The Tudor Rose (19 page)

And in the end the information she sought came to her quite casually. “Oh, John Green?” said the hated Stillington, who wrote out most of the King's orders. “Did you not know, Madam, that he is gone overseas?”

“You mean to France?” Elizabeth brought herself to ask, wondering if the trusted body squire had been sent to spy on Henry of Lancaster.

“Why, no, Madam, not so far as that,” the King's clerk informed her unctuously. “Only across the Solent. If there is anything I can do—”

“Then he may be back soon?” snapped Elizabeth.

“Not for a long while, I should think, Madam,” grinned Stillington. “As a reward for his devoted service the King has made him Receiver of the Wight.”

“A dull appointment, on an island, for the best-looking bachelor at Court,” pouted Cicely, who—like half the Queen's ladies— considered herself in love with him.

“But one where no one is likely to ask him questions!” murmured sagacious old Mattie, setting out her mistress's embroidery frame.

On the ninth day of April, that sad anniversary of the bereavement which had so altered their lives, Elizabeth and her sister were allowed to visit their mother. The King had been quite humane about it when Anne Neville, before departing, had begged the favour for them. “Providing John Nesfield is present,” had been his only stipulation, thereby guarding himself against any further trouble from the Woodville woman's plotting. The poor deposed Queen Dowager was pathetically glad to see them and the loving prattle of her younger children helped to cheer her. The older girls were able to assure her of Anne Neville's kindness and more than once she sighed, envying them their freedom to live publicly at Court. Elizabeth, in Nesfield's presence, could not speak of the disadvantages which went with it when one's birthright had been taken away. All she could tell her mother was that the allowances the King had promised to make them when they left sanctuary had been legally confirmed. Of his proposals for marriages for Cicely and Ann the Queen Dowager was already bitterly aware, and Elizabeth had not the heart to add to her bitterness by speaking of the marriage threat he had made in private to herself.

The hours passed almost happily, but the Queen Dowager clung especially to her eldest daughter at parting. “When Uncle Richard returns I will ask if we may visit you again,” Elizabeth promised, although she hated above everything to ask him for favours.

But a bare week later, when the King's courier rode in mud-splashed and breathlessly from Nottingham, she went again—alone and without permission. She went white-faced and shocked along the corridors to her mother's far-off apartments, and when Nesfield would have kept her out the preoccupied regality of her bearing silenced even him. “Let me pass, Sirrah. I must tell her Grace that my cousin, the King's heir, is dead,” she said, passing through the open doorway without so much as glancing at him.

Her mother rose at sight of her, and by the look of triumph on her face Elizabeth knew that she had heard. “It is the curse you laid upon him. That dreadful curse!” she said, almost accusingly.

“When did the boy die?” asked the elder Elizabeth steadily.

“That day we spent with you—the anniversary of the very day upon which my father died.”

“Then God has been good to me,” the Queen Dowager said with slowly savoured satisfaction. “Three of my sons that fiend slew.”

Elizabeth sat down unceremoniously beside her because she could no longer stand. “They had reached Nottingham when they heard. They were holding Court in the castle there. They did not even know the boy was sick. The messenger says they are beside themselves with grief.”

The Woodville woman stared straight before her into the pit of her own sufferings. “Then they will know now what it is like,” she said scarcely above a whisper.

Elizabeth, too, stared before her in the heavy silence of her mother's meagre room. So this was the fearful thing which poor Anne had felt was out there waiting to meet them on the road. Elizabeth recalled how bravely they had set forth, with their banners and their gorgeous clothes and their happy anticipation; and tried to picture their return—with the empty bleakness of their faces and of their lives. No matter what wrongs she herself had suffered, she could not but be sorry for anyone who had been as kind to her as Anne had been. Yet, strangely enough, in that hour it was Richard whom she was most sorry for. Richard, the man whom she hated. Whatever he had done had been done because he had this son and so could preserve the strength of the dynasty he had sinned for. And now, it seemed, the sinning was left denuded of its better motive, with nothing but the tattered shreds of remorse to clothe its shame.

The Queen's homecoming was sad beyond words. She had gone forth a gay and placid young woman, and came back a sick and heartbroken one. Her warm trills of laughter no longer spilled over the formality of Court life to inspire people's love, and the citizens of London, already deeply suspicious of her husband, saw the date of the Prince of Wales's death as an indication of God's judgement, and so withheld even their pity.

Elizabeth, the tender-hearted, seldom left her; and the King did all he could to comfort her. “You must grow strong again, my sweet, and bear me other sons,” Elizabeth overheard him say, leaning over his wife's bed. But she also caught sight of his twisted face as he said it. For it was difficult to believe that Anne would ever get strong again, and the only child she had ever given him had been born eleven years ago.

Even if the lines about his mouth were deeper and his crisp orders sounded more impatient, he went about his affairs as usual. He was accustomed to suffering in silence and asked for no one's pity. And it was characteristic of his Court that the following Christmastide should be kept as splendidly as ever.

“Will the King let our mother be with us for Christmas Day?” little Katherine had asked wistfully, leaning against Elizabeth's knee.

“The Countess of Richmond is to be allowed to—Lord Stanley told me so,” said her sister Ann.

“And so is his eldest son, Lord Strange,” said Cicely, who believed in seizing all the fun she could before being hustled into a loveless marriage, and was looking for some one to replace John Green.

When the time came it was good to see her and young Ann being flattered by all the personable young courtiers and enjoying the dancing as they used to do; and to hear Katherine and Bridget shrieking with delight over their toys and sweetmeats and carrying out the spirit of the season by sharing them with simple Warwick, who was so much bigger than themselves. Even the Queen roused herself to take part in the festivities and sat in the midst of them to watch the Nativity plays and acrobats and mimes. “Although the mimes are but poor this year without our Dickon!” declared Cicely stoutly.

Since her return to the Palace Elizabeth had never known the King to be so gracious to her. He teased her about the new blooming of her beauty occasioned by freedom and fresh air, saying that his home evidently suited her. And when the Queen ordered a crimson gown pearled with holly leaves for Twelfth Night he insisted upon Elizabeth having one made exactly like it. “That crimson stuff will suit Bess now that she has wild roses in her cheeks,” he had said, coming into his wife's room while the dressmakers had the exquisite stuff spread out. “Though I am desolate at the thought that they may be Lancastrian roses!” It was not like Richard to be tactless and both women knew that the comparison was unkind to Anne. Elizabeth saw the raised brows of the 'tiring-women. In any other circumstances the lovely creation she was being offered would have delighted her, but she was uncomfortably aware that to wear a dress exactly like the Queen's would cause talk about the Court; and, more important still, that Anne herself must be displeased. “How can Richard be thinking about clothes when we have no child to enjoy Twelfth Night?” she had cried indignantly after he was gone.

“Because he can feel two completely different kinds of things at once,” said Elizabeth, realizing even as she spoke how odd it was for her to be explaining a man to his own wife. It used to be the other way round, but her mind had dwelt so much and so searchingly on the man of late. Seeing that all the preparations and festivities and dressmakers had tired the poor Queen out, she gently persuaded her to lie down upon her day-bed. “Madam, I did not seek this,” she said soberly, when they were alone.

“I know that you did not,” agreed the Queen at once. “Have I not already told you that when I know people well I trust their motives better than what other people say?” Impulsively she caught at her friend's hand, looking up at her with special urgency. “I know that I am often peevish these days,” she added. “But, whatever may happen and whatever people may say, I want you always to remember that, dear Bess.”

T
HE SEASONS HAD GONE round again since that splendid cavalcade had had all its gaiety quenched at Nottingham— his “castle of care,” as Richard now called it. Elizabeth stood at the Queen's window at Westminster looking down upon the greening garden. “The spring flowers will soon be in bloom again,” she said to cheer her.

But poor Anne was not to be comforted. “I shall not live to see the spring,” she said listlessly from her bed. “Do not the physicians all agree that I have the same wasting sickness which took my sister and my little son? And now Richard tells me it is because of the contagion that he must shun my bed. But I do not believe him. There must be some other reason.”

It was the first time that Anne had disbelieved anything that Richard had said. “Please God she does not think, in her distraction, that I am the reason!” thought Elizabeth.

“Why is he arranging marriages for your sisters and not for you?” asked Anne suspiciously, after tossing and sighing a while.

“Probably because he thinks mine is more important,” suggested Elizabeth, carrying a cloth and a dish of rose-water to the bedside.

“Because you are the real Queen of England?” jibed Anne.

Elizabeth said nothing, but gently wiped her friend's hot forehead.

“Perhaps after I am gone he will marry you himself,” went on Anne, determined to provoke an argument.

“He is my uncle,” said Elizabeth coldly, setting down the basin.

“You could get a dispensation from the Pope. The Spanish Duchess of Infantasgo and some of the Austrian royalties did.”

“Possibly. If we both wanted to. But it takes two to make a marriage,” said Elizabeth. “And if there is one thing you can be sure of, my dear, it is Richard's love.”

The words melted Anne momentarily to tears. “Oh, Bess, forgive me!” she cried weakly. “It is just that everything seemed to go wrong when we lost our son.” But she spoiled her lovable contrition by adding with a hardness which seemed all the more terrible considering her natural child like naïveté, “You got what you wanted
then
, didn't you?”

“Oh, Anne, don't talk so wildly!” implored Elizabeth, struggling with her anger.

“Well, if you didn't, your mother did. And whatever happened to your precious brothers they have been well avenged!” muttered the dying woman, hunching herself back among her pillows.

Long after Anne had fallen into an uneasy sleep Elizabeth sat by the window with her stirred and troubled thoughts. Had the poor Queen's words been so wild after all, she wondered? Or had she herself during these last few weeks been merely imagining things? That Richard's attitude towards her had changed must be patent to all. Her status at Court was very different now and many enjoyments came her way. To have been glad of it was only human; although with everything that she accepted from him went the self-abasing thought that she was being disloyal to her brothers. But now, reviewing her own feelings in the light of remorseless candour, she asked herself whether there had been something more? Some excitement because he singled her out—some strange attraction? Something unnatural, shameful, vile? Could it possibly be that Anne was right?

So often of an evening now that Anne was sick in bed, when supper was over and the musicians were filling the hall with sweet music from their gallery, she would find Richard at her side. Richard at his most charming. A grown edition of her younger brother— highly strung, mercurial, amusing, quick in mutual exchange of thought—speaking the same easy, expressive language of her breed. The sort of companion whom she so much missed.

As the threads of poor Anne's life grew more tenuous and she called constantly for them both, inevitably they were thrown more and more together. And when Anne died, as she had said she would, before the spring flowers were well in bloom, they shared a common sorrow. When the Archbishop finally folded the pale hands of the mighty Kingmaker's daughter across her small, cold breasts, for the first time in her life Elizabeth heard the hard-bitten Plantagenet sob—and yet by now she was almost sure that Anne's suspicions had not been groundless.