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

by Lesley Nickell

  With singing they came to the clearing where the rendezvous was appointed. The huntsmen were there already, while servants bustled about the long trestle tables and camp fires and strained every nerve to set before the King and his guests an immaculate miracle of a dinner. Richard was apart beside an oak tree, his foot resting on an upthrust root, deep in conversation with one of the Flemings, not about the hunt but about wool. He broke off to greet his wife, and to summon Katherine for a kiss. There was a long scratch across his forehead and he explained laughing that a low branch had found out his lack of practice in hard riding.

  ‘For the honour of England I had to keep up with our friends from Flanders,’ he said, ‘but you see it was not without punishment that I accomplished it.’

  ‘His grace speaks with great modesty.’ The merchant bowed, smiling. ‘A lesser horseman would have been swept to the ground; I was witness to it.’

  Richard, at his most relaxed, made a deprecatory gesture. If all his diplomacy could be conducted from horseback, his wife was thinking, the state need have no fear for the future. Out here beneath the trees, in his own setting as it were, he lost the over-careful striving for effect which he could not help under the critical eyes at Westminster Palace. The colour in his normally sallow cheeks was that of healthy physical exertion. With admirable promptitude the meal was announced, and Richard himself conducted his guest to the table, strolling across the glade with his wife and daughter on one side and the Fleming on the other.

  When appetite had slackened its hold the promised masque of Robin Hood began. The townsfolk of Nottingham had been busy for several weeks, in guildhall and private house, fortified by much ale, to prepare their show. All clad correctly in Lincoln green, longbows in hand, they leapt with enthusiasm into action. To the foreign visitors it was no doubt mostly incomprehensible, but with the sun warming their backs and their host’s wine warming their bellies they had no need of a translation, and roared and applauded with the rest. Being unfamiliar with the legends of the beloved English outlaw, they were probably ignorant of the climax which was to every English subject present a foregone conclusion. Sure enough, at length the band of very merry men congregated, discussed, and advanced en masse to the head of the table, where King Richard himself, most appropriately named, would be asked to forgive bold Robin, and no doubt reward him to boot.

  Two horsemen cantered into the clearing and were greeted with a cheer, as a surprise addition to the pageant. The players took no notice and ranged themselves before the King, as one of the riders dismounted and began to push his way slowly through the milling greenery. With almost one accord they dropped to their knees, hands clasped in supplication. The newcomer remained standing for a moment, and then he too knelt. A familiar figure; far more so than the excited laughing faces of the masqueraders. And he was not laughing.

  Fingers had closed on Anne’s arm, and were gripping tighter and tighter until pain began to shrill through her nerves. She knew him too, as Richard had recognised him already. Metcalfe, Ned’s groom, who with Peacocke hardly ever left his side. He had met their eyes only once and now, head bowed, proffered a sealed packet across the scrapstrewn table. It was unnecessary. The pain was not in her arm but everywhere, and the infernal echoing racket of the bird-song was rising inside her head to an unbearable shattering single scream. Somewhere, not near enough to affect her, were the soft wide frightened eyes of her foster-daughter and voices, but all that was real to her was that numbing, comforting grip on her arm and a continuous low groaning that counterpointed her own wordless keening.

  There was no need for Metcalfe to speak; no need for the carefully penned letter from Lord Fitzhugh. Awed and shaken, court and commons present in that clearing of Sherwood Forest watched while their normally restrained King and Queen gave way to their grief. The axe which had been poised over the neck of their son, from the hour of his uncertain entry into the world, which they had half-expected to fall every day of his delicate life, had fallen, and their preparedness did nothing to allay the agony of it. The cowed band of merry men were packed off hastily back to Nottingham with their bows, although the next day they were sent the purses which the tragic arrival had prevented them from receiving. Robert Percy and John Wrangwysh persuaded the King to mount his horse, but the Queen, in silent shock since she had stopped screaming, would not leave him and in the end he took her up before him. It was the only time they had ridden thus since he carried her from Francis Twynyho’s kitchen to St Martin’s sanctuary. At the castle they were escorted to the King’s private solar and left there. John Kendall dealt with Metcalfe the messenger, who had also broken down; Prince Edward had been in his charge since the age of five years old.

  It was possible, of course, for the government to carry on without the presence of its head. Richard had chosen efficient administrators and they did their work - decrees, commissions of array and despatches continued to issue from Nottingham under the Royal Seal - although there were few who did their duty in those latter days of April with more than half a heart. A gloom hung over the castle and the town until even the children and the dogs were subdued by it. The bereaved parents remained out of sight. But the right of sorrow to privacy can only extend so far. Uneasiness began to disturb the unnatural hush of the castle passages. The privy council met, privately, and Lord Lovel was proposed to represent their anxiety to the absent King. Reminding them that the King had, in fact, signed a number of letters and transacted several pieces of business through Kendall’s agency, since the secretary’s presence was so familiar as not to be an intrusion, Lovel agreed. He was forestalled. While he was still revolving the best form of words to use, Richard emerged, and announced crisply that he would be receiving public petitions in the great hall the following morning.

  His ministers’ relief was not only that of human sympathy; it was also an acknowledgement of their need for him. In less than a year he had wrenched the administration away from the road to chaos where King Edward’s sudden death and Queen Elizabeth’s irresponsibility had driven it; it was practical, functional, well-staffed. Yet its weakness was its dependence on the very man who had created it. Richard was its direction. After five days of self-indulgence, the lifelong habit of subjection to duty had reasserted itself, and he took up his abandoned position as head of state, to all intents and purposes as if nothing had happened, because he had to. But now, as discerning eyes soon perceived, beneath the closing in upon himself which was his response to the series of blows struck at him these past twelve months, he had lost his own direction.

  Like the inhabitants of an anthill when it is kicked over, he was very busy to no purpose. And like the ants, perhaps mercifully, he was not yet aware of it.

  For his wife there was no such compulsion to duty. She remained secluded in the royal apartments, and only her foster-daughter was admitted to attend her. On the fourth day after Richard had resumed his public life, Katherine sought an interview with him. Her eyes were circled with the dark evidence of the tears she had saved for the privacy of her own bed. Her sorrow had seemed subordinate to the matter of helping Anne to bear hers.

  ‘Father, you must talk to her,’ she said at once. ‘She just lies there, not weeping, not eating, not speaking. I’m afraid ...’ Richard walked up and down the chamber once, and returned to face his daughter. The line between his brows was deeper than usual.

  ‘I know.’ He spent each moment he could spare with his wife, as well as every night. ‘I would have feared to have left her at all, had I not been able to trust her to you. But what can I say, Kate? What words of comfort are there?’ His rigidly governed voice was shaking, and only the determination which Katherine had inherited stopped her from flinging her arms round him.

  ‘It’s not comfort she needs, sire. She must be forced back into living, or she won’t even try. And you are the only person she’ll listen to.’

  ‘Will she? I wonder.’ All she had done, these past nine days, was to cling to him, exerting a frightening strength
when he had to leave her. It seemed to him as if human speech made no kind of impact on her stricken brain.

  ‘You must make her. Or do you want to lose her too?’ There was the rise of hysteria behind the girl’s voice, and in a movement of panic, for that and for what she had suggested, Richard caught her to him. Holding her smooth dark head against his chest, he controlled himself.

  ‘You are right, Kate. I will go to her now.’ Tipping her face up towards him he kissed her forehead. ‘God bless your care of us,’ he said, and went.

  Anne was lying, as she had lain for so long, prone on her bed, her face turned into the crook of her arm. Her hair, which had been combed solicitously by Katherine, was arranged with unnatural sleekness down her back. Fear cold in his stomach, Richard knelt at her side. Her eyes were open. But as he repeated her name several times there was barely a flicker of recognition in them. He lifted a handful of hair and watched its fineness slip through his fingers. At least before today she had found some kind of solace in his presence, but now even that seemed to have gone. Seized anew with the panic his daughter had roused in him, he raised the inert body and shifted it awkwardly until she was sitting beside him on the bed, leaning against his shoulder. In the process her loose sleeve had fallen back, uncovering the bluish remains of the great bruise Richard’s grasp had inflicted upon her in the first paroxysm of his knowledge. Only now realising its origin, he was stabbed with remorse. What other injuries had he done her since he took charge of her life, less obvious but more lasting? What right had he ever had to order her destiny? She had wanted to be a nun. Instead he had taken her from the care of the brothers of St Martin’s and subjected her to a hard public career and a dangerous childbirth; he had made her assume a crown she expressly rejected, parted her from her son and neglected her for his royal duties. And at last this cataclysm. She lay in his arm like a rag doll, the little resilience she had crushed out of her.

  But he loved her, and selfish and guilty though he might be, he could not spare her. This past year her mere presence had kept him human in the superhuman task he had set himself; and now, more than ever before, he needed her in his loneliness. He had fought for her before. Unwillingly the picture came into his mind of George shouting at him, and he pushed it away, as he always did. Then he saw her as she had been amid the clatter of the kitchen, stirring the stewpot. The girl he had led to freedom from that kitchen had had scarcely more animation in her than this woman whose heartbeat was faint beneath his palm. But twelve years ago the future had been bright with promise, which today was only a hopeless struggle. What could he say, indeed? He gathered her limp hands in one of his, and was rewarded by a response. Like a baby’s instinctive grip, her fingers curled around his, and he knew that at least she was aware of him.

  Quietly he began to speak. He spoke of the things that bound them together, the past which uniquely they shared: of Kat’s various manifestations as wooden billet, doll and kitten; of the buried forgotten castle at Middleham whose grave had been their sanctuary; of St Anne and St Anthony and mummers in the priory in York. He touched too upon incidents which perhaps had never before been put into words between them: his distress at her returning the pendant which was the pledge of his faith; his joy when she had taken it back in the darkening abbey cloisters. In an eloquence which appeared out of nowhere he told her of the sweetness she had brought to his life, omitting the subject of their son. Carried away by the flood of his own memories, he came to that one which for him marked the crowning felicity of their early marriage: the sunset among the flowers by the Falls of Aysgarth, when their love had become passion.

  As he recalled their mutual eagerness for consummation he felt that his fingers were wet. Faltering to a stop he looked at his wife. Tears were sliding from her open eyes, flooding down her still face and falling unchecked to her lap. Hope lifted Richard’s heart even as she murmured, almost inaudibly, ‘It’s no good. It’s gone.’ Words of despair, but the first she had uttered for many days. He braced himself to snatch at the slender advantage he had been given.

  ‘No, it’s not all gone. We are still here. Have you forgotten what odds we defeated to come together? Because we were blessed with such happiness is no reason to expect it to continue for ever. We have no right to that. Love is not easy. But as long as it is still here, nothing is impossible. And it is still here, isn’t it, Anne?’ It was a challenge, an appeal, no rhetorical question. Never before had he asked her if she loved him, and now it was necessary for her life, for his peace, that she should answer it. There was only the weary turn of her head against his shoulder.

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘You must know!’ Richard tightened his clasp; Katherine had warned him that gentleness would not be enough. ‘Why then did you marry me? Was it as they said, for position and security and wealth you’d lost the chance of any other way?’ She moaned and her body tensed. ‘And why did I take you? For charity?’ It was cruel, flinging at her when she was defenceless the rumours he had kept from her when she was a happy bride. But she had to defend herself.

  ‘You don’t believe that,’ she whispered, and there was a spark of protest somewhere.

  ‘What should I believe? That your love was not strong enough to survive adversity?’

  ‘Not my love. How could you doubt it? But myself. I’m too weak; I always told you so.’ She, who with his help had dragged herself from the scrapheap of society and fitted herself to order the efficient running of a great castle within a few months; she had the strength, if she could be persuaded to use it.

  ‘Then it’s a poor kind of love,’ he said harshly, ‘and you have failed me.’

  ‘No, no! I haven’t!’ She was sitting up now, her hands trembling in his.

  ‘Prove it!’

  ‘How can I? I’m no use to you, only a burden. Any purpose I had in your life has gone now. Even in that I failed.’

  That way lay despair; he pulled her back. ‘I need you today. A dispute between two broiderers from the town about a girl prentice who ran away, from one to the other. I believe she was ill-treated. It wants a woman’s judgement and compassion. Yours.’ It was a shrewd stroke, from a fortuitous circumstance. He knew her fellow-feeling towards the persecuted and helpless.

  After a moment Anne asked, ‘How old is she?’

  Concealing his relief Richard said, ‘About Kate’s age, I should judge.’

  ‘Kate. Poor Kate—’

  That had been a miscalculation; he broke in, ‘Will you come?’

  Again a pause, and then, ‘If you wish it.’

  ‘No - I ask it.’ Bowing her head, she rose to her feet in token of assent. Immediately she tottered backwards into Richard’s arms, and he was struck with conscience at his severity towards her. He knew well that he alone could have stimulated her fading will to survive, but this time perhaps his demands on her physical resources had been too great. Then he recalled that she must have fasted for days, and laying her back on the bed he went hastily to call for food and wine before her impulse was dissipated.

  An hour later, with the aid of Kate’s tremulously hopeful ministrations and Richard’s constant presence, the Queen was prepared to take up her role. She would have to lean heavily on her husband’s arm, and there were great smudges of grief and fatigue beneath her eyes, but together they had won the fight. For the time being, at least, she would have part with the living and not with the dead. There was however one thing more that Richard had to inflict upon her, and he nerved himself to do it now, for fear of a worse relapse later. Just before they passed out of the bedchamber he turned her to him and said, ‘There is something else I have to ask of you, love.’

  She raised her eyes to his, and he almost stammered over his next words at the sad trust in them. ‘You must go to Middleham with me.’

  She flung her head up as violently as if he had hit her.

  ‘No! I can’t! Not that, Richard - have mercy on me!’

  Her anguish was his, and this time his voice showed it. �
�I beg you, Anne. To go alone ... would be unbearable.’ The prospect of his breaking down accomplished what more sternness could not have done. Shaken from her self-woven cocoon of suffering, she saw that it was his loss too. She touched his face with a soothing gesture.

  ‘Then I will come with you.’

  Spring was in full flood through Wensleydale. The beeches by Jervaulx Abbey were clothed in their delicate silk-fringed leaves, and the may was in bloom. The weather had been abnormally warm since leaving Nottingham, almost too hot for travelling, if either of the principal travellers had been in the state to heed external conditions. A few days’ stop in York was a relief to their retinue, if not to Richard and Anne. There had been no cheering from the massed crowds in the streets of the northern capital, as the royal couple rode through them stony-faced. The people of York understood; they were one with their King and Queen in loss as they had been a pitifully short eight months before in their triumph. Miles Metcalfe, Thomas Wrangwysh and other friends received them, and suffered with them.

  If the ordeal was hard in York, it was doubly so at Middleham. But, by a combination of will-power and numbness, they had found a way to face it. Both Richard and Anne had in the past possessed a certain ability to withdraw into themselves when the world was too much for them; at this most severe test they seemed to take refuge in and draw strength from each other. Outwardly they were unmoved by returning to the home that was tragically deprived of the main reason which had made it home to them for the past eleven years. Their agony was expressed privately and in silence.

  One incident only almost broke Anne’s composure and threw her back into the state of collapse from which her husband had with such difficulty raised her. She went to the castle chapel, an old habit of hers when she wished to lose herself in familiar prayer beneath the benevolent eye of St Anne. But under the glass saint with her nest of fledglings a coffin was standing on a bier, draped with the royal arms of England and the Prince of Wales’ feathers. It was not this, for which she should have been prepared, nor the faint stench of corruption which was trapped in the hot little room with the morning sun, that struck at her most cruelly. Within the altar rails, chin on paws and still as a grey stone sentinel, was Edward’s hound, Arrow. By some curious instinct the animal recognised her step. It rolled a lack-lustre eye towards her and thumped its tail once. Anne began to shake uncontrollably and Katherine, as usual close behind her, ran for Richard. He was in the great hall, not far away, and came at once. With his arms round her, at a distance from the bier and its solitary mourner, she was able to speak.