The Exiled (28 page)

Anne was breathless, instantly, ‘Stop! Edward!’

He had his hands inside the silk wrap. ‘Say it.’

‘Yes! Yes, oh, please stop.’

The warm hands on her body stilled. But he kissed her; she did not prevent that.

‘Very well. I have your word.’

Swathed around once more in the cloak, the king bowed himself from the solar, wrenching the door open so quickly that Ivan nearly fell into the room. Anne smiled dazedly at the embarrassed servant.

‘Ivan, fetch Deborah for me, please, after you have seen the king’s messenger from our door. I must dress.’

So, the die was cast, and she would go to the reception tonight. Last night when she had told the king of the plot to murder her, he’d been outraged, but today, she’d seen the fear in Elisabeth Wydeville’s eyes when the word was given voice. Somehow Anne had to find solid proof that the queen had tried to have her murdered.

And for that she had to be brave.

O
nce she was dressed Anne made sure that tonight she was amongst the first of the duke and duchess’s guests to arrive and, this evening, she’d joined a party of friends.

Tonight also she would do her best to be inconspicuous; masks were to be worn — they would help her in the task. So, clothing herself with a confidence she did not feel, this time she was carried to the Prinsenhof in Mathew Cuttifer’s own litter.

The tented wedding-hall was crowded with many of the guests from the previous evening, but tonight the focus was on the wedding gifts burdening the press of liveried servants as they tried, in vain, to push through the milling, excited, overdressed throng.

It might have been Anne’s intention to be inconspicuous this evening, but the cream silk dress was a lamp lit on a dark night. Its very simplicity brought a ripple of comment as Anne arrived amongst a happy crowd of her own friends: mostly merchants from the Italian community of Brugge, gold dealers and jewellers principally, with their wives and sons and daughters. They might all be masked, but the brilliance of the group — flashing dark eyes behind the masks, white teeth and the ‘Florentine’ style of their opulent clothes — made them a centre of attention.

Envy is a powerful underground river in human affairs and it was flowing strongly tonight; Maud Caxton was not the only woman to cast hostile looks at Anne. Intense, unacknowledged fear provoked and fed Dame Caxton’s anger and Anne caught an almost physical sense of it as she looked up to find Maud glaring at her across the throng of guests from behind an eerie white half-mask which gave an impression, disturbingly, that the bones of her skull had surfaced through the skin.

Anne nodded graciously and then turned away, anxiety flooding her gut. Such concentrated spite was a wild force loose in her life. How many others felt as Maud did, and how could she bear their implacable opposition, year after year, if she continued to live in Brugge?

The king had said he wanted her to return to England with him; she and Deborah could go home maybe, to her mother’s lands — her lands now — the place she’d never seen, and bring little Edward up decently in peace, in quiet obscurity; if the queen could be persuaded to let her be.

And if she could bear to part herself from the king.

She had no time to think further as the courts of Burgundy and England processed together into the great space of the banqueting hall, stepping gracefully and rhythmically to music from a gallery filled with the members of the Guild of Minstrels; they alone had licence to play at public events of this kind.

Edward, his face impassive, walked forward ahead of the duke with his sister, the new duchess on his arm; following them was Duke Charles, conducting Elisabeth, whilst Duchess Cicely brought up the rear escorted by the cardinal, the papal nuncio to the court of Burgundy, who had officiated at the marriage only yesterday.

The king was careful not to let his glance sweep too obviously over the guests tonight in search of Anne, yet he’d seen the cream dress laid out in her solar and his peripheral vision registered she was there because of it — a source of light amongst a sea of darkly glittering courtiers. His belly clenched. How would he see her alone again tonight?

That was Anne’s thought too as the royal party sauntered past on their way to the line of chairs of state — yes, Maxim had managed to restore what he had hired just ahead of the set-up for tonight’s entertainment.

There’d been little time to think between the king’s visit and arriving at the Prinsenhof, but now another aspect of the nightmare hit her with a hammer’s force: Edward’s wife had plotted her death just as the previous Queen of England, Margaret of Anjou, had tried to kill Anne’s mother and, indirectly, succeeded.

The similarities between the lives of each generation were eerie: was she living out her mother’s life? She’d not died with Edward, the king’s child, as her mother had with her, but what if there should be another?

She closed her eyes for one brief moment: to think of children, conception, conjuring up the moment she and Edward had first touched each other again — was it only one day, one night ago?

‘Are you well, Lady Anne?’ Anselm Adorno touched her hand; he was twenty years old and the son of a famous family of Genoese merchants, long settled in Brugge. Anne turned to look into his concerned face; she was grateful for his friendship.

‘The heat, Anselm, it’s just the heat.’

And it was hot again for this second night of celebration of the marriage between the Duke Charles and the Princess Margaret. Sweat slid down between Elisabeth Wydeville’s swollen breasts as she endured the ceremony of gift-giving, a pageant that seemed endless.

Sitting in an exquisite but unforgivingly hard chair of state beside her stony-faced husband, she contrived, through iron will, to smile and smile until her face ached as overdressed merchants and their wives presented yet more opulent chess sets, glass from Venice, jewels, carpets, musical instruments, even horses and dogs to the ducal couple — all extraordinarily valuable and many in execrable taste.

It had been explained to Elisabeth that the tradition of masking at the gift-giving was meant to save the blushes of those who could not afford to give lavish presents; yet the pretty conceit did little to disguise the identity of donors since the groom invariably greeted them, correctly, by name, which seemed part of the entertainment, and brought vulgar squeals of delight from the onlookers whether he got it right or intentionally wrong.

Elisabeth shifted in her seat. Would this tide of lumpen Lowlanders never recede? She must to speak to Edward, and soon, and alone. Anne de Bohun was alive; it was a terrible blow, but somehow she must deflect the king, get him to concentrate on the political web she was trying to spin for her own defence and his. Yes, his safety too, she was convinced of that!

Beside her, Edward also was impatient, but for different reasons. He wasn’t certain if Elisabeth had recognised Anne yet this evening, but he knew the moment could not be far off.

‘And now, Your Graces, an unknown lady wishes to approach with her gift.’

The herald had a penetrating voice, almost as loud as the brass whinny from the two trumpeters who signalled the arrival of yet another donor.

‘Long life and may you have much joy of each other, Duke Charles and you, Duchess Margaret. For this, my poor token is symbol of all our prayers.’

Edward felt rather than saw Elisabeth tense at his side as Anne, in her simple ivory-cream dress, bowed deeply whilst four palace servants placed the cassone at the feet of the bridal couple. There were gasps as the crowd surged closer, ogling the exquisite chest.

‘Lady Anne — I believe I recognise you — unmask, so that we may thank you properly!’ Smilingly, Anne removed her mask. ‘This marriage casket is most elegant, most sumptuous; it will be an adornment to our chamber. Do you not agree, Duchess?’

English princess though she was, Margaret had been stunned with the wealth of her husband’s dukedom on display tonight, but this cassone was a most noble gift indeed.

‘Lady Anne, I must thank you doubly for your magnificent generosity — and for your exquisite taste.’

Anne, in her cloud-like dress couldn’t help smiling happily. She was still young enough, vulnerable enough, to be thrilled when others enjoyed her presents. Edward felt love and lust flush through him like hot butter — she was adorable.

‘Also, my ... husband, the duke,’ the hesitation was pretty and endearing, ‘has given me your betrothal gift — the perfumes, the most exquisite material I have ever seen, the ruby; and now this! I shall very much enjoy planning with you what good uses I can make of all your generous gifts to us.’

Time slowed and though Anne saw the duchess speak, she heard not one word as the hall dissolved around the newly married couple and Anne glimpsed something, something unexpected: Caxton and the duchess happily poring over a large book together, the merchant pointing to the letters with ink-stained fingers; and there was a smear of ink on his expensive doublet too. Strange in such a fastidious man. And it was winter, for the duchess was wearing fingerless gloves and a fur-lined cloak.

‘...when you visit us, very soon.’ Anne was back in the hot hall of the present as she smiled uncertainly at the new duchess and then bowed to each of the royal family before gracefully backing away, leaving her cassone in pride of place at the duchess’s feet.

Elisabeth had smiled gently, nodded approvingly at Margaret’s speech — altogether the picture of courtly grace — but she’d observed her husband leaning forward, just slightly, to better see Lady de Bohun as she rejoined her friends, and a flash of rage, of intense heat, transformed her normally fair skin to hot rose.

The duchess smiled graciously too, as was appropriate, but she found it hard not to grin in triumph at the queen’s expression. She too had seen her brother watch Lady de Bohun with all the fixed purpose of a hawk out hunting.

Something of the duke’s spirit of mischief had flicked Margaret into granting Anne extra recognition tonight; just because she knew it would make Elisabeth furious. Which it had.

The bride sighed happily. How wonderful that she had her own court now, well away from her scheming sister-in-law.

For a moment the queen and the duchess crossed glances. Each smiled sweetly at the other — and neither was fooled.

War had just been declared. Over Anne.

I
t was very late, well past midnight, but the celebrations at the palace continued.

Tonight there was no curfew bell, no chaining of the streets, and people were still gathering at corners and in the squares and courtyards all through the city in happy, roiling crowds. All the municipal fountains ran with excellent wine, day and night, so if they were drunk, they were mostly happy drunk and expecting to sleep very little for the next nine days.

Warm nights, much food, much excitement, even more sex: taverns and whores were bathing in a money shower, yet much of all a man could want was provided free throughout the city.

A wedding such as this pumped red gold through all the veins and arteries of the city and tonight, as they drank deep, the Bruggers hung on the stories of all the entertainments — the clothes, the gossip and the scandal of last night’s wedding feast — from those who’d been lucky enough to be there.

Have you heard about the cunningly trained flock of goats? Yes, they sang, really — though some said, brayed — a specially composed motet to the wedding couple; then, what about the white whale? At first, none could see how the leviathan had moved, swam rather, then a very drunk mechanist in the Markt gave the secret away to his enraptured audience. Massive wheels concealed in the fins and the tail, that was the secret; the great fish had entered the hall spouting water, which alarmed all the rich women in their sinfully expensive dresses — and then, when it opened its mouth, there were exposed fully forty men dressed as mer-people warbling an epithalamion to the duke and his duchess!

And as if that had not been enough, now, tonight, after the formal gift-giving, a troupe of English mummers was still performing, even now. Did you hear that the players had ridden into the hall on the backs of live lions and tigers? Even an elephant, which had defecated and voided great rivers of piss, to the shame of the animal handlers, but everyone else’s great merriment?

It was said too that as the guests sat down to eat, girls dressed as angels, wings and all, had flown down from the roof on invisible wires, startling some elderly guests so much that they cast themselves down on to their knees and begged forgiveness for past sins!

There was much chortling and some envy. What you wouldn’t give, eh, to be there? Close enough to touch royalty, maybe goosing some of those rich bitches as they stuffed themselves near to bursting their laces?

Their duke looked after his people — that was the general verdict. There’d be plenty of free entertainment in the days ahead — like the archery today, even if it’d ended so badly. A shame for the pretty English girl who’d paid for their pleasure on behalf of the duke and his bride.

Lucky bastard, Duke Charles, when you thought on it. Three wives and each one more good looking, and younger, than the last. And now this fourth one, very toothsome.

‘But no better looker than her brother the king. What shoulders he has, and hair — just like gold, I say!’ shouted one very drunk whore, boozing at the sign of the Golden Fleece, an inn much patronised by Genoese and Italian clerks.

‘Reckon he’s got a golden fleece too? Or maybe his sister has. Lucky old duke!’ There was ribald laughter, heartiest from the whore. Everyone knew that the most prestigious chivalric Order of the Golden Fleece, founded by Duke Phillip, this duke’s father, and kept up with much pomp by Duke Charles, was not so much named for the mythical treasure that Jason sought, but more for the remarkable pelt that had adorned the former Duke Phillip’s mistress’s delta of Venus.

Anne heard the drunken laughter as she was carried home after the gift-giving feast. If she had arrived at the feast tired, she was going home with blood fizzing through her body from a combination of fear and unslaked longing for the king.