The King's Grace

by Anne Easter Smith

  Now Grace’s legs did give way, and she fell to her knees, trembling. “Do not punish my husband, your grace,” she begged, her tears splashing onto the blue and red tiles. “He is not of the same mind as I. He should not be disgraced because of me.”

  Henry softened for a moment. “Come, child, ’tis not a weeping matter. Your husband will keep his place, but he must take responsibility for keeping you from court for a spell. No doubt he has family somewhere who will take you in.”

  Grace nodded miserably and, getting to her feet, she would have stumbled had Cecily not taken her arm and led her from the room as several pairs of eyes watched them go in silence.

  And so Tom had finally taken his wife home to the wolds, where she was far removed from worldly events. When he saw how frightened she was, he had not chastised her but assured her that although she had not yet met her brother-in-law, Edmund, who now owned the Gower manor, he and his mother were eager to welcome her.

  And so she did not hear how Richard went as Edward’s son and prince of England to the Holy Roman Emperor Frederick’s funeral in Vienna in November. Nor did she hear how he sat at the right hand of Maximilian, now emperor, who had finally accepted Margaret’s nephew as duke of York and rightful king of England.

  JUST AS TOM had predicted, his family welcomed Grace with open hearts. Alice Gower was the first to greet her, clucking around the diminutive Grace like a hen with her chick. “Well met, my dear, oh, well met!” she kept saying. First she kissed Grace on both cheeks and then decided to curtsy, unsure how to treat a lady of royal blood who was now a member of her own family.

  Grace tried to be serious, but soon she was laughing and gladly taking the older woman’s arm into the familiar hall. She looked around her in wonder; the pleasant room looked exactly as she remembered it. She never thought that day ten years ago after her mishap in the stream that she would ever return. Alice was chattering on as they climbed the staircase to a small chamber she had prepared for the young couple. She swore she had seen a bright new star that night after Grace and Cecily’s unexpected visit and told Grace she was not surprised when Tom had taken her to wife.

  “’Twas a portent, Lady Grace, that told me we had not seen the last of you,” she explained. “Now come into my solar and meet your sister Cat, who is visiting from York,” she trilled, steering the weary Grace down a short passageway and into a sun-filled solar that looked over the southern fields of the Gower land.

  Tom came bounding up the stairs two at a time and, overtaking his mother and Grace, called out for his sister. Throwing down her spindle, with which she was idly playing while waiting impatiently to meet Grace, Cat flung herself into her brother’s arms. Her linen cap was knocked flying, revealing a thick braid of exactly the same colored hair as Tom’s. Only when Tom put her down could Grace see that there the resemblance between the siblings ended. Where Tom was big-boned and handsome, with a strong jaw and wide shoulders, Cat was just like her name, lithe and graceful, with a sweet face and huge blue eyes. When Edmund followed Tom into the room, breathless from his run from the field where he was supervising the haying, Grace was astonished to see a medium-built, dark-haired man with a ruddy complexion whose features could only be described as regular. How did three such different children spring from the same parents, she wondered?

  Tom grinned and drew Grace to him. “Cat, Edmund, may I present my wife, Lady Grace Plantagenet—or plain Dame Gower, if ’tis all the same to her. Is she not as fair as I told you?”

  “Aye, that she is!” Edmund said, his voice a rich baritone with a slight Yorkshire burr. He smiled, and he was suddenly handsome, with Alice Gower’s dimples making him look surprisingly boyish for his thirty years. “You have done well for yourself, my clay-brained, clodhopping brother. God’s greeting to you, sister,” he finished, taking Grace’s hand and pressing it to his lips: “You are right welcome in our house.”

  Grace couldn’t control a giggle at the description of Tom, and when Cat saw that Grace was not offended, she elbowed her brother out of the way, curtsied and then gave Grace a quick embrace, blushing as she did so. “I am glad to meet you, too, sister,” she murmured and moved to her mother’s side before Grace had a chance to react.

  “What do you think of my family, Grace?” Tom asked, going to the two women and putting a protective arm around each.

  “I like them very much, Tom,” Grace replied, smiling happily at them all. “I like them very much indeed.”

  THE SUN WAS just sending out its first golden rays over the snowy fields when Grace, only half awake, heaved herself out of her warm bed and onto the jakes, thinking she had been relieving herself in her sleep. Then she knew her time had come.

  “Tom, Tom!” she whispered into the room, bathed in a rosy glow, her breath visible in the cold air. “’Tis time. The babe is coming.” A movement from the pallet on the floor told her Tom had heard her and in a flash he was by her side, shivering despite his warm cloak.

  “Sweet Christ, what should I do?” Tom cried, helping her up and back into bed. “Stay here and don’t move,” he ordered her, which made her smile. Where would she go? “I will fetch Mother and Enid.” Gratefully, he ran from the room, his palms now sweating with anxiety and his stomach churning. Grace could hear him knocking on his mother’s door but before Alice had time to answer Enid had bustled into the room carrying firewood to rekindle the embers in the hearth. Before he had died, Tom’s father had spent a small fortune opening up the central chimney of the manor house so fireplaces could be installed in the upstairs chambers, and then Edmund had replaced all the old horn panes in the leaded windows with glass, which allowed the sunlight to brighten and warm the rooms, even on a winter’s day.

  Enid soon had the fire blazing, while Alice called out to Tom to send Edgar for the midwife from Westow. Then she came hurrying in, all smiles and clucking, plumping up the pillows and straightening the bed covers. “Enid, I pray you, open all the doors and windows a crack. I know ’tis cold, but we must let any evil spirits escape who may be hiding in the house. Nothing must harm this child.” Grace knew Alice was remembering the loss of her first grandchild and its mother the year before, when Edmund had been widowed. She admired Alice’s pragmatic perspective on life: “The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away. They are in Heaven now and free of all earthly toils,” she had written to Tom.

  “Have Jack bring water from the well to boil,” Alice commanded. “I have prepared clean cloths—you will find them in a basket in my solar,” she said, shooing Enid out of the room as Grace suddenly groaned with an unfamiliar pain. “Hurry, woman! There is no time to lose.”

  Enid did as she was told and was back in two shakes of a lamb’s tail. Grace was dismayed by the intensity of her spasms, but at the moment they were irregular and short. She wanted Tom beside her, but Alice would not hear of it. “’Tis not customary for a man to be anywhere near a birthing chamber, my dear,” she tut-tutted. “He can wait downstairs, just as his father did. The midwife will be here anon, if the snow is not too deep.”

  Alice gave Grace sips of a potion made from myrtle, horehound and dried mare’s blood that was thought to shorten the labor, but it was late in the winter afternoon before Grace was helped onto the birthing chair. She had lost all sense of time, her chemise was soaked through with sweat and her hair hung in a damp plait down her back. She leaned against the hard, sloping wooden chairback, her legs straddling the seat, and attempted to understand the commands of the midwife, a gnarled old woman with a broad Yorkshire brogue. With her purple nose, sporting a hideous wart from which sprouted several long hairs, and her wheezing cackle, which revealed only a single tooth in her gums, Grace thought she must be a dobby, the Yorkshire name for a goblin. As her pains came closer together and intensified, she became more terrified of the woman and screamed more from fear than pain. She became delirious, shrieking that this woman would steal her child and feed it to the wolves. Alice was concerned poor Goody Watling would leave in a huff, but the old w
ise woman only cackled again and told her, “Tak noa gawm, I tak nowt higg,” which Alice translated to Grace as, “Pay no mind, I take no offense.”

  “Can she not speak English?” Grace muttered before she was overtaken by another contraction.

  “Push, hinny, push! Aye, open thy lisk,” she ordered, spreading Grace’s legs wider. “Tha mun rive a mickle, but tha’s nowt going to dee,” the midwife assured her, feeling for the baby’s head. “The barn is a-coming. Tha mun push agin.” To help out, Alice reiterated, “Push once more on the next pain, child; the babe is almost here. See? Oh, so much black hair!”

  Grace didn’t think she wanted to look, but when she saw the crown and knew she would soon hold her child, she put her whole effort into expelling it and freeing herself from the agony of the past few hours. The tiny mite slithered into the waiting hands of the midwife, who declared with pride: “Tha hast a dowter, lady. A strang barn, by gum,” and she turned the baby upside down and smacked breath into her. Furious at being so ill-treated after nine months in a cozy cocoon, the child wailed her displeasure, making all four women smile.

  “Pray go and tell Tom he has a daughter, Mother Gower,” Grace said wearily, watching as the baby’s cord was cut and bracing herself for the rest of the after-birthing ritual.

  But in no time at all Grace was back in her bed wearing a clean chemise, the child tucked into the crook of her arm. She watched in amazement as the tiny fingers flexed and unflexed and the rosebud mouth began to work in anticipation of her mother’s breast. Had she and Tom really produced such a miracle of nature? she marveled. Every feature was perfect in her eyes, despite the flattened head and nose, and her only disappointment was that her child did not have Tom’s flaxen hair.

  There was a knock at the door, and Tom looked in. Grace had to chuckle. “Why husband, you look almost as untidy as I do,” she declared, loving Tom’s sheepish grin. “Has the wait been such an ordeal? Come and meet your daughter. Goody Watling says she’s ‘strang.’”

  “Aye, strong. She told me on her way out,” he said, tiptoeing to Grace’s side with a grin he could not contain. He bent over and kissed her lovingly on the lips, not heeding the tiny blood vessels that had burst in labor peppering her face. She looked more beautiful than he had ever seen her, he assured her. “Oh, pish!” she retorted, making him laugh. Then he picked up the tiny bundle that wriggled in protest at being snatched from its mother’s warm breast, but who calmed the moment Tom put her upon his broad chest and gently jigged her up and down.

  “Thank you, Grace,” he said, stroking the dark head snuggled under his chin and inhaling the new baby’s scent. “You have made me the happiest man on earth.”

  PART FOUR

  …Among each degree and each estate

  To know a tapster from a lady, a lord from a lad.

  Then shall truth and falsehood fall at debate,

  And right shall judge and set aside flattery and guile

  And falsehood for ever be put in exile.

  —FROM INSTRUCTIONS TO HIS SON, PETER IDLE, ESQUIRE OF KENT AND FIFTEENTH-CENTURY POET

  26

  England

  1497

  Tom came riding to the manor unannounced one late afternoon in July. Edgar saw him first from the stable, where he was polishing the reins of Edmund’s horse. He jumped up from his perch on the water trough and, not heeding the trailing leather lead that he had managed to wrap around his leg, tried to run towards Tom. With a shout of annoyance and a few well chosen oaths, he ended up flat on his face among the chickens, which immediately scattered to safety with fearful squawking. On hearing his cries, Alice went to the front door and saw her younger son trot into the stableyard, his head thrown back in laughter.

  “Tom! My dear boy,” she cried and then called up to the second-story window. “Grace, ’tis Tom come home to us. Are the girls with you or Enid?”

  Grace let out a whoop when she saw that it was indeed Tom dismounting on the wooden block that Edgar had placed for him. Tom slapped the groom on the shoulder and plucked a long dangling straw from his tunic, still laughing. “Such a simpkin, Edgar,” he said jovially, and Edgar hung his head, feeling ashamed of himself. Then he took charge of the horse and led it to the trough to drink.

  Like a rabbit from its hole, Grace bolted from the house and into Tom’s arms. He whirled her round and round as if she were goosedown and planted kisses on her face until she begged him to set her down. “Where are my babes?” he asked, linking his arm in hers and going to greet his mother. “Where are Susannah and Bella?”

  “They were asleep, but I doubt they are now, after this racket,” Grace said, laughing and pulling him towards the house. “How good it is to see you, my dearest! How long can you stay this time?”

  “Not long, Grace, but let me tell all when we are inside.”

  Alice had hurried inside the hall before them and was pouring some good Yorkshire ale into the horn cups when Tom and Grace pulled out a bench and sat at the long table. Edmund’s new wife, Rowena, slipped into the room and stood passively by her mother-in-law, awaiting a task. Tom greeted her warmly, and the girl gave a small smile but said nothing. Alice sighed. Rowena was with child, but that was all that could be said for this namby-pamby young daughter of a distant cousin in Scarborough. Grace was kind to her, but Alice found that at her age her patience was beginning to wear thin, and she tended to snap at the child. But nothing pleased Alice more than a family gathering like this, and when Edmund came in from baling the hay, she would be in her element.

  “Papa, papa!” a little girl’s voice called from the top of the staircase, and Tom swept up the dark, curly-haired Susannah before she had reached the bottom. Her plump little arms clung to his neck and she snuggled into his broad chest, giggling.

  “Just like his father with Cat,” Alice whispered to Grace. “How George doted on his daughter.” She sighed. George was dead these ten years and she still missed him. He had been well enough to give his beloved Cat away to her York merchant a few months before his death, and they were now keeping a fine house and raising a baby boy near the Layerthorpe Gate. “Ah, here is Enid with Bella,” she said, nodding to the top of the stairs, her eyes lighting up. Grace knew Alice was partial to her third grandchild, and it was because Isabella’s birth had not been as easy as Susannah’s. Thanks to Goody Watling, warts and all, the child had survived. Grace had taken a fever and had not been able to suckle her baby. A wet nurse was found in the village, and Alice had insisted on paying for her out of what was left from her own meager family inheritance. “What do I need at this time in my life, Grace?” Alice had declared as she bathed her daughter-in-law’s hot, dry skin with sweet rosemary water while Grace attempted to refuse the kindness. “Certes, if I cannot give to my own grandchild, who should I give to, pray tell? Now, not another word, child. The babe will be taken care of, and that is all there is to it! Praise be to God, both you and she are still alive.”

  Tom had insisted on a wet nurse for the first child, as befitted a noblewoman of Grace’s rank, he had said, but when she conceived Isabella, Grace told him she hoped she could suckle the next and pass on the money saved to Edmund, who had been more than generous to take them in. She had been melancholy following Bella’s birth and her illness, and so she did not refuse Alice’s kind offer. Tom sent money every month, but Henry had not given Grace a penny when she left court. Instead, Cecily had pressed several rose nobles into her hand before the couple had ridden off quietly from Collyweston that early September day almost four years ago. Grace had been distraught at leaving Cecily, and the two women had clung together for several minutes, promising to pray daily for each other and write often. Anxious to remove Grace from danger and leave, Tom had cleared his throat to interrupt them.

  “No one knows the true reason for your going, Grace,” Cecily assured her. “Jack understands that your family tradition requires Gower children to be born at Westow, and as his family’s lying-in house of Bonthorpe is sacrosanct, as I discov
ered to my utmost discomfort”—she grimaced—“he is at ease with letting Tom accompany you.”

  “Promise me one thing, Cis,” Grace urged. “If you can only lie about your true belief in our brother, then do not speak of him at all. Certes, until he comes. I fear for your mortal soul.”

  Cecily had gripped Grace’s arm and hissed: “I lie because I fear for my life, sister. You would do well to follow my lead. Henry isn’t above hanging us both. And never, I repeat, never suggest to anyone that Dickon may invade—nay, not even to those you love. There are spies everywhere, Grace, so lace your lips together and trust no one. Underneath Henry’s cool exterior is a frightened man, and fear makes a man dangerous, Grace. Jack has told me tales—” She had broken off, certain her point had been made.

  Cecily had been right. In the fall and winter of Ninety-four, several plots had been uncovered that smacked of Yorkist collusion, and on Valentine’s Day of Ninety-five—a day usually kept for lovers—Lady Margaret’s own brother-in-law, Sir William Stanley, had been executed as part of a conspiracy to place the so-called duke of York upon the throne. This was the same William Stanley who sat with his force watching which way the wind would blow at Bosworth Field and chose to come in on Henry’s side when King Richard made his desperate bid to reach Henry and dispense with him personally. A grateful Tudor had made this turncoat a Knight of the Garter and Lord Chamberlain and as chamberlain had taken Grace to visit John in prison at Collyweston. But Sir William was heard to say that if he was certain the young man was indeed Edward’s son, then he would not bear arms against him. Grace had been saddened to hear that the man who betrayed Stanley was one of the men she had met laughing with her brother at Dendermonde, Sir Robert Clifford. Cecily was right; there were spies everywhere—even among one’s friends. Indeed, the air was rife with rumors of invasion, and Henry ferreted out many loyal Yorkists, who were condemned as spies and either tortured or executed in an attempt to stem the unrest.