The Sunne in Splendour: A Novel of Richard III (83 page)

Jane had never been one to pretend, saw no reason to start now. She did not want to sit across a table from him, to make desultory conversation, to pose polite questions and feign interest in his answers, and all the while wanting only to taste his mouth, to feel his hands on her body, his weight over her in what had to be the largest feather bed she'd ever seen.
She shook her head slowly, saw by his smile that her forthrightness amused him.
"Neither ami," he said, and, with a peremptory gesture, dismissed the ushers waiting to serve them.
He was considerably taller than she; as he brought his mouth down to hers, she had to strain upward, had to cling to him to keep her balance. He solved this disparity in height by lifting her up in his arms, carrying her to the bed, where they lay together and found prolonged pleasure in each other's bodies, more than he'd expected.
Jane had begun to slant surreptitious looks toward the bedside candle marked to measure the passing hours. It was not that she wanted to leave; never had she wanted anything less. She was accustomed to fancying herself in love with one man or another, gave her heart as generously as she did her body.
Generally, her feelings were intense in nature and brief in duration. But nothing had prepared her for this, for the way she felt now, lying beside Edward as the hearth burned low, munching on cold chicken, passing a brimming wine cup back and forth and laughing frequently.
She was not surprised that he'd given her such satisfaction. She was surprised, however, that he'd been so attentive after their lovemaking. He was, she soon discovered, much given to touching, playing with her hair, cupping a breast, rubbing his foot against the muscles of her calf. He asked her questions she'd not expected, questions about her childhood and her likes, her family, asked as if he were truly curious about the answers. He'd shouted with laughter when she artlessly confided that she'd prayed these ten days past to the Blessed Lady Mary that he'd not forget her. If the Virgin Mother had, indeed, taken heed of so dubious an appeal, Edward pointed out, she'd be performing a service more commonly assumed by the bawds who ran the Southwark bordellos. That was the most sacrilegious remark Jane had ever heard; it sent her into shocked giggles that did not subside until he kissed her again.
No, she most assuredly did not want to leave, would have given virtually everything she did own if only she had the right to lie beside him till dawn, to sleep and make love and sleep again. She knew, however, what was expected of her, knew that to presume would be to jeopardize any future she might have with him, be it for a week, a month, or however long his passion for her did last. She sat up reluctantly, began to search the floor for her discarded clothes.

Edward reached over, caught her arm. "Where do you go?"
"Home, Your Grace. It grows late and . . ."
He hesitated but briefly. "I'd have you stay the night," he said, surprising himself somewhat by the offer; it was not one he made casually, preferring more often than not to have his bedmates depart once he'd had his pleasure with them.
She looked as if he'd just offered her the sun and moon. He began to laugh, pulled her back down beside him. "I did forget. . . . You've a husband, haven't you? Will he be sorely vexed if you're gone the night?"
The last person on her mind at that moment was her husband; had she been asked she'd have been hard put even to remember his name. She shook her head happily, lay back in Edward's arms.
"What will you tell him, sweetheart?"
She considered, began to giggle. "The truth, of course, my liege. That I did pass the night in the service of my King!"
"I rather think," he said, and smiled lazily at her, "that under the circumstances, you might call me Ned!"
WILL stood in Edward's bedchamber, watching as Edward was dressed by his esquires of the body.
Servants were clearing away the evidence of an intimate late-night supper for two, and the bed had not yet been made up by the grooms of the chamber; it was still rumpled, warm. A gleam of gold caught
Will's eye; he reached under the pillow, retrieved a woman's locket. It was a pretty piece of work, and he'd paid a London goldsmith a rather extravagant sum for it just a month ago, wanting it in time for
Jane's nameday.
"Shall I hold on to this and return it to her when next I do see her, Ned?" he asked, and took a certain pride in the fact that the question came so naturally to his lips, betrayed no more than the curiosity
Edward would expect him to show.
"You needn't bother, Will." Edward, who was in a boisterously good mood, glanced over his shoulder to smile at Will. "She'll be back tonight; I'll see that she gets it then."
"Twice in two nights," Will said softly. "Did she please you as much as that?"
Edward laughed. "That's a queer question, Will, coming from you! She's the best I've had in a long while, as you damned well know! In truth, I should hold a grudge against you, keeping her to yourself as long as you did ... hardly the act of a friend!"
Will listened in silence as Edward began to banter with John Howard's son, Thomas, who'd been acting as a royal esquire of the body for some three years now. He couldn't speak in front of Thomas and thel

other men milling about in the chamber. But he could ask Ned for a few moments alone. He could tell him the truth, that this woman was different from the others; this woman he did not want to share.
They were pulling over Edward's shirt a magnificent crimson velvet doublet, elaborately stitched with gold thread, fumbling with the points that fastened his hose. Twice Will opened his mouth; twice he held his tongue. Only Gloucester was closer to Ned than he was. Ned had given him lands, offices, a barony. But he had never asked Ned for what Ned hadn't first shown himself willing to give. What had it meant to
Ned, after all, to give him lands confiscated from Lancastrian rebels? But Jane . . . Jane had been born knowing what most women never learned; Jane could fire a man's blood and Ned hadn't yet had his fill of her. Would Ned be willing to give her up merely because he asked it of him?
Once he could have asked this of Ned and felt confident that Ned would have done it for him. Now . . .
now he was not so sure. Betrayals and exile and the bloody fields of Barnet and Tewkesbury had wrought changes in Ned. Since reclaiming his throne, he was far less patient with the foibles of others, was less generous, more inclined to command where once he might have suggested. Ned at nineteen would never have done what he'd done at twenty-nine, given the order that sent Harry of Lancaster beyond all earthly cares and concerns. Ned at twenty-two might have laughed at Will's confession, have shrugged and looked elsewhere for his pleasure. But at thirty-two? Will didn't know. He didn't doubt that
Ned cared for him. But he did doubt whether Ned would be willing to yield up Jane Shore until his own hunger for her had been sated.
The suspicion was an unsettling one, that Ned might put a passing lust before a friendship of thirteen years. But suspicions he could live with; certainty he could not. If Ned would not do that for him, he'd rather not know.
Will dropped the locket back onto the bed. Ned's passions burned bright but not long; he tired of women rather quickly. Why should it be any different with Jane?
edward generally preferred to keep his Christmas court at Westminster. This year, however, his primary concern was raising funds for his forthcoming war with France: Christmas Day found him in Coventry, and, shortly thereafter, he ventured as far north as Lincoln in his quest for benevolences and loans. It was mid-January before he returned to London. On the second night of his return, he sent for Jane Shore, and frequently thereafter in the weeks that followed.
It was in the spring, as war fever swept the capital, that Will first

marked the change in Jane. As April thawed and flowered, she began to find excuses for not seeing him.
She shrugged off his queries with uncharacteristic evasiveness, and when they did share a bed, he found, too, a change in her physical responsiveness. She was no longer so eager for their lovemaking, seemed more indulgent than impassioned, at times indifferent even. Will was not burdened with a fool's vanity, was well attuned to nuances and inference; he was not long in reaching the discomforting conclusion that she was acting more to accommodate his needs than to gratify her own, that she was tiring of him as he'd once hoped Edward would tire of her.
It was late. They'd lain in silence for some time. Normally, it would not have bothered Will all that much, that he'd been incapable of getting an erection; it didn't happen often with him, and he knew, moreover, that there was not a man walking God's earth who had not suffered the same lapse at one time or another. But that was normally; now he mentally cursed his body for beginning to thicken, for slowed reflexes, for no longer being twenty-five. This was the second time in a fortnight that he'd had this problem with Jane, and why in Christ's Name must it be with Jane, of all women?
"Will?"
At sound of her voice, he turned toward it, said hurriedly, "I'm sorry, sweetheart. I guess I was more tired than I did realize. ..."
"Don't be silly, Will. You know I don't mind."
That was just the trouble. He knew she didn't. "It grows late. I'd best call for a servant to see you safe home."
"No, I can stay the night. I told you, now that I am the mistress of the King, my husband does give me all the freedom I could wish. I need only tell him I was at Westminster and he'd never think to question me further."
"Praise God for complacent husbands," he murmured against her ear, and she laughed; as usual when she spoke of her husband, there was both affection and a certain low-key contempt in her voice.
"He was always that, provided that I was reasonably discreet. He is much older than me, you know ..."
Will felt a twinge at that. William Shore was only four or five years older than he was.
". . . and of course he's been impotent since the.first year of our marriage," she continued carelessly, oblivious of the slight stiffening of the body beside her. "Will. . . I do need to talk to you, love, but I don't know how to begin. I've never been in a coil like this before and I fear you're going to laugh at me."
She sat up suddenly, wrapped her arms around her drawn-up knees. "Will, I'm ever so fond of you. You do know that, don't you?"

"But you fancy yourself in love with Ned," he said very quietly, and she gave him a startled, grateful look, nodded eagerly.
"I guess that wasn't so hard to see, was it? I do love him Will, I do. ... I've never felt this way about any man before. He's on my mind day and night and when I'm not with him, I feel empty inside; I ache, I truly do. Each time I do see him, it be like that first night, and the wonder of it does hit me anew, that this man be England's King, England's King and my lover . . . mine!" She smiled, confided, "I still find it hard to think of him as Ned; even in my own mind, I think of him as the King more often than not!"
"And what of him, Jane? Surely you cannot think that he does love you?"
"I don't know," she said in a small voice. "I think he ... he does care. I do, Will. He's been very good to me. . . ."
Will was thankful now that he'd seen this coming, grateful for the surge of pride that briefly blotted out hurt. "And so you yearn now to play a new role, the faithful concubine," he said coolly, saw her lower lip tremble, like a child unjustly slapped.
"I knew you'd laugh at me. . . . But Will, that is what I want. Please don't be mean. You're the dearest friend I have and I hate it when you say hurtful things to me. I know you must think me silly and moonstruck, but I cannot help it, Will. I do love him so much. He has only to touch me and-"
That he didn't want to hear and he interrupted hastily. "I'm not laughing at you, Jane. It be only that I
should hate to see you hurt. And you will be. Take it from me who knows him best, Ned's a man to take more pleasure in the hunt than in the kill. No woman's ever held him for long, and unless you accept that, you're riding for a nasty fall."
"That does remain to be seen," she said, somewhat defensively. "You say no woman's ever been able to hold him for long. But what of the Queen? She's given him two sons and three daughters . . . four if you do count that poor little lass who did die two Decembers past. Clearly he does still find pleasure in her bed, and they ten years wed!"
There was, he saw, nothing he could say to convince her. She'd have to learn the hard way with Ned;
women generally did.
"But it be sweet of you to worry about me, Will." She reached over, touched his hand. "Will . . . we'll still be friends, won't we? I don't know who I'd turn to if I didn't have you; I've never been able to talk to anyone-not even Ned-the way I can talk to you."
"That be a foolish question, Jane," he said after a brief silence, and, while a trained ear might have detected echoes of strain, Jane heard nothing in his voice but a suggestion of sleepiness. "Of course we'll still be friends."

She reached for the coverlets and then snuggled back against him, seeking his warmth. "You mustn't worry about me, Will," she assured him drowsily. "Truly, love. It be worth the risk. Ned is ... He's the
King," she concluded simply, as if that explained all.
"Yes," Will said. "I know."
MIDDLEH AM
May 1475
A
l.nne took no pleasure in the coming of spring that year. Spring meant the onset of Edward's French campaign. She counted the days with secret dread, silently cursed her brother-in-law, and watched helplessly as the beautiful white armor crafted for Richard before Tewkesbury was cleaned with sand and vinegar, watched the preparations for a war that made no sense whatsoever to her and filled Her with fear.
And now there were but two days left before Richard led the men under his command south to join the royal army assembling at Barham Downs. All week, men had been riding into Middleham in response to
Richard's summons to arms. He'd contracted with Edward to bring one hundred twenty men-at-arms and one thousand archers, yet so enthusiastically had the men of Yorkshire flocked to his colors that he expected to have fully three hundred more than the number promised his brother. Richard was delighted;
for three years now, he'd been laboring to win the goodwill and respect of a people not easily impressed, and he took this turnout of northerners to his standard as proof that he was slowly prevailing against local bias and loyalties given for generations to the Houses of Lancaster and Percy. But, to Anne, it meant only that all men, no matter their rank or blood, did share this inexplicable eagerness to risk life and limb in foreign lands.
These were the first quiet moments of the day. Across the solar,