The Sunne in Splendour: A Novel of Richard III (27 page)

"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 ravages 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 fingers 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 meal, 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
Jesii, 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?
After a while, she rose and returned to the mirror. A powdery perfume lay open before her; she reached for it and began to rub the fragrance into her throat and the hollow between her breasts. And then she began to undress, not bothering to summon her ladies, letting the items of clothing drop to the floor at her feet, until she stood in a circle of discarded silk and satin.
"YOU need not announce me," she said to the men posted at the door of her husband's bedchamber, said with all the hauteur she could command, and they made haste to give her entry. She breathed a swift silent prayer that he'd be alone and moved into the chamber.
He wasn't alone, but there was no woman with him tonight and she thanked God for that. The grooms of the chamber were engaged in the elaborate ritual of making the royal bed, were concluding by sprinkling holy water upon the turned-back coverlets. Two others were stoking the hearth for the night. Wine and bread had already been set out on the bedside table, and, nearby, a chair had been positioned within sight of the bed, where, upon a red velvet cushion, the crown of England glittered in the firelight. In the midst of all this activity, her husband was reclining in the window seat, playing at Tables with his brother.
Elizabeth's entrance stopped all conversation. She crossed the chamber, waited as Richard scrambled hastily to his feet. He bent over the hand she extended, dropped to one knee until she nodded, freeing him to rise.
She had no liking for this dark quiet boy so little like Ned or that wretch, Clarence. Her dislike was not personal; she did not know him well enough for that. But she disliked on instinct anyone who laid claim to her husband's affections, and she thought Ned to be overly fond of his youngest brother.
The boy had only that morning returned to court; he'd been off in Wales for the past month, doing something or other for Ned. She wasn't sure what, vaguely recalled fragments of conversation she'd heard that afternoon, that he'd captured a castle or some such act. But she felt a sudden surge of friendliness toward him, for had he not been here now with

Ned, she might have found Ned in bed with one of his trollops. With that thought in mind, she gave
Richard a dazzling smile, offered her congratulations upon his success.
For an unguarded moment, he looked startled by her unexpected cordiality; she generally accorded him no more than perfunctory courtesy. He did have tact, though; she'd grant him that, for he'd not lingered, swiftly making a discreet departure. The grooms were quick to follow, so that within moments she was alone with her husband.
"You wished to speak with me, Lisbet?"
Edward was regarding her with a polite disinterest that set her teeth on edge. Swallowing her resentment, she nodded.
"I came to tell you that you've won, Ned. I accept your terms."
If only she could read him as easily as she knew he read her! His expression told her nothing of his thoughts, and when he spoke, his voice was no more revealing than his face.
"Shouldn't you first be sure you do know what my terms are?"
"I know exactly what they are," she said flatly. "Unconditional surrender."
She thought she saw amusement flicker in his eyes, and before he could speak, she stepped forward, moved toward him. She did not want to talk, did not trust herself, knew how little it would take to kindle their quarrel all over again.
She stopped before him and, leaning over, kissed him on the mouth. He didn't rebuff her but he didn't respond, either, and as she straightened up, it was with the sudden fear that he might mean to pay her back in her own coin. If he did, she knew she'd never be able to forget the humiliation, nor ever be able to forgive him for that humiliation.
Not daring to wait, she began to fumble with the ivory combs binding up her hair. It fell about her in a swirl of silvery brightness. "Spun moonlight," he'd often called it, liked to bury his face in it, feel it against his chest, a silken barrier between them in bed.
These memories of his past passion were strong enough and vivid enough to dispel her present doubts, and she unfastened the sash of her dressing robe, let it fall open and then caught it loosely at the waist, so that she stood revealed from ankle to midthigh and from swelling breasts to throat.
He was no longer smiling. The atmosphere between them had changed, was charged with sudden sexual tension.
"Jesii, but you're beautiful," he said at last, said softly, almost wonderingly.
Elizabeth had no trouble reading him now. Her mouth was suddenly dry, and it was not nerves now that quickened her breathing. She knew he'd find no fault with her responsiveness this night. She felt giddy, light