She might have managed to keep to this resolve had not a courier arrived five days later bearing a letter she never got to read. It was only by chance that she encountered the man in the courtyard, saw the Whyte Boar of Gloucester on his sleeve. He’d confirmed her suspicions at once, said that he had, indeed, brought her a letter from the Duke of Gloucester; it had been taken from him by the Duke of Clarence, who said he’d see she got it. He hadn’t wanted to hand it over, but the Duke had been insistent. Anne, however, was no longer listening, was on her way back into the house.
She found George in the solar, her letter open in his hand. Indignation blinding her to all else, she demanded the letter. He showed no embarrassment whatsoever, refused curtly and, when she persisted, he strode to the table, jerked a candlestick toward him, and held the letter to the flame.
Anne gasped; so great was her outrage that she was all but stuttering. “You…you think because I’m a woman you can abuse me and steal my lands and no one will hold you to account for it! But you be wrong, damn you, wrong! I’ll appeal to Richard and to Ned! And they’ll heed me, you know they—”
She knew suddenly that she’d gone too far, said too much. The look on his face was frightening. She began to back away, cried in a choked voice, “No, George, let me be! If you touch me, I’ll tell Richard, I swear I will!”
She’d almost reached the table and, as he lunged for her, she darted behind it. She’d have made it if only she’d not chosen that morning to wash her hair. It was loose, swirled out behind her, and he was able to entangle a handful in his fist. Anne was wrenched backward with such violence that she felt as if her neck would snap. She cried out, first in pain and then in fright.
Véronique had followed Anne anxiously into the solar. A petrified witness until now, she came out of her trance and fled for the door. She was shaking so badly, though, that she could barely get it open, jerked it back to free Anne’s second scream out into the stairwell. It was all Véronique could think to do, all she dared hope for, that enough witnesses might bring George’s rage back within the bounds of reason.
There were faces staring up at her. Anne’s screams had drawn a score of people into the stairwell, but Véronique saw with sick horror that none were going to come up; they were as fearful as she, far too fearful to risk drawing George’s wrath upon them. Behind her, Anne cried out again, and she clung helplessly to the door, too frightened to go back into the solar and yet unwilling to flee and leave Anne totally alone with George. The Duchess of Clarence! She’d have to find the Duchess! Even as she formed the thought, she saw the servants moving aside on the stairwell, saw that God was ahead of her in this, and she flattened herself against the wall, let Isabel pass, heard her gasp, “George! My God!”
George released Anne and she collapsed, weeping, against the table. Isabel gave her husband an incredulous look, brushed past him to reach her sister. Anne’s hair was falling wildly about her face and she was trembling so violently that it was a moment or so before Isabel could smoothe back the tangled hair, could raise Anne’s face to the light. Blood was trickling from Anne’s mouth and her skin was splotched with hot color, but Isabel soon saw she was more frightened than hurt.
“Go to your bedchamber, Anne,” she said as steadily as she could. “Hurry now. Do as I say.”
Anne did as she was bade, fled without a backward glance, banging bruisingly against the solar door in her haste to be gone.
Véronique was quick to follow. Edging away from the door, she stumbled down the stairs into the now deserted great hall and out into a kitchen and buttery no less empty of a sudden. There she collected cold compresses, a cup of salted warm water, a flagon of wine, and carried them on a tray to Anne’s bedchamber.
She was expecting a weeping hysterical girl. She found one incoherent with impotent fury. Anne was raging about the room, calling George every vile name Véronique had ever heard and some she hadn’t.
Véronique did at once what Anne hadn’t thought to do. She barred the door.
“Rinse your mouth with this, Anne, and then spit into the laver.”
Anne choked on the wine and renewed her railings against her brother-in-law.
“How dare he, Véronique? How hateful he is, hateful and greedy and craven! What did I ever do to him that he should so resent me? That he should so want to hurt me…and he did, Véronique, he did. I saw it on his face….” She shivered and then called George a name she could only have learned from her father, the Kingmaker.
“Anne, hold still….” There were deep red indentations upon Anne’s wrist, much like rope burns. There would, Véronique thought, soon be ugly bruises as well. “Does this much hurt, Anne?”
“Some. In truth, it be my mouth that does hurt the most.” Anne touched a finger gingerly to her cut lip, probed with her tongue, and winced.
“Misbegotten son of Satan!” she spat. “But so short-sighted, so stupid! Does he truly think I’ll suffer his maltreatment in silence?”
Véronique would not have thought Anne capable of such an anger, found herself wishing that Anne’s fear had lingered longer. Fear did make people cautious; rage such as this was dangerous, was all too apt to lead to disaster.
“When I do tell Richard…” Anne looked up at Véronique, said with bitter satisfaction, “He’ll pay then. Oh, yes, he’ll pay! Let him answer to Richard then, if he thinks he need not answer to me. It will not, I can assure him, be to his liking!”
Véronique stared at her in dismay, realizing that this same thought would be sure to occur to George, too, once he did calm down.
“Oh, Anne….” she whispered, sat down abruptly upon the edge of the bed. Anne was now a threat twice over to George. A threat to his possession of the Beauchamp lands he craved with such passion. A threat, too, to his well-being, even to his safety, if she chose to speak, to tell Richard and the King how he had ill-treated her. And of course she would tell. That, too, George would realize.
“Chérie, this is a man most dangerous….” She fumbled for the right words, couldn’t find them. “Are you not fearful of him, of what he might do?…”
“I admit I was afraid…there in the solar,” Anne said, with some reluctance. “But I don’t fear him the way I did Marguerite d’Anjou or Lancaster. George isn’t clever enough to be truly ruthless. He doesn’t think very far ahead and he never seems to be able to foresee the consequences of his actions. In all his life, he has managed to do but one thing without blundering—to judge rightly that it was time to abandon my father for Ned. Much of the time he just grabs wildly for what he does want, and then marvels afterward when it never comes to pass as he did expect! A man like that is not likely to inspire fear.”
Véronique didn’t agree. She remembered Anne once saying that Richard was impulsive. The word that came to mind when she thought of George was erratic. George swung like a weathercock in a high wind and he showed, as well, a truly frightening tendency to brood upon suspected wrongs. A man such as that might well do something desperate in a moment of anger, something he’d not truly thought through, might later repent of. When it was too late. Dear Lord Jesus, how was it that Anne could not see how much more dangerous it made him that he could not, as she said, judge the consequences of his actions?
Anne was startled when Edward in late August made George a grant of the lands held by the Lancastrian Earl of Devon. She was pleased for Isabel’s sake, but begrudged George as much as a single shilling. She had no illusions that the acquisition of these lands would make him any less greedy for the Beauchamp and Neville estates. The more one feeds a pig, the more it does want, she’d said bitterly to Véronique, who agreed, but entreated her to say such things only in the privacy of their bedchamber if she must say them at all.
Still, it had been a blessed reprieve, for George went west again, to look upon his new estates. As August edged into September, it seemed to Anne that her life had stopped in time, had frozen into a pattern of endless waiting. She lit candles that all would go well for Richa
rd in the North, prayed that he would soon return from Yorkshire.
Her luck ran out on September 5. It was a Thursday, Isabel’s twentieth birthday, and soon after Compline, George’s household was thrown into a turmoil by the unexpected arrival of their lord. For Isabel, George brought a magnificent gold-and-ruby pendant. For Anne, he had a long measuring look and a mocking smile.
In the days that followed, he was in suspiciously high spirits. Anne watched with wary eyes as he was openly and tenderly loving to her sister, teasing her and laughing at his own jokes and forcing Anne grudgingly to admit that his family’s charm had not been portioned out exclusively between Richard and Edward. He even turned some of that charm upon Anne herself, though she was hard put not to spit in his face. She’d come this summer to hate George as she’d never hated anyone before. Even Édouard of Lancaster, whose memory was no longer looming so large in her life, had been less hated than George, George who now watched her with something approaching smugness. And somehow, Anne found that more unsettling than outright hostility. He was up to something; she was sure of it.
On September 13, George had ridden to Eltham Palace in Kent, where Edward was currently keeping court, and when he returned to London, Anne at first thought he must be ill. There was a greyish tinge to his complexion and he was snarling at the servants even before he’d turned over his lathered stallion to the uneasy grooms. When Isabel emerged from their bedchamber the following morning, none could doubt the night had been one of bitter quarreling. Her face was pinched, showed sudden hollows and shadows Anne had never before noticed. She gave Anne no chance to speak, lashed out at her with unexpected, inexplicable rage, shouted, “Don’t say anything! Not anything at all! I don’t want to hear it!” And to Anne’s consternation, Isabel then burst into tears, fled back up the stairs, not to come down again that day.
The week that followed was Hell for all within the Herber. When George and Isabel met in the great hall, on the stairs, at meals, the chill between them was such that it froze any unlucky enough to be within range. And at night, their raised voices carried even beyond the oaken barrier of their bedchamber door. By Friday, the tension was such that all were snapping at one another out of sheer nerves and even the Herber pets showed the strain. And that night saw the worst quarrel of all. The heated voices raged on into the early hours of the morning. Anne lay awake till dawn, aching for her sister and cursing George with every breath she drew.
But with daylight, an uneasy quiet seemed to settle over the house. George arose as the sky greyed and lightened, was gone before many in the Herber even realized he was no longer abed. Isabel kept to her chamber throughout the day, admitted no one at all. The hours dragged on.
By nightfall, Anne could tolerate the suspense no longer. She prepared a tray of food with which she hoped to tempt Isabel, who’d eaten nothing all day, and dismissed the servant standing vigil at her sister’s door. The room was in darkness, still shuttered; even the bed-curtains were still drawn. She set the tray down, caught up her candle, and tentatively approached the bed.
“Get out. Whoever it is, get out.”
“Isabel…. It’s me, Anne.”
Silence greeted her. She pulled the bed-curtains back on the near side of the bed and then cried out sharply as her candle’s light fell upon Isabel’s face.
“Bella, my God!” She scrambled up onto the bed, and with a sob that was pure outrage, gathered a resisting Isabel into a close embrace.
“Oh, Bella, I never thought he’d hurt you…not you!”
“The candle…I don’t want it, Anne. Put it out.”
“I will, Bella…straight away.” She breathed upon the flame, had one final glimpse of her sister’s face, of the bruised puffy flesh that had swollen one eye shut so thoroughly that she could think only of the way eyelids were sewn shut on a newly captured falcon till it be broken to a man’s hand.
“Have you hurts other than your eye? What else did he do? Bella, I’m going to fetch a doctor right now and—”
“No! No, you will not! Do you think I’d let anyone see me like this? I’ll be all right, Anne…truly. It was partly my fault. He was drinking and blind with rage and I should have realized…should have—”
“How can you defend him? After what he did to you? And you’re his wife! He does pretend that he loves you…. Oh, Bella, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean that…didn’t mean to make you cry!”
It was a strange sensation for Anne, to see the brittle self-assurance stripped so suddenly from the worldly willful sister fully five years her elder. She did all she could to comfort, which was to keep her arm around Isabel as she wept, to stroke her sister’s loose bright hair, and to promise herself that she’d make George pay for Isabel’s pain.
Isabel struggled to sit up. “Anne, listen to me. There is something I must say to you. I cannot help you, Anne. I cannot. But I did try. God’s truth, I did. You must believe that.”
“Of course I do,” Anne said mechanically. It took the greatest effort of will to sit quietly there on the bed, to wait for her sister to continue speaking. Her heart had begun to hammer so that she seemed to hear nothing else. When she could stand it no longer, she said, “For God’s sake, Bella, tell me!”
“I don’t know him, Anne. I’ve known him all my life and yet I don’t know him at all. He won’t listen to reason. He just…Oh, God, you don’t know…cannot imagine what he’s been like…. I’ve never seen him like this, never!” Isabel fought to get her voice under control. “When he went to Eltham last week, Ned did tell him that he’d had word from Dickon, that he’ll be back in London far sooner than George expected, within a fortnight.”
“Oh, thank God!”
“No, Anne, no…. You don’t understand. That’s forced his hand, you see. He thought he had more time, time to work things out. But now that Dickon’s expected back so soon…”
“Time for what, Bella?”
“Time to arrange…to bring about your disappearance.”
“What are you saying?”
“You still do not understand, do you? He’s afraid, Anne. Afraid of what you’ll tell Dickon, and of what Dickon will then tell Ned. He’s not rational about this. I cannot talk to him, cannot make him see reason. I tried. It did no good, only led to this….” Her hand came up to her face, hovered over the darkening bruise that spread from her eye up into her hairline.
“He can see only the threat you do pose, wouldn’t believe me when I swore I’d persuade you to hold your tongue. He’s afraid of what Dickon will do, Anne, afraid of losing the lands. He thinks Ned will heed Dickon, will take from him all the Beauchamp lands, mayhap the Devon lands, too. He’s gotten it into his head that there’s but one thing to be done—that you must be gone from the Herber by the time Dickon gets back to London.”
“Gone? Gone where?”
“I don’t know…. A convent, I think. He’s vague as to the details, won’t tell me much. He did mention Ireland once, and that seems most likely to me. He is still Lord Lieutenant there. But I cannot say for sure that it be Ireland. Burgundy, perhaps…. I don’t know.”
“But he could not! Not force me against my will! Richard would never let him!”
“Oh, Jesus God, Anne, don’t talk like such a child, not now! Of course he could. Do you think for a moment he’d have trouble finding men to do his bidding? It would be so simple, so simple that it frightens me, and should damned well frighten you!
“He need only see that your wine or food be drugged. You’d wake up aboard ship, out on the Channel…in the hands of his men. Name of God, girl, can you not see? They could keep you drugged for days, weeks. By the time you had your wits about you, you’d be pledged to God in some poverty-stricken Irish convent only too glad suddenly to have a rich patron, to have the corody he’d give for your keeping. Or if not that, held fast within some remote manor house. As neat a conjuring trick as you would wish to see…and Dickon could search from now till Judgment Day with no hopes of finding you. No one would find you, An
ne. Don’t you see that?”
Anne did. “But…they’d know…Richard and Ned…. If I were to disappear, they’d know he was to blame!”
“So I did tell him, too. But he said that they could prove nothing, not if he said you’d run away. That all the suspicions in the world mattered little without evidence. Like Harry of Lancaster, he said. All know Ned did order his death, but none can prove it. I tell you, Anne, he’s bound and determined to do this thing, and I cannot dissuade him. I can only tell you what he does mean to do. But you must never let him know I did warn you!”
Anne looked down at her hands, found they were trembling, and laced her fingers together in her lap. “Bella, what should I do?” she whispered.
Isabel looked at her and then turned her head aside on the pillow. “I don’t know, Anne,” she said dully. “God pity us both, but I don’t know….” And she began to cry again, but silently this time. Anne knew it only because she felt a tear splash upon her wrist.
“Anne, listen to me…. Listen! What proof have you that he truly has a convent in mind? Your sister said you could be drugged and wake up aboard ship. My fear would be that you might not wake up at all! What’s to keep him from seeking a more lasting solution to the problem you pose? I know women are forced into convents, but that could well be a tale told for your sister’s sake. He’d hardly confess to her that he did have murder in mind! Or he could…could put you within an asylum for the deranged of mind if he did balk at murder! Anne, he could—”
“Stop! Oh, God, stop!”
Anne had not consciously considered the possibility of murder. Now she found herself able to consider little else.