The King's Grace

by Anne Easter Smith

  “Never say so, Grace!” Perkin hissed so vehemently she took a step back. “She sent me messages during those months in the Tower through a priest who was in her service. She did not abandon me. She loves me. But she has no power to free me. Now, if you care at all, I beg of you, carry my message to her.”

  “Aye,” Grace whispered. “I promise.” Then she took a deep breath as she heard the guard’s key in the lock. “Who are you in truth?” she said.

  “Ask Aunt Margaret, for I cannot tell you,” Perkin muttered. “Now, go!”

  Grace bent down swiftly and kissed him on the forehead, flinching at the vile odor of him. “God grant you his mercy,” she told him, deciding not to add, and give you a swift end. Then, giving Atwater a quick blessing, she hurried from the room without a backwards look.

  “God bless you, Grace Plantagenet,” Perkin called after her. “And adieu.”

  The guard leered at Grace as he led her back out into the fresh air, where Edgar and Katherine were anxiously awaiting her. Her fur hem was coated with the cell slime and her feet were wet through. She reached into the small pouch at her waist and gave the guard two groats. “If ’tis possible, sirrah, can you see to it that he is clean for his ordeal tomorrow. After all,” she said, eyeing him, “we do not know for certain he is not the duke of York.”

  The guard was pleased to get the money and laughed. “We have orders to clean both prisoners, my lady. Sir Simon’s orders included fresh shirts and hose. What a waste!” He guffawed and disappeared back into the blackness of the dungeon.

  Edgar walked a step behind her, ready to support his mistress, whom he had once before seen deathly white. He would be there to catch her ere she fell this time, too, he thought. Grace walked in a daze along Water Lane to the Byward Tower gate and, as she passed behind the portcullis room, she saw Margaret, Countess of Salisbury, coming towards her carrying a basket and a book.

  “Good day to you, Lady Grace,” Margaret said, surprised. “Are you here to see my brother, too? I have brought him food and a prayer book.” There was a catch in her throat, and Grace could see she had been crying.

  Grace was glad Margaret had come in time to see Ned. Margaret lived most of the year on her husband’s estates, but must have heard of her brother’s trial and come quickly.

  “I had hoped to see him—I was not certain anyone else would come, but now that you are here, certes, he will be happier to see you,” Grace said. “Pray tell him he is in my prayers, and that I do not doubt Henry will pardon him. ’Tis the talk at court,” she lied, and was glad to see hope in the woman’s eyes. “No doubt we shall see you at court until—”

  “No doubt,” the other woman finished with a small smile of understanding. “I shall look forward to praying with you, dear Grace,” she said. “My brother needs our prayers.”

  Grace chose not to add, As does Perkin. She merely nodded, bowed and walked on.

  TOM MET THEM on the Westminster wharf when the boat returned from the Tower and walked both women back into the palace. Grace turned to thank Edgar for his escort and, in an unusual gesture, he grasped her hand and kissed it.

  “How now, Edgar, what ails you?” Grace said kindly, although she wanted nothing more than a moment with Tom to tell him of her ordeal at the Tower.

  “You be the best mistress in London,” the big man answered. “Nay, the best in all England. To go alone into such a place as that”—he jerked his thumb back towards the Tower—“to comfort that Perkin fellow. My lady here told me of it, mistress, and when you’d come out, we could smell the dungeon from a mile away. It must’ve been something awful down there, but you didn’t care. That Perkin be a lucky man.”

  “Aye, so he is, Edgar,” Katherine answered before the stunned Grace could say anything. “My husband never had a truer friend—and neither have I.” She gave Edgar one of her sweetest smiles and Edgar almost toppled into the Thames with embarrassment.

  Tom chuckled, reaching to grip the man’s hand. “And we are fortunate to have such a loyal servant, Edgar. I thank you for the compliment, on behalf of my speechless wife.” All Grace could do was smile her thanks and take Tom’s proffered arm.

  Watching Katherine disappear up the spiral staircase to the royal apartments, Grace related the events of the morning as quickly as she could. She was still upset, so Tom took her in his arms. “Certes, you do smell foul, my love, but I am so proud of you, I know not how to express it. ’Tis evident to me that you will want to extend your kindness to this man tomorrow, and I cannot deny you. In fact, I will escort you myself—for I know if I did not, you would not hesitate to disguise yourself with the apprentices, it being Saint Clement’s Day. What say you, O best mistress in England? Shall we go together?”

  “Oh, Tom, I did not dare to dream you would agree to it,” Grace said, burying her face in his blue wool doublet and inhaling his familiar, comforting scent. “I think I can bear it, if you are there.” She lifted her head. “And then let us take the children home to Westow for Christmas. Bess will let me go—sadly, there will be no need to watch Katherine after tomorrow.”

  “I AM TO stay away,” Katherine sobbed later that evening, after she and Grace had been dismissed from the queen’s chamber. Grace thought it wise to tell Bess that she and Tom would go to Tyburn, and Bess had shrugged. She was not feeling well, and her head ached. “Go with my blessing, Grace,” she said, her voice listless. “Sir Giles Daubeney has invited Henry to hunt nearby his lodge, Hampton Court, and I expect Arthur, Harry and Margaret to visit me—if my head heals.”

  Grace broached the subject of Katherine, and Bess frowned. “She should not witness the execution. Henry has expressly forbidden it; he believes it is for her own good. He has her well-being in mind, and I commend him for it.”

  Grace said nothing. She saw the resignation in Bess’s eyes, and her heart went out to her gentle, temperate sister. She knows, Grace thought; she knows about Henry’s penchant for Katherine. Grace’s hatred for Henry grew even more. She was convinced that Henry did not have Lady Gordon’s well-being in mind this time; he was afraid that the beautiful, tormented wife of the condemned man would curry pity with the crowd and make him look malevolent.

  “My dear Katherine, ’twould serve your husband nothing for you to be there,” Grace said now. “Supposing he sees you? It will make his ordeal even worse knowing you are watching.” Grace did not entirely believe what she was saying, but she had to give Katherine just cause for obeying Henry. “If he should…if he resists…should he not behave in a dignified way,” she tried to find the right words, “and you were there, it would mortify him. Do you see?”

  Katherine nodded and leaned her head on Grace’s shoulder. “You must promise to tell me all,” she murmured, and Grace patted her hand. “Certes, I shall,” she replied. “And, thank God—and the people of London—for changing the king’s mind about the manner of his death. A simple hanging is more merciful, I promise you.”

  Grace and Tom set off on horseback from the Westminster stableyard as soon as they had broken their fast—Tom in a servant’s livery and Grace in a gown Edgar had borrowed from a laundress.

  With the groom on a sturdy rouncy behind them, Tom urged his horse into a canter along the muddy paths between the fields that stretched from the palace up to the village of Tyburn, so called for the meeting of two small streams that converged there and flowed the short way into the Thames. A roaring noise began to get their attention from the east as they neared the hamlet, and soon they recognized the sound of hundreds of voices upon the road out of London.

  At the back of the village, Tom spotted a gnarled old apple tree out of sight of the nearest dwelling and quickly dismounted with Grace. Leaving Edgar to wait with the animals, he and Grace finished the journey on foot. Rounding the tiny church, they were confronted by an already sizeable throng crowding the notorious hanging tree in the middle of the road that led to the north.

  “How close do you want to be, sweetheart?” Tom asked, putting his arm
around Grace protectively and wishing he had his shortsword with him. “Closer? Then hold on tight.”

  People glanced indifferently at the couple as they fought their way to within spitting distance of the gallows, as the noise grew louder, and the spectators already there began to feel the pressure of more bodies angling for a view.

  “There must be more than five hundred souls,” Grace whispered. “Although I cannot see much from down here,” she complained.

  “’Ere, mistress, you can have this pail if you likes,” a man near them said. He had just been to the well, but he cheerfully tipped the contents onto the already muddy ground and turned it upside down for Grace to stand on.

  “Thank you, sir,” Tom said, helping Grace up. She turned and gave him a brilliant smile and was amused to see the rough old farmer blush.

  “’Tis not often I see eye to eye with my husband,” Grace told him, and then felt ashamed for jesting on such a day. The man guffawed and dug his neighbor in the ribs.

  Straining her eyes over as many heads as she could, Grace could see several men on horseback at the head of the procession. Then she heard the people around her cheering: “Here he comes, the pretender prince. Perkin, Perkin, Perkin…” They chanted in unison, now all standing on tiptoe or jumping up and down to see the captives.

  The armed escorts rode their mounts slowly around the base of the scaffold, pushing back the crowds so there would be room for the hanging party. “Move back, move back!” the riders shouted, and a scream of pain went up from a woman whose foot was trodden on by one of the horses.

  Tom held tight to Grace, and his height and her bucket anchor caused people to move around them instead of pushing them aside. Then Grace saw the two horses pulling the hurdles, and she put one hand to her mouth to stifle a cry and pointed with the other. “There he is,” she whispered. “Dear God, look at him.”

  Spread-eagled upon the wooden hurdle, Perkin had been dragged by a horse through the muck-filled streets of London from the Tower to Tyburn. The journey had taken two hours and he had endured poking, spitting, rotten vegetables, an occasional stone and, worst of all, the heckling, taunts and derision of a city angry at this mawmet who had disturbed their peace and insulted their king. “Perkin, Perkin, Perkin…Hang him, hang him, hang him,” they cried, enjoying the little chant they had invented.

  A hush came over the throng as the second horse arrived and both prisoners were untied and tipped off the hurdles into the mud, clothed only in shirts and hose. Elderly John Atwater could barely stand and needed support, but Perkin got up from the dirt and stood tall, facing his mockers. He looked at the leering men and women eager for the day’s entertainment and swallowed. He asked for water but was refused. A priest mumbled prayers in his ear and then called them out to him as he was pushed, his hands still tied, up the steps to the stage. He was calm, Grace noticed, and she could see that his shirt had been clean before the hurdling. He gazed out at the sea of upturned faces and began to speak. At first no one heard him, but as the shouting abated they listened.

  “’Tis his confession,” Grace murmured to Tom. “Dear God, he is repeating his confession.”

  “I am a stranger born, from Tournai in Picardy…and I was never that person I said I was—the second son of King Edward, nor”—his voice and his head dropped so only a few heard—“none of his blood.” Then he jerked up his head and told the spectators that he never wished to be named the prince but that “John Atwater here present and others were to blame.”

  A gasp of disgust rose from those in the front who had heard. “He blames the poor bastard who follows—” one man began, but he was cut off by Atwater himself.

  “What he says is true,” Atwater cried as loudly as his weakness allowed. “He did not wish it.”

  Perkin looked down gratefully on the Irishman, and when he raised his eyes again, by a miracle he found Grace’s small, sweet face, wet with tears and radiating pity, gazing back at him. It gave him courage and the strength to cry out: “I beg God and the king and all others whom I have offended to forgive me.” His eyes begged for her forgiveness, and Grace nodded her acceptance.

  The spectators’ raucous jeering had subsided during the confession, and now Perkin’s final apology seemed to have garnered their grudging sympathy, for they stood quietly watching him. He nodded to the hangman, who secured the noose that hung from the crossbar around Perkin’s neck and turned him to the ladder. With his hands tied behind him, it was no easy task to mount each rung, but with the hangman’s help he reached the top.

  “In manus tuas, Domine, commendo spiritum meum,” he cried to the heavens as a crow cawed on the topmost point of the gibbet.

  Before Grace could close her eyes the ladder was kicked away, and the young man who might have been a king swung free, his legs dancing as the noose constricted his airway and he fought valiantly for breath. Grace stumbled off the bucket and buried herself in Tom’s embrace, weeping uncontrollably. “Is he dead?” she asked after the cheering began again for Atwater’s turn.

  Tom could not tell her that it would take Perkin at least an hour to die up there; prison had so emaciated the young man’s body, there was not enough weight to have broken his neck.

  “Aye, sweetheart, he is gone. He died with dignity and patience,” he told her and, thanking the man for his bucket, led the trembling Grace away before the traitor Atwater met his more grisly end.

  The final indignity imposed on the pretender by Henry, which may have been lost on Perkin, was that he died the common criminal’s death. His head was cut off, speared on a pole and displayed upon London Bridge for the carrion to feast upon and as a warning to other would-be traitors. Even then, there were Londoners who stared up at the blackened head, its blond hair lifting with the breeze, and wondered if he had really been Richard, duke of York.

  FIVE DAYS LATER upon Tower Green Henry rid himself of yet another York prince. Edward of Warwick, too, had the original traitor’s death sentence of hanging, drawing and quartering commuted and, in deference to his rank, was sentenced to be beheaded instead. What was so surprising was that there was no public shaming of his body, which was conveyed with all respect to Bisham Abbey in Berkshire, where the young man was laid to rest in the family vault. And even more surprising, Grace told Tom, was that Henry paid the bill.

  Others in the conspiracy were executed, imprisoned or, surprisingly, pardoned.

  Robert Cleymond was never found.

  A LIGHT SNOW was falling when the Gower family left the inn at York on the last few miles of their journey to Westow, and when the road branched off a little north of the city, Grace called out to Susannah, who was riding in her favorite place in front of Tom, almost hidden in the folds of his fur-lined cloak.

  “You see that other road, sweeting? ’Tis the road to Sheriff Hutton, where there is a big castle. ’Tis where I met your father for the first time.”

  “How old were you, Mother?” Susannah asked, swiveling round as best she could.

  “I was only twelve. Your father was tall and skinny and interested only in hunting, fishing and archery,” Grace told her, squeezing Tom’s waist in fun. “He had a big dog called Jason then. It was sad when Jason died, but he was old for a dog, and one day he did not wake.”

  “Doggie,” Bella said suddenly from her perch in front of Edgar, who had Enid riding pillion on his big rouncy. Enid and Grace took turns holding baby Alice, who found the gentle rocking of the horse’s gait soporific and slept a good deal of the day. “I want a doggie.”

  “Then you shall have one,” Tom exclaimed. “We shall go to Sheriff Hutton and see what the kennels hold. ’Tis a perfect gift for the new year,” he said over his shoulder to Grace. “What say you, sweetheart? When we take up residence at Cecily’s manor in Essex, the girls will have a new playmate, and Freya will be left in peace.”

  “I’d rather have a lamb,” Grace teased him. “Oh, Tom, I am so looking forward to being at Westow again.” She laughed at the girls, who were sticki
ng out their tongues and catching the crystal snowflakes as they floated down more heavily now. “I hope we get there before there are drifts.”

  “Only a league more, my love. I hope Mother has mulled wine for us; we shall be in need of it after this.”

  No one at the manor heard the hooves in the falling snow until a dairy-maid saw the group riding up the hill past the copse towards the stables. She picked up her skirts and ran full tilt to the kitchen door, shrieking at the top of her voice. “Mistress Gower, Mistress Gower, they are come!”

  The double oak doors into the hall were thrown open and Alice, Edmund and his wife and their child stood grouped on the steps down to the courtyard, calling out their welcomes.

  Grace’s heart lifted. Her journey from deep sorrow after the deaths of both Perkin and Ned to the happy anticipation of reaching Westow had taken several days to achieve on the road north. Tom had shouldered the lion’s share of the children’s well-being and allowed her to be melancholy, and soon the joy of being close to Tom’s family again overcame her sadness and she began to look forward instead of back.

  “Oh, Tom,” she whispered as he lifted her off the uncomfortable pillion seat for the final time and carried her like a bride over the threshold and into the warm hall. “’Tis so good to be home.”

  “Mother, take care of Grace, I beg of you,” he said after he had embraced his doting parent. “I must fetch Susannah.”

  Alice took Grace in her arms, tears in her eyes. “It has been so long, hinny,” she said, and Grace noticed that her hair was now completely white. “We have missed you all.”

  Enid was next to dismount, and Edgar took the precious bundle from her and carried the baby to Grace’s waiting arms.

  “Thank you, Edgar,” she said, smiling at him. “You are the best servant in the world.”

  Edgar grinned from ear to ear and bowed his way from the door. Slipping on the icy steps and with arms flailing, he tottered backwards into the snow.