The Exiled (21 page)

Meeting Charles again, Edward remembered the time he’d spent at the Burgundian court in Liege, and in Brugge; he the younger, Charles the elder getting them both, very willingly, into endless games and scrapes. Charles had been a good teacher in the tilt yard too, finding ways to give Edward confidence to trust his natural timing and hone his focus so that, when he fought, Edward thought of nothing else but the next blow, the next feint. It was to Charles that he owed the steadiness he still had in the lists. Edward the King smiled; he would enjoy the play-contest that was to come in the next ten days of celebration — perhaps he could show his erstwhile tutor a few new tricks.

His belly contracted. It was not the thought of jousting which caused it. He could not deny, or suppress, the image of Anne’s face looking down at him from the casement above.

It must have been her. She looked barely older than the last time, though a year and a half had passed. So many questions to ask — what was she doing here? What did she feel for him now? No matter what his duty, no matter how late the feast, he would find her, tonight.

Impatient to be done with the dressing, Edward strode over to the casement and flung the windows back, trailing body servants desperate to smooth his hair and finish buttoning the tight black velvet jacket he must wear for tonight’s wedding feast under a full robe of scarlet cloth of gold lined with ermine.

God knew, the weight of all that material was a trial, for though Edward’s dress of state was artfully made, velvet on such a warm night was tiresome, not to mention cloth of gold! Edward closed his eyes again, dreaming of the pleasure he would feel later, when he could strip the heavy cloth from his body, feel the warm air on his naked skin.

He stretched luxuriously, disrupting the hair brushing, the primping once more. ‘Where’s Dickon? I’ve had enough of this!’ His valet had hurried to fetch his light crown, it was the last thing required, then Edward would be fully arrayed.

The sounds of Brugge celebrating were everywhere on this still, hot night — happy shouts, hurrying feet and laughter. Edward smiled briefly. Heat. There were many kinds of heat. He looked down the canal towards the bend he could just see in the distance. That was where it had happened: that great house set back from the curve — there. He’d seen her in the upstairs room — she’d thrown him the rope of emeralds and pearls.

‘The jewels that were thrown to me today. Where are they?’

Just then, Dickon, his chief body servant hurried back with the light ceremonial crown of England, for his master. ‘Sire, I have them safe.’

‘I’ll wear them.’

There was complete silence in the room. Looking out at the dark water, Edward knew what they’d be thinking. The queen would be furious when she heard that Edward had chosen to wear jewels thrown to him by an unknown lady on his first night in Brugge. But the queen was in London, without him. He’d won the contest at Battle Abbey.

That made him smile again. For once, he’d outwitted Elisabeth, though she’d sought to please him in every physical way she knew the night before they’d left. He’d enjoyed himself immoderately, and left his refusal to change his mind until the very last moment — so she’d been icy when he’d embarked.

Thinking of that moment, in the biting wind of the dock when the queen had turned him a very cool cheek, the king swung back, away from the window and saw their faces. He laughed out loud and those who heard him were astonished. He sounded so free, so young. They hadn’t heard him laugh like that for, well — Dickon said it later — the king only laughed like that when he was in love.

Anne stood perfectly still in the middle of the solar as Jenna and Deborah laced her tighter and tighter into the dress. Her body felt insubstantial, light-filled. And her mind. Perhaps her fiercely elevated pulse was to blame for the strange way the world appeared tonight.

Time was fleeting, though, and downstairs her barge waited by the water gate, but Anne was clear — she would arrive as late as she decently could at the Prinsenhof for the wedding feast tonight. It was time to make an entrance, time that she shed some of the anonymity and mystery that she’d so carefully wrapped around herself and her life.

And, even though she tried to banish the thought — fearful of presuming too much — tonight she knew she would meet Edward again. It would be his doing, not hers. She was certain of that.

Therefore she was calm, patient and attentive to the last rituals of preparing. It was lucky that at dawn, when none of them had known what today held, Deborah and Jenna between them had washed Anne’s hair with sweet rosemary water to enhance the deep lustrous bronze, drying it first with bleached linen in the sun of her heber, before polishing it with silk cloths.

Now it was braided high on her head in a thick, glossy crown — a foundation upon which to fasten her elegant henin embroidered with gold thread and pearls. Veiling as fine and light as sea mist floated from the peak of the headdress almost to the hem of her gown; the most insubstantial of cloaks moving gracefully with every movement, every slight flutter in the air surrounding her body.

Anne herself had designed this dress and they had carefully dropped it over her naked body a moment or two ago; tonight’s heat meant she would not wear an undershift. Deborah held her tongue — it was not fear of Anne’s catching cold that concerned her.

The dress was very simple, cut from a volume of the finest of gossamer silk and like Anne’s headdress it was deep topaz green-blue, the colour of her own eyes. And unlike the heavy dresses most often worn at court, which moved so stiffly, it was cut to flow with every movement, the material falling like water from a belt jewelled with emeralds caught up high beneath her breasts. The sleeves were simple too — scandalously so — tight, unadorned, except for buttons made from pearls, which closed them from wrist to elbow.

As Anne moved, light caught the precious, strange material and it seemed to change colour: peacock hues, gold, even rose pink, flushed through the folds of the fabric.

Jenna, astonished at the mysterious, changeable beauty of the garment, crossed herself, hoping no one saw; to her it was a garment fashioned by magic, a dress that only a witch might wear.

Anne, standing quietly as Deborah made the last, careful adjustments to her veil, felt breath catch in her throat. Unconsciously, she turned her head and caught the last movement of Jenna’s hand. Something icy touched her as the girl looked up, and then glanced quickly away, guilty, as she hurried into the shadows of the room, stooping to pick up discarded garments, setting the room to rights.

‘Shall I tell Maxim that Mistress Anne will be ready for the barge soon?’ Jenna addressed the question to Deborah, but she sounded breathless, panicky.

Deborah, preoccupied, waved an absent yes, but Anne fixed concerned eyes on the girl as she scurried from the room; then she too was distracted — a sudden gust of sound swept down the canal, the high whinny of trumpets, cheering, shouting, laughter. The guests were arriving at the Prinsenhof — the wedding night was beginning.

‘Something wrong?’ Deborah had felt Anne stiffen under her touch. ‘Nothing,’ but there was — Anne was reluctant to give it words, this uncertainty.

‘You’re finished. Or rather — I’m finished.’ Deborah stepped back and looked critically at her handiwork. Strange and rueful thoughts flowed through her.

Anne smiled at her. ‘There, dear friend. Don’t be concerned. You’ve spoken about the fates to me often enough. Do you think the spinning women are weaving me happiness tonight?’

Deborah gently touched the veil one last time, one last tiny adjustment that only she could see. ‘I cannot tell, so I will not lie to you. But I will pray.’

Anne walked quietly to her door, the trailing silk whispering over the tiles. ‘Which gods will you pray to, Deborah?’

The last words floated on the air as Jenna returned to open the door for her mistress. Perhaps she heard, perhaps she did not. Perhaps it was all too late, and at some very deep level, all three women in that room, that night, knew it.

H
ans Memlinc had excelled himself. He and a band of his brother artists — including Jan Van Eyck, his great rival and friend — had been commissioned by Duke Charles, not only to decorate the whole city as his bride arrived, but also to provide built and painted backdrops for the endless entertainments at each of the wedding celebrations to come.

Their greatest triumph was in the creation of a sumptuous tent-like hall to house the wedding feast, a structure made by roofing the duke’s new tennis court — a novel, imported sport to which he was recently, most expensively, addicted — with a vast piece of painted, gold silk. The walls of this extravagant structure, a noble chamber almost as high as it was wide — and it was very wide — had been draped in deep blue silk and swagged and gathered between enormous displays of white roses for the white rose of York, Princess Margaret, the bride.

Fat wax candles burned in bunched sconces and flickered from brass candelabra, dangerously close to the tented ceiling — so many brilliant little suns it seemed like day.

The tent-hall itself sat proudly on a terrace above the canal, the same canal on which Anne was now being rowed towards the landing. A broad, noble flight of steps led upwards from the water towards a wide bank of glassed doors, flung open along the entire front where the hall faced the canal. She could see the people processing to and fro behind them; the doors themselves were a fashion imported from Venice and had caused much controversy because they were more expensive than cannon to make. Largely constructed from surprisingly large pieces of pale pink glass, tonight they came into their own, thrown open to the warm evening air; now the Bruggers were proud of how much they had cost, the faces of their English guests said it all — who had ever seen that much glass, in one place, ever before? Truly this was a wealthy city.

Anne’s was one of the very last barges to arrive at the water stairs and yet it took some time for the press of people ahead of her to step onto the landing beside the canal. Patiently Anne waited — anxiety mounting, until at last her men were able to dock.

Gathering her skirts in one hand, Anne breathed deeply and, having steadied herself, began to ascend the shallow stone steps in front of her.

At the top, a broad path led straight to the hall, well lit by lines of liveried servants each side holding flambeaux. It was only at the last step that Anne saw the path was empty in front of her, all the other guests either already inside the hall, or still climbing the water steps behind her.

She would enter the hall alone. That would cause scandal, she knew, as she’d been asked by several other guests to join their parties — and had refused. Now, however, as the moment could not be denied, her courage almost failed for there was no escaping the attention such an act would bring.

The light in the hall was dazzling and in one sense, her entry was badly timed because as she stepped through the rose-glass doors, trumpets sounded so loudly, so suddenly, she stumbled from surprise.

Around her, fellow guests turned towards the high dais set at the far end of the great tented space. They breathed as one — a quick inhale, followed by a long, long sigh, for the duke and his new duchess had arrived. With the collective whisper of expensive material being gathered up in jewelled hands, the entire company knelt.

The trumpets sounded once, twice, three times more, and Edward of England and his mother processed into the hall, to be greeted by their host and his duchess, sister and daughter no more, but co-ruler of her own domain.

For a moment, Anne, dazzled by the sight, stood alone in the doorway, in clear sight of the dais to which the royal party was processing.

Edward, as the chief and most honoured guest at the feast, bowed graciously to left and right as he escorted his mother to her own ducal throne behind the high table, but then he paused, his eyes fixed on the open doorway where Anne found herself trapped: Anne, standing alone in her dress of mutable silk.

Gracefully, unhurriedly, she too sank to her knees on the painted tiles joining the other guests. But her heart was hammering — he was wearing the jewels she’d thrown him.

The court, the hall, was a frozen tableau, then Edward bowed expressly to her, Anne graciously inclined her head, and the king moved on with Duchess Cicely.

A great feast is a hive of gossip — elaborate manners and courtly gestures are merely the pretty garments on top of the flesh and bone of expectation and speculation. So it was here. Many eyes had noted Edward’s expression when he saw Anne de Bohun, amongst them Duke Charles. And many had seen too that the skein of pearls and emeralds thrown to him by this same English lady was slung around his shoulders, in place of the more usual gold collar of state. Where was William Caxton? Had he seen what had come to pass?

But now the bride was seated beneath her own Cloth of Estate, with the duke seated at her right hand, and Edward on his sister’s left. The guests all rose quickly from their knees as the silver trumpets brayed once more, and hurried to their allocated places whilst servers processed the first spectacular dishes to each long board.

Whole baked peacocks redressed in their plumage, gilded raised pies in the shapes of mythical animals, fricasées and ragouts of spiced porpoise, and venison, crane, widgeon, teal, tench and pike.

Duke Charles, as aware of Anne’s spectacular entrance as any man in the room, flicked a glance at Edward. How much did his guest know of what Caxton had told him?

The king had chosen to honour Anne by wearing her jewels. Yes, Charles had heard the gossip, too, though he’d not seen her throw them. So, perhaps, there was truth in Caxton’s story about this pair of remarkably handsome people — but then his bride smiled at him, charmingly and shyly, and the duke abandoned his uneasy thoughts and concentrated on his new duchess. Time enough for politics later.

After the busy chaos of being seated, Anne, with consummate good manners, applied herself to conversation with her neighbours, apparently unconscious of the interest that one glance from Edward had engendered amongst the other wedding guests.