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

by Lesley Nickell

  He had suffered small childish ailments before, colds and rashes and colic, and Jane had nursed him through them without troubling her mistress overmuch. This time the doctor had been called, for the cough was affecting his breathing. As often as she could during the day, and through many broken nights when the companionship of Jane in the nursery was preferable to her cold bed, Anne sat by his crib. He was no trouble; he had never cried very much, and now he was not fretful. There was just his tiny body, with limbs of almost a bird’s slenderness, lying quite still, the wheezing breath, and the occasional cough rasping cruelly through him. Often she wanted to shed tears, but none would come past the painful knot in her throat. It was less distressing to tear herself away from his side than it was to return and face the news of his condition.

  Yet Jane was the only person in the castle to see her true face. Outside the nursery she hid her anxiety and her loneliness and continued her normal duties. Because they were used to a certain reserve in their lady whenever the Duke was absent, the household were left to guess whether there had been a reconciliation before their parting or not. At any rate she was carrying out her husband’s instructions. The arrangements for the reception of the children from Pomfret had been placed in the hands of the chamberlain and his wife. Since they had several small children of their own, Anne had given them carte blanche, and wished only to be informed when the preparations were complete. She wanted as little to do with her expected guests as possible. Her change of heart towards Richard did not embrace his bastards; they should be hidden away in a remote wing of the castle, and she would ignore their existence. Evidence that Richard was less than perfection had no place in her life.

  And her preoccupation with her son did drive them from her thoughts. When on St Luke’s day he took a turn for the better her heart lifted, and she was heard to sing in her chamber on a golden morning near St Crispin. The doctor had pronounced Lord Edward on the road to recovery, and Richard had replied to her letter. His grave formal phrases revealed no flood of emotion, but she believed she could read between the lines that he had forgiven her.

  She was humming to herself on another morning, more duncoloured than golden, at the beginning of November, as she crossed the bridge from the keep to her apartments. Below her there was activity in the inner bailey, and she stopped to look; it might be another messenger from Richard. But it was a horse-litter, halted a little way off, and two wagons in the process of unloading. Servants were appearing, as always on the arrival of visitors, from nowhere, to lend a hand or just to stare. Bundles were being borne past in the direction of the north curtain, but all around the litter was quiet; the passenger must have disembarked already. Even as she thought it, Anne saw that the passenger had indeed disembarked. She was standing motionless where she had been placed by some attendant, a short distance away. A little girl, nursing a wooden baby which like her was wrapped in a dark blue cloak and hood. She was showing no curiosity in her surroundings, and no fear at being left alone; simply a blank stare before her, either of resignation or tiredness.

  A curious sensation was possessing Anne, a division of herself. She was still the Duchess of Gloucester, looking down on the courtyard of her castle on an autumn morning, but also she was the child by the litter, bewildered, lost, picked up and set down in strange places for reasons never explained, sick from the motion of the journey, and with only a poppet for comfort. Even as she hovered between past and present, a woman bustled round the leading horse, and the girl turned to her in sudden animation. The woman plunged within the leather curtains and emerged with another child in her arms. Speaking a word to the girl, she set off the way she had come, and her charge hitched the poppet higher in the crook of her elbow and trotted obediently after her.

  So that was who she was! In nauseated revulsion Anne drew back from the rail and hurried onwards, making for the haven of the nursery. There she would be safe from dangerous illusions, and the unspeakable newcomers would be consigned to their proper oblivion. When the chamberlain reported later in the day that Dame Katherine and Master John were settled in their apartments, she thanked him shortly and ordered him to take full responsibility for their well-being.

  She banished them from her mind as resolutely as if they had been still sixty miles away at Pomfret. In such a large castle there was small likelihood of their paths crossing hers, and she did not allow herself the idleness to brood about them. Edward’s cough had gone, but he was listless and weak, and with the winter coming on she spent much time on considering and discussing ways to nurse him through the severe weather. Then there was Richard to think of; he wrote that the Earl of Oxford had gone to earth on St Michael’s Mount off Cornwall, and he would hardly be rooted out before spring. Otherwise, however, the petty rebellion was nearly dead, and he would be home when the King could spare him. He did not mention to Anne Clarence’s part in the revolt, stirred because of his discontent over the division of the Countess of Warwick’s property; that was a matter which could be settled between Parliament and the three brothers. So Anne fed strengthening possets to her son and daydreamed of her husband’s return, pushing aside the occasional traitorous suggestion that the presence of his two other children would for ever jar their concord.

  Snow came early, clothing the world skilfully overnight in a flawless white robe. Cold though it was, she could not resist climbing to the parapet above her chamber, to gaze at the old castle up the hill clad in its winter mystery. The cloud of her breath hung on the frozen air, and written in it she seemed to see the first conversation she and Richard had shared twelve years before. She could not remember the words, but the solemn tones of their exchange were so real to her that she expected a second cloud of moisture to drift beside her own.

  There was a burst of shrill laughter, and she looked about her with a start. She and Richard had not laughed like that, not then; her memory must be playing her false. No, the children were down in the meadow outside the curtain wall, and they were too young for herself and her cousin. There was white fur round the little girl’s hood, and she was jumping up and down in the snow with tiny squeaks of excitement which carried clearly to the watcher on the battlements. The other child was stumping purposefully along, small booted feet and arms spread wide, and when he fell, as inevitably he did every few steps, he added a satisfied roar to his sister’s piping. The same stout woman who had carried him from the litter in the courtyard pursued him and brushed him down every time he heaved himself to his feet again. Enthralled, Anne stared down at them; she had seen lambs frisk with just that wholehearted joy in living on the spring hills of Wensleydale. And it was not the reminder that they should not exist at all that turned the spectacle sour for her; it was simple envy. She cried for Richard in bed that night.

  He would be coming, he wrote, in the New Year. Anne speeded her efforts to finish the cushion that she, who hated embroidery, was working painstakingly for his chamber. It was a peace-offering, and poor enough, she knew, to atone for weeks of heartache that they had endured. But a greater one was at hand, thrust upon her possibly by the merest chance, possibly by the machinations of Margaret Wrangwysh, who had secretly and disloyally been visiting the north curtain.

  Margaret was, however, nowhere in sight when Anne entered the nursery that day. It was her morning routine, after mass and before receiving her steward, to spend half an hour with Jane and her son. She was surprised that Jane was talking to someone; even more surprised that her companion was a small girl. But she could not mistake that figure, even from the back. She was wearing the same furtrimmed hood but it was thrown back, dark straight hair straying from beneath a red cap. And she was leaning over the crib, one foot kicking idly at the other ankle. Jane rose in a flurry as she saw her mistress, making a particularly deep courtesy in which Anne read guilt. The child showed no such agitation. She lifted her head and turned to Anne. Her brown eyes were wide with serious wonder.

  ‘Baby’s asleep now,’ she told Anne in a confidential whisper. ‘Kate
wants to see blue eyes. Wake up soon?’ Then she transferred her attention back to the sleeping child. Anne could not speak, but when the nurse drew breath, clearly intending to bring the little girl to due respect, she signed to her to be quiet. With a strange fluttering in the throat, she moved to the other side of the crib and sat on the stool placed there for her. Katherine was paying no heed to her now. She was absorbed in the contemplation of the magical delicate doll with fair hair and real fingers, so much smaller than she had ever imagined a baby could be; her brother John had never in her memory been either so small or so delicate - besides, his hair was red. The tip of her tongue protruded from the corner of her wide mouth in her concentration, but it was not that which had struck Anne dumb.

  Her eyes were Richard’s. It was with just such an expression that he had spoken of his brother Edward who had just become King of England. And the Edward that this child was worshipping silently was her own Edward. Dark Katherine and red-headed John, and blond Edward; they were all Richard’s, and it did not matter who their mothers were. As they were part of Richard, so she must love them as she loved him. And while she waited with Katherine van Soeters for her baby to awake and prove that his eyes were blue, the knowledge came to her that it would not be only for Richard’s sake. Blinded no longer by foolish pride, she saw that she could take these two children to her heart as naturally as she had taken the shivering kitten from beside its dead mother, and the little boy who had practised secretly with a broadsword almost too heavy for him to lift.

  Passing Jervaulx Abbey, Richard did not as usual urge his horse to a faster pace for the last few miles home. He was deadly weary, and he thought more of the uphill road to Middleham than of the shortness of the distance. The months in the south had dispirited him; not only the ill-tempered contentiousness of his brother George but, more dearly, the change that was overcoming his brother Edward, the sybaritic court that was moulding his all-conquering splendour to its own triviality. George was satisfied for the present with grants of land far wider than the King had intended, the Earl of Oxford was on the point of surrender to starvation, and Edward had been as affectionate as ever, lauding Richard warmly for the work he had already accomplished in the North. Yet it was with a sense of disappointment too deep to be articulate that the Duke of Gloucester left the butterfly world of Westminster, and he had not shaken it off. For he was not sure of his reception at Middleham. He thought that Anne had forgiven him his harshness, but their meeting would be difficult with the shade of Marja between them still. His gentlemen, glad to be heading for their wives and suppers, had long ago forgotten that there was any disagreement between their lord and lady, and wondered if the Duke were ill.

  It was growing twilight before they crossed the drawbridge and thankfully slid from their horses in the inner bailey. The usual commotion of homecoming was about them, and for once Richard hung back, unwilling to make haste towards the poor welcome that might await him. Torches were already flaring in cressets up the stairway to the keep, and as his reluctant eyes were raised to the top, they encountered a procession slowly descending. His wife was leading, and on one arm she carried her baby son. The other hand was given to a little boy, whose auburn hair gleamed in the torchlight as he clambered laboriously down the steps. Behind, with a stoical and condescending Kat draped over her shoulder, was his daughter Katherine. Not until they all reached the bottom could Anne look up. Immediately she met his gaze and smiled at him. Almost stumbling in his eagerness, he ran towards her.

  Part III: QUEEN

  1: THE PROTECTOR'S WIFE

  The Earl of Salisbury was the first to shoot. Walking steadily to his mark, he inclined ceremoniously to the spectators, unslung his bow and fitted an arrow. Without haste he took his aim at

  the target and drew back the string to his ear. Although the bow was not full-sized, the effort needed was visible at a distance. Still he did not hurry; his arm quivering with strain, he remembered to lift the arrowhead and slew it to the right to allow for flight and the crossbreeze. The string twanged and the arrow sang to its goal. A man stationed to tell the score passed the word up: ‘A good outer.’

  Polite applause, and rather more than that from the Earl’s mother, the Duchess of Gloucester. Maintaining his solemnity, showing neither pleasure nor exasperation, he bowed again and gave place to the next contestant. The new archer ran to the centre of the tiltyard, and grinning broadly he waved to the audience; one of the ladies blew kisses. Before making his shot he combed his auburn fringe out of his eyes with his fingers, leaving clearly visible black smudges on his forehead.

  ‘Oh, look, madame, John is dirty already,’ said the dark girl next to the Duchess in vexation.

  ‘Hush, Kate,’ retorted the Duchess mildly. ‘A black face won’t spoil his aim.’ Apparently she was wrong, for John’s shot was wild and missed the target altogether. There were half a dozen in the contest; the eldest was twelve, the youngest was Richard Wrangwysh, aged only eight and a half but determined to keep up with the best of his companions. Each boy was greeted with acclamation, especially loud from the corner of the yard where his friends or family stood, and each shot applauded, whether or not the arrow reached its mark. There was a fine trophy at stake, a silver-mounted mazer presented by the Duke, and the event possessed all the grandeur and seriousness of a great occasion: the master and mistress of Middleham in special seats with pennons flying above them, their gentlemen and ladies grouped about them, off-duty servants and men-at-arms held back from the butts by ropes, an enclosure for the townsfolk, and the April sun shining to boot. Even John of Pomfret, after his first muffed shot, restrained his wayward spirits and played in earnest.

  But although he came in the third round within a hair’s breadth of the gold, it was Lord Edward of Salisbury who loosed the winning shaft. Circumspect, with only a flush along the cheekbones to betray his feelings, he approached the Duke and Duchess and knelt before their chairs. Richard handed the trophy to his wife and it was she who presented it to the young Earl. No words passed between them, but she kissed him on both cheeks and his flush deepened. Everyone was cheering the victor, the vanquished the most lustily of all. Before he rose, Lord Edward looked shyly up at the Duke.

  ‘My son,’ said Richard quietly, and at last the boy smiled.

  Although he bore himself proudly as they left the butts, both his parents were aware of his fatigue, and Richard laid an arm lightly round his shoulders. The weeks of intensive practice, the determination to acquit himself well, had told on his strength; there was unnatural tension in his tired muscles. They would not speak of it, but Anne and Richard lived with the dilemma of fiercely wanting their son to succeed in the normal exercises of knightly training, and the constant fear that he would overtax himself.

  ‘He is so like you,’ Anne said often to her husband, and behind the conventional remark of a mother to a father was the memory of the dogged little Duke of Gloucester fighting his way from delicacy to resilient manhood. They had bred no more children, yet what was to Anne a secret sorrow was to Richard a private relief; his doctor had warned him soon after Edward’s birth of the danger to her life of further conception. We have no need of more, Richard would have said if they had discussed it, Ned has passed his tenth birthday and he grows stronger every year.

  Deep in technicalities, father and son were criticising the latter’s performance at the butts today. Anne, judging herself unqualified, did not join in, but she was touched to hear that Edward was harder on himself than his father was. The boys had drifted away to make the most of the free hours before supper, but Richard’s daughter Katherine walked at her side, hands clasped and head slightly bowed in contemplation as was her habit. Anne had suggested to him that perhaps she would take happily to a convent life, but he thought that she would do better to make a good marriage, unless her objection was very strong. Whether to a cloister or to a husband, Anne would be sorry to lose her. Serene and gentle, even in her twelfth year she had reached a maturity which Anne le
aned on in times of stress. And they shared a common devotion to the Duke of Gloucester and the Earl of Salisbury.

  As they entered the inner bailey through the postern in the east curtain a cloud swept across the sun and dimmed its radiance for a moment like a great bird’s wing. It passed, and a horseman rode in at the gatehouse. The cloud was an omen which drew darkness also across Anne’s heart. Through the tranquil years in Wensleydale bad news had ridden often enough under the gatehouse to justify her premonition. The death of her sister Isabel six winters ago; the murder of poor Ankarette Twynyho by the maddened widower on a wild charge of having poisoned her mistress and her infant son; the retribution on Clarence’s act which had taken Richard in haste to London to plead his cause with the King. Anne had not argued with his decision to go. That her old persecutor lay in the Tower on a charge of high treason did not exactly delight her - in the contentment of Middleham she had let her hatred for him slide into oblivion - but she could not sympathise with her husband’s profound distress. When he returned he had not needed to tell her that George was dead, but several months of extreme tact and much love had been necessary to restore him.

  From London the news was always bad. Even this year, coming home from his Christmas at Westminster, Richard had brought tidings of a disaster to King Edward’s diplomacy: Louis of France had deserted his English alliance and made treaty with his old adversaries the Burgundians. Anne recalled her meeting with the man they called the Spider King, who had been her father’s friend and ultimately his destroyer, at the time of her betrothal to Prince Edward. Despite the shabbiness of his appearance, she had known instinctively that Louis would never be the loser.