The Queen of Last Hopes (35 page)

“Yes, I’ve noticed that you’re quiet around her. But she likes you; she’s told me so.” (I was not strictly telling the truth here, but my mother had never said that she disliked Anne, after all.) “Just talk to her as you do your own mother. She’d probably like it.”

“She wouldn’t find me impertinent?”

“Not unless you ask her if I’m a bastard.”

Anne looked at me warily, then laughed. “Well,” she said, “I guess I can try.”

***

“The Bishop of Bayeaux has granted the dispensation,” John Morton announced in early December. He held up a document triumphantly. “King Louis’s people have read it, and I have read it, and it is sufficient for the Prince of Wales and Lady Anne to marry.”

“Here in France?” Anne asked.

“Why, of course,” Mother said. “Your father wished you to marry my son once he took England, and I shall keep that promise. We have been waiting only for a proper dispensation.”

“I just thought it might be nicer to marry at Westminster Abbey,” Anne confessed. “An English royal couple should be married in England. And I always wanted Father to be at my wedding, instead of across the sea.” She brightened. “Perhaps we could marry here, and then marry again at Westminster? Then Father could see me married, and my uncles and my aunts. Oh, and King Henry too,” she added. “He should be able to see his own son married.”

“A second ceremony,” my mother mused. Our victory had had a noticeable effect on her appearance; dressed in one of the fine new gowns that Louis had provided for her, she looked no more than thirty, ten years younger than her true age. She smiled. “Why not? The people would enjoy a grand wedding between two such handsome young people, and we could make a great festivity out of it. And King Henry and your father will indeed like to be present. I think that would be an excellent idea, Anne.”

The Duchess of Clarence looked up from her embroidery. There was an acidic tone to her voice when she said, “But when shall it be consummated?”

“On their wedding night,” my mother said. “It is what the Earl of Warwick wished.”

Anne and I simultaneously gulped. For she was without a doubt a virgin, and so was I.

How had I maintained this state at age seventeen? There had not been any women at Koeur except for my mother’s ladies and the laundress, all of whom were unsuitable. Our poverty at Koeur was so well known in the neighborhood there that no woman there would risk getting with a bastard by me or by any other man there. That left only whores, and even if I could have afforded one, which was not always the case, there was enough in me of my father—and of my grandfather the fifth Henry, who’d been a fastidious man—not to wish to lie with such women. So I had stayed pure, and at Amboise, which Louis kept isolated from the surrounding town, there had been nothing to threaten this state, though I probably wouldn’t have minded an attack on my virtue.

So it was Anne who would be my first woman—my only one, if I kept my wedding vows sacred. My father too had been a virgin when he married, and had by all reports never strayed from my mother’s bed. Perhaps I was more like him than I realized.

***

On December 13, at Amboise, Anne and I were married. Much of the French court was present, though Louis’s omnipresent greyhounds had been banished to their kennels for the occasion. As we said our vows, our mothers appeared to be holding a little competition to see who could shed the most sentimental tears—much to the disgust of Louis, who was heard to hiss, “Wenches! It is a wedding, not a funeral!” But Anne, with her long blond hair trailing to the waist of her rose-colored gown (she’d at first picked a blue, but it turned out to be too close to the Duke of York’s blue to suit a Lancastrian wedding), looked lovely, and the ladies of the court bestowed approving nods upon me as well.

There was the usual feast, during which Anne and I picked at our food, the usual blessing of the marital bed, the usual putting us to bed together. Then the guests left our bedchamber, and I was alone with my wife.

I reviewed the information I’d received from William Vaux, whose guidance I’d solicited the day before.
Don’t pounce on the girl as soon as you get aroused. Kiss her, play with her a while. Put your hand
there
, if you’re feeling daring and she’s not too nervous; it can help. Go slow. And it never hurts to tell her she’s beautiful, whatever else you do
. I turned to Anne, sitting up straight and alert in her elaborately embroidered nightshift, her golden hair spilling loose over her shoulders. “You’re beautiful.”

“Thank you.”

Evidently girls were not told to say, “You’re handsome,” in these situations. My nerve broke. “We can put this off if you like,” I said. “Maybe until you’re fifteen.”

“And disappoint my father? Heavens, no. We must do it tonight.” Anne began to untie her shift. “Here. I’ll get us started.”

I stopped her. “No.
I’ll
get us started.” I untied her shift and took her into my arms.
Start off cuddling her a little, women like that. Kissing their duckies always seems to work also. And if you’re really bold, you can—

Suddenly William Vaux’s voice faded out; I was managing just fine on my own—or as fine, I suppose, as could be expected under the circumstances. Sooner than I had hoped, but not nearly as soon as I had feared, I was lying spent atop Anne. “I didn’t hurt you too much, did I?”

“No, not too much,” Anne said. I rolled off her, and she curled against me as I ran my hands through her hair. “Really, it wasn’t bad at all, considering.”

***

“Paris,” said Louis, seeing us off for that city two days after our wedding. “The perfect place for young lovers.”

“How would he know?” muttered Anne under her breath so only I could hear—or at least, I hoped only I could hear.

Anne, however, had pitched her voice correctly. Serenely, Louis went on, “You will not forget your promise to us, I trust.”

“No, your grace.” I had promised to aid him in his cause against Charles, and to urge my father to declare war on Burgundy. “I shall keep it faithfully.”

“Good, my dear boy.” Louis stepped back and waved our escort forward. “To Paris!”

King Louis having received favorable reports from his ambassadors to England, he and my mother had deemed it safe at last for us to return home. We were to travel to Paris and then to Rouen, where Warwick was to meet us and then escort us to England. It was what my mother had been impatiently awaiting for weeks—yet now, as we left Amboise behind, she looked preoccupied. “What is wrong, Mother?” I asked when the men Louis had sent to escort us were out of earshot.

“Burgundy. Its duke has been good to us in the past—and he was a friend to one I held very dear.” An odd expression passed over my mother’s face, so fleetingly I wondered if I had imagined it. “I do not like the idea of going to war against him.”

“But it is what my father wants as well as King Louis,” said Anne.

“Yes, it is what both men want, and I have long known that it was the price of Louis’s aiding us to begin with.” My mother sighed. “But sometimes it pricks at my conscience nonetheless.” She sat silent for a moment or two, then roused herself. “You shall like Paris, Anne. King Louis is right: it is a wonderful city for the young.”

“Indeed, madam?” Anne winked at me. The night before, we had had our most satisfactory session of lovemaking to date—and our marriage was only two days old. “Then I think we shall like it very much indeed.”

And we did. Louis had ordered the citizens to give us a royal welcome, and not a night went by when there was not some great banquet in our honor, followed by dancing far into the night. We were never too tired, though, to enjoy the majestic bed that graced our chamber at the Louvre, which we put to very good use.

“Will the two of you stop making sheep’s eyes at each other and attend to me?” the Duchess of Clarence asked us one afternoon while our mothers were out of the room.

Anne turned guiltily from the window seat in which we had been sitting, rather too close together. “Yes, Isabel?”

“I said that I am leaving France, and that the men George sent to escort me home should be here any day. I am tired of lingering here, and I wish to join my husband. The more so since I have to watch the two of you pawing each other all of the time.”

“We do not paw each other,” said Anne. “We simply show our affection toward each other.”

“Is that what you call it?”

Anne tossed her head as well as a girl with an outsized hennin could. “There’s no need to be hateful to me just because you can’t be queen now.”

I watched this quarrel begin with a certain interested detachment: as I was an only child, fights between siblings were a novelty for me.

Isabel snorted. “And what makes you so sure you will be queen?”

“Why, Father has secured England for us.”

“And since when was Father invincible?”

“Isabel!”

“And do you really think the old King Edward is going to give up on England?” Isabel asked. “He has a son there now, in case you don’t remember. Do you think he’s just going to stay abroad and forget about him? And his daughters as well?”

Elizabeth Woodville had proved a fertile queen, though the first three children she had borne the king all turned out to be girls. In November, though—after taking sanctuary at Westminster for fear of Warwick’s intentions—she had at last given birth to a boy, who was named after his exiled father. The French court had found it rather amusing that not only did England have two rival kings, she now had two rival princes bearing the same Christian name. I had failed to see the humor in it myself.

“Father won’t let him. After all, he made Edward king to begin with. He can unmake him. He
has
unmade him. Anyway, how can you talk so? Whose side are you on, anyway? Edward, why aren’t you saying anything?”

“I—”

Isabel cut me off. “I am on my husband’s side, if you must know. In my opinion he has been treated shabbily by both Father and by King Edward. And my place is with him, not wandering through France.” In a milder tone, she said, “Besides, I miss England.”

“Father will be angry that you’ve gone to England without waiting for him to escort you there.”

“Why should he care, as long as I am escorted as befits my station? As you said yourself, you are the future queen, not me. I am of small importance to him now. And George would not have sent men to take me home without advising him, anyway. I don’t understand, though, why the rest of you don’t come now.” Isabel suddenly appeared to remember my presence. “I should think that you, Edward, would want to see England after you’ve been gone all of this time. And that you would want to see your father.”

I did not miss the malice in her voice. “My lady mother has given her promise to your father and to the King of France that she and I will tarry here until your father arrives, and she keeps her promises. But I am eager to return home, you can be assured of that.” I hesitated. “What does the Duke of Clarence say of my father’s condition?”

“That he is sane, but that the governing of England is all in my father’s hands. I should think you’d want to hurry to England to take up your part in it, if nothing else. After all, you are the heir to the throne.” Isabel stood. “I am going to begin packing. You lovebirds can get back to your petting.”

***

“Mother, why are we staying here?” I asked a few days later after Isabel and her escort had left for the coast.

“We must wait for Warwick.”

“You keep telling me that, and I don’t believe you. Why must we wait for Warwick, really? There are men who would escort us, and who would really want to harm us, anyway?”

“With France on the verge of war with Burgundy, we could be intercepted by Burgundy and seized as hostages.”

I shook my head. “Since when have you been so cautious?”

“You are speaking to me rather impertinently, Edward.”

“I am next in line to the throne. I am not a child; you have said so yourself. I have a right to know what we are about. When we go to England I will be all but king. Isn’t that so? Father is unfit to do anything but the most trivial tasks.”

“Who tells you that, and how dare you speak of your father in that manner?”

“You said before you met Warwick that Father might not be capable of running the kingdom on his own, and from what I can gather from what’s left unsaid, he’s not. And I am sorry, Mother, to speak harshly, but I am seventeen, almost at man’s estate. I am too old to be fobbed off with excuses and half-truths.”

My mother raised her hand, and for a moment I thought she was going to slap me. Instead she drew her hand back and sank onto a settee, where she began weeping.

“Mother!” I sat beside her. “Don’t cry. I’m sorry.”

My mother wiped her eyes. “Your father wrote me a letter the other day, in his own hand. All of the others have been written by his clerks. Very loving, but very businesslike and formal. In this one he called me his Marguerite, his Daisy, and begged me to come home. He said he was so lonely, even with everyone treating him with respect again, and that sometimes when they had been pressing too much business on him, he got confused and thought he was in the Tower again. He thought he would be so much better if you and I were there with him. He would not be so forgetful and nervous.”

She answered the unspoken question in my eyes. “I told him the truth—or part of it. I do want to see him; I want to take care of him. With my love he will be at peace, even if he never is fit to rule on his own again.”

“Then why don’t you return to England, Mother? It would make him so happy, and everyone else too.”

My mother snorted. “No one in England but Henry wants me in London, or anywhere. That will never change. But that is not why I am in no hurry to return to England.”

“Then why?

My mother stared at her lap. “Because I am terrified that when I do come, something will happen to break my heart.”

“That’s irrational, Mother,” I said sensibly. “You should not be so superstitious.”

Mother shrugged. “I know it.” She stood and tried to smile. “But nonetheless, I am content to wait until Warwick comes to get us. Aside from my fears, he knows the situation in England and the mood of the people there.”