Virgin Widow. Anne O'Brien

      Chapter Six

      I WAS given no presentiment of looming disaster. The storm came without warning to break over our heads.

      ‘What’s amiss?’ I asked the Countess as I joined her at the head of the outer staircase from the old keep at Warwick. ‘What’s happened? Surely we’re not at war again?’ We looked down on the suddenly chaotic scene below to where the Earl’s Master at Arms had just ridden through the gates with a force of armed retainers, outfitted to my eye for battle. Neville pennons flew from the tips of a half-dozen lances.

      ‘I don’t know.’ She ran down the steps with me hard on her heels.

      As soon as she opened the letter delivered to her hand by the Earl’s courier, I saw the recoil. Her eyes held the glassy blindness of panic as she lifted them from the words to survey the soldiers that filled our courtyard. The news was surely bad. In my innocence I thought it could only mean one thing and a cold hand tightened around my throat.

      ‘No,’ I whispered. ‘Not that!’

      ‘What?’ Face so pale, eyes wide, even her lips white, the Countess had difficulty in answering me. It must be the Earl! Only so critical a disaster could rob her of her self-possession.

      ‘Is he hurt?’ I moved to stand closer at her side, fearful that she would sink to the floor, but although she looked through me as if I did not exist, her hand closed vice-like around my wrist.

      ‘What?’ She gasped as she took my meaning. ‘No…no. Your father is well. But…I knew he was disturbed, angry…I knew the bitterness that drove him, that he feared Edward’s soft words as a mere sop to cover his true motive. But I had no idea that Warwick would consider this! That he would refuse to let matters lie quiet and wounds to heal. By the Virgin! Why has he done this?’

      ‘But what?’

      Her fingers tightened further, unaware, until I winced with pain.

      ‘Rebellion against Edward. Again.’ She forced the words through stiff lips. ‘He’s instigated an uprising in Lincolnshire, to draw Edward north into a trap where the Earl can defeat him in battle. Our Master at Arms is here to muster troops for my lord’s use.’

      ‘Will he take Edward prisoner again?’ I found it difficult to follow the reasoning. The King’s imprisonment had failed last time with humiliating results. Why risk another appalling failure? Why risk Edward’s good will a second time?

      ‘No.’ The Countess crushed the document in her fist as we watched the deployment of the men-at-arms. ‘Clarence is with Warwick. The plan is to depose Edward and make Clarence king. Clarence…! And Isabel then will be Queen. Ha! As if I care about that! All very well if my lord can carry it off. But if he cannot…If we fail, Edward will not forgive us this time. There’ll be no mercy for us at his hands.’

      But I could not think of that. In a moment of pure selfishness all I could see was that we had been cast in the role of traitor again. Rebels. Enemies of the King, destroyers of the peace of the realm. Objects of Edward’s hatred and vengeance. For the first time I think I questioned the wisdom of the Earl’s actions. Yet surely I could rest on the Earl’s just decisions. I could not start apportioning blame.

      Truth struck like a viper.

       Oh, Richard. My dearest love. Where does that leave us now?

      ‘What do we do?’ I asked helplessly, the answer to my question stark and brutal in my mind.

      ‘We wait. What other can we do?’

      One decision was made for us. At Clarence’s insistence, delivered shortly and verbally by the courier, we packed Isabel into a travelling litter and sent her with a strong escort out of harm’s way. She would travel slowly to Exeter where she would lodge in the sanctuary of the Bishop’s palace, under God’s protection and far from the dangers of warfare. Far from Edward, who might take it into his mind to take her and hold her and her unborn child as security for Clarence’s good behaviour. Margery travelled with her for her comfort. My mother was reluctant, but saw the sense of it. We watched her entourage disappear into the winter landscape.

      ‘I should not allow her to travel without me at this time,’ the Countess murmured, her anxieties showing in her hands clutching white-fingered on the coping stones. ‘She’s not strong. It would be better for her to remain here. If anything amiss occurs on the road…’

      I shuffled wordlessly at her side. Clarence’s high-handed orders had not endeared him to me. Far better for Isabel to remain safely behind the walls of Warwick Castle. Then the Countess braced her shoulders and regarded me with a steady stare.

      ‘So! Do we lay up for a siege, daughter—or do we gather our possessions for instant flight?’

      ‘It’s Richard! Richard’s here.’

      I raced from the battlement walk with no consideration for anything except that against all the odds he had come. ‘Richard has come. And Francis with him.’ I slid to a halt, ridiculously wishing I wore my new damask in rich cerulean with gold-embroidered bodice rather than my present hard-wearing woollen gown. Delight that I would see him again flooded through me. But I saw my mother’s fixed expression and the heat chilled, the fire died. How would either Richard or I face this redeployment of loyalties? Richard and I were on opposite sides, delineated by spilt blood and black treason. And as I had feared, Francis might be Warwick’s foster son, but was now riding in Richard of Gloucester’s train. I could not imagine how we should receive them. Nor what Richard could possibly say to me to give me hope, no matter how becoming my dress.

      ‘It had to happen,’ the Countess’s only observation. ‘Youth cleaves to youth. They were always good friends.’

      We welcomed them—in a fashion—in the open spaces of the courtyard, but the greeting was edged with frost.

      ‘I cannot stay, my lady.’ Richard dismounted, flung his reins to his squire and approached, a chillingly formal bow, addressing the Countess, but with his eyes sliding to me. ‘It’s not fitting that I should be here with rebellion afoot and the Earl’s allegiance a matter of censure. I regret this. The rift is not of my making.’ There was a brittleness about his movements, as if he wished himself anywhere but within the walls of one of Warwick’s castles.

      Francis too was ill at ease as he saluted my mother’s fingers. There was no warm embrace between them on this occasion. ‘I had to follow the dictates of honour, Lady.’

      ‘I understand.’ The Countess managed a thin smile. ‘If I have instilled honour into you, Francis, I must be satisfied, must I not? We must deal with circumstances as we find them.’

      ‘I am here to have conversation with Anne,’ Richard intervened with less than patience. ‘If you will permit it…?’

      ‘It is not seemly,’ my mother replied coldly, to my dismay. Would she indeed refuse? Deliberately, she would not meet my ferocious stare.

      ‘Anne was my betrothed,’ Richard said. I noted the tense with a sickening lurch of my belly. ‘It is seemly that I take my leave of her. I would ask your indulgence, Lady. Just this once. Is it too much to ask that I make my final farewells in person?’

      Just