The Innocent (54 page)

Anne could see they were in a large, windowless vaulted room. Around them were niches built into the wall in which stone coffins lay and in front of them, raised on an ornamented stone bier, lay another, larger marble coffin with two carved effigies on top of it: a crusader knight, from his armor, lying beside his lady.

“Look at their hands…” Edward said softly.

At first Anne did not see what he meant but he held the torch closer and then tears filled her eyes. Two hundred years ago this husband and wife had gone into eternity together, holding hands. And as she looked more closely, she could see their heads were turned toward one another; all those stone eyes had seen for two hundred summers, two hundred winters, was the loving face of the other lying so close.

He was standing quietly beside her, his arm around her waist. “I wanted you to see them. I didn’t understand what they meant to each other until you came into my life.” Helplessly they turned to one another and he held her tight as she sobbed. Tears were slipping down his face as well—he had not cried since the death of his father…

Edward knew they only had a stolen hour together and that they were no closer to solving what needed to be done. He loved her and he wanted to trust her as well, but years of double-dealing still held him back. She must truly be the one to decide on her own future but, for them both, England must come first. There was no other way.

Swiftly, tenderly, he picked her up and sat her on the edge of the crusader’s tomb as she twined her arms around his neck. Gently he kissed her, little soft kisses, all over her face, her eyes. She held him tighter, let him take her mouth, feeling her heart beat faster. He shivered, pulling her as close as he could, but neither of them felt the cold air of the crypt as he stood between her legs, only her long skirt separating them.

“Ah, Jesu, how I want you…” he whispered in her ear, his breath so warm. She closed her eyes as he kissed her throat. It was her turn now to be bold because this was such a precious moment, and she might never have another. She let him feel that she was drawing up the velvet skirt of her gown—soon her thighs and belly were naked against him.

His breath was coming shorter and shorter. “Take me inside you, my love.” She fumbled as she tried to find the points for his hose and the codpiece, but each touch made him want her more, made him harder. Eventually she found the way into his clothes and quite timidly slipped her fingers inside. He guided her until they closed around him—he sobbed with sheer pleasure. “I’ll help you.”

But she needed no help to take him in—just a little wriggle as he pushed between her legs and she felt him enter her fully. She gasped as he began to rock back and forth, back and forth, each time pulling her toward him closer and tighter. She could feel him inside her, higher and higher in her belly. She wanted him, wanted him as she felt the hot itch between her legs build up as it had the first time, and build and build as he dug his nails into her buttocks and she tried to ride his rhythm. In the delicious heat between them she felt the shaft rubbing against the outside of her cleft with each stroke, and unconsciously she helped him do it by opening her thighs wider. The feeling was wilder and wilder, wilder and hotter and…she could not help crying out into his chest.

“Hush, my darling. Shhh. The brothers will hear,” he whispered directly into her ear, and unaccountably that made her giggle, setting him off laughing in turn. And it was true that the brothers at compline heard something, but then the building was so old, it was no wonder strange sounds were heard from time to time…

The great hall of Westminster was brilliantly lit, filled with the court in its finest, most expensive clothes as they waited for the king and queen to appear. But the glittering array was unaware of the drama then taking place in the rooms of the queen.

Elizabeth was distraught; she was dressed and waiting for the summons from Edward, but none came.

More than an hour’s mark had burned through on the largest time-candle and still he had not appeared.

William had sent a message that the king was delayed and would be with her shortly, but the queen knew he was lying. She’d sent Marceline to ask questions of the king’s dressers; no one knew where he was. But she did. Her eyes darkened dangerously, tears dried abruptly, as she thought on it—he’d gone to the Abbey!

The baby lurched in her belly. The fear and anger she felt must have touched the child, another cause for her to feel so wretched. But Elizabeth was not queen for nothing; if she’d learned anything from the last three years it was how to put on the mask of imperturbability, so now she breathed deeply and closed her eyes. At all costs the court must not see her vulnerable or cowed. It was then she decided to change her headdress—she would have her hair re-braided into a corona and wear her light crown. Let the court see her as Edward’s queen and lawful wife, no matter what rumors began to fly about the king’s unexplained absence.

Edward knew he was very late as he bounded up the concealed stairs that led to his apartments, but since he had lived for years fenced around by protocol and crowds of hangers-on, this last hour spent alone with Anne was very precious to him, worth all he might have to deal with now. As he cautiously pushed the door open onto his empty bedchamber he could hear William’s voice beyond the closed door. He sounded angry and afraid as he berated someone for failing to find the king.

Edward strode over to the door and wrenched it open. The relief on William’s face when he saw the king was almost painful to see. Beckoning his chamberlain, and a dresser, Edward hurriedly closed the door on all the curious faces. His servant quickly proffered an array of clothing for the king to choose from. Black and gold. He would be the Leopard King. Wasting no time, he ripped his current clothes off unassisted, though not without regret, for there was still a scent of Anne about them.

“I should let you know the queen is said to be displeased.” William used his most neutral voice as he helped Edward on with the garter below his left knee.

The king grunted in reply; he would not be drawn. His servant was attempting to curl his hair with hot tongs, and he waved him away impatiently. “There, William, all arrayed. No harm done.” Edward flashed a glance like a rapier at his oldest friend.

“No, sire. I’m sure you’re right.” If only he was, thought William.

Not for the first time William regretted the king’s marriage. This was a rare prince, a great bird of prey unlikely to be mewed by one woman alone. If he’d married royalty, had made a polite marriage formed for contractual and national purposes, his life would have been much easier. A well-schooled young princess could have been molded to understand why Edward needed his diversions, she would have expected as much and, perhaps, not been troubled by it. Elizabeth was too old to be trained, and without the benefit of a royal upbringing expected too much from her husband. And the kingdom would suffer for that in time. William sighed. They’d be in for a wild ride tonight.

But Elizabeth surprised William again. When he and the king hurried in to her apartments, he was forced to admire the will that sustained her.

She received her husband arrayed gloriously in tissue of gold—a happy contrast to his own severe black and gold—with her butter-colored hair braided high to support the glittering crown. She looked anything but the betrayed wife, greeting Edward with a happy laugh as the last rings were slipped onto her fingers and new slippers of embroidered white velvet were placed on her feet. “Husband, I fear I must make you wait a few moments. Time quite escaped me as I was being dressed. I am a laggard!” It was said with a musical laugh and the lightest of emphasis.

Edward bowed and stood waiting patiently, silent, refusing to be drawn into her little game. Elizabeth understood immediately and gave him another big happy smile. “There, ready now.”

Rising gracefully, she extended her hand to the king, who bowed deeply again as he took it and placed it over his own. Then, stately as two bishops, the king and queen processed down to the great hall into the heaving, buzzing mass of courtiers who had grown hungrier and hungrier and more and more curious.

Over in the abbot’s lodgings, Anne heard the cry of the trumpets, the noise of the courtiers greeting the king and queen as they arrived at dinner. For a moment, she stopped at her task, closing her eyes, an agonized expression on her face. Then, breathing deeply, she opened her eyes, staring sightlessly at the vellum in front of her. It had only lately arrived from Mathew Cuttifer and it was necessary she decide how, and when, to show it to the king. Now she bent back to the task of writing her own letter that must accompany the proof of her birth.

“Are you well, Lady Anne?” Abbot John was concerned, his guest was so pale.

“Quite well, thank you, Reverend Abbot. Quite well…”

Doctor Moss, quietly reading an illuminated missal in his corner by the fire, glanced quickly at Anne, wondering at the distant tone in her voice. He had lost weight in these last few days and a concentrated look of misery had settled on his face. He and Anne had barely spoken during their time in the Abbey because he, too, had spent much of his time in prayer at the direction of the abbot to whom he had confessed everything, including the reason he had brought Anne to court. It had been a long time since he’d prayed with anything like sincerity: it had been a hard and humbling experience. He hardly dared look at the girl now; to do so reopened the wound again, the wound of his betrayal. John Millington had given him severe penance for his actions, penance he was grimly observing. He’d agreed to go on pilgrimage to the shrine of Saint James of Compostela when he was out of sanctuary, and then, after that, to serve the poor of any city he found himself a part of for the next five years. It would not be easy, but perhaps it would give him peace.

For Anne there was no peace, and no sleep. Painfully, slowly, she had added the last few sentences to the letter she’d been composing earlier in the abbot’s parlor. Each word had been the tolling of a distant bell, the tocsin perhaps, the bell that warned of danger. And then, there was nothing more to write and so she signed what she had written with only one word, “Anne.” She, too, was a prince, it was her right.

Later, open-eyed, she lay on the hard little bed of her cell, Deborah breathing peacefully beside her, and listened to the sounds of distant revelry from the palace. She could see him so clearly at the high table—and the queen, and William Hastings. And she was not there; perhaps would never, ever, be there again.

Chapter Forty-three

It was the Feast of Saint Valentine and from first light the tournament grounds had been pulsing like an anthill as Londoners in their thousands tried to buy tickets for the tourney.

The king had picked out a ground at West Smithfield, and for three weeks before today, builders, carpenters, painters, and tent-makers had all been busy at William’s direction. Gaudily painted galleries for spectators lined all sides of the three-hundred-foot long lists, and pavilions for the combatants were erected outside the double palisade that surrounded them. The stand built to hold the queen, her ladies, honored noncombatant knights, and particularly favored courtiers was three stories high and very finely decorated with gilded allegorical figures of all kinds. It was surmounted by an enormous flagstaff, which today bore the king’s personal standard, cracking bravely in the sharp wind above their heads.

A second stand, close by but lower than the queen’s, was for the lord mayor and his aldermen. This caused a lot of gossip; the king was favoring merchants again, with judges and lesser magnates also included. Today, William was to oversee the Lists—a special honor—and would conduct proceedings from a specially built raised tribune in front of the queen’s gallery.

Edward’s pavilion was the largest of the many put up over the last few days. It had as many rooms as a small castle, though it was all on one level, and was made of wood and canvas painted to look like masonry. It was surrounded by a “forest” of half-sized trees potted in great tubs, all in very early spring leaf as they’d been coddled in a warmed forcing house.

It was hard to believe this was a temporary construction designed to last only five days.

The king was resting before the lists in his own magnificent room on a carved and gilded bed of state.

He’d been able to avoid the queen’s bed last night and this morning, and a conversation about his most recent absence, by declaring that if he were to fight well for her honor, he must spend his time surrounded by his companions praying for victory. Still, it had been very late last night when he and his chosen twelve, including George—who was extremely drunk and had to be brought in a litter—had arrived at the tent city erected around the lists. And true to his word, the king had insisted that his group of knights attend him at a Mass in a specially consecrated tent-church and stay with him to pray for strength and guidance in the tourney to come.

Edward was not a particularly religious man. He wore his faith comfortably and could most often square the very pragmatic decisions he made as king—which were often not very Christian—with the knowledge that God had chosen him for the task. It was difficult to rule and yet abide by all the commandments in the Bible. Besides, there must be some special rules for kings, who needed to have the good of so many, and not the few, at the heart of what they did. However, he did go to confession from time to time, and last night, fleetingly, he’d thought of confessing the truth about Anne.

Even though he saw himself as a modern man, a certain dread assailed him when he thought about Anne’s strange history. Her life was like something out of troubadours’ songs: a lost princess loved by a king. No, he had not confessed last night, but he promised himself now that once the tournament was over, he would solve the conundrum of her destiny.

Suddenly there was the bray of many trumpets and the boom of great drums.

It was mid-morning and the queen had arrived at her stand. Edward grimaced. It was time: time to become the warrior-king again. Time to face what must be faced. Elizabeth, meanwhile, was waving and being cheered. They didn’t like her much because of her greedy family, but she was beautiful and she was pregnant. If she was good enough for Edward, she was good enough for them.