The Innocent (56 page)

Was it only one small moment before Anne bowed to the king in return? So little time in which to feel that all the old life was gone. And the new one—the mystery—beginning.

Outside the lists, they did not speak, but Doctor Moss was seen by Warwick’s squire as he handed the “unknown” knight three letters before he and the lady rode away.

For a long time, the “unknown” knight watched them go, but Anne did not look back, and he made no move to follow them.

Later, he rode against three other knights of Warwick’s party, and nearly killed them all.

Chapter Forty-four

It took Anne three days to ride to Dover after the tourney. She was very cold and weary as they arrived in the town at the end of a bone-shaking ride. A storm had just closed over the little port, drenching them all, and adding to Anne’s misery. But word had preceded them and they were to lodge in the guest quarters at the Benedictine monastery there, with a special room and its own parlor set aside for her and Deborah. Doctor Moss, too, had been given his own quarters on orders of the king.

Anne no longer cared if she ate or where she slept. She had done what was needed in London; assessed what was possible, understood she could not win against Edward the king, maybe did not want to win, because Edward the man was her lover; all that remained to her was honorable defeat. But the daughter of a king would not leave without that one last gesture at the tourney; you will not acknowledge me, that I understand, but you owe me and mine honorable treatment.

Her reward had been one last meal in the hall of Blessing House with Sir Mathew, Lady Margaret, Deborah, and Jehanne, who had been released from the Tower by the king’s order. Well fed by Maître Gilles, she had left Blessing House for the last time—it would have been too agonizing to sleep another night under their roof, reminding her of all she had lost.

Now soaked, shivering, and achingly lonely, she huddled over the fire in their monastery quarters as Deborah stripped the sodden clothes off Anne and encouraged her into the warmed bed. The strain of the last weeks had finally gripped the girl’s healthy body—she was flushed and a dry cough hurt her chest. Listlessly she did as she was asked but that night alternate chills and fever shook her. She was so cold her teeth chattered, and Deborah, in the same bed, tried to keep her warm with extra clothes and her own body. Then Anne burned with fever, throwing the clothes off, stumbling around in the dark naked, and muttering of betrayal.

By morning she was very ill and Deborah was frightened. She had few herbs with her except some willow bark and dried fever-few—that was little enough to dose Anne with. She was so worried she even asked Doctor Moss to see Anne—she had some respect for his skill though he had no great opinion of hers—and they took it in turns to get Anne to swallow the fever teas Deborah made and apply an embrocation Doctor Moss brewed from ingredients he found in the monastery’s infirmary.

For three days as the last storm of winter howled around the little town, Anne lay in a state between sleep and waking, tossing, crying out with bad dreams, and mumbling snatches of strange visions.

Deborah and Doctor Moss almost came to blows on how best to treat her. He wanted to seal all sources of the potentially poisonous air and build up the fire to make Anne sweat the sickness out, while Deborah believed they needed to let the sea wind sweep noxious vapors from the room. It was their low-voiced arguing that Anne heard first as she came back to true consciousness, it made her laugh, though the laugh was closer to a wheeze she was so weak.

For the first time, Anne truly saw where they were: a little dark room with a groined stone ceiling.

There was pared horn in the small-paned window and a massive fireplace covering one entire corner of the small space. She was in a large box bed wadded firmly with fresh straw, lying between clean, coarse unbleached sheets, but as she tried to raise her head to see more, the effort was too much and she closed her eyes as everything suddenly swam and she spiraled into the dark again.

The next day was again closer to dreams than reality but she allowed herself to be washed by Deborah—again against Doctor Moss’s vehement protests—and her sweaty hair freshened with a soothing rosemary wash that Deborah blotted dry with linen warmed at the fire.

With the gradual return of health came awareness and with it the need to plan for the future. When she’d left London, she’d asked nothing for herself, but Mathew Cuttifer had arranged that Leif Mollnar would meet her at Dover with the Lady Margaret.

Optimism gradually returned as Anne took stock of her situation. A year or more ago she’d lived day to day, no real thought of the future in her head, equipped with nothing but her wits, the education she’d been given by Deborah, and the beginnings of skills at doctoring.

She was a woman now and knew herself to be the daughter of a king but she was no fine lady and for that she was grateful. She was not afraid to earn her living. She and Deborah could use what they knew of physic to treat the sick, she could make cosmetics, too, and if they were desperate, she could work as a seamstress. Mathew Cuttifer had supplied her with a letter to his factor in Brugge insisting there was safe haven at his trading place in that city for as long as they needed or wanted it.

Also she had her clothes. They were valuable and she could sell some to raise money if they had to, though being young and loving clothes as she did, that caused a pang. Similarly it would take much for her to part with the topaz brooch given to her by Jane Shore or the little filigree cross that Lady Margaret had given her, but for the moment she would not have to. Mathew had given her a good purse of coins so their case was not hopeless. She and Deborah would have the means to survive, to start again. Now all that was required was her full recovery and passage with Leif across to France.

Her musings in the chair by the fire were interrupted by Deborah, who ran suddenly into the room.

“Quickly, cover yourself.”

Anne was astonished by this whirl of activity as the shawl she was wearing over the fine silk sleeping shift was whipped from her shoulders and a velvet cloak flung over her. Deborah hauled her to her feet while simultaneously trying to brush her hair out.

“Deborah—ow! Stop that! What has possessed you to—” Her words dried in her mouth as she heard the sound of booted feet and spurs on stone outside the door of her room.

She knew those steps—knew the man who made them. She clutched the cloak around her and sat down suddenly again. Her legs would not hold her up.

The footsteps stopped. There was a moment, a knock, and then a man’s voice: “Anne?”

The door was pushed open and there stood the king in a mud-spattered riding cloak; it had been a hard, fast ride from London. Wordlessly, Anne looked up at Deborah. The other woman patted her hand then slipped from the room.

“Sire…” Anne started to rise from her chair, wanted to stand, as his equal, but her legs had no strength.

In a moment he was beside her, holding both of her hands in a painful grip, intense eyes locked with hers. He knelt beside her chair like a supplicant.

“My darling, my sweet Anne…” It was hard for him to speak. “I could not come before the tourney was over—and I thought I would never see you again. But then I was told you were dying…” He shook his head, blinking tears away. For a man who spoke very little about his feelings and was wary of those who did, the heartbroken note in his voice brought tears to her own eyes. “You understand—please tell me you understand. I had to let you go. You left me no other choice.”

Yes, she understood, she understood everything.

“I read the letters from…the former king, your father. Sir Mathew himself told me they are copies, witnessed by Doctor Millington at the Abbey. He keeps the originals for surety, somewhere.”

There was the ghost of a smile from both of them then.

Shakily, she extracted her hands and, at last able to stand, walked toward the fire and looked into its depths with her back to him.

“I wish, I deeply, deeply, deeply wish, that things could be different. That you had the power, the magic, to make the world go away.” It was the last childlike thing she would ever say and she sounded so forlorn he was beside her in one stride, wrapping his arms around her, rocking her gently, holding her tight. She turned in his embrace and, burying her head, allowed herself to sob for all that was lost to her: him, the person she truly was, her life at his court, their future—which could not exist.

The agony he felt was a physical pain. She would leave his kingdom, he knew it. Not for her the safety of a marriage he could arrange that would keep her near him at least.

This was her way of telling him that it remained her choice to go. He sighed.

“No. I have no magic. But things of this earth I can accomplish. See, I have something for you…”

“I don’t want anything from you, Edward.” She meant it. Pride was all she had left to sustain her.

He kissed her again, so gently, with such longing. “Let me restore what was once given.”

He had a leather bag strapped to his belt and when he opened it she saw he had two scrolls, tied with red ribbon and sealed. “Open them, please.”

The first scroll was a title deed. There, word for word, were the phrases that had been in her father’s first letter: “To our dear brother of Somerset…lands of the county of Somerset…dowered in perpetuity…to be hers and the heirs of her body and all in perpetuity…” But there were two differences from the original: she was the person named, not her mother, as the owner of these lands and farms and fishponds and mills, and the name of the king at the end of the document was Edward’s, not Henry’s.

Anne looked up at Edward. “But breaking sanctuary means I may not live in England.”

Edward moved a tendril of hair away from her eyes. “Yes, but the income will be sent to you. I’ll let Mathew Cuttifer know, it shall be done through him. Your estates will be excellently managed, that I promise you. And these lands will always belong to your children.” He said it so sadly. She would have children, but not with him.

She unfurled the second scroll as tears slipped down his face, and hers. It was a grant of arms to Anne in her own right. She would be Baroness Wincanton, Lady Anne de Bohun and her crest was made up of the Angevin leopards rampant above two drops of blood. “The blood is for you, and for me, for that is what we have given—hearts’ blood,” Edward whispered.

And there was one last thing. It was a ring, a great square ruby that had been engraved with her arms and the initials of their names, A and E, entwined above the leopards. Kissing the palm of her left hand, he then turned it over and slid the jewel onto her middle finger. “A ruby because you are above price and this is the stone of constancy.” For one last time he looked into her eyes then, once, only once, he kissed her.

Helplessly they clung together, body to body, but neither cried now; the feeling of loss was too achingly great to find expression. Then he left her, more alone than she had ever felt in her life, listening to the shouts in the yard of the monastery as the party of men and horses left.

And later that night, as she and Deborah were being rowed out to the waiting cog at anchor in the harbor, she smelled the sea and remembered her vision of loss and parting. She shivered. And prayed.

Sword Mother, let the dreams not be true…Let him be safe.

One last time, Anne lifted her eyes from the dark water. One last time, she looked back at the homeland she’d lost as the light of the wavering torches touched her face. Only the sound of the waves, the seabirds calling; nothing else was left.

But Anne was wrong, for as she turned away from the shore, the vision came to Deborah, unbidden.

Anne carried the king’s child in her belly.

This was not an end. This was a beginning.