The Innocent (26 page)

“The pessary, girl, what was in the pessary you made? Quickly, quickly.” Anne, her mind spinning with all she’d seen as she’d run through the palace, took a moment to understand what he wanted, but the groaning queen brought back that dreadful night with Aveline, so few weeks ago.

“Honey, poppy, and this…” She fumbled in her little skin bag, the one that Deborah had given her, and brought out a handful of the same dark seed pods she had used when Aveline had given birth to Edward. Elated, Moss snatched them out of her hands just as the king’s page knocked at the door of the birthing chamber, again asking urgently for the doctor.

“Tell the king I shall be with him directly—and that I hope to have good news.” Moss knew that he walked a very thin line toward his fate, but he had no more dice to throw, short of hauling England’s heir from his mother’s womb. However, he would only try that if the queen died. Moss urgently dispatched Tom to find honey and the things they would need to make the pessary, while Anne waited quietly in the shadows behind the press of women crowding around the queen.

The woman on the great bed was howling like an animal now, eyes rolling back in her head, as Moss conferred nervously with one of the queen’s sisters and her mother, Duchess Jacquetta. Tom returned quickly, however, and the doctor hurried him over to Anne, thrusting a large mortar into her hands, his voice urgent with fear.

“Do it now. Every moment brings her closer to death.” And he whirled away back to the bed. “You must try to push, Your Majesty. Please…just try.” The women around the queen were wide-eyed with terror, for now the queen was suddenly immobile, shuddering, no longer screaming. Clearly the end was near and there was no sign of the child.

Desperate for help, Anne found herself praying to both Saint Anne and Aine as she worked, as fast as she could, to bind the crushed seed pods and powdered poppy seeds into the honey until she’d made a creamy paste. Hurrying over to Moss, she thrust the mortar toward the doctor’s hands; quickly he scooped up handfuls of the sticky paste and pushed it up between the queen’s legs.

What happened next seemed a miracle to all in the room that night. In the space of ten heartbeats, the queen gave a great groan, while blood and clear fluid gushed out of her, and moments later, the child’s head crowned.

And when the face was delivered, it gave a cry before its body had even properly left its mother’s. The rest of the baby quickly followed.

The queen’s mother herself cut the umbilical cord, but then there was a moment’s stricken silence before Moss gathered enough courage to announce, “A girl. A fine girl. See, Your Majesty—your daughter.” The baby’s lusty cry brought the queen back and she opened her eyes wearily when they placed the baby on her belly.

“A…girl? Where is my son? Who has taken my son?” The queen’s anger brought back the life force to her swollen body but it was almost too much. She spasmed, her back arched, and in that moment it appeared that she would die.

Quick thinking by Doctor Moss saved Elizabeth Wydeville. He thrust his hand into her mouth and held on to her tongue so that she would not choke on it—even though she bit him hard—while he bellowed for attendants to hold the queen’s arms and legs. Duchess Jacquetta snatched the new princess from her daughter’s convulsing belly and wrapped her in a costly velvet cloth edged with miniver embroidered with the leopards of Anjou and the fleur-de-lys of France, the cloth in which they’d thought to wrap a prince. In the frenzy surrounding the queen, Anne was forgotten by everyone except the doctor.

When Elizabeth regained consciousness, she wept bitterly in her mother’s arms at her ill fortune, and then the doctor, sure the queen was out of danger, checked the new child. She was a healthy pink now, screaming her head off as the wet nurse was hustled into the room quickly opening the bodice of her dress to feed the new princess. Moss then signaled to Anne to join him outside the birthing chamber.

On the other side of the great doors of the queen’s suite there was a monstrous crowd of courtiers, all eager to be the first to hear the news of the sex of the child. The doors might have been of thick, carved oak, but they could not muffle the cries of a newborn baby. The doctor bowed and smiled and accepted congratulations on all sides but strode on resolutely, answering no questions, with Anne and Jassy trailing in his wake. “Lords, dear ladies. I go to the king. Yes, the child is healthy—and the queen. But please, do not delay me.”

There were curious glances for the young girl who followed the doctor, accompanied by the older, respectable-looking servant woman. The court was small enough for strangers to be noticed, though they were quickly forgotten in the excitement that followed the birth of the princess.

The doctor strode quickly toward the king’s apartments still buoyed by the wave of exhilaration the birth had brought, as Anne, Jassy, and Tom hurried to keep up. A live child, even if it was a girl—and he, Moss personally, had saved the queen! Of course, the two women with him had played a part—a small part—in that moment, but it was prudent that that knowledge remain his, and their, secret alone.

“Tom.” The doctor stopped in a dark, empty passage as his boy scuttled to his side. “I want you to take these two ladies back to their home. Look sharp now.” Moss turned with a charming smile to Anne, and swept her a very deep bow.

“Little mistress, I have to thank you but now is not the time. I would ask that you and Mistress Jassy say nothing about the events of tonight, not even to Master Mathew and Lady Margaret, until I have been able to speak to the king. Then I shall call at Blessing House after I have slept and once more seen the queen and her child.” Another bow and he strode off.

Tom pulled urgently on Jassy’s sleeve. “This way, goody.”

That was enough for the housekeeper. She was no one’s good-wife and the events of the night, awesome though they’d been, were not so impressive that she would tolerate this boy’s offhand tone now.

“I am Mistress Jassy, if you please, and I shall trouble you to remember that, young man. Come, Anne.”

And with that she stuck her nose grandly in the air and picked up her skirts with an all-encompassing sweep of her hand, just as she had seen Lady Margaret do. Meekly, Anne fell in behind Jassy and cast her eyes down, clasping her hands at her waist.

Tom shook his head. These two confused him mightily. He knew that Jassy was the merchant’s housekeeper, his master had told him that, but from her bearing and clothes one would have thought her a lady. Anne looked for all the world like the daughter of the house, yet she behaved like a well-schooled servant.

Women. Very confusing creatures. He yawned deeply as they walked quietly back through the palace, sounds of celebration of the birth of the princess coming to them from a distance as all the church bells in London began to peal and cannons fired the salute from the Tower. Well, Tom thought, it had been a big night and he needed his bed.

Anne, too, was exhausted, but as she listened to the commotion spreading through the city, the commons outside the walls of the palace shouting the news from house to house, she felt very worried.

Her earlier mistrust of Doctor Moss had returned. It was an odd thing to be summoned in the middle of the night and then dismissed and hurried away from the palace as if they’d been thieves. And then there were the implications of the birth itself. Of course, she was grateful that the salve she’d made had accomplished what it needed to, but if Edward were to keep the country safe from the bitter wars of succession they’d all lived through, he must have sons. Court politics did not greatly interest her, but the consequences of a girl being born had been discussed in Blessing House, and Anne knew that Warwick would do all he could to foment unrest now that a princess, not a prince, had been given to the king and queen.

“Please, Aine, please, Mary,” she prayed as they hurried through the chaotic streets, among the people lighting bonfires in the squares and passing ale jugs from hand to hand. “Please preserve King Edward and his little daughter and may we have peace…”

Chapter Eighteen

It was four months since the queen had been delivered of the Princess Elizabeth and in that time much had changed at Blessing House. The first breath of winter could be felt as the last yellow leaves dropped in the pleasaunce, and Anne was in the solar packing her few possessions into a small, iron-bound coffer as Jassy hurried into the room.

“Not done yet? They’re waiting for you below.”

Anne said nothing as she folded the last of her three dresses carefully—it was her best, the green gown given her by Lady Margaret—and placed it on top of the other two. Jassy bustled forward as the girl closed the coffer and helped her put the pin through a simple hasp to keep it shut in transit.

Anne took one last look around the lovely room, her home and refuge for more than a year, and as her eyes dwelled longingly on each familiar thing she saw, she shivered. Perhaps she’d never see this place again. Her eyes filled with tears.

“Now, now. None of that,” Jassy said. Clumsily, because she was unaccustomed to offering affection, the housekeeper pulled the girl into her arms and rocked her for a moment as if she had been a small child, and then dropped the embrace, embarrassed. “Anyone would think you were off to your death, you silly burde. This is a great opportunity.”

Anne understood the unconscious note of envy she heard in Jassy’s voice—she’d heard it often enough over the last weeks from most of her friends, and some who didn’t like her—for the queen had requested, personally, that Anne join her household.

It still seemed the most remarkable thing. After the night of Princess Elizabeth’s birth, Doctor Moss had informed the queen of the role—the very minor role, in his estimation—the girl from Mathew Cuttifer’s household had played in her survival, and that of the royal child. Then the story had been told of Anne’s part in the cure of her mistress, Lady Margaret, and that had been enough. Such knowledge of plants would be useful in the royal household, and the queen had petitioned the king for Anne’s services so that she might teach her ladies the skills she possessed. But the decision to employ the girl permanently within the palace was sealed when Anne prepared a herbal tea for Doctor Moss to give to the queen. With its help Elizabeth had shed the excess fluid of pregnancy and greatly enhanced the clarity of her skin.

So now, after saying her good-byes to all her friends at Blessing House, Anne curtsied to her master and mistress as they sat formally on a dais at the end of the great hall accepting her farewell.

“I will send word to your foster mother of your good fortune, but we expect that you will serve the queen with the devotion you have extended to my own family, Anne. You will bring honor to us in this way.” Mathew was perplexed by the degree of sadness he felt at the departure of this girl. Servants came and went from his house as they did from any other, yet he had come to appreciate that Anne was kind, and had courage. Rare enough qualities in someone so young, but it was still odd to feel bereft in the face of her departure. She was not his daughter, after all.

But Mathew’s wife understood her husband’s sadness better than he did himself, because she felt it too, and had thought about its source.

When the summons had come from the court she and Mathew had not hesitated to release Anne, though for different reasons. If Mathew, on one level, felt it was great good fortune that a servant of his should now be so close to the queen—and he had lectured Anne at length on the duty she owed for all the opportunities Blessing House had given her—Margaret recognized something else.

Over the last year and more, Anne had grown. She was tall now, moved gracefully, spoke softly, and seemed as well bred as any court lady. Her unusual degree of learning, her often demonstrated loyalty, the warmth she and the girl had for each other after all the terrible events of the last few months, made Anne different from any other servant in the Cuttifer household. She was gentle and strong at the same time: a green willow, reaching down to a still pool…And when she left, a small light in the gloom of this great old house would be gone. She would leave a hole in all their lives that would not easily be filled.

Determinedly, Margaret shook off the wistfulness she felt as the girl bowed before her, and then she did something that surprised her husband. She got up and embraced the girl as if she had been her daughter, about to leave home. “Dear child, we are not far away. You must remember that. If you have need, we will always listen.”

Anne’s heart brimmed with unshed tears as Margaret gently kissed her and then gave her a little cloth packet. “This is something we want to give you. It comes from us both. Open it, to please me.”

With careful fingers, the girl undid the scrap of ribbon that bound the black velvet and opened the material wrapping. Inside there was a fine gold chain and on it swung an exquisite filigree cross, with a delicate pattern of tiny alternating garnets and pearls.

It was unusual, this cross, for behind its arms there was set a circle, such as was often seen in stone crosses of the west and the north of the kingdom, the parts where Christianity had come earliest and found an accommodation with the ancient beliefs of the people there. Anne looked up into Margaret’s eyes, tried to say something, a word of thanks, but nothing would come.

Margaret slipped the chain over her head and gently arranged the cross so that it nestled down inside the bodice of her black gown. “There. Now you will always have something to remind you of your time here with us, something familiar that will give you strength when you pray. I know you have a special dedication to the Mother of us all, for I’ve heard you pray to her often—she will hear you.”

Margaret smiled at her and gently laid one finger on the girl’s lips, as if to stop her speaking. Anne guessed that Margaret somehow knew of her belief in the strength of the other gods, the gods of her childhood in the forest, and she was grateful for Margaret’s approval and understanding. The circle and the cross would indeed give her strength when she prayed.