Anne O'Brien - Virgin Widow

‘Ha! As I thought. Perhaps it’s too late anyway.’ We staggered and clutched as a rogue wave lifted the boat from prow to stern. I covered my mouth on another surge of nausea, the clammy sweat chilling me in the hot air.

‘Breathe deep, daughter. I can’t deal with two of you sick. Sit with Isabel, hold her hand, talk to her.’

‘What about?’ I looked to the Countess for guidance. There was a fear here in this cabin. Sharp and bright, it suddenly overwhelmed me.

‘Anything. Encourage her, distract her if you can. Now, Margery, let’s see if we can bring this child safe into the world.’

Three hours later we had made little progress.

‘We need the powers of the Blessed Virgin’s Girdle here, my lady,’ Margery whispered as Isabel’s whole body strained.

‘Well, we haven’t got it and so must do what we can without!’

Sniffing, Margery resorted to the age-old remedy of a knife slipped beneath the pallet to ease the pain and cut the birth pangs, adding a dull green stone for good measure. ‘Jasper,’ she whispered.’It gives strength and fortitude to ailing women.’

‘Then we could surely do with such powers this day. For all of us.’ The Countess did not stop her, but decided on a more practical approach.

‘Find the kitchen, or what passes for one, wherever it may be in this vessel, Anne. Tell the cook I need grease. Animal fat. Anything to coat my hands.’ The Countess leaned close, speaking to me as an equal in age and knowledge, with a foreboding that she no longer made any effort to hide. ‘The child is taking too long. Isabel grows weaker by the minute and the child’s not showing.’

I raced off, returning with a pot of noxious and rancid grease—from what source I could not possibly guess.

‘Don’t stand gawping, Anne. If nothing else, pray!’

My mother astounded me. Stripped of all her consequence along with her veils, skirts and under-robe tucked up, hair curling on to her neck in greasy strands, she was as rank as any common midwife, yet as awe inspiring as the most noble lady in the land.

‘Who shall I petition?’ I asked. Praying seemed to me a tedious affair when all around was fear and chaos.

‘Pray to the Virgin. And St Margaret—chaste and childless she may have remained, accepting death as the lesser of evils, although I cannot agree with her, but during torture she experienced all the pain of being swallowed up and spat out by a dragon. An unpleasant experience not given to many of us. Pray to her.’ She hesitated a moment, then held my eyes in a fierce stare. ‘But before you do, fetch the priest.’

I did not need to ask why.

The next hours were the most horrifying of my young life. Enclosed in that cabin it was difficult to tell when day passed into night, night into day. Candles were replaced as they guttered, food was sent in to us that we did not eat, until it was all over, except for the hot reek of blood and sweat and terror. There was little else to show for it. Isabel lay as pale and drained as whey cheese. The Countess knelt beside her, exhausted, whilst Margery fussed and fretted with pieces of soiled linen. The bones of my fingers were crushed as in a vice where Isabel had hung on in the worst of her pain. I had repeated every prayer of petition I knew, as well as a good many impromptu offerings, until my voice was hoarse and at the end I drooped with fatigue. But all we had was a poor dead baby. The grease to slick the Countess’s hands and ease the child into the world and the dire experience of St Margaret with the dragon saved my sister, but not the child. A poor weak creature smeared with blood and slime that managed to utter a cry little stronger than a kitten, then left this life almost as soon as it had entered it.

A girl. The priest, Father Gilbert, our own Neville priest who had come with us in our household, hustled in from where he had waited all this time within call, baptised her at the bedside to save her immortal soul and to free her from slavery to the Devil. I think we pretended that she was still alive when the water touched her forehead. It would have been too distressing to accept that her life had passed and so her soul was lost to God as well. Anne, she was called, because my mother’s eye fell on me as I would have shrunk from the room at the end to find some solitary space in which to shed the tears that now would not be restrained in my weakness. Her eye fixed me to the spot, where I stood frozen as the priest touched the unresponsive face with holy water from the little vial. Isabel watched glassy-eyed as her daughter was washed and wrapped and finally given into my reluctant care in my role as messenger.

‘Take the babe to the Earl,’ the Countess instructed, touching the waxen features with fingers that were unsteady. ‘He will know what to do.’

Such a small weight. The child lay in my arms as if she slept toil-worn from the excesses of the event, the skin on her eyelids translucent. Her fingernails were perfect too, but too weak to cling to life. How could I not weep as I carried the burden on to the deck? To my father, my mother had said. Not to the Duke of Clarence.

I stood before them where they waited for me, as if I were offering a precious gift.

‘Is it a boy?’ Clarence asked.

‘No. A girl. And she is dead. We called her Anne. She has been baptised.’ I knew my tone was blunt and unfeeling, but I dared do no other. Nor dared I look at him. Too many feelings crowded in, not least my hatred for this man who cared nothing for my sister other than the inheritance that came with her name. The power of her Neville family connections that would buy him support and, as was his ambition, the throne of England. If I had allowed it I would have sunk down to the rough decking and howled my hurt and disillusion, like one of my father’s hounds.

‘Perhaps next time it will be a boy.’ Clarence turned away, disappointed, uninterested. He did not ask about Isabel’s condition.

My father saw my distress. With a brusque gesture that held his own grief in check, he pulled me and the sad bundle close into his arms. ‘Isabel?’

‘She is tired and weak. I don’t think she understands.’

‘We must thank God for your mother’s skills. Without her we might have lost Isabel too.’ He lifted the child from me with great care. ‘Go back. Tell your mother. I will send the child’s body to Calais with Captain Jessop here.’ I became aware that the Captain had returned and was awaiting instructions. ‘I will ask that she be buried with all honour at the castle. She is very small and barely drew breath, but she is ours with Neville blood in her veins. Wenlock will see to it.’

I nodded, too weary to do or to think anything else.

‘Tell her…tell your mother…I was wrong. I should never have put to sea.’

‘I don’t think it mattered, sir.’ I rubbed my eyes and cheeks on my sleeve. ‘If any should take the blame it should be the Yorkists. King Edward who drove us on with fear of capture. King Edward is to blame.’

And Richard, my Richard, who has stayed loyal to his eldest brother and is now my enemy whether I wish it or not.

I gave the bundle into the Earl’s keeping, and left before I could see it carried over the side.

There began for us a long and distressing voyage west along the coast from Calais. The winds and tides did us no favours and there was an uneasy pall of death over the ship. Isabel regained her strength, enough to sit in her chair or walk a few steps on deck, but not her spirits. Clarence did not endear himself. He remained brashly insensitive, rarely asking about her, rarely seeking her company, too concerned with the instability of his own future now that he was branded traitor to his brother. The Earl and Countess held discussions deep into the night. I knew it was about our future plans, where we would go now that Calais was barred to us. We could not return to England unless we had an army at our back—that much I understood. All my father’s wealth was not sufficient to fund such an enterprise. If we returned to cast ourselves on King Edward’s mercy, we would all be locked up. Without doubt heads would roll. The line between my father’s brows grew deeper as his options narrowed. Not yet knowing what they were, still I realised that they were distasteful to the Earl and to the Countess. As for Clarence, he did not care, as long as there was a golden crown for him at the end.