The Sunne in Splendour: A Novel of Richard III (82 page)

embrace. Nan watched, while calling to mind a score of such scenes witnessed within these walls when
Warwick's Ragged Staff had floated above the keep. It hurt, but not as much as she expected.
ANNE gathered up several cushions from the window seat and, carrying them across the bedchamber, deposited them on the floor by the bathing tub. The bath water was pleasantly scented with costmary, rose about her in clouds of aromatic steam. She parted the tented curtains and settled herself on the cushions so she could talk to Richard while he bathed.
Stirring up small ripples and eddies with an idle finger, she rested her cheek against the padded rim of the tub, waiting for him to dismiss his body squires. She was sure he would, for they'd had no time alone yet and she knew he was no less impatient than she for privacy.
As soon as the door closed, he leaned over, kissed her the way she'd been wanting him to do all afternoon.
"Jesu, but I did miss you, Anne!"
"I missed you, too," she said, and then smiled at the understatement. Rising to her knees on the cushions, she knelt beside the tub, reached for the soap.
"Shall I help you?" she invited, and he grinned.
"I thought you'd never ask!"
This time she was the one to kiss him. "Thank you, love, for what you did say to my mother . . . about this being her home. I fear I wasn't as generous."
"You quarreled?"
She nodded. "I regret we did. I've been telling myself that I do bear her no grudge, Richard, but that's not as true as I would like it to be. She had only to make mention of ... of what I'd sooner forget, and I did flare up like kindling. I cannot help it; I still feel that she failed me when I did need her the most."
"You shouldn't feel guilty about that, Anne; she did."
She'd been soaping his back, now began to lather his chest and shoulders. "I was thinking that I might be able to persuade Isabel to visit us after her babe is born. Perhaps she'll be more amenable to a reconciliation with Mother once she does have the child she so wants."
Richard caught her hand, held it still against him. "Sweetheart, you'd best face the truth, that it'd take nothing less than a genuine miracle for George to let Bella come to Middleham."
Anne's face shadowed. "Yes, you're right. I just wasn't thinking. ..." She squeezed the soap so tightly that it slipped from her fingers, sank from sight. "There's no end, is there, to the misery George does manage to stir up. My mother would have been freed from Beaulieu

months ago had it not been for him and his accursed lust for lands not his."
"Let's not talk of George. Whenever I do, I find myself thinking of the arguments to be made for murder!"
He brushed her hair back from her throat, explored it with his mouth until she shivered with pleasure and
George was forgotten.
"Be you sure, sweetheart, that you do want Johnny here with us? I don't want to be unfair to you. ..."
She nodded, and when he kissed her again, she returned his embrace so wholeheartedly that she only belatedly became aware that her hair was trailing in the bath water.
"Oh, love, look at me! I'm soaked!"
She gazed ruefully at the dripping strands, the water stains darkening the bodice of her gown, but made no protest when he drew her to him again. By now they both were laughing, but when she lost the soap again, the hunt for it took on such interesting dimensions that amusement was not long in giving way to urgency.
In the first weeks of their marriage, Anne had been shy in their lovemaking. She still found it easier to show her passion in the soft intimacy of darkness, within the quiet and curtained privacy of their marriage bed. Now it was midday, the chamber was bright with summer sun, and the trestle tables were already being set up in the great hall, chafing dishes and trencher plates being taken from the cupboard. But
Richard had been gone for fully a month, the first time that they'd been apart since their marriage, and their lovemaking had, of necessity, been limited during the last stages of her pregnancy.
"Tell me again how much you missed me," she murmured, and laughed when he said, "I'd rather show you."
He was kissing her throat again, and she tilted her head back so that his mouth could wander at will, sliding her hands up his chest, delighting in the touch of warm wet skin, the fragrance of costmary, the sudden huskiness in his voice as he said her name.
"Why don't you," she suggested softly, "hurry and bathe?"
He played with the wet hair that fell forward across her breast, pulled the damp silk down still farther to caress the soft curve thus exposed.
"I've a better thought than that. Why don't you join me?"
He saw her eyes widen. She blushed, looking both uncertain and intrigued. He laughed, loving her for that, for blushing, and for what she was doing now, reaching around behind her to untie the lacings of her gown.
"Here," he said. "Let me help."
"I thought," she said, "you'd never ask!"

LONDON
November 1474
.LOR hours, the wind had been rising on the river, and shortly before noon, the sky began to darken. Rain was pelting the windowpanes, in sharp staccato bursts quite unlike the usual lulling rhythm of falling rain. Sleet as sure as Adam's Sin, Will Hastings thought, and smiled; there were few comforts more pleasurable than lying abed in the languorous afterglow of lovemaking, listening to the futile fury of wind and rain against stone and timber.
"Will! Look, love!"
A crystalline soap bubble rose into the air above the bathing tub, then another and still another. Through half-shut eyes, he watched them drift ceilingward, reflecting the light of the wall cressets as if each one had a miniature candle flame imprisoned within.
"You're such a child, sweet. That bubble-blower was a toy meant for my sons. I scarcely had you in mind when I picked it up at the Smithfield Faire!"
"Well, you didn't know me last August, Will, else you might have gotten one for me, too," she pointed out reasonably, and he grinned. She shared the normal feminine taste for jewelry and costly perfumes, but she was the first mistress he'd ever had who was capable of getting pleasure from trifles, too.
She looked appealingly disheveled: honey-colored hair was defying ivory pins, stray strands curling damply at the nape of her neck, loose wisps slanting rakishly over her eye, tickling her nose. He watched her push impatiently at it; she was the most unselfconscious woman he'd ever known, her lack of vanity all the more surprising to him in light of her undeniable physical charms.

Not that she was beautiful, not like the Woodville bitch. She couldn't hold a candle to Elizabeth; he freely conceded that. And yet there was something about her that got to a man. Her laugh. Her dimples. The most kissable mouth imaginable. High firm breasts, now gleaming soft and wet. Watching her balance a shapely leg on the rim of the tub and lather it lovingly, he smiled, knowing she was being deliberately provocative, and yet feeling desire start to quicken again. Perhaps that was the true secret of her appeal, the real reason why he found himself so unexpectedly besotted at age forty-three with this child-woman of twenty-two, this plump pretty little wife of a London mercer who could make him feel as if the twenty years between them mattered not a whit, who could make him hot to have her twice in an hour's time, with an eagerness he'd not known for years, an urgency he'd almost forgotten.
"Where's your wife?" she queried now. In another woman, he might have taken it as malice; with her, he knew it to be no more than simple curiosity.
"At Ashby-de-la-Zouch in Leicestershire." Unable to resist adding, "Like this house, Ashby was given to me by the King's Grace."
Her eyes were long-lashed, a deep blue-grey, so wide-set as to give her an altogether spurious air of innocence. They widened now at mention of the King; he'd known they would, enjoyed indulging her with intimate confidences of the Yorkist court, the Yorkist King who was his friend.
"Will ... is the King back yet from his tour of the Midlands?" she asked, somewhat shyly, for she was not yet accustomed to making casual conversation about her sovereign as if he were someone she knew personally.
Will nodded. "He's been back since the sixteenth. A right profitable excursion it was; he raised a fair sum and by way of benevolences, too, not loans that need be repaid."
She looked blank. "What be benevolences?"
He laughed. "A polite term for highway robbery! It does work like this. The King summons one of our wealthier citizens to the royal presence, greets said citizen with flattering warmth, bedazzles with the royal charm, and then expresses his confidence that said citizen will be well disposed toward making a voluntary contribution to the royal treasury ... a rather large contribution, needless to say. Not surprisingly, sweetheart, most do prefer to turn out their purses rather than turn down their King!"
"How clever! But if he has such a need for money, then the talk must be true? That he means to go to war with France?"
"Yes, I fancy that he will. There are more than straws in the wind these days. In July, he did sign a treaty with Burgundy, avowing that an

English army would land in France before a twelve-month had passed. Last month, he betrothed his third daughter, little Cecily, to the eldest son of the King of Scotland, so he need not fear trouble from the
Scots while he does deal with France. And given the way he's been exerting himself to raise money, I
rather think we'll be marching on Paris ere too many months goby."
"Do you want to go to war, Will?"
"Not particularly," he conceded carelessly, and then held out his hand. "Come here," he said, and she laughed, rose sleek and dripping from the bath water. She was reaching for a bath towel when the bedchamber door burst open. Will sat up with an oath, and she hastily splashed down into the tub again as Will's steward stumbled into the chamber.
"My lord, the King is here! They be below in the great hall even now and-" He spun around in the doorway; they heard him gasp, "Your Grace!" and Edward strode past him into the chamber.
"In bed at midday, Will? What ails you?" But if the question was directed at Will, his eyes were directed elsewhere, were taking in the girl in the bathing tub, eyes that missed no detail of glistening wet skin, open red mouth, tumbled blonde hair.
"I withdraw the question," he said, and laughed.
Will gestured abruptly to his steward. "Return to the great hall. See to the comfort of those with the
King's Grace."
He tucked the sheet around him, swung a leg over the edge of the bed, but Edward waved him back.
"Don't bestir yourself . . . not on my behalf!" He moved forward into the chamber, and as the door closed behind the steward, said, "We were on our way upriver from the Tower to Westminster when the storm did hit. I thought it best to put in at Paul's Wharf, and your house being nearby, it seemed to offer the most inviting shelter. Alas," he said, and laughed softly, "I see I'm about as welcome as a visitation of the French pox!"
He glanced back at the girl, who was staring up at him like one doubting the evidence of her own senses.
As he approached the tub, she crossed one arm over her breasts, but she did not, Will noticed, make any move to draw the tented curtains around the bath.
"My liege, you ..." She ran her tongue over her lips. "You do have me at a disadvantage. ..."
"I'd surely hope so," he said, and grinned. "Do you not mean to rise and greet your King?"
She blushed, the first time Will had ever seen her do so, and then dimpled. "I'd do so gladly, Your Grace, but I can scarcely ask you to hand me a towel!"
"Why not?" Edward reached, not for the towel she indicated, but for

the washing cloth that hung over the rim of the tub. "Will this do?" he drawled, and she burst out laughing.
Will was torn between amusement and an emotion he'd never before experienced where Edward was concerned, something startlingly akin to jealousy.
"All the books of courtesy I did read as a boy are agreed that it be the height of bad manners to seduce a man's mistress in his own bathing tub," he observed dryly, and Edward laughed.
"I suspect I've just been politely asked to take myself off! I suspect, too, that I'll see Hell freeze over ere
I get your mermaid's name out of you, Will!"
"Mistress Shore," Will said, with an exaggerated show of feigned reluctance that was, in actuality, quite real.
"Elizabeth Jane," she volunteered quickly, smiling up at Edward like one blinded by the sun.
Her shyness, Will noted, had dispersed as rapidly as the steam rising from her bath water. She had leaned forward, and resting her folded arms on the rim of the tub, was saying with the ease of long acquaintance, "My father-John Lambert of the Mercer's Company-does call me Eliza, but all others have called me Jane for as long as I can remember, which be the name I do prefer myself."
"So do I," Edward said, and smiled at her. "There be so many Elizabeths in my life already, but that I can recall, nary a single Jane!"
He was no sooner out of the room than Jane scrambled from the tub, and scorning towels, flung herself onto the bed next to Will.
"Oh, Will, I cannot believe it! That he was here, not an arm's length away! And found me fair to look upon! He did, didn't he? Oh, Will!"
She was wet and eager in his arms, soft and slippery, covering his mouth with her own, her hands sliding down his body, until he found himself responding to her need even as he told himself that her excitement, her passion, was not for him, was for Ned.
After they'd both been satisfied, lay entwined in the sheets and in each other's arms, he listened in silence as she spoke of Edward.
"... and the first time I did see him . . . thirteen years ago it was, Will ... in February, the month before he won Towton. I was eight and he was not yet King. My father took me to the churchyard at St Paul's; I've never forgotten. He rode a white stallion, wore armor like to blind you, so bright it was, the most beautiful being I've ever seen or hope to see, like one of the archangels. ..."
Will gave a derisive hoot. "Ned's been called many things in his life, but 'archangel' be a first!"
She pretended to pout. "Laugh if you will, but that's how he did seem to me that day. ..."

"It sounds as if you're still afflicted by the same faulty vision!"
"Why, Will!" She rose up on her elbow to better see his face; her own reflected astonishment. "You do sound as if you be jealous!"
"Don't be ridiculous!" he snapped, and after a pause, she settled back into his arms.
"I am being silly, aren't I?" she agreed, sounding faintly embarrassed. "After all, who could be jealous of the King?"
"Who, indeed?" he said tersely.
After a time, she fell asleep. He lay still, listening to the fading echoes of winter rain as the storm moved southward and the sky began to clear over the city. It was so unexpected and unfamiliar, this jealousy of
Ned, that he didn't know how to handle it. Ned was more than his sovereign. He loved Ned fully as much as he did his own brothers. When he thought of the women they'd shared over the years, the mistresses they'd traded, the conquests passed back and forth . . . Why, then, was Jane Shore different?
Why should he care whether Ned did bed her or not? He didn't fully understand why it bothered him, only knew that it did.
BY the time Edward's summons came, Jane had just about given up hope. For ten days she'd been daydreaming about Edward, fantasizing how he'd be as a lover, assuring herself that he could find her with no undue difficulty; hadn't she made sure to let him know her father was a member of the Mercer's
Company? But the days passed and she at last concluded that she'd been deluding herself. How could she have thought to fly so high, to fancy that the King would take to his bed a mercer's daughter?
At sight of the Yorkist colors, her heart began to pound so that she scarcely could hear the message delivered. Not that it mattered; she'd have gone anywhere without question or qualm, let this stranger escort her to the ends of the earth if that be Edward's wish. She had time only to tuck a small flask of perfume into a cloth purse and attach it to her belt, then to find pen and ink and scribble to her husband a hasty excuse for her absence, thanking God and her father that she'd been taught to read and write.
It was past Compline by the time the barge tied up at the King's Wharf. Edward was awaiting her in his bedchamber. She had a quick glimpse of a table set for two, of wine flagons and silver chafing dishes, and then she sank down before him in a deep curtsy. Her knowledge of royal etiquette was sketchy at best; hoping she was performing the ges- I ture correctly, she touched her lips to his coronation ring, and then impulsively pressed her mouth to his palm.
He raised her up, kept his hands on her shoulders.
"I'm glad you could come on such little notice. Are you hungry?"