Virgin Widow. Anne O'Brien

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СКАЧАТЬ eyes would attract. Why would he not kiss Maude who had all the attributes I lacked? He would not kiss me with such fervour! Richard would never see me in such a light.

      So my love was dead, I told myself. Killed by his perfidious preference for another. Not that he had ever led me to believe otherwise, honesty forced itself into my bitter thoughts. He held me in some affection, perhaps, but I wanted more than that. I wanted those intense kisses for myself. I wept hot tears of hopelessness.

      When I could weep no more, I practised my own version of my mother’s severe dignity. I forced myself to stay away from him, chin raised, head tilted, the coldest of shoulders. I stared my reproach, but closed my lips when Maude served Richard with ale and a tilted chin, and he smiled that slow smile. My words were short and sharp when conversation was needed. Richard frowned, perplexed at my ill manners, but for the most part ignored my attempts to impress him with my heartbroken dignity. He asked Isabel if I was suffering from some form of ague.

      It hurt. My feelings were not dead at all.

      ‘What is it like to be in love?’ I asked Isabel, driven against my better instincts to talk to someone who might know. ‘Is it painful?’

      Isabel shrugged her uninterest. ‘I have no idea.’

      ‘Do you not love Clarence?’

      ‘No!’

      ‘But you would wed him.’

      ‘It is my greatest wish.’ Her smile was full of pitying condescension. ‘But love is irrelevant to people of our standing.’

      Yet I thought she lied. I thought her heart was more than a little engaged despite her terse denial. Nor did love seem irrelevant to me. It was a most painful part of my existence. How could I love him and he not love me? I hated him for it and determined to have no pleasure in life.

      

      ‘I am bidden to London, madam. Immediately.’

      I could see the simmer of anticipation in Richard. Despite my continuing coolness towards him, it was the news I had been dreading. Relations between the King and the Earl continued to lean and totter endlessly on a knife edge. So Richard would be gone at the King’s order, away from the Earl’s influence, and would never return. I hugged my silent misery as the preparation and packing up of his possessions, the leave takings, all merged together into one throbbing wound.

      The Countess embraced him with real affection and a quick sadness. ‘We shall miss you. You have been like my own son to me.’

      Francis staked a claim for future friendship. ‘I shall demand your royal attention when I too come to London. A tankard of ale at least for old times’ sake. Or will the Duke of Gloucester be too high for the likes of me?’ Francis demanded with the sly humour of deep bonding over inexplicable male issues.

      Isabel wished him well in her self-important fashion.

      Stony-faced, ungraciously monosyllabic, I swore silently that I did not care, that his absence would make no difference to me. In reality I was frozen with dismay. I had long ago given up the pretence that I was immune to Richard, although I guarded my words and my actions around him. The days of youthful confidences had long gone. Now I might never see him again unless we visited Court too, an unlikely event given the increasingly bad blood between our families. It cast a dark shadow over that cold January day with the promise of snow on the northern hills. It was no colder than my heart.

      ‘Will you not give me your hand in farewell, cousin?’ Richard had manoeuvred a moment of privacy within the swirling movement and bustle of the courtyard.

      I did so, curtly. ‘God speed, Richard.’

      ‘I think you will not miss me.’

      ‘Of course I shall.’ I went through the demands of courtesy.

      ‘Then adieu, Anne.’ A flamboyant bow with his feather-trimmed hat as if he would mock my poor manners. ‘One day I shall see you at Court too.’

      ‘Perhaps.’

      On a thought he leaned to whisper in my ear, before I could pull away, ‘Perhaps we would not have suited after all. Your affection for me seems to have quite vanished, little cousin. I would want a warmer bride at my side.’

      ‘No, we should definitely not have suited,’ I snapped back, ‘for I would demand constancy and loyalty in a husband.’

      Richard laughed aloud at my stubbornness, eyes sparkling. I could see the excitement, the exhilaration. He wanted to be gone. Planting a kiss smartly on my cheek, he was mounted and away.

      Thus it was a cold departure between us, and all my fault. If I could not have his love, I would not tolerate the mild warmth of his friendship. Now lonely and adrift and unquestionably guilty, trailing along the battlements to the spot where he used to stand to look out towards the south, I set myself to wallow in my own self-inflicted misery. For the first time in my life the confines of Middleham hemmed me in and my desire was to escape. If we were to go to London, Richard would be there…

      

      Calais! Not Warwick. Not London. But Calais?

      Why were we to travel to Calais?

      It was eight years since either I or Isabel had last been to Calais so I had no memory of it. The Earl was often there, but why should he suddenly take it into his mind to transport his whole family with him? The Countess, who received the instructions from the Earl, saw no need to enlighten us.

      I did not like it. There were too many secrets by half.

      We journeyed south, rapidly, a strange journey, almost as if in flight from some unforeseen danger. First to Warwick Castle, not stopping there above two nights, but met there by my father. Then on to the coast at Sandwich where we took ship. There was a tension in the party, between my parents, that could almost be tasted. The uneasy crossing was also to match our mood, the seas cold and grey. Moreover, barely had we set foot on land, our household disembarked into the comfort of the great castle there with its formidable garrison, than the Earl turned on his heel and left again.

      ‘But why are we here, madam?’ Isabel asked crossly with no attempt to disguise her disapproval of the whole venture. With betrothal in her mind, and robbed of one bridegroom, this military outpost was no place to achieve another.

      ‘And where is the Earl gone?’ I added.

      ‘Returned to England, to the King’s service.’ It was the only explanation the Countess was prepared to give in all the dreary weeks of waiting—for what I didn’t know—that were to follow. I had the dismaying sensation that we had been abandoned there. But if the Earl had mended his friendship with the King, why must we be in this voluntary exile? More dark secrets as we sat in our stronghold in Calais, grasping at any crumb of news, all through that spring and early summer. We knew that the Earl spent time at Sandwich where he was fitting out his ship the Trinity. The Queen gave birth to yet another girl. There were rebellions in England, in the north, against high taxation. Edward had left London to collect an army to subdue them.

      ‘Will the Earl march with him?’ I asked, with ulterior motives. ‘And Richard too?’

      But the Countess’s distracted reply troubled me even more. I had never known her so anxious as she was in those days. СКАЧАТЬ