The Queen of Last Hopes (34 page)

“I would hardly be here if I had,” I snapped.

Edward was less on edge than I. “Will the Lady Anne be here?”

Louis smiled. “You are eager to see your bride, dear boy? I fear that you must wait a few days more. The countess and her daughters and the Duke of Clarence are still in Normandy, but don’t worry. You shall be bedding her in due time.”

My son blushed, and so did I.

A clattering of hooves and a blowing of horns indicated an important arrival, who I knew could be none other than the Earl of Warwick. Though the most powerful man in France stood beside me, I could not help but wish that my father and my brother, who were busy with their own military affairs in Provence, were at my side as well.

“Stand still for a moment,” Katherine Vaux hissed, and I obeyed. She tucked a stray bit of hair that had escaped my hennin into its place and smoothed my gown. “There. You look splendid.”

I sank into my chair of state moments before Warwick was announced. Respectfully, he stood at the door until I motioned him forward. Studying him before he dropped to his knees, I was struck once more at how ordinary a man he looked. He was magnificently dressed—indeed, as Louis scorned elaborate robes, and Edward’s and my own clothing showed the poverty we had been living in over the past few years, he was the best dressed person in the chamber—but otherwise there was nothing in his face that one would recall, seeing him in a crowd. “You may speak.”

“Your grace”—Warwick addressed the general area of my feet—“I have done great wrongs to you in the past—”

“And to my son.”

“And to your son. Your grace, I beg that you put the past behind us and that you allow me to offer you my humble service now.”

“You faithfully served the man you seek to remove from the throne now.” Beside me, I heard Louis cough in warning, but the sight of Warwick, even this kneeling Warwick, was beginning to revive my old anger. “How do I know that having turned traitor to him, you will not turn traitor to me? How do I know that you are not double dealing now?”

Louis stopped in the middle of a second cough. “My dear lady, we have discussed this—”

“We may have discussed these things, but it is one thing for you to tell me what this man intends, and another for him to tell me himself what he intends. How do I know that he is sincere? How do I know that having struck at my dear friends, he will not strike at them again? How do I know that having humiliated my dear husband once, he will not humiliate him again?” I glared down at Warwick’s neck. “Speak!”

“Your grace, Edward of England has done me wrongs, which would be tedious to recount here. Your grace may be assured that I have no intent of reconciling with him. And I have suffered hardships coming here myself, which cannot be forgotten easily. Did your grace know that my first grandson was born to the Duchess of Clarence on our way here?”

“No.”

“The birth was premature. He was born, died, and buried at sea, all within an hour’s time.”

“I am sorry to hear it.” It was typical, I thought, that Louis had never mentioned this to me.

“It grieved me very much, the more so as I have never been blessed with a son and never will be. Watching his body being lowered into the sea made me understand, better than I ever have in the past, your grace’s love for your own son. Your son by King Henry.”

Despite myself, I relaxed slightly in my chair. Louis gave an encouraging cough.

“I well understand your grace’s doubts; I would have them too. But I came here prepared to swear an oath that I would serve King Henry, Prince Edward, and your grace, and one thing that can be said of me is that I have not broken a solemn oath.” Warwick raised his eyes as far up as he deemed politic. “Your grace, King Henry was generous enough to take the late Duke of Somerset back to his side after the duke deserted him for Edward. Some might have turned the duke away, but King Henry welcomed him, and the duke subsequently died for his cause. I am honest enough to admit that I would rather survive the risk I am about to take, but I am willing to die for the House of Lancaster, just as the duke did, if God ordains it. I can offer no greater proof of my sincerity.”

He drooped his head. I was silent for a moment or two. “Very well,” I said. “In the king’s name, I grant you pardon.”

Louis’s sigh of relief filled the room as I silently calculated how long I had kept the earl on his knees. Fifteen minutes at least, I decided.

***

Several days after I had officially forgiven Warwick, we processed to the Church of St. Mary, where the Earl of Warwick swore upon the cross that he would uphold the cause of House of Lancaster. King Louis and his brother, Charles of Guienne, swore that they would uphold Warwick in his task, and I swore that I would henceforth treat Warwick as a faithful subject and would not reproach him for his past deeds. Things moved quickly after that: within days, Warwick, accompanied by the Duke of Clarence, had gone to the coast to see to the assembly of his invasion fleet, and Edward and I were at Amboise, watching as Warwick’s womenfolk were ushered into our presence.

The Countess of Warwick, the Duchess of Clarence, and Lady Anne were unmistakably a mother and her daughters. All three were tall and slender, with fair complexions, and the sliver of hair their headdresses revealed was light blond. They each wore the tall, pointed hennins that were the fashion here in France; in my nervousness, I wondered if the truncated version still held sway in England.

Edward stared at Anne with undisguised appreciation as she and the rest rose at my command. No man in his right mind could have disliked what he saw: dark blue eyes, blooming cheeks, a straight little nose, and kissable lips. Could Anne dislike what she saw? I tried, with great difficulty, to see my son objectively. He had shot up a couple of inches recently and had yet to grow into them, which gave him a certain gawky air, but he had largely been spared the spottiness that troubled so many other boys his age. Dark-haired and dark-eyed like his father, he had a similar facial structure as well, but Henry’s mild features had turned sharper, more determined, in his son. It lent his handsome face a stern expression, which softened, however, when he smiled or when he was gaping at a pretty girl, as he was now.

With a start, I realized that I had been so busy with these reflections that I was tardy in greeting my daughter-in-law to be. I smiled quickly. “Welcome, my dear. I am very glad to see you here, as well as your mother and sister.”

“Thank you, your grace.”

“You left your father the Earl of Warwick well, I hope?”

“Yes, your grace,” Anne said

“You had an uneventful journey here, I trust?”

“Yes, your grace.”

How long could we go on like this? I truly did not know what to say to the child. Even if she had not been daughter to a man I had hated for so long, my lengthy stay at Koeur, where I seldom saw anyone other than my fellow exiles, my servants, and my French relations, had not improved my ability to carry on an inconsequential conversation. Edward might be scarcely better. He was well-read and well-trained in the art of war, I realized belatedly, but there had been little time or money during our exile to train him in the more gentle arts. Perhaps I should have sent him to my father’s court, where he would have learned how to play an instrument, to write verse, to pay the compliments that young ladies expected.

But Edward was the one who rescued us. “Welcome, my lady.” He lifted Anne’s hand—a dainty one, I saw—to his mouth and kissed it with more savoir-faire than I would have expected. “It is pleasant to see an English rose here in France.”

Where in the world had Edward learned this manner of talk? It did not, however, have much of an effect on Anne, who thanked him stiffly.

Unbowed, my son turned to me. “Mother, I would like to speak to my betrothed privately. May we walk out in the garden?”

“Why, of course,” I said, wondering what further botanical compliments this would inspire my son to muster and hoping that they proved more successful than the last.

I always thought I would marry the Duke of Gloucester,” Anne informed me as soon as we entered the garden at Amboise. Aside from a brief exchange about whether we should go here or to the menagerie (I vetoed the menagerie, feeling that I did not need the competition from Louis’s elephant), it was the first thing she had said to me since we had left our mothers’ presence.

Gloucester, King Edward’s youngest brother, was just a year or so older than me, I recalled. I had no idea what he looked like. “Did you want to marry him?”

Anne shrugged enigmatically and accepted my invitation to sit down on a bench of turf. In a finicky manner that made me wonder how she had survived the miserable voyage from England, during which her sister had given birth, she arranged her skirts around her. “I had grown so accustomed to the idea, I hardly thought about wanting or not wanting. It was just part of my life. But I did like the idea of being a duchess.”

“Well, with me you will become Princess of Wales. Then queen.”

“If all goes well.”

“It’s your own father who is arranging all of this. Don’t you have faith in him?”

“Of course I do in him, but not necessarily in the rest of you. If this plan fails, I will be exiled at Koeur with you. And then I’ll just be a hanger-on among your family.”

How could I have wanted to kiss this girl just a few minutes before? “If it comes to that, we’ll get an annulment.”

Anne considered this for a moment or two, then frowned. “It won’t be easy, not with the dispensation we’ll be getting. And I’m sure our parents will make us consummate it.”

“Horrors,” I murmured. “Did you tell your father that you didn’t wish to marry me?”

“Goodness, no. One doesn’t argue with my father. And he gave me this.” She held out her wrist. A sapphire bracelet that could have fed us at Koeur for a month flashed upon it.

“You should have argued. Perhaps he would have given you rubies for the other wrist.”

“He did promise me a nice gift on our wedding day,” my bride said.

“My mother has some jewels she plans to give you on that day,” I said. “They used to be her mother’s.”

“Poor thing, can she afford it? It is petty to notice those things, but her gown looks as if it is on its last legs. Though she is still a beautiful woman for her age.” She studied my clothing. “Your clothing is rather stylish, though.”

It was, because Mother always insisted that I be clothed like a prince even when she could no longer afford to clothe herself like a queen. By God, when my father recovered his crown, she would have some new clothes—and jewels to replace the many she had pledged to pay our expenses—even if I had to rip them off the back of this spoiled brat. “Her father has them, actually. He will send them after the dispensation arrives.”

“Oh, I see.”

I cast around for a topic that wouldn’t tempt me to shake this girl. “Do you like France?”

“Well, of course, I have spent much time in Calais, so it isn’t entirely new to me, but I suppose Calais doesn’t quite count. But no, I don’t like it very much. I like the North of England, actually.”

“The North? I wouldn’t have thought it was your sort of place.”

“That shows how little imagination you have. The North is very beautiful in its way. Of course, I spent more time at Warwick Castle than anywhere. I miss it there too.”

She did look homesick, and for a moment I felt almost sorry for her. It couldn’t be easy, I reminded myself, for this pampered girl of barely fourteen to suddenly find herself in exile. I’d been living that life since age seven, following Palm Sunday Field, short of money and always on someone else’s sufferance; though I didn’t like that mode of living, I was used to it. “When Father’s back on the throne, we’ll spend some time in the North,” I offered.

“Father,” Anne mused, and I tensed, knowing already from this brief encounter that this tone of voice did not bode well. “Edward, I hardly know how to put this, but well, I’ll just ask it. You are legitimate, aren’t you?”

I could do nothing but sputter, “How dare you insult me—and my mother—like that?”

“Well,” said Anne reasonably. “It is rumored, and it is something that I should know for sure. Don’t you think? One doesn’t want our marriage to be founded on a lie.”

“I am legitimate. The rumors you have heard were of your beloved father’s own making and for his own purposes. And now, if you’ll excuse me, I shall go for a walk on my own. If I stay here one more minute, I would strangle you. And not only would that be against the rules of knighthood, that would spoil everything, wouldn’t it?”

“I only asked,” Anne called as I stalked away.

***

Though Anne’s and my first interview had been less than successful, I found when I returned that our mothers had gotten on rather better—probably to the countess’s credit, for my mother was not the sort of woman who spoke easily to other women, save for those who had served her forever, like Katherine Vaux. With us gone, they’d busied themselves by sewing baby clothes for Queen Charlotte, who had given birth to a son just a few weeks earlier. I’d been one of the godfathers.

When my mother asked later how I had gotten on with Anne, I didn’t tell her how unpleasant the experience had been. Almost as if we’d agreed upon it, Anne must not have told her mother either, for when we supped with Louis that evening, the countess was all smiles. Anne and I sat side by side and made polite conversation, and Louis beamed at us paternally.

Under the circumstances, we would have to make the best of each other, I knew, and Anne no doubt knew it too. So we passed our days at Amboise, alternating between bickering and cool civility, while Warwick and Clarence, along with the Earl of Pembroke and Warwick’s brother-in-law the Earl of Oxford, attended to their men’s business on the coast. They were expected to leave for England any day, but unfavorable winds, and a blockade of La Hogue by Burgundy and England, held them there until more friendly winds scattered the ships pinning them in. At last, on September 9, Warwick’s ships pulled out of harbor.

I have never seen any woman pray as much as my mother did that September; we might as well have been living in a nunnery. She fasted too, sometimes several days a week, and I do believe that she would have donned a hair shirt if someone could have been found to make her one. When she wasn’t on her knees, she was pacing around the castle, waiting for the messenger who would give us news of our enterprise. The rest of us were scarcely better. Even Louis, who alone among us had no close relation whose life would be forfeit if our invasion failed, was on edge. His greyhounds, who sensed his moods about as well as or better than as any human being, slunk around their business quietly.

By the end of September, we had received an optimistic letter from Warwick, bringing the news that he had landed safely and was gathering support. This was something, but not enough to lure my mother from the altar or strike any comfort into Louis’s hounds.

Then, during the first week of October, Louis burst into the solar that had been assigned to our group of refugees. “Where is Queen Margaret?”

“Praying,” I said.

“Get her up, get her up!” Katherine Vaux obediently went to the door, and Louis all but shoved her out of it. “Hurry, woman!”

Katherine had barely rushed out of the door when she collided with my mother approaching it, as if lured there by a sixth sense. “Have you news?”

“Yes, I have news. We have succeeded! Without striking a single blow. Warwick has entered London. Edward, knowing that resistance was futile, has fled England. And King Henry sits again upon the throne of England.”

“My husband is free?” whispered my mother.

“That’s what I said. He was taken from the Tower and lodged in state at the Bishop of London’s palace. He is to be recrowned with great ceremony in a few days.”

My mother seemed about to faint for a moment. “God be thanked,” she muttered as I steadied her. She pulled from my grasp and embraced Anne, toward whom up until now she had been polite, but somewhat distant. “This was all due to your father—and to King Louis,” she added politicly. “I am grateful to them beyond words. I should never have doubted them—or the Lord. I thank them for giving me you as a daughter, too, for this could not have otherwise come about.”

Anne smiled rather smugly.

“My husband is a man who can do great things,” the Countess of Warwick said.

“How does King Henry fare? Did he send a message?”

“Yes, he sent his love to you and the Prince of Wales, and longs to see you soon,” Louis said. “He looked rather shabby when they led him out of the Tower, they say, but they put some proper clothes on him, and he looks fine now.”

“But how is his mind?”

Louis seemed to find the question largely irrelevant. “Well, it will take him some time to get used to being a free man, and to ruling, again. But in the meantime, Warwick will manage all.”

“Where did March go? What will he do?”

Louis blinked as my mother reverted to King Edward’s former title. “Seek support from Burgundy, no doubt, as his sister is married to the duke there. But why fret over all of these details today, my dear lady? Surely today should be a time for rejoicing.”

“And I do. It is just so sudden.” My mother embraced me. “To see you restored to your rank as Prince of Wales gratifies me beyond words. I must go give thanks.”

She walked shakily away, led by Katherine Vaux. Anne stared after her before turning her attention to me. “So you and I are now Prince and Princess of Wales,” Anne observed. “Or the next best thing in my case, since we have been betrothed.” She looked at me with a new interest, then turned to Louis. “When shall we get our dispensation to marry, your grace?”

“Any day now.” Louis winked at me.

That afternoon, Anne let me take her to a secluded part of the garden and kiss her, not once but three times—I couldn’t help myself, for the girl was quite cuddlesome once she melted a bit. She even kissed me back to some extent. “You really are quite handsome,” she observed breathlessly.

Daringly, I laid a hand upon her breast, albeit a breast with several layers of fabric shielding it from my insolent touch. She frowned and backed away. “But not that handsome,” she warned, bending and patting one of the ever-present greyhounds, who growled at me. “Why, the dispensation hasn’t even arrived yet!”

***

Every day at Koeur, under the tutelage of some of the knights who shared our exile, I had practiced the arts of war with my companions—most of them boys connected with my grandfather René’s court in some way. Louis had arranged for me to keep up this routine at Amboise. I was running against William Vaux in the tiltyard when I saw Anne watching me from a distance, the first time she’d shown much of an interest in my daily activities. I decided not to halt what I was doing, but went on about my practice while she stood watching, though it was disconcerting to have those blue eyes fixed upon me.

“You’re skilled,” she acknowledged when I, finished for the day and stripped of my armor, walked over to acknowledge her presence. “I used to watch the boys in my father’s household practice, and you’re as good as any of them. Of course, they were younger.”

I had just turned seventeen, an anniversary that had been marked with more jollity than in the past. “Thanks for nothing.” I grinned.

“Well, it’s just that they left to go back to their homes when they were fifteen or sixteen. You needn’t be offended.”

“I wasn’t. When you’ve spent your life in exile, being called a bastard and the son of a madman, you either get offended at everything or nothing. I’m more the latter, I suppose.”

“I suppose you are still offended by my asking you whether you were a bastard.”

“No, though I do find it amusing that now that my father’s on the throne again, you no longer seem to care.”

“It is not that,” Anne said testily. “It is simply that I believed you.” She looked at me, and I felt another delicate question coming on. “Edward, how mad is your father?”

I supposed that this was a step up from questioning my legitimacy. “You forget I haven’t seen him since I was nine. Back then he never acted like people say madmen act, at least not when I was old enough to notice things. He never spoke gibberish; he could talk to someone just as you and I are talking now. But there was always something very odd about him. Unworldly, you might say. Or even other worldly.”

“He’s never fought in a battle.”

“No. The closest he came was at the first St. Albans, they say, and all he really did there was stand around. That’s one reason I’ve always practiced my fighting skills; a king should fight in battle. My grandfather the fifth Henry did.” I hesitated, wondering whether I should confide in my future wife, and took the leap. “When my father was captured, I decided I would do everything I could to be like my grandfather instead of my father, even though I do love him.”

Anne didn’t make the rude remark I’d dreaded, but simply nodded. “Yes, a king should fight. Your mother would like him to, I’m sure.”

“Probably, but she accepts him as he is, and loves him. I think she always has.”

“She half scares me,” admitted Anne with some trepidation. When no reprimand came from me, she added, “She’s always perfectly pleasant to me, but I don’t find her easy to be around.”