He put a finger on her lips. ‘Don't promise too much. But perhaps we will do better now.’
Maybe only Ashwellthorpe could heal the breach of years, she thought, and when two days later they rode out with the children, Annette glowing with excitement, the boys chattering eagerly, with Robert and Elysia and their little son, with Aline and Fitchett and John Davy, she did not once look back towards the crowded, noisy, dirty streets of London that had been her home for so long.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
‘Mother!’ John swung himself down from his horse and came up the steps of Tendring Hall to greet her. He had grown so tall at fifteen that he had to bend to kiss her. ‘It is good to see you.’
‘Come inside, my dear boy.’ She tucked her arm into his and drew him in. ‘They are all gone hawking but I stayed behind in the hope you would come today. Your letter said only “for the Easter Feast” so I was not sure.’ She led him into a room lined with shelves where Lord Howard had collected a considerable library and where he kept his account books. There was a fire burning, for the March day was cold, and she sat looking up at her son as he stood before her stripping off his gloves. He had grown so like his father and he was developing something of Humphrey's gaiety mingled with the studious nature which Lord Rivers had discovered and nurtured. ‘Tell me, is your tutor pleased with your work?’
‘He seems to be,’ John said and grinned. ‘Though he will never give a man too much praise for fear he become puffed up. We have to labour very long and it is not easy to write a good hand at six in the morning when one's fingers are numb with cold.’
‘But you have enough money for fire in your lodgings and good food? We have not been ungenerous?’
‘Oh no, far from it and I often have poor scholars in to share my comfort. It is just that it is hard to rouse a lazy servant on a frosty morning. But Balliol is the best college at Oxford and we mean to show it by our work.’
‘Your grandfather and your father too would be so glad,’ she said. ‘I remember when you hated your lessons and used to run away from your tutor.’
‘Did I? That was before I went to Lord Rivers then.’ He glanced round the room. ‘I am glad we are to spend Easter here. Lord Howard has so many books I shall be torn between hunting his fields and having my nose in these volumes.’
‘Did you go to London on your way here?’
‘It was hardly on my way, Mother,’ he answered smiling, ‘but I went. I settled the matter of the house. It was better as you said to sell it than have endless trouble with rents, and I have brought the deed for you to sign. I shall not want to live so close in the city when I am wed to Katherine. I don't know how you bore it.’
‘I was much at court with your father and we found it convenient.’
‘Well, I would rather build a house on the river, towards Westminster perhaps. So many gentlemen are finding it healthier there.’
‘Thank God there was no plague last summer,’ Bess said. The year before that horrible disease had carried off a great number of people, among them Master Hay, dying among his books in the anonymity he had sought. Elysia wept bitterly for him but was consoled that he had seen his first grandson before he died. Sir John Paston had fallen victim also, but Master Paston, her one-time suitor, was now happily married and living at Caister where they were on social terms with the family at Ashwellthorpe. She went on, ‘Did you bring the goods I wanted?’
‘Everything. The velvet cloth for my stepfather and the silk for you and Annette. My man is unloading my goods now. I've a gift for Katherine too. Where is she?’
‘She is in the garden looking for spring flowers to decorate the chapel on Sunday. Yes, you shall go and find her shortly but tell me the news from London. You stayed with Lord and Lady Hastings?’
‘Yes, and found their sons at home. I like Edward very much and we went to a bear-baiting together.’
‘And is my friend Lady Catherine well?’
‘She seems so,’ John said vaguely, ‘just as always. She said Lord Hastings was very busy and indeed I think no man in the Council or Parliament could do more than he. He is beset by business and he looks aged.’
‘We are all getting older,’ she said with a faint smile.
‘Not you!’ He bent to kiss her. ‘You don't change. I went to court one evening and all the gossip is that there is a great quarrel between Lord Hastings and the Marquess of Dorset. No one knows who or what started it but if the King goes pleasuring with one the other does not come.’
‘Oh,’ Bess sighed, ‘I always feared my lord Dorset's influence. He used to amuse the King, make him feel a youth again, but Lord Hastings has been his trusted friend these twenty years and it would be hard if his son-in-law should turn the King against him.’
‘The court is all Woodvilles and my Lord Hastings likes none of them, except perhaps Lord Rivers.’
‘Was he at court?’
‘No, he is with the Prince of Wales at Ludlow. But I was only there one evening, Mother, not long enough to glean all the tattle for you.’
She realized she had been talking to him as if he were a full grown man, which indeed he seemed, yet he was after all still a boy. She reached for his hand. ‘Well, I've kept you long enough talking with me. Go and find Katherine and give her your gift.’
‘It is a brooch,’ he said seriously. ‘I hope she likes it.’
When he had gone out Bess sat on by the fire. She had been whole-heartedly for the betrothal of John to Thomas's half-sister. While still almost children they had seemed to fall into love, and it consolidated the family, Howard and Bourchier united.
The years since she and Thomas had left London had been far happier than she had anticipated. They settled at Ashwellthorpe with her father and the days passed pleasantly. Thomas appeared to like the life of a country gentleman. He interested himself in local affairs, became a justice, studied the best use of the land and got on very well with his father-in-law. They played chess in the evenings or listened to Annette singing to Margaret's lute. The younger children, Tom, Edward and four year-old Edmund, were growing into sturdy boys in the freedom of the Norfolk countryside. London seemed far away. Catherine Hastings wrote to her but kept her letters general and Bess could only guess how matters were in the capital. She did, however, gather that Edward and his Queen had come to live very separate lives, that if Elizabeth was at Westminster the King was at Sheen, when she was at Eltham he was in London, and it seemed sad to Bess that they had drifted so far apart. For herself she was growing more contented – it was as if a marriage begun in passionate love was dying while hers, begun in active dislike, was changing for the better, into respect and a mutual regard born out of their difficulties. When Thomas made love to her she was able to respond at last and that very response made him more sensitive. Edmund, the result of this new situation, was a singularly endearing child with a sunny nature and she hoped they would have more children, for last year they had laid a three-month-old daughter in the grave and Thomas had wanted a daughter. In his way he adored Annette and she him. Annette would have to be found a husband soon, Bess thought, for the girl was eighteen years old, but neither she nor Thomas had hurried on the matter, for they enjoyed her presence at home.
During these years they had journeyed once into Yorkshire just before the recent war against the Scots and stayed again with the Duke and Duchess of Gloucester. Richard and Anne asked nothing more than to live in their own little kingdom far from court troubles, and their only concern was the precarious health of their only son. But when strife on the border seemed imminent Richard quickly and efficiently raised an army and went north, while Bess and Thomas came home to find Lord Howard had taken his ships up the coast. As vigorous as ever he had sailed into the Firth of Forth and inflicted a crushing blow on the Scots fleet. The land invasion collapsed and Richard signed a treaty with the Duke of Albany.
In England peace had brought prosperity and in Norfolk the wool trade flourished. There had been a good harvest too last year
and no one in East Anglia had gone hungry this winter. Now the spring had come and Thomas said they might pay a brief visit to London, but she was no longer sure she wanted to go. The old love and longing for Edward was safely buried and she did not wish to risk awakening it.
Thomas's sisters were all here at Tendring for Easter, Isabel with her husband Robert Mortimer and several lively children, and the party promised to be a cheerful one. Both Lord and Lady Howard welcomed all the children and did not seem to care how uproarious they were. Young Tom was always at the heart of any sport or mischief and once the solemnities of Good Friday were over they gave themselves up to the Easter merry-making with music and dancing and a troop of tumblers to perform for them.
It came to an end when a letter four days later announced the news that the Earl of Essex was dead. He had lived to a good age and been perhaps the most respected peer in the realm, and Bess mourned him deeply for he had been constantly kind to her. This news was followed by another letter, this time from Westminster. It was from Lord Hastings to inform Lord Howard that the King was unwell.
‘It seems he went fishing at Windsor, got very wet and caught a cold,’ Lord Howard told the family assembled in the long dining-room.
‘His grace was always happy to slip away and sit on a bank with a rod in his hand,’ Thomas said. ‘It's not serious, surely?’
His father read on. ‘Hastings thinks not, but the King overexerted himself and had a seizure. He is better but still feverish and has taken to his bed, which is a rare occurrence for him. My lord thinks it might be as well if I came to London, and so do I.’
‘I'll go with you,’ Thomas said. ‘In any case Bess and I must attend the Earl of Essex's funeral.’
In their bedchamber that night, Thomas said, ‘John and Annette and Margaret must come with us, of course, but are you content to leave the younger children with my mother?’
‘Of course.’ Sudden anxiety sharpened Bess's voice. Do you think then there is cause to hurry?’
‘I hope not,’ he answered, ‘but I've not known the King ill before and I am uneasy.’
I too, she thought, and lay awake for a long while, remembering things she had not relived for many years.
The countryside was awake after the winter as they rode down during the first week of April by little twisting lanes to Coggeshall and then on to Witham, reaching Chelmsford late on the first evening. On the second they came to Romford and on the following afternoon saw the city of London lying before them. They were to enter by Moor Gate, but even before they did so a solemn tolling reached them from the numerous steeples rising above the jumble of houses.
Lord Howard and his son exchanged glances. ‘Whose tolling bells can they be?’ Thomas queried. ‘We only know of Lord Essex and surely even for him –’
‘– there would not be so many,’ his father finished and added, ‘I begin to fear –’
‘Oh God! Bess cried out. ‘You do not think – it cannot be for –’ She could not bring herself to say the words.
They hurried their horses towards the gate and there heard the news called to them from all sides. The King was dead! Great Edward who had given them all peace and good trade, Edward who had loved the city and all its people, Edward whose forty-first birthday they would have been celebrating in three weeks' time, the splendid figure so familiar to them all, lay dead, and they were stricken by their loss.
‘Jesu!’ Lord Howard crossed himself and Thomas also. Slowly Bess signed herself. She felt cold, sick, unable to believe it, yet all the while listening as the single mourning bells tolled their unmistakable message.
‘We must go at once to Westminster,’ Lord Howard said to his son. ‘Bess, my dear, take all our people to my house while we ride on. We will send you news as soon as we can.’
They rode off, pressing through the crowded streets, and Bess followed with John and his sisters and the two dozen servants and squires who had accompanied them, all dazed and shaken by the news. She saw people gathered in small groups to talk in low voices, some hurrying into the churches to pray for their King's soul, others clustering by tavern doors to speculate on the future.
Once she descended and holding John's arm went into St. Olave's church in Old Jewry to kneel with many others, while candles blazed and a priest intoned prayers for the dead. Annette and Margaret wept but she was still too stunned for tears. She tried to pray but only formal words would come, ‘Ave Maria, ora pro nobis,’ and her heart felt as cold as a stone.
As they came out of the church John said, ‘The new King is no more than twelve, is he, Mother? King Edward must have thought his son would be grown to manhood before a crown was set on his head.’
‘Woe to the land whose ruler is a child,’ Bess said, scarcely above a whisper. ‘I heard that somewhere.’ Poor child, she thought, it would not be easy to be a boy king. She thought too of Elizabeth and the years that had gone, of a March day and a frightened horse and moments of ecstasy. ‘Get me home, John,’ she said, ‘get me home, quickly.’
At Lord Howard's town house they waited. By evening the heavy tolling had ceased and they ate supper privately in Bess's chamber. At last at ten o'clock father and son came home, Lord Howard looking very grave, his son hardly less so.
‘We have seen his grace,’ Lord Howard said. ‘He lay in his chamber naked but for a cloth covering his privy parts, that all the peers and churchmen in London might see he was truly gone from us. It was a sad sight, the glory of a king gone to naught but clay.’
Bess closed her eyes, the image thrown up almost unbearable, and Thomas went on hastily, ‘Then they dressed him as befitted him and we bore him to St. Stephen's chapel for all to pass by and honour him.’
‘How did it happen?’ she asked. ‘When Lord Hastings wrote it seemed there was no real cause for worry – and he was always so strong.’
‘The doctors do not know, but he was a big man and heavy. The fever had him and his breathing grew hard-pressed. Hastings was summoned yesterday and found the King already at the point of death – it took everyone by surprise.’
‘And the Queen? Was she there?’
Lord Howard gave her an odd look. ‘No. The King had not asked for her.’
What had happened to the love of youth? Bess wondered. Did it always die? Nineteen years since that day at Grafton and Edward did not call Elizabeth to him when he was dying. She put a kerchief to her eyes and begged Lord Howard to go on. Thomas poured a cup of wine for her and another for his father.
Dorset was there, and knowing how he and Hastings had quarrelled the King bade them love each other for the sake of his son and the safety of his realm. They shook hands but it's my belief their new-found friendship will not outlast the burial mass.’
‘What is to happen then? Has the young King been summoned?’
‘We don't know,’ Thomas said. ‘We dine with Lord Hastings tomorrow and will maybe learn more.’
Shortly after Lord Howard rose and went to his bed and Thomas and Bess were alone. He put his arm about her. ‘We all grieve,’ he said in a low voice, ‘and you – perhaps more than many.’
She wept quietly for a while, her head on his shoulder. She was seeing Edward as he had been the last time they had met, sitting in his chair in a mulberry-coloured velvet coat, with long fur-lined sleeves, his legs thrust out, still handsome, still able to stir her. She had perforce turned her back on him, on the court, and now she would never see him alive again. It would be better to remember other moments, the young bridegroom of Grafton, Edward at her own bridal, his visit to Ashwellthorpe and their walk together to Walsingham. And Thomas's present kindness, his understanding was touching. It seemed he had long since put aside the jealousy he had cause to feel and she was grateful, finding herself holding on to him as an anchor in a heaving sea that must bring great change to them all.
In the morning she went to Westminster with her two eldest children, Robert Bellasis escorting her, though Elysia, heavily pregnant, stayed behind. They joined the lon
g lines of people waiting to pass by the coffin, artisans and workmen, merchants and apprentices, all come to see the last of the King who had given them peace and prosperity. He lay surrounded by yellow mourning tapers, a priest intoning prayers, monks from the Abbey chanting. Most people wept as they passed and Annette had tears running down her cheeks. Bess looked on Edward's face and remembered how Elizabeth had once said a new sun was rising upon England. So it had proved – yet now he lay here, in utter stillness, all light extinguished from that mobile countenance.
She swayed and felt John's arm steadying her. They passed on and out into the gusty April morning. She went then to the Queen's apartments to offer her sympathy but was told that her grace was too immersed in state affairs to see her. Disappointed, she turned away. She supposed it must be so; friendship counted for less than Elizabeth's preoccupation with the future.
At dinner, Lord Hastings, his face drawn and tired, nevertheless also turned his mind to what had to be done. ‘I've sent an urgent message to the Duke of Gloucester,’ he told them. ‘King Edward named him protector to his son and he must come at once and with force.’
‘You expect opposition?’ Lord Howard asked.
‘Don't you?’ Hastings countered. ‘I am still Lord Chamberlain but already the Queen and Dorset are forming a council, making decisions. They have no right, none at all. Nothing can be done until the new King comes and yet they are issuing orders, sending for every man who will be a Woodville man.’
‘Are there many?’ Thomas asked.
‘Less than they expect. It is for my lord of Gloucester to see all done correctly and I pray God he comes quickly.’
Bess thought of Middleham, of Richard and Anne and their delicate little boy. Now their peace would be shattered, their Yorkshire moors exchanged for the dirt of London and the contention of the Council chamber. Duty was a hard thing, and yet she knew Richard would not shirk it.
The Sun in Splendour (The Plantagenets Book 6) Page 20
