The Sunne in Splendour: A Novel of Richard III (80 page)

"Do you like it, Dickon? Truly?"
"I can think of nothing that could please me more!" He leaned over and kissed her upon the cheek, so hurriedly that it might have seemed as if he'd expected her skin to be scalding to the touch.
For a moment, they looked at each other. She was too close; he could see the uneven rise and fall of her breasts. He'd not expected this, had not expected still to want her so. He took her hand, brought it to his lips, saying in a low voice, "God keep you, Kate."
"You, too, Dickon." There was a breathless catch to her voice now; she said, "Surely you do mean to kiss me goodbye?"
He hesitated and then touched his lips lightly to hers. But as he drew back, her arms went up around his neck and suddenly she was in his arms; he felt the familiar warmth of her body against his; her mouth was clinging, sweet, and it was as if the past year had never been.
He tightened his arms around her without thought, without choice, aware only of the feel of her breasts pressed against his chest, the feel of her tongue in his mouth, her softness, her scent. But then she whispered, "Oh, love . . . love, it's been so long," and his brain unclouded. Freeing his mouth from hers, he pulled away from her, ended the embrace.
"Forgive me, Kate," he said swiftly and somewhat unsteadily. "I did not mean for that to happen. I had not the right."
"Oh, but you do! You do have the right, Dickon. Only you. . . ." She leaned toward him yearningly, and he slid his hand down her arms, held her away from him, not trusting himself with her, not now.
"No," he said softly. "No, I have not."
She had eyes so blue as to appear lavender; he saw bewilderment in them and dawning hurt. "I do not understand. You do want me, as much as I want you. You cannot deny that, not now!"
"No . . . I'd not deny that."
"Beloved, listen to me. I love you; I never stopped. Oh, I know adultery to be a mortal sin, but I don't care. It be worth-"
"Kate, don't!"
She stopped, open-mouthed, and he said wretchedly, "Oh, God, but I never wanted to hurt you, never. I
swear by all that's holy that I didn't!"
She stared at him. "I see," she breathed. Turning away abruptly, she stooped and retrieved the wrapping of white silk from the floor; with infinite care, she began to fold and refold the material, as if that and that alone mattered to her now.
"Kate . . . Kate, I'm sorry."
"Why? Because I did make a fool of myself?"
He moved toward her at that, but she backed away, out of reach.
"I do blame myself as much as you, if that be any consolation.

should have seen. But I would not let myself face the truth. When you wrote me last fall that you meant to wed your cousin, I found reasons a hundredfold why you should wish to make the match-that she was a
Neville, the Earl of Warwick's daughter, an heiress. ... I did think of every reason save one-that you might love her. And that be it, isn't it? Why you wed her, why you are no longer willing to lay with me.
You do love your wife."
When he said nothing, she cried, suddenly shrill, accusing, "I'm right, aren't I? Say it, then! You do love her, don't you?"
"Yes," he said, and then watched unhappily as she twisted and wrenched the white silk until it jerked in her hands like a living thing.
"Kate, I do care for you, I care very much. ..."
"Name of God, Dickon, don't!" She swallowed, shuddered, and then sat down abruptly in the window seat.
"I think you'd best go," she said.
Not knowing what else to do, he reached for her hand, held it for a moment against his cheek. She tensed at his touch, and he thought she meant to pull her hand from his grasp. Instead, she closed her eyes, leaned back in the window seat.
"Please go," she repeated dully, and he nodded, moved away from her. He paused at the door, wanting to go, to escape a scene as painful as any he'd ever experienced, but not wanting to leave her like this.
"Kate, is there nothing I can do for you?"
"Yes, Dickon, there is." She raised her head; her eyes were free of tears, but her voice was suspiciously tight, as husky as ever he'd heard it.
"There is a favor I would ask of you," she began, and he said at once, before he realized what a risk he could be taking, "You need only name it, Kate."
A flickering smile twitched her lips. "Don't be so impulsive, Dickon. One day that'll get you into more trouble than you can handle."
"I daresay it will," he agreed, finding a smile no more convincing than her own. "Tell me what I can do for you, Kate."
"Don't come back here," she whispered. "I do want you to see Kathryn, as often as you can. But not here. You need only let me know when you wish to see her; you can send an escort for her, have her with you at Middleham or wherever else you do choose. But don't come back here, Dickon. Stay away for my sake . . . please."

MIDDLEHAM
December 1472
ON the eve of Christmas, the yule log was lit in the great hall; by tradition, it would burn for the twelve days to come. On the preceding day, a hunt had been staged for the pleasure of the castle guests. Later in the week a hunt was planned for wild boar, but for the safety of the women riding to the hunt, yesterday's quarry had been the roe deer hunted from Michaelmas to Candlemas. The dining was done;
the trestle tables had been taken apart and stacked behind the screens that stretched across the south end of the great hall. The mummery, too, was done; several of the players still remained within the hall, amusing with the antics of trained marmosets and a tame bear cub. Richard's minstrels were very much in evidence, but there'd been a lull in the dancing.
Alison Scrope was looking for her husband, but with no great urgency. She was mellow with wine and contentment, for the house was full of friends and neighbors and the entertainment had been much to her liking, as lavish as in the days when Warwick's blood-red crimson shone vivid midst the holly and
Christmas ivy. Now the colors that bedecked the hall were the blue and murrey of York and, with relief inexpressible, Alison saw that her husband at last seemed able to accept that, seemed inclined to let the dead bury their dead and make his private peace with the house of York. Alison could only thank God for it; King Edward had three times forgiven John for the support he'd given Warwick and the Nevilles.
She knew there'd be no forgiveness for a fourth such slip.
With that in mind, she was delighted with the way the past two days had gone. John had been flattered by Richard's request that he serve on Richard's council, which acted not only as an administrative body but as a court of equity and arbitration. Alison thought it a very promising sign,

showed that Richard valued her husband's abilities and, equally important, that he meant to pursue a policy of reconciliation, not retribution. Of course he'd be foolish to do otherwise; he was, she knew, fully cognizant of the ambivalent loyalties that persevered in the counties north of the River Trent.
She circled around Francis Lovell's sister Frideswide. An uncommon name, Alison thought, smiling to herself. Saxon for "bond of peace," as Frideswide was so often called upon to explain. Alison nodded as she caught Frideswide's eye but didn't stop. Francis's other sister, Joan, was here, too. But his wife Anna was not. Francis had told Alison that Anna felt she should spend this Christmas with her mother, it being less than six months since Anna's father had died. Alison had diplomatically agreed with him. Now she shook her head. A pity. But that was too often the way of it. Child marriages either worked out very well or they worked out not at all.
Just then, Alison caught sight of her husband. But as she joined him in the hearthside gathering, she was struck at once by the somber expressions on the faces of the men and women encircling Richard.
She was not long in discovering why. They were discussing the;! death a fortnight ago of Edward's infant daughter, the Lady Margaret.! The baby had been ailing from birth and had clung to life only eight brief months. Richard had just confirmed the rumors of the child's death he had, he said, received a letter from his brother the King only thaq week past.
Alison dutifully crossed herself, but she was thinking that Edwa and his Queen had been more fortunate than most. Five children beth had borne Edward and this was the first time that death had cla a babe of theirs. Most parents were more familiar with grieving, especia in that first fragile year of life, when death all too often came swift sudden.
At that moment, she happened to look toward Anne. Anne paled. One hand fumbled with her crucifix chain; the other pressed tectively against the folds of her gown.
"Babies be so vulnerable," she said, almost inaudibly, and knew her suspicions of the past two days were well founded.
She seized the first opportunity that arose after that to speak Anne alone. Anne was delighted to talk about the renovations made du ing her eight months as mistress of Middleham and needed no urging!
take Alison into the adjoining solar, where she took pride in show Alison the vivid unicorn arras hangings that adorned the walls and new oriel window cut into the west wall of the solar.
Alison was impressed; she said so at length and then listened

tiently as Anne spoke with enthusiasm about the additions and restorations she and Richard were planning in the months to come.
"... and then we hope to enlarge the windows in the Round Tower, but first Richard wants to-" Anne laughed suddenly. "And none of this does interest you in the least, does it?"
Alison grinned. "Well, as it happens, there is a matter closer to my heart. Tell me, dearest, when is your babe due?"
Anne's eyes shifted hastily downward, came up again to Alison's face. "I was so sure it did not show yet!"
"It does show on your face, my love," Alison laughed and gathered the girl to her for a congratulatory hug. "I first began to suspect when you did decline to go on the hunt yesterday. And then I noticed how your husband did watch you when you weren't looking, as if you were made of Venetian crystal fine enough to shatter at the merest touch! Men are always so with the first babe; a pity it does not last, so do make the most of it, Anne! I regret to tell you that by the third or fourth child, he'll be complaining that you must take a full nine months when his best alaunt bitch does whelp in two!"
Anne had begun to laugh again, now shook her head so vehemently that the veil trailing from her headdress swirled about her in a filmy cloud of lavender.
"Not Richard!" She hugged Alison back, said, "I would have told you ere you departed, Alison. I cannot wait till I do swell up like a ripe melon; I do want all the world to know!" No longer laughing, she confided quietly, "I cannot begin to tell you how much it does mean to me, that I was able to conceive as soon I did. It was much on my mind, Alison, that in all her years of marriage, my mother had only Isabel and me ... and more miscarriages than I care to remember. My sister, too, does not seem blessed with a fertile womb; one babe stillborn in more than three years of marriage. I was afraid. . . . But not now. Oh, Alison, not now!" She spun around in a circle, velvet skirts flaring, laughing, and Alison was reminded anew how very young Anne was, just sixteen.
"I think," Alison said, "that you do have now all you truly wanted. I think, too, that I need not worry about you any longer, child. You've come home."
"Yes," Anne said. "I have." She smiled suddenly. "There are times, Alison, when I do wonder how such luck came to be mine. And then I do remember. . . . Richard is my luck."

E A U I E U ABBEY
June 1473
AN Neville, Countess of Warwick, was sitting on one of the benches in the cloisters of the abbey of St
Mary of Beaulieu Reeis in Southamptonshire. Ravens were congregating in the grassy inner garth, blue-black, raucously aggressive. Birds of ill omen. The birds that | had haunted the Tower of London as long as men could remember. How | fitting, she thought, that they should be drawn, too, to this white-walled 1 abbey that was her prison. Her self-pity was particularly acute this noon; | easy tears filled her eyes.
She let them run unchecked down her cheeks; who was there to see, 1 after all? She was alone. She was always alone. She was likely to be alone I for the rest of the barren days allotted to her in this life, an unwilling pen- sioner of the Cistercian White Monks of Beaulieu.
The ravens were cawing, squabbling among themselves. She | watched, but without seeing; she was treading a familiar mental path, step by painful step retracing the events of the past two years, reliving her regrets.
It hadn't been that way in the beginning. That first summer of sanctuary, she hadn't done much thinking at all; she'd been numb, too 1 stunned to do more than weep for her slain husband and for her own plight.
But she'd been jolted back to reality when her daughter Anne disappeared from the Herber.
Nan's love for her flamboyant, ambitious husband had been both ex-1 cessive and exclusive. It was not that she'd deliberately meant to slight her daughters; there was just never quite enough love left over for them. I But in her own way, she did care for Anne and Isabel. They were hers, after all. She'd given them life, forgiven them that they'd not been sons,

taken pride in their prettiness, hoped to make brilliant marriages for them. And now they were all she had.
Her fear for Anne was genuine, and so, too, was her relief when word reached her that Anne was safe.
But her thankfulness was not long in giving way to euphoria. That Anne should be marrying Richard seemed no less than miraculous to Nan. Her daughter would have as her husband the dark-haired cousin she'd doted on since childhood, and she would have someone to speak for her, would have as her son-in-law the one man powerful enough to defy George.
Nan was sublimely sure that her troubles were over, and when Anne wrote to tell her that Edward had refused to allow her to come forth from sanctuary, she was devastated. So confident had she been that she'd not prepared herself for the possibility that Edward might say no, that he might prefer to placate
George at her expense.
Anne had expressed confidence that Edward would relent, had promised that Richard would keep on urging Edward on her behalf. It was only a matter of time, she assured her mother.
That meant nothing to Nan. Words, empty and easily forgotten. As she had been-forgotten and forsaken.
Before she could think better of it, she had written an incoherent, abusive letter to Anne. If Dickon could not persuade Ned, it was only that he hadn't truly tried. The truth was that he would rather she stayed sanctuary-bound, just as George did. Perhaps Anne did, too. Isabel surely did. Neither of her daughters cared whether she lived or died. Her pen raced on, covering page after tear-splotched page, accusing
Anne of indifference, Richard of far worse, spilling forth all the griefs and grievances of the past year.
She regretted that letter the same day she dispatched it north to Middleham, regretted it once it was too late. For a month, she heard nothing. And when her answer came, it came not from Anne, but from
Richard.
Nan had stared, appalled, at her son-in-law's signet, afraid to break the seal. Dear God, surely Anne would not have shown him that letter!
She saw, with his first words, that Anne had. The letter was terse, polite, but far from friendly. He denied her accusations, so stiffly that she knew he was both angered and offended. He insisted he'd made a good- faith intercession with his brother, said he would continue to speak on her behalf. Nan knew better. Whatever chance she'd had of gaining his support had been irretrievably lost, forfeited forever the moment Anne had seen fit to let him see her letter. She'd never forgive Anne for that, never. She scribbled a brief accusatory note to Anne, saying just that, and