The Sunne in Splendour: A Novel of Richard III (76 page)

self as vindicated, claims we do owe him an apology for doubting his word! I tell you, Dickon, he does defy belief!"
Richard looked up at that; his eyes were very dark. "Oh, I believe it," he said bitterly. "And that is precisely the reason why I don't want to see him, Ned. I may be able to say to you that he's not to blame for what he has done, but to come face to face with him ... I don't trust myself enough for that."
Edward nodded. "The same feeling does come upon me from time to time! You do know he's adamant in his refusal to consent to your marriage? Claims he has the right of wardship over Anne because of her age and kinship to Isabel. That does cast a shadow on the title of the lands, to say the least! I expect I'll be able to bring him around if I do lean on him hard enough. But it may take some time, Dickon. You'll just have to be patient, lad."
"How patient?"
Edward hesitated. "Well, I cannot say for sure," he said, somewhat evasively, "but I think you'd best not post the banns till after the New
Year."
"I've no intention of accommodating George," Richard said tersely. "Not George, Dickon ... me. I cannot have the two of you at sword's point. That you're in the right and he's in the wrong doesn't change that.
Now you've already told me that Anne is very loathe to see George lay claim to her family's lands. Well, I need time to make George see reason. Ah, damnation, Dickon, that's not so much to ask. You couldn't expect to wed right away, in any event, will have to petition the Holy See for a dispensation to wed since you be cousins." He paused, then added, "Moreover, a delay could serve your interests in yet another way, by giving you time to mend the damage done by Lancaster."
Richard's head jerked up. His first impulse was to tell his brother not to meddle where he wasn't wanted, but the words died on his lips. Embracing Anne that Saturday afternoon in an Aldgate inn bedchamber, he was sure he'd prevailed over the shadows of her past. A fortnight later, he knew it wasn't so, wasn't to be that simple. After a thoughtful pause, he said cautiously, "I'll not deny that Anne has some ugly memories. But why should you think she's still bothered by them?"
Edward had twisted around in his chair, away from the window; he raised his hand now to shield his eyes against the morning light. "Because she's not had time to forget. Scars upon the mind do heal far more slowly than those of the body . . . especially when we speak of women and hurts inflicted in bed."
Richard had no chance to respond, for it was then that Edward's daughters burst into the chamber, shepherded by several harried nursemaids. Bess and Mary at once began to squabble over who got to sit irtj

Edward's lap, while little Cecily clung to the back of his chair and tugged at his arm.
Richard watched with amusement. They were beautiful children, his brother's little girls, seemed to have emerged untouched from the ordeal of seven months' sanctuary. Richard knew his mother thought Ned indulged them too much, and he conceded now that neither he nor any of his brothers and sisters would ever have dared to greet their father the way Ned's daughters were clambering on top of him. But he knew, too, that none of the Duke of York's children had loved him as these little girls loved Ned.
"Softly, Bess, softly! You must confine yourself to squeals ... no shrieks ... for my head does ache right fearfully!"
They subsided slightly, giggling. Having lost out to Bess, Mary came over and gave Richard a hug and a wet ill-aimed kiss. In appearance, Mary was the most like her mother, but the pale-green eyes were alight with a warmth he'd never gotten from Elizabeth Woodville. He hugged her back, made room for her beside him in the window seat.
Edward had waved the nurses away. Richard knew he generally found time for his children on even the busiest days. Just as years before, he'd somehow always had time for an admiring little brother.
The memory made Richard smile. Coming to his feet, he helped Cecily up onto the seat beside her sister and then reached over to give Bess's blonde braids a playful tug. She grinned, showed a gap between her front teeth that hadn't been there the last time he'd seen her; her father's blue eyes laughed into his. He wondered suddenly what his and Anne's children would look like; both Kathryn and Johnny were dark.
"Are you off, Dickon? St Martin's, I'll wager. ... At least I always know where to find you these days!"
They both laughed, and Bess was glad. She liked to hear her father laugh, knew that meant he'd not be as likely to send her away with a hasty kiss and talk about being busy. But she found nothing in their conversation to hold her interest and chose now to call their attention back to herself.
"I saw Uncle George outside. I think he wanted to see you, Papa, but when he heard Uncle Dickon was with you, he went away." She glanced up, saw how swiftly all amusement had fled their faces.
"I don't like him much," she said flatly.
She felt her father's hand move caressingly on her hair. "Why not, sweetheart?"
"Because you don't, Papa."
Edward opened his mouth to make the conventional denial. He didn't, though, said instead, "You be right, Bess. I don't."

ST MARTIN LE GRAND LONDON
February 1472
Wn
'inter dusk was fast falling. Since midafternoon, snow clouds had been drifting in from the east, now encircled all of Greater London. Glancing up at the patch of sky visible from the bed, Anne frowned;
Richard left at dawn the next day for Shene, and it looked as if he'd have foul weather for travel. She leaned over, touched her lips first to his temple pulse and then to the hair slanting across his forehead.
The corner of his mouth curved in acknowledgment of her caress, but he didn't open his eyes. She leaned over still farther, gave him a rather awkward upside-down kiss, the best she could do at the moment, for he had his head pillowed in her lap.
"I should be off, ma belle. Yet another envoy did arrive this week from Brittany and I do have to see him ere I join Ned at Shene. What with war looming so likely between Brittany and France, Duke Francis is becoming more and more importunate in his entreaties for English aid."
Richard made no move to get up, however, seemed content to lie there and let Anne stroke his hair. She unbuttoned his shirt, slipped her hands inside.
"If you'll turn over, love, I'll rub your back," she coaxed. "You're so tense; your muscles be tied in knots."
She concentrated her efforts on his right shoulder, broken and improperly set more than nine years ago in a fall at the quintain. She recalled the mishap very vividly, could still see the way he'd looked as he'd been carried up into the keep, his face grimy with the dust of the tiltyard and contorted with pain. Massaging his shoulders now, she could feel the disparity not visible through his clothes, although she remembered him mentioning once that he had the right shoulder-pauldron on his armor

adjusted to accommodate the mended break. It pleased her to have such intimate knowledge of his body; it seemed somehow to make him all the more irrevocably hers.
She brushed his hair aside, found the thin silver chain of his pilgrim cross, and tracked it with soft kisses until he rolled over, drew her down beside him.
"You be so fair to look upon, Anne. I marvel that I should be so lucky, knowing that your face shall be my first sight upon awakening and my last before sleep."
"Have a care," she whispered. "When you do say things like that, I am sorely tempted to keep you with me, even knowing it might mean serious affront to the lords of Brittany!"
She'd spoken lightly but truthfully; she was tempted. Her reasons for restraint were no longer as persuasive as they once seemed. Yes, it would be a sin, but she could not make herself believe it was a sin to bring upon them eternal damnation, no matter what the Church did say. After all, she reasoned, surely a sin so widely practiced must be judged less harshly by the Almighty, else most all of mankind were doomed!
Regrettably, she'd not found it as easy to allay her other concern, her fear that Richard might get her with child. It wasn't so much that she feared branding her child with the stigma of illegitimacy. If it came to that, they could always wed without waiting for the papal dispensation. But her pride cringed at the thought; it appalled her to think of people smirking and counting upon their fingers when the babe was born.
Richard had reluctantly concurred, unwilling to subject her to the scurrilous gossip that had so grieved both Kate and Nan. But his good intentions notwithstanding, there were times when he urged Anne most persuasively to reconsider, and she was more and more inclined to let herself be persuaded.
It was true that she had yet to experience again the intensity of feeling that had assailed her so unexpectedly and overwhelmingly that afternoon in the inn, during those first moments when emotion had briefly banished memory. The memories had soon come back upon her, of course, but they were not as troubling as they'd once been, grew less and less so with the passing weeks. Her shyness did not outlast
November, and if the desire Richard stirred in her was lacking in urgency, it was pleasurable, nonetheless, was more than she'd once expected to ever feel. And as February sands trickled into the ornate hourglass she kept by her bed, she found herself wondering with increasing frequency what it would be like to lay with him; only that past week, she'd awakened, flushed and disconcerted, from what had been the first erotic dream of her life.
She watched Richard now as he sat up, reached across the bed to

rescue his doublet from the ravaging jaws of the spaniel puppy he'd given her as her New Year's gift. But when he pulled it on over his shirt, she sat up abruptly to protest.
"Richard, you aren't leaving? Oh, not yet, love!"
"Anne, I must."
Moving to the window, Richard gazed out at the gathering snow. The flakes were drifting down languidly, brushing in midair and settling like powdery-white moths upon the stripped branches and shriveled vines of the barren winter-ravaged landscape below. By the morrow, the roads would be fit for sledding and little else.
He wished Ned hadn't summoned him to Shene. It would serve for naught; George wasn't going to see reason unless forced to it. And so far, Ned- He jettisoned the thought, half formed, and pressed his fist against the glass; it was clouded with moisture drawn through the inevitable chinks and cracks that veined the window embrasure. He didn't trust himself to confront George again. Ever since Richard had seen
Anne safely into sanctuary here at St Martin's, George had taken conspicuous care to keep out of his way. But there'd been an unexpected encounter on Epiphany Eve, and with George's first defensive sarcasm, Richard's pent-up rage had broken through, spilling over onto them both in a scalding surge of accusation and invective. What followed was a savage shouting match that came perilously close to violence. Richard unclenched his fist, spread his hand flat against the pane. And it was likely to happen again, all too likely.
"Will you take the river to Shene, Richard?"
He turned away from the window. "I think not, unless the snow does ease up."
Anne was groping under the bed for her shoes. "Will you be gone for long?"
He shrugged, and she said what she knew she shouldn't. "It won't do any good, Richard . . . going to
Shene. George is not about to relinquish his claims to the Neville and Beauchamp lands, not until Ned makes him. And Ned isn't willing to do that."
"This does no good, either," he said irritably. "Every time we do begin to talk of what Ned has or has not done, we end up quarreling, and I don't want to leave you with harsh words unhealed between us."
Anne was at once contrite. "Nor do I, love. It is just that I so hate to be parted from you. . . . Sometimes at night, I dream it is as it was before, that there be walls between us too high ever to be breached, and I
wake up aching that you're not asleep beside me."
"That could be remedied easily enough," he said pointedly, but then he smiled. "Now come here, wench, and bid me a proper farewell!"
She did, so effectively that he decided he could linger a few moments

longer. He brushed her hair back as it strayed across her throat, wound a thick burnished rope around his hand.
"Anne, I've been giving thought to the lands in dispute. Ned has been most generous with me. Now that he's seen fit to give me the estates forfeited by the Earl of Oxford . . . Well, they do total more than eighty manors, sweetheart, and will yield a right handsome yearly income. Add to that, the grants he made me last June of Middleham, Sheriff Button and Penrith and-"
"And we'd have no need of more. Is that what you're saying?" Giving him no chance to reply. "Richard, you know how I do feel about this. It isn't that the lands do mean so much to me. By rights, they be my mother's, after all. But if she's not to have them, I'm damned if I'll see them go to George! I cannot keep him from laying claim to Isabel's portion, but I'll not concede him so much as an acre more! Why should
I?"
"I did not say-"
"How could you ask that of me? I don't understand, truly I don't!" "Are you going to hear me out or not?
Surely you know I do like it not. Do you think I want to see George enriched at our expense? But I want to wed you, Anne. I'm wearying of these delays."
"Richard, I'm impatient, too, that we wed. But why must we make such a choice? It's so utterly unfair!
Why should George not only escape his sins unscathed but emerge the richer for it? When I think of what he has done . . . and continues to do! He has no right to claim wardship over me, no right to the
Beauchamp lands, and I do not understand why Ned seems unable to curb his demands!"
"We've been over this time and time again. George is not capable of responding to reason as another man would. You might better measure the mists on Malvern Hills than try to untangle what goes on in his head. Not even threats have so far worked with him. I'm beginning to think nothing short of a stay in the
Tower will."
//Triat sounds like a marvelously fair idea to me!" Anne said tartly. "I'd wager that if Ned cast him into the
Tower for a spell, he'd lose his taste for my lands quick enough! And God knows, that's where he most deserves to be!"
"You know quite well why Ned is reluctant to take so drastic a measure as that," he said, striving for patience but finding only the teeth- gnttmg kind. "His forbearance is not for George; he refrains for our lady mother's sake. She's had more than her share of grieving on George's beoaland Ned would not add to her hurts if he can help it."
'So you keep telling me. And I'm sure it be true ... as far as it goes."
"What mean you by that, Anne?"