The Exiled (47 page)

Silently she shuffled the cards one long, last time. The queen held out her hand to pull her card from the pack.

‘No, I cannot!’ Irina suddenly held the cards away.

Elisabeth was shocked, then angry. Never before had Irina been so direct. There was a moments’ cold silence.

‘Do as I ask, Irina.’ The queen’s voice was calm.

Irina had tears in her eyes and her hands were shaking as she, finally, held out the pack. It was as if her body tried to do what her heart would not permit.

‘Ah, lady, please, everything I feel, everything I am, asks that you do not do this.’

Elisabeth stood suddenly, her face white with rage. Violently she ripped the cards out of Irina’s hands and scattered them.

All but two fell to the floor beneath the table, but these final two fell directly onto the trestle’s surface, face up: the Wheel of Fortune — with helpless, hopeless souls clinging to the iron-shod rim as it turned and crushed some, whilst others rode high above them — and the Death card. Again.

‘They’re only cards. Just cards!’ But both women had seen it: one of the tiny figures clinging desperately to the rim of the wheel as it turned, one of the figures that could not escape being crushed, had yellow hair and a dress of imperial purple; this little figure was wearing a crown. Today the queen was wearing a purple dress and her hair, bound high and crown-like on her head, was blonde. Incontestably it was blonde.

S
he was a good-looking piece, alright, but she didn’t talk to anyone. Just sat in the back of the cart they’d hired in Whitby market, as far away as she could manage from the delirious Henry, and continually looked out over the moors, back towards the sea with the saddest expression in her eyes.

Wat watched her, watched it all, rolling his eyes at the vain attempts the baron made to get the girl to speak to him. He shook his head in disgust as he kicked the jennet up, to speed her past the cart on this sadly mired road. They deserved each other, Henry Hardwell and his loon-like father. Well-bred idiots!

The baron himself refused to acknowledge Wat’s contemptuous pity, for he was weighted down by the consequences of that one blurred moment in the marketplace. Some might say that lust had driven him to that mad action, lust for this silent girl, but that was untrue. He had acted from instinct, unaware of his assailant, or the identity of the girl on the saddle bow. He was a knight; no matter what they said, it had been for duty that he’d nearly murdered the only son he had.

Stephen sighed gustily as he looked at Anne huddled in the back of the cart, and always gazing out towards the sea. Perhaps no one would ever understand this tragedy. It was certain he did not, for over the last two days’ journey from Whitby, his chosen lady, the girl for whom he had risked and lost so much, had refused to entertain his suit, even out of courtesy, the courtesy she owed him as her rescuer.

Perhaps it was the ropes? Perhaps he should untie her now? He’d first tethered her to the back-board of the cart for her own protection, since she was unconscious when the cart jolted its way out of Whitby. Then, opening her eyes again, she’d said not one word to him, her rescuer, and turned her face away!

Perhaps she really was as mad as she’d seemed, that day at the convent when she’d collapsed? Or the fall from Henry’s horse, the loss of blood from the wound to her throat — could these explain the oddness of her behaviour, her apparent contempt of him?

For Anne, the hallucinogenic miles jolted on and on as the foolish man at her side warbled distractingly of chivalry and honour. She hardly heard him or took in the sense of what he said. The rope which burned her wrists, burned her heart as well. She ached all over, and fever from the wound to her throat deepened her despair at the loss of her purse of coins in the fight in Silver Lane — now all that remained was the one, single ruby. If she lost that, or if it was found by the mob of ruffians she’d been forced to join, she would be lost indeed.

In her misery, she hardly noticed that the cart had creaked to a stop until she heard Wat yell out, ‘Defend yourselves!’ at that same moment the baron roared, ‘To me, Wat, to me!’

Only presence of mind saved Anne’s life as an arrow fleeced the air between her face and the back-board of the cart. Hunching down as much as the ropes allowed, Anne huddled into a corner as the shouting and screaming began. Head down, hidden as much as she could, she did not see, but she heard. A mêlée engulfed the baron’s party as men and horses screamed, swords rang, grunt and clang, and arrows flew through the last of the light.

It was moments, moments which stretched to hours, before they found her, but find her they did.

‘Captain. There’s a woman.’

No use burying her head. No use for anything any more. Deliberately Anne straightened her spine and dragged herself up to a sitting position. Time to face death — it had truly found her at last.

Deborah cried in her sleep that night. In her distress she called out, ‘Anne? Anne!’

Her anguish woke little Edward and he began to wail.

That lonely little cry woke Deborah properly, and in a moment she had flung a cloak around her naked body and hurried over to the sobbing child, scooped him up and held him tight, rocking him, kissing his wet cheeks, until the sobs subsided into gulps and he was silent once more.

Quietly, soothing him as she walked, Deborah carried the little boy over to her own box bed and put him between the covers, climbing in beside him, pulling him close. She thought he’d gone to sleep, but then she heard his forlorn whisper.

‘Wissy?’ It was one of his few words — the word he used for Anne.

‘Ah my lamb, she’ll come back, she will. You’ll see. Our Wissy ... we’ll find her.’

Yet as she kissed the little boy and sang to him, felt him snuggle up against her, heard his breathing even out until he slept deeply, Deborah did not allow the thought to take form or substance.

But then it was impossible to hold back as the floodtide of fear lapped higher and sharper. Loneliness and death. There was a black, black ring around Anne and no matter how hard she tried to shake the feeling of doom that swaddled her like a cloak, she did not have the strength. Let it be dawn soon, let the night pass. May the darkness lift, may it lift.

Deborah was not alone in her prayers, for the king too, in the bleak, silent hours before dawn, found he could not stop his mind from roiling and roiling over the events of the last few days. At last he gave up trying.

Padding to the fireplace, he shivered as he felt the dank, icy breath of night against his naked skin.

It was grave-quiet. There was not even the rustle of a mouse or a rat to disturb the suffocating black blanket which was wrapped around him. Edward grimaced. He needed warmth, and he needed light. Flint; there was some here, somewhere.

Feeling around the hearth stone of the fireplace, Edward found the flint box. And, yes, pieces of pitch pine and a heap of wood shavings lying ready for the morning. He would restart the ashes and bring some warmth into this tomb of a bedchamber.

The sound of the flint as it struck sparks was alien in the quiet: too sharp, too metallic for the smooth darkness which clogged the room. It did its work, though: the white sparks fell amongst the wood shavings and soon a sharp crackle gave promise of warmth as the banked ashes brought assistance to the first tiny flames.

Edward moved quietly around his room. He did not want to wake the guard who was sleeping outside across the chamber door — he needed this moment of solitude, there were so few in his life and they were precious.

It was in solitude like this that he thought best and most constructively, without the clamour of other’s advice, without the distraction of competing obligations.

The fire had caught well now, generating light as well as heat, a red cave in the darkness. In the ruddy glimmer he saw the branch of candles on the gate-leg table standing beside the fireplace; more light flared in the gloom.

Sighing, the king turned to look at the scrolls heaped up on a chest standing against one wall. Each one of them demanded his attention. But there were other things to think about. More important things. Anne.

Brooding, Edward, King of England, sank down into a Cathedra that had been placed for him in front of the fireplace the night before.

It was a good chair, substantial. It even had a padded cushion stuffed with horse-hair and goose-down on its unforgiving plank seat. A rare luxury, one he liked. He grimaced as he shifted around to get comfortable. Even used to riding the distances he did out hunting and on campaign, the last days had been a marathon and he was still sore, despite the daily hot baths.

Anne. Panic gripped him. Could he remember her face? Could he summon it if he tried? Deliberately he closed his eyes and breathed deeply, thinking of her, thinking of their time together in Brugge. Imagining her body — her feet, her legs, then her belly, her breasts, her hair. Her face.

Yes. Her face. He could see her face. She was smiling at him, lovingly. Then she pulled him down to her so that her mouth was against his; he was lying with her, so warm and smooth, so ...

A knock at the door tore the fabric of the fantasy. He ignored it, trying to hold the feel of her skin in his mind, the softness.

‘Edward?’ His brother’s urgent voice.

The king stood and wrapped himself in the cloak, trying to ignore the ache in his belly as he strode to the door, wrenching it open.

‘What?’

Richard was ashen: the light of the sconces in the passage outside his room showed the pallor of his face. Silently he held out a vellum packet, sealed with an extravagant amount of red wax. ‘This has come for you just now. From Warwick.’ Edward hurried back inside his room, Richard at his heels, as he tore the seal and opened the document, holding it up to the candles to read.

‘To Edward, King of England, from Richard, Earl of Warwick, greetings. Know that today I was presented with something of value to your majesty. Lady Anne de Bohun. I have her safe in my care. A most charming lady and with such a surprising past.’

Richard saw the look on his brother’s face and swallowed fearfully. Edward was staring into the fire, his lips drawn back from his canine teeth. In the flickering and uncertain light it was as if he’d been transformed from a man to a wolf. ‘Richard.’ It was a whisper.

‘Yes, Edward?’

‘Get the horses saddled.’

M
iddleham Castle was said to be a fair place, in happier times.

As it was now, Warwick’s favourite castle was reduced from a home to a garrison stuffed with armed men, men who ate too much and quarrelled, and got in one another’s way when the rain stopped practice at the butts, or training with horses in the fields.

Anne looked down from the window seat in her room in the Round Tower onto the seething inner wards below. Even in the driving rain, which turned the sky into a brooding leaden mass, the men worked with all the industry of ants. Preparations were everywhere; preparations for war, preparations for the death of innocent people. That was the meaning of war. Always.

How strange, then, that she who knew death so intimately, who’d expected to die even so little time ago as yesterday, should feel so calm. Perhaps she was feeling-less after feeling so much?

Wearily the girl closed her eyes. She would think more clearly for a little sleep, just a few moments of rest and then she would assess what she must do. So tired, so very tired ...

Behind her, an iron-bound door opened silently and a man stood looking into the room, looking at the girl in the window.

Richard Neville, the Earl of Warwick, was a courtier to his fingers’ ends, a competent general and a good lord to his tenants, but above all, he understood politics, and played at them like chess.

Every instinct he had said that, in the fortuitous advent of this girl being picked up on the moors by men out on routine patrol of his lands, he had the Queen-piece in this current game.

Edward would not just be checked in the war of nerves they were waging on each other, he would be swept off the board.

For he remembered all the rumours, the mystery, the scandal of less than two years ago when it was said the king had found a new love, his greatest love, and that the queen knew. And yes, he remembered the tournament vividly, the tournament of Saint Valentine’s Day, when a veiled girl, riding into the lists on a donkey, had made her own challenge to the king. Now he knew it was this same girl, Anne de Bohun, the girl who’d been in sanctuary at the abbey, evading Edward.

He’d never seen her face then, of course, but he’d known her name, oh yes, he’d known her name. And now, here she was. And she wasn’t going anywhere.

Unconsciously his hand tightened on the pommel of the dagger in his belt. Then he relaxed. Gently he coughed, and Anne slewed around, instantly awake, unable to completely suppress the wariness of the captive.

‘And so, lady, I hope my people treat you well?’ He smiled charmingly, sweeping her a deep bow.

She refused to rise when he addressed her, he noted that with wry approval. He rather enjoyed women with mettle, though of course, in the end, it was a useless quality, irrelevant, in their sex.

Anne nodded graciously and he watched one white hand smooth the pretty surface of the gown she’d been given. It was one of his own daughter’s, kept in readiness for when the family was in residence — deep, almost night-blue velvet; it suited Anne de Bohun well. He saw too that the wound on her throat had cleaned well and was healing. It would leave only a faint scar on her throat, a white necklace. That pleased him: he did not like beauty to be needlessly destroyed.

‘I am well-housed, Earl Warwick, but I should be most grateful if you could arrange for me to journey on to my home as quickly as can be arranged.’

The earl nodded sagely, maintaining the polite fiction that she was his guest. ‘Ah yes, to your lands in Somerset?’ Anne smiled and, as if the thing did not have stakes, looked away idly and yawned delicately.

‘Yes, I am expected these last ten days. My people will be most concerned.’