B008257PJY EBOK (13 page)

Richard blinked. The ghosts vanished.

Slowly, inexorably, his eye crept from the steps of the massive ivy-mantled Keep up to the highest window where two swallows pecked in the vines, building a nest below the black-draped stone sill. There, in that peaceful, sun-drenched chamber above, Ned had been born.

There, he had died.

Birds chirped; the wind rushed through the trees with the same rustle it always had, carrying the scent of fir and beechnut that Richard remembered so well. But there was also something else. He sniffed the air. Something faintly pungent and disturbing; a fume that grew stronger the nearer he approached the Keep. White Surrey snorted. Richard turned his head to his left, towards the chapel where Ned lay.

His heart twisted in his breast.

It was the sickly-sweet smell of incense, and it did little to mask the violent, putrid stench of rotting human flesh.

~ * ~

Chapter 13

“Sing, and unbind my heart that I may weep.”

There was no relief for Richard and Anne. Ned had died, and neither of them had been with him. Even harder to bear was the knowledge that he had suffered. Anne sat in a carved chair on the dais in the great hall clutching Ned’s worn velvet blanket while Richard stood stiffly at her side, white-knuckled and unmoving, his face ashen. Together they listened to a procession of doctors, clerics, and servants who related the terrible details of Ned’s passing.

He had fallen ill with a bellyache in the middle of the night on Easter Monday after a pleasant dinner and evening of music, and the doctors could do nothing for him. He was in great pain to the end and had cried out for his mother. Anne swayed in her chair. He had died two days later.

Richard had to practically carry Anne from the room, for her legs trembled so that she could barely stand. In their bedchamber where Ned used to play chess with them and read poetry, his love-child Johnnie sat with Bella’s Edward by the empty fireplace. Eyes red-rimmed, their cheeks tear-stained, they stroked Ned’s dog, Sir Tristan, as Gawain and old Roland looked on. Even the hounds mourned Ned, for they lay silent, chins flat on the cold tiled floor, a knowing, sorrowful expression in their eyes. In the corner where Richard’s suit of armour hung beneath a tapestry of the Siege of Jerusalem, Maggie, his niece, and Katherine, his natural daughter, knelt at the black-draped prie-dieu together.

When Richard and Anne reached the threshold of their room, they halted. Directly ahead, in full view of the window, stood the tall elm where Ned’s archery target still hung. The boys rose slowly, followed their gaze, saw the tree. Their faces crumpled. Young Edward ran to them, threw his arms around Anne’s skirts. “L-Lady a-aunt,” he cried in a strangled voice, unable to control his stutter, “w-w-why did N-Ned have to go? D-Did God n-not k-know I w-would have g-g-gone for him?”

Anne sank to her knees, bursting into tears. She clasped her sister’s child to her breast and opened her embrace to young Johnnie, who rushed to her. Kate and Maggie ran to her, too, and Richard knelt and put his strong arms around them all. Together they huddled on the floor, all weeping, except for Richard, who stared over their heads with a blank expression, while the Countess drooped against the stone wall, tears pouring down her cheeks. Coming upon this scene, King Edward’s daughter, Elizabeth, with aching heart and a depth of pity, shut the chamber door.

~ * ~

As Ned’s funeral cortege clanged over the drawbridge of Middleham Castle and wound down the hillside, Richard looked back one last time; a long lingering look. White clouds sped across the blue sky, whipped by the roaring wind. Birds squawked, leaves rustled, and the bells of Jerveaulx Abbey chimed over the dales. His throat constricted. He would never return. Middleham, always his joy, was now forever draped in black. He jerked his reins and spurred White Surrey into a downward gallop.

Ned was taken to Sherriff Hutton to be buried near his young cousin George Neville. Anne had not wanted him to be alone. On May 24th, as bells tolled across all the North, his little body was laid to rest in the north chapel of the parish church of St. Helen and the Holy Cross, across from George, whom he had loved so well in life.

In their bedchamber that night, Anne was again tormented by her dream of fiendish gargoyles. As they had done since Ned’s death, they bore Margaret Tudor’s face. This time her yellow eyes blazed with triumph, and when she laughed, her lips formed a word:
Poison!

Anne bolted upright, chest heaving. “Poison! It was poison!”

Richard sat up beside her and put his arms around her trembling shoulders. “Hush, dearest, you’ve had a bad dream.”

“No!—’Tis the truth!” She turned wild, feverish eyes on him. “We didn’t see it before! We didn’t see it because we couldn’t let ourselves see it! Ned was poisoned.
Poisoned—
” She broke off with a choked sound.

“No, cannot be! Ned was but a babe. No one would do such a thing.”

“Tudor would do it,” whispered Anne in a strange, hoarse voice. “For the love of the Crown for the love of the Crown for—”

Richard slapped her. She stared at him, mouth agape. He looked at her mutely. Then he gathered her in his arms. She clutched at his chest, but there was no comfort this time. Unable to breathe, she pushed away, lay back against the pillows.

Richard gazed into the darkness. Hutton’s words on the eve of Buckingham’s execution echoed in his mind.
There is nothing Tudor will not do to gain his end.
Horror, chill and black, numbed him, and for the instant that he believed, he felt as if he had fallen into a lake of burning ice.
No, cannot be!
He flung back the velvet bed curtains, rose from bed. He went to the window and looked up at the dark sky.

Had he taken a Crown to which he had no right? Had God punished him by taking Ned? Was it Tudor’s poison, or God’s retribution? Or merely cruel fortune? He passed a hand through his hair and bowed his throbbing head.

~ * ~

The North mourned with them, but in the rest of England men murmured that Ned’s death was divine retribution. Had he not died on Easter Monday, a year to the day of King Edward’s death? In the taverns, the blacksmith shops, on the farms and in the manor houses, people crossed themselves and muttered that never before was the hand of God seen so clearly. Some who had not believed Richard had done the princes to death before, were persuaded now.

Richard was not told what his people said, but he knew. He had heard the whisperings in the castle, read the condemnation in the eyes of the villagers and townsfolk the nearer he rode to London. Even harder to bear was the mute pity on the faces of those who believed Ned had been poisoned. Out of nowhere had come this rumour, to be added to the rest.

Richard closed his eyes, let the steady clippity-clop of horses hoofs fill his head and numb his senses. John Neville’s words of long ago came back to him:
Don’t look back. In last year’s nest there are no eggs.

That had been good advice once, had kept his face turned to the future. But where was the future now?

He threw a glance back. Anne’s litter wobbled along behind him. His heart twisted in his breast. It was August, three full months since Ned’s passing, and Anne was ailing, unable to ride, with scarcely enough strength to sit up. It was no wonder. She didn’t eat, didn’t sleep. He had removed her from the oppression of Middleham as soon as he could and taken her to Barnard’s Castle, but to no avail. Next, he moved her to York, where the townsfolk had surrounded her with an outpouring of love, then to the hills of Pontefract where the air was cool; then to the sea at Scarborough, where it was fresh. Nothing had helped. Since Ned’s death they had not made love, not laughed. There had been no music, no joy to be found in the cold, hollow world.

Sounds of coughing came from the litter and he saw the Countess, Katherine, and Elizabeth exchange anxious looks as they rode together beside Anne’s cart. He bit his lip, turned away. What if God took Anne? Then he would face a lightless future, pointless and irrelevant. His throat tightened. Where had he gone wrong? The image of the inn at Stony Stratford rose in his mind’s eye. He saw Buckingham arrive, swing his long legs over the bench, heard his merry laughter. He saw the dimly lit room and young Edward carefully scratching out his name and Buckingham adding his motto and signature below.
What should I have done differently?

Maybe there had been no right choice.

His throat ached. He’d taken the throne with the consent of the people to save the land from civil strife. Now men condemned him for it, said he had coveted it all along. That he, Richard, who had always remained steadfastly loyal to family, had murdered his brother’s sons for it. Those lying rumours had fuelled Buckingham’s rebellion and torn him from Ned back to London. And Ned had died, without his ever seeing him again.

Those lying rumours, spread by Henry Tudor.

Tudor
. The word rattled in his head like an adder. Tudor was the source of their misery. That whoreson had spread the vile rumour that Ned’s death was divine retribution. Perhaps he was responsible for Ned’s death…
Poison
…

The thought writhed inside him like a maggot. He shuddered, drew a sharp breath. He could not—would not—believe such a thing! But Anne did. Her conviction that Tudor had poisoned Ned was destroying her. Of all Tudor’s wicked cruelties, this was the worst, God damn him!

Richard clenched his fists around White Surrey’s reins. A vision of Hutton’s face rose before his eyes, lips forming a single word:
Lucifer
. He blinked. Aye, Tudor might well be one of Lucifer’s own, for he did have unholy luck. After months of naval warfare, Howard and Brampton had managed to force Brittany to sue for peace. As part of the agreement, Tudor was to be returned to England, but Tudor, well served by either friends or fortune, had galloped across the border into France, his pursuers hard on his heels, and had reached France barely minutes ahead of them.

Richard had signed the truce with Brittany anyway, and tried to make a treaty of amity with France, as he was doing with Scotland. But France, though weak and divided by the problems of a minority reign, was united against him. They thought him an enemy of the realm, a notion bequeathed them by the Spider King. Louis had never met a man he couldn’t buy, and he’d never forgiven Richard his defiance at Amiens. From beyond the grave he was making him pay. And so, France received Tudor with a hearty welcome and promises of aid. Richard’s spies had sent word that he would invade England in the spring with a French army at his back.

London loomed against the horizon. Richard drew in his reins, stared mutely at the line of city wall, towers, steep roofs, and bridges that he had always hated. At the winding river crowded with boats, barges, and ships. At the dingy grey skies.

London, where the sun never shone.

He glanced back at Anne’s litter and turned away with a heavy heart. He had the worries of a kingdom in which to bury his grief, but where would Anne find comfort?

~ * ~

Chapter 14

“Who is he that he should rule us?

Who hath proven him King Uther’s son?”

Illness was nothing new to Anne, but this time was different. This time she knew she was dying. She welcomed it. Death would be a release, not only from the pains of her body, but from something far worse: the affliction of her spirit. As she lay wasting in her bed, she thought of nothing else but the blessed release. It was Elizabeth who turned her mind to one whose suffering was greater than her own.

“My lady, may I speak?” Elizabeth asked hesitantly, wiping Anne’s damp brow with rosewater. She handed the basin back to a tiring maid and knelt by the bed. “There is something you… something which…” she paused, rushed on, “I have no right to speak of it but… but…”

Anne turned puzzled eyes on the girl, who gazed at her earnestly. She blinked. For a moment Elizabeth had reminded her of someone familiar, but she couldn’t place who it was. Then, with shock, she realised it was herself. Elizabeth reminded her of herself when she’d been young! The same colour hair, same honied complexion, same heart-shaped face. Strange that she had not noticed the resemblance before.

“Speak, child,” Anne whispered with great effort, her voice laboured, breathy.

“My lady Queen, forgive me… ’tis about your lord husband, the King.” Elizabeth lost her courage and dropped her lids. Anne gazed at her softly, seeing the lines of suffering that pulled at her mouth, the fingers that folded and unfolded a pucker of silk sheet. Summoning all her strength, she lifted her hand and placed it over Elizabeth’s own. It had the desired effect.

“My lady, I fear for the King. He is in great pain but he mourns in silence. He needs you, Your Grace; he is so alone. The entire way from Nottingham, he rode ahead of your litter and cast back looks of such longing and sadness that I—I—” She broke off again, unable to meet the queen’s gentle gaze. She couldn’t tell Queen Anne how her heart had contracted to see the King’s lonely figure riding ahead, how she had longed to gallop to his side, to take his strong sunburned hands into her own and comfort him. “You must get better or I fear the King… the King…” She swallowed, looked away in confusion.

The dainty hand squeezed her own with a touch as light as a bird’s. “Speak,” commanded the soft voice. Elizabeth lifted pained eyes to the wasted, once-lovely face. “Without you… I fear the King may not survive.” She bit her lip to hold back the tears that threatened.

There was a long silence during which the queen merely stared at her. Then she nodded, tried to say something. Elizabeth bent her head closer to catch the words.

“Thank you, dear child,” the queen murmured.

~*~

For a long moment after Elizabeth had made her revelation, Anne was stung with anger and jealousy. She had immediately seen through the girl’s concern for Richard to the truth. Elizabeth loved him. And why not? Richard was handsome, kind, noble, chivalrous—everything a young girl would admire.