The Exiled (52 page)

Richard silently joined his brother and waved to the girl below. She waved in return, once, then turned her face, turned her back, riding beside her son and Deborah, into the future.

‘She’s doing the right thing, Edward. You need to let her go. We know who she is, others will in time. Warwick.’ He fell silent. The stakes would be heightened far too much if Warwick ever found out that the girl he’d let slip through his fingers was a daughter of the old king.

Edward said nothing. An iron band was clamped around his chest, an iron band which would not let him speak, for if he tried, he would howl like an animal.

Something moved in his hand, moved within one clenched fist; it felt like a trapped insect, scrabbling at his palm. He was startled and, distracted momentarily, uncurling the fingers; he was holding the ruby, the ruby Anne had given him. He shook his head, puzzled — he must have imagined the movement and yet, there was a scratch on his palm, blood welling where one sharp edge of the gem must have cut him slightly.

He willed the distraction away, gazing down the road below as the group slowly retreated into the rags of morning mist. He closed his burning eyes, determined to imprint the image of the girl riding away from him on his mind, for all time, whilst he lived.

Her words of this morning, as she mounted the mare and held out her hand to touch his face, covertly, one last time, came back like a sigh. ‘You gave me a ruby once. This is mine now to give to you. It is my love, and my blood. And my blood is yours.’

It was then she gave him the stone.

Blood. His heart’s-blood, on her ruby. He looked down at it again, startled, and when he glanced up again, the party of horses was nearly too far away for even his famous long sight to make her out, buried amongst the forest of male bodies around her horse, and the mist.

But Anne did look back, one last time, though he did not see it. She saw the two men standing on the battlements, saw his cloak flying out behind him emblazoned with the leopards and the lilies — the leopards and the lilies which belonged to him, and to her, as emblems of the country that was jointly theirs by right — and was jolted by fear when she saw the figure who now stood behind them.

A woman with wild, tangled red hair and a gold torque gleaming at her throat in the pale morning light, thick bands of gold on each of her muscular arms. Silently the Sword Mother raised her arm, her shield arm, and spread it wide. In her other hand there was a sword, this too she held out, high above her head, and shook it, once, twice, three times.

And Anne lost her fear for she saw the Sword Mother stood between the two men now, arms spread wide, encompassing them: she was protecting them — Edward and Richard — but they gave no sign of knowing she was there, too intent on watching Anne ride away with her son, and Deborah.

Anne turned her head away and set her face for home and Brugge. She would not turn back, it was not her right, but for days after, as the jolting miles to Dover were consumed on good roads and bad, as the sun rose and set, she dwelt on that last image, the Goddess protecting the king and his brother. She had been given this one last comforting vision; it was hers to cherish.

The presence of the Sword Mother said battle was yet to come, but all might still be well for she would be there. Would Anne?

T
he scar on Anne’s throat from Henry Hardwell’s knife had faded to a white line by spring of the following year and the bad dreams of pursuit, of blood, had nearly stopped.

In Brugge, happy people flung open their windows — it was warmer, assuredly it was a warm wind! Summer, surely they could smell summer coming?

Anne could feel the season changing too — the casement open to the heber allowed a flood of perfume from the blossom on the plum apple trees into Mathew Cuttifer’s parlour in the house near the Kruisport, and she could feel her heart lifting at last.

‘Careful! Oh, gently now!’ Deborah was terrified; she was doing her best to supervise Ivan and Maxim. The steward refused help from anyone else in taking down Hans Memlinc’s master work from its place on the wall.

Anne watched herself descending from the wall, watched Saint George — and remembering Edward, their last time together — saw the dragon freshly, so real it seemed to squirm within the frame. Did its glittering scales, its insatiable mouth remind her of the queen, her enemy? She smiled ruefully. ‘Foolishness!’ she could hear Edward say it, ‘Superstitious nonsense!’

‘There! Now ... careful Ivan! You nearly dropped it!’ Anne had to turn away, she’d nearly laughed out loud through the pain, which would not have helped. Pain to leave, pain to stay. Change, radical change, burned away the dross. Perhaps she would be at peace, later.

‘Deborah, where’s Edward?’ Her foster-mother, distracted, nodded to the heber as the two men, red-faced with the effort, lowered the huge painting with muscle-burning effort into its specially made case packed with loose wool. There! It would travel safely now.

‘I think I’ll just ...’ Anne couldn’t bear watch them pack up the rest of her things. She slipped out of the room into the tiled hall and hurried through the dark passage, unlatching the door that led out into the scented, walled garden.

She heard her son before she saw him: wild giggles and gleeful shouts.

‘Edward? Edward? Oh, there you are. Hello, Father!’

Father Giorgio was staggering around, arms out, blindfolded, doing his best to catch the laughing child as he dived in and out of the priest’s legs. Then the boy saw Anne and ran towards her, his few words chasing each other. ‘Wissy, wissy, baw, baw!’

Laughing, Anne picked up the brightly painted pig-skin bladder stuffed with rags and threw it to her son who overreached himself trying to catch it, and tumbled into the new grass beneath the blossoming trees.

Laughing, Anne joined him, and mother and son rolled together, over and over, as Father Giorgio, strolled towards them, removing his blindfold.

‘And so, Mistress Anne. You found it?’

Anne spat blossom petals from her mouth, tickling the little boy who squealed joyfully.

She nodded ‘Yes, Father. A house of my own.’

The priest sat beside her in the grass, frowning slightly. ‘You are sure then that this is right?’

His friend looked at him, smiling. ‘I shall have a house and a farm and a physic garden for Deborah, Father Giorgio. I’ve missed, oh so much, having somewhere that I belong, properly belong — my own home. Edward will have space and green fields to play in, and none of the noise, the stink of this city.’

‘And you, what will you have, my child?’

Anne looked up at the spring sky, fingered the scar on her throat. ‘I will have peace; and the knowledge that I am not the sacrifice.’

The priest looked at her curiously.

‘The triple death, Father. Have you heard of it?’

The worldly Italian shrugged uneasily. ‘No, my child, I have not.’ The intensity of her glance unsettled him. Suddenly the day was still, very quiet. Even the little boy lay quietly in Anne’s lap, suddenly drowsy.

‘In the old times, the old world, sometimes they made a sacrifice of someone for the good of the tribe, or the village. Or if the people were afraid.’

The priest, sophisticated though he was, felt the hair on his neck move as Anne spoke, almost chanting.

‘First they hung them, then cut the throat whilst the sacrifice still lived,’ she touched her neck gently where the faint silver line of the scar caught the spring light, ‘then they drowned them, or buried them, underfoot at the crossroads.’

She smiled at him, but her eyes were very far away.

‘Sometimes, I have felt as if I were that sacrifice, Father. As if I must die, so that others could live.’ The boy stirred in his sleep, muttering something. ‘But now, I know that is not true.’

The priest, discomforted, jumped up to break the mood, vigorously brushing white petals from his finely woven habit.

‘Anne, sweet child, you’ve been upset by all that has happened to you — which I understand, we all do. But to speak of such things, on such a lovely day, when you are just beginning the next great adventure of your life ...’

He leant down to help her with the sleeping child.

‘Now all I need for you is a husband — a dear man who understands you and all your strange little ways.’ He was determined to make light of what she had said, and because he was her friend, such a good friend, she made it easy for him.

‘Of course! And he should be rich, and handsome, and sing as well as you do!’

Delighted she had responded, the priest led Anne back into the house, carolling, in English, ‘The Nut Brown Maid’, Anne joining in, descant, on the chorus. But as they reached the door which led into the house, Anne said, ‘Did you know, by the way, that Elisabeth Wydeville has had another daughter?’

Startled, the priest held open the door, his look asking the question.

‘Well now, that changes everything.’

‘Again.’ Anne smiled as she cradled her sleeping son, stepping into the shadows of the doorway, leaving the warm light behind. The door closed, but ahead of her the great door to the street itself was wide open, allowing the brightness of spring into Mathew Cuttifer’s hall, into her heart.

There were leaves on the trees again, and they were green, emerald green.