“I would show Grace how the stable has been rebuilt,” Katherine lied, and Elizabeth waved a clawlike hand to dismiss them. “She will be asleep before we close the door, mark my words,” Katherine said to Grace.
At least a wintery sun accompanied them on their brief walk, as they made their way to the herb garden through the main courtyard. Brother Oswald called cheerful welcome when he spotted Grace, and she again admired his fortitude for tending to the herbs and vegetables that still grew in this cold season, for he was now more than sixty years of age. She drew her fur-lined cloak around her and found Katherine eyeing it with envy.
“’Tis handsome, is it not?” Grace said. “’Twas a gift from Lady Welles. She has been more than generous since I went to be her companion. I pray you, take my cloak for today, Lady Katherine, and I will gladly wear yours. The wind is cold, in truth.” Grace pushed the hood back, unhooked the silver clasp and swung the garment off her shoulders. Katherine did not protest but unhooked her own worn velvet mantle and encased her old shivering body in Grace’s with girlish glee.
“’Tis indeed a thing of beauty, Grace. I thank you.” She reached out and touched Grace’s arm, as the younger woman wrapped herself in the thin black velvet. “I now have a confession to make.” She took a deep breath, and Grace wondered what was coming. “All these months after you were gone, I wrestled with my conscience for the manner in which I behaved towards you. I spent many hours with my confessor and on my knees, asking God for forgiveness and for the chance to make amends. It seems my prayers were answered, for here you are in person. In truth, I never thought to see you again.” She paused to take a breath, but hurried on. “’Twas only after you left us and the queen’s spirits sank so low that I saw how much goodness there is in you. Lady Anne showed me how fortunate we were to have had you in our lonely exile. She is my dear friend’s daughter, and yet she could show only a modicum of the love you showed a woman who is not your own mother.” Her fingers tightened on Grace’s forearm. “Will you forgive an old lady her unkind jealousy?” she asked. “For I believe now that is what it was.”
Grace stared at the woman who had brought her so much misery for so many years and saw true contrition in her eyes. How much courage must she have mustered to tell me this, Grace thought, awed. As faded memories of Lady Katherine’s cruel taunts and insults came crowding back, they seemed petty now, after all Grace had experienced since leaving the abbey. Katherine was watching her anxiously, the seconds eroding her confidence, and so she begged once again. “Please forgive me, Grace.”
Grace’s face softened into a sweet smile. “Certes, I forgive you. I am honored by your honesty and grateful for your apology. ’Twill make her grace’s last weeks on this earth more peaceful, I’ll wager—not to have us squabbling. Now, let us speak no more of it.”
If someone had overheard the exchange without seeing the women, he might have thought Grace the older of the two. In a year away from the bitter older women she had acquired confidence and an understanding that not all in life was black or white. “You must tell me all that has befallen the queen to reduce her to this sad bag of bones,” she said. She patted Katherine’s arm, acknowledging the tears of relief in the older woman’s eyes, and they resumed their walk.
IN APRIL, THEY thought Elizabeth’s last hour had come. In the middle of the night, she called for Grace to light the candles and fetch parchment and a pen. Elizabeth had woken in a sweat, certain the Devil was hiding behind every piece of furniture and wall hanging to snatch her off to Hell. Katherine and Alison bustled about with the tinderbox and taper until every rushlight and candle had brightened the room.
“As God is my witness,” the queen dowager cried in fear from her pillow, “I have done nothing to deserve the flames of Hades. I was faithful all those years to Edward, despite his infidelities, and I gave him many children.” Grace went to her side and held her hand. “If I have sinned because I did my best to better my family, then I know not what it means to be a dutiful daughter and sister. Aye, I schemed to keep Richard from the crown, but only to protect my own children’s right. And I entered into an alliance with that Beaufort woman to give Bess to her measle of a son, but only to raise up my own child, who in the end might wear the crown.” Katherine took the bony hand out of Grace’s so Grace could make ready her quill. But Elizabeth wasn’t finished. “My only sin was the failure to be a good mother to my boys. How could I let them go—especially Dickon? If I could take back one decision I made in my life ’twould be the one on that June day. I should never have agreed to let Richard take Dickon, God forgive me. And now, I suppose, both boys are dead,” she cried, a great sob racking her. “And I shall die without ever knowing.”
Grace hurried back to the bed and set down her implements. “Nay, your grace, do not say that,” she whispered, bending close to Elizabeth. The rancid odors of foul breath and incontinence almost caused her to retch, but she controlled herself and stroked the queen’s perspiring forehead. “Remember your sister-in-law sent assurances that Dickon lives yet,” she told the distraught woman. “And there is more news of him.” She turned to Katherine, who raised her brows in surprise. “Aye, he has been recognized in Ireland—in Cork—and now it seems he is the guest of the king of France. People have seen him; people have declared he looks the image of his father—my father,” she said, excitement in her voice, and she was cheered that Elizabeth’s eyes had brightened with her words. “I promise your grace, Richard of York will come to claim his throne. ’Tis why you must stay well, so you can greet him—so that we all can greet him.” She looked from one eager face to the next. Alison Mortimer had covered her mouth with her hand, her already bulging eyes now almost popping out of her head; Katherine, a lopsided grin on her face, was crying tears of joy; and Elizabeth, using all her strength to raise herself into a sitting position, stared openmouthed at Grace. “Is this true? Is he coming home?” she whispered.
Grace nodded, her eyes shining. “I do not know when, but he will come. So you must be well when he does. And I,” she cried happily, “shall finally meet my brother.”
The news made Elizabeth forget her will and, after an infusion of valerian root, she finally went back to sleep. “I will send a message to the royal doctors to attend Elizabeth soonest; she trusts these two men, and I have no doubt will make them executors of her will,” Katherine whispered to Grace as they settled back on their truckle beds. Katherine had given up sharing the softer bed with Elizabeth once it had become so unpleasant to do so, and Grace could not blame her.
The next afternoon Elizabeth again called for Grace to sit down beside her to take down the details of her new will.
“How I regret I have nothing to leave you good ladies,” Elizabeth said before she started. “But you know you have my gratitude—especially you, Katherine. I shall request that my body be buried beside my dear Edward at Windsor. ’Twas his wish, and mine, too. I would hope the king will allow this, but I doubt he will afford anything elaborate for me.” She gave a snort of laughter. “Certes, I cannot afford but a winding sheet and crude wooden box to house me. But I should not like to make the journey to Windsor alone. I pray you, will one of you accompany my poor body?”
All three of her attendants agreed in unison, although Katherine reassured Elizabeth that she should not speak of dying yet. “There is color in your face this morning, my dear friend. Would you like to see in the mirror?” she asked.
Elizabeth had not called for a mirror for several weeks, and she shook her head again now. “You are a liar, Katherine,” she said haughtily. “I do not need a mirror to know that I look like a hag. I can see it in your eyes every time you look at me. Now, Grace, have you finished trimming that quill? Why are you so slow today?”
Grace smoothed the vellum, anchored a curling top corner with the inkpot and nodded.
“In Dei nomine, Amen. The tenth day of April, the year of our Lord God Fourteen Hundred and Ninety-two. I, Elizabeth, by the grace of God Queen of England, late wif
e to the most victorious prince of blessed memory, Edward the Fourth, being of whole mind, saying the world is so transitory and no creature certain when they shall depart from hence…” Elizabeth paused, and then chuckled. “’Tis true, I thought I would die last night.”
She stroked Poppy’s silky hair absentmindedly as she allowed Grace to catch up to her dictation and thought about her next sentence. “‘Item: I bequeath my body to be buried with the body of my lord at Windsor…’” She stopped, searching for the right words. Then she snapped her fingers, startling Poppy, who leapt off her knees and went to lie by the door. “I have it!” she cried. “Write this, Grace, and then Henry will have no choice but to carry out my wish. After ‘Windsor,’ write ‘according to the will of my said lord and mine,’” she instructed, “‘without pomp entering into it, or costly expense.’ Ha! Forever after, people will think kindly on me for eschewing a lavish funeral, and ill of Henry because he didn’t spend the money on one. Then I shall immediately plead penury thus: ‘Item: Where I have no worldly goods to do the queen’s grace, my dearest daughter, a pleasure with, neither to reward any of my children, according to my heart and mind, I beseech almighty God to bless her grace, with all her noble issue, and as with good heart and mind as is to me possible, I give her grace my blessing and all the aforesaid my children.’ Do you have that, Grace?”
She waited as Grace, who was mouthing to herself the exact verbiage, painstakingly scratched out the phrases. Katherine chuckled and remarked that Elizabeth was a sly fox indeed. “Ah, but you do not know how sly I am, Katherine,” Elizabeth murmured. “I shall name Bess one of my executors so that she will know to what depths her mother has fallen at the behest of her purse-pinching husband.”
Grace did not like to say that Bess did not deserve the scorn her mother might subject her to; it was one of the paradoxes of Elizabeth that she could give with one hand and take with the other without regard to moral or personal considerations.
Elizabeth also named her son, Dorset, and three other men Grace did not know as executors. Then she commanded Alison to fetch Father John and Brother Benedictus, the infirmarer, to witness the document.
“I do not trust Brother Damien as far as I can see him—which with my bad eyes is not very far,” Elizabeth said, amused by her own joke. “Prior John’s long nose may be put out of joint, but ’tis his own fault for violating God’s holy laws with the man.”
Once the will was witnessed and placed in the secret drawer in the bed, Elizabeth seemed to rally. She even expressed an interest in taking a walk in the garden. Alison and Grace helped her into her second-best gown—she was saving the purple velvet for her next visit to court, she had informed her attendants, although they guessed Elizabeth would never again be well enough to go. The women did their best to make their mistress as presentable as they could—the abbey inhabitants had not set eyes on the queen dowager for many months—but despite a few cosmetic tricks that Alison had learned, they could not conceal the ravages of time and ill health that had eroded her former beauty. Her dove-gray dress and white wimple only served to swallow up her chalky face, although her large almond-shaped eyes were still her best feature. Grace placed the wide straw hat over the linen coif and threw a veil over the top of it, protecting Elizabeth from the bright April sun and curious stares.
“I would walk apace alone with Grace, ladies,” Elizabeth said once they had half carried her down the stone stairs to the little yard. “Nay, Katherine, do not be offended. I need to speak of family matters, and Grace is family,” she said, smiling sweetly at the prickly Katherine. Grace gave the queen a gnarled walking stick to support her left side, and took her right arm. Slowly they processed through the main courtyard, and many of the laymen workers doffed their hoods and touched their forelocks as the queen passed by. Elizabeth nodded this way and that, and Grace could see she was smiling beneath the gauze.
“How is your husband?” Elizabeth asked suddenly, taking Grace aback with her directness. “Why are you not yet with child, my dear? I pray you are not barren, like my poor sister-in-law, Margaret.”
Grace stiffened. There was too much to explain, she knew. Elizabeth would not have the patience to listen to the complicated reasons for her failure to produce a child. After all, she had been married now—what was it? dear Lord, nigh on eighteen months? Nay, she does not want to know that Tom and I have spent only a few nights of intimacy together in that time, Grace thought. So, making a cross with her thumb between her fingers, she lied. “Tom insists on consulting the viscount’s astrologer, and it seems the man has been unable to predict my fertile time,” she said, not knowing where this preposterous explanation sprang from and begging God and Tom’s forgiveness for her indiscretion. Tom consult an astrologer? She would have laughed if she hadn’t been so afraid of going to Hell.
“All is well between you, then?” Elizabeth persisted. “If I were to guess, I would say you were not pining for your husband as one would imagine a young bride would. Is he deficient in bed, my dear? Do not be afraid to tell me, for my mother taught me many ways to solve that little problem.”
Grace gasped. “N-nay, your grace,” she said, horrified. “Certes, it must be my fault, for Tom…well, he…um…performs…I mean…there is no problem on that score,” she finished in a rush, making Elizabeth laugh.
“I am glad to hear it for your sake, child. A good roll in the sheets can cure most ills in a marriage, I have found.” She then lowered her voice. “What I really want to talk about is my son, Dickon. Is there more you are not telling me?”
Grace steered Elizabeth to the herb garden and a stone bench she’d often rested on when she used to help Brother Oswald tend the plants. The fragrant bay bush beside it and the aromatic angelica close by scented the air, and Elizabeth breathed deeply and let out a satisfied “Ah.”
“’Tis a pleasant spot, is it not, your grace? Are you comfortable?” Grace arranged the gray silk around the dowager’s feet and picked an early lily of the valley to present to Elizabeth. “John went to his grave believing Dickon was alive,” she began, and although she felt a pang of sorrow at the thought of him, she no longer grieved for him. “He was captured and tortured for the information he might have about this man who, ’twas rumored, was Richard, duke of York. John knew very little, so he told me, but he was charged by Aunt Margaret with joining Lord Lovell in Scotland to prepare the way for an invasion by the young duke.”
“Dear God, so he gave his life for his cousin, brave boy. I know how your heart was broken, Grace. But John was not meant for you. Your Tom will suit you better, please believe me.” She sighed, pushed the veil back from her hat brim and let the sun warm her face. “I fear there is naught I can do from here to aid my son’s invasion. If I were well enough to travel I would go to France and see for myself. And if you had but met your half brother once, I would send you to tell me if he be Dickon or no. No matter; there are many who will know him when he comes, even if he is ten years older. Bess and Cecily will know him, and the doctor, Argentine. He had Edward’s odd brow and a lift to his right lip, but otherwise his body was unmarked, unlike Ned, who had a birthing mark on his upper arm.”
Grace had many questions about Dickon, and as the two women sat quietly for half an hour, she learned other facts about the child—or those Elizabeth’s fading memory could conjure up. He hated the smell of cloves and loved the taste of mint, and his favorite fruit was oranges. He had been a small-boned boy, although at age eleven, it was hard to know if he would grow up more like his father. “And one more thing,” Elizabeth recalled, smiling. “How he loved to sing!”
She suddenly turned to Grace and gripped her wrist. “I would know if my son is this man, Grace. Promise me you will find out—one way or the other, even if I am dead.” Her tone was urgent and her eyes pleaded.
“I will do my utmost, your grace,” came Grace’s quiet response. She was promising much to those waiting to go to God lately, she thought and grimaced, but she put her hand over her hear
t anyway. “I cannot refuse you anything after all you have done for me. If I have not thanked you enough during these years, I am most heartily sorry. You are thanked in my prayers each and every day.”
Elizabeth patted her hand. “I know, Grace, I know. And if I understand that clever mind of yours as I think I do, you will unravel the mystery of the man across the sea.” She turned away. “Pray God I live to see it.”
A flock of starlings flew overhead, shrilly announcing their passage, and blackened the sun for a second. Elizabeth shaded her eyes to follow them, and then both women saw the single magpie as it chose to alight on the wall that sheltered the garden. They gasped in unison, and Grace quickly recited, “Good morrow, Master Magpie, how is your wife?”—the question that was supposed to ward off the bad luck.
“’Tis time for me to return to my chamber,” Elizabeth said, putting out her hand to Grace. “I have one more thing to ask of you, Grace. I would like to see my daughters. Can you send word to Cecily for me? I would like to see them all before I die.”
21
Bermondsey and Windsor
SPRING 1492
Tom formed part of the escort that brought all of Elizabeth’s daughters to the abbey on a glorious day in late May. Skylarks rose up from the fields, thrilling listeners with their soaring song, and lambs bleated as they frolicked beside their dams, each lamb’s voice different and known by its mother. Grace had learned that lambs always waved their tails in ecstasy while they suckled, and she had laughed delightedly when Brother Oswald had shown her how to manually wag a lamb’s tail so that it would accept milk from another source when the mother died in the lambing.
Word had spread of the visit by the royal princesses, and people from miles around abandoned their hoes, spades and weed-hooks or their barrows, laundries and spinning wheels to line the road from Southwark to Bermondsey. Bess, heavy with child, sat on a low, cushioned chair in the middle of the open carriage, its canopy richly decorated with the new Tudor rose and the lions of England, and she was surrounded by all her sisters—Cecily, Anne, Catherine and twelve-year-old Bridget. “God bless our queen. God bless good Queen Bess,” they cried, waving their bonnets and throwing flowers onto the litter. Grace waited in the courtyard for the procession to enter, a posy of her favorite heartsease in her hand, and her heart swelled with pride for her family—and especially for Bess. How England loves its good, sweet queen, she thought. And she was ashamed of herself for thinking how little they had loved Bess’s mother, Elizabeth Woodville, her mentor and protector. Ah, she told herself, but one of them was born royal and had nothing to prove; the other had royalty forced upon her and had spent her life trying to prove she was worthy.
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