The Sunne in Splendour: A Novel of Richard III (131 page)

the ears of his dying wife. Need I tell you what he would do? No, I see that I do not. So you think on that, Master Bray. You think on that long and hard, because I don't bluff and I warn but once."
COMING out into the street, Elizabeth was dismayed to see an early winter dusk settling over the city.
Much to her relief a member of the Watch was passing by, gallantly agreed to escort her back to St
Paul's. The man made a few polite attempts at conversation but soon gave up, attributing Elizabeth's absentminded responses to the distraction of the newly bereaved.
Elizabeth had already forgotten her benefactor; Reginald Bray occupied her brain to the exclusion of all else. As satisfying as it had been to see fear upon Bray's face, she knew her threat to be an empty one.
Even if she'd succeeded in silencing Bray, the damage had already been done; she was enough of a realist to know that. He'd already planted the seeds, and nothing took root faster than rumor. People didn't have to believe it; it was enough that they'd pass it on.
Now that her first surge of rage was receding, Elizabeth wondered how she could have been so taken by surprise. What was more common, after all, than sexual slander? It was as much a weapon of politics as the cannon was a weapon of warfare. She had only to think of all that had been said about Ned during his lifetime; nor had his family been spared. Those hoping to prevent Margaret's marriage to Charles of
Burgundy had so slurred her name in the weeks before the wedding that many of her Burgundian subjects remained convinced to this day that she'd come to her marriage bed a jaded wanton, and when, as dowager Duchess of Burgundy, she sought to keep the French King from swallowing up her stepdaughter's domains, Louis had spread the story that she'd taken the Bishop of Cambrais as a lover, had borne him a bastard child. Nor was the House of York the only target for such innuendo and aspersions. Gossip had Charles of Burgundy to be guilty of the vice of Sodom, while long- ago Yorkist slander challenged the paternity of Marguerite d'Anjou's son.
Elizabeth mouthed an oath so unlikely to be on the lips of a grieving widow that her escort did a double-take, decided his ears had deceived him. Elizabeth ignored him. She'd too often been the victim of such slanders herself not to have developed a bitter resentment, a deep-rooted contempt for her credulous countrymen who took gossip as gospel, hearsay as truth on high. No, she should have expected something like this. A young King with an ailing wife and a beautiful niece; the ingredients were already there for scandal, waiting only to be seized upon by the unscrupulous, by men like Bray, who cared only about discrediting Kichard, cared not at all if Bess should be hurt in the process.
Elizabeth felt now a new anger, directed against Bess and Richard,

for being so careless of gossip, for not realizing that it was no less important to avoid the appearance of impropriety than it was the impropriety itself. How like the two of them to be so blind, she thought in disgust, and then she came to a sudden halt, startled into immobility.
Could it be there was any truth to these rumors Bray was spreading? Not all gossip was totally unfounded, after all. If Edouard of Lancaster had truly been a son of Harry's loins, that should rank as no less a miracle than that of the fishes and loaves. And like as not, there was some truth, too, to those rumors about Charles of Burgundy's taste for boys. What, then, of Richard and Bess? She'd told Bray there was more between them than blood; had she spoken greater truth than she'd realized?
Yes, they were uncle and niece, but sexual passions sometimes burned all the more intensely for being forbidden. Didn't Scriptures say as much, say something about stolen waters being all the sweeter? Nor was incest all that uncommon. The first Plantagenet King had taken as his mistress the young girl betrothed to his own son. While Queen of France, Eleanor of Aquitaine had a blatant love affair with a young uncle, and just a few years past, the French court had been scandalized when a nobleman named d'Armagnac contracted an incestuous marriage with his own sister.
Elizabeth frowned; it was difficult to be objective about a man she hated as much as she hated Richard.
He had never made any secret of his fondness for Bess, and Bray was right; Bess was beautiful. But was that enough? Ned. . . . Ned had been a rakehell hot to lay with anything in skirts, but Richard had a reputation for being rather straitlaced in carnal matters, and if he'd strayed from Anne Neville's bed in some twelve years of marriage he'd been remarkably discreet about it. Elizabeth couldn't say with certainty now that he'd not have conceived an incestuous passion for his niece, but to take Bess to his bed, to flaunt her as his concubine before his dying wife, a woman to whom he'd always seemed devoted
. . . well, it might not be impossible, but it did seem wildly out of character.
What, then, of Bess? Her vulnerabilities were more readily apparent. She was not yet nineteen, after all, still grieving for the father she'd adored beyond reason. Could she have sought in Ned's brother the father she'd lost, only to find her emotions complicated by her first sexual yearnings? Richard was only thirty-two, dangerously young for an uncle, and he'd been very kind to Bess since her return to court.
Had her emotional dependence developed into something more?
Elizabeth's frown deepened. Yes, there was a certain plausibility about it. But she didn't believe it. Bess was no actress, was as transparent as springwater. When she came home to Waltham to visit her little sisters, she talked often and easily of Anne, of her many kindnesses, her grief

over the loss of her son, her illness. Could Bess be so natural, so sympathetic if she were involved in a relationship both adulterous and incestuous? Could she have accepted Anne's generous offer, let Anne's dressmaker make her a Christmas gown from Anne's own cloth of gold, if all the while she was sleeping with Anne's husband? Elizabeth knew the answer to that, for she knew her daughter. Bess simply wasn't capable of duplicity like that, could not be betraying a dying woman with so little compunction. No, if she and Richard were guilty of anything, it was of stupidity, of playing into the hands of men like Bray.
Elizabeth toyed briefly now with the idea of carrying through with her threat, of going to Richard with what Bray had told her. The temptation was considerable. Once he was forewarned, Richard would be better able to guard Bess against gossip, and by alerting him to the danger, she'd be putting him in her debt. Best of all, she'd get to see Bray die a traitor's death, in prolonged agony. But if she betrayed Bray to Richard, she was forfeiting all chance to make Bess a Queen. She couldn't do that, couldn't surrender that last vestige of hope, however unlikely or farfetched, that Tudor might one day win England's crown, claim Bess as his consort. Moreover, how could she sever all ties with Tudor as long as Tom was being held at the French court as surety for her continued cooperation?
By the time she reached St Paul's, she'd made her decision. She'd go at once to Westminster, go to her daughter. Bess must be warned how easily tongues could be set to wagging, must be made to see that the scales be weighted unfairly in this life, with innocence counting for little and appearance for all.
LEAVING one of her servants with their horses, Elizabeth had her other attendant engage a boatman to take them upriver to Westminster. It was quite dark by the time they docked at the King's Wharf. The inner-palace bailey was lit with scores of torches, thronged with expectant people. Elizabeth found herself looking out upon a sea of spectators, and she cursed herself for a fool, for having forgotten that this was
Epiphany.
How often she and Ned had marked this, the end of the Christmas festivities, in high style, with court fetes and masques and feasting. So, too, had Richard and Anne celebrated this Twelfth Night, with a lavish banquet in the great hall of Westminster. Elizabeth knew from Bess and Cecily that Anne had defied her doctors, stubbornly insisted upon presiding with Richard over the Christmas revels. She gathered from the conversation swirling around her that Richard and Anne were about to make an appearance before the crowds waiting so patiently for a glimpse of their sovereigns.

Elizabeth found herself caught up in the crowd, carried along against her will as the people jockeyed for position. Blinded by torch-fire, Elizabeth's eyes were drawn, mothlike, to the gleaming gold of Richard's crown. A pain that was physical lodged just under her ribs, a hollow hurtful yearning for what had been hers and was now irretrievably lost, all because Ned had scrupled to murder a priest.
Beside Elizabeth, a matronly woman clicked her tongue against her teeth in sympathy, said, "Oh, the poor lamb!" Elizabeth tore her gaze away from Richard, looked for the first time at Anne Neville, and drew a sharp involuntary breath.
She'd known for weeks that Anne's illness was thought to be mortal, but it was a shock, nonetheless, to see coming death so clearly etched in the younger woman's face-the hollowed cheekbones, thrust into sudden sharp prominence, stained with deceptive false color, eyes sunken back, feverishly bright, compelling. The signs were unmistakable to Elizabeth, for she'd had personal experience with consumption, had watched a young cousin of her first husband die of it.
Consumption came in many guises, was also known as phthisis, hectic fever, the White Plague, but
Elizabeth thought wasting fever was the most apt, best described the fate of those stricken. Sometimes there was considerable pain, but for others, there was not. Her young cousin-by- marriage had been one of the latter, had suffered comparatively little pain even to the last, merely growing relentlessly weaker, remaining in surprisingly cheerful spirits even on his deathbed, deluding himself with hopes of recovery long after all others knew he was doomed, a phenomenon peculiar to consumptives, which the doctors could only attribute to the relative absence of pain. There were, Elizabeth thought, worse ways to die-plague, leprosy, putrid throat-but consumption was still one of the most feared of all ailments, for it almost always proved fatal.
Looking at Anne now, Elizabeth thought it would be a miracle if Anne did live through Lent, and she was glad, glad that Richard was to lose the wife he loved, to have to watch helplessly as her life ebbed away.
Let him see what joy he'd take then in that jeweled crown, the crown that should have been her son's.
Like Richard, Anne, too, wore her crown; her head was tilted back with the weight of it, held upright by sheer stubborn force of will. She faltered suddenly, and a murmur swept the crowd. Richard turned around, reached Anne just as she began to cough.
"The poor lamb," Elizabeth's neighbor repeated; others around Elizabeth took up the refrain, but for all their sympathy, there was an unwholesome if very human excitement, too, in this scene being enacted before them, a passion play brought to life in the glare of torchlight, with the

power to invoke pity, wonderment, speculation about retribution and redemption and the mysterious workings of the Almighty.
Anne's coughing spasm had subsided, but she clung to Richard as if it had sapped her remaining strength, leaned so heavily on his arm that his support seemed to be all that was keeping her on her feet. They seemed oblivious of all but each other, and a hush fell upon the crowd, caught up in this moment of unsparing intimacy being played out before hundreds of fascinated witnesses. Richard tilted Anne's face up, put his lips to her forehead; when she turned her face away, into the velvet of his mantle, he stroked the chestnut hair cascading down her back in the unbound style reserved for virgin brides and Queens.
An aging man in a long dark robe detached himself from the royal entourage; Elizabeth recognized Dr
Hobbys. People now realized that Richard meant to take Anne back into the palace, and murmurs of disappointment began to surface; many had been waiting in the cold for hours to watch the pageantry, the procession to the abbey. But Anne was shaking her head, gesturing about her at the thronged bailey, winning for herself no small measure of admiring approval when the people realized she was arguing for continuing with the procession as planned. A tense three- way argument ensued between Richard, Anne, and Hobbys, and at last a compromise was reached, Richard agreeing to go on to the abbey if Dr
Hobbys would escort Anne back into the palace.
Richard stood watching as his wife moved away from him, retracing her path with the slow measured steps of one drawing upon rapidly diminishing reserves, expending energy that could no longer be replaced. If Richard was aware of the curious, sympathetic eyes riveted upon him, he gave no indication of it; surrounded by people, he seemed strangely alone, and there was on his face a look of utter desolation.
Once more quiet had descended over the crowd, a subdued silence that had in it as much of discomfort as it did of pity; it was as if the man before them suddenly seemed all too real, a flesh-and-blood being whose pain lay exposed for all to see, an anguish of spirit and soul too naked to deny, too easy to identify with. The glittering torchlit crown, the courtiers cloaked in silver fox and sable, the trumpeters and
Princes of the Church, and flaming candles held aloft in gilded holders, all the magnificence and pageantry of royalty ... It was that which they wanted of their Kings, needed that splendor to eclipse the drabness, the harsh rigors of their own lives. If they no longer demanded, as a more primitive age had done, that their Kings be Gods, neither did they want to see in their sovereigns human frailties too closely akin to their own. People stirred uneasily now, uncertain, finding themselves actors in a play they'd come only to watch.
It was Bess who broke the spell. With Anne's departure had gone,

too, her ladies. But Bess had glanced back over her shoulder, came swiftly back now to Richard's side.
She spoke softly, urgently, her eyes never leaving his face, and after a long pause, Richard nodded, turned, and gave the signal for the procession to proceed. Flanked once again by Bishops and lords of his court, he moved across the bailey. Bess waited a moment or so longer, turned to follow after Anne.
As Richard reached the gateway that was the King's private entrance into the abbey precincts, the crowd surged forward, sought to follow. Elizabeth was rudely jostled, elbows digging into her ribs, feet trampling upon the trailing hem of her skirt. She scarcely noticed, accepted the shoving like one sleepwalking, and when her servant at last managed to extricate her from the crush of bodies, she stared at him blankly, without recognition, for the idea that had come to her was so stupendous, so astounding that all else had been blotted from her brain.
Bray had been right; Bess did have a face easy to read. And as she stood beside Richard in the torchlit courtyard, her only thought to give him comfort, it had been there for all to see. So she does love him, Elizabeth thought in wonderment. She loves him but she doesn't know it, hasn't admitted it even to herself. She's either unwilling or unable to deal with her feelings and so she denies them, not realizing she does give herself away every time their eyes meet. The little fool, God help her. But it was in that moment, swept by sudden pity for the daughter so unlike herself, this innocent infuriating child of hers, that it all came together for Elizabeth, a plan dazzling in its simplicity, awesome in its implications.
Warwick's daughter was dying; none who looked upon her tonight could deny that. And when she died, Richard would find himself under unrelenting, irresistible pressure to wed again, to beget a son and heir.
They'd give him no time to grieve, would push a foreign bride into his bed with indecent haste, just as they'd done with the second King Richard. A King owed his countrymen heirs of his body; Richard would have no choice. He'd need a Queen, need a healthy young woman who could give England sons.
Why could that Queen not be Bess?
Not an illicit incestuous liaison, a relationship that could only give Bess grief, besmirch her name, and shred her conscience. A legitimate honorable marriage, recognized by the Sacraments of the Church, a marriage that would make her a Queen.
Elizabeth tried now to dampen her rising excitement, to consider this astonishing possibility dispassionately, to examine it for flaws. They'd need a papal dispensation, of course. But Popes were astute practitioners of the art of power politics; the petition of a reigning King was not likely to be denied.
But would the English people approve such a marriage? The blood bond was closer than most
Englishmen were accustomed to accept;