There was a long silence. The queen stared at me, then nodded and spoke. I bent my head close to catch the words.
“Thank you, dear child,” she murmured.
From that moment on, the queen directed all her energies into getting better and forced herself to take nourishment. Though it made her nauseated, she swallowed hot broth, ate honey, and chewed boiled nuts and raisins. Exertion was taxing, almost painful for her, yet she rose from bed and struggled to stand on shaky legs. She even managed to walk with the aid of two canes. King Richard’s joy in finding his queen improved moved me deeply.
“My dearest,” he said joyfully, taking her hands into his own, “now that you’re better, we’ll leave for Nottingham! I had no wish to leave earlier—” He broke off.
I knew his thoughts. He should have gone to Nottingham to prepare for Tudor’s invasion. From there, he could be anywhere on the coast quickly, for Nottingham lay in the middle of the country. But doubting his queen’s recovery, and facing a bleak future without her, he had made no effort to meet the threat of Tudor’s invasion.
We spent three days at Windsor, one of the queen’s favorite castles. While King Richard was kept busy with state affairs, Queen Anne sat by the window, drawn by the beauty of Windsor’s scenery with its rolling hills, emerald woods, and serene river. She held in her hands King Richard’s book, The Vision of Piers Plowman, about the weary plowman who dreams of a better world, one where injustice is remedied. On our last day there, leaning heavily on my arm, the queen managed a short stroll in the garden, which was rich with summer blooms. We reached the pleasure garden near the Round Tower and paused, looking down at the river and manicured hedgerows. “What is the date today, do you know? I seem to have lost count,” the queen asked.
“The twenty-second of August,” I replied.
“How fast the summer is passing!” the queen said sadly. She glanced up at the sky and I followed her gaze. Vivid turquoise; no trace of a cloud. “Such a beautiful day,” she whispered.
I looked at the sad, childless queen, clad in her black garb of mourning. “You should be in bed, my lady. The wind is chill. The king will not be pleased.”
“The wind is chill, but the sun is hot.” The queen smiled at me. “Fret not, child. I can’t stay in bed on such a day.” She halted on the high grassy slope, suddenly winded. “We shall await my lord here.”
Trailing servants set a high-backed chair next to a stone bench by a cluster of rose bushes and withdrew a respectable distance. As she settled into her chair, her glance swept the garden, where she herself had directed the planting of flower beds and hedges the previous summer. Now it was alight with roses, lilies, and violets. Birds celebrated the glorious morning, and from the trees and woods came the song of wood pigeons, wagtails, and larks, while from the pastures outside the castle came the bleating of sheep. A yellow butterfly flitted past, and the queen followed it with her eyes until it disappeared around the hedges. Down on the river’s edge, two white swans glided in the jade waters. A wistful smile touched the corner of her lips as she gazed at the birds that mated for life.
I stood stiffly, ill at ease about the whole business. The doctors had warned against such exertion, and King Richard would surely be distressed.
“I can manage the king, dear child,” the queen said, reading my thoughts, “and in any case I shall be all right. ’Tis warm even for August. The air will do me good. Now sit.”
Reluctantly, I bundled Queen Anne’s furred velvet cloak around her frail body, smoothed the skirt of my green silk gown, and took a seat on the sunny bench. “ ’Tis not what the doctors say, my lady. They say the air is bad for your fever—”
“Fie on the doctors; they would deny me everything. They think me already dead—” the queen broke off. “Nay, anger serves no purpose. They mean well, but they can’t help me. Only God can help any of us.” She looked up at a flock of blackbirds soaring past overhead, crying shrilly. “And in this lovely place, I feel His presence.” The queen moved in her chair, and a white rose caught in her cloak. She took it into her hands, bent her head to inhale its fragrance. It was in full bloom, the heart exposed. She released it with a gentle touch, and the petals spilt to the ground. For some inexplicable reason, I was seized by great sadness as I watched her.
She sank back in her chair wearily and closed her eyes. I caught a tear at the corner of her eye, and knew she was thinking of her lost child.
The queen opened her eyes and gazed at me. Raising her hand, she touched my hair. With a sigh, she closed her lids again and lifted her face back to the sun. We sat peacefully for a time, drinking in its drowsy warmth. Men’s voices and the trample of horses’ feet shattered the serenity. The queen sat up and squinted into the sun in the direction of the noise.
From where we sat, high in the pleasure garden near the Round Tower, we had an excellent view of the main entrance. A small troop of men-at-arms had appeared through a distant archway in the castle wall and begun a descent to the Norman Gate. In their midst, a lone woman rode pillion. Thin, rigidly erect, wearing a wimple and dressed in black, there was no mistaking Margaret Beaufort. I watched uneasily as she and her escorts descended to the main gate. As if sensing our attention, Henry Tudor’s mother turned her head and stared directly at us. I gave a shiver. There was something deeply unsettling about that woman.
“You don’t like her, do you?” said the queen, reading my expression.
I averted my eyes hastily. “N-no, my lady, ’tis not so—”
“You needn’t pretend with me, Elizabeth. We are friends.” She patted my hand. “The reason I ask is because Margaret Beaufort troubles me also.”
“Your Grace—”
“Anne. Call me Anne.”
Thus emboldened, I dared to speak thoughts I had never shared before. “I know we shouldn’t judge our betters, and ’tis presumptuous of me—my lady—Anne—” My gaze returned to the Norman Gate, and the chill I had felt earlier engulfed me again. “But Lady Margaret has always seemed cold to me and—and—”
“Aye?” the queen prompted.
“And—” I searched for the right word—“dangerous.”
“Lady Stanley had the honor of carrying my train at my coronation, yet she’s been at the center of two treasonous plots against my lord, the king, for which he has forgiven her both times.”
I felt myself color fiercely. My mother had been at the center of those plots alongside Margaret Beaufort. The queen must have read my thoughts, for she reached out and took my hand into her own. “Child, ’twas not your fault; you were not involved. One thing I’ve learned in life is that we can only be responsible for ourselves.”
I smiled gratefully. “On my part, I’ve learned that for all his sternness, the king is in truth a gentle and forgiving man.”
“Too forgiving, and too gentle, and too easily fooled by showy piety.” The queen stiffened and returned her gaze to the gate.
“Something about her troubles me,” I murmured. “Could Lady Stanley be false of heart and using her devotion as a ploy to get her way with others?”
“Dear Elizabeth,” Queen Anne sighed, “you are wise beyond your years. Her actions speak of her falseness. I know it goes contrary to what we are told, but I have long believed it is by our deeds, not only our words, that we will be judged.”
“I don’t even trust that she had a—” The words burst from my lips before I could stop myself. I blushed a furious red and looked down at my hands in confusion. “Nay, I speak foolishly.”
“I, too, have doubted that Margaret Beaufort had a vision.”
I looked up in stunned amazement.
“She is a worldly and ambitious woman, and an exceedingly intelligent one,” Queen Anne replied. “At twelve years of age, she was told to wed dull Suffolk, and she wanted dashing Edmund Tudor. What better way to get her wish than to claim St. Nicholas appeared to her in a vision to demand it be Tudor? She is clever enough to have concocted the story. For she is a respected scholar, fond of
translating French writings. Nothing is beyond her intellect.”
“I believe those who have truly been vouchsafed a vision would keep it close to their hearts, like a cherished treasure. Not boast openly of it to gain the praise of others.”
“Yet I yearn to be wrong,” the good queen sighed. “It would be better for my lord husband if I were. If she does not deceive us, she must be without sin. Otherwise, God would not have chosen her for such honor.”
“Nay, my lady, that need not be! God grants visions even to sinners, for St. Paul had his while persecuting Christians.” I hesitated an instant, and then I entrusted yet another of my secrets to the queen in the hope that the knowledge might comfort her. “And I’ve had one.” Feeling embarrassed by my confession, I fell silent.
“Blessed Mary,” the queen prompted with a small smile. “Must I always pry the words out of you, Elizabeth?”
I gathered my courage. I had not had a close friend since Mary’s death, and it felt good to speak freely. “It was at Westminster, soon after my sister Mary died—” I told her of my experience after Mary’s death. “She said my name only once, yet I knew it was her.” I dropped my gaze. My cheeks burned. Now the queen probably thought me mad. “I’ve never spoken of it before.”
“Sometimes, late at night,” said the queen softly, “when I pray, the candles flutter and I think I see out of the corner of my eye . . .” Her voice broke slightly. “I don’t know what I see. When I look, it’s gone.” She closed her eyes, and a tear sparkled as it rolled down her cheek.
I touched the queen gently on her sleeve.
“In no other way has God shown me special favor. I’m certain there are many whom He loves better, who have never been granted such comfort.”
The queen blinked, and I had the sensation she was again seeing our resemblance to each other. She leaned forward in her chair and seized my hand. “Blessed are they who mourn, for they shall be comforted,” she murmured, almost to herself. She closed her eyes and rested her head against the back of the chair. A smile curved her lips, leaving me to wonder what joyous revelation had come to her.
WE SPENT TWO ANXIOUS MONTHS IN NOTTINGHAM waiting for an invasion that never arrived. Finally as November approached, concluding that Tudor no longer posed a problem until the advent of good weather in the spring, we returned to London.
Royal bugles blared and bells rang for Tierce, but the crowds were respectfully quiet when King Richard and Queen Anne, clad in their dark mourning garb, approached Bishopsgate, followed by the royal procession of peers, knights, bishops, servants, and rumbling baggage carts. The city air was thick with the smell of sweat, horse droppings, and butchered animals, and the skies that hung over the city were gray.
On this chilly morning a bitter wind blew, bearing a dank smell from the river and the shops along Fish Street. The king glanced at his queen with concern. Near the city she had transferred from her litter to her chestnut palfrey to make a more dignified entry. Smothered in furs she smiled at him as her palfrey bore her sedately, not like King Richard’s white stallion, which held up its elegant head and pranced majestically before the throng as befitted its royal status. King Richard was met by the mayor and the aldermen of London in their ceremonial scarlet. He listened politely to the mayor’s welcome and made the appropriate responses.
At Westminster, the fresh bloody remains of a dead traitor greeted King Richard at the gates.
“Who is that?” inquired King Richard.
“The man named Collingbourne, Henry Tudor’s agent, sire,” one of his men replied. “He was caught nailing a placard to St. Paul’s.”
King Richard lowered his eyes. “Take it down. Give him decent Christian burial.”
Only once before in history had a king made such a demand, and that was King Henry VI, whom some had called mad, and now called a saint, and whose body King Richard had had transferred from shabby Chertsey Abbey, where my father had buried him, to the splendid Chapel of St. George at Windsor.
In the north, where they knew Richard, they had named him “Good King Richard.”
Now I understood the reason.
IN HER PRIVY CHAMBER AT WESTMINSTER PALACE, Queen Anne caressed Ned’s little hound, Sir Tristan, who had curled up and fallen asleep in her lap.
“We should be foes, yet you’re my dearest friend,” she said as I bent intently over my embroidery.
I slid the needle through my tapestry and knotted the wine silk thread. I broke it with my teeth and smiled. “It seems another lifetime when I thought of you and King Richard as foes. How strange life is.”
“If we loved as easily as we hated, we could change the world. Is there someone close to your heart, Elizabeth?”
I blushed fiercely. Here was my opportunity to speak of my heart’s desire. “Aye, my lady queen.” I caressed my brooch. “Sir Thomas Stafford.” My pulse pounded as I spoke his name.
“Sir Humphrey of Grafton’s younger brother?”
I smiled shyly. “The same.”
“King Richard is devoted to Humphrey. He is a loyal and trusty knight. Is his brother like him?”
“Aye, my lady.”
“When was the last time you saw him?”
“Before we left sanctuary,” I replied sadly.
“Ah . . . ’Tis a long time ago. You are much changed since those days.”
“Oh, no, my queen. I haven’t seen him for months, and he has not written, but I haven’t changed. When the king finds time to arrange a marriage for me, as he has done for my sister Cecily, I should like to wed Sir Thomas Stafford . . . if he’ll have me.” I colored under the queen’s intent gaze. She said nothing in reply. I waited awkwardly. The silence lengthened. Nervously, I filled the emptiness with a question. “You and His Grace have loved one another since childhood, so I’m told.”
“Aye, since I was seven years old,” she said. “I remember the first time Richard came to Middleham. It was soon after your father was crowned. He was so young, so unsure of himself . . . and frightened.” She drifted off into her thoughts.
“Sometimes,” I said at length, “though I could be mistaken—” I broke off in confusion. How dared I speak of such a thing? “No, ’tis foolishness.”
“Tell me what you were going to say, Elizabeth.”
I felt myself turn scarlet again. “Truly, it was nothing, my lady.”
“I must know.”
My fingers slackened around my embroidery and I turned my gaze to the river. “ ’Tis just that . . . sometimes . . . I see an odd expression on the king’s face, when he thinks no one is looking.”
“Aye?”
“Fear, and doubt, madame. Forgive me, but I’ve seen that in his eyes, and it wounds me to the heart.”
The queen gave an audible gasp. She reached out and gently touched my hair, which I’d gathered beneath a silver circlet and gauzy veil. “Aye, child, I know.”
“And I fear for him,” I whispered under my breath.
“Because you love him,” the queen said.
I shrank back. “No, my lady, no—”
“You must not be ashamed of loving,” she said gently.
“I’d never do anything to hurt you—I’d give my life before I’d hurt you!”
The queen seemed about to reply when suddenly she pushed herself up from her chair on trembling legs. Sir Tristan jumped off with a start. She clutched her stomach and bent over as if to vomit. I leapt to my feet and seized her by the shoulders. “My lady, what is it?”
“The foul wind from the river . . . reminds me of something in my childhood.” She inhaled a sharp breath and said, “The doctors have been baffled by my illness. Now I know what it is. The White Plague. I caught it from a sailor on my father’s ship when we were fleeing Marguerite d’Anjou.”
I stared at her in horror. The White Plague was always fatal. Attacking the lungs, it slowly choked life out of a person. Worse, it was a painful disease, especially at the end, when the victim had trouble breathing and coughed up blood and black
phlegm.
With a nod of her head, Queen Anne indicated a far window that stood open to the garden. “There,” she managed. Leaning heavily on my arm, she made her way slowly to the silver cushioned seat. There was no dark river odor here, only the sweet scent of pine. She patted the empty space beside her. Overwhelmed with misery, I sat down.
“Why must you think you’ve harmed with your love, child?” the queen asked when she felt strong enough to speak again. “All we take with us when we die is the love we leave behind.”
I looked at her blankly.
“Love is all there is, dear child,” she explained. “All that matters. All that warms the hearts we leave behind when we depart this world. We take their love, and leave them ours . . . until we are finally reunited, and made whole again.” She looked out at the garden. I followed her gaze to a distant tree, a majestic elm with wide, sprawling branches like the one I’d seen at Middleham where Ned’s archery target had hung.
Her voice sank to a bare whisper. “Ned has my love, and I keep his—here—” She laid a hand to her bosom. “As long as I live, I’ll remember his love—” She gave a sudden gasp.
“Madame, madame!” I cried. “Are you all right?” I wrapped my arms around her to steady her. Nausea plagued her of late, and was coming on with increasing frequency. She calmed, though her breathing was still shallow.
“ ’Tis nothing . . . merely a passing pain.” The queen spoke haltingly. Giving me a strange look, she whispered softly, almost inaudibly, “You have your father’s eyes . . . but they darken. With emotion they darken to violet, like mine.” She inhaled a deep breath. “Now, I’ve something to say. Then you must make me a promise.”
“Anything, madame.”
“Stop . . . calling . . . me ‘madame,’ ” she breathed,“I am Anne.”
“Aye, my dear lady Anne.”
“We must plan . . . for the future.”
The King's Daughter (Rose of York) Page 12
