The Sunne in Splendour

  “I am, Bella,” he said truthfully, and kissed her lightly. As he did, she gave him a quick, convulsive hug and her voice took on a sudden urgency.

  “Dickon, talk to Ned…please. He wouldn’t listen to George. But he may listen to you. Make him understand that my father and George wanted only to detach him from the Woodvilles…God’s truth, no more than that. It was the Woodvilles they acted against, not Ned. Make him see that.”

  “I’ll speak to him on George’s behalf, Bella,” Richard agreed, after a prolonged pause, and Francis wondered if Isabel discerned the subtle yet significant difference between what was asked and what was promised.

  “Thank you, Dickon! I knew we could rely on you!”

  As she hugged him again, Richard lowered his voice, pitched it for her ear alone, and Francis caught only fragments of phrases.

  “Tell her…the little chapel off the great hall…await her there…”

  Isabel had been listening intently and now she nodded.

  “Of course I will, Dickon.” She hesitated and then said, “But I don’t think she will come.”

  Francis didn’t think so, either, and his belief was borne out within the hour. Richard was once more at his brother’s side and as he read Francis’s silent query, he slowly shook his head.

  Most of the men were mounted now, and Edward, astride the blooded white stallion brought by Hastings and Richard, was exchanging sardonic courtesies with the Earl of Warwick, assuring his cousin that he’d remember the Earl’s hospitality.

  Richard, taking advantage of these spare moments, guided his stallion toward the east-wall servant dorters, where Francis stood alone.

  Francis was experiencing the inevitable letdown of one who was to be left behind. “God keep you, Dickon…and His Grace, the King,” he said somberly.

  “Take care, Francis.”

  “Tell His Grace that I—” He never completed the compliment, for a blurred flash of color caught his eye.

  “Dickon!” With a meaningful jerk of his head.

  Anne was flushed, her breath coming in gasps. Her eyes were swollen and her hair unbound, framing her face in soft swirls and tumbles. Seeing Richard, she slowed to a walk, and then came to a complete halt as he turned in the saddle.

  He swung his horse about, and they met in the center of the bailey. Francis was not within earshot, but they did not appear to be speaking. As he watched, Richard leaned from the saddle and brushed back the chestnut hair from her face. Then he reined his mount in a tight semicircle and cantered across the clearing courtyard. As he passed Francis, he saluted him silently, before spurring his stallion over the drawbridge and onto the road that led through the village and then south, away from Middleham.

  Two months later, Francis wrote in his journal:

  It is reported that King Edward was acclaimed with much fervor upon his entry into London. The Lord Mayor, the aldermen, and two hundred city craftsmen clad in blue gathered at Newgate to welcome His Grace into the city. He had with him a thousand horsemen, and in his escort were the Dukes of Gloucester, Suffolk, and Buckingham, the Earls of Arundel and Essex, and Lords Hastings, Howard, and Dacre.

  He was accompanied, too, by His Grace, the Earl of Northumberland. John Neville joined the King on his progress south and rode at the King’s side as they entered into London. It can be no easy thing, to be forced to choose between one’s brother and one’s sovereign, for I doubt not that he does love them both.

  The King, has ordered the Lancastrian Henry Percy freed from the Tower, and he did name Dickon Lord Constable, just as my lord of Warwick told us he would do. Dickon has now been dispatched to the border to quell a rebellion in Wales and to recapture Carmarthen and Cardigan, which were seized by the rebels. It is his first military command.

  He hesitated, blotted the page with ink, and then added, as a postscript, all he deemed it safe to say about the power struggle taking place between the King and his cousin, the Kingmaker.

  The Earl of Warwick and the Duke of Clarence remain in the North. The King did summon them to London but they have so far refused to obey his summons. It is as if England were split asunder. I do not know what will happen now, but I do fear for the future. I see naught but sorrows in what is to come.

  13

  Westminster

  December 1469

  “Why, Ned? Name of God, why? How could you?”

  “Because I had no choice, Lisbet.”

  Elizabeth stared at him. Edward saw her disbelief, saw his words had not registered with her.

  “No choice?” she echoed blankly. “My father and brother did die at Warwick’s command. And now you tell me you’ve no choice but to pardon him?”

  Her voice rose. He moved toward her, but she eluded him, stepped out of reach.

  “Yes,” he said quietly. “That is exactly what I am telling you. I had no choice. If you cannot destroy your enemy, Lisbet, you’re compelled to come to terms with him. That’s an elemental rule of warfare, my love, however little we may like it.”

  “You have the power—” she began, and he cut her off in midsentence.

  “No, Lisbet. I regret to say that I do not. I do, of course, have the moral authority of kingship.” A sardonic smile touched his mouth before he added, “Unfortunately, moral authority has traditionally fared rather poorly upon the battlefield, sweetheart.”

  She was oblivious to his sarcasm, was shaking her head. “You’re the King,” she said stubbornly. “That does give you the power—”

  “The way Harry of Lancaster had the power? Christ, Lisbet, my father feuded with Marguerite d’Anjou for years and there was damned little Lancaster could do about it, even when it did turn bloody.”

  “Because he was simple!”

  “That’s true enough, but the answer lies as much in my father’s strength as in Harry’s weakness. Strength enough to defy the crown, even to taking up arms against the King. How many battles were fought in the years before Towton…. Four? Five? You spoke of power. Well, my father did have the power to challenge the King. And however much it galls me to admit it, so does my cousin of Warwick…. At least, for now.”

  She didn’t reply, and he slid his arm around her waist, drew her to him. Lowering his head, he brushed light kisses against her temples, her eyelids; spoke softly and coaxingly, recognizing the justice of her demand for vengeance, but reminding her that the King had no army of his own, was dependent upon his lords to gather men to arms, reminding her that Warwick had his own power base in the North, that he could put a formidable force in the field under his own standard of the Bear and Ragged Staff. She made no response, merely turned her cheek slightly so that his lips just grazed her mouth.

  “I do understand your bitterness, sweetheart. Do you think I wanted this? I can assure you that never was a pardon more grudgingly given. My cousin of Warwick does owe me a debt. It is not one I mean to forget. But I am not yet in a position to demand payment. I know it’s not easy for you, my love, but—”

  She pulled free from his embrace. Never had he seen eyes so green, a glazed glittering emerald, pupils contracted to the merest slits of scalding fury.

  “No, you don’t know! The truth is that the deaths of my kindred mean little or nothing to you! You talk to me of necessity. Just tell me what necessity could ever have forced you to come to terms with Clifford! Nothing on God’s earth could have compelled you to pardon the man who murdered your brother. But it seems my brother’s death counts for less!”

  He was now angry, too, but he made an attempt to stifle it, said patiently, “You’re not being fair, Lisbet. I did tell you why I agreed to pardon Warwick. You must know it is not what I wanted to do—”

  “No,” she spat. “No, I do not. I know only that you are giving a pardon to the man who murdered my father and brother, and that is all I need to know!”

  Never in their five-year marriage had they quarreled this seriously; in the end Edward stalked from the bedchamber in disgust, while Elizabeth gave vent to her rage by
wreaking havoc upon the furnishings of the chamber, sweeping ivory combs and Venetian glass bottles to the floor and heaving a pillow across the room with such force that it ripped open in a flurry of escaping feathers.

  Edward’s anger was short-lived. He’d spoken the truth; the pardon was no more than a realistic recognition of the power inherent in the earldom of Warwick. But Elizabeth had spoken truth, too, and he knew it. The humiliations he’d been forced to endure at Warwick’s hands rankled more with him than the deaths of his wife’s kin.

  His Woodville in-laws had sorely disillusioned him within months of his marriage. An extraordinarily handsome family, they soon showed themselves to be endowed with little more than good looks, to be grasping and inept at all but making enemies, at which they excelled. Edward was not long in reaching the conclusion that his interests would’ve been far better served had his wife been an only child, and he could only marvel that a family so weak should have produced Lisbet, whose strength of will and ambition rivaled his own.

  He regretted the executions of his father-in-law and brother-in-law on Coventry’s Gosforth Green, but he did not grieve for them, and Elizabeth knew it. Knew it and resented it. He did not blame her. Nor did he fault her for vowing to take vengeance upon the man she held responsible.

  Edward had long known his beautiful wife would make an implacable enemy. He knew, too, what it was to suffer a loss that demanded to be redeemed in blood. And knowing that, he was willing to accept from her what he’d have accepted from no one else. He gave no more thought to their quarrel, diplomatically overlooked her icy demeanor in the days that followed, and discreetly stayed away from her bed for several nights in order to give her temper time to cool.

  It was on the fourth night after their quarrel that he came to her. He’d underestimated the extent of her anger, however. Time had only served to inflame, and the grievances she bore against him loomed ever larger with the passing days.

  Sitting before her dressing table, Elizabeth watched her husband’s mirrored movements in the polished pier glass she’d ordered from a master craftsman of Genoa. Her face was without expression; inwardly, she was seething. Her first impulse had been to voice her resentment, to tell him to take his pleasure with one of the harlots he kept about the court, to assail him with stinging words of rejection. She repressed the urge, but only with considerable effort.

  During the agreeable uneventful years of her marriage to John Grey, she’d never scrupled to withhold sexual favors as a means of winning her own way. It had proven to be a highly effective weapon with the slow-spoken earnest knight who’d never quite lost his awe at the breathtaking beauty of the girl he’d taken to his bed as a virgin bride of fifteen.

  It had proven to be otherwise with Edward. Early on in their marriage, Elizabeth had rebuffed his amorous advances after a minor disagreement and thus provoked a quarrel of unexpected and alarming intensity. It was the first time she’d seen her easygoing new husband genuinely angry, and she’d stored the memory away for future reference. Elizabeth was self-willed, but she was pragmatic, too. She knew how important it was to please Edward, and in the years to come, she did not make the same mistake again.

  Now, as much as she longed to deny him, she hesitated to do so, and she had too much pride to feign illness. But by the time her ladies had brushed her hair and perfumed her at throat and wrists, she had the solution to her dilemma.

  She rose, came slowly across the room in reluctant response to his summons, stood before him, waiting as he rose from the bed, drew her into his arms. She yielded passively to his embrace, let him stroke her hair, explore her mouth with his tongue, strip away her dressing robe. She submitted silently to his caresses, made no response even when he touched her in places and in ways that he knew to give her the greatest pleasure. Now, however, she felt nothing and rejoiced in her triumph of will over body.

  As he lowered her onto the bed, she met his eyes for the first time. He was, she saw, amused by her affectation of indifference, complacently confident that it was only a pose, that he could soon bring her to an unwilling acknowledgment of arousal.

  It had occurred to her, too, that her own body might betray her, that this might be a form of retaliation that was more effective in theory than in practice. The sexual attraction between them was intense in the extreme, had been so from the moment of their first meeting. Even now, after five years and countless infidelities, he could smile at her across a room and suddenly her body would be trembling, would be suffused in heat. She had never tried to repress her desire for him, was not sure she could.

  She found now, somewhat to her surprise, that it was not difficult at all. She had only to think of Warwick. Warwick, who had ridden to Westminster under her husband’s royal safe-conduct. Warwick, who was attending the great council as if the events of Olney had never been, as if he’d not murdered her kinsmen and imprisoned her husband.

  With that, she went cold, a coldness that chilled her blood and quenched all flickerings of desire so thoroughly that she could not have responded to Edward even had she suddenly wanted to do so. She felt numb, as if her mind had somehow severed all ties to her body, and she lay inert and uncaring under her husband’s weight while her brain was filled with images of Warwick and her heart was filled with hate.

  Hatred was an emotion that came easily to Elizabeth; even as a child, she’d not been one to forgive a wrong done her. She vowed now that the day would come when she’d see the destruction of Warwick and all who were his. Nor would she forget the part played in her father’s murder by George of Clarence. Clarence, too, she owed a blood debt.

  She shifted her shoulders; she was pinned against the bed in a position that was none too comfortable and she hoped Ned would soon finish, for she was developing a cramp in her leg. Perhaps this time he might get her with child. She fervently hoped so; she was eager, desperate even, to give him a son, and it had been months now since her womb was full. Her pregnancy of the past summer had proven to be false…. Either that or she’d miscarried late in the second month. That had been August, when Ned was taken captive at Olney. Yes, that might well be another debt to be charged to Warwick. It gave her a certain bleak satisfaction to think so, to blame him for her present barrenness.

  She belatedly became aware that her husband was suddenly still, and his immobility took her by surprise, for she knew he had not yet gained satisfaction. She raised herself on her elbow to look up questioningly into his face. With a start, she found that he was staring at her, perhaps had been studying her for some moments. He showed no amusement now; his eyes were very light in color and sheeted in ice.

  “Would you like a book to help you pass the time?” he asked, very softly, and Elizabeth realized that she’d wounded him in a way he’d not expected, was not likely to forgive. And lying there entwined in the most intimate of lovers’ embraces, they regarded each other with the accusing eyes of enemies.

  Elizabeth was not a nervous woman, nor was she one to conjure up specters or entertain forebodings of unnamed dread. What little imagination she possessed was strictly disciplined, not given to fanciful wanderings beyond the well-defined boundaries she’d long ago set down for herself.

  Yet now she found herself unable to sleep at night, and when she did, her sleep was fitful, troubled. She began to flinch at unexpected loud noises and when a careless page overturned a heavy ceramic pitcher in her bedchamber, she lost her temper completely and slapped the boy repeatedly across the face, with such force that for days afterward he bore the marks of her outburst on his cheek.

  By the middle of the second week, her nerves were so frayed that those in her service dreaded to be summoned to her presence. She had been driven to seek a sleeping potion from Dominic de Serego, one of the court physicians, and each night swallowed a vile-tasting mixture of opium, henbane, and wine, but she found little relief in sleep so heavy and thick that she felt drugged for hours after awakening. Her appetite was failing her; nothing tasted as it should and after every me
al, her food seemed to lie in her stomach like lead. She forced herself to eat, however, just as she forced herself to attend each and every entertainment of this, their Christmas court.

  Elizabeth had always loved to dance, had always delighted in the music of minstrels, in the antics of jugglers and their trained bears and monkeys, in the morality plays given by the guilds and traveling troupes of actors. Now she hated it all, knowing that all eyes were upon her, speculative, prying, unfriendly. For there were few secrets at court. Her husband treated her with irreproachable courtesy when they did meet in public, but few activities of the King escaped the scrutiny of ever-present eyes, and all knew by now that he no longer came to Elizabeth’s bed.

  Elizabeth had long known she was hated, but that awareness had only made her all the more imperious, all the more set upon having her own way. Now, however, she found herself watched with an intensity that was somehow different, that was…expectant, she decided. It put her in mind of the way a wolf pack would trail a deer for days, waiting for the signs of exhaustion that would bring them in for the kill.

  Such a thought was so foreign to Elizabeth that she made an audible sound of dismay. In a voice suddenly unsteady, she ordered her attendants from her bedchamber, and then walked across the room to stare at the woman reflected in her pier glass. And for once she did not see the beauty that even her most virulent enemies never denied. She saw only the haunted, fearful eyes.

  After a time, she moved to the bed and lay down upon it, fully clothed. For a fortnight now, she’d been refusing to face it, to face the fact that she was frightened by this estrangement that was deepening daily between her and Ned. First it was her anger and then her pride that kept her from seeing the truth, from admitting which of them had the most to lose.

  She was an unloved Queen who had failed to give her husband a son and heir. Three daughters she’d given him, and it was nigh on nine months since the birth of the last babe. And she had enemies, sweet Jesú, enemies enough for a lifetime with some to spare. Enemies but no friends, none she could trust. Only her family, who would fall if she did. What would happen to her if Ned should stop wanting her, stop loving her?