The Exiled Read Online Free Page A

the strange half sleep as the light from the fire flickered on her face, her eyelids. Aveline ... her name was a breath, not even a sound. For Aveline was indeed dead, and she too had borne a child named Edward. Yet she was never a sister of Anne’s, although, in the end, in that other life lived as the Cuttifers’ servant in London, Anne had loved her like one.
    Aveline, who’d served in the Cuttifer household as Lady Margaret’s maid; Aveline, raped and made pregnant by Piers, Mathew Cuttifer’s only son; Aveline, who’d endured a forced and dreadful marriage to Piers Cuttifer, finally killing both her repellent husband, then herself and leaving her own child an orphan to be raised by his grandparents, Sir Mathew and Lady Margaret.
    The tears were genuine when Anne spoke of the sadness of Aveline’s life and death, and perhaps it was easier to believe, for others, that Anne’s baby was Aveline’s son for he was not much like his ‘aunt’; his skin was olive and he had speedwell-blue eyes, his father’s eyes in truth, where her own were some strange amalgam of green and blue. Jewels, he’d called them, sea-topaz, kingfisher bright.
    Anne remembered too well every word they’d spoken, every moment they’d ever had together. But it was useless to dream. Dreaming would not bring Edward’s father to Brugge and she had her own way to make in life without him — an aching, lonely thought.
    But then Anne’s courage rose a little as she dismissed the image of her lover’s face. She had much, so much, to be thankful for in comparison to many others. She’d been left a small estate in Somerset, gifted to her mother Alyce de Bohun, and that provided a small income faithfully accounted to her each quarter day. She had good, warm clothes, a house to live in — even if it was not hers — and a small number of jewels, if all else failed her: a topaz brooch, a great ruby ring (a precious keepsake given her by Edward’s father) and the little pearl and garnet cross presented to her by the Cuttifers when she’d left their house for the Court of Edward IV and his queen, Elisabeth Wydeville.
    Anne shifted uneasily in her chair, frowning as, unbidden, the images came; pictures from that time as Elisabeth Wydeville’s body servant when dread and joy were her constant companions.
    For it was at court she’d fallen in love with Edward the king, and it was at court she’d found out who she really was: the natural daughter of the old king, Henry VI. Thus the man she loved, adulterously, had usurped her father’s throne.
    That knowledge had brought fear, and sudden clarity. Yes, Anne was illegitimate,
but
she was the illegitimate daughter of a king. Sighing, almost groaning, Anne shook her head. It hurt, it still hurt like a deep, deep burn, the choice she’d made: self-exile to Brugge rather than remain in England. For if she’d stayed, she’d have to have chosen a side, eventually, as the old king’s daughter.
    A terrible choice, for how could she support her father’s natural enemy, the man who’d taken his throne, driven him into hiding, even
if
she loved him?
    But then, she’d not known she was pregnant when she’d sailed from Dover into exile. Perhaps Edward might have wanted her to stay if she could have told him, even with the risk to his throne? He’d only had daughters with Elisabeth Wydeville, the queen — but she, Anne, had a son. England desperately needed a male heir if Edward was to consolidate his reign. Perhaps he’d have forgiven Anne her ancestry for the sake of their child — this combination of York and Lancaster?
    Forgive her? Better she should think of forgiving him! He was her father’s usurper! And how could she allow herself to contemplate, for even one moment, allowing her own child to be engulfed by the vicious game of English politics just because she loved his father still?
    Anne’s eyes snapped open with the turmoil of her anguished thoughts and she sat up. England was in her past