Red Rose, White Rose (23 page)
The morning after Richard’s return and Harry Holland’s outburst and detention, I had gone to the church to pray at the tomb of my sons. Richard and I had argued about the marriage the previous night after retiring to our chamber. I knew it could mean nothing but a life of misery for Anne, but Richard did not see this mattered in the least. ‘Marriage is not about happiness, Cicely,’ he had insisted. ‘I am doing the very best I can do for her. You are looking at the short term, while we should both be considering the future of our dynasty. In a few years Harry will not be the foolish, insecure hothead he is now.’
I could not contain my anger. ‘No, he might be even more dangerous, considering his antipathy now. Anne carries your blood, Richard, just like Edward. How can you throw her away on a lunatic like Harry Holland?’
Predictably Richard exploded. ‘Throw her away? This marriage has cost me six thousand marks! As for blood, it is for blood ties that I made it, so that the Exeter line to the throne will be joined to ours. That is the reason it is important and that is why I will listen to no more of your objections. I expect you to defer to my wishes, Cicely. The marriage will take place.’
At least when we had simmered down, the news that I was once more safely into a new pregnancy gave Richard hope that our departure for Ireland might be postponed. In fact I received the distinct impression that, angry though he was at me for defying him over the marriage, he was grateful to be provided with an excuse for delay over the Irish appointment.
I returned from the chapel for a meeting with Richard and the Master of the College to discuss the marriage of Anne and Harry. When a lay brother arrived to say that the nurse Anicia urgently wished to see me I was, to be frank, relieved to excuse myself. Anicia was waiting for me, her plump round face a mask of anxiety framed in a blue wimple. ‘The Lady Anne is not to be found, your grace. She would not eat her breakfast and asked to be permitted to go the chapel. I thought prayer and a talk with the chaplain would be a good thing, so I sent one of the nursery servants with her and he left her in the charge of the priest but when Lord Willoughby came seeking confession Lady Anne must have slipped out of the chapel. Now she has disappeared and I do not know where she can be. She is not normally disobedient, as you know, but she is very upset about the marriage.’
Being only too aware of Anne’s fragile state of mind, I felt a pang of guilt that I had not paid a visit to the nursery that morning but I had an inkling as to where she might be so I tried to reassure the nurse. ‘I am sure Anne will not have gone far and I will find her, Anicia. Instruct the rest of your staff to say nothing about this. I do not want the news reaching the duke’s ears and adding to his worries unnecessarily. Now go back to the nursery – I will bring Anne back there shortly.’
During the fine summer weather I made it my habit to walk daily in the garden I had caused to be planted in the castle’s outer ward, among the orchards which grew along the river. When I visited all the York castles during the course of my wedding trip fifteen years before, I listed Fotheringhay as my favourite. It lay in a beautiful setting beside the River Nene as it flowed from Northampton to Peterborough on its way to the great drains and fleets of the fens. It was also located in the centre of England and convenient for Richard both in attending his vast and scattered estates and keeping well informed about court business through the spies he kept in the king’s nearby residences and London. During our years away in Rouen, Richard had spent a considerable sum having the ducal apartments made more comfortable and spacious but it remained a reassuringly impregnable fortress, defended by a deep moat, three solid towers, a gatehouse and a massive keep perched high on a steep motte much like the one at the royal stronghold of Windsor. Perhaps coincidentally or perhaps by design, the keep was built in the shape of the York fetterlock symbol, with a stout barbican defending the entrance to an unusual oblong tower where I knew I would always be safe with the children when Richard and his entourage were away.
I had had a ‘mount’ built, a man-made hill like those I had noticed in many French seigneurial gardens. It formed a viewpoint lifted above the noise and bustle of castle life, offering a panorama of the river and surrounding countryside and boasted a turf seat within a leafy arbour where I knew little Anne loved to play her games of knights and ladies.
In the rose-garden at the base of the mount, Richard had expressed a wish that all the blooms should be white but when I planted one deep-red damask rose in the middle in memory of my mother, he could hardly object. It was just coming into flower, poignantly reminding me of the girl I had once been – the young and vivacious red ‘Rose of Raby’. The path up to the arbour wound through a planted ‘wilderness’, where honeysuckle and wild roses clambered over rustic trellises, and evergreens and foxgloves and wild campion flourished. Perched on the turf seat, under a cascade of flowering elder, was Anne, hugging not a doll as might have been expected of a girl of her age, but a pair of golden slippers. She must have heard me coming for she was sitting bolt upright, her face a picture of misery.
She flinched as I sat down beside her. ‘I have not come to scold you, Anne,’ I said gently. ‘Poor Anicia thinks you are lost but I knew where you would be. It is quiet and peaceful up here at this time of year.’
Anne said nothing but it was my turn to flinch as she sniffed loudly and lifted her arm to wipe her nose on the sleeve of her kirtle. It was blue like the one she had worn the previous evening, but it must have been clean that morning because there was no sign of the gravy stains on the bodice which Harry had mocked so cruelly. However both sleeves already bore evidence of the fact that she carried no kerchief and had used them as a substitute several times. I sighed inwardly. As so often in her company I felt irritation when I should have felt love and compassion. It irked me that Anne showed little sign of growing into an elegant and graceful lady. Having inherited my father’s height and my mother’s poise I freely admit that I found it hard having a daughter who was short, plump and gauche. I comforted myself with the thought that she was all Plantagenet and Richard, too, had been shy and sturdy when he first came to Raby as a boy. Somehow, however, I could not penetrate Anne’s timid, mousey shell to find the sweet, sensitive girl beneath. Worse, I knew that Harry Holland would never do so either.
‘You are nearly nine, Anne. It is not too young to be married, you know. Your father and I were pledged when I was more or less your age.’ I tried to speak with encouraging cheerfulness. ‘You will not have to live with Harry for years yet.’
‘I do not want to live with him ever!’ Anne’s voice was shrill and full of panic. ‘He is mad. You said so yourself, my lady mother.’
I chastised myself for making my muttered comment the previous evening, even in a whisper. ‘He is still a boy,’ I said gently, ‘but he thinks he is already a man. He is confused. He will not stay angry. By the time you are fourteen or fifteen he will be mature and in control of himself and meanwhile you can look forward to being a duchess and having beautiful clothes. You like beautiful things do you not, Anne? Those shoes for instance.’
She stopped hugging the gold shoes and held them out to admire them. They were fashionably but not exaggeratedly pointed at the toes, with red laces tipped with gold aiglets, and the soft leather uppers were stamped under their covering of gold leaf with a pattern of wheatears. They were costly items which Richard had ordered in London for her and they had arrived in his baggage the previous day. They must have been delivered to the nursery that morning and she obviously treasured them or why would she have brought them up the mount? I had not the heart to tell her that the wheatear was Harry Holland’s personal device, the badge his retinue would wear once he came into his Exeter inheritance. With the marriage already arranged when he ordered them, Richard must have specified that the symbol should be used on the shoes to mark Anne’s new status.
‘They are beautiful,’ she agreed. ‘I will wear them this evening and thank my lord father when I see him after dinner. But I cannot thank him for the marriage. Harry is not nice and he hates us. I have heard him talking to his horse when he grooms him in the stables. You should hear what he says, Mother; then you would know he is mad.’
I shook my head sorrowfully. ‘People do talk nonsense to animals sometimes. They do not necessarily mean what they say. Your father has your best interests at heart, Anne. As well as thanking him for the shoes, I expect you to also thank him for arranging a great marriage for you. There are only five dukes in the kingdom and the other four are married. You are a very lucky young lady. You must prepare yourself for the wedding. There is no more to be said.’
A shutter seemed to close in my daughter’s red-rimmed eyes and, knew I had not succeeded in giving her any reassurance. ‘Yes, my lady mother,’ she said dully.
A week later, Anne stood in the nave of the collegiate church stiff and immobile, like a wooden doll, albeit one dressed like a duchess in a gown of gold tissue and a mantle trimmed with ermine, her tawny hair hanging limply from a bridal coronet. No matter how hard Anicia tried, it could not be made to curl or look lustrous. Given the fabric and colour of her wedding gown, there had been no objection to her wearing the treasured gold slippers and so she was able to stare down at them throughout the ceremony, taking comfort from the gleaming tooled leather. This kept her eyes modestly downcast and led to whispered comments among the congregation about the dignified deportment of so young a girl. For once I felt proud of my little daughter, particularly after she showed no reaction when, after the joining of hands, Harry flung hers away as if it had scorched him.
The bridegroom had refused to don the new red quilted satin doublet which had been provided for him and appeared in the plain brown woollen jacket and hose he had been wearing when he was marched off to his tower chamber a fortnight before, garments which showed all the stains of sweat and wear inflicted on them since. It was clear to all in the church that the putative Duke of Exeter was making no concessions to a union which, despite concerted efforts to persuade him otherwise, he steadfastly continued to repudiate.
The ceremony was performed by the Master of the College who doggedly pursued the necessary declarations and vows, accepting the bridegroom’s wild protests and mutterings as if they were the appropriate responses and ignoring the fact that two armed guards stood at the young man’s shoulders with a hand on each elbow in case he should try to make a bolt for it. In consideration of the bride’s youth, the nuptial kiss was declared inappropriate but in any case it was unlikely that the bridegroom could have been prevailed upon to cooperate. When the wedding group processed under the screen into the choir for the mass, a soaring anthem sung by the college choristers covered the sound of Harry’s strident objections to being frog-marched along with it. Behind the unhappy couple and their two armed attendants, Richard and I walked stony-faced, decked out in full ducal regalia, our gold coronets sparkling with rubies and sapphires and the trains of our crimson velvet mantles carried by pages in liveries of murrey and blue. Above us rows of banners hid the scaffolding which allowed the masons access to work on the intricate stone vaulting of the ceiling and, I held my breath as I realized that, as well as displaying the York emblems of the White Rose and the Falcon and Fetterlock, some of the banners also showed the Red Rose of Lancaster and, revealingly, should Anne have glanced up, the Exeter Wheatear. However, her eyes remained firmly fixed on her golden shoes.
At the wedding feast a flower-decked canopy did much to disguise the presence of the burly guards standing behind the bridal couple but even so the two youngsters hardly looked like newlyweds. Jaw jutting defiantly and submitting the assembled guests to a baleful stare, Harry deliberately ignored Anne, who pretended not to notice because on her other side Edward kept her entertained playing a spying game based on the animals to be spotted woven into the brightly coloured hunting tapestries that covered the walls of the great hall, a favourite pastime among the children whenever they were allowed in there. The customary formality of York feasts had been suspended for what should have been a joyous family occasion and guests were free to talk and laugh and move about as they wished, enjoying the continuous flow of food and wine, constant music from minstrels in the gallery and riotous interruptions supplied by fools, tumblers and mummers. The only person who failed to take any pleasure in this entertainment was the bridegroom, who remained isolated and largely ignored except when toasts were made to his health, gestures he refused to acknowledge. On a day when he should have been enjoying centre stage, receiving the congratulations and good wishes of his friends, young Harry, Duke of Exeter, sat ignored and excluded, a sad and brooding figure smouldering with resentment.
I was seated alongside my brother Hal of Salisbury, who had travelled down from Yorkshire for the event. He would doubtless also use it as an opportunity to confer with Richard over the situation at court. Never a man of social vitality, Hal made a cheerless dinner companion. ‘I hope you can win him round, Cis,’ he murmured, indicating the slouched figure of the bridegroom. ‘He is a danger to himself and others in this frame of mind.’
I rolled my eyes in despair. ‘I fear he may be a lost cause,’ I said, keeping my voice low. ‘We seem to have no lines of communication. Richard thinks he will get over his resentment but I believe he grows daily more vindictive against York. I believe we have done Anne a dreadful turn in making this marriage.’
Hal shrugged and took a thoughtful gulp of his wine before producing a predictably male reaction to my misgivings. ‘There is no denying that it is a brilliant match though, Cicely. Richard has endowed her well no doubt and young Harry will need funds when he comes of age because his estates are woefully tied up in trusts and obligations. His mother commands a substantial portion and could live for many years yet and she has quite a young daughter – another Anne I believe – who must also command a dowry. There is talk of her marrying our kinsman Lord John Neville, Westmorland’s heir.’
