By Loyalty Bound: The Story of the Mistress of King Richard III (29 page)

“My marriage to Edward Stanley...”

“Is not consummated?” He raised an eyebrow in query.

“No. I have never been to his bed, and it was not a marriage to which I freely consented.”

“Then an annulment can be granted.”

He still held her hand firmly in his and she was fixated by his imploring eyes.

“Richard,” she breathed, “are you sincere?”

“Of course I am sincere! Surely you know that I would never make a mockery of such a request as this!” She smiled at his indignant tone.

“Yes,” she told him. “If you can make it possible then surely you must know that my answer is yes.”

He released her hand and put his arms around her. She found herself pressed into a familiar embrace with her cheek on his shoulder and her face in the crook of his neck. He kissed her and held her tightly against him and she found that she was crying tears of joy. “My lord, I will give you more sons,” she sobbed. “I will give you sons without number – strong, bold Plantagenet sons.”

She felt his hand move down her back and she pulled away from him. “Not here!” she said, expecting someone to come in at any moment.

“Why not?” he asked, with a look that scandalised her. “I once loved you in a pleasure garden, why not on a riverbank?” He held out his hand. In less than a few minutes his pain and sorrow had lifted from him and he was the young man she had known, with his mischievous smile and ardent desire for her. And her years of loneliness and anguish were also swept away as she placed her hand in his and he led her to the door.

“The lady and I will walk by the river. We do not wish to be disturbed,” he said to his attendants as they passed.

Outside, the sun felt warmer than the shaded rooms of the palace. Anne held Richard’s arm pressed tightly against her breast as they walked towards the water, where the royal barge with its blue and red canopy was gently rising and falling on the turning tide. He handed her aboard then pulled her against him and kissed her. The taste of him was familiar and she held him as she had longed to do for so many years when he had been forbidden to her, never wanting to let go. He hesitated, his hand on her thigh pressing her against him.

“May I?” he asked.

“Yes,” she breathed into his ear and he eased her down onto the cushioned seat from where she could see the leaves dancing on the trees above them.

Afterwards, he lay with his head on her lap and she fingered his hair.

“Do you mind if we keep this secret for a while?” he asked.

“Secret? Why?” she asked, hoping that his request had not been insincere after all.

“That bastard upstart, Henry Tudor, preys on my mind and I would like to rout his aspirations, and those of his supporters, before we speak openly of our marriage. The idea that I may yet marry the Lady Elizabeth still concerns them and I do not want to assuage their fears just yet.” He reached up to caress her cheek. “You’re disappointed,” he said.

“I want to be with you. Too much time has passed already.”

“I know.” She pressed his hand against her cheek. His palms were smoother now and she wondered if he spent more time at his administration than in honing his skills for the battlefield. She would not be sorry if he did, although his talk was not of peace. “I do not think it will take long to subdue this last rebellion,” he said, “but I would like to have my kingdom secure before I marry you.”

Anne nodded as she turned his hand in hers. “I can wait a little longer,” she said. “And when we are married will you take me to see Middleham?”

He hesitated and she was sorry that she had mentioned the place. “Middleham has unhappy memories for me now,” he said. “But I will go to the church there and to Fountains Abbey to pray for my son’s soul – though such a blameless little soul should have been taken straight to heaven.”

Anne looked down at his anguished face and realised that she would never have the whole of him. There was a part of him that would forever belong to Anne Neville and their son. But how could she begrudge him that? She would not love him as she did if he were cold and heartless.

“Anne,” he said, sitting up. “Would you be willing to give up Hornby? If your marriage is annulled the castle will remain as your property and I have a mind to return it to your uncle. It belongs to the Harringtons by right and, besides, I owe your uncle a reward for his discretion in a difficult matter.”

“It must be a very important matter that you should plan to reward him with my inheritance,” she remarked, meaning only to tease him but sensing his muscles stiffen.

“I’m sorry. I did not mean to criticise,” she said.

“No, I am not displeased with you, Anne,” he said. “But it is a something best known to only a few.”

“You do not trust me?”

“I would trust you with my life.”

She was on the brink of asking him if the matter in which her uncle had been discreet had something to do with the whereabouts of Lord Edward and Lord Richard, but she sensed that he did not want to speak about it. She knew that he would become angry if she pried too far and that when the time was right he would tell her what had happened to his nephews.

“What you have offered me is more than recompense for Hornby Castle,” she told him. “In fact I would be glad to see the Harrington banner flying high from the turret once again.” Though, even as she spoke, she felt sad for Edward who would have to pack up his flasks and jars and move from the chamber in the tower that he liked so much.

“We had best go in,” said Richard at last. “The tide has turned and it looks like rain. Anne, be patient. I promise that I will marry you before Christmas comes,” he said.

They walked back to the palace, uncaring that anyone should see them. But, as she waited for the page to find her uncle to escort her home, Anne’s stomach lurched as she caught sight of the figure lurking in the ante-chamber where visitors waited for an audience with the king.

“Mistress Stanley,” said Sir William. “I did not think to find you here.”

Anne saw the angry jealousy that glittered in his eyes. She prayed that he had not seen her hand in hand with Richard or seen the king’s farewell to her as he had kissed her lingeringly on the lips.

“I am come to speak with the king about our children,” she told him.

Sir William sneered in disbelief. “You disappoint me Anne,” he said. “I am twice the man that he will ever be. And one day I will prove it!”

A shiver ran through her at his words. They seemed an empty threat but she knew better than to trust the Stanleys. She repeated the incident to her uncle as they were rowed back upriver, but he dismissed her fears.

“For all his bluff Sir William has always been a loyal Yorkist. He is more trustworthy than his brother. Think no more of it. He would never do anything to harm the king.”

As the threat of invasion from Henry Tudor intensified, Lord Stanley begged leave from the king to attend to matters on his estates in Lancashire and Anne and Edward returned with him to Lathom. Anne wanted to ride on to Hornby, but she was forbidden.

“Perhaps it is better if you do not go,” said Edward. “There is a bout of the sweating sickness taken hold. Lucy writes that she and her mother are kept busy brewing medicines to alleviate the illness and she advises us to stay away for the present.”

Richard, meanwhile, had begun to plan the defence of his kingdom and a messenger came from Nottingham Castle with a letter for Lord Stanley.

“The king demands I go back to court or send Lord Strange in my place,” he said as he read out its contents. “I have the feeling he does not quite trust me after all,” he remarked with a sly smile at his wife.

“I will go in your place,” volunteered Lord Strange. “I will say that you have succumbed to the sweating sickness. He cannot argue with that.”

“I doubt he will believe it,” said Lord Stanley, “but if you are willing I would appreciate it, for I am more use to our cause here than under the king’s watchful eye.”

“Traitors!” said Anne and they turned to stare at her, as if they had forgotten that she was there.

“You had best make sure that she writes no message to her lover,” advised Lady Stanley. “And in future be more careful of your conversation in her presence.”

“Go to your chamber,” Lord Stanley told Anne.

“So it is I, rather than your wife, you mean to keep as a prisoner is it?” she demanded.

Edward took her arm and pulled her up from the stool. “Come upstairs,” he whispered. “Leave this to me.” Defenceless, she allowed him to take her up to their bedchamber. “I am sorry,” he said after he had closed the door. “My father has no right to treat you like this.”

“Then be a man for once and do something about it!” she challenged him.

“I will. I will suggest that it would be safer for their plans if you are allowed to return to Hornby – if you are willing to risk going?”

“Of course I am willing. Why wouldn’t I be?”

“I was thinking of the sickness,” he reminded her.

“Perhaps if you tell your father I may die it will encourage him to send me there!” Edward didn’t reply and Anne never knew if he had suggested such a thing to Lord Stanley, but the following morning she was allowed to go north with an escort of two retainers.

“Tell my uncles where I am,” said Anne as Edward kissed her hand in farewell. “And take good care of yourself,” she added, reaching out to stroke his face with a sudden rush of affection. “God keep you safe!”

As she rode away Anne looked back at him and wondered if she would ever see him again. She would gladly have waited for an annulment of their marriage, for as long as it took, but she knew that Richard was impatient and she was haunted by the fear that he would use the forthcoming battle to rid himself of her husband as people said he had once rid himself of the husband of Anne Neville.

She wished that she could get a message to him, not only to tell him of Lord Stanley’s betrayal, but also to ask him to have pity on Edward Stanley. But she knew that her escorts on the journey would have their orders to prevent any letters being sent, and that by the time she had written from Hornby and found some reliable messenger to ride to Nottingham it might be too late. The last news she had heard before she left Lathom was that Henry Tudor and a considerable force of his supporters had already set sail from France.

Anne’s mood lifted as the flat lands of west Lancashire were left behind for the rising hills and heather strewn moorland of the north. When she caught her first glimpse of the octagonal tower of the castle against the vivid blue of the summer sky she rejoiced at coming home, thinking that if only Richard and her children could have been at her side her joy would have been without measure.

As they rode up the steep drive and into the courtyard she was surprised by the silence and the absence of Lucy running out to greet her. No advance message must have arrived, she thought, as she eased her aching body from the saddle and looked around.

A door squeaked open and Martha came out. Surprised, but delighted to see her, Anne held out her arms and Martha hugged her but said nothing.

“What is it? What are you doing here?” she asked as she saw the tears in the woman’s eyes and noticed how pale and thin she had become.

“Tis the sickness, my lady. Nearly everyone in the castle is sick and I’ve come to help nurse them. You should not have returned, my lady. This is not a healthy place.”

“Lucy?” asked Anne. “And the children?”

“The little ones are well. They’re safe in the tower nursery, my lady. But Mistress Lucy is very ill.”

Anne followed Martha to the chamber that Uncle James had once used as his solar. It was now turned into a makeshift infirmary, filled with pallet beds.

“Mistress Payne and Mistress Lucy said that if all the sick were kept together it would be easier to nurse them and would stop the contagion spreading. It was some idea that they’d got from Master Stanley, though I told them it was a foolish one. Look how it’s ended,” she said, pointing to the low bed where Mistress Payne was tending her daughter.

Lucy lay pale and drenched in sweat on the straw mattress. Her breathing sounded harsh and laboured as she struggled for breath, each coming as a gasp after the last. Mistress Payne looked up at Anne with tears running freely down her cheeks. She shook her head in despair. “I have done everything I can,” she whispered, “but God will take her before the day is out.”

Anne stared down at the girl who had become her friend and companion. Her loose hair was damp and clung to her scalp and she looked dead already. She stretched out her hand thinking to give her some comfort during her last moments, but Mistress Payne stopped her. “No,” she said. “Enough have died already. Do not risk your own life, my lady.” Anne drew back nodding. She would not risk causing Richard the grief of losing her to this illness. They had the chance of happiness now and she would not be the one to destroy it.

As predicted, Lucy died that night. Her death was the last at Hornby and, as she had been the one to nurse every other victim, it seemed that she had sacrificed her own life for those who had recovered. They buried her in the priory graveyard and Anne said prayers daily for her soul and helped to comfort Ned and little Thomas as best she could, although they did not understand that their mother would not come back to them. She wrote to Edward to tell him, searching for the right words and knowing that no mention of heaven would bring him any comfort.

The August days drew shorter and hotter, interspersed with fierce thunderstorms that shook the tower and filled the bailey with mud as the rain pounded down. No one came near the village as they still feared the sickness and Anne waited, her eyes straining to the south, watching for the messenger who would come to tell her that Henry Tudor had been defeated and that she could go to Richard to become his wife.

For a moment Robert Harrington thought he had seen a ghost. Anne’s son, John, had changed of late from a child into a leggy adolescent on the brink of manhood and as he strode into the hall at Nottingham Castle he reminded Robert so intensely of his dead brother that a fresh wave of grief almost knocked him off balance. But if his features betrayed him as a Harrington the boy’s determination was all his father’s as he gave the king a formal nod of the head before bursting out, “Papa, let me come with you. I beg you!”

John had been excused his studies for the summer months and allowed to ride with his father as a squire, but now that battle looked imminent he had been told that he must return to the castle at Sheriff Hutton.

“No,” replied the king, continuing to study the map which was spread before him on the table.

“But Papa, I will be fourteen next birthday. There are other boys of my age who are going. Why not me?”

“I have said no and you will not change my mind,” remarked Richard gently as he looked up from the map to study his son with obvious affection.

“But Papa, you know that I can draw my bow well and shoot a straight arrow and my...”

“No!” Richard interrupted him, with a face as determined as that of his son. “I have ordered you to return to the castle at Sheriff Hutton. And you are not yet too old for a beating if you continue to defy me!” he added.

Robert watched as they faced one another in a contest of wills and then John appeared to crumple under his father’s bright blue stare and the king moved towards his son and put an arm around his shoulders, briefly brushing his lips against the boy’s dark hair as if he were still a child. “I will not lose another son,” he said quietly, “and your mother would never forgive me if any harm came to you. Do as you are bid.”

Robert saw the tears of frustration and disappointment glistening in John’s eyes. The thought of battle was exciting at that age, he thought, when all you knew of it was the boasting and the stories of those who had returned victorious. The reality was noisy, bloody and terrifying and no place for any boy so young.

With a hostile look at his uncle, as if he thought Robert should have argued for him, John stomped out and Richard turned back to the map. “I will not lose another son,” he repeated with his hands braced against the table and his eyes unfocussed on the parchment before him but seeing an altogether different scene. Then, after a moment, he placed his finger on the map. “Tomorrow we will ride to Leicester where our armies are mustering,” he said. “And from there we will, with God’s help, vanquish our enemies.”

James Harrington watched as the horsemen began to ride out of the bailey at Nottingham Castle four abreast. Each man was well-armed with honed and polished weapons and their armour was burnished to high silver and glinted in the morning sun, dimmed only by the shine on the coats of the horses and their brilliant harness. The sight of so many men with their colourful banners held aloft to catch the breeze gladdened James’ heart. The king had been insistent that they should leave with a great show of confidence, allowing no trace of fear or apprehension to spoil their display.

James knew that the king still had doubts about some men, the Stanleys in particular, but none showed on his face as he steadied his gleaming white destrier as it shifted beneath him, as eager as its rider to move off. With a simple gold circlet placed over his helm and his visor up so that the people could see his face, Richard touched his spurs to the horse’s flanks and it leapt forward. James urged his own horse into the line that followed. By evening they would be in Leicester and it remained to be seen who would join them.

They knew that John Howard, the Duke of Norfolk, and his son Thomas Howard, the Earl of Surrey, were already there with their forces, but Richard had privately admitted to a concern that Henry Percy, the Earl of Northumberland, had not yet arrived even though he had sent word that he was nearby. And James had also seen how alarmed the king had been at the sight of John Sponer and John Nicholson from York who had been waiting for them at their hunting lodge when they had arrived back after a day spent hawking in the forest. Richard had stood before the blazing fire in his mud splattered clothes and had not even taken any refreshment until he had heard what they had to say. Their concern that he had not sent for troops from the city to fight on his behalf had been mirrored by his own as he had pressed his lips tightly together before remarking that as Commissioner of Array in the North it had been Percy’s role to call out men from York. The king had sent John Nicholson back to York to gather men, but there was sickness in the city and how many would come and when they would arrive was still unsure.

The king’s army arrived in Leicester before nightfall and James attended Richard as he saw the men settled and met with the Duke of Norfolk.

“It troubles me not to know whom I can trust,” remarked Richard, who had been helped off with his armour and was now in the private chamber that had been set aside for him at the White Boar Inn. “And now that William Stanley has seemingly turned traitor by doing nothing to arrest the march of the bastard Tudor through Wales, I wonder if his brother will be more loyal.”

James watched as the Duke of Norfolk listened in silence. Although he and his son had brought a numerous army he had confessed that many men had no appetite for more fighting and that despite his scouts there had been deserters and many more who had refused to ride with them at all.

“But we will easily outnumber Tudor,” he reassured the king as Richard paused for a moment and looked out of the open window at a group of laughing soldiers below.

“If those we have remain true,” he said with a frown.

Towards sunset the following evening an army was sighted heading south and a messenger was shown into the inn as they were sitting down to supper to say that the Earl of Northumberland would be in Leicester before darkness fully fell. Studying the slice of sky that he could see through the doorway, James thought that Percy had best hurry.

“Tell him that I will speak with him as soon as he arrives,” said Richard. “I would like to hear from his own lips why he chose not to raise troops in York.”

They had barely touched the dishes of the first course of the meal when Henry Percy was announced and ducked in under the low lintel clad in his armour. He bowed to Richard, but even in the guttering candlelight his expression held an arrogant disdain.

“I deny any tardiness, Your Grace,” he replied when Richard challenged him. “Surely you can understand that it takes three days to march from Alnwick to York and then a further two to reach Leicester? And to do that I had to force our pace.”

“Why did you not raise loyal troops at York?” demanded Richard.

“They have the sickness in York. If I had called men from there and it had spread amongst my own men my force would have been decimated. It would have been the height of folly,” he argued back. “Besides, if you step outside you will see that I have brought a substantial army. The Percys are loyal to our king.”