“Though King Henry has kept my London residence of Cold Harbor, he has granted me the lordships for life of Waltham, Badowe, Magna, Masshebury, Dunmore, Lieghes, and Farnham—and”—she grinned broadly—“and one hundred two pounds per annum from the fee farm of the town of Bristol!”
“That is indeed much to smile about,” I said, though my heart ached that we had so little in common.
One dismal morning, watching the rain fall, I began to weep. For Richard, for Anne, for all that might have been. Anne had not wished to be queen, either, I thought. When Ned died, Richard had sat at her bedside, begging forgiveness. He’d blamed himself for accepting the crown that Anne had pleaded with him to refuse, for it was the crown that had claimed their child’s life.
“Why these tears?” my mother said gently. “What is the matter, child? Here you are queen, and you weep?”
I had not noticed her enter the room. I wiped my eyes with the back of my hand and realized that the Beaufort woman was not around. “I never wished to be queen,” I said. “I don’t love Tudor, Mother.”
A silence.
“You think I loved your father?” she replied.
I looked up sharply at her words.
“You marry for power, for riches. That’s where happiness comes from.”
“Mother, don’t delude yourself,” I said roughly, retreating back into myself. “You were never happy, though you had what you thought you wanted. Nay—have no fear, I shall do my duty and be a good queen to Tudor, though ’tis not for wealth and power and pretty dresses. None of these things mean much to me. ’Tis to give you and my sisters a better life.”
“Ah!” my mother exclaimed. “You can put your nose up at fancy clothes and jewels and a crown because you have never known what it is to go hungry. Or to see others with barely a fraction of your beauty ride by in rich gowns and sneer at you. You know not what it is to be ridiculed and disrespected, to have people despise you, to be powerless to strike back. The crown I wore gave me the chance to set things right—to get revenge for the humiliations my family suffered. You are princess now because of me. Queen, thanks to my sacrifice.”
“So now it’s a sacrifice, not happiness? Pray, Mother, make up your mind.”
My mother gave a muffled sound of aggravation, and quitted the room.
But in domineering Margaret Beaufort my mother had met her match, for Henry Tudor’s mother was as strong-willed as my own. Margaret Beaufort always had the final word in the control of my household, and this brought about many clashes between her and my mother, until the erstwhile allies soon became foes.
“Don’t turn your back on me!” my mother cried after a particularly heated argument with the Beaufort woman.
“I do as I wish with the likes of you,” retorted Margaret Beaufort, lifting her brows.
“With the likes of me?” my mother repeated in disbelief. “Dare you give yourself such airs—I am queen, my daughter is queen! You are no queen, and signing yourself ‘Margaret R’ doesn’t make you one! It only exposes your foolery in thinking yourself royal.”
“If you wish to debate queenship with me, then I say this,” replied Margaret Beaufort. “You, madame, lost a kingdom for your sons which I, by my ingenuity and intellect, won for mine. My Henry is king now, and I, as his mother, wield great power. Through your insatiable greed and recklessness you obtained advancement for your family, but at what cost? You drew upon yourself, and on them, the great hatred of the land—and this loathing, upon the death of King Edward, brought about the doom of your brother and three of your sons and the fall of House of York. Need I remind you that your title, your lands, indeed, all your property, has been granted you by our grace? Beware, lest we deprive you of it as surely as we gave it with a wave of our royal hand.”
She looked up at my mother from her diminutive height. “You have only yourself to blame for the loss of a kingdom, madame.” She rustled out of the room. At the door, she turned back. “ ’Tis not I who am the fool.”
After she left, my mother stared at me. “Welladay, are you going to sit there and watch me take this abuse? Have you nothing to say about it?”
“And what would you have me say, Mother?”
“Anything! Something!”
“Then I say that she is right.”
“What?” Mother whispered on a breath. “What did you dare utter to me, you insolent girl?”
I sighed and laid down my mending. “She is right, Mother. Can you not see that? All that has come to pass is because of you. Good King Richard is dead, Henry is king, I am captive here. Dickon and Edward are who knows where, whether alive or dead only God knows; and little Warwick spends his days alone, imprisoned in the Tower. My Uncle Anthony, whose sound advice you never cared to heed, is dead, and with him my brother Dick Grey. ’Tis your doing. ’Tis what you have wrought. I have resigned myself to it. Best that you do the same, Mother.”
“I have had enough of you, and that horrid woman!” Mother shouted. “I am queen dowager! I don’t have to take this, and I won’t!”
One evening, in front of Henry, they went at it again.
“What do you mean I’m not permitted to wear a surcoat?” demanded my mother. “I am queen dowager and can wear what I wish.”
“My ordinance makes it clear. Only I, as the king’s mother, am permitted to wear a surcoat and other attire like the queen,” replied Margaret Beaufort.
My mother, who was especially tall for a woman, and almost as tall as many men, strode up to the Beaufort woman and looked down on her. Many times I had seen two hounds of vastly unequal size challenge one another in just this manner. I couldn’t help myself ; it was such a comical sight, I was almost unable to suppress the laughter that bubbled in my throat. I stole a glance at Henry and was surprised to find he had the same reaction. Our eyes met and we smiled at one another in shared understanding.
“I’ve had enough!” my mother exclaimed suddenly. “I shall retire from court and live elsewhere.”
I leapt to my feet. Despite all our difficulties, I had no wish to see my mother leave court. “But Mother—where will you go?”
“Cheynegate. There’s a mansion up for lease. You may visit me there, Elizabeth—if you are granted permission, which I doubt.”
“Mother—” Panic seized me. I watched her incline her head to Henry and sweep out of the room. A sickening knot formed in the pit of my stomach. She would take my sisters and leave me truly alone.
Over the next weeks, I stole many glances at Margaret Beaufort. I could well understand why Humphrey and Thomas had joined Richard’s cause against the Tudors. For Margaret Beaufort, a relative, was devil enough to inspire fervent hatred to the death, especially by those who had the misfortune to know her well.
Poor Humphrey. That he suffered so horribly at Tyburn. Dear God!
A vision of him flashed into my mind on our last Yuletide together: “Look!” he’d said with a grin. “Someone has had his fill of marchpane—”
ONE DAY, WHEN MOTHER CAME TO VISIT AND MARGARET Beaufort was called away by Henry, I confided my misery to her.
“There is only one thing you can do to ease your lot. You must seize control of your household away from her.”
“Mother, don’t you understand? We are captives, you and I. Though you may roam more freely than I, we are both watched by Tudor spies, and they report back on everything we say or do. I cannot take back the reins of the household from Henry’s mother. I have no influence with him. He hates the House of York. ’Tis only his mother and Morton he trusts. Their advice has been to give me honorable captivity, but tighter than what Henry received in Brittany, for in the end he escaped. I am not even permitted to write letters—though whom I would write to is a matter for consideration. Everyone I would wish to write is dead.”
Mother looked at me with soft eyes, and my heart flowed to her.
“You have to do something about that awful woman,” she said abruptly.
“Hush, Mother. She has spies everywhere
.”
My mother turned and shouted to the far ends of the room, “Do something about that awful woman! Aye, that’s what I said, you accursed eavesdroppers!”
I felt myself turn as red as the root of a beet. The servants scattered, heads down. The room emptied. She turned back to me.
“And what, pray, can I do?” I demanded angrily.
“If you had some spirit, I wouldn’t have to tell you.You’d know what to do—you’d get into bed and lick that king of yours until he stops listening to his mother and turns to you.”
“Henry is not my father,” I retorted icily, flooded with disgust. But if I had thought to shame her, she was impervious.
“All men are the same, you fool.They all want the same thing. You could free us from that witch, if you so chose. But you choose not to.”
“Aye, ’tis my decision. Henry is my punishment. Your gift to me, Mother.”
“Beware, daughter, lest your humility makes you invisible, forgotten, and despised. Of no use to anyone. Dispensable. You do know what happens to dispensable royalty?”
I chose not to address her last charge; it was too frightening. “And your arrogance makes you offensive, Mother.”
“At least I shall not be a forgotten queen, for I was never helpless like you.”
“Indeed, you are too reviled to ever be forgotten, Mother. I have no intent to walk in your shoes. I have chosen my path and ’tis the opposite of yours. I choose to be humble.”
“Humble you certainly are. As vulnerable and humble as a peasant.”
“I may be vulnerable, but I have acquired a wisdom you never had. Greed is the root of all evil, and your greed has been our destruction, Mother.”
“How can you be so insipid? Such a mouse? So without ambition.”
At the word ambition, such rage seized me that I trembled, for it was my mother’s ambition that I blamed for my predicament. “I need none! You have enough for us all,” I screamed. “Now leave me.”
She swept out of the room, her yards of silk rustling angrily. I sighed with the agony of my despair. I wanted her love, her respect, her advice, but never would I have it.
The next day tidings reached me that the Bishop of Worcester had concluded his sermon on Trinity Sunday by reading the pope’s bull of confirmation concerning my marriage to Henry. He sent me a copy and I received his messenger in the Painted Chamber. As always, Margaret Beaufort stood at my right-hand side.
“In appreciation of the long and grievous division between the Duchy of York and the Duchy of Lancaster,” his messenger read, “and with the consent of our College of Cardinals, we approve the marriage made between King HenryVII of the House of Lancaster and the noble Princess Elizabeth of the House of York to beget a race of kings—”
My purpose from birth has been to supply an alliance through marriage with the highest bidder, I thought; my function to provide an heir, and to give him brothers and sisters to be sold for more marriage alliances . . .
“Furthermore the Pope confirms that, if it pleases God that the said Elizabeth should decease without issue, then the issue of her who afterwards shall join King Henry shall inherit the crown of the realm of England.”
The babe in my belly kicked. And if I fail in this, if I die trying, then someone else shall take my place, and it shall be as if I never was.
A sick bitterness flooded me. I thanked the bishop’s man as graciously as I could, with a smile that hid what lay in my heart. As soon as he was gone, I turned and retched in a gilded bowl.
CHAPTER 13
A Rose Both Red and White, 1486
BUT INTO ALL GRIEF FLUTTERS THE BREEZE OF HOPE.
As the months passed, my belly grew large. I caressed it day and night, wondering if my babe would be a boy. A son; a king, to rule over England with wisdom and justice, as Richard had done. Such a one could only have the name Arthur. Determined to end oppression, Richard, like legendary Arthur, had ordained that justice be blind and his laws dispensed without regard to a man’s rank. Henry had set aside Richard’s laws, but his son—my Arthur—would return Richard’s dream to English hearts.
I fingered Richard’s book, the Boethius. God had released him from this brutal world and reunited him with all whom he had loved here on earth: Anne, Ned, the Nevilles, his daughter Cat. I tried to imagine them in Heaven, golden clouds of joy encircling them as they laughed together, while angels sang choruses of joy.
If we have a son, I shall get Henry to name him Arthur, I thought. He was away in Bristol, but was returning shortly to Sheen, and wrote us that we should meet him there.
“ ’Tis time for celebration,” he announced on his arrival. “Rebellion has been thwarted, and the people of Hereford, Gloucester, and Bristol cheered my path. But the poverty of Bristol troubles me. I have promised to ease their pain by reactivating their shipyards.”
My heart warmed at his words, for it meant he cared for the people. I’d not had evidence of that till now, and I grew hopeful for the future.
Henry’s gaze touched on my stomach. “Perhaps a son in the fall, eh, Elizabeth?”
I inclined my head, and gave him a smile.
AS THE BABE DEVELOPED, MARGARET BEAUFORT GREW more insufferable. I endured her presence by praying for the day when she would leave to visit her own estates and her husband, Thomas Stanley. But she never did. She remained at my elbow, shadowing my steps. From my embroidery frame, I stole glances at my mother-in-law, dictating her rules for the making of the king’s bed. The scrivener read them back for her final approval.
“The Making of the King’s Bed. Rule Number One. Testing the Mattress.”
He looked at Margaret Beaufort, who nodded.
“In the making of the king’s bed, the first rule is to test the mattress. This shall be done thus. One yeoman shall leap upon the bed and roll himself around on the mattress to test for lumps and soft spots. Upon finding such, a new mattress is to be brought in and tested in the same manner. Then the mattress taken from the king’s bed shall be sent for immediate repair and kept in abeyance until needed.”
He looked at her again; she nodded once more.
“Rule Number Two concerning the King’s Royal Pillows,” he read. “The yeomen are commanded to take the king’s pillows and beat them with their hands. When they have been beaten for no more than ten minutes, and no less than—”
I closed my eyes; I wanted to scream. She hounded everybody with her rules, dominated the entire court with her petty “ordinances.” From peeling potatoes to fluffing pillows, she had rules. Rules about how to mourn; when to retire to the bedchamber; when to take a drink or go to the privy.
“The pillows should be cast up to the squires of the body,” came the scrivener’s voice, “who shall place them on the king’s bed in the manner he is known to prefer. The queen’s bed is to be made only with gentlewomen, in the manner directed for the king’s bed. Rule Number One—”
I could understand Henry’s devotion to his mother, for he owed her his crown, but the woman was a scourge on everyone, with the possible exception of the scholars and universities she patronized. Power had gone to her head. Not only had she put aside the black she used to wear and the Psalter she used to carry, but now she dressed herself in copies of my gowns and wielded my scepter as if I didn’t exist.
I noticed that Margaret Beaufort had moved on to dictating rules about the nursery.
“The royal infant shall have a wooden cradle set in a fair frame decorated with red, purple, and gold paint,” she said. “For state use there shall be a great cradle, covered with crimson cloth of gold and garnished with fringes of silk and gold and trimmed with ermine. There shall be layers of velvet upon velvet.” She turned to a page standing against the wall. “Fetch the chamberlain,” she said.
The man arrived minutes later, breathless from running. He bowed deeply.
“I am preparing my ordinances for the rule of the nursery, which are to be read to the staff four times a year,” Margaret Beaufort said, “and I w
ish to go over them with you personally.”
“Aye, my lady Margaret.”
“The nursery attendants are to be chosen with the greatest care. They are to be sworn in by you. They must be supervised in the strictest manner. At every meal a physician must direct the nurse to make sure she feeds the royal child correctly.”
My mother’s angry voice made me turn to the door.
“I have just been informed that you are planning to be godmother!” she exclaimed, addressing Margaret Beaufort without ceremony. “That position is mine, not yours!”
But Margaret Beaufort did not give in.
“You are good at usurping the positions of others, aren’t you? Do you know what they call you out there?” Mother pointed to the window. “England’s ‘Usurper Queen’—that’s what they call you! Then they laugh into their beer.”
For once, I sided with my mother. They went on to argue about everything, and agreed on nothing: not the furnishings of my chamber, nor my lying-in arrangements, nor the program for the christening, nor the feeding and nursing of my child, and certainly not the design of my baby’s cradle.
“And why purple, red, and gold for the cradle?” my mother demanded.
“They are my favorite colors,” replied Margaret Beaufort.
“What about my favorite colors? What about Elizabeth’s favorite colors?”
“I know what’s best.”
“Has it ever occurred to you that your taste is not perfect, that you make mistakes?”
“I never make mistakes. I take my direction from God, and He is never wrong.”
“Aye, indeed, I forgot. God told you to choose handsome Tudor over boring Suffolk as your husband. How convenient.”
“That was not God. That was Saint Nicholas.”
“Very clever. I should have thought of that myself. Instead of taking old Mayor Cooke to trial three times before getting the verdict I wanted, I should have declared that Saint Nicholas appeared to me in a dream and told me to have Cooke locked up. That would have saved us all much trouble.”
The King's Daughter (Rose of York) Page 19
