Henry had to explain himself to the French, who accused him of breaking their treaty, and to the English, who screamed for war against France now that English blood had been spilt. One evening, deeply troubled by his predicament, he came to my chamber without his mother.
“Sing to me, Elizabeth,” he said, drooping in a chair, a hand to his brow, his limp fair hair hiding his face.
I chose the lyre over the lute, arranged the folds of my black gown over my knees, and launched into a rippling melody. The sun was setting over the Thames, drenching the blue water in golden color, and a flock of blackbirds squawked from a nearby chestnut tree, providing a rich chorus for my song.
“You have a lovely voice,” Henry said, lifting sad eyes to me when the last chords had echoed away.
“What ails you, my lord?” I asked, dropping my hands, though I knew well his troubles.
He let out an audible sigh. “As you know, the boy king Charles VIII of France and the twelve-year-old Duchess Anne of Brittany have declared hostilities, and Brittany is on the brink of destruction. I am loath to see the once mighty duchy absorbed by France, and am torn between my conflicting loyalties to both Brittany and France. Meanwhile, Isabella and Ferdinand of Spain are urging me to attack France.”
“What will you do?”
“I shall take the funds Parliament gives me for war and try to maintain peace,” he replied. “I believe your father did that once.”
I reached out and laid a hand on his sleeve. “Pray, my lord, be gentle with the people. They suffer much, and many go hungry to pay their taxes. It may also—God forfend—bring revolt.”
“Nay. I have shown them what happens to rebels.”
“My lord, the English are unlike the docile French. We are a spirited people of an independent nature.”
Henry rose to his feet. “ ’Tis a favor I do you to tell you of my affairs! I am not ruled by women as your father was, madame!” He strode angrily from the room.
He forgets he is ruled by his mother, I thought. But perhaps he is right. Margaret Beaufort is no woman.
With a chuckle, I took up my lyre again.
Henry convened Parliament and demanded an exorbitant sum in taxes; Parliament, cowed by fear, granted the funds. I sighed to myself. What could I do but pray? Pray for Henry’s soul—for well he needed my prayers—and pray for the poor people who had to make the payments. And pray for myself, not to hate my husband.
“I fear there shall be trouble,” I whispered to my thirteen-year-old sister, Anne, who was old enough now to understand such things. “The commons prize their rights, and will not give in easily to such heavy taxation.”
I was not long in being proven right. The people of Durham and Yorkshire refused to pay the tax collectors. Henry Percy, Earl of Northumberland, the great traitor of Bosworth, went out to enforce the levies. Led by a commoner, John a Chamber, the mob pulled him down from his horse and slew him while his retainers watched.
Welladay, what surprise in this? I thought. Percy was a hated man. The people of the north had loved Richard and had never forgiven Percy his heinous betrayal of their beloved king.
“Even here, confined in my chamber, I knew it would happen,” I told Anne, “for I understand my people as Henry cannot. French and Welsh blood course in his veins more closely than English, nor does he know England because he spent much of his life in France.”
“He sent Thomas Howard to help his father, the Earl of Surrey, put down the rebellion in the north,”Anne replied, dropping her head.
Cupping her chin, I searched her upturned face. “Do I detect worry in your tone? You blush!” I broke into a smile as realization dawned. “My fair sister, you care for Tom Howard.”
“Tom cares for me, too,” she replied, darkening to deeper rose.
“Do you wish to wed him, dear sister?”
“More than anything in the world, Elizabeth.”
“Then we shall have to see what we can do about that,” I said, smiling. “But on one condition.”
“What is that?” my sister asked.
“That you not wed for many years yet.” She was too young for the duties of a wife, no matter how much she thought she desired them.
Tom Howard returned safely from York with his father, the Earl of Surrey. Following Henry’s orders, they hanged the leader of the rebellion, John a Chamber, on a high gibbet with his accomplices symmetrically placed on gallows below him.
“Surrey is a good man,” Henry told me one evening in my chamber.
“He has proven himself,” I said. “And should be rewarded.”
This was met with silence. A wry smile twisted my lips. “But not with money and lands,” I added.
“Then how?”
“My sister’s hand in marriage to his son, Tom. The boy loves Anne. She has nothing to bring him, but he’d take her anyway, and Surrey would see it as a great royal benefice.”
My plot worked. Henry agreed to the Anne’s betrothal to Surrey’s son.
“I’ll miss you when you do marry and leave court, dear Anne,” I sighed as we sat together in my chamber, embroidering.
She covered my hand with her own. “I promise to come and visit often.”
I threw a glance at my ladies in the antechamber, laughing and chattering with Patch in an abnormally unrestrained fashion. “There is much to celebrate now that Margaret Beaufort is gone to visit her estates in Woking,” I smiled.
Anne grinned broadly.
I wove my needle through a complicated stitch, as my thoughts returned to Anne’s future family. “Tom Howard’s father seems devoted to Henry,” I said.
“Nay, he cares little for him,” she whispered under her breath. “But he is loyal to the death because he blames King Richard for his father’s death, and for the years of imprisonment he himself endured at the Tower.”
I jerked my head up. “How is that?” I exclaimed. Surrey’s father, John Howard, Duke of Norfolk, had died at Richard’s side at Bosworth, the only one of Richard’s nobles who didn’t turn traitor.
“Tom says King Richard delivered his people into Henry’s hands when he led that suicide charge behind enemy lines. He cast away his life, his crown, and the lives of everyone who put their faith in him. For that, his father will never forgive King Richard. Tom said that when his father was freed from the Tower, he vowed to accept whoever sat the throne, even if it was a bramble bush.”
A vision of Richard rose before me, cutting his way to Henry, killing Henry’s bodyguards, raising his sword arm to slay the cowering Tudor. But for William Stanley’s traitorous redcoats, Richard would have had him.
I blinked to banish the image. It is as it is.
But there was some truth in what Surrey said. At the end, Richard had been a man crazed by grief; he had not wished to live. He’d only wished—like King Arthur—to get at his Mordred, the one he held responsible for the destruction of all whom he had loved.
I was swept with sadness. I knew Thomas Howard, Earl of Surrey, to be a good man, and I regretted that he felt so bitterly about Richard.
Patch was watching us from across the room. His eyes had taken on that sad expression I often caught when his gaze rested on me. I reached out a hand to him and he left his group of ladies, crossed the antechamber, and came to me.
“Make me laugh, Patch,” I said on a sigh.
CHAPTER 18
The Ostrich Feather, 1489
THE OLD YEAR OF 1488 GAVE WAY TO 1489. WINTER struck hard the year I turned twenty-three. And then came spring, and with it the knowledge that I was expecting a child in November. Margaret Beaufort curtailed my hours for receiving petitioners, but I did not mind, for I found myself more tired than ever, and I wondered at the cause of my listlessness in the brightness of May Day. Instead of lifting my spirits, the revels oppressed them further. Maybe it was due to my condition, or maybe to the fact that my time with Arthur was drawing to a close with the passing of his childhood. He would turn three years old in September.
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��Arthur is ready to be created Prince of Wales and leave for his own household in Wales,” Henry told me one day in August. “He is an exceedingly bright child, far older than his years, and shall progress well under the tutelage of my lady mother’s appointees from Oxford and Cambridge universities, I warrant.”
“May I not have a little more time with him, my lord?”
Henry regarded me with soft eyes. “Best to let go now, Elizabeth. It will only get harder to give him up the longer he is with you.” He inclined his head, and departed my chamber.
The month of September arrived too soon. We celebrated Arthur’s birthday that fall with a feast that featured a masterpiece of the confectioner’s art after each course. There was a red knight with his sword fashioned from red sugar and licorice; a fierce golden dragon sculpted from marchpane; and the most exquisite wall of edible stained glass ornamented with Arthur’s blazon of three ostrich feathers that was the insignia of the Prince of Wales. But my stomach churned with dread with each bright smile I threw Arthur. How would I manage without him to lighten my days?
Quitting my chamber, I took the tower stairs to where he played in the garden.
“See what I have—a bird!” Arthur exclaimed jubilantly. He jerked the string tied to the creature’s feet, and pulled it along.
I knelt before him and forced a smile to my lips. “I do see that, my sweetheart. Come, let us sit here on the ground together.” He took a cross-legged position, and I lowered myself onto the dry grass. Placing my arm around his tiny shoulders, I drew him close and kissed his curls. “ ’Tis a pretty blue thrush you have there, dear heart.”
“I caught him all by myself!” he exclaimed. “He was in the bushes—” He turned and pointed to a clump behind the bed of roses. “I saw him moving. I knelt down like this—” He crouched on all fours. “And Master Bowman gave him to me.”
I gave the archer an unsmiling look. The man colored.
“He’s a nice bird, Arthur, my love.” I stroked the little thrush whose heart pounded fiercely. “Do you know why he is so frightened, my sweet?”
Arthur shook his head.
“ ’Tis because he fears he will never be free again. Free to fly where he wills, free to feel the wind on his feathers. He fears captivity.”
“Is captivity bad?”
“Let me see ... Would you like to be told that you could never again see your friends? Or play ball? Or shoot your arrows? Or run wild across the grass with your arms out pretending to be a bird like him?”
He shook his head vehemently.
“Would you like me to place you in a dark room where you would never again feel the sun on your skin? A room so small where you could barely walk a few steps?”
“No!”
I stroked the little bird, gripped by an inexplicable sadness. “Now that he is captured, he fears all these things. Freedom is his breath of life, my sweet.” A tear threatened. I rose to my feet before Arthur could notice. “You may keep him captive, if you so choose, for you are a prince, and yours is to command. But I hope that you will give thought to this little creature that God made to be free, and show him mercy.”
With a nod to the archer, I left my son holding the bird tightly in his lap. When I reached the tower entry, I looked back. Arthur was untying the string. He held the thrush in his hands a long moment, and then tossed it high into the air. The little creature flapped its way skyward. And I smiled.
ARTHUR LEFT FOR WALES AND I WENT TO WESTMINSTER Palace for my confinement. At the threshold of the chamber Margaret Beaufort had prepared for my lying-in, my steps faltered. A dense gloom hung over the room. A fire burned in the hearth and candles flickered all around, but the windows had been shrouded by thick tapestries to blot out light, fresh air, and noise, according to Margaret Beaufort’s ordinances, for she had decided these were detrimental to the health of a newborn. It feels like a tomb, I thought.
I inhaled a sharp breath and stepped inside. Here I would be confined for the next four weeks, like a queen bee breeding in her hive, sealed away by wax from all intruders. There was naught to do but pray, and read, and sew. And wait. The last time I was buried like this, I thought, at least I had my mother. Overcome with yearning for her, I sought comfort at my prie-dieu.
God must have heard my prayers, for within twenty-four hours of my confinement, Margaret Beaufort entered with an announcement.
“Your mother is being brought to court to receive her kinsman, Francois de Luxembourg, who heads the French embassy from Charles VIII.”
“My mother?” I breathed, my eyes widening. “Here?”
“Fret not. She will not stay long,” Margaret Beaufort said spitefully.
I trembled with expectation as my ladies dressed me in one of my black gowns with wide, hanging sleeves, and covered my hair with a jeweled gable headdress and veil. My breath caught in my throat at the sight of my mother, whom I had not seen but once since the rebellion in 1487. She looked gaunt and frail, and now walked with the aid of a cane.
“Mother,” I whispered hoarsely, embracing her.
“Daughter . . . queen,” she murmured. “I greet thee well.” My heart pounded; I looked down in an effort to recover my composure. I barely noticed Francois of Luxembourg doffing his hat or heard what he said, for it was all trivial against the weight in my heart.
I’d hoped to have a few private words with my mother, but the Beaufort woman never left my side during the entire audience. Too soon, I had to bid Mother farewell. I embraced her for a long moment, and when I released her, I found tears glistening on her lashes. I watched her leave my presence, walking slowly with the aid of her plain wooden stick, and knew with a finality I could not bear that I had looked my last upon her. Now she would be returned to her abbey and locked away, and I would remain here, locked away.
Swept with sorrow and emptiness, I lay in bed that night, listening to the monks’ chant and the church bells that tolled the hours. If we could undo a single error of our past, what would it be? I asked myself. The answer flew into my mind. If Mother had not gone into sanctuary, if she had made her peace with Richard as Papa had wished, all would be different now. Nor was I blameless. If I had fled Sheriff Hutton, all would be different now. But the past could not be changed, and a sea of tears would not wash out a word of what Fortune had written. Looking back did no good; we had to keep going forward.
A few days before the twenty-sixth of November, 1489, Arthur was brought from Ludlow to Sheen to be created a Knight of the Bath, and also Prince of Wales. In their own barges, Henry and Arthur crossed the Thames to an elaborate reception in London.
“He waited on his father through all the public dinners and ceremonies, holding his towel, offering him dishes,” Margaret Beaufort reported to me. “He did very well.”
How weary my little one seemed as he stood beside his father in the doorway, stiffly formal in his heavy robes, an ostrich plume in his cap. He was too well raised to shift his feet or duck behind his father, and merely stood there, awaiting my invitation to enter. Unable to stem my euphoria at the sight of him, I sat up in bed and opened my mouth to speak welcome, but my joy was so great, I could not find voice, and so I put out my hands instead.
Arthur ran to me and jumped up on the bed, crying, “Mama, Mama!” I enfolded him in my arms, choking with sobs as I covered his sweet face with kisses. Aye, there was loss in the past; but there was such hope in the future!
“Mama, I am going to become a knight!” he exclaimed when we finally parted to look at one another.
“My sweet, I know you will make a fine knight. A knight with a heart that is pure and true—” A spasm in my belly made me cry out.
Arthur scrambled off me. “Mama, pray forgive me! I didn’t mean to hurt you.”
I forced a smile through the pain that seized me.
My labor began that night, and in the morning, I gave birth to a daughter. I gazed at the child through a blurred fog, dimly aware that Margaret Beaufort spoke. “ ’Tis a girl. She shall be my
namesake, and I will stand as her godmother.”
I remembered the nasty fight she had put up over Arthur. Now my mother languished in an abbey and was not permitted even to attend her grandchild’s christening.
I laid my head back on the pillow. Suddenly exhausted, I closed my lids and knew no more. When I opened them again, it was dark, and by the flare of candlelight, I saw Henry sitting at my bedside.
“Arthur—?” I asked anxiously, raising myself up on an elbow. He was only three years old! The long day would have taken a toll on him.
“He is doing splendidly,” Henry replied. “The two ceremonies have been tiring, but he held up well. I invested him as Prince of Wales, and the feasting and celebration began. When I left, he was sitting at the center of the table, raised high on a chair that brought him to table height. I checked on him from behind the curtain, and he was presiding over the hall like a little king.”
My King Arthur, I thought, smiling.
A noise drew my attention to the door. It was Margaret Beaufort. At her side walked the nurse with the new babe in her arms. “All is well,” she said. “My godchild is now christened Margaret.”
I shut my eyes.
CHURCH BELLS CHIMED FOR VESPERS. I STRUGGLED up in bed. I felt better, though still weak. “How long have I been asleep?” I asked.
“All night, and through most of the day, my lady,” Lucy Neville replied.
“Can you send for Arthur? I wish to see my son.”
Lucy retired with a curtsy. Servants came in and out, straightening the room, bringing a basin of water, a tray of sweetmeats. And then a babe’s cry came from the alcove. My daughter!
“Tell Nurse to bring my babe to me,” I said.
The woman entered with my child in her arms. I gazed at the small bundle, but I didn’t have the strength to hold her yet. “Lay her in the cradle, and bring it close so I can see her,” I said, surprised I felt no emotion.
The King's Daughter (Rose of York) Page 25
