The Uncrowned Queen (61 page)

Wat—who had Mathew Cuttifer's release to return with Anne to Herrard Great Hall permanently—thought himself more sensitive than both of Anne's other servants and announced the cause, though it gave him no more than gloomy satisfaction in being right. “Her heart's been broken—that's what's happened.”

Jane shushed the man but surreptitiously crossed herself just the same. Her own opinion was that Anne de Bohun had been cursed in London. She'd heard all sorts of strange rumors about her mistress in the Cuttifers' house, because there were one or two people there who claimed to remember Anne from a previous time, years ago, a time when she'd been Lady Margaret's own body-servant.

These same people said that Anne's fortunes had been transformed by sorcery or worse, since, rumor had it, she'd once raised their same Lady Margaret from the dead by her black arts. Corpus, the wizened old pigman who lived with his animals, swore to the truth of it. He was full of talk about Lady Anne and the king, too, and the queen. Salacious talk, vicious talk, painting her mistress as an adulterous whore, fit only for burning. Poor, confused Jane, she'd experienced nothing but kindness from Lady Anne and thought, wistfully, that her lady must be very evil indeed to have such a well-disguised black heart, since her beauty and grace suggested goodness, not its opposite.

And now, on the afternoon of their third hot day on the roads, watching her mistress ride home toward Herrard Great Hall as if returning to her own execution, Jane couldn't help but wonder if any of the gossip was true, though she crossed herself to ward off such terrible thoughts.

Autumn had touched the countryside with the lightest of fingers and, though it was still warm, the foliage of the great oak in the inner ward of Herrard Great Hall was withering to dried bronze, telling of what was to come. The first skittish winds of the changing
season skirled around the massive trunk as the leaves took flight, so many at one time that they revealed the little boy who'd been roosting unseen among the massive branches. He was the first to see the riders as they came, the westering sun behind them.

“Deborah, Deborah!”

Barking his knees and elbows, he slithered from branch to branch and then, with a deep breath, dropped the last six feet to the ground; the distance was more than double his height. Edward rolled as he hit the newly fallen leaves and bobbed up unhurt.

“Wissy, Wissy! You're home, you're home!” He was a small speeding blur and he covered the distance between the tree and the opening gate like a yearling colt. “Oh, we've waited and waited and waited. I thought you'd never come.”

Anne jumped down from her horse and was kneeling, arms wide, to receive the small body as he hurtled toward her. “Yes, I'm here. Home for good.” Her son was in her arms and she could feel the frantic energy of his heart against her own.

“For good? No more going away?”

Anne shook her head, brushing away his tears, her tears.

“No. Home to stay now. Wat?” Anne turned toward her servants. “Take the horses to the stable with Ralph, please. They'll be hungry. And Jane, I'd like you to help.”

“Anne!” Deborah hurried across the inner ward, ignoring the pain that autumn brought to her knees. “Oh, child, child. You're so thin!” Anne de Bohun tried to embrace Deborah but the older woman held the girl at arm's length, looking searchingly into her eyes. Anne smiled crookedly.

“Thin, Mother? That's easily fixed. Your good food and country air is all I need to make me strong again.”

Shading her eyes, Anne watched her three companions leading the horses away and then she turned from Deborah and looked, really looked at her house. The battlements cut a stark pattern across the flaming sky as the mellow stone darkened. The great tree stood like a sentinel and a witness to this moment. Was this enough? Was this place truly enough?

Deborah could see the truth in her daughter's face. Anne was wounded and the pain of that wound was very deep and fierce.
Peace and rest: these were the things her daughter needed. And time to heal.

Edward was impatient. He tugged Anne's skirt. “We've been so busy while you've been gone. Come and see.” He was pulling her toward one of the great storerooms under the Hall's living quarters. Through the open doors, rows of neatly sewn sacks were stacked deep and high.

Anne was suitably impressed. “Did you do this, Edward? All by yourself?”

The little boy giggled. “Not me. Leif did. It's for you. A surprise. You like surprises, don't you, Wissy?”

Anne glanced at Deborah, who nodded. “He's been driving everyone hard, himself also. Leif wants to gather the harvest in ahead of the rains. Edward's been a great help—he's very good at gleaning. Meggan says he's the best she's ever seen.” Edward puffed out his chest and nodded proudly. Deborah ruffled his hair lovingly. “This good summer has given us grain in abundance, and food for the animals we'll keep over winter. And you're back in time for Harvest Home.”

“Am I? That's good. London makes you forget things like Harvest Home. It makes you forget much that is simple and good.” The two women strolled toward the living quarters of the Hall, Edward clinging to Anne's hand. She wouldn't ask about Leif. Not yet.

“They'll be very pleased you're back. The villagers. They've been anxious.”

Anne nodded. At least she'd kept faith with her people. That was something.

“Would you like to rest, Anne?”

Anne shook her head. “I think that Edward and I will go out to the fields. They'll be packing up now. I'd like them to see I'm home.”

“Yes!” Overjoyed, her small son tugged Anne towards the gate. “Come on, come on. Let's go!”

When Anne laughed with little Edward, some of the dull pain that had lodged beneath her ribs shifted like a physical thing; and because he made her run to keep up as they set off toward their
home meadows, she forgot, for that moment, the weight she carried. The weight of sorrow.

The last light lay long across the strips of meadow land and gilded the backs of the men as they scythed the standing corn. Women followed, gathering, stooking, binding, gleaning; timeless rhythm, timeless tasks.

“Look, look who's here!” Edward danced ahead of Anne, yelling, “Leif. Meggan. Look! Wissy's back.”

The tallest of the men stood up and turned, shaded his eyes against the sun. For a moment it seemed he would drop his scythe and run toward the woman and the boy. In the end, he waited for them to come to him.

Anne tried to think of nothing as she walked across the stubbled field, smiling, saying hello, waving to her friends from the village. There was Meggan. There was Long Will. What would Leif say to her? And what could she say to him? What would she feel?

She was close enough to look up into his face now. He wasn't Edward Plantagenet but he was big and brown and real. “Hello, Leif. I'm back.” Such a silly thing to say, but they were the only words she had.

The big man said nothing but then he smiled and leaned down, gently wiping the tears away; the tears she was so ashamed of. “No need for these.”

“Wissy? Why are you crying?”

Leif picked the boy up in a whirl and dumped him, laughing, on top of the harvest wain filled with sacks of unthreshed grain. “That's not for you to ask, young man. Your aunt is tired from the journey, that's all. Let's take her home, shall we, and get this wheat to the threshing floor.” And suddenly, as if she weighed no more than the boy, Leif scooped up Anne de Bohun and tossed her up beside her son; she was winded by surprise.

Meggan nudged Long Will. “London's a bad place, Will. Look how thin she is. And sad too. We'll fix that though, now she's home. Maybe he will?”

Long Will picked up his scythe and his sharpening stone. “None of your business, woman. Leave them be. Gossip is the Devil's tool, as well you know.”

But as he trudged back to the village, Meggan beside him, Long Will heard the boy singing loudly on top of the harvest wain as Anne's bullocks pulled the wagon along the track to the Hall. And as Will looked back, he saw Leif join in, walking beside the open wagon. And their lady, who had looked so unhappy only moments ago, was giggling on her perch, high up on the mountain of sacks. And then she began to sing as well and all three voices—the man's, the woman's, the child's—made harmony together for a moment, until Edward lost the tune and they all laughed.

Meggan looked at him in sly triumph. “Told you so. All will be well. You'll see.”

In work there was healing and, as the year finally began to turn toward winter, Anne de Bohun pushed herself ever harder so that she would have no time or energy to think. Each day she joined the women from the village on the threshing floor in the largest of her barns and, like them, flailed the wheat to detach the ripe grain from the husk. Then, with all the women standing in a circle, together they tossed the grain to separate it from the chaff. These women had become her friends because she never asked them to do what she did not do herself.

Each evening saw the chatelaine of Herrard Great Hall stretch her weary back as she shoveled the last of the clean grain into sacks she'd sewn herself. And, because she was hungry, truly hungry at last, she ate ravenously at night—which pleased Deborah and made Leif smile, to see her so greedy—and fell asleep in front of the kitchen fire as she sewed yet more sacks, oblivious of her itchy clothes. More than once Leif carried Anne up to her own great bed and placed her, fast asleep, beside her dreaming son.

One night Deborah was settled before the fire in the flagged kitchen, a pile of sacks beside her, as Leif joined her. “Ale, Leif?”

The man sat beside the old woman on the settle and gave her a grateful nod. He said nothing as he drank deep. Then, wiping his hand across his mouth, he ventured an opinion. “She's better, I think.”

Deborah squinted in the light from the fire; it was getting
harder to thread the big sacking needle. That was a worrying sign of old age. “Can you see to do this, Leif?”

“Of course.” Like all seamen he was good with rope and deft with his fingers. And what was this thread but a jute rope made very small? “Do you agree with me, Deborah, about Anne?”

Taking back the needle, Deborah flashed a glance at her companion. “In body, I agree she's mending well. Time is the solution to…”

Leif's face was grim. “Edward Plantagenet.”

The old woman laid a hand on the man's knee. “Will you wait, Leif?”

He smiled faintly. “What choice do I have?”

“All the choice in the world.”

They both turned. Anne was standing, barefooted but dressed in her working kirtle, at the bottom of the stone stairs that led down to the kitchen from the rooms above.

“You were asleep.” Leif stood, abashed. He was embarrassed to think Anne had heard them discussing her.

“I woke.” Anne was short. She would not tell them about the dream: wolves and eagles fighting. Always, every night. She spoke urgently. “Leif, I would not hold you here for the world. You have been so good to us, helped us so much. We have no right to—”

Leif put his hands on Anne's shoulders and gently pressed her to sit in his place beside Deborah.

“Yes, you do. Every right. Mathew Cuttifer asked me to come here and make sure you were well prepared for winter. There's still a lot to do. I'm not leaving. Not unless you want me to.”

Anne shook her head. “No. Never.”

Why had she said that? She smiled at him, embarrassed. “I mean, it's true. We do need you here. We can't finish all that needs to be done without you. Can we, Deborah?”

Her foster mother nodded placidly, eyes on her work. This was between the two of them; she did not speak.

“Ale, Lady Anne?” Leif diverted Anne's confusion with instinctive kindness.

Anne stretched and shook her head. “I'm aching in every muscle and bone. And itching!”

Now Deborah spoke. “It's the chaff. It gets into everything. You need to wash it off. I'll boil water for you and you can bathe in front of the fire. You'll sleep better, I promise you that.”

Leif swallowed the last of his ale hastily. “Well then, I'll be off to my bed.” And that was what he intended to do. And yet, later, he found an excuse to wander past the kitchen on his way to inspect the horses—to see if they'd been fed properly, that was what he told himself—and happened to cast one glance through the small kitchen window, which was open to let the steam out.

He saw Anne from the back, naked but for the bath sheet wound around her hips, holding her arms high as Deborah gently washed her body. It was just a glimpse—the line of one shoulder, the supple curve of her back as she bent, the grace of an arm as she held it extended. Love and pity overwhelmed Leif. It was not right that her ribs were so clear beneath her skin; not right that grief had made Anne so slender. He fed the confused horses a second supper that night, thinking deeply. He knew what Anne de Bohun needed, even if she did not. She needed him.