The King's Grace

by Anne Easter Smith

  Grace nodded and, once again for Elizabeth, put her hand over her heart. “I swear, your grace,” she whispered, although she prayed to St. Sibylline to make Elizabeth fall asleep immediately and forget all about divulging this secret.

  When her next spasm passed, Elizabeth took a deep breath. “A few years after my marriage, my mother discovered that Edward had been contracted to another before he ever laid eyes on me. Her name was Eleanor Talbot, and she was also a widow. God be praised, she died a few years after Edward and I married. I learned the truth from my mother on her deathbed.” Seeing the irony, she chuckled. “Much as I am now relaying it to you. Do not say a word, child,” she insisted, seeing Grace about to deny that she was dying. “I know I am not long for the world. Indeed, I wish the good Lord would take me soon, for I am weary of this dull life and would now rather lie with Edward at Windsor for eternity.” A wave of pain made her grimace, and Grace lifted up the bony shoulders and head to administer another sip of laudanum. Then she gently let the queen down, wiping her brow.

  “Where was I?” Elizabeth frowned. “Ah, yes, Eleanor Talbot—or Butler, as she was when Edward was tempted to bed her. I swear to you, Grace, I knew nothing of this when I agreed to wed Edward. Aye, I was ambitious for my two sons by John, but not so ambitious as to break one of God’s commandments.”

  Grace’s eyes were wide. “Then what Bishop Stillington unveiled in Forty-three, when my father died, was true? And Uncle Richard did wear the crown by right?” Grace whispered, her mind racing. All those insinuations that he had usurped the throne and bribed poor Stillington to come forward at exactly the right moment and tell his story were untrue. Poor Uncle Richard. He went to his death at Bosworth still fighting to prove he was England’s true king.

  “Aye, Richard had the right,” Elizabeth said dully. “But he did not have the right to put away my boys, even if they were bastards.”

  Grace brightened. “But it seems he did not ‘put them away,’ your grace. It seems Dickon survived whatever fate was in his path. I have heard it said that Ned was sickly and inflicted with a bone-wasting disease. Certes, ’tis likely he perished either in the Tower or elsewhere, wherever Dickon was also hidden.” Grace was so absorbed in the certainty that one of her half brothers was alive that she failed to notice the mulish look in Elizabeth’s eye.

  “Are you not shocked by my secret, Grace?” the queen snapped. “Do you know what honor I do you by revealing it? I am admitting I was a bigamist and that my children were no better than you are—all bastards! I pray you, appear outraged or sympathetic or…anything,” she groused.

  Grace was at once contrite. “Your grace, I am indeed surprised. But as you tell me the lady in question no longer lives, and that you were ignorant of the event when you gave your hand to my father, I cannot condemn you. My father is another matter,” Grace said, frowning. Then she took Elizabeth’s hand and looked into those once-glorious eyes. “Remember, your daughter sits on the throne. The king legitimized all your children so that he could marry her and make his rump safer upon the throne. But if Dickon returns, what can Henry do? If he reverses the bastardy act, Bess can no longer be his consort and the mother of future kings. But if he does not, it means Dickon will have every right to state his lawful claim.”

  Elizabeth’s eyelids were beginning to droop and her words slurred with the effects of the drug. “Do not think I have not pondered this question ever since I heard of this man’s existence. Do I want to disinherit my daughter with this information and welcome my son back as king—although he does not have the right, in God’s eyes—or do I go to my grave knowing I have passed on that responsibility to you? Now you know why ’tis important for you to go to Margaret. Promise me you will?” The exertion of this exchange had drained the queen dowager, and her eyes finally closed. “Let us recite the Angelus together and try to sleep,” she said. Grace had to lean into her face to hear her mutter, “I am tired of this weight I have carried for so many years. I trust you may bear it less heavily.” Then, fingering her rosary, she began, “Angelus Domini nuntiavit Mariae.”

  “Et concepit de Spiritu Sancto,” Grace intoned the response of the dying queen’s favorite prayer, crossing herself as she did so. She blew out the candle, but she could not sleep for the rest of the night, while her mind processed all that she had been told. As the cock crowed and the abbey awoke, she sat up with a start. “Dear God,” she whispered, “Bishop Stillington died last year.” She turned her head to look down at Elizabeth, whose breathing was now so shallow, and realized: “When she dies, I alone will know the truth.”

  Deciphering the true identity of the young man across the sea now seemed even more vital. And, she thought grimly, I have given my promise that I will. She shivered—from excitement or fear, she wasn’t sure.

  “MISEREATUR VESTRI TUI omnipotens Deus,” chanted Father John, holding the Holy Chrism high above his head, while Brothers Damien and Benedictus stood behind him holding long candles. They answered with a sonorous “Amen” at appropriate intervals during the last rites of the most high and noble lady Elizabeth, dowager queen of England and beloved mother of the queen.

  On the other side of the bed, kneeling by their dying mistress, Lady Katherine Hastings, Lady Grace Plantagenet and Mistress Alison Mortimer told their beads, their heads bowed. The dowager’s doctor, Thomas Brente, was also in attendance. An occasional sniffle from Alison broke the monotony of the chanting monks and the tolling abbey bell, but Grace and Katherine had shed their tears earlier that morning, when it became clear their charge was slipping quietly away.

  “Bless you, my dear friend,” Elizabeth had murmured as Katherine had pressed the queen dowager’s hand to her lips, wetting it with her tears. “I wish I had more to leave you than my gratitude…” She drew another labored breath and Katherine hushed her, stroking her forehead with her other hand.

  Then it was Grace’s turn, and she thought her heart must be made of marble, it weighed down her chest so heavily. She tried not to cry, tried not to conjure up again all the memories of those first days at Grafton when Elizabeth had rescued her from the convent, taught her to be a lady and given her a new life. They were all engraved on her heart, and she had vowed in her prayers the night before that she would never tolerate a bad word about Elizabeth from anyone from that day forth. She bent and kissed Elizabeth’s cold forehead, one tear escaping and wetting the parch-mentlike skin.

  “Now, now, Grace, no tears.” Elizabeth managed a smile with her admonishment. “I am counting on you to help carry out the wishes for my funeral. Do you remember them?”

  “Aye, your grace, certes I do,” Grace answered, attempting to smile back. “No pomp, no finery. A plain wooden box, and only two attendants on the boat to Windsor.” Elizabeth nodded, satisfied, and closed her eyes. Grace continued: “However, you cannot prevent us from mourning you in whatever way we wish. I for one will light a candle for you daily, and you will be in my prayers until I die.”

  “What day is it, my child?” Elizabeth asked, each word a struggle.

  “’Tis the Friday of Pentecost.”

  “Then let me be buried on that holiest of Sundays. And may the white tongue of the Holy Spirit touch me and wing me to Heaven,” Elizabeth whispered reverently. Then her eyes flew open and she attempted a laugh. “Sweet Mary, ’tis the very same day I was crowned, twenty-seven years ago. How droll.” Her laughter gave way to a cry of pain, and she clutched Grace’s hand.

  Grace waited until Elizabeth was calm again. “Your grace?” Her voice was low and urgent. “I would ask a boon before you die.”

  “Ask,” Elizabeth said, a little of her impatience returning. “For I have not much time left, and I must reconcile my soul to God.”

  “I am not your daughter, but, in truth, you have been like a mother to me. May I be given leave to call you ‘Mother’ just this once?” Grace held her breath. She was breaking all the courtesy codes with her request.

  Now Elizabeth’s tears began to flow and
her serene face crumpled. “Nothing would please me more, child. Certes, you have shown me more devotion than any of my own daughters.” A spasm of pain wracked her body and a thin trickle of blood oozed from her mouth. With her last ounce of energy she pleaded: “Send for Father John, I beg of you.”

  “Aye, Mother,” Grace answered on her knees, sobbing. “And may the Virgin protect you on your journey to the Light.” She rose and hurried out to find the abbot.

  “Indulgentiam, absolutionem et remissionem peccatorum nostrum, tribuat nobis omnipotens et misericors Dominus,” Father John intoned now, touching Elizabeth’s head, lips and heart with the holy oil.

  Elizabeth’s mouth curved into a soft smile, and it seemed the queen’s beauty was miraculously restored in that final moment. “John, my love, I am coming,” she murmured with her last breath. True to her heart, the once proud queen of England had called out the name of her first husband, and not the man who had raised her to the highest rank in the kingdom.

  THE REGULAR SPLASH of the oars as they dipped into the limpid waters of the Thames lulled Grace into a somnambulant state as she sat to the right of the flower-covered coffin that was being carried upstream to Windsor, some forty miles from London Bridge. The abbot had sent word immediately to Greenwich, where the queen was in confinement, and to Thomas, marquis of Dorset, to inform both of their mother’s passing. Dorset had spent a day with Elizabeth a few days before she died, and Grace had been gratified to see his grim face when he turned away from the bed to take his leave. She had never forgiven him for forsaking his mother when Henry had banished her to Bermondsey. So he should be sorry, she thought; but she had helped him with his short mantle and murmured, “Pray accept my sincere sympathies, my lord.” He had given her a smile and a curt nod before hurrying from the room.

  It had been decided that Katherine would stay behind due to her age, and to make sure none of Elizabeth’s few possessions were looted once the news of her death was known. “I will throw myself on my brother-in-law Richard’s charity,” she told Grace when they were discussing their futures. “And you, Grace?”

  Grace would not return to Bermondsey after Windsor, she told Katherine, because she belonged by Tom’s side now that her duty to Elizabeth was over. “I pray he may reach Windsor to escort me home—wherever that may be,” Grace had said. “Cecily is at Greenwich for the queen’s confinement, but I know not if Tom is with his lord or no.”

  “Certes, ’tis possible you and I will be neighbors!” Katherine cried. “The Hastings have a manor in Lincolnshire, too, if you go to the Welles estates there.”

  So it was Alison who sat to the left of the coffin on the barge to Windsor—an unknown attendant, it was noted by those watching—who journeyed with Grace, bastard daughter of King Edward. Also on the boat were Doctor Brente, one of the executors of Elizabeth’s will, and her second cousin, Edward Haute.

  The scent of the dozens of white roses that the kind people of Bermondsey and Southwark had gathered from their gardens to place upon the bier of the Yorkist queen masked the smell of death from the crude coffin as the barge floated past Baynard’s Castle, Westminster, and around the bend to Shene, the fairy-tale palace Elizabeth had so enjoyed, which stood proudly against the backdrop of lush Richmond Hill. The boatmen rowed to the dock, where everyone disembarked. It was their chance to relieve themselves and be offered food from the charterhouse priory nearby, whose prior—another of Elizabeth’s executors, John Ingilby—joined them on the journey to Windsor.

  Grace nibbled on a piece of rabbit pie but had little appetite as she watched a moorhen and her brood weave in and out of the reeds. Wooded islands floated in this wide part of the river, and Grace could see lambs gamboling in the fields on the other side.

  “Let lambs go unclipped, till June be half worn/The better the fleeces will grow to be shorn…” went the old adage. Aye, your first shearing must be near, Grace thought, smiling to herself as she remembered the frantic flailing legs of the lamb she had attempted to truss and shear her first summer at Bermondsey. She turned away, leaving Alison to make a chain from among the thousands of daisies that bloomed in the overgrown lawn, and wandered down to the river’s edge to dabble her feet in the cool water. It irked her that the boatmen made merry while they ate and drank, seemingly having forgotten the solemn occasion that had brought them there. She saw Edgar among them—he and others were in another boat that was following the funeral barge—and she frowned when she saw him raise a full flagon of frothing ale to his lips. Catching her eye, his hand froze halfway to his mouth and then he quickly set the drink down, slopping some onto the table. Grace turned away; it was a hot day and she should not begrudge the man ale.

  Her thoughts flew back to the day before, after the three attendants had knelt in turn to pray for hours at Elizabeth’s prie-dieu. Sadly, they noted, as women, they were not permitted inside the church while the monks kept vigil over Elizabeth’s body. “Idle hands make the Devil’s work,” Katherine had said. “Open all the windows and take the linens to the laundry, Alison. Grace and I will gather fresh herbs.”

  The two women picked up baskets and small shears from the shed and meandered through the pretty walled garden deadheading, cutting fragrant herbs to freshen their chamber and pulling up weeds. As they worked, they reminisced about Elizabeth.

  “How unkind of God to take her before she had the joy of seeing her young son again,” Grace said, returning with all speed to her favorite subject. She glanced around and lowered her voice. “I wonder what chance there is that he can unthrone Henry?”

  “That is treasonous talk, Grace, and you should beware,” Katherine warned under her breath, putting her finger to her lips. “Our brown-robed friends are not averse to eavesdropping. Will always said he would never trust a cleric as far as he could see their shiny tonsures, and after what happened with Bishop Morton the day of Will’s death, he was right not to trust them.”

  Grace clucked her tongue and shook her head. “The news of your husband’s sudden execution must have come as quite a shock, Lady Katherine. He had been such a friend to my father, I wonder at Uncle Richard’s strange behavior.”

  “Aye, ’twas shocking indeed, and I can never forgive Gloucester for that. Poor Will never even had a trial.” She sighed. “But you are right, Edward and Will were the best of friends,” she said, and grunted. “Forever whoring and drinking. You would have thought neither had a care in the world, instead of being the king and counselor of one of the most important realms in Christendom.”

  “I remember the story you and her grace told about fooling my Uncle Clarence one night in London. How they tricked him with drink…I forget the rest,” Grace said, chuckling.

  Katherine sat her large frame down on the same seat Elizabeth and Grace had occupied a few weeks before, in April, and Grace settled herself on the grass and played with a stalk of mint, inhaling its fresh scent.

  “You mean the Frieda affair?” Katherine replied, rolling her eyes. “There is not much to tell. Edward and Will found George with this buxom Flemish girl, both very much the worse for drink, and offered to help them upstairs to bed. So Will tells me, Edward helped George with his codpiece, but as soon as the lad fell on the bed he was dead to the world, and the girl not much better. Knowing Edward wanted the woman, Will left the room while Edward pleasured her. Whoring was such an uncharacteristic thing for Clarence to do—he and Isabel adored each other, you know—but Edward could not resist allowing his brother to think he had done the dirty deed when he awoke the next day, and so he thought he would have the last laugh.”

  Grace was wishing she had not asked to have the story repeated. Her thoughts about her father’s behavior were filled with disgust. Instead of stopping his younger brother from shaming himself with a whore and betraying his wife, Edward had encouraged it. And as if that act had not been heinous enough, he had taken advantage of a young girl in a stupor and allowed the guilt-ridden Clarence to believe he had sired a bastard. She hung her head and tor
e the mint leaves to shreds.

  “Instead, my uncle Clarence had the last laugh—although he did not know it,” she muttered. “You are sure the girl had a child, Lady Katherine?” The older woman nodded. “And your husband paid her off on behalf of my father.”

  Katherine harrumphed. “’Twas the way of it. ’Tis always the way of it, more’s the pity,” she complained. “A woman is naught but a chattel—a pleasure tool for a man, whether he be husband or no.”

  At that moment, Grace agreed with her, although, in her heart, she knew all men were not the same. A warm glow spread through her as she thought of Tom, but for good measure she prayed he might never run afoul of a brother as immoral as Edward, king of England—her own father.