It was a long journey, returning to Herrard Great Hall, but this time Anne de Bohun hired horses for them all to ride. It was a blur: day to night, then sleep at an inn, if sleep it could be called; night to day, then ride again; and the next day the same, and the next.
And as with all things that rearranged the heart, reached the soul, there were no words for what she felt. Fate had to be met and dealt with in silence.
Failure and loss, failure and loss: the beat of Anne’s horse’s hooves sounded the words. And never again, never again, never again… She would have cried, if she could. But she was empty and dry, a husk, all feeling burned away.
It was not her own pride that burned her, or shame that she’d been wrong. What destroyed Anne was that she’d had the strength, or the will, to turn away from Edward Plantagenet without a much greater force than she could find in herself.
But then there was pity. Pity for Elizabeth Wydeville and the king, trapped in a marriage that would last all their lives, and must be lived for duty. With pity came remorse and the most terrible sense of judgment. That was the truly humiliating, scalding thing. Judgment tasted like boiling pitch, like molten iron and acid mixed together, and now it was tearing at her throat, seeking to find her heart and burn it from her chest.
Jane Alleswhite was frightened of her lady’s profound silence as they rode, day after day. Anne seemed suddenly to have become another person, haunted, hollow-eyed, hardly eating, unable to rest or sleep at night. She was fading to a wraith in front of them. Even the phlegmatic Ralph of Dunster had commented to her, the previous night, that perhaps their lady had a touch of the colic?
Wat—who had Mathew Cuttifer’s release to return with Anne to Herrard Great Hall permanently—thought himself more sensitive than both of Anne’s other servants and announced the cause, though it gave him no more than gloomy satisfaction in being right. “Her heart’s been broken—that’s what’s happened.”
Jane shushed the man but surreptitiously crossed herself just the same. Her own opinion was that Anne de Bohun had been cursed in London. She’d heard all sorts of strange rumors about her mistress in the Cuttifers’ house, because there were one or two people there who claimed to remember Anne from a previous time, years ago, a time when she’d been Lady Margaret’s own body-servant.
These same people said that Anne’s fortunes had been transformed by sorcery or worse, since, rumor had it, she’d once raised their same Lady Margaret from the dead by her black arts. Corpus, the wizened old pigman who lived with his animals, swore to the truth of it. He was full of talk about Lady Anne and the king, too, and the queen. Salacious talk, vicious talk, painting her mistress as an adulterous whore, fit only for burning. Poor, confused Jane, she’d experienced nothing but kindness from Lady Anne and thought, wistfully, that her lady must be very evil indeed to have such a well-disguised black heart, since her beauty and grace suggested goodness, not its opposite.
And now, on the afternoon of their third hot day on the roads, watching her mistress ride home toward Herrard Great Hall as if returning to her own execution, Jane couldn’t help but wonder if any of the gossip was true, though she crossed herself to ward off such terrible thoughts.
Autumn had touched the countryside with the lightest of fingers and, though it was still warm, the foliage of the great oak in the inner ward of Herrard Great Hall was withering to dried bronze, telling of what was to come. The first skittish winds of the changing season skirled around the massive trunk as the leaves took flight, so many at one time that they revealed the little boy who’d been roosting unseen among the massive branches. He was the first to see the riders as they came, the westering sun behind them.
“Deborah, Deborah!”
Barking his knees and elbows, he slithered from branch to branch and then, with a deep breath, dropped the last six feet to the ground; the distance was more than double his height. Edward rolled as he hit the newly fallen leaves and bobbed up unhurt.
“Wissy, Wissy! You’re home, you’re home!” He was a small speeding blur and he covered the distance between the tree and the opening gate like a yearling colt. “Oh, we’ve waited and waited and waited. I thought you’d never come.”
Anne jumped down from her horse and was kneeling, arms wide, to receive the small body as he hurtled toward her. “Yes, I’m here. Home for good.” Her son was in her arms and she could feel the frantic energy of his heart against her own.
“For good? No more going away?”
Anne shook her head, brushing away his tears, her tears.
“No. Home to stay now. Wat?” Anne turned toward her servants. “Take the horses to the stable with Ralph, please. They’ll be hungry. And Jane, I’d like you to help.”
“Anne!” Deborah hurried across the inner ward, ignoring the pain that autumn brought to her knees. “Oh, child, child. You’re so thin!” Anne de Bohun tried to embrace Deborah but the older woman held the girl at arm’s length, looking searchingly into her eyes. Anne smiled crookedly.
“Thin, Mother? That’s easily fixed. Your good food and country air is all I need to make me strong again.”
Shading her eyes, Anne watched her three companions leading the horses away and then she turned from Deborah and looked, really looked at her house. The battlements cut a stark pattern across the flaming sky as the mellow stone darkened. The great tree stood like a sentinel and a witness to this moment. Was this enough? Was this place truly enough?
Deborah could see the truth in her daughter’s face. Anne was wounded and the pain of that wound was very deep and fierce. Peace and rest: these were the things her daughter needed. And time to heal.
Edward was impatient. He tugged Anne’s skirt. “We’ve been so busy while you’ve been gone. Come and see.” He was pulling her toward one of the great storerooms under the Hall’s living quarters. Through the open doors, rows of neatly sewn sacks were stacked deep and high.
Anne was suitably impressed. “Did you do this, Edward? All by yourself?”
The little boy giggled. “Not me. Leif did. It’s for you. A surprise. You like surprises, don’t you, Wissy?”
Anne glanced at Deborah, who nodded. “He’s been driving everyone hard, himself also. Leif wants to gather the harvest in ahead of the rains. Edward’s been a great help—he’s very good at gleaning. Meggan says he’s the best she’s ever seen.” Edward puffed out his chest and nodded proudly. Deborah ruffled his hair lovingly. “This good summer has given us grain in abundance, and food for the animals we’ll keep over winter. And you’re back in time for Harvest Home.”
“Am I? That’s good. London makes you forget things like Harvest Home. It makes you forget much that is simple and good.” The two women strolled toward the living quarters of the Hall, Edward clinging to Anne’s hand. She wouldn’t ask about Leif. Not yet.
“They’ll be very pleased you’re back. The villagers. They’ve been anxious.”
Anne nodded. At least she’d kept faith with her people. That was something.
“Would you like to rest, Anne?”
Anne shook her head. “I think that Edward and I will go out to the fields. They’ll be packing up now. I’d like them to see I’m home.”
“Yes!” Overjoyed, her small son tugged Anne towards the gate. “Come on, come on. Let’s go!”
When Anne laughed with little Edward, some of the dull pain that had lodged beneath her ribs shifted like a physical thing; and because he made her run to keep up as they set off toward their home meadows, she forgot, for that moment, the weight she carried. The weight of sorrow.
The last light lay long across the strips of meadow land and gilded the backs of the men as they scythed the standing corn. Women followed, gathering, stooking, binding, gleaning; timeless rhythm, timeless tasks.
“Look, look who’s here!” Edward danced ahead of Anne, yelling, “Leif. Meggan. Look! Wissy’s back.”
The tallest of the men stood up and turned, shaded his eyes against the sun. For a moment it seemed he would drop his scythe and run toward the woman and the boy. In the end, he waited for them to come to him.
Anne tried to think of nothing as she walked across the stubbled field, smiling, saying hello, waving to her friends from the village. There was Meggan. There was Long Will. What would Leif say to her? And what could she say to him? What would she feel?
She was close enough to look up into his face now. He wasn’t Edward Plantagenet but he was big and brown and real. “Hello, Leif. I’m back.” Such a silly thing to say, but they were the only words she had.
The big man said nothing but then he smiled and leaned down, gently wiping the tears away; the tears she was so ashamed of. “No need for these.”
“Wissy? Why are you crying?”
Leif picked the boy up in a whirl and dumped him, laughing, on top of the harvest wain filled with sacks of unthreshed grain. “That’s not for you to ask, young man. Your aunt is tired from the journey, that’s all. Let’s take her home, shall we, and get this wheat to the threshing floor.” And suddenly, as if she weighed no more than the boy, Leif scooped up Anne de Bohun and tossed her up beside her son; she was winded by surprise.
Meggan nudged Long Will. “London’s a bad place, Will. Look how thin she is. And sad too. We’ll fix that though, now she’s home. Maybe he will?”
Long Will picked up his scythe and his sharpening stone. “None of your business, woman. Leave them be. Gossip is the Devil’s tool, as well you know.”
But as he trudged back to the village, Meggan beside him, Long Will heard the boy singing loudly on top of the harvest wain as Anne’s bullocks pulled the wagon along the track to the Hall. And as Will looked back, he saw Leif join in, walking beside the open wagon. And their lady, who had looked so unhappy only moments ago, was giggling on her perch, high up on the mountain of sacks. And then she began to sing as well and all three voices—the man’s, the woman’s, the child’s—made harmony together for a moment, until Edward lost the tune and they all laughed.
Meggan looked at him in sly triumph. “Told you so. All will be well. You’ll see.”