The Sunne in Splendour: A Novel of Richard III (60 page)

Edouard of Lancaster even more than she feared him, hated the scorn in his voice when he spoke of her father, hated his boastings of the bloody reprisals he meant to take against the House of York, hated the way he saw her fear and laughed at it. Above all, she'd hated those nights when boredom or the lack of other bedmates brought him to her bed, and she'd had to submit to his physical demands, submit in silence because he was her husband, because he had the right to make use of her body as he chose, because she was his. Far more than the physical pain and humiliating forced intimacy, it was that which scoured Anne's spirit, the loss of self. She was no longer Anne Neville at such times; she had no identity, no purpose in being other than to serve his need, a need that any soft female body could fill.
It was not that she'd not expected to be submissive to her husband. She knew obedience to be a wife's duty, a husband's right. Holy Church said so, said wives must submit themselves unto their husbands, and for the first fourteen years of her life she'd accepted it without question or qualm. But with Edouard of
Lancaster, it went beyond submission. Intuitively she sensed that, understood that she was less than a wife, was a possession, to be used when it pleased him, to be ignored when it did not . . . and she came to hate him with the passion she did not bring to his bed.
During those two nightmarish days that followed the battle, Anne spent much of her time in prayer, thanking Almighty God for giving the victory to York, for seeing to the safety of her Yorkist cousins. She was sure Marguerite knew her son was dead, must be dead. Since arriving at Little Malvern Priory, Marguerite had spoken scarcely a dozen words, not so much as a crust of bread passed her lips, and candles burned in her bedchamber each night till dawn. Marguerite must know. It only remained for Sir
William Stanley to stand before her on the stone steps leading into the Prior's lodging, to say with considerable relish, "Madame, you may consider yourself a prisoner of His Most Sovereign Grace, King
Edward Plantagenet, fourth of that name since the Conquest." He'd grinned widely then, savoring the moment so obviously that the women were forewarned as to what was coming.
"We are to proceed at once to Coventry, upon the King's command. Although if I did have my way, I'd dispatch you, instead, to join that whoreson Somerset and your bastard-born whelp in Hell everlasting!"
No sound escaped Marguerite's lips; she scarcely seemed to be breathing. Disappointed by her lack of response, Stanley sought to remedy it by providing the details of her son's death: "Skewered through as he cried unto my lord of Clarence for succor, like any common craven."
Still she looked at him, saying nothing. Anne thought at first that

Marguerite, proudest of the proud, was not willing to lose face before a blackguard like Stanley, but she soon saw it was not that at all, saw that the Lancastrian Queen was staring at Stanley with unseeing eyes.
So she hadn't known! Anne gazed wonderingly at Marguerite, marveling at the capacity of women to cling to hope until the last possible moment, until confronted by a William Stanley. She shivered, even though she was standing in the sun, and only then did she begin to think what Lancaster's death would mean to her.
Stanley at last had ceased his unproductive baiting and agreed to the request put forward by the enraged
Countess of Vaux, to allow the women to gather needed belongings from Marguerite's bedchamber.
It was only then, behind closed doors, that Marguerite broke. She shed no tears, merely sank to her knees upon the floor, like a sawdust doll suddenly bereft of support. She doubled over in the way Anne remembered her own mother doing when, many years ago, she had been stricken during a Christmas
Midnight Mass, miscarrying of yet another daughter even before she could be borne from Middleham's chapel. Marguerite clutched herself as Anne's mother had done, rocking back and forth, oblivious of her ladies, oblivious of all except this stark savage anguish that seemed indistinguishable, to those watching, from physical pain.
Anne alone did not go to Marguerite; she leaned against the door and watched. She'd been appalled by
Stanley's needless brutality, all the more so because he took such evident delight in it. Now she wondered that she could look on, unmoved by a grief so intense, a suffering so severe. She must be sorely lacking in Christian charity, she decided, with that queer cool detachment she'd begun to develop with her December marriage.
Well, so be it then. What pity had they ever shown her? What sympathy had she been given for her father's death? Marguerite had even begrudged her the few pence she'd had to borrow so she could buy dye in Exeter to transform two of her gowns into mourning garb.
No, she did not grieve for Lancaster, either that he had died so young or so violently. She was glad he was dead. And as she looked upon the woman writhing upon the rush-strewn floor, racked by the dry sobs of a grief forever beyond the balm of tears, Anne thought this was but one more reason to hate them, that they'd made her so much like them, able to take pleasure in the death of another being, to be an uncaring witness to this rending of a woman's soul.
She soon found that Stanley's soldiers treated her, as they did not treat Marguerite, with courtesy, even with a touch of deference. Only once on the way to Coventry had she been approached with insulting fa

miliarity and almost immediately the offending soldier had been reprimanded. Even Stanley himself had shown her a consideration that she found totally out of character, and unwelcome, as well, for she'd rather not have had to speak to him at all. She finally decided that perhaps there were still those who held her father's memory in esteem; there were Yorkshiremen among Stanley's soldiers, after all. Perhaps it was the memory of old Neville allegiances that prompted civility toward the Earl's daughter. She didn't know, could only be grateful for it.
She never doubted, however, that no matter how dismal her future might be under York, as the daughter and widow of dead rebels, she'd still fare better with her cousin Ned than she would have as Edouard of
Lancaster's unwanted wife. She didn't know Ned all that well, but she felt certain he'd not imprison her as he would Marguerite, not punish her for the sins of Lancaster or Neville.
Her greatest fear as they moved toward Coventry was that her fate would be found within the white-walled silence of the convent. Anne did not want to spend the remainder of her life as a nun. But she was apprehensively aware that Ned might see that as the kindest, most convenient way to rid himself of the embarrassment that was Lancaster's widow. And even if be didn't think of it himself, George would be there to plant the suggestion and then water it till it took root.
Anne remembered a girl in the village that clustered in the shadow of Middleharn Castle. She'd been wed to a soldier in the service of Anne's father. Rumor had him lost on a routine trip to Ireland for the Earl.
But his death was unconfirmed and for nearly two years the girl had been trapped in her uncertain status, neither wife nor widow. Anne felt like that now. She was free of Lancaster. But she was not free to wed again. Not when she was heiress to one-half of her mother's considerable estates. Not when George meant to claim the whole of the Neville and Beauchamp lands for himself. Anne needed no one to tell her that was her brother-in-law's intention. She'd known George for eleven of the not quite fifteen years of her life.
She was his sister-in-law, not his ward. By rights, he should have no say over her. She knew that wouldn't matter in the least to him. He was as careless of legality as he was of morality, and he had the power to win his way. He'd never give her leave to wed again, allow her to take a husband who might enforce her rights as she herself could not. Nothing could better please him than to see her safely sequestered, out of sight and memory of the world and would-be suitors. George would force her into a convent, unless Ned would gainsay him . . . and why should he?
She could appeal to Isabel, but she had none too sanguine hopes for aid from that quarter. Isabel was . .
. was not always reliable, she ac

knowledged, finding neutral words to formulate an uneasy suspicion. Moreover, Isabel was subject to
George's will; she was his wife. She could not prevail against him. Only Ned could do that, Ned who had no reason to deny George for her sake.
Richard could. At once hating herself for thinking it. He could, though. If she appealed to him, he'd help her; he'd not let her be convent-caged against her will. But how could she appeal to Richard now? Had she so little pride as that?
Thus she tormented herself during the week that led inexorably to Coventry and the moment that filled her with emotion of an intensity and an ambivalence to set her to trembling. The moment when she would come face-to-face with her Yorkist cousins. Oh, how she lied to herself, even now! It was not Ned she was so reluctant to face. It was Richard. It had always been Richard.
Her unhappy reverie was abruptly dispelled by that happening which was both awaited and unexpected, the entrance of the King.
Anne's pulse quickened, picked up a dizzying tempo. But she recognized only two faces among those accompanying her cousin of York, that of William, Lord Hastings, and the self-satisfied Stanley. Her breathing slowed somewhat, and she followed the lead of the other women, who were sinking down in submissive curtsies.
Marguerite alone remained standing, a figure carved in ice, waiting as Edward crossed the room. He stopped before her, seemed about to speak. She did not give him the chance. Her hand came up, with surprising swiftness. There were gasps from her ladies and his companions, but he readily blocked the blow, wrenching her wrist back and away from his face with almost contemptuous ease.
There was a horrified silence. Her cousin Ned had always been able to shield his thoughts when he so chose; Anne found his face unreadable. Like the others, she could only wait.
Marguerite stared at Edward, dark patches of color flaming across her cheekbones. Expecting his reaction to be one of violence, counting on it, she struggled with his silence, then said in a raw, constricted voice, "Tell me of my husband. Does he still live?"
Of Edward's men, he alone showed no outrage at the insult. He nodded briefly.
"For how long?" she asked, and once more those who heard her were startled into exclamations of dismay or anger.
"Suicide be a mortal sin, Madame," he said evenly. "And the sin is no less if you do not do the deed yourself, but contrive another to do it for you."
One hand had moved to her throat, was pressing against the beating hollow. "What do you mean?"

"I mean that you cannot provoke me into sending you to the block. However much you do deserve it ...
or desire it."
"You did not spare my son," she said stonily.
Edward didn't even bother to deny the accusation, to remind her that her son had died on the field.
Instead, he said with insulting forbearance, "I'll not stain my hands with a woman's blood."
Marguerite drew so deep a breath that all could see her breasts heave. The hatred on her face was unmistakable, yet curiously muted. Like one forced to call upon remembered emotions, Anne thought;
the light was there, but no heat, as if the sun had given way to a perpetual shadowed moon.
"Even if it were a mercy?" Marguerite asked, in dulled, queerly flattened tones, and Anne at last felt the faintest unwanted flicker of pity.
For the first time, emotion showed in Edward's eyes. For an unguarded instant, they mirrored an unhealed hatred, gave an unnerving glimpse of a searing blue-white flame, all the more intense for being under such relentless restraint.
"Especially if it were a mercy, Madame," he said bitterly, and turned away.
His gaze was now passing over the other women, the wives and widows of Lancaster. Anne's heart began to pound again. As he moved toward her, she dropped down in a second curtsy. Then he was reaching down, raising her up. He bent his head; for a brief moment, she felt his mouth touch hers. She scarcely knew him at all, this glittering formidable cousin of hers, had not known what to expect; but certainly not this, never this, to be treated as if she were a cherished treasure long lost and at last recovered. His hands were warm upon hers, his eyes even warmer, the deepest, clearest blue she'd ever seen, and his voice was enough like his brother's to fill her with a surge of feeling that had something in it of both pleasure and pain.
"Welcome to Coventry, Anne," he was saying, with an astonishing gentleness. "Welcome home, sweetheart."
ANNE was alone with Edward, but she could find nothing to say, thinking only that if ever a man was born to win, always to win, surely it was this man . . . and Blessed Mother Mary, why had her father not been able to see that?
"You look woefully like the lamb thrust into the lion's den! Come now, sweetheart, what were you expecting from me ... the rack?"
Edward was not the first to have been misled by Anne's surface shyness and now he was delighted by the candor of her reply.

"I dared not hope you would be so forgiving, my liege. Not to Edou- ard of Lancaster's widow."
"You are far more than that, Anne. You are my cousin; we do share the same blood. Moreover, you are but fifteen years of age, and I doubt that your marriage was of your choosing; am I wrong in that?" Not waiting for her response, he tilted her chin up, warming her with his smile.
"We are kin, Anne, and surely that must count for more than a brief forced marriage with a youth no longer living." Leaving the one reason unsaid, that his brother wanted her.
"Your Grace ..." How strange that an unexpected kindness should be as unsettling as the careless cruelty she'd found in France. For he was being kind, kinder than she had any right to expect, and the arduously constructed defenses of the past year were crumbling; sympathy was the one weapon they'd not been structured to withstand.
"Ned," he corrected amiably. "You truly did fear the worst, didn't you?" In genuine surprise. "That's hardly flattering to me, is it?" He grinned down at her, kept her hand in his as he said playfully, "Tell me, sweet cousin, just what did you fancy Dickon would be doing while I cast you deep into that sunless cell or cloistered convent?" Intrigued to observe what he could accomplish with the mere mention of his brother's name.
Her face burning, Anne felt suddenly feverish, sunsick. Why did Ned think her plight would matter so to
Richard? And why had he sounded so amused, approving even?
"Richard. ... He still thinks of me?"
"Oh, now and then, I do believe," he said, very dryly.
"And what does he think? Of my father's betrayal? Richard loved him; you do know that? Yet had my father won Barnet, Richard would be dead, and I ... I would one day have been Queen, Lancaster's
Queen. ..." She was fast losing control, but she managed to make the word Queen sound as if it burned her mouth.
She'd told him more of the past year than he cared to know. "No, Anne. No, little bird."
He kissed her forehead and found a handkerchief in his doublet. She was wiping away tear traces with the finely stitched crest of the Rose-en- Soleil when he beckoned from the open window.
"Ah, at last. Come here, sweetheart."
She knew, of course, even before she reached the window, gripping the casement as she stared down into the priory garth. He was mounted on an unruly chestnut stallion and he was laughing. He glanced up, unknowing, and she thought that had it not been for the brilliant sky-color eyes, he might have been a
Spaniard. Blackest hair and thin sun-browned