The Tudor Rose (7 page)

A
S THE DAYS WARMED to high summer the hammering ceased. London lay decked and waiting for a coronation. The spectators' stands were all set up, the merchants' gabled houses draped with richly coloured damask, the civic banners bravely flying. And in the Abbot's quiet garden out at Westminster, among the red and white roses, paced the two sad women who should have been the most radiant figures in the coming pageantry.

“All this preparation is for himself—for Gloucester, the false usurper!” raged the widowed Queen. “Did I not warn you?”

“You were right, Madam, and I a blind artless fool,” admitted Elizabeth.

“He never intended to have young Edward crowned. It was all lies, lies!” The Queen's black skirts swished angrily against the low box borders, stirring a bitter sweetness from their sun-drenched greenery. “The moment those credulous clerics had wheedled Richard from me, what did the fiend do but have my brother and my first husband's son executed at Pontefract? My poor brother Rivers was so handsome, so brilliant…Gloucester was always jealous of him.”

“My father would never have believed this of Gloucester,” mourned Elizabeth. “It is bewildering to recall how he trusted him.”

“And now the unnatural creature dares to justify himself by calling your trusting father's children bastards! You, Cicely, Edward—all of you. Trying to strengthen his case by reminding the world that the King and I were married secretly.”

“It is only the legitimacy of Edward and Richard that really matters to him.” Elizabeth of York sank down upon a stone bench and drew her mother down beside her so as to put an end to the distraught pacing. In the noonday heat the combined scent of box and full-blown roses almost made both women swoon; but neither of them could bear to be cooped up with prying attendants within four walls. They had to voice the thoughts which were tormenting them. “Who was this Butler woman whom they now pretend my father married first?” asked Elizabeth, who had never dared to speak of so intimate a thing before.

“One of the King's earlier loves,” shrugged his widow, inured to his infidelities.

“Was she—long before you?”

“Only a few months. She was just Joan Talbot, the Earl of Shrewsbury's daughter, when I first knew her. She was very pretty and Edward very ardent, no doubt. If he could not get his way he may have
promised
to marry her.”

“But at the time of your coronation surely the Council satisfied themselves that
you
were his wife?”

“They saw my marriage lines,” stated the woman who had been enterprising enough to insist upon more than promises.

“And you had witnesses?”

“Only my mother and two waiting-women. But the testimony of my mother—Jaquetta, Duchess of Bedford—cannot be lightly set aside. That is why, for all their talk of secrecy, the only hope of my enemies is to prove that the late King married Joan Butler first.”

“But surely after we have lived among them for so many years the people will never tolerate such lying injustice!” protested Elizabeth. “For whatever my father's faults, he was brave and open-handed and unbelievably popular.”

“Whatever he was, it is only his sons who matter now,” said the Queen wearily; and suddenly she covered her face with both hands and began to sob uncontrollably.

“My poor sweet, you have scarcely slept through all this terrible time!” comforted her daughter, kneeling on the grass to put strong young arms about her. “Let me ask the good Abbot's physician to prepare a soothing draught for you.”

“What can that old dodderer do for me? It is Life which has already done so much!” wept the Queen. But Elizabeth produced a handkerchief with which to dry her mother's cheeks, and held still her pathetic, fluttering hands. “There is that clever Doctor Lewis who attends the Countess of Richmond,” she suggested. “You remember how highly she speaks of him, and since he is a priest as well there will be no difficulty about his visiting you here.”

“The Richmonds are Lancastrians,” objected the exhausted Yorkist Queen.

“But now that the Countess has married Lord Stanley she is always received at Court.”

“Yet her son is still an exiled traitor to our house.”

“I am not asking you to see Henry of Lancaster, whom men might call our arch-enemy,” smiled Elizabeth, “but this man Lewis who is reported to be so clever.”

“Then perhaps to please you I will,” conceded the Queen, bending to stroke her daughter's bright hair. “You are very good to me, Bess. You always did take other people's sorrows to your heart— even the younger children's small disasters. But I do assure you I am not sick. It is only that I am crazed with anxiety about the boys. God knows I should never have let them take Richard from me!”

It was the same useless lament with which Elizabeth Woodville had wearied herself and others for days. “Well, at least let us go in out of the sun so that you may rest,” coaxed the younger and more practical Elizabeth. And when they came into the house they found the Queen's eldest son, Dorset, booted and spurred as for a journey and talking earnestly with Thomas Stafford, Buckingham's son, who had been brought up with them in the late King's household since he was a page.

Seeing a visitor from the outside world, the Queen stopped in the doorway. “It is true, is it not, that Gloucester will have himself crowned?” she demanded dramatically.

“Yes, Madam,” confirmed Stafford, bowing low. “At first he made some show of refusing it, but the Council have pressed it upon him.” Being ill-pleased with the answer, she ignored him. “And the boys?” she asked, sweeping past him towards her eldest son.

“Stafford says it is thought that Richard will be allowed to attend the ceremony—to provide some show of avuncular regard, no doubt,” hazarded Dorset, in order to comfort her.

“And not our Edward!”

“Even Gloucester would scarcely dare risk that, I fancy,” smiled Dorset, settling the folds of a riding-cloak his servant had put about his shoulders. “Why, even those people who see in a proven man more security for the Yorkist line and more prospect of peace might be moved to cheer for him.”

“Those same self-seeking people who so short a while ago wept for his appealing youth!” sighed the Queen, seating herself wearily in the midst of them.

“Richard always wants to see everything, but he will hate going without him,” said Elizabeth.

In spite of the Queen's displeasure, handsome young Stafford fetched Elizabeth a stool and waited beside her. “He will scarcely have time to look about him, for if he goes he is to hold the new Queen's train,” he told her.

“My son—a Plantagenet—to carry a Neville's train!” exclaimed King Edward's widow. And then, as if noticing for the first time that her eldest son was dressed for travelling, she cried aghast, “What! Are you leaving us and the protection of Holy Church?”

“I may be of more use to you raising help abroad, Madam, than skulking here,” he explained. “Besides, Tom Stafford here says it is no longer safe…”

“'Tom Stafford says'!” she mocked contemptuously.

“Your pardon, Madam,” began that sturdy young man in self-defence, “but such is the Protector's enmity towards all Woodvilles—”

“That you think it politic to forsake our household for his,” snapped the most ambitious Woodville of them all, liking him none the better because of the indignant gesture of remonstrance which Elizabeth dared to make.

“Had Tom not been with Gloucester he could not have served us by coming here to warn me,” pointed out Dorset, in his friend's defence.

But the Queen's fingers still drummed sharply on the arms of her chair. “Then perhaps since he is so useful an emissary he can tell us whether any of the other turncoats there had the courage to protest when my children were proclaimed bastards?” she enquired bitterly. “And whether it is likely that, when all my kin are dead or fled, Hastings, who was our Chamberlain, will find it expedient to be of the Protector's household too?”

There was silence in the Abbot's disordered parlour while the two men exchanged glances. “Why, Mother, have you not heard?” asked Dorset at last, coming to her side.

“Heard what?” she asked, turning the rings on her fingers. “What fresh horror has been kept from me?”

Dorset seemed as if he could not bring himself to tell her, and finally it was Stafford who spoke, keeping his eyes lowered from sight of the shame that must be brought her by her shrewish tongue. “Milord Hastings will grace no man's household again,” he said, telling the thing as briefly as possible. “Days ago, when the Duke of Gloucester first sounded the Council on the expediency of bringing into doubt the validity of your Grace's marriage, William Hastings refused point-blank to have anything to do with it. All his life he had served the late King, he said, and no one should have his allegiance save King Edward's true-born sons. He was absolutely immovable; and for the first time in my life I saw cool Gloucester lose his temper. He stretched out his arm with the old battle scar that shrunk it, and shook with rage. All his life he had fought for his country, and for years the Woodvilles had been the curse of it, he said; and even now, because of a pampered Woodville child sitting on the throne, they tied his arm so that he could do nothing to consolidate the Yorkish cause and so strengthen England.”

“Go on!” ordered the Queen, when Stafford dared say no more; and with eyes still lowered the unfortunate young man took up his tale. “Jane Shore and women like her had dissipated his brother's life, the Duke said, and you—the so-called Queen—his substance. And now it had been proved that owing to a precontract with Lady Butler 'the Woodville woman' never had been the late King's legal wife. Those, Madam, were his terrible words.”

Without flinching the Queen lifted her ravaged face. “Did no one protest?” she asked.

“Some of the bishops and Lord Stanley, and were arrested for their pains,” he told her tersely. “And before that stormy meeting was concluded poor Lord Hastings was dragged from the council-chamber and executed outside in Tower yard.”

“You mean—then and there? Without either trial or shriving?” asked Elizabeth in horror.

“Some priest from the Tower chapel was hastily called, I believe,” said her half-brother, finding his voice at last. “And it is a byword how instantly Gloucester's men obey him. They did not even wait to fetch a block, but laid poor Will across some timber lying ready for the coronation stands.”

“God forgive me!” whispered the Queen. She rose from her chair and swayed against his shoulder, where she stood a while with covered face. Then, freeing herself from the precious comfort of his arm, she began to fasten the collar of his cloak. “You do right to go; and I beseech you go quickly!” her children and household heard her saying, as they drew away pitifully to leave her some privacy for so sad a leave-taking. “You must get ship for France. Not Brittany. Henry of Lancaster will be there. Try rather my sister-in-law, the Duchess of Burgundy. For the great love she bore her brother Edward she will surely do what she can for you—”

Moving to the seclusion of the Abbot's cloister, Elizabeth of York turned instinctively to Stafford. He had been the comrade of her youth, although of late her mother seldom suffered her to speak alone with him. “I am proud that my father had so fine a friend,” she said, her voice soft with awe and grief. “Why, why would my mother never trust him?”

“She does not trust me either,” said Thomas Stafford, worrying sulkily at a loose flagstone with the point of his shoe.

Elizabeth stopped by an archway and stood pulling at a trail of ivy while she looked across the sunlit grass outside. “Perhaps people who intrigue and plan find it difficult to believe that others are just ordinary and straight-spoken like ourselves—and poor Lord Hastings,” she said. “But, oh, Tom, I wish she would not insult you so!”

Her sympathy wiped all the dark resentment from his face and he looked down at her adoringly. “I have only myself to thank,” he grinned. “Having spoken with Dorset, I need not have waited. Indeed, if it should reach Gloucester's ears, it is not very healthy for me to be here at all.”

“Then why did you not slip away?” she cried, all anxious contrition at once.

“Because Cicely said you were in the garden and I hoped to see you. To be able to comfort you a little perhaps.”

Elizabeth smiled back at him, and the dark threatening shadows in which she had been living seemed to lighten, letting in the warmth of trusting friendship.

“Oh, Bess, you do see, do you not, that I am no turncoat, though I could never be a Hastings?” he implored boyishly, drawing her down gently to the long stone seat beneath the cloister arches. “We all followed Gloucester—thinking we were following young Edward the Fifth. It was this swift snake-like turn—these surprise tactics—which have landed us all in a completely false and unforeseen position. Even Gloucester himself, perhaps.”

“You mean that at first he may have meant Edward to be King?”

“I don't imagine anything else occurred to him. Not during the shock of those first few days. He was white with grief for his brother. I was there, Bess, when he had young Edward proclaimed in York, and I would stake my soul that everything he did was sincere.”

“He had my Uncle Rivers and my younger half-brother put to death,” she reminded him.

“He was furious because they had tried to forestall him in fetching the new King to London. He looked upon it as a plot. And perhaps as he rode southward he began to think about his own little son, whom he had just seen and had to leave behind in Middleham Castle. Or it may well be that once he had reached London and was in Baynard's Castle the old Duchess of York persuaded him.”