She’d known for weeks that Anne’s illness was thought to be mortal, but it was a shock, nonetheless, to see coming death so clearly etched in the younger woman’s face—the hollowed cheekbones, thrust into sudden sharp prominence, stained with deceptive false color, eyes sunken back, feverishly bright, compelling. The signs were unmistakable to Elizabeth, for she’d had personal experience with consumption, had watched a young cousin of her first husband die of it.
Consumption came in many guises, was also known as phthisis, hectic fever, the White Plague, but Elizabeth thought wasting fever was the most apt, best described the fate of those stricken. Sometimes there was considerable pain, but for others, there was not. Her young cousin-by-marriage had been one of the latter, had suffered comparatively little pain even to the last, merely growing relentlessly weaker, remaining in surprisingly cheerful spirits even on his deathbed, deluding himself with hopes of recovery long after all others knew he was doomed, a phenomenon peculiar to consumptives, which the doctors could only attribute to the relative absence of pain. There were, Elizabeth thought, worse ways to die—plague, leprosy, putrid throat—but consumption was still one of the most feared of all ailments, for it almost always proved fatal.
Looking at Anne now, Elizabeth thought it would be a miracle if Anne did live through Lent, and she was glad, glad that Richard was to lose the wife he loved, to have to watch helplessly as her life ebbed away. Let him see what joy he’d take then in that jeweled crown, the crown that should have been her son’s.
Like Richard, Anne, too, wore her crown; her head was tilted back with the weight of it, held upright by sheer stubborn force of will. She faltered suddenly, and a murmur swept the crowd. Richard turned around, reached Anne just as she began to cough.
“The poor lamb,” Elizabeth’s neighbor repeated; others around Elizabeth took up the refrain, but for all their sympathy, there was an unwholesome if very human excitement, too, in this scene being enacted before them, a passion play brought to life in the glare of torchlight, with the power to invoke pity, wonderment, speculation about retribution and redemption and the mysterious workings of the Almighty.
Anne’s coughing spasm had subsided, but she clung to Richard as if it had sapped her remaining strength, leaned so heavily on his arm that his support seemed to be all that was keeping her on her feet. They seemed oblivious of all but each other, and a hush fell upon the crowd, caught up in this moment of unsparing intimacy being played out before hundreds of fascinated witnesses. Richard tilted Anne’s face up, put his lips to her forehead; when she turned her face away, into the velvet of his mantle, he stroked the chestnut hair cascading down her back in the unbound style reserved for virgin brides and Queens.
An aging man in a long dark robe detached himself from the royal entourage; Elizabeth recognized Dr Hobbys. People now realized that Richard meant to take Anne back into the palace, and murmurs of disappointment began to surface; many had been waiting in the cold for hours to watch the pageantry, the procession to the abbey. But Anne was shaking her head, gesturing about her at the thronged bailey, winning for herself no small measure of admiring approval when the people realized she was arguing for continuing with the procession as planned. A tense three-way argument ensued between Richard, Anne, and Hobbys, and at last a compromise was reached, Richard agreeing to go on to the abbey if Dr Hobbys would escort Anne back into the palace.
Richard stood watching as his wife moved away from him, retracing her path with the slow measured steps of one drawing upon rapidly diminishing reserves, expending energy that could no longer be replaced. If Richard was aware of the curious, sympathetic eyes riveted upon him, he gave no indication of it; surrounded by people, he seemed strangely alone, and there was on his face a look of utter desolation.
Once more quiet had descended over the crowd, a subdued silence that had in it as much of discomfort as it did of pity; it was as if the man before them suddenly seemed all too real, a flesh-and-blood being whose pain lay exposed for all to see, an anguish of spirit and soul too naked to deny, too easy to identify with. The glittering torchlit crown, the courtiers cloaked in silver fox and sable, the trumpeters and Princes of the Church, and flaming candles held aloft in gilded holders, all the magnificence and pageantry of royalty…It was that which they wanted of their Kings, needed that splendor to eclipse the drabness, the harsh rigors of their own lives. If they no longer demanded, as a more primitive age had done, that their Kings be Gods, neither did they want to see in their sovereigns human frailties too closely akin to their own. People stirred uneasily now, uncertain, finding themselves actors in a play they’d come only to watch.
It was Bess who broke the spell. With Anne’s departure had gone, too, her ladies. But Bess had glanced back over her shoulder, came swiftly back now to Richard’s side. She spoke softly, urgently, her eyes never leaving his face, and after a long pause, Richard nodded, turned, and gave the signal for the procession to proceed. Flanked once again by Bishops and lords of his court, he moved across the bailey. Bess waited a moment or so longer, turned to follow after Anne.
As Richard reached the gateway that was the King’s private entrance into the abbey precincts, the crowd surged forward, sought to follow. Elizabeth was rudely jostled, elbows digging into her ribs, feet trampling upon the trailing hem of her skirt. She scarcely noticed, accepted the shoving like one sleepwalking, and when her servant at last managed to extricate her from the crush of bodies, she stared at him blankly, without recognition, for the idea that had come to her was so stupendous, so astounding that all else had been blotted from her brain.
Bray had been right; Bess did have a face easy to read. And as she stood beside Richard in the torchlit courtyard, her only thought to give him comfort, it had been there for all to see. So she does love him, Elizabeth thought in wonderment. She loves him but she doesn’t know it, hasn’t admitted it even to herself. She’s either unwilling or unable to deal with her feelings and so she denies them, not realizing she does give herself away every time their eyes meet. The little fool, God help her. But it was in that moment, swept by sudden pity for the daughter so unlike herself, this innocent infuriating child of hers, that it all came together for Elizabeth, a plan dazzling in its simplicity, awesome in its implications.
Warwick’s daughter was dying; none who looked upon her tonight could deny that. And when she died, Richard would find himself under unrelenting, irresistible pressure to wed again, to beget a son and heir. They’d give him no time to grieve, would push a foreign bride into his bed with indecent haste, just as they’d done with the second King Richard. A King owed his countrymen heirs of his body; Richard would have no choice. He’d need a Queen, need a healthy young woman who could give England sons. Why could that Queen not be Bess?
Not an illicit incestuous liaison, a relationship that could only give Bess grief, besmirch her name, and shred her conscience. A legitimate honorable marriage, recognized by the Sacraments of the Church, a marriage that would make her a Queen.
Elizabeth tried now to dampen her rising excitement, to consider this astonishing possibility dispassionately, to examine it for flaws. They’d need a papal dispensation, of course. But Popes were astute practitioners of the art of power politics; the petition of a reigning King was not likely to be denied. But would the English people approve such a marriage? The blood bond was closer than most Englishmen were accustomed to accept; such marriages were far more common on the Continent. Yet if the Pope did sanction it…There were many who felt Ned’s sons had been cheated out of their just inheritance; even among those who believed implicitly in Richard’s right, there was considerable sympathy for the children made to suffer for their father’s forgotten sin. What better way to heal the wounds of Richard’s accession than to crown his brother’s daughter?
But what of the plight-troth? How get around that? Richard couldn’t repeal the Act of Titulus Regius without impeaching his own right to the throne, and that much of a fool he wasn’t. Blessed Mother M
ary, but there must be a way, must be…What of the Beauforts? Jesú, yes! That high-and-mighty House had begun in bastardy, the issue of the Duke of Lancaster and the sister-in-law of the poet Chaucer. Yet the children of that illicit liaison had been declared legitimate by the King, the stain of illegitimacy expunged by parliamentary act. Could not the same be done for Bess?
Would Richard ever consent, though? Could he be persuaded to make such a marriage? If Ned had made an unlikely marriage from lust, could not Richard be induced to do the same from guilt? He had to have an unease of conscience; whether he’d wished it or not, his brother’s sons had died because he’d taken the crown. To lose his own son so soon thereafter and now his wife…What man would not see that as God’s judgment? And what better act of expiation than to make Bess England’s Queen? Elizabeth’s mouth softened, curved in a smile of cynical certainty. Why shouldn’t he agree? How often was a man given the chance to find atonement in the bed of a beautiful girl?
She mustn’t delude herself, though. The odds against such a marriage ever coming to pass were disheartening at best. So many ifs, so much contingent upon chance, upon factors beyond her control. But when had she ever shrunk from risk? She’d lived a gamble her whole life long. Who would ever have believed, after all, that the widow of an obscure Lancastrian knight could have gotten the King of England to offer marriage? But she had, a twenty-seven-year-old widow with two children, she’d held out for a crown, as stunned as anyone by her success, not realizing that Ned took marriage no more seriously than he did anything in this life, including himself.
No, she’d not think on that, not think on how he’d betrayed her, or how she missed him even now, a mocking ghost haunting her sleep these twenty-one months past, the man who’d given her all she’d ever wanted only to fail her at the very last. Think rather about Bess, about this, her last chance. Edward and Dickon were dead; she could do nothing for them. But if she could see Bess crowned as Queen of England, if she could do that…
“Madame?” Her servant cleared his throat hesitantly. “Madame, be it your wish that I escort you to your daughter’s chamber?”
Elizabeth shook her head. “No,” she said. “I want you to take me home, back to Waltham.” She needed time, time to think.
23
Windsor
February 1485
Anne had always preferred Windsor to Westminster, and on January 12 Richard took the court to the eleventh-century castle some twenty miles west of London. He’d hoped against hope that Anne might somehow benefit from the change, but as the month dwindled away, so, too, did her waning strength. Shortly before Candlemas, she took to her bed, and Richard could no longer deny the truth, that she would not live to see another spring.
The first day of February dawned raw and blustery. Snow began to fall shortly before dusk, was still falling hours later. A biting wind was sweeping across the lower bailey; Richard scarcely noticed. Nor did he pay heed to the startled looks of the few people he encountered, taken aback to come suddenly face-to-face with the King, accompanied only by a large silver-grey alaunt.
As was his custom now, Richard had gone at dark to his wife’s bedchamber; his evening hours were reserved for Anne and Anne alone. Sometimes they talked, but there was less and less to be said that would not give the lie to their mutual pretense. Most nights they played chess or cards, but tonight Richard soon saw that Anne’s attention was wandering from the chessboard. Making excuses to cut the game short, he rose to go, and saw in her hollowed dark eyes an unmistakable relief.
Although it did little to ease the hurt, Richard thought he understood. All Anne could do for him now was to try to minimize her discomfort, to spare him the fear, the despair that must torment her solitary hours as she sought to come to terms with the disease cheating her of so much, with a mortality to be measured in weeks. Richard felt he had no choice but to honor her wishes, to make death a forbidden topic between them, but in truth he could not have handled it any other way, could not bear to abandon all hope, even a hope he knew to be false.
And so they found themselves locked into a conspiracy of silence, but until tonight Richard had not understood how high the price would be, that in denying the truth they were condemning themselves to suffering isolated and alone. The irony bore down upon him with devastating impact. He wanted above all else to give Anne comfort, and yet he was the very one who couldn’t, for with him she must strain to hide the reality of her illness, to live her last days as a lie. Standing there by her bed, it had suddenly seemed to Richard as if he were seeing her from a distance, a distance that widened between them with each breath she drew, breaths that were labored, finite. Already she was slipping away from him, caught up in emotions he couldn’t share, listening to that which he couldn’t hear—the silent relentless ticking away of time, her time. She was dying and he was not, and that was a barrier not even love could breach.
For more than an hour he’d been walking aimlessly, but it was only now, as the Chapel of St George loomed ahead through the wind-swirled snow, that Richard realized where his footsteps had instinctively been leading him. Begun more than ten years ago by his brother Edward, the chapel was as yet unfinished; at the time of Edward’s death, only the choir and aisles had been roofed. But it was a magnificent building, even in its present state, and Richard hoped that in time he’d be able to carry out his brother’s architectural ambitions, to make of St George’s Chapel a living, lasting monument to Edward’s memory.
Entering the south door of the nave, he found himself pausing before the door of Will Hastings’s chapel. He stood in silence for a moment, staring down at a large grave slab. Will’s resting place. It was adorned with an incongruous remembrance—Richard’s torch played upon glossy dark-green leaves, interspersed with berries as bright as blood. It was, he saw, a cluster of English holly, and he wondered who had chosen to remember Will in this fashion, with a woodland tribute that somehow seemed more pagan than Christian, but queerly touching, withal.
He didn’t linger in Will’s chapel. Passing through the screen set up to shield the east end of his brother’s tomb, he stood at last before Edward’s grave site. A priest had apparently been careless, for a torch still burned near the door leading up to Edward’s chapel. Richard approached the altar, knelt, and murmured, “In Nomine Patris et Filii et Spiritus Sancti.”
The prayer came from memory, without conscious thought. But after that, he was at a loss for words. If the Almighty no longer heard his prayers, how could Ned? He was surrounded by silence, the implacable accusing silence of the dead.
Richard came stiffly to his feet. Fool, what did he expect? Absolution from a dead man? A mistake to come here, a grievous mistake. He found himself staring at the gilded iron gates that stretched across the aisle to the west of his brother’s tomb. On the gates were hung Edward’s cap of maintenance, his sword, armor, and a surcoat of crimson velvet, embroidered with pearl and gold, interwoven with rubies.
Against his will, Richard reached out, let his fingers brush this garment that had been his brother’s, and in that moment it was almost as if the loss were being felt for the first time, the stunned realization that Ned was truly dead, his laughter forever stilled, flesh and blood and brain no more than memory, and memories…memories were not to be trusted. They distorted, took on the coloration of love or grief or guilt, projected the past through a glass, darkly, and sometimes, sometimes too bright to behold…or to bear.
“Ah, Ned,” he whispered, “how came we to this?”
His words seemed to hang in the air, and then he heard a sound behind him, quickly stifled, and he realized that he wasn’t alone. He saw now what he’d not noticed before, that the stairwell doorway was ajar, and caught up in a sudden unreasoning rage, he strode over, jerked the door all the way open, and found himself looking into frightened blue eyes.
Richard’s shock was such that he stood frozen, doubting the evidence of his own senses, for Jane Shore was the last person he’d have expected to see, a
ghost conjured up without warning from a time in his life he wanted only to forget.
“What are you doing here?” he demanded, saw her flinch away from the anger in his voice, his face.
“I loved him, too, Your Grace,” she pleaded, stepping out of the shadows of the stairwell. Richard stared. Even a long woollen cloak could not conceal her condition; her once slender body was now heavily swollen.
“You’re with child?” he said, startled, and she nodded shyly.
She was, he now saw, clutching a garland of holly. He hesitated and then reached out, put his hand on her arm. “I think I’d best escort you across the bailey. The ground is icy in spots; you might slip, hurt your baby.”
Jane showed no surprise at the offer, gave him a grateful smile. “Your Grace…there be something I would say to you, something I’ve wanted to say for months. Please…I must. I owe you so much, you see.” Bringing her hand up, she stroked her swelling belly. “This baby…I cannot tell you how much it means to me, to be with child. I wanted so much to bear your brother’s baby. Twice my womb quickened with his seed; twice I miscarried. I guess…guess God thought my sins were too great. I’d long since given up all hope of motherhood, and now…well, God willing, the babe be due at Eastertide. But if you hadn’t given Tom leave to wed me…” She shook her head, said wonderingly, “I couldn’t believe it, told him he was a fool even to ask. But you said yes; with every reason to deny the marriage, you gave your consent.”
She held out to Richard the holly garland in unspoken entreaty, watched as he walked over, laid it upon the black marble of his brother’s tomb. So much she still wanted to say to him: how sorry she was that his little boy had died, that his wife was so ill, that meanspirited men did spread ugly stories about the fate of Ned’s sons.