Secrets at Court (18 page)

Chapter Twenty

A
nne’s lips turned to stone. She could not tell him. She must not.

‘Of course there was! My mother swore it in the documents before the Pope. Of course it is true!’

And Anne had wanted to believe it. All her life she had wanted to believe, even when her mother finally told her the truth.

‘How could she?’ he said. ‘How could she live with Salisbury knowing her husband slept under the same roof?’

‘I don’t know! She just did.’

‘You never questioned? Any of it?’

‘Why would I?’ She had never wanted to. And until now, until she had known Nicholas, she had never really understood the enormity of the question. Now, she knew that if Joan had felt for Thomas Holland what Anne felt for Nicholas, if the desire had been strong enough to lead them to bind their hands together, nothing of God or man would have let her be ‘married’ to another man.

‘No, of course not. You would have had nothing to gain.’

And everything to lose.

And now, she had everything and more, for to confess to Nicholas would be to lose even the small comfort that he had cared for her, at least for these few months. That precious memory would be swept away by his fury.

Strangely, that was what gave her the courage to tell him. He already believed she had lied and he loathed her for it. To admit the truth would not change that, but it would be the only thing that would redeem her in her own eyes.

She lifted her chin and braved his eyes, which were already tinged with disgust. ‘And I have nothing to gain now,’ she said. Did she owe him the truth? Maybe she owed it to herself. ‘But, yes, you are right.’

‘When did you know? When did your mother tell you?’

‘Not for years. She wanted me to believe as everyone else did.’ It was safer, at least, then.

‘And she traded her knowledge for your security.’

She nodded. Everything, everything her mother had done, all the lies all her life, all for Anne’s own sake. ‘I think she finally told me the truth because she feared something might happen. Joan might have a change of heart...’

He made a sound that wasn’t a laugh. ‘She’s known for that, isn’t she?’

She felt her anger stir. Until now, Joan had been kind to her. ‘My lady tries always to please people.’ Particularly men.

But sometimes, it was not possible to please one without angering another. She could not please her mother and the King and the Queen, who all wanted her to marry Salisbury, and still keep herself and Thomas Holland happy.

‘Yet she has turned other’s lives upside down not once, but again and again.’

‘She took care of me!’

‘Because your mother made certain she would! Because if she didn’t, you could destroy her.’

Her lady had sent her north because she feared just this. The secret she held so dear, as tenderly as a cherished pet, had become a viper. Now that it was revealed, Lady Joan would not be the only one poisoned.

She could see by his face that Nicholas had just begun to realise the cascade of implications. ‘That means,’ he began, with the quick logic she loved, ‘that she is actually married to Salisbury, and always has been. There was no marriage to Holland, ever. Their children are bastards. And...’

He looked at her with growing horror.

She nodded. ‘And her marriage to Edward is also invalid because her husband, Salisbury, her real husband, still lives.’

* * *

Numbness came first. Even though Nicholas had said the words, even though his mind had processed the facts and they lay, indisputable, before him, surprise had drawn a veil over them, preventing the full impact of the blow from reaching him all at once.

Because the worst thing was not that the Prince had joined with another man’s wife. Not that bastards would sit on the throne of England. Not even that, for all his good intentions, he had successfully thwarted God’s laws and caused Popes and Archbishops to sanction it.

No, the biggest horror was that he had made his father’s mistake all over again. He had let himself be fooled, thinking that a poor cripple needed sympathy. In fact, she had manipulated him like the worst beggar in the street, who whined and begged and, when your back was turned, rose and danced down the street.

He had trusted this woman, even thought to love her, and she had lied. Knew the truth and kept it from him. From all of them.

As his brain struggled to accept the truth, questions, and implications, started to flow.

‘But the King,’ he continued. ‘And the Queen. How could they have stood by and allowed—?’

‘They did not.’ Her answer was quick and emphatic. ‘They believed her story. And once they did...’

Of course. Once the King and Queen accepted the ‘truth’, who would challenge it?

‘The Prince?’ He tried to imagine lying beside a woman you loved and not feeling, not somehow knowing. Yet hadn’t he done the same? ‘Does Edward know?’

She shook her head. ‘No.’

‘Of course not.’ Joan, any woman, obviously, was capable of lying so cleverly that even in lovemaking she could conceal the truth. ‘That would not suit Joan’s purposes. Nor yours.’

They had plotted to deceive the Prince, the two of them, and made Nicholas an unwitting party to it. Only an accident, a slip of the tongue, had revealed it even now.

He was so angry, he had no shield for it. He grabbed her shoulders and shook her. ‘Who else knows?’

‘Joan. Me. No one else living.’

Holland and Anne’s mother. Now dead.

All this time, he had wondered why she and Joan were so close. Now, he knew. They were locked together by this secret. A secret that kept Anne clothed and fed and off the streets.

And looking at her, he could see why. If Joan had not sheltered Anne after she was orphaned, had not lifted her out of the mud into that rarified air that royalty breathed, she would have died on the street, perhaps. Laughed at or spat on. Forced to dance for the amusement of the peasants, or shunned for her assumed sins.

Ah, there was the truth of life. All were not equal in the sight of God. He created each to his own role. One forgot that to his, or her, peril.

For a moment, he understood. Even...forgave.

No. Not this time.

‘You. Lady Joan. And now, me.’

‘What will you do?’ Strange, that he saw no fear in her eyes.

‘Will I tell him? Is that what you mean?’

There should have been no question where his obligation lay, but for a moment, he didn’t know the answer. Would he let England’s future King ascend, knowing his marriage and his children were invalid? Perhaps he should leave punishment to God.

And what would happen if the secret were exposed? He was not a man learned in the intricacies of canon law, but the only similar case he knew of involved a man who had married two wives. In that case, the wife was forgiven for her ignorance.

No such option existed here.

Anne grabbed his arms. ‘What good will the truth do anyone now? How many lives will be upset by the truth?’

‘Yours, of course.’ Yet for that reason alone, he hesitated and cursed his weakness.

She did not even bother to laugh at that. ‘My life is of little consequence.’

‘Do you not care that the entire kingdom is wronged by the lie? That the Queen will be a concubine. Worse. A
bigamist?
And her children bastards?’

What calamities might God send all of them as punishment?

For a moment, Anne looked as cynical as he felt. ‘It will not be the first time a bastard has sat on England’s throne. Do you not care about Joan’s children?’

‘She and the Prince have no children.’ Yet.

‘Her children with Thomas Holland. She has four. Little Joan, Thomas, John, Maud. You saw them. Would you make them bastards without rights to their father’s title?’

‘It would not be me who makes them so. It would be your lady.’ The children were of her body, the fruit of her sin.

‘What of Salisbury?’ Anne continued relentlessly. Anne, who had known for years of the implications he was only beginning to grasp. ‘What of the wife he married when he was forced to release Joan? She is innocent and blameless, as is their son. What of them?’

The litany, the endless list of ruined lives, all because Thomas Holland was no better at controlling his lust than Nicholas’s father.

No better than Nicholas himself.

Nicholas rose. Three more days to the convent where he would be rid of her. And then... ‘I will sleep elsewhere tonight. We will leave early tomorrow.’

‘But...’

‘There is nothing you can say I want to hear. Anything you tell me now I will never believe.’

She nodded, slowly, as if she had expected no more from him. She was Anne again, determined to meet the fate life had decreed for her without complaint.

And that was harder for him to bear than if she had pleaded for his silence.

‘And tomorrow?’

‘Tomorrow, I’ll take you on to Holystone and after I leave you there, I’m leaving England. All of you can burn in hell together.’

She struggled to rise and he forced himself not to help her. He must not touch her again. And when she finally stood straight, legs braced against the bed so she would not fall, she radiated a near-regal air of command. ‘Do not take me to the convent. Take me back to court.’

Ah, as he should have known. She would return to Lady Joan so they could plot anew.

He shrugged agreement. Let them. It would do no good. He was going to reveal everything to the Prince. After that? A lifetime of lies would come to an end.

* * *

In silence, they retraced country Anne had thought never to see again. This time, she did not savour the sights, nor try to commit the miles to memory.

She told herself she did not grieve to lose Nicholas’s love, for she had never thought to win or keep it. But even the brief time with him had given her courage she could never have imagined. The courage to choose.

All her life, she had been told she had no choices. She was crippled and lucky to have Joan’s protection, protection she must keep at all costs. Beyond that, she tried to make her foot, even herself, invisible.

But Nicholas never defined her that way. Nor did he use it as an excuse for her. He knew it was a fact of her, was careful and considerate of it, but for the first time, she had met someone who saw something more in her.

More, even, than she had seen in herself.

So now she would not go quietly to a convent, shut away from life for the rest of her days. She would rather spend them begging by the side of the road to the cathedral.

But there was one thing she must do first. In all their years together, their understanding had been unspoken. When her mother told her, she had also warned Anne never to speak of it. So between Anne and her lady, there had been glances and pauses, sentences begun and not completed, but never had Lady Joan acknowledged the truth.

She would now. Anne would make certain of it.

* * *

The walls of Windsor surrounded them again, finally, on a cold, grey November afternoon.

Anne had hoped for a word of farewell from Nicholas, but it did not come. At the base of the tower, Nicholas tossed the reins to Eustace and, without a pause, started up the infinite staircase. He would reach the top, she was certain, before she had hobbled a quarter of the way. He would speak with the Prince before she gained the final step.

She sent Agatha ahead and began her climb. No need to hurry now. But by the time Anne reached the pause point three quarters of the way up the staircase, Lady Joan was running toward her, skirt billowing behind her.

There was a window opened to the light here on this small landing and the look of horror on Lady Joan’s face told Anne everything she needed to know.

Her lady slowed, took a breath and donned again the false smile. Yet her jaw was tight, her eyes narrow.

Then Anne was wrapped in her arms, surrounded by a voice, full of concern. ‘Anne, what’s the matter? Are you ill? Why have you returned?’

Anne looked into her eyes and saw it, finally, the thing Lady Joan had hidden for so long.

Fear.

Fear that weakness and foolish decisions, made when she was a young, headstrong girl, could not lie buried for ever.

And in that moment, Anne felt, for the first time, as if she understood her lady. Had she not done the same? Had she not allowed desire to drive her to succumb to the first, the only man who had ever really seen her? Strange to share that understanding just before all would be shattered.

Her lady’s fingers flickered over Anne’s hair and her arm, the way she touched a person she wanted to charm. ‘Are you hurt? Did something happen?’

Anne drew herself as straight as her leg allowed, reaching for the wall as she swayed. The ride had been long. The stairs steep. ‘I am as well as ever, but something happened, yes.’

She paused, thinking of her next words. She would not speak of Nicholas, what they had done or what he knew. What she must do now had nothing to do with him. He would make his own decision about what to tell the Prince. She was the one who must confront Lady Joan. ‘I will not go to a convent.’

Joan licked her lips. ‘Anne, you know how dear you are to me.’ It was almost amusing, to see Joan try to swallow her shock. ‘I have taken care of you, kept you close, for all these years, but if convent life is not suitable...’

‘It is not.’

Now Joan was the one who stiffened her spine. ‘Then I have nothing to offer you. I cannot—’

‘You mean that
I
cannot,’ Anne said. ‘I cannot join the household that will be the Queen’s.’

Lady Joan’s silence told her all she needed to know. Anne had fooled herself into believing her lady’s care had been genuine, even when she knew there was another reason for it. Clearly, the concern had been no more than a mask.

And that truth, ah, that was more painful than the other. ‘That is not what I am asking. That is not the price of silence. The price of silence is the truth.’

‘Mind yourself,’ Lady Joan said, gripping Anne’s arm. ‘The stairs are steep.’

Chapter Twenty-One

U
shered before the Prince, Nicholas wasted no time on pleasantries. ‘I’ve learned something you must know, my lord. It seems—’

Yet Prince Edward, still wearing the smile of a new spouse, clapped an arm around Nicholas’s shoulder. ‘First, my friend, I must thank you again for all you did. I never even imagined...’ He sighed and shook his head. ‘How it could be.’

Such joy on his face. He had never seen Edward so. Bliss, Anne had called it. The same look he had seen on his father’s face. The same look he must have worn for those few days with Anne.

An illusion, just as it had been with his father.

‘Can I not persuade you, Nicholas, to find a wife instead of leaving for war again?’

‘I am not a man meant for domestic things.’

‘I thought I was not either. Until my Jeanette.’

Ah, he wore a smile any man would envy. And Nicholas, to his regret, was about to destroy it.

He tried again. ‘Edward, you knew of Joan’s past, that she was no maiden.’ This speech, rehearsed as all the others, still would not come. ‘You knew and yet...’

‘Yet I gave up everything for a woman known for her amorous nature as well as for her beauty?’

‘You put it bluntly.’

‘And you wonder why. Well, my friend, some day you may meet a woman for whom you will be willing to do the most ridiculous things.’

‘How can you know the truth of someone?’ Or could you ever? And what must you do when you do know?

The Prince shrugged. ‘You are the one who figures things out, Nicholas. I’m the one who follows my feelings. That is all I did.’

Followed his feelings. Exactly what had got him, all of them, into trouble. A good reminder. He must not weaken now. He must speak. ‘Edward, I must tell you something about Joan. Something—’

‘Nicholas.’ The word was a statement. ‘There is nothing you can tell me about Joan that would make a difference.’

‘But...’ But as he saw the stubborn set of Edward’s jaw, Nicholas let the sentence fade.

‘Nothing.’ Finality, certainty, in one word.

And he thought, perhaps, that Anne had been wrong when she said the Prince did not know. Perhaps Joan
had
told him. Or told him enough that he should have known...

Whatever he knew, he did not want to know more.

Nicholas sighed. ‘Sometimes it turns out badly.’

‘It won’t. Not for me.’

Because he was a Prince? Because he had been touched by greatness his whole life? Or maybe because he refused to let anything, even his duty, intrude on his happiness.

Because sometimes, foolish emotions could lead to bliss instead of entrapment.

And all the arguments he had clung to all his life seemed nothing more than resentment that a man and a woman should be happy together. He had not believed it possible. And yet, perhaps his father had been content, happy even. Nicholas was the unhappy one who had kicked and screamed, resenting something that had nothing, really, to do with him.

All these years, Nicholas had refused to let himself be happy because he had carried the resentment with him, dragged it wherever he went, just like Anne’s lame foot, making him unable to move toward something, only to run away.

No, he would not be the one to destroy the man’s happiness because of his own disbelief. God, not Nicholas Lovayne, would mete out punishment, if punishment were due to Edward or Joan or to the kingdom itself. Let them live with their choices. And let Thomas Holland’s children, and Salisbury’s, live in the bliss of ignorance.

He forced his attention back to Edward, who was speaking to him still.

‘You did all I asked of you and more,’ Edward was saying. ‘Now, there is something I want to do for you. Since you insist on returning to the Continent, I’m going to make it easier for you. I will assume responsibility for your hostage. When the gold comes from France to free him, it will come to me, in repayment for this.’

He laid a pouch of coins, heavy, in Nicholas’s hand. He stared at it, seeing all the freedom he had ever wanted.

‘There. Enjoy your life of freedom.’

Freedom.

He had spent his life, it seemed, running from things that might require commitment, preferring the temporary to the lasting. Ready to die rather than savour and enjoy the life he had been given.

And he never realised it until Anne.

Anne. He must tell her he had kept the secret before she told Lady Joan everything.

He turned, abruptly. ‘There’s something else I must do.’

* * *

Lady Joan’s fingers pinched Anne’s arm, throwing Anne off balance. She reached for the wall and shifted her weight away from the stair’s edge.

One stumble and she would tumble down near two hundred steps to certain death.

‘The truth,’ Anne began, ‘is that there was no betrothal in Flanders.’

Joan was deadly white. ‘What do you mean?’

‘All these years. The story my mother told about you and Thomas making a marriage vow. It is a lie.’

‘Whatever makes you say that?’

But she does not deny it.
‘Because it is the truth.’

‘You should not even suggest such a thing.’ Even though they were alone, Lady Joan looked over her shoulder. ‘Who have you told?’

There was power in questions now, not in making answers. ‘Did you even know him in Flanders?’

‘Of course I did. Your mother found us, we pledged ourselves before God...’

Perhaps in trying to please Holland and Salisbury and God, Lady Joan remembered only what she wished the truth to be, had lived the lie so long that she had come to believe it herself.

‘Mother told me there was no commitment. No marriage.’

‘And you believed that?’ Wide-eyed with surprise. ‘To think you have carried such an awful, wicked thought all these years! If you had come to me, asked me, I would have told you the truth. We did marry.’ Her fists clenched now. ‘We did.’

Anne shook her head. ‘But everything you have done, taking care of me all my life, that was repayment because my mother kept your secret.’

‘But I have known you, loved you, since you were a child, Anne. That is why I care for you now, no other reason.’

Doubts of a lifetime crowded in on her. ‘But Mother told me. She told me that she had lied for you. And that the price was that you would see that I was cared for after she was gone.’

Lady Joan patted her arm, gently. The look of fear had turned to one of compassion. ‘And now you ask me if it is true because you doubt what she told you. As you should. There was a marriage. She did witness it. She attested the same to the Pope himself. Your mother would never have committed such a sin as to lie to His Holiness.’

Doubt whispered to her. Could her mother have lied to her instead of to the Pope? She searched her mind for something, anything, that might tell her what was false and what was true.

Of Flanders, when she was four, Anne remembered nothing. And when Thomas Holland had come to Salisbury, well, she had been right about one thing. Children didn’t always notice, or understand, what they did see.

But being a woman in love, that Anne now understood. ‘If you married Holland in April, how could you marry Salisbury before winter was over? Months. It was only months.’

After only one night Anne knew she would remember Nicholas all her days.

But it had been only a few months after Thomas Holland died that Lady Joan joined hands with the Prince of Wales in a darkened chapel at Windsor Castle.

Now Joan whispered, words from the darkness of memory. ‘My parents owed Salisbury a debt. They wanted the union so much and I thought, well...they convinced me.’

Joan, always wanting to please others.

But she had walked into the past now and found remembered anger. ‘And Thomas had left me! Off to Prussia to fight the heathens without even thinking of me.’ She sighed. ‘But when he returned from the wars, when I saw him again, I knew I was his wife in God’s eyes. And he asserted it, too, demanded I be returned to him.’

‘Really? To whom did he make this demand?’

‘To my husband. To the Queen. To the King. But they wouldn’t listen, not even to me, when I told them the same.’

Her husband
. Was that a slip of the tongue? ‘Did you tell them?’ Anne had trouble picturing Lady Joan arguing with the King and Queen.

‘Of course. You remember. You were there.’

Anne searched her memory, but she had been only five, still too young to wonder what went on when the adults closed their doors. ‘But Holland ploughed on anyway.’ Anne felt a bite of jealousy. No matter what her sins, Lady Joan had had men mad with love for her. Anne still envied her that.

‘Until he had enough money to pursue the dissolution. That was when Salisbury locked me in the tower.’

Anne remembered that, of course, for it was a few years later and she was near maiden age herself. Salisbury, a sensible man, probably thought that if he removed his wife from temptation, she, easily swayed, would come to her senses.

And perhaps she would have, if Holland had stepped aside again. Or if Anne’s mother had not gone to visit the Pope...

‘So you see?’ Joan turned back, her calm tone carrying the finality of a conversation’s end. ‘There was no great secret. It is all as the world knows. I was married to Thomas. Your mother’s lies must not trouble you.’

All the pieces could fit, when Lady Joan had explained them, except...

‘No. That could not be the way it happened.’ Nearly six years had passed between Thomas Holland’s return from Prussia and his petition to the Pope. Years in which he served both the elder and the younger Earls of Salisbury. ‘If Thomas Holland claimed to be your husband before God, why would Salisbury retain him as a steward? How could they fight beside each other against the French?’

Nicholas was right. It could not be believed.

‘Thomas was a knight,’ Lady Joan began, with an edge of panic in her voice. ‘I was the granddaughter of a King, married to an Earl.’ Her voice rose as she rattled off all the reasons. All the excuses. ‘The King would not support his petition for me so Thomas knew he could not be successful in the English courts and he had no money to take the case to the Pope, not at first, not until he captured a Count in France and received a ransom.’

Still not to be believed. ‘So Salisbury kept him as part of the household, even paid him money that he must have known would go toward taking you away from him?’

‘It was the only way we could be together.’

Words, finally, with the ring of truth. A passionate few months in Flanders forgotten until Thomas returned. And with him, Lady Joan’s hunger.

Her mother had been right.

‘But he wasn’t your husband, was he?’ Anne said in a whisper. ‘He was a strong soldier and you a young maiden and you knew him in Flanders, yes. Knew him carnally because he swept you off your feet and into his bed. And my mother found you together, just as she always said. That much was true.’

Silence from her lady. No denials now. Only an expression of horror, as she saw her life dismembered before her eyes.

‘But there was no promise, was there? Not then. Not in Flanders. It was only later, when you saw him again, when he was in your household every day. Much older and stronger than your husband, who was still near a boy.’

It felt freeing, to speak so. As if she were running on two good legs.

‘You know nothing. I loved him. And I gave up that love for what I was told was duty. You wouldn’t understand.’

‘Ah, but I do.’ She smiled and, for a moment, they were equals, women who had done foolish things for love.

Anne saw then, suddenly, that she had tried so hard not to let her lameness define her life. Fought against the physical limitations and the attitudes. But on the other hand, she had let it define her life totally. Had given herself over to Joan’s keeping because she had thought there was no other choice. And had been made to feel grateful when all the time it was Lady Joan who should have been grateful.

She lifted her head. She was taking her life back now and she would return her lady’s life, as well. ‘The secret is mine no longer. I return it to you. The truth is your burden, not mine. But that means I am free. And so are you. You need not care for me any longer.’

‘Free?’ Joan’s face had screwed into an expression Anne had never seen, twisted like a gargoyle. ‘Without me, you will be free to beg with your bowl and your deformed foot.’

Strangely, the thought did not frighten her. ‘All,’ she said, a slow smile taking her mouth, ‘all will be as it must.’

Something in Joan’s face snapped. ‘Yes, it will. I gave you a choice. You should have taken it.’

And it wasn’t until then that Anne realised they were alone and saw how far down it was to the bottom of the stairs.

And how easy it would be to fall.

* * *

Nicholas came to the Tower stairs only after he had searched everywhere else. Both Lady Joan and Anne were missing, as he expected, conspiring together, perhaps, about what to do now that the secret had been shared.

And there they were, on a landing partway down. But they were not standing with heads together. Anne was too near the edge of the step. Lady Joan reached out, but instead of pulling her to safety, she pushed...

No. Not now. Not now that I know...

First, Nicholas froze, heart, brain, legs, nothing moving as Anne slipped off the step and slid down the stairs.

Then he plunged down the steps.

Heedless of his own footing, he skipped stairs, trusting he would hit the next tread without looking down, looking only at Anne.

She reached for a hold and when that failed, pulled her arms in, so that she was rolling on her side, over and over. Her crutch, no help now, clattered wildly behind her, racing her to the bottom.

Hopeless, really, to think he could run faster than she could fall. The woman he could lightly lift on and off the horse seemed to hurtle toward the bottom, rolling over and over, with the speed of an arrow shot from a longbow.

He caught up with her when she reached the landing, halfway down, and lay on her back, motionless. Afraid to move her, Nicholas shielded her with his body, willing her to be alive.