The Sunne in Splendour: A Novel of Richard III (89 page)

Ankarette heard no more. She fainted, crumpling to the ground at Strugge's feet without a sound.
"Get some water," he said calmly, watched as two of his men reentered the manor house. Kneeling down by Ankarette then, he took her hands in his and stripped from her fingers the jeweled rings of her widowhood.
THE palace at Westminster was dark, quiet. Edward was not ready for sleep, however, and torches still flared in his bedchamber. He was dictating some personal letters when one of his servants brought him word that Jane Shore was without, asking to see him.
Edward was surprised, but more intrigued than annoyed. It wasn't like Jane to come to him without being summoned first; even after more than two years of sharing his bed, she never presumed.
"Send her in," he said, and dismissed the scribe, the other servants.
Jane was enveloped in a long blue cloak. He wondered if it was the dark color that gave her face such pallor, moved forward to meet her. Before he could take her in his arms, however, she sank down in a deep curtsy. When he would have raised her up, she stayed on her knees before him, said huskily, "My dearest lord, forgive me for coming to you this way, but I did have to see you. It be urgent, my heart, could not wait."
She made a very pretty picture, kneeling, her face upturned to his, soft red mouth highlighted by a trinity of dimples, blonde hair spilling out of the hood of her cloak. Edward was not indifferent to her appeal; he was very fond of this woman. Reaching down, he took her hands, drew her to him.
"You're forgiven," he said, and sought her mouth with his own. She kissed him back with her usual ardor, but as his hands slid up from her waist to her breasts, she said swiftly, "My love, wait. . . please. I've brought someone with me, someone who does need most desperately to see you." She saw him frown, put her fingers to his lips in mute entreaty.
"Please," she whispered. "He's been trying to gain an audience for days now, but with no luck. And he must see you, my lord. There is something you must hear, Ned. Please?"
She waited breathlessly for his response; her relief was considerable when he laughed.
"Hell and damnation, woman, but you do take advantage of the love I bear you," he said ruefully. "I'll give this petitioner of yours five minutes, and no more."
"Thank you, my love, thank you!" She kissed him feverishly, repeat

edly, his neck, his chin, wherever she could reach, and then whirled for the door. A moment later, she ushered in a frightened-looking youngster of seventeen or so. Under Jane's prodding, the boy came forward shyly, dropped to his knees before Edward.
"My liege, this be Roger Twynyho, of Cayford in Somerset. He has a tale of horror to tell you. Go on, Roger, tell the King's Grace what you did tell me."
The youngster seemed unable to speak, however, and accurately gauging Edward's patience, Jane said hastily, "His grandmother, Ankarette Twynyho, was acting as one of the Duchess of Clarence's ladies.
She returned to her family after the Duchess died, had no more contact with your brother of Clarence.
Then on Saturday last, Clarence did dispatch some eighty men-at-arms to Cayford, and there arrested her, accusing her of bringing about the Duchess of Clarence's death by poison."
"What!"
The boy found his voice, nodded vigorously. "It be true, Your Grace. They refused to allow my aunt and uncle to accompany her, and took her by force back to Warwick Castle."
Edward had recovered his composure. "Go on," he said in a hard voice.
"The morning after their arrival in Warwick, she was brought before a Justice of the Peace sitting in petty session and charged with murder. My lord Clarence accused her of giving the Lady Isabel a drink of ale mixed with poison on October tenth, which poison caused her to sicken and die on the Sunday before
Christmas. At the same time, one John Thursby of Warwick was charged with poisoning the baby son who died on January first." The boy's voice was emotionless; he recited the facts like one quoting from memory, kept his eyes steadily on Edward's face.
"My grandmother did deny the charges most vehemently, but it availed her naught. The jury did declare her guilty and sentence of death was passed upon her. She was taken at once to the gallows beyond town and there hanged. John Thursby was hanged with her."
He stopped speaking, watched Edward. So did Jane.
"And she was innocent," Edward said softly. It was not a question, and Roger Twynyho expelled his breath with an audible hiss; his shoulders slumped with the sudden easing of tension.
"Indeed, my liege," he said quietly. "The Lady Isabel did die of consumption, weakened by a most difficult childbirth. My grandmother never harmed her, never harmed anyone."
"The entire proceedings from start of trial to execution lasted no more than three hours," Jane now interrupted, her face flushing with indignation. "Several members of the jury did come up to Mistress

Twynyho afterward and beseech her pardon, saying that they knew her to be innocent but for fear of
Clarence they could not do otherwise than find her guilty!"
There was a silence. Edward seemed to have forgotten them both. Roger's fear began to come back. He knew that Clarence was this man's blood kin, knew that Princes did all too often make their own law.
But then Edward motioned him to his feet, said, "You're a brave lad, Roger Twynyho. I shall remember that. Go back to Cayford; you've done all you can for your grandmother here."
Roger yearned to ask Edward what he meant to do. Would Edward give Clarence the justice that had been denied his grandmother? Or was this to be yet another crime for which Clarence would not be called to account? But he dared not push it further. He'd been dismissed. In a turmoil of conflicting emotions, he made an awkward obeisance, and then fled the chamber.
Jane didn't move, kept her eyes upon her lover. "Ned?" she ventured at last. "Was I wrong, my lord, to bring him to you?"
Edward turned to face her, and she caught her breath, seeing then the deadly controlled rage that thinned his mouth, filled his eyes. Pray God he does never look thus at me, she thought and shivered.
"No," he said flatly. "No, you were not wrong."
SINCE childhood, the Duchess of York had been an early riser. She loved the expectant hush, loved the soft pale haze that glimmered in the eastern sky in that brief hesitation between dark and day.
This morning, however, she'd given little thought to the fleeced brightness of the sky. Rising at six, she'd had Low Mass in her chambers, and after breaking her fast with bread and wine, she heard divine service and two Low Masses with her household in the castle chapel. She generally preferred to spend those hours till dinner in meditation or in religious readings; just as she now shunned plush velvets and bright silks for more somber shades of grey and brown, so did she eschew the familiar amusements of her youth. Always a deeply pious woman, she found as she aged that her greatest contentment came in denying herself the pleasures that once meant much to her and now meant little. But on this Tuesday in late May, she'd chosen neither to meditate nor to read, had withdrawn, instead, to her solar to write to her daughter Margaret, dowager Duchess I of Burgundy.
The initial passages came easily enough. The turmoil in Burgundy seemed to be subsiding somewhat.
There appeared to be widespread approval for Marie's choice of husband and consort, Maximilian, the son

the Holy Roman Emperor. Addressing these issues, Cecily expressed herself so briskly that her scribe was hard put to keep up with her.
But when she began to speak of her son, her voice and manner changed abruptly. She rumbled uncharacteristically for words, hesitated, backtracked, and at last took the pen herself. Dismissing her scribe, she sat down in the violet-tinted light of her oriel window and willed herself to tell Margaret about
George.
What I do have now to tell you, Margaret, is as painful as anything I have ever written and yet you must be told; you must be prepared for what is to come. You know how bitterly George did resent your brother Edward's refusal to permit his marriage with your stepdaughter Marie. George's behavior is intemperate in even the best of times, and when he did learn that Edward had proposed Anthony
Woodville as a prospective husband for Marie . . . well, it was like jabbing a blade into a festering sore.
George proceeded to make himself as unpleasant as possible. At a banquet held at Windsor to celebrate the birth of Edward's newborn son, he insisted upon dropping a unicorn horn into his cup before he would let the cupbearer pour his wine. All do know unicorn horn is meant to protect one from poison, so such an insult was impossible to misconstrue. Edward was furious. What passed between them I do not know, but after that, George withdrew from the court, secluded himself at Warwick Castle.
It was then that he did commit a crime so grievous, so shocking that it does defy all understanding. I
refer, of course, to the murder of Ankarette Twynyho, the gentlewoman who'd been in service to
George's wife Isabel. I cannot tell you whether he believed his accusations to be true, would to God I
could. But George's perception of reality is frighteningly flawed. Could he have cold-bloodedly sacrificed an innocent woman? Or did he convince himself that Isabel truly was poisoned?
I've thought of little else this month past, am no closer to the truth now than ever I was. It may be that
George does not even know the truth himself. He is my son, of my flesh, and yet a stranger to me. I
cannot stop caring, not as long as there be burned into my mind and soul memories of the child he once was. But I cannot forgive him, either. . . .
Her pen faltered. After a second's reflection, she rapidly scratched ut the last three sentences.

Edward was as angry as ever I've seen him. Even had Ankarette Twynyho been guilty, George's action would have been outrageous, an offense both to the King and the Almighty.
Shortly after the Twynyho affair came to light, a man named John Stacy, an Oxford clerk and astronomer, was arrested and accused of sorcery. Under torture, Stacy did confess and he implicated, as well, one Thomas Burdett, a man of some standing in Warwickshire and a member of George's own household. A commission of oyer and terminar was appointed to try both men on charges of using the black arts to bring about the death of the King. They were tried on May 19th and condemned to death.
The next day they were taken to Tyburn and there hanged, Burdett protesting his innocence to the last.
il
Cecily's eyes flicked rapidly and critically back over what she'd written. She was well aware that there was some suspicion this had been a deliberately staged political trial meant to convey to George an unmistakable warning. She didn't doubt that Burdett was involved with George in some sort of double-dealing, but she did not believe him guilty of sorcery and she was not comfortable that a man should die for what he had not done, even if his other crimes did warrant death.
She raised her hand to her face, pressed her fingertips against aching eyes. Sweet Lady Mary, how tired she was. And how ironic that her sons should give her greater grief as men grown than ever they had as children.
This last thought was too closely akin to self-pity for her liking. She blinked rapidly, raised her chin. And then she picked up the pen again and wrote, On the day after Burdett's execution, Edward departed London for Windsor. No sooner was he gone than George burst into a meeting of the privy council at Westminster. He had with him-of all men-the
Franciscan preacher, Dr John Goddard, the very one who'd once preached Harry of Lancaster's right to the throne from Paul's Cross. George contended that Burdett had been innocent and made the council listen while he had Goddard read aloud Burdett's gallows statement in which he swore he was not guilty of the charge for which he was dying.
I needn't tell you, Margaret, how serious may be the consequences of George's actions. This is not behavior Edward can ignore. George did murder an innocent woman and then he actually dared to appeal over Edward's head to his own council, did

all but charge that Burdett's death was unjust, was a political execution meant to intimidate him into silence. By these actions, he did challenge the King's justice, and that Edward cannot allow. In fairness to your brother, Edward has shown great patience with George in past years. But Edward is not as tolerant as he once was, and George has learned nothing from past mistakes. I do not know what Edward means to do when he returns from Windsor, but I think it likely that this will be one time when George's sins are not forgiven.
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York
June 1477
IT had not been a happy spring for Anne. As deeply as she grieved for her sister, Isabel's death had come as no great surprise; Anne had known Isabel was "ill unto death" in the weeks following the birth of her son. Anne was not prepared, however, for the death of her aunt Isabella, John Neville's widow.
Isabella had remarried some two years after John's death at Barnet, and Anne had been glad; Isabella was her favorite aunt, and she was pleased that Isabella seemed to be building a new life for herself.
Isabella was not long in giving her new husband a son, and in the year following, a daughter. Shortly after the Feast of Epiphany, 1477, she had given birth to another daughter. But the birth had been difficult and infection soon set in.
The shock of Isabella's death had not yet worn off when word reached Middleham of George's extraordinary vengeance. Anne's own father had not scrupled to commit murders no less blatant than that of

Ankarette Twynyho; he'd sent Lord Herbert and Elizabeth Woodville's father and brother to the block without even the pretense of a trial accorded Mistress Twynyho. But Warwick would never have avenged himself upon a woman. It was that which Anne found so shocking and Richard so unforgivable.
Next had come the news of the trial and execution of Thomas Burdett and John Stacy. Anne's private belief was that the sorcery charge against Burdett was a fabrication. Although she didn't doubt that
Burdett deserved hanging. As she saw it, anyone intimately connected with George was bound to be guilty of at least one hanging offense. But the entire episode had cast a pall of sorts over Middleham, and she began to dread the arrival of couriers from London; these days, the news seemed inevitably to be bad.
She was looking forward all the more, therefore, to their June visit to York. Anne's favorite festival was the Feast Day of Corpus Christi. She'd been six the first time she'd been taken to York to view the city's celebrated mystery plays, performed outdoors on huge wooden stages mounted on wheels and transported about the city to be enacted before enthusiastic crowds at designated locations. She still enjoyed the plays as thoroughly as she had as a little girl, and only childbirth and war had kept her and
Richard from York's Corpus Christi festival in the years since their marriage.
This year was to be a particularly memorable occasion. On the day after Corpus Christi, she and Richard were to become members of the Corpus Christi Guild, a prestigious religious fraternity. The following
Wednesday would see a celebration of a milestone birthday for Anne, her twenty-first. And the culmination of their stay in York would be the wedding on St. Basil's Day of Rob Percy and Joyce
Washburne. As Anne had spent the past six months actively promoting this courtship, she was delighted that her efforts had borne such fruit, and by mid-May she had already begun to mark off the days in the back of her Book of Hours.
THEY had arrived in York several days before Corpus Christi, had settled themselves comfortably at
Prior Bewyk's friary. Preparations advanced smoothly for the upcoming wedding; the children had been as fascinated by the guild plays as Anne herself had been upon her first viewing, even four-year-old Ned, who was still rather young for any sort of sustained inactivity. But at supper that night, Anne happened to overhear a remark made by Francis Lovell, newly come from London, and it all went suddenly sour.
"What did you say, Francis? You did make mention of my Uncle :