Are you very tired, Anne?’ he whispered, and although she was, caution made her ask why.

  ‘If you would prefer to sleep... tonight...’ Once more he was making allowances for her, excusing her from a duty that he did not believe she was capable of fulfilling.

  Remembering her marriage vows, she said quickly, ‘No, I’m not at all sleepy.’ Maybe she had sounded too eager, for he needed no further prompting. Wine did not cloud the act tonight. She was offended by the intimacy of his fondling, hurt by the roughness of his entry into her, and shocked by the violence of his orgasm. Yet she forced herself to lie still, to hold him, to sigh when he did, and even to smile into the dark when he asked if all was well. He lay beside her for a long while after that without speaking, and she thought he had gone to sleep. When he broke the silence, she found that she had not deceived him entirely.

  ‘It’s new to you, dear love. Don’t distress yourself if there’s not much pleasure. Trust me, and that will come in time.’ And then he did fall asleep, with his head tucked under her chin. She lay still, while numbness crept along her arm because she did not dare move it from beneath him, and pondered her newly acquired knowledge. Now she had some understanding of the change in Isabel after her marriage night. And she wondered what pleasure Richard could possibly be promising her.

  But repetition took much of the repugnance out of her nights. Richard was unfailingly gentle, and the pain soon disappeared. She could respond to his kisses, even sometimes to his caresses, yet always there was a barrier across which she could feel nothing. The days were busy, with preparations for going north and with learning to be the Duchess of Gloucester, and so mercifully she slept soundly and had little opportunity for her old idle self-searchings. Her husband’s affection for her was ever-present, and he gave her no indication that she was inadequate in any way. Only occasionally, examining in her looking-glass the poor drained complexion and immature breasts, did she question why Richard should have wanted to marry her.

  Shortly before they were due to leave, they were able to pay an outstanding debt. Janet Evershed came to visit them, and brought her own hand-worked wedding gifts. They in turn gave her a gift, a token of their thanks for her part in the rescue of Anne from the city kitchen. As Janet and Richard talked like long-standing acquaintances, Anne observed her with interest. It was rumoured that she had been the King’s mistress for many years, and yet she had the appearance only of what she was by profession: a well-to-do independent mercer in widow’s mourning. Not at all the kind of woman Anne would have expected to attract - and keep - the flamboyant Edward. Still, she did not lie with him for material advantage, or she would be a court lady by now. Anne found herself envying a little the poise of the King’s paramour, and at the same time wanting her as a friend. When her husband invited Janet to visit them at Middleham, she endorsed the invitation with sincerity.

  The pace of her new public life was telling on Anne. With each strenuous day she longed more for the haven of Wensleydale, and she discovered one night that Richard was of the same mind. Waking in the darkness she found herself alone, and her anxieties of desertion revived again. But he had heard her movement of disquiet, and came back from where he had been pacing. She asked what was wrong.

  ‘Nothing. I was restless and didn’t want to disturb you. But I have, it seems.’ When he was lying beside her again he added with unaccustomed vehemence, ‘I shall be glad to leave this city. Outside London I can sleep easy.’ He gave no reasons, and soon fell asleep, yet Anne was comforted. Sometimes she had suspected that it was only duty and the humouring of her that was driving him away from the King his brother’s side.

  There was no mistaking his lightheartedness as he led his train to Bishopsgate on the day of their departure. He waved gaily to the knots of citizens who always turned out for a procession, especially if their beloved King was gracing it. Anne rode between Edward and her husband - on horseback, as she had insisted despite Richard’s doubts

  - and in her relief at turning her back on the city of her captivity she brought herself to follow his example and acknowledge the crowd. Behind them the knights of the Duke’s household were behaving like excited boys. Even those who were not Yorkshire-bred were eager to face the challenge of the wide lands of the North, to win them, from their long allegiance to the Nevilles, to the loyalty of the Duke of Gloucester and King Edward. Outside Bishopsgate the formal partings took place, and Anne submitted with grace to a vigorous kiss from her brother-in-law. There was no longer any cause for her to fear him: she had won Richard.

  Now she rode under the device of the white boar, and was treated as a personage instead of as part of the baggage. However, the journey was no idyll. The warm spell in February had given way to hard weather, frost, wind and sleet, as if winter were reluctant to loose its grip a second time.

  Although the cavalcade covered little more than fifteen miles a day, Anne was soon regretting her gallant resolve to ride on horseback all the way. When she caught a cold near Nottingham Richard overruled her still-vocal protests and transferred her to the chariot which, piled with cushions and furs, had been shadowing her from London.

  ‘It’s like carrying my coffin with us!’ she had complained, but he merely said, ‘I hope not.’ Indeed, she was secretly pleased to be so cosseted. Kat was let out of his basket to travel with her, and spent half his day stalking unsteadily up and down the jolting mountains of velvet and fur, and the other half cat-napping tastefully in the centre of a scarlet cushion. He was a welcome distraction for Anne between the bouts of sickness which always assailed her in litters and chariots. Richard was very concerned for her. At every stopping-place his primary consideration was a chamber for the Duchess, and he would make sure that she was suitably installed, with warming-pans in the bed, before he saw to anything else. She slept the nights through, almost as heavily as she had done at St Martin’s. Often enough she was already asleep when her husband came to her, and he let her be. His desire for her would always be subordinated to her comfort. There would be the rest of their lives at Middleham, he told himself, and deferred their mutual satisfaction until later.

  It was over three weeks before they left York behind them and crossed into Wensleydale. Anne was mounted again, determined that however her head might ache with weariness she would greet her home worthily. Her home: an odd word to spring so readily into her mind. She was not really sure what it meant, since she had heard nobody but attendants and the women in Twynyho’s kitchen talk about it. Somewhere to return to, somewhere to rest your thoughts and yourself in peace. It was good enough for Middleham.

  Dashing the rain from her eyes, Anne lifted them to the skyline, close and steep to her left, and knew that beyond that rise another hill rose, and another, on and on, with heather roots and sheep and brown bracken, unaffected by the sparse villages and castles which by their courtesy took shelter from the weather in their folds. Awesome, yet reassuring. Richard pushed his horse alongside, and she realised that in her eagerness to reach her destination she had outstripped the other riders. Exchanging a glance of perfect harmony, they spurred forward. The horses were almost blown, dropping again into a walk, when the wonder happened.

  As if a curtain had been drawn aside, the squall passed. The rainclouds careered away towards the Vale of York, and before them the sky was scoured clean, the blue of a thrush’s egg. Late sunshine dusted the downward slopes, and the battlements of the castle were touched with pale honey. It looked near enough to reach with an outstretched finger, as solid and as living as the broad back of the mare beneath her.

  ‘Middleham!’ It was Richard who uttered it, but they reined in with one accord and gazed, silent in the fullness of their hearts.

  A boy, trudging towards them on an errand to Jervaulx Abbey, stopped short, stared at lord and lady motionless in their magnificence, then
yelled ecstatically, threw up his cap, and pelted back towards the town. At the same time the gentlemen came up with them, chattering, slapping each other on the back, laughing, expressing in their different ways their own delight. But Richard and Anne rode into Middleham town the first of all their train, to the impromptu but enthusiastic greeting of every resident within earshot of their shrill harbinger. The warm North Riding tones struck familiar chords in Anne’s memory, and no effort was needed here to smile and call out her thanks to the lads who splashed beside her horse in the recent puddles, a mobile guard of honour to the castle gate. The porter had not changed, she noticed with astonished joy as he pulled his forelock beyond the arch of the gatehouse; it was impossible to believe that she had left here less than five years previously.

  Yet how different was this homecoming. The small garrison, drawn up smartly in the inner bailey, wore bright new surcoats adorned with the white boar, and Anne was with Richard as he paced his horse solemnly down their rank, inspecting them as her soldiers as well as his. And when he lifted her from her horse, and led her by the hand out of the sudden sunshine and up the stairs under the massive walls of the keep, the attendants and the servants who awaited them in the great hall were smiling, pleased to greet their young Duke and Duchess, murmuring with northern hospitality, ‘Welcome home, lord; welcome back to Middleham, lady.’

  It was too much. She hardly kept her feet to the great chamber, and then Richard saw how faint she was and supported her into his own presence chamber. The curtains had not yet been hung on the bed, and the posts stood naked above the soft green hill of the coverlet. As she was disrobed and left to rest, her wandering mind returned to the day when the bed was hung with scarlet and white, still crumpled from travelling, and her father had commanded her to study to like the Duke of Gloucester better. Her husband still hovered near, and he heard her giggle faintly. Bending over her, he said, ‘What amuses you, dear love?’

  ‘I learned that lesson well,’ she answered drowsily, and fell asleep.

  March had gone out like a lion before she saw any more of Middleham. Her reaction to three weeks’ travelling was severe, and she paid heavily for her days of riding exposed to winter’s rearguard attack. Richard would not have her moved to the lady chamber in the south curtain, keeping her in his own bed, secluded beyond the great chamber, yet close enough to sit with her in any moment spared from business. He also slept with her, but never made any advances beyond kissing her night and morning. Holding himself responsible for her collapse by hastening their departure from London and pressing on too rapidly with the journey, he would do nothing that might hinder her recovery. As always she was grateful for his forbearance and care. And then, as she improved enough to leave her bed for a while in the afternoons, she began to miss what she had merely endured at Westminster. The closeness of his embrace, the uneasy thrill as his hands touched her naked flesh. Strangest of all, she dreamed once again one of her old dreams, and there was no doubt as to who was stirring her to that torrid exultation. She woke with a start, and Richard’s voice spoke sleepily.

  ‘Anne?’

  ‘A dream; that’s all.’

  ‘Dreams cannot hurt, they’re only fancies,’ he said soothingly, thinking that it was a nightmare she had suffered. Moving nearer, he put his arm round her. Anne listened until his breathing became slow and regular, wishing that her fancy had been true.

  She was ashamed of her thought in the morning, but she dismissed it quickly, for today she was to move to her own chamber, and to dine in the great hall with all the household. Ceremoniously she was escorted across the wooden bridge, which was so much shorter and lower than she remembered, to the apartments which had been her mother’s and now were hers. Smaller than her memory of it, the solar was gay with arras and strewn with fresh rushes which bruised under the feet into sweetness. The bed was hung with the golden brocade from her chamber in London, but the coverlet was another gift from her husband, embroidered with birds flying to and from their nests.

  ‘I saved it until we reached Middleham,’ he said diffidently, ‘for the sake of St Anne in the chapel window.’ It was another instance of his generosity, and of his thoughtfulness, and once more she could not thank him. Then he dismissed their attendants and took her up the spiral stair to the battlements. As she emerged into the clear air she saw how much change her time of sickness had wrought in Wensleydale. The year had budded into green and blue April, the wide dome of the sky full of hurrying birds and cloudlets, the high hills lilac with distance, the trees springing into leaf, and up there, the mounds of the old castle flecked with the sunshine of early gorse. Unthinking, her hand crept beneath her cloak to where her pendant hung, and then Richard’s hand was laid over both. She leaned back against him, and they recalled together the boy and girl who had sealed a pact yonder which was at last fulfilled. At length he turned her to him and kissed her lips. Perhaps it was the warmth of the past, so strong between them, or perhaps it was the spring about them: some response moved deep within her that was new and urgent; if only she had known how to express it. But in no more than two quickened heartbeats he had released her, and it faded back into the loveliness of the countryside.

  A week later they rode together up the dale to Nappa Hall at Askrigg, where Richard had business with the Recorder of the city of York. Anne had not been so far since their arrival, but the warm weather held, and she would not be left behind.

  They took the way that ran below the crown of the hills; on their left the little irregular fields with their embroidery of drystone walls tumbled down to the glint of the river, and then climbed up the other side towards the far crest. Frank Lovel lifted his voice to the freshness of the day and sang, and soon the others joined in.

  By the time they left Askrigg the sun had reversed its position and was poised in a golden blaze above the Pennines. It had been a visit of an informality that quite disconcerted Anne, unused as she was to the manners of the prosperous gentry. She watched the Duke of Gloucester take leave of Miles Metcalfe and his goodwife with an ease she had not seen him use among the high lords at Westminster. Sped on their way by stirrup-cups of good malmsey, they made for Aysgarth and the valley road by the river.

  They came down a steep hill from the village, turned a corner, and the din of water abruptly filled their ears. Above and below the bridge the Ure thundered, great plumes and sheets of whiteness where it leaped down the huge staircase of its upper course. Cowed by this sudden manifestation of power, in a river which only a dozen miles downstream purled peacefully over the stones near the castle, Anne pushed her mare closer to Richard. He was staring out at the cataracts, preoccupied, and when he looked at her there was still something absent in his eyes, strangely wild, which disturbed her as much as the falls. They passed on over the bridge.

  On each side of the road the undergrowth was starred with flowers. Reining in involuntarily, she gazed at them stretching into the distance between the tangle of budding twigs, windflowers like a fall of late snow, lit here and there to brilliance by the sun, and her throat constricted with emotion. She had never seen such beauty, and she wanted to weep. Then she found that Richard was lifting her from her horse, and as she stood for a moment irresolute, not sure what to do with the freedom he had given her, he pushed her forward.

  ‘Go on. You may do as you wish.’ And so she did as she had not been allowed before: she gave way to impulse and ran in among the trees, among the myriads of delicate blossoms. A kind of madness seized her. She fell to her knees and began to pick them feverishly, as if she would gather all their loveliness to her before it vanished. Here and there were greater treasures still - modest clumps of primroses hiding under their wrinkled leaves. Without heed of the twigs that caught in her headcloth she searched for more, uttering little inarticulate cries of triumph as she spied another plant. A drop splashed on a leaf before her and she looked up, startled that rain could come from a clear sky. But it was her own tears, and through them she saw Richard, leaning again
st a slender alder trunk and watching her. She stood up, and her flowers scattered.

  ‘What is the matter with me?’ she said shakily. ‘You must think I’m crazed... It was the flowers… and the sun... I don’t know.’

  All he said was, ‘Look. You’ve dropped your flowers,’ and he stooped to collect them for her. The other members of the party had dispersed, following the fortunes of those who had brought their hawks with them, and Richard and Anne were alone, near the brink of the river. Only the graceful alders stood between them and the rushing of the Ure in its shallow gorge. He gave her the fallen windflowers and primroses, and held her hands between his. She was facing the sun, and in its westering light her cheeks were flushed with warm colour, and her eyes were soft and bright. His face was dark and she could not read the expression, but the touch of his hands lit a spark somewhere which made her gasp with its fierceness. She flung herself into his arms, and the flowers tumbled again to their feet unnoticed. It was like no embrace they had shared before, like nothing in her experience. She was acutely conscious of his body pressed against her, of the flesh beneath their garments straining to be welded together. The spark grew into a sheet of flame that seemed to envelop them both and then, suddenly, they were two again and he was holding her at arms’ length, and he was trembling as violently as she. Her legs were so weak that but for his grasp she would have fallen.

  ‘Anne,’ he said, in a low voice that shook, and she gazed back at him with the same dumbfounded amazement. Then he began to pull her by the hand back towards the road, at a speed which took no account of the rough ground or the unsteadiness of her gait.

  They were mounted and away before the surprised grooms had collected their wits, and it was some time before their companions, pursuing at the gallop with ruffled falcons on their wrists, came up with them, enquiring gaily if the Scots had invaded. Richard only laughed, and Anne joined in, a little hysterically. She was in such tumult that nothing much outside herself, save the figure of her husband urging his horse forward, was of any significance. Racing with him towards an unknown consummation of instincts she did not understand, she felt only the delicious upsurge of her heart as she relived those moments by the river, and the throbbing expectancy of whatever was to come. Soon after dark they were home, and as the sweating horses were being rubbed down in the stables, Anne and Richard bolted their supper in his chamber. They were oblivious of the surreptitious mirth that rippled among their attendants, as they intercepted and interpreted without difficulty the hungry glances that passed between the Duke and Duchess over the eel pie and cheese. With a tactful degree of collusion they sought their dismissal and slipped away.