Anne O'Brien - Virgin Widow

At home my outlook was even less cheerful because it was the year I fell into love after hovering precariously, unknowingly, on its brink. An entirely adult emotion that exploded through my blood, creating a fire that would burn for ever and never release me.

It was all the fault of St George and the Dragon.

In October of that year, Richard came of age. We celebrated, gifts presented to mark the occasion. Edward sent him a full suit of armour, swathed in cloth and soft leather against the rigours of travel. It was a Milanese confection, chased and gilded, a magnificent affair from the visored bascinet to the pointed sole rets, it would encase him cap-à-pie. I imagined it would draw all eyes on a battlefield or in a tournament. My father gave him a destrier, a true war horse of his own breeding at Sheriff Hutton, with some Arab blood in its proud head-carriage and arched neck. Dark bay and fiery, it was of the weight to carry him into any battle. They would make a splendid pair.

My undoing was at the evening banquet where it was decided that we, the younger members of the household, should enact the chivalric tale of St George and the Dragon, our own version of a mummers’ play. We’d seen it performed often enough—crude and popular in the repertoire of travelling players—so it took little preparation beyond a good memory for speeches and a delving into a box of costumes and other oddments from a decade of Twelfth Night productions. Costumes, armour, hobby horses and masks—much chipped wood, scuffed gilding and curled board—but all we needed.

Richard, of course, made a courageous St George. Francis Lovell in character as a wily dragon. Isabel would take the role of Virgin Maiden to be rescued and saved from a fate worse than death. But since I made a stand, refusing to be pushed into the background as the Virgin’s servingwoman, there were two of us, beautiful damsels, to be rescued.

There was much posturing and declaiming.

‘Come to our aid, bold knight. Or we shall surely perish.’ Isabel wrung her hands. I fell to my knees in dramatic grief.

‘Halt, Sir Dragon.’ St George stood foursquare before the terrifying beast. ‘Do you dare attack these sweet maidens?’

The Dragon in mask and scaled body with a cloth tail bellowed and vowed his intent to eat us all. Clad in old gowns, once sumptuous but now musty and mildewed, that hung on our figures and trailed the floor, with diaphanous veils floating romantically from brow and shoulder, we maidens clutched our bosoms as symbols of our virtue and wailed at the sight of the dragon come to ravish us.

The Dragon roared. Virgin Isabel pleaded for her life. I remained on my knees, dumbstruck…because I found myself unable to drag my eyes from my rescuer. In that moment Richard filled my whole horizon, his face pale with the dramatic tension of the moment, shoulders braced, all knightly courtesy and determination to overcome the brazen creature. Handsome, no. His face was too thinly austere for conventional comeliness, but striking, yes, with all the glamour of his gold armour. His voice raised in authoritative demand was suddenly, disconcertingly adult. His dark eyes blazed as he stared down the Dragon; his dark hair was tousled from nervous fingers. I could not look away.

Forced to take one deep breath, I found it difficult to take another. Standing, I retreated to Isabel’s side. My lips parted, but I could think of none of the words I should speak, even when my sister’s elbow found sharp contact with my ribs. I had fallen headlong and breathtakingly into love with Richard Plantagenet.

I did not tell Richard of my new feelings for him. Why? Because I promptly pretended that I fell out of love again within the week, when I caught him kissing a kitchenmaid. That my heroic and fascinating cousin should choose to kiss Maude, a flirtatious and extremely pretty kitchenmaid in the shadowed corner behind the dairy when I came upon him—it turned my bright daydreams to the sour lees of old ale. These kisses were not formal or passionless, mere bushes of lip against fingers or cheek. They opened my eyes to reality. Whispered words, more heated kisses, fineboned hands that stroked and caressed. Maude giggled and tossed her head.

Fleeing to stand in the centre of my room in the dim light, I ran my hands down my sides, over my chest, dismayed at the evidence of unformed waist and hips, lean flanks, the flattest of bosoms. None of the womanly curves that Maude flaunted. As for my face, I had studied it in my mother’s precious mirror. The far-more-desirable-Maude’s fair skin and velvet-brown 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.