The King's Grace

by Anne Easter Smith

  “My lord bishop, I have troubling news from England,” Margaret began, her eyes sad. “It appears King Henry, not satisfied with capturing Richard and torturing a confession from him, is subjecting him to the most degrading public derision while pretending to treat him as a guest at court.”

  “Aye, madame, I had heard such a rumor.” Cambrai nodded. “’Twould seem the king is afraid to imprison one who may be royal and yet he is afraid to be seen as weak by not confining him. The young duke of York is in grave danger, I fear.” Margaret’s mouth turned down and Cambrai was afraid she was about to cry. He had had no experience of dealing with a woman’s tears—and especially not one this powerful—until the news had come of Richard’s capture and confession. Then she had been inconsolable for many minutes during that particular meeting, and he had been relieved when anger overcame her tears and she cursed Henry, astounding Cambrai with her vitriol. Now he sent up a prayer to his favorite St. Peter to stem the flood that threatened to engulf her again. “How can I help you, madame?” he offered.

  Margaret composed herself and gave him a wan smile. “I want you to go to the English court and make sure my darling nephew knows I still support him. I fear Maximilian and Philip are losing interest in his cause because of the despicable trading restraints Henry has imposed on Burgundy. I am certain that your erudition and spotless reputation will give Henry no reason to refuse you a private audience with Richard. Any letters I write will never reach him, and”—she drew a deep breath, her tears close now—“I want him to know that he still means everything in the world to me, but that without Maximilian and Philip’s support, I cannot send an army to rescue him.” She fingered the white rose brooch she always wore, and Cambrai knew this trinket was a constant reminder of her York family roots, from which she took her strength even after thirty years in her adopted land. “Will you go, my lord?” she cajoled. “For me?”

  Cambrai thought quickly. A brilliant man from a fine family who had served both Duke Charles and Maximilian well, he was acutely aware that Richard, duke of York’s future was not bright. And if the truth be told, he had never believed Margaret that this young man was the son of Edward of England. He could not believe he was a boatman’s son, either, and it had irked him that although Margaret trusted him in all other matters temporal and spiritual, she would not reveal to him the man’s true identity. If he went to the court as her emissary, he felt certain Henry would refuse to see him; if he went secretly, he might succeed, but at what cost once Henry’s spies discovered the ruse? He would put his rather special life in danger, he suspected, and Cambrai had no intention of jeopardizing the power and luxury he had built up for himself. And yet how could he refuse the woman who had helped him get there?

  “May I think on your request, madame?” He put a tiny emphasis on the word request, reminding her that he was not hers to command. “A visit to the English court must be carefully planned if it is to be successful, do you not agree? We must be better informed of the climate there before we endanger your nephew by putting our foot wrong.”

  To his immense relief, Margaret sighed, got to her feet and stretched out her hand in agreement. “Aye, my lord, we shall think on it and not do anything rash. Henry of England may not know what to do with Richard, but let us be sure we do.”

  31

  London

  SUMMER 1498

  And still Henry could not make up his mind how to deal with the peacock called Perkin. He took his captive down to Kent with him during the month of April. After celebrating Easter at Canterbury, Henry subjected Perkin to the humiliation of witnessing the king receive the captured standard from the failed Deal landing in a ceremony that included a singing of the Te Deum. There seemed no end to Henry’s debasing of his so-called guest.

  When the court removed to the Tower in the middle of May, Katherine received a gift from the king that surprised even Cecily. A tawny gown over a black worsted kirtle, ribbons for her girdle and some white gauze to tuck around her neck were ordered for her, and for the first time since she was taken to Henry’s presence in Exeter, Katherine did not wear black.

  “Do you suppose his grace is softening towards us, Grace?” Katherine asked one morning after Mass as they were walking in the tidy knot garden in the inner ward of the Tower. The king was lodged in the Lanthorn Tower this time and out of sight of the queen’s apartments, which emboldened Katherine to ask the question. “My husband has shown he plots no more and is contented to be a guest at court. ’Tis said his aunt in Flanders has abandoned him…”

  “Nay!” Grace exclaimed. “Do not say so. He—you—are not forgotten, trust me. There can be no communication at present, ’tis all. The Holy Roman Emperor still works to have Perkin returned to Burgundy, so Tom tells me.” True, the attempts at a diplomatic solution had lessened on the part of Maximilian since November, when trade sanctions had hit the Burgundian merchants hard, but Grace was convinced Margaret would never abandon her White Rose and believed what she was saying to Katherine. She changed the subject. “I can imagine your husband’s face when he sees you in your new gown, Lady Katherine. In truth, you will turn the head of every man at court. You are truly beautiful.”

  Katherine dimpled. “The king is most kind. I cannot believe I warrant an expense such as this,” she said, holding up one sumptuously decorated sleeve and fingering the braid and ribbons.

  Grace merely smiled. Katherine was an innocent, she had decided. Had she not noticed the queen’s worn-out clothes and wondered why the king did not allow his wife more of an allowance? Grace knew that Elizabeth’s shoes were of the cheapest leather because she spent much of her income on her own sisters’ upkeep and dowries. And the amounts she gave to help the poor and infirm often left her in debt. Then she had to beg Henry for a loan, which Grace told Cecily was degrading.

  Grace looked at the radiant Katherine, who was admiring her new garment, and prayed the young woman could avoid hearing the common gossip about the king’s generosity. Even Viscount Welles had told Tom of his disapproval of his nephew’s recent crass remarks about the Lady Katherine to his privy council at Westminster. “He would have her to mistress, if he could,” Tom told Grace. “’Tis only the Scottish treaty and the need to see the betrothal between James and little Margaret come to pass that keeps the king’s hands off the woman.” And Grace had noted it was the first time Tom had been openly critical of his sovereign.

  “Such a champion of young and fragile ladies you are, Sir Thomas,” she’d teased him. He had scratched his rumpled head of hair and given her his endearing sheepish grin, which made her stand on tiptoe to pull his face to hers to kiss. “I beg of you, husband, look to your own lady and not at others. Am I not enough of a handful? Not to mention Susannah and Bella.”

  Grace smiled as she thought of how he had picked her up by her waist then, and she’d wrapped her legs around him as they exchanged a kiss that might have led to further exploration but for their location in front of a window to one of the palace offices, where a balding accountant had tapped loudly on the window and embarrassed them.

  Katherine’s voice interrupted her thoughts and, as she turned to apologize, she saw Robert Cleymond stomping across the courtyard. Begging Katherine’s pardon, she darted down the pathway to speak to him.

  “My cousin of Warwick?” she murmured when he recognized her and bowed. “Is he well?”

  Cleymond nodded, his smile guarded. “As well as can be expected under the circumstances. I am on my way to give my weekly report to Sir Simon, if you will excuse me, my lady.” And he bowed again and would have passed on but Grace stayed him with a raised hand.

  “Tell my cousin that I have kept my promise,” she bade him. “I have prayed daily for his release, but I do not seem to have enough influence with the saints to matter. If my duties to the queen allow, I will try to visit him before we leave again, Master Cleymond.” She inclined her head. “I am sorry to have kept you.”

  She thought she saw him smirk, but as he was an
insignificant little man, she ignored it and returned to Katherine.

  “Did you know my cousin, Edward of Warwick, languishes in the Byward Tower for crimes he never committed?” she asked by way of explanation for her absence. “’Twas his manservant I spoke to. Sweet Jesu, Ned was only nine years old when he was imprisoned after Bosworth. I still remember his screams as he was taken away from all of us.” She watched Katherine’s eyes grow as big as bucklers. “But Henry has always been afraid of him—just as he is afraid of Perkin. Aye, Katherine, that is the other side of King Henry you do not see. ’Tis the side I hope you—or Perkin—never sees.”

  Katherine shivered. “Let us go inside, Grace. For all it is May, I am suddenly chilled.”

  THE BARGES SWUNG sideways to the ebbing tide and the oarsmen brought them into shore with ease. Once safely tied, the queen and all her company processed into Westminster Palace to rejoin the king’s court once more. Since the Tower, Henry had progressed to Woodstock and Hertford, and Bess had begged to be excused. In March she had lost a child she had carried for only a few months and it had weakened her constitution. And she still grieved.

  As they wound their way up the spiral stone staircase to the queen’s wing of the rambling palace, they could hear music floating up from the great hall. It sounded as though someone was playing the round organ and singing, but whether the voice was male or female, Grace could not decide, but was less than tuneful. Later, when Henry joined the queen in her small audience chamber for supper, Dick the Fool came tumbling into the room and then began to sing in a high falsetto, preening and posing before the king and queen.

  “He mimics le garçon, my dear,” Henry explained, grinning, and Grace winced at the demeaning moniker. He swiveled around to find Katherine in the group of ladies and called her forward. She sank to her knees in front of him, and his hand trembled as he put it out for her to kiss. “Your husband chose to give us a recital today, my dear Lady Katherine. He thinks because he was trained in a humble choir in Tournai that he can sing. Such arrogance. Would you believe he has even offered the wife of one of my ushers music lessons? ’Tis amusing, n’est ce pas? I have tasked Skelton to write a poem in praise of him. You shall be the first to hear it.”

  Katherine’s eyes were now bright with tears, and she flinched.

  “Your grace,” Bess chided him gently. “Is this necessary?”

  Henry’s smile faded and he turned away, catching Grace’s eye so unexpectedly she was unable to hide the anger in it. “I see I am unwelcome here tonight. I do not seem to please you, madam,” he said to Bess, “or you, Lady Gordon,” he said to Katherine, still on her knees, “nor indeed any of your ladies,” he said straight to Grace. “I believe I shall retire, and so wish you all bonne nuit.” He strode from the room, leaving Bess full of remorse in his wake.

  GRACE’S ANGER MOUNTED further when John Skelton, poet laureate, entertained the court the next night with his verses that he titled Against a Comely Groom.

  Katherine was told to stand with Perkin, facing the royal dais in the middle of the great hall upon the wide staircase leading back into the palace. Bess sat motionless on her throne, her eyes never wavering from the white hart badge of King Richard the Second engraved over the huge oak door at the other end of the hall. In anticipation of the poem, Henry’s mood was merry, and he told some of his courtiers to be prepared to wager well later that night. “I am in the mood for a game of chance, sirs. Make ready the tables,” he said, rubbing his hands and clinking his money pouch. “Now, Master Poet Laureate, pray entertain us. Nom de Dieu, I pay you well enough to scribble your lines,” he cried. “Let us hear the droppings from that witty tongue of yours.”

  The hall was silent as a tall stick of a man came forward dressed in a flowing green and white robe that might have been fashionable in the Rome of Cicero and Virgil, and upon the breast of which was embroidered the word Calliope, his muse. A laurel wreath rested on top of his wispy white hair and his gleaming sharp, birdlike eyes roamed the room until they settled on the young couple standing alone upon the black and white marble flagstones. His pink cheeks flushed red and a slow smile spread from ear to ear, revealing several bright yellow teeth and an overactive tongue that darted in and out of his mouth like a reptile’s. “He is relishing this,” Cecily whispered to Grace. “He thinks no one should teach music but him. He thinks he is the sole recipient of the Muse’s gifts, and he thinks Perkin has tried to usurp his position. God help our poor imposter.”

  “A sweet sugar loaf and sour bran bun

  Be somewhat inform and shape alike,

  The one for a duke, the other for dung,

  A bit for a horse thereon to bite.

  The groom’s heart is too high to have any chance,

  Except in his scale to snatch what he can;

  Lo, Jack would be a gentleman!”

  A guffaw from Henry accompanied the line about “his scale,” and Perkin cast his eyes down to his feet, his toes nervously poking at the rushes. Grace’s heart went out to him, but there was nothing she could do but listen to the rest of the scathing diatribe that had the court in stitches.

  “He cannot find it in sharps and flats

  Though he sings the notes from ‘doh’ to ‘ti.’

  He brags of his birth that was born full base

  His music lacks measure, too sharp is his ‘mi’

  He trims his tenor o’er his deficiency.”

  There was even a line that referenced Katherine, who blushed from her bodice to her brow: “Lord, how this Perkin is proud of his peahen.” Skelton pronounced the initial p’s with a popping emphasis, gloating over his own prose.

  When Skelton took his bow, Henry roared and encouraged the court to applaud with hands and feet thumping tables and the floor. Then he threw a rose noble to Skelton, who was ready and caught it deftly, bowing his thanks to his sovereign.

  “I would see Perkin and his peahen dance,” Henry cried, waving at the musicians to begin. “Something sprightly, I pray you.”

  Cecily drew in a sharp breath. “’Tis beyond belief,” she murmured to Grace.

  “And look at his mother, beaming beside him,” Grace answered.

  Cecily was silent; her friendship with Margaret Beaufort had deepened during the years Grace had spent in Westow, but she could not blame Grace for her unkind comments. The woman had treated Elizabeth with disrespect and encouraged Henry to send Grace from court.

  Grace could see that Perkin and Katherine used the time on the dance floor to their advantage, caressing each other’s hands and brushing much too close during the crosses of the dance. They had been joined by others now, and so a few murmured remarks between the couple were not noticed, except by Grace—and possibly by Henry.

  Later, as Grace and Katherine walked side by side up the staircase back to their quarters, Katherine whispered: “Richard can bear it no longer. He means to run away.”

  Grace stopped in her tracks. “He cannot! ’Tis too dangerous. Henry will surely kill him.”

  Katherine’s chin trembled. “He says ’twould be preferable to dying of shame each day as he is doing. I tried to talk him out of it, but he is stubborn. It seems the locks on the door to the wardrobe room are being changed. His servants told him this today. He wonders if you would help us?” They were hidden in the doorway of a dark corridor, a flambeau lighting their way farther down the passageway. Grace nervously fingered her brooch—the gift from Elizabeth that always gave her courage. She thought quickly, which, Tom would have reminded her, often led to rash action on her part. But Tom was not there, and this man who had been, in name if not in person, so much a part of her life for the past twelve years needed her help. She could not refuse.

  “Does he yet have a plan?” she asked Katherine, who shook her head.

  How convenient that the locks would be changed, she thought. It would take the locksmith a day at least. Perkin was right to use the information to his advantage. If he could get past the two yeomen servants and whatever ot
her guard might be outside the door, he could use the river to make his escape.

  “I want to go with him,” Katherine interrupted Grace’s planning. “We shall go into Wales and find our son, and then we will flee to Europe.”

  “You plotted all this during the dance this evening?”

  “Nay,” Katherine admitted. “I have spoken with him a few times from the window in the wardrobe room at night when you—and his guards—are asleep. There is a ladder in the room, for fetching down items from high shelves, and Richard climbs it to reach the window. It is not far to the ground outside, but too far for him to jump, in truth. We can hear each other even though we whisper.”

  Grace raised an eyebrow. “Certes, Katherine, and I thought you would not say boo to a goose. I am awed by your daring.”

  Now Katherine drew herself up and leveled her gaze at Grace in the gloom. “I am Katherine Gordon, daughter of the earl of Huntly, and I grew up by the highlands of Scotland,” she declared, her brogue thickening with every word. “I have climbed hills higher than you boast of in England, hunted in dense forests and sailed in a miserable boat to Ireland for weeks while close to my birthing time. I have more courage than anyone at this lily-livered court, in truth.”