White Boar and the Red Dragon, The (25 page)

George says he loves Isabel. She is his wife, so he should. She loves him too, though what she sees in him is anybody’s guess. I tried to warn her against him from the start. But she was set on marrying him, even though she probably realised he was marrying her to get his hands on her estates. She would not listen to reason. Even mother could not persuade her. She was completely taken in by his charm and handsomeness.

They even went against the king to get married! He would not allow it, but off they went to Calais and did it anyway—even without waiting for the Pope’s dispensation, as they were cousins!

I do not mourn my so-called husband, Edouard. He was murdered after the battle of Tewkesbury. My father engineered that marriage by humbling himself to the she-wolf Queen Marguerite and pretending to side with her to get her support when he tried to overthrow Edward. He needed her armies to help. The only one who ever loved Edouard was his mother. They had twin natures. I hated and despised him. He was loathsome.

My father really hated Queen Marguerite, and she hated him, venomously. The only reason she agreed to help him was to get her poor husband Henry VI reinstated with my father’s help. They managed it too—for a short while. And she took out her feelings on me. She was always cold and belittled me constantly. Her son was as vicious as she, and perverted. He liked to watch men beheaded for fun, even when he was a child! I was terrified of him and repulsed by him too. Luckily, he did not touch me—not even in the marriage bed. I think he was other ways inclined. Thank God for that! So I am still intact for the man I hope to marry, the man I love, have always loved—Richard. God bring him back safely from the borders soon!

Westminster Palace, September 1471

‘But where is she then, George? You say she is gone from your home, of her own volition? Why would she do that? As her so-called protector, you did not guard her very well!’

‘No one knows, Richard, not even Isabel. One morning recently, she was just not there. Isabel was with her the night before and she said not a word about going away. It is a complete mystery! We searched high and low in the house and grounds, but there was no sign of her! And the servants knew nothing when questioned!’

‘I do not believe you, George! Edward, Sire, do you not agree with me that George is surely lying? The look in his eyes, which I know so well, says so. He has secreted Anne away to keep her from me! I know it! I wish to marry her. And of course, he does not want that. Then his chances of securing the entire Warwick inheritance is gone forever!’

‘My dear Richard, calm yourself! She will be found, ‘tis certain! And if George has her hidden somewhere, then he will be made to reveal her whereabouts, you may be sure!’

‘I tell you, Sire, I know nothing of where she may be. I swear it! Richard here cannot prove a thing against me!’

‘We will see about that, Brother dear. In this, you will never have your way! I love Anne and plan to marry her. I will search ceaselessly until she is found. If you can bribe or threaten your servants and retainers into silence, then I can use stronger threats—to their very lives—to break that silence. They may fear you, but they will fear me more!’

‘Now, Richard, I am sure it will not come to that! A search must be instigated at once. I myself will provide the men to help you. I am sure George here will not mind—if he is as guiltless, as he says—if you start with his various properties? If she is at any of those, she will surely be found quickly?’

‘It will be a waste of time and your resources, Sire! I tell you, she will not be found on any of my estates!’

‘Strangely enough, George, I believe you! You are too devious to hide her in such obvious locations where she could so easily be found. Sire, his own words convince me she is somewhere quite near, but in a place no one would even think to look. Well, I will have every house, tavern, and shop in this great city searched until she is located. And if I find that you were behind it, George, you had better not be anywhere near me when I do!’

Kate, Fotheringhay Castle, Northants, October 1471

The nightmare came again to me last night—Richard arrived, but too late. They got here first.

Baynard’s Castle, London

I am sitting here, with some tapestry work, but I do not touch it, have not touched it all evening. I am far too pent-up!

Ruth is in bed and asleep long since, baby John too. I sent the servants to their quarters at 10 p.m. They must be up so early. I can let him in myself.

I am convinced he will come tonight! My recent note has been answered! Richard is back in court and I have written to him several times. At last, he has answered! I know he will come to me soon—probably tonight, as the note came this afternoon!

So I must wait up, though it gets so very late—in the certainty that he will be with me at last!

I cannot understand why he has not come here before this. I heard he arrived back at Westminster in September from the Scots border. What has he been doing?

I am in a fever of expectancy to see him! I cannot go on like this.

I hate this huge, gloomy palace. I want to get away and get John into the country. It is unhealthy here for him, right by the river. The smells that arise from it are not to be borne and the diseases that come with them, I am sure are all around—a vulnerable baby could not resist them. The city is a fetid, disease-ridden place.

If Richard were here all the time, it would not be so bad. I would risk everything to be with him. But of course, he cannot be. But he must move me elsewhere. I will not stay here.

There is a clanging sound. It echoes through the hall, shaking me from my half-sleep—the doorbell! But of course, it must be Richard—at last!

I rush along the hall to the great door. It is very difficult to open, with many bolts and locks. I have never done it before. It is very heavy, but as I unlock the last bolt, it swings open inwards without me having to pull it—It is Richard, as anxious to see me as I am him!

‘My love…’ but my words freeze on my lips, my heart seems to stop as I stare at those sardonic, leering faces. I hastily try to push the door closed again, but it is just too heavy for me. And there are two of them. Their strength and determination to get in soon outwits me.

I am running down the great hall in a terrified rush, but they are easily overtaking me. They are laughing—with the thrill of the chase, no doubt.

I stand panting, like a hare at bay—they are too strong for me, too determined!

I know what they intend to do—and it is like looking on the necessity of instant death.

‘We intercepted one of your notes, my dear! And answered it!’ Lord Dorset says. He is red-faced, panting, but looks like a hunter mad with blood-lust—‘Very convenient! We have been searching for you for a long time! Ever since he took you away from that whore’s den in Southwark! You should be flattered! I never forget a pretty face—especially one I want to bed! We knew Richard had you hidden away somewhere! But he’s too busy now looking for another lady-love to come at your request! But we are eager enough!’ He laughs loudly again. They both do.

‘Looking for whom?’ I cry out, grasping the back of a chair to steady me.

Their gaze is predatory—like two serpents about to strike.

‘Why, the Lady Anne Warwick, of course, his intended bride! George of Clarence has hidden her away somewhere for his own ends, but Richard will find her eventually! He is searching the whole of London! She was not at any of Clarence’s estates, but then, he is too cunning to hide her there, but Richard had to be sure, I suppose!

No time for you, my dear! It may take him months! And he is most determined! As are we! We are here, my dear, far more attentive than your supposed lover! Face it, he has forgotten you now! The thought of Anne’s vast estates, which he will get his hands on when he marries her, has quite eradicated you from his mind!’

‘Never! Richard loves me. We have a child together!’ I blurt out.

‘So what? I have dozens of bastards—many I have never even heard of, I suspect! And Lord Grey here too, I expect. We’ve long forgotten their mothers too! Nice at the time—but then, there are plenty more fish in the sea, as they say!’ They both snigger, sickeningly.

‘But we are wasting time! This time, you will not outwit us, pretty one! You may as well accept it! You will probably enjoy our attentions—most women do!’

Then, with more laughter, they come at me, approaching from two different sides. My physical horror is echoed by the horror and hurt in my heart and mind—Richard is not here to save me this time from these vicious would-be rapists—and worse—Richard loves another.

Richard, Westminster Palace, November 1471

‘Dorset, you vicious degenerate! Sire, this creature—whom you call friend, and Lord Grey, his equally depraved brother, have committed a most terrible act upon the innocent woman whom I love—who bore me my beloved son, John! What are you going to do about it? Neither of them are fit to be your closest friends, the queen’s sons or not! I have felt this for years. Now this act of pure evil has prompted me to speak my mind at last! They have always been a bad influence on you!’

‘Dickon, my dear young brother, what is this girl to you anyway, really? You are to marry the Lady Anne at Eastertide, the one you have truly loved for years, I know. And she is the greatest heiress in the land! Why should you care so much about a passing mistress who bore you a bastard? Bastards are two a penny! Like Lord Hastings here and Lord Dorset and his brother, I am sure I have dozens I do not even know the existence of! And you have looked after this Kate, have you not? Even taken her to our dear mother’s safe-keeping at Fotheringhay Castle, as she is ill? What more can you do?’

‘It is you, Edward, as king, I wish to do something! To punish this rapist here and his vile brother! How can you take it so lightly, Sire? She loves me and trusts me. I could not be there when she needed me, as I was searching for Anne, whom our dear brother George had abducted! I was not there when Kate needed me, and these—things—took advantage and deliberately intercepted her message to me and tricked her into thinking it was I who was coming to see her that night at Baynard’s Castle! And all the time, they were planning to get in and rape her! They tried before, you know. That is why I took her there to what I imagined was a safe place! I had not reckoned with the deadly and ruthless determination of your “friends” to get their own way with her! They should be severely punished. They do exactly what they like, presuming on your friendship to back them up and get away with everything!’

‘What would you have me do, Dickon? Behead them? For something which is happening dozens of times every day in all walks of life?’

‘Edward, you have known many women—have you actually ever raped one? I don’t think you have, in spite of your excesses, which are well-known. You have the decency to draw the line somewhere, at least. But these—these dissolutes—who dare to call themselves friends of the king, have done it many times in their lives! And you seem to regard it as an act of no importance whatever!’

‘In the scheme of things, Dickon, it is not! And I admit, I have never needed to rape any woman—they always come to me more than willingly, thank goodness! And I do prefer to have a compliant mate! My advice to you, dear little brother, is to forget it! And think instead of the woman you are to wed soon! She is the important one! You have done what you can for this Kate of yours, as I said before. Now leave her to our good mother’s care! Make provision for the boy, if you feel the need to, but then let it go—the whole affair! This is the best advice I can give you!’

‘I cannot believe that you dismiss it out of hand without a second thought! I have loved you well, Edward, as my brother and as my king, but I feel I do not know you any more—that I have never really known you properly! It was bad enough you also did nothing to George for having poor Anne abducted and subjected to two months of hell in that dreadful kitchen! I also remember, as a boy, being so shocked that you would not punish Hastings here when he raped that twelve-year-old girl, who came to court heavily pregnant with her distraught father to demand justice! What did you do? You gave the old man gold, I remember, and called it justice!

Now there is no morality left in this great kingdom of ours, let alone justice! I will not forget this and if you, as the king, will do nothing to punish them, then, one day, I promise you, on my most sacred honour, that I will find a way to see they get what they deserve! They will not escape my wrath, either of them!’

Anne, St Martin-Le-Grande Sanctuary, London, Late 1471

At last I am safe! Safe from George of Clarence in particular! Richard searched a long time, but he found me in the end and rescued me from that dreadful place! I knew George wished me ill, especially on that awful morning when two of his henchmen dragged me from my room at dawn and bundled me into a closed litter, one with a hand tight over my mouth so that I could not scream for help! I was terrified. They answered not a word, however hard I pleaded during the journey, but one just put a gag in my mouth to silence me and continued, plodding on deep into the stinking back streets of the city.

Before I knew it, I was taken from the litter and propelled down several flights of steep stairs to what I can only describe as a hell-hole! So confused and distraught was I by that time that it could have been hell, for all I knew.

The roaring fires, the stink of roasting carcasses, and the almost unbreathable hot air filled with fumes and spitting hot fat, the raucous shouts and laughs emitting from the place, which I soon saw was a large and busy basement kitchen, made it very like what I imagined hell to be.

They deposited me and left at once, again without a word.

There, for two whole months, I was made to work hard, like any common skivvy, ignored or laughed at when I protested, as I frequently did—at the beginning—that my being there was all some terrible mistake! I was even threatened with a whipping by the head cook if I did not do as I was told and give up whining! I could not believe that this had really happened to me so unexpectedly and irrevocably. But I knew George of Clarence was behind it somewhere, when I overheard the landlord of the cook-house tell one of the pastry cooks that he had once worked for Clarence and that this business he now ran was a perk given to him for ‘services rendered’ to his master in the past!