Chapter 18

Anne

Minster Lovell, June 1483

King Edward died suddenly in the year fourteen eighty-three. We knew, of course, Francis and I, that his marriage to the Queen had been invalid and the children illegitimate. We had seen the proof at Ashbury years before and knew that in law his eldest son Prince Edward could not inherit the throne. We had held our peace on the matter and been richly rewarded over the years. Francis had been made a viscount and was the right-hand man of his friend Richard, Duke of Gloucester. Now King Edward V had inherited and Gloucester was Lord Protector I thought very little would change. I understood nothing.

The day that Francis told me that Gloucester was to take the throne was the day he smashed our existence to pieces. He had ridden from London where the court and the city were in turmoil. I was in the potager garden at Minster Lovell when he came; it was late spring and the raised beds were groaning with the promise of a good crop. Already the colours of the peas and beans and cabbages were showing amongst the rich earth.

I had been unwell that spring. At first, I had hoped I was with child. After seven years living as husband and wife I had begun to despair quietly. I was surrounded by sisters, cousins and friends who had growing families. I felt a failure, the barren wife, the butt of jokes, good for nothing. Francis never reproached me yet our very silence on the matter seemed to drive me further away from him.

My mother, famously fertile, had been unconcerned when I had first sought her advice, a year after my removal to Minster Lovell.

‘You are young still,’ she counselled. ‘Do not let it concern you. There is plenty of time.’

Six years on and she was not so sanguine. She recommended a powder of mugwort and marshmallow root, and enquired delicately whether there was anything wrong with Francis. I thought not, though I had no means of comparison, and that spring my hopes were raised when I missed my courses for two months. I prayed fervently. In private moments, I even clasped the lodestar to my breast and begged for a child, hoping that the holy relic would help me.

‘I want a child,’ I whispered. ‘Give one to me.’

However, it seemed it was not to be.

Francis came straight from the stables that day, striding into the garden and pulling me into his arms. I had turned at his step and my face, I know, had lit with happiness for even now my heart speeded each new time I saw him. But he did not speak. He kissed me and I sensed something in him I had not known before, a desperation and a conflict I could not understand, as though I was his last bastion against something terrible. When he released me, I raised a hand to his cheek.

‘What is it?’ I asked.

I had heard a little of the troubles that had followed the death of the King. I knew that Elizabeth Woodville and her faction had not told Gloucester he was named Lord Protector in the King’s will and that it had been left to Lord Hastings to send word to him in the North. Matters had only worsened when Gloucester had arrested the new King’s escort at Stony Stratford and the Queen had taken the rest of her children and fled to sanctuary in Westminster Abbey. It felt to me as though King Edward’s death had pulled a thread and now the entire tapestry was unravelling.

‘The Woodville faction will not relinquish one iota of their power or influence unless they are obliged to do so,’ Francis had said at the time. ‘Gloucester is legitimately named Protector of the Realm and yet they will not support him.’

There was a legacy of mistrust between the two camps that could only augur badly for the future, I thought. Even as the new King, Edward V, was housed in the Tower of London, preparing for his coronation, it felt as though winter was coming rather than summer. Something was badly awry. I felt it and shivered deep inside.

Francis took my hand and led me over to the seat in the shelter of the garden wall. The stone was warmed by the sun and it was pleasant here but the cold was already within me and would not be banished.

‘Gloucester is to take the throne,’ Francis said bluntly.

I gaped at him, thinking that I had misheard. ‘What? Why?’

‘It is the only way to keep the peace,’ Francis said, and it sounded as though he was rehearsing words that he had repeated over and over in his mind in the knowledge he would need to hold fast to it forever more. ‘Only Richard is strong enough to hold the kingdom together. A boy king cannot rule the factions that threaten us.’ He looked down at our entwined hands. ‘Besides, you and I both know… the King’s marriage to Elizabeth Woodville was never legal. His children are illegitimate and his son cannot rule.’

I jumped up. ‘It was legal enough for no one to mention it when King Edward was alive!’ I said.

‘Anne,’ Francis said. He spread his hands in a gesture of pleading. ‘That was different—’

‘It was expedient, no more than that,’ I said cuttingly. I felt such rage that I could not understand it. Somehow it was tied up with the despair I had felt three days before when I saw the spotting of blood that indicated I was not to bear a child, not this time, perhaps not ever. I thought of the Queen in sanctuary with her children. What would become of them, denounced as bastards, their inheritance betrayed? They had lost their father and all the security they had known. Soon they would lose even more.

I pressed my hands together hard to still their shaking.

‘Is Gloucester to make their illegitimacy public, then?’ I demanded. ‘Did he keep Eleanor Butler’s marriage lines all along so that he could claim the throne? Is it to be the basis of his usurpation?’

Fury flared in Francis’ face. ‘You are not to call it that,’ he said. His voice was low but his tone was colder than I had ever heard it before. ‘How can you not understand? Gloucester is the only one who can rule. You yourself said as much when we were in Ashbury. You said we needed a strong king with a son to follow him! Now that Edward is dead, Gloucester is such a man.’ His shoulders slumped. ‘Prince Edward is no more than a child, a mere twelve years! We all know how badly it goes when a child sits on the throne. Besides, he is sickly and like to die—’

‘Oh well!’ I could not help myself. ‘That makes the matter perfectly acceptable then! Perhaps his little brother will oblige Gloucester by dying too! Where is he now, Richard of Shrewsbury? Still with his mother, I hope, as befits so young a child—’

I stopped as I saw something furtive in Francis’ expression, his gaze sliding away from mine as though there was something shameful he could not bear to reveal. But it was too late. I had guessed.

‘No,’ I said, and it came out as a whisper. ‘Do not tell me that Gloucester holds both Princes.’

‘Richard is in the Tower with his brother,’ Francis said.

‘Dear God, no.’ I wrapped my arms about myself. ‘That cannot be right.’

‘It is for their own safety,’ Francis said. He made a gesture of exasperation. ‘What are you suggesting, Anne? That Gloucester would harm his own nephews? He would never do such a thing. You know him for a fine and loyal man! How could you imagine it?’

‘I only know that this is wrong,’ I whispered. ‘The Duke of Gloucester should not take the throne.’

Francis leaped up and turned away from me as though he could not bear to look at me. Desolation swept through me and with it a kind of fury that Richard of Gloucester could do this to us, demanding Francis’ loyalty and in the process weakening forever the ties my husband had to me. I understood well enough how we had got here; Francis and Richard had been friends in childhood and those bonds, forged through rebellion and blood, were so often the strongest. And Francis was the most loyal of men, the most constant. I knew that and loved him for it. Yet now, that very loyalty drove a wedge between us.

‘What does Will Hastings think of this?’ I asked, striving to calm our quarrel. Hastings, the late King’s Lord Chamberlain, was a man whose counsel I admired for he was strong, and able and far-seeing. I could not believe he would support Gloucester’s bid for power.

There was a silence, then: ‘Hastings is dead,’ Francis said.

‘What? No!’ I almost crumpled to the ground, but managed to steady myself, my fingers digging into the warm wood of the bench to keep me upright. ‘How?’ I asked. But I already knew. He had opposed Gloucester’s will.

‘Oh, dear God,’ I said again, half to myself. ‘Francis…’ I looked at him. ‘This cannot be right,’ I repeated dully. ‘Did King Edward ask that his brother take the kingdom after he was gone? He did not! It is Gloucester’s role to protect, not usurp!’

‘It is the right thing to do!’ Francis spun around on me. ‘Gloucester served his brother loyally and well and now he does what is best for England—’

I put my hands over my ears. Probably it was childish but I could bear to hear no more of his twisted logic. Perhaps Francis was right, if one looked beyond personal allegiances to the greater good. I knew as well as any that the rule of a minor brought little but trouble. Even so it stuck in my throat that a man who had been lauded as just and fair could now take so greedily for himself.

‘You will be telling me next that Gloucester does not want to be king,’ I said, ‘and is only doing that for the greater good as well.’

I walked away then. The tears blurred my eyes and clogged my throat. Each step felt like a step onto ever more uncertain ground and each moment that Francis did not come after me felt lonelier than the last. I was at the gate when I heard him behind me and I turned to face him. We stared at each other over what was suddenly a yawning chasm. I felt shock and horror that we had been driven so far apart, so fast.

‘Anne,’ Francis said. Once again, he drew me close to him and I did not resist. He rested his cheek against my hair, and I felt the misery of the world ease a little for surely if we were united all would be well.

‘I am sorry,’ he said. ‘You have ever been my guide and my conscience, Anne.’ He took a breath. ‘But now… I have to do what I feel is right.’ He let me go. It felt very final. I stood alone, feeling cold, and searched my heart to see if there was a way that I could simply forget what had happened between us; carry on as though it had never occurred.

Perhaps Francis hoped for that too, yet the distance between us suddenly seemed unimaginably great. I felt despair and blinked back the tears from my eyes.

‘Will you accompany me to London?’ he asked me formally. ‘We should be there for the coronation.’

I knew then that there was no way back. I had to either betray him or my own principles. I was his wife, bound to obey and I did not want to put us to the final test and force him to order me.

‘I will accompany you,’ I agreed.

He nodded. ‘Your cousin Anne asks to be remembered to you,’ he said, very carefully. ‘She desires you to become one of her ladies-in-waiting when she is queen. Both your mother and your sister Elizabeth have accepted the honour.’

I hated them all then. I hated my mother for her Neville arrogance and her lust for power, and my sister for following her example. I hated my cousin Anne for choosing her ladies-in-waiting whilst the widowed Queen was hiding in sanctuary and Richard of Gloucester’s enemies were barely cold in their graves. And I hated Francis for following Gloucester’s star out of a loyalty I could only feel was blind.

‘I shall not do that,’ I said steadily. ‘I shall never do that.’ And I turned my back and left him there amidst all the fresh promise of the summer.

King Richard III came to Minster Lovell Hall on his royal progress that summer and from there we all travelled through the Midlands and up to York. There was so much pageantry, so many feasts and entertainments, but they masked an ugly truth, which was that the country was not content with the usurper. There were men who plotted to free the King’s nephews from the Tower of London, and to take the widowed Queen and her daughters from sanctuary. Rebellions blew up and were put down. Rumours spread like a plague. I felt as though we were skating, not on the thinnest of ice, but upon nothing but smoke.

The endless politicking masked another ugly truth as well, which was that my marriage to Francis was little more than a hollow shell now. We were always together at court yet never spoke of anything of significance. I wore the gowns of fine blue and crimson velvet and of white damask, I smiled and danced and played and sang, and all the whilst I waited for the quicksand to swallow us as it had so many others who had once been as close to the King as Francis was now.

My mother took me to task. ‘I do not understand you, Anne,’ she complained. ‘Your husband is the Lord Chamberlain and there is no man higher in royal favour. You have the world at your feet. Why must you be so dull about it? You do not even have the excuse of babes to distract you. You waste those chances that are yours.’ She looked at me with her blue Neville eyes as though I should be grateful to be childless when she knew that it had snapped my heart in two.

That winter of 1483 we celebrated Christmas at court with much good food, wine, laughter and dancing, even though – or perhaps because – the late King’s eldest son, Edward Plantagenet, had died of plague in the Tower of London. Richard felt more secure on the throne than he had for a very long time.

‘You are mistaken,’ I said coldly to Francis, when, unusually, he confided as much in me. ‘Edward’s death changes nothing. The Queen has another son and any number of daughters, and have you forgotten the Duke of Clarence’s son too? Does he not have a better claim to the throne than his uncle?’

We stared at each other in mutual dislike and mistrust until Francis shook his head and turned away from me. ‘You are damned obstinate, Anne,’ he said. ‘Why can you not bend even a little to try to meet me?’

‘Perhaps I would,’ I said, ‘if you use your influence to persuade the King to release his other nephew from the Tower,’ I said, hurt making me cruel, ‘instead of salving your conscience by teaching him swordplay and archery, and pretending that it is right that his uncle keeps him in captivity like a pet animal.’

Francis walked out then and I was left with my grief that I had pushed him further from me still. Everyone was unhappy that year; it felt as though the country tiptoed on splinters of glass as matters grew worse and worse. Then the King’s only son died and the court was plunged into mourning.

‘There are rumours that the King is to put away his wife and seek another,’ my mother said waspishly to me. ‘No doubt your husband will do the same, for you give him scant attention and he is surrounded by the prettiest women at court.’

I ignored her. It was true that there were many women at court now who were younger and prettier than I was, including the King’s nieces who, with their mother, had finally emerged from sanctuary at Westminster Abbey. It made for the most extraordinary brew of scandal and gossip. I felt as though I were looking through a mirror at a distorted image of what the world should be like, where two factions who despised each other with a deep and visceral hatred pretended to live in harmony. Something, I thought, was going to snap, and soon.

One day I was walking in the pleasure gardens, along the little winding paths beneath the sweet-scented trees. I walked alone because I had no appetite for company even though there were plenty who would have accompanied me had I given the word. Today not even the sight of the climbing rose on the trellis, or the ivy entwined around the old trees, could bring me a sense of peace. The air felt heavy, as though a storm was coming, and I sat down on a turfed bench beside a pool and closed my eyes for a moment.

A shadow fell across me, a woman, alone like me. I recognised her and rose, instinctively intending to curtsey, but she stopped me with a hand on my arm.

‘Your Majesty,’ I said.

‘I am Dame Elizabeth Grey now,’ Elizabeth Woodville said with the ghost of a pale smile. ‘I am the one approaching you for a favour, Lady Lovell.’

I wished she would not. Elizabeth Woodville and I had never been friends, not even in the days when her husband had been alive, for we had clung fast to our factional loyalties. Now, though, she took a seat beside me and arranged the dove-grey folds of her skirts neatly. She was still almost as beautiful as she had been ten years before and still as cold. Her blue gaze appraised me, no softer than it had been when she was queen and I the wife of a minor baron far beneath her notice.

‘I need your help,’ she said. ‘A time is coming when I shall need to know that my son is safe. I wish to entrust his care to you.’

I gaped at her. Not only was she speaking treason – and every rustle of a leaf and every snap of a twig about us might indicate the presence of a spy – but her words made no sense to me at all. Richard, her son, was still in the Tower of London, kept safe from the world, so we were told, that he might pursue his education in peace, away from those who would use the Prince to further their own ambitious ends.

‘Surely,’ I said, when I had regained my breath, ‘his uncle will see to his safety.’

She smiled, a cold smile that moved her lips but failed to touch her eyes. ‘Of course,’ she said. She snapped off a leaf or two of sage from the plant beside us and rubbed them thoughtfully between her fingers. The smell of mint and bitterness was almost overwhelming.

‘But should there come a time when he is unable to do so,’ she said, ‘then I ask you to take his place.’

I stared at her. ‘I cannot see what I could do,’ I said bluntly. ‘I would have no power to protect him—’

She touched the lodestar pendant at my throat, a light touch, almost as though she was afraid that she might vanish in a puff of smoke. ‘You have this,’ she said.

For a moment I stared at her in stupefaction. Then I remembered that Ginevra, when she had first given me the lodestar, had been tirewoman to Elizabeth’s mother, Jacquetta the witch. I put my own hand up now to cover the stone, as though to protect it.

‘You know about the lodestar,’ I said.

‘I recognised it,’ Elizabeth said. ‘My mother tried to bind its power but it was too dangerous. Yet you wear it like a jewel.’

‘It saved my life,’ I said. ‘It is my talisman and I am its protector.’

She turned those pale eyes on me again. There was something very disturbing about her gaze. For all that I wore the stone, it felt as though she was the one who could see the future.

‘I have seen its power,’ she said. ‘I know it will save my son.’ She stood up. ‘Be ready,’ she said, ‘if either the King or I should send Richard to you.’

She walked away from me down the winding path and I watched her go, watched as the brightly coloured knots of courtiers parted to let her through, saw the curious glances, the sly smiles, and the calculations of those who wondered whether Elizabeth Woodville was still a force to be reckoned with. And then I sat there, wondering if it were true, if I had the power to protect another woman’s child, and if I would be called upon to use it.

The distorted mirror smashed one day in the year fourteen eighty-five.

I had known that there would be an invasion; had known it from the very moment that Gloucester had taken the throne from his oldest nephew two years before. My only surprise had been that he himself had not had the wit to see it. Or perhaps he had, and he thought that he was strong enough to win. Whatever the case, in the spring of that year, news came of an invasion by Henry Tudor, Francis went to the south coast to oversee the provisioning of the royal fleet, and I returned home to Minster Lovell.

Francis came to me there one day at the start of August. I had been working in the kitchen gardens for I found that being out in the open air was all that could lift my spirits these days. Outside, seeing the way that nature continued to turn regardless of the follies of men, gave me comfort and an obscure hope that one day the world might turn into the light again.

I was in my oldest clothes and had soil smeared across my apron and very likely my face as well. When I looked up from my weeding, a man and a boy were standing beneath the laden branches of the apple tree on the edge of the orchard. They were plainly dressed, like countrymen, like me, in fact. It was a moment before I recognised Francis and then I got to my feet, a little stiff from kneeling and hurried across to him.

‘You should have told me you were coming,’ I said. ‘We are unprepared—’

He put out a hand to stop my flow of words. ‘No one must know I was here,’ he said. He touched the boy’s back lightly. ‘I’ve brought Richard to stay with you here. The King commands it. Tell no one who he is. He will be safe here for a little while.’ He took my hands in his despite their dirt. ‘Henry Tudor will invade and soon. If there is a battle…’ He swallowed hard. ‘I have made provision for you, Anne. Two manors that will be yours alone, for you and any future children you may have should you remarry’ – I made a move of protest but he continued – ‘I will come back as soon as I may, but if I do not…’ He hesitated. ‘I am leaving Franke to protect both you and Richard. He will guard you with his life.’

‘I am sure he will detest that charge,’ I said. I tried for a light tone, but my voice broke on the words. ‘He will want to fight alongside you.’

There was nothing else to say. For two long years Francis and I had been estranged, and now that I was about to lose him, I regretted it bitterly. I had loved him since I was six years old and at last I saw that in doing so, I had expected too much of him. He’d told me of his imperfections but I had held him to too high a standard. In my own way I had been as culpable as he.

I stepped into his arms, and drew him close, and I thought: Oh, how much I have missed this. What a fool I have been.

Francis buried his face in my hair and I felt the desperation in his touch and met it openly and with love as I held him to me. When we stepped back, I was crying and I did not care who saw it.

‘I love you,’ I said. ‘Godspeed you safely back to me again.’ I wrapped my arms about myself and thought of Francis’ words, of the provision he had made for me, of the children we had never had. That was the bitterest pill of all.

The boy had watched us in silence, and as Francis walked away, he looked at me with his mother’s clear blue eyes and her impenetrable coolness. Richard Plantagenet, not even twelve years old, too young for all he had witnessed, too vulnerable to be at the mercy of this sort of fate. It was not a conscious decision, but in that moment, I wrapped him tight in a hug and after an initial resistance I felt him melt and he clung to me, a boy still in need of a mother’s comfort.

‘All will be well,’ I promised him. I felt like a tigress suddenly with one cub to protect. ‘I will guard you with my life and Francis’ – I swallowed hard – ‘he will return. Francis always comes back.’