“Rumor has it that the Earl of Huntingdon has asked to take your Kathryn as his wife. Be there any truth to it, Dickon?”
“I can see the day coming when rumors do overrun this court like weeds grown wild,” Richard said in bemusement, but then he smiled. “It’s true enough. I hadn’t thought to arrange a match for her so soon, not for another year or two. And Anne thinks fourteen be too young for marriage. But I wrote to Kathryn’s mother, telling her of Huntingdon’s offer and she’s in favor of it. Kate says some girls mature faster than others and Kathryn be ripe for marriage. I haven’t made up my mind yet, thought I’d keep Kathryn at court for a while and see how she takes to Huntingdon. He comes of good family, is personable enough, and should do right by Kathryn. And the match would, of course, be to my advantage, too, binding Huntingdon all the more closely to York. But there’s no hurry, after all. Fourteen seems rather young to me, too, I admit….”
This last was said rather absently; Richard had noticed the man just entering the hall, a man to draw all eyes, for he was garbed from head to foot in the stark black of bereavement. Midst the glitter of vivid jewel-color velvets and silks, he looked like a raven suddenly thrust among peacocks; the contrast was startling, somehow discordant.
Richard wasn’t the only one to think so. People were turning to stare, a path opening up before him almost as if he were a leper, carried some loathesome disease in the guise of grief.
“She’s a pretty lass, your Kathryn.”
Richard smiled. “Not surprising, for Kate—” And then he was out of his chair and on his feet, for he’d just had his first clear look at the man’s face, recognized Henry Burgh, whose wife Isabel had been Ned’s nurse for the past ten years.
As their eyes met, Burgh’s face contorted. “My liege….” He sobbed, stumbled forward to kneel before the dais.
Richard’s goblet slipped from suddenly nerveless fingers, shattered on the steps of the dais, sending slivers of broken glass into the rushes, splashing wine upon the mourning black of Burgh’s doublet.
Burgh was weeping openly. “He’s dead, my lord,” he choked. “Your son be dead.”
Struggling up out of a deep, drugged sleep, Anne was dimly aware that something was wrong. Her eyelids felt weighted down and the light filtering through her lashes seemed extraordinarily bright, as if she were looking directly up at the sun. Her tongue was coated, an unpleasant aftertaste still lingering in her mouth. A sleeping draught? Was that what was the matter with her? But why was the pillow wet? Had she been crying in her sleep? Instinctively she shrank back from the answers to those questions, sought refuge again in sleep.
Her dreams were troubled, fragmented. Faces swirled around her, swooped down upon the bed like hawks and then faded away. Sounds of grieving filled her ears. She tossed restively, and an unknowing whimper escaped her throat. Richard was with her now; a dream? Or a memory fighting its way back into her consciousness? She reached out to him, seeking comfort, but he didn’t seem to hear her, kept saying “Forgive me, forgive me,” over and over again. And then he was gone and she was alone in a grey strangling fog and somewhere a child was crying….
Anne screamed, sat bolt upright in bed. Richard was leaning over her at once, drew her sobbing into his arms. She gave a grateful gasp, clung to him with a feverish urgency, her tears drying against his shirt. But the horror of her dream was still very much upon her, had not been dispelled by the reality of Richard’s embrace, the sight of sunlight spilling into the chamber. She found herself staring over his shoulder at the chair in which he’d been sitting, where he’d been keeping vigil by her bed throughout the night. He was murmuring her name, as if he knew no other words, his voice slurred and frighteningly unfamiliar, and in the doorway people were clustered, drawn by her cries, Dr Hobbys and Véronique and Agnes Ratcliffe, theirs the stricken faces of her nightmare terror.
“He’s dead, isn’t he?” she whispered. “He’s dead….”
Bess moved quietly toward the bed, saw with relief that Anne appeared to be sleeping. She stood for a time gazing down at her uncle’s wife. She knew Anne was not yet twenty-eight, but she looked even younger. Too tiny for elegance, like a little girl dressed in her mother’s skirts, hers was a fragile ethereal beauty that put Bess in mind of snowflakes, butterflies. She’d been very kind to Bess in those first weeks after Bess left sanctuary, had gone out of her way to make Bess feel welcome, at ease. Yet somehow Bess could not be comfortable with Anne; she felt awkward, self-conscious about her height, inexplicably tongue-tied in the other woman’s presence. But she’d liked Anne, nonetheless, had been grateful for her thoughtfulness, and she found it intolerable to have to be a helpless witness to Anne’s anguish.
Bess was no novice to grieving, but in this past fortnight she’d begun selfishly to wish she’d not accompanied her uncle and aunt on their progress north. Never had she known how painful an emotion pity could be, an aching, rending pity for a hurt beyond healing.
The tale of the past two weeks could be told without words, was there for all to see in Anne’s face. Her skin had a transparent sheen, like silk stretched too tight, was seared with the passage of scalding tears; her eyelids were bruised, had taken on the delicate discoloration of fading flower petals, and even in sleep the corner of her mouth drooped piteously. Bess felt tears sting her eyes. Why did the Lord God let people suffer so? Anne didn’t deserve this. Nor did Dickon—Dickon who looked more and more to her like a damned soul in a world suddenly bereft of all mercy. Bess had found his stunned, silent grieving even harder to bear than Anne’s tears; she yearned passionately to comfort him, knowing that there was no comfort to be given.
Anne sighed in her sleep, brought a hand up to her face, like a child trying to ward off a blow. Bess reached down, drew a blanket up around Anne’s shoulders. It had been four days before Anne had been able to travel, and they’d made the journey north from Nottingham in agonizingly slow stages, the choked sounds of weeping occasionally audible from within Anne’s swaying horse litter, not reaching York until the first of May. That same day Richard had ridden out to meet his son’s funeral cortege. He had chosen to bury Ned at nearby Sheriff Hutton Castle, and Bess had wept when she heard that, knowing it to be a tacit admission that Middleham, too, was lost to him.
Ned had been buried on a Sunday in the little church of St Helen and the Holy Cross, while the city of York mourned for the little boy who’d died just days away from his eleventh birthday, and then Richard and Anne went home to Middleham. They’d been here but one day so far; Bess did not think they would linger long.
“Does she sleep?”
Turning, Bess saw Véronique de Crécy standing beside her. She nodded, and when Véronique whispered, “I’ll watch over her now,” Bess made a grateful exit from the bedchamber, out into the sunlight of the inner bailey.
Passing the auditor’s kitchen, Bess smiled at sight of the girl standing on the stairs leading up into the keep. It had been a bitter disappointment to her when her mother refused to let Cecily accompany her on the northward progress, and she’d been delighted to find her half sister Grace living at their uncle’s court, under his care. Grace smiled too, waited for Bess to join her on the porch.
“Grace…who’s that woman by the gatehouse? The one talking with Johnny, do you know her?”
“That’s Johnny’s mother. She’s come to take him home with her for a while. Pretty, isn’t she?”
“I suppose.” Bess was surprised at the prickle of resentment she felt toward this onetime bedmate of her uncle’s. It was very similar to the antagonism she’d harbored against her father’s many mistresses. Save only Jane Shore, she thought, Jane who was too openhearted and spontaneous to dislike.
“Poor Johnny,” Grace said, and sighed. “He’s been all but forgotten, I fear. I tried talking to him, but he’s not easy to reach, does keep his grief bottled up. And then, too, he be so young…twelve? Thirteen?”
“Thirteen, I believe.” Bess glanced about, made sure they we
re alone. “I had a letter this morn from Cecily; remind me and I’ll let you read it after dinner. Do you know what she told me, Grace? She says that it is being noised about in London that Ned died on April ninth…just like Papa.”
Grace looked bewildered. “But…but he didn’t, Bess. Ned died on Easter Eve, a full week after we did mark Papa’s year-mind!”
“I know,” Bess said bleakly, “but don’t you see, Sister? Had Ned truly died on the ninth, so great a coincidence would be sure to raise questions in people’s minds. That Dickon’s son should so suddenly be stricken, and on the very day that Papa died…. People who doubted the plight-troth would see it as divine retribution, as God’s judgment upon Dickon for taking his nephew’s crown. Those who do hate our uncle need only plant rumors to that effect and the gullible will see that they be spread quick enough, passed on in tavern and alehouse as gospel truth.”
“Isn’t it enough that he has lost his son and heir,” Grace said wonderingly, “without people seeking to make of it a greater grief?”
Bess hesitated, but only briefly, said in very measured, dispassionate tones, “Cecily says that when she told our mother Dickon’s little boy had died, Mama laughed. She laughed and said, ‘So there be a just and jealous God in Heaven, after all!’ ”
Not even in the chapel was Richard alone, free of eyes that were sympathetic, pitying, but ever-present. His chaplain hovered solicitously in the background, eager to serve. Richard willed himself to forget the man’s obtrusive presence, and kneeling before the candlelit altar, he began to pray for the soul of his son. Then he prayed for Anne, entreated the Almighty to give her strength to accept Ned’s loss, to show her the mercy she so deserved. After that, he prayed for his grief-stricken mother-in-law, who’d learned to love Ned as she’d never loved her daughters, for Johnny and Kathryn, for all who’d known Ned and loved him. For himself, he asked nothing. He’d known from the moment he stood staring down at the weeping Burgh that God had turned His face away from him, and to cry out that his punishment was more than he could bear would change nothing, would not resurrect the dead.
The torches in the great hall had been extinguished for the night. But he couldn’t bring himself to go to bed, not yet. The sight of his wife’s grief was too great a penance; he loved her as he’d never loved another living soul, but to be with her now was a torment beyond endurance. He couldn’t help her, could only suffer her pain as his own.
The sky was a deep midnight-blue, spangled with stars. Richard leaned against the battlement, gazed out across the moonlit shadows that hid the landscape he so loved. Wensleydale had been ablaze with autumn brachen when first he’d laid eyes upon Middleham, a nervous nine-year-old consigned to his cousin the Kingmaker’s care. The happiest years of his boyhood had been spent within these walls. And here he’d brought Anne, his bride of a week. Over the years, they’d spent time at other castles: Sheriff Hutton, Pontefract, Skipton. But Middleham had retained its hold upon his heart. Middleham had been home. For more than eleven years, his home, and now…now it was the place where his son had died, died with neither he nor Anne at his bedside.
Richard was turning away from the embrasure, toward the stairwell, when he saw the light coming from the uppermost chamber of the Round Tower. Coming from Ned and Johnny’s bedchamber. But Johnny had long since been moved to another room, and no servant would be up there at such an hour. Richard moved back to the embrasure. The light shone steadily, a bright beacon in the blackness that encircled the castle.
It was even later than Richard realized; he encountered no one in the hall, and the bailey, too, was deserted. He found himself hesitating before the door of Ned’s bedchamber. Neither he nor Anne had been able to cross the threshold of this, the room in which Ned had died. But light gleamed from beneath the door. His hand closed on the latch; he shoved inward.
Johnny was curled up on the carpet by the bed, his arm around a huge brindle wolfhound. At his feet lay a second dog, the animal that for five years had been Ned’s shadow. Both dogs raised their heads at sight of Richard, silent sentinels to the boy’s grieving. He seemed to be sleeping, but as Richard moved forward into the chamber, he jerked upright, bounded to his feet like a startled deer.
“I’m sorry I startled you so, Johnny. But why are you here?”
“I couldn’t sleep, and I…I came…”
“Why, lad?” Richard put his hand on Johnny’s arm, felt a tremor go through the boy’s body.
“I came…came to ask Ned’s forgiveness.”
“Why, Johnny? For what?”
“It was my fault, my fault he died.” Despairing blue-grey eyes looked up at Richard, a mirror image of his own. “Ned woke me up in the night, said he felt queasy, that he had pains in his belly. I told him it was all the sugared comfits we’d eaten before bedtime, told him to go back to sleep. When he woke me up again before dawn, I knew then it was more than that. He was in such pain, had broken out in a cold sweat…. I called Mistress Idley at once, but had I only summoned someone earlier…Had I believed he was truly ill…”
“It would have made no difference, Johnny. The doctors told me that Ned suffered a rupture, that infection spread so rapidly nothing could be done for him. They don’t know how to treat a sickness like that, Johnny. They neither know why it happens nor what to do for it, and those stricken like this always die. Always, lad. Those few hours could not have saved him.”
“You swear?”
“Yes,” Richard said, and Johnny could hold back no longer. Leaning against the wall, he slowly slid to the floor, and burying his face in his arms, he wept.
“Ah, Johnny….” Richard knelt by the sobbing boy, put his arm around Johnny’s shoulders, and then his son was in his arms, clinging in a desperate awkward embrace, his body all angles, elbows, and knees, his face wet against Richard’s neck, all the heartbreak of the past three weeks spilling out in a scalding surge, beyond his control.
“Why Ned? Why, Papa? Why did God take him? He was so smart, so much fun to be with, and he…he was your heir. Better it had been me. I wish it had, wish…”
Jesus God. Richard stared down at Johnny’s bowed head. Let him somehow find the right words, say what Johnny needed to hear. He mustn’t fail Johnny, too. He stroked the soft black hair, said slowly, “Johnny, you mustn’t ever think that. I want you to promise me…promise me that you’ll put such thoughts from your mind. If I were to think you truly believed that…Well, nothing could give me greater grief. Will you promise me?”
Johnny’s whisper barely reached his ears. “Yes….”
“Johnny…listen to me, lad. I know your mother has come all the way from London to bring you back with her for a time. But I don’t want you to go. I want you with me. From here I must go north to Durham and then to Scarborough; when we leave Middleham, I want you to go with me, and when I go back to London, I want you to come and make your home at court.”
Johnny had raised his head. “Papa, I thought you were sending me away. When my mother came yesterday and told me, I…I thought you didn’t want me with you anymore….”
Richard’s throat constricted; he saw his son through a sudden blur of tears. As much as he loved Johnny, he’d loved Ned more, Ned who was part of Anne, whose dark eyes were hers, who was of her flesh, her blood. Had Johnny sensed it? Had he denied the boy not only his birthright but a sense of belonging, too?
“You’re my son and I love you very much. I would never send you away…never.” He hugged the boy to him again, and again Johnny responded with a need so naked that Richard was swept with guilt. He ignored the discomfort of their position, ignored the torchlight shining blindingly into his eyes and the musty stale odor of a room too long closed up, held his son until some of the tension had eased from Johnny’s body, and tried not to look at the bed beyond, the bed in which Ned had died.
20
Scarborough, Yorkshire
July 1484
The windows of Anne’s bedchamber opened onto a panoramic view of the harbor
. Brisk winds had swept the sky of clouds, and a midday sun shimmered over the North Sea, a dark ink-blue along the horizon gradually shading into a vivid sapphire as the waves rolled shoreward, showering the cliffs below in a spray of frothy spume. The sight was a spectacular one, but Anne was staring with unseeing eyes at the scene, and she jumped, visibly startled, when Richard said her name.
“I didn’t hear you enter,” she confessed, summoning up a wan smile. “Have you been standing there long? I…I was just thinking about the time we brought Ned to Scarborough. He was so excited, seeing the sea for the first time…remember?”
“Yes,” Richard said, “I remember.” He turned, closed the door deliberately behind him. “Anne, why weren’t you at dinner? Are you unwell?”
“I’m fine. I just didn’t feel hungry.” Seeing his mouth tighten, Anne added, somewhat defensively, “Richard, don’t look at me like that. It was only a missed meal, after all.”
“Anne, we’ve got to talk and this time you’re going to hear me out.” Moving toward her, Richard took her hand and drew her into the window seat. Her body was stiff, resistant, and she sat down beside him with a reluctance all too easy to read.
“Beloved, you cannot keep on like this.”
“Like what? Just what am I doing, Richard, that is so wrong? Yes, I am grieving for our son, but what would you have me do? Say it’s been time enough, put my grief aside like a gown I no longer wear and—”
“Anne, stop it! No one expects you not to grieve for Ned; least of all, me. But you cannot give in to it like this. Don’t you see that? It’s been eleven weeks; how much longer before you fall ill? Before you—”
“Richard, I’m not ailing! How often do I have to say it to be believed?”