The Tudor Rose (42 page)

“No,” said Elizabeth uncompromisingly. “Is it not enough that his Grace is kind to you and makes you an allowance? You should thank the blessed saints that you were not with child by this impostor or he might have been forced to act differently.”

“But, after all, I am his cousin, and I think he likes me,” mused Katherine.

“Yes. I am sure that he likes you,” replied Elizabeth, pausing before her mirror and deciding that it was not only Henry who was ageing. The strain of all that she had been through was beginning to tell on her, and for the first time she discerned faint lines which might in time mar the serenity of her beauty. She had brought to her husband the benefit of her popularity and given him a fine family to unite the red and white roses, which was probably all that he had ever wanted of her. So perhaps the reason why he did not often come to her bed now was that he liked this pretty Scottish cousin of his too much. The thought annoyed but did not hurt her. “And I am afraid I grow more and more apt to misjudge him,” she thought.

During the days that followed Elizabeth strove hard to keep her thoughts from Katherine Gordon's attractive husband and all that had happened in the monk's old garden. And the simplest way was to make up her mind once and for all. She was convinced that she could never have felt that kinship with him and opened her heart to him had he not had Plantagenet blood. For the sake of her own peace of mind she accepted her mother's solution of the matter. He was some bastard brother who looked extraordinarily like Dickon. How else could he have had that fineness of feature and that charm of manner? And her mother, she guessed, had secretly contrived the affair with her all too willing sister-in-law, Margaret of Burgundy. Ill as the Dowager Queen was at the time, Mistress Grace, who was so devoted to her, could have sent her own younger brother as the tool that Margaret sought. A tool so likely that he must have appeared to her as a gift from Heaven with his looks, his knowledge of Court life and his inherited charm. A counterfeit so plausible that for more than six years he could put fear into even the self-sufficient Tudor. But whoever the young man was Elizabeth did not like to think of him, hunted and hungry, hurrying from one watched port to another, pitting his nimble wits against her husband's.

Her imaginings were groundless, for in the end the King's men caught him within a stone's throw of Richmond Palace. Even then he dodged like a hare and escaped them and managed to enter the sanctuary of Sheen Priory.

“You see,” said Katherine Gordon triumphantly to all who would listen to her, “were he not really your Richard of York how could he have known that sanctuary was at hand?”

“He had time to look round,” snapped Jane Stafford, knowing how this constant use of the name affected her mistress. “A noble priory with acres of land could scarcely be mistaken for a farmstead.”

But for once the Queen overlooked the use of the forbidden name and drew their guest gently aside. “I am sure that it was the Palace, not the Priory, he was originally making for,” she consoled her. “He must have loved you very dearly to risk his life to see you, Kate.”

In spite of her anxiety, the girl's fair face flushed with happiness. “But how could he possibly have known that we were coming here?” she asked, after a moment's consideration.

But that the Queen had no intention of telling her.

“Well, at least he is safe,” they both sighed.

But he was not, for there was an end even to Henry's patience. This time the King disregarded the laws of Holy Church. Perkin Warbeck was a disturber of the public peace, he contended firmly, and demanded that the Prior should deliver him up. It was well known that Henry never offended the Church if he could help it, and more and more frequently he had made valuable religious foundations and bequests; but the common sense of his request roused so much sound backing throughout the country that the Prior agreed to hand over the pretender on condition that his life should be spared. And judging from the spirited way in which he bargained with the King, it seemed probable that during the few short hours of his unwanted guest's sojourn the wise old Prior, too, must have succumbed to some inherited Plantagenet charm!

The whole nation marvelled when Henry acquiesced, merely having the impudent impostor set in the stocks for the whole of a forenoon before Westminster Hall and then again at Cheapside, and then imprisoning him for life. “Put him in one of those cells beneath the Earl of Warwick's room,” she heard Henry tell the Lieutenant of the Tower. And there, presumably, he would eat his young heart out, forgetting the warmth and sunshine and the song of the birds, not being even allowed to walk on the battlements as her poor Cousin Warwick did.

The year limped away and Elizabeth resolutely turned her mind from that grim place. More and more she spent time and money on the sick and the distressed so that she came to be known as Elizabeth the Good. She tried not to criticize anything that her husband did and to keep her mind dutifully upon the concerns of her own household and family. Now that her mother-in-law had withdrawn from Court, Elizabeth relied more and more upon her own judgement; and although she never sought any of the spectacular power so beloved by the Woodville side of her family, she was pleased to find that within her own sphere she had much quiet influence. Her children adored her and she counted herself fortunate in the frequent companionship of her sisters. Although Katherine Plantagenet was now one of the Devon Courteneys and absorbed in their affairs, and young Bridget was already a novice, Ann—who had married the brilliant Earl of Surrey—was often in attendance upon the Queen. And when Cicely's rich old husband died it was Elizabeth to whom she came for advice. For life was blossoming anew for Cicely because she need no longer make a secret of her love for Sir Robert Kim, a gentleman of Lincolnshire. “But of course the King would never hear of my marrying him,” she would sigh.

“What he does not hear of he cannot prevent,” pointed out Elizabeth.

Cicely stared at her favourite sister in surprise. “You mean that you, who took “Humble and Reverent” for your motto, seriously advise us to marry without his permission, Bess?”

“Only if you are prepared to live away from all the gaiety of Court. In some quiet country manor perhaps. Think well, my sweet. You need to be very sure, you who have always been so lively and so feted.”

“Oh, Bess, for Robert I would live
anywhere
!”

“Then that is the answer,” said Elizabeth, with a new firm assurance.

“And you would do what you could for us if the King is angry?”

“I would do what little I could.”

“I suppose I should not ask this of you, but you do not know how awful it is to be married while one is still young to a man whose touch is like salted fish on Good Friday!” explained Lord Welles' new young widow.

Elizabeth took her sister's piquant face between both her hands and kissed her very tenderly. “Darling Cicely, I understand better than you suppose,” she said quietly. “
I
was heir to a throne and had no personal choice. But for one whose happiness I desire above all things I would say 'Take a man who will be your mate.'”

That her elder children could not marry for that reason Elizabeth knew and accepted. But James of Scotland was manly and generous, and the Spanish girl by all accounts had been well brought up. So she did what she could to prepare the characters of Arthur and Margaret and their knowledge of foreign languages, and their wardrobes for their approaching marriages, in spite of the fact that the Spanish sovereigns seemed still to hesitate. “But Henry is sure to find some way to persuade them,” she told her anxious friends, being more confident than ever of his power and wisdom.

And then one day all London was suddenly agog with the news that Perkin Warbeck, whom people had baited in the stocks, had tried to escape again.

“But surely, nobody ever escapes from the Tower!” exclaimed Elizabeth, when her brother-in-law, the Earl of Surrey, came to tell her. She was sitting talking with Thomas Stafford and his sister, and her old friend Lord Stanley, and in her sudden agitation she rose from her chair, scattering her embroidery silks upon the floor.

“Nobody ever will, Madam,” Surrey assured her. “But few people have ever succeeded so nearly as he. They were by the Byward Tower—almost on to the drawbridge—when they were taken.”

“They?”

“Your Grace's cousin, the Earl of Warwick, was with him.”

“Warwick!” exclaimed Jane Stafford, down on her knees gathering up the silks.

“It appears they had concocted some sort of plot—” explained Thomas Stafford, who had heard of it before but been warned by his sister not to speak of it before the Queen.

“My cousin of Warwick concocted a plot!” protested Elizabeth. “I ask you, my dear Tom, would he not be hard put to it to arrange the simplest hawking party?”

“Then it must have been this Perkin who concocted it,” surmised Lord Stanley, whose mind had been slipping from Court affairs since his brother was executed. “No doubt Warwick, tired of years of constraint, lent a willing enough ear. We all know that obliging way he has. He probably did everything Perkin Warbeck bade him.”

“What puzzles me, milords,” said Jane, squatting back on her heels with the silks in her lap, “is how, if Perkin were locked in one of those terrible cells, the two of them could meet?”

“The cell was found unbolted,” said Surrey. “True to type, he must have managed to make friends with his guards.”

“But they were all four specially chosen. Strangeways, Blewet, Astwood and the man they call Long Roger. I heard the King appoint them,” said Elizabeth, unaware that she was providing his stepfather, who had cause to know Henry so well, with a possible clue. “Each of them had already proved himself zealous in serving the King.”

“Perhaps they
were
serving him,” suggested Stanley blandly.

Elizabeth swung round on him in understanding surprise. “You mean that this time the clever pretender was fooled? That he was the bait?” she demanded angrily.

“Well, anyhow,” summed up Surrey, trying, as usual, to smooth matters over, “they are both taken now and held for trial. And we all know what the end of them will be.”

“Oh no!” cried Elizabeth. “The King would not do
that
! Everyone knows how merciful he is, and he must realize as well as we do that whatever happened Warwick could not really have been responsible.”

“But no doubt—saving your Grace's presence—it would clear the path to the Spanish marriage miraculously were the trial to go against him,” remarked Stanley.

And this time Elizabeth said nothing. She was recalling those words of Archbishop Morton's which she had accidentally overheard. “So long as Warwick lives there will be no Spanish marriage.” And she shivered as if someone walked over her grave. Was her son's marriage to be paid for in Plantagenet blood? Just as Henry made his wars pay, had he used the cat's-paw of Europe for his own ends at last?

When the day came for Edward, Earl of Warwick, to be executed on Tower Hill, Elizabeth the Queen, as was most fitting, went alone into her oratory to pray for the passing of his gentle soul. There were tears in her eyes for his untimely death and for the pitifully useless days of his life. But the thoughts of her heart were really at Tyburn, where another young man who had wished him no harm, and who probably deserved to be hanged, waited beneath the common gallows. Even in the midst of her prayers Elizabeth pictured him standing on the scaffold in the morning sunlight, gay and dramatic, above the gaping English crowd, confessing to the last, with an engaging smile, that he was the son of a merchant of Tournay. And it was almost as if she could hear his voice saying again, in the warm, walled garden, “Since my day is done, let it be indubitably your son.”

E
LIZABETH STOOD ON THE dais in Westminster Hall with all the wealth of Tudor pageantry around her. It was her elder son's wedding day and the culmination of the hard-won union of two great powers. Spanish splendour, in which the elegance of black played so effective a part, vied with the more richly hued familiar devices of the English. All the previous week there had been magnificent comings-and-goings to meet the Princess of Aragon, and a scurrying of servants to prepare for the impressive reception of her numerous entourage. And on this happy day itself the bells of all the churches had rocked their steeples, and the people, packing the street, had thrown their caps in the air and shouted a spontaneous welcome to the youthful Prince of Wales and his auburn-haired bride. The water conduits ran with wine, altars and sideboards gleamed with gold plate, and all the best horse trappings and heraldic banners in the country had been brought out. Never, since the Tudor mounted the throne, had there been such lavish expenditure.