He tried to speak, but there was only silence.
“What is it?” I repeated, moving forward.
“Arthur—” he broke off. “Arthur is dead.”
“Dead?” I stared at him. “I don’t understand.”
“Our son is dead,” Henry wailed.
“ ’Tis not true. Arthur is well. I had a letter from him only last week.”
He shook his head, and lowered himself into a chair. His shoulders heaving, he covered his face with a handkerchief, and sobbed. I listened to his weeping; I watched him wipe at his tears; and still I did not believe. It was as if I stood outside myself looking down at some macabre pageant.
“ ’Tis not possible. There must be some mistake,” I said.
Henry removed his handkerchief and looked at me with tear-stained, red-rimmed eyes. “No mistake,” he mumbled. “His chamberlain came from Wales—arrived in the night—told my confessor—he brought me the news so early, I had not risen yet.” He burst into another fit of sobbing.
My legs went numb. I rested my weight on the table and sank into a chair.
“He died suddenly on the second of April,” said Henry. He threw his head back and a terrible moaning issued forth from his lips. It was the most wretched sound I had ever heard, and it unleashed in me a flood of pity for this man I had struggled all my life not to hate. He rose, looked at the window, stretched his arms to Heaven, and cried,“Why? Why—”
To my horror, his legs gave way beneath him and he fell to the floor with a dull thud. I ran to him, knelt down, gathered him into my arms. I rocked him back and forth, as I had done with Arthur when he was a child and had bruised himself.
“Hush, Henry, hush . . . If we receive good things at the hand of God, why should we not endure bad things?” I whispered. “You still have Harry. Your lady mother never had but one son, and that was you, and God in His grace ever preserved you, and has left you a fair prince in Harry . . .”
I spoke the words, but I didn’t believe them. I knew that Henry believed, but it was only a bad dream, and someone would come and wake us up, or maybe it was a jest. A cruel jest. Richard’s queen had let out the wail of a madwoman when she’d learned of Ned’s death, and my mother had swooned into oblivion. I felt nothing. Therefore, it could not be true.
Henry calmed in my arms; his sobs eased. He pressed my hand in his own, and nodded. The gratitude on his face broke my heart. “We are still young, Henry,” I said. “We can have more children.”
I helped him to his feet and embraced him, but it seemed to me that I held space in my arms. A vast empty space. He leaned on me, and I took him to his bed and laid him down. I watched him for a while, and when I heard his even breathing, I knew he rested. I pushed to my feet and made my way to my chamber. We had not slept together since the executions, and I knew not why I had invited him back to my bed, except that his sorrow had touched my heart.
As I walked, servants and courtiers bowed and retreated.
’Tis no jest. Arthur is gone. I see it in their eyes.
I turned into the hallway where I had walked so short a time ago holding Arthur’s arm, gazing up at his handsome face. I closed my lids and dragged myself forward, one leaden step after another. I entered my antechamber and my ladies rose and murmured at me, but I heard not what they said, nor would I have answered if I had. Kate came to me; I felt her arms around me. I shook my head. I wanted to be alone. Papa had died in April. Richard’s son, Ned, had died in April. Why did everybody die in April?
Could Arthur really be gone? Why had God demanded such brutal tribute? When Ned had died so suddenly at ten years of age, the people had called it divine retribution for the death of my brother Edward.
Was this divine retribution?
Henry’s words echoed in my ears. “ ’Tis either Edward or Arthur. One must die so the other can live.” Now both were dead.
I gave a cry and grasped the bedpost.
Catherine of Aragon arrived in England on Richard’s birthday!
Richard had loved his nephew Edward almost as much as his own Ned, and Edward had been executed on a false charge of treason to make way for Arthur’s marriage to Catherine. And Catherine had arrived on the second of October—Richard’s birthday. Now I remembered my frightening dream of Richard just before Edward’s execution. An omen? A warning? A threat? I had not known at the time.
I couldn’t stop Henry! I cried. I closed my eyes, tried to steady my dizzy head. You know I couldn’t! I had to accept everything. What choice did I have? I thought it was God’s will. I tried to do my best. I tried to atone for the crimes Henry committed for his throne—
The throne of your son Arthur, came a cruel inner voice.
“Arthur—” I cried aloud on one long sobbing wail, my heart tearing with agony and anguish. I couldn’t breathe. My legs gave way beneath me. I let out a scream and fell to the floor in a heap. The door burst open. My ladies were all around me. I made out Catherine Gordon’s face, tears in her eyes, standing aloof, behind them all. Had her husband truly been Dickon?
“Oh God—God—” I sobbed, my body heaving as if each breath I took was a blow. A priest arrived, tried to comfort me, but there were no words to banish the grief, to soothe the pain, to ease the sorrow.
I had failed to win Humphrey Stafford his life; to obtain Edward, Earl of Warwick, his pardon; to see my mother released from confinement. I had failed to help Warbeck, who might have been Dickon. But in all this I had been sustained by the knowledge that I was raising a noble king for England, one who would love his people as my father and Richard had loved them. But all my efforts were for naught, my dreams undone. I had failed at everything I had undertaken. My mother was right about me; I was useless. My aunt was right to hate me. All I had accomplished with my life was to secure the tyranny of a bastard over my father’s good people. I thought I was doing my best; bearing all for England’s sake; giving her a worthy king. And God took Arthur from me. This was God’s judgment.
“Why?” I cried at the sky. “Why?”
I felt Henry’s arms around me then, and I turned my gaze on him. Why was he here? Had he not done enough?
“Go!” I heard him say. “Go!” I cried.
There was a swish of skirts and the patter of running feet; the slam of a door, then silence. He lifted me into his arms and held me. “Hush, Elizabeth, hush . . . If we receive good things at the hand of God, why should we not endure bad things?” he said, repeating to me the words I had spoken to him. “My dear wife, we have endured much, and somehow we will survive this day. We are still young. We can have more children—” Then he dissolved into shattering sobs, and he clutched me, and I clutched back, and the blackness of my nightmares overtook me.
I LAY BENEATH HEAVY COVERS OF DOWN AS VOICES came and went, riding on the shadows. My father was talking, and little Edward of Warwick was running, laughing after his hound. I heard my terrier bark with joy. Johnnie of Gloucester said something, but I couldn’t make out what it was. Oh, he wished a dance. He was such a handsome boy, of course I would dance with him . . . And there was Mother, huddled in a corner of the sanctuary, cheek to cheek with little Dickon, speaking of secrets. Dickon vanished, but Grandmother Jacquetta appeared. She was with Friar Bungey. They turned away from me now and were whispering. Never mind, Papa had come to join me, and he gazed at me the way he always had, with adoration in his eyes. My golden, magnificent, handsome father. “Papa,” I murmured, smiling; “Papa, I love you.” He took my hand and kissed it. “You shall be queen,” he replied. He vanished, and Richard stood in his place. He inclined his head, and held out his hand to me. Arthur joined us, and arm in arm we three strolled through the crowded hall. Everyone surrounded us with smiles; it was good to hear them talk of love and reunion. Drifting in and out, the voices came and went; darkness lifted, light broke. I opened my eyes.
A new dawn had risen.
CHAPTER 29
Elizabeth the Beloved, 1502
AFTER ARTHUR’S DEATH, REMEMBERING MY SISTER Mary, I
waited for a sign from him. But there was nothing. No streak of blue light; only silence, and utter darkness. Queen Anne’s words echoed in my mind:“Love is all there is, dear child. Ned has my love, and I keep his—here—”
Seated before my mirror, I laid my hand on my bosom, as she had done on hers, but there was naught there but a vast emptiness. I have disappeared. I am a stranger; I walk, and eat, and am invisible. A vision of Anne rose up before me. Each time someone dies, he takes a piece of you with him, she had said. Until there is nothing left, I added, laying down my mirror.
I dropped my head into my hands.
All the court waited to see if Catherine was with child. As they had once waited for me to show with Richard’s child. But she was not. Kate sat with me in these days in quiet companionship. Once she asked how I felt.
“I know not how to answer that, Kate. Queen Anne said the ones we love are never gone, for we keep their love in our hearts, and they take ours with them to Heaven. But I cannot feel my heart anymore, Kate.”
I continued with life as I always had: receiving petitioners, presiding over state banquets, darning and mending my gowns, and offering my prayers to Heaven. Yet nothing touched me. I was weary of life, weary of pretense, weary of yearning for what was lost.
Blessed Virgin, send me rest . . .
I did not attend Arthur’s funeral, but I knew that his black-velvet-draped coffin was carried on a hearse drawn by six ebony horses to Worcester, where he was interred. They told me that all the torches of the city were lit in mournful greeting, and that the streets filled with tearful folk come to bid him silent farewell. After the prayers, the readings, and the sermons, the black horse that Arthur had loved so well was led into the chapel, and there was no man present who did not weep.
So I was told.
Henry gave me a month to mourn and came to my bed every night afterward, and every night he slept fitfully, disturbed by evil dreams. One time he bolted upright in bed in terror.
“I keep seeing their faces,” he said.
I did not ask whose faces; there were so many now.
In June, I learned I was with child. Henry was elated. In that same month, Kate and I became sisters in grief, for her five-year-old son, Edward, died of a sudden illness.
“If my babe is a girl, I shall name her Katherine,” I told Kate.
She attempted a smile and passed me a paper with a white satin ribbon attached. “Elizabeth, I found this tied to the rose bush by the bench where you sit.”
I opened it, and bent my head to read:
In a glorious garden green
I saw a comely queen
among the flowers, once fair and fresh.
She plucked a stem and held it in her hands.
I thought I saw a lily-white rose,
I thought it was a lily-white rose.
And evermore she sang,
“This day dawns,
This gentle day dawns,
Another day dawns,
and when shall I go home to rest?”
I felt as if the rhyme maker had caught my soul. I reached out a hand to Kate, and she bent down and laid a kiss on my brow.
AFTER ARTHUR’S DEATH, HENRY PLACED HARRY under guard. His movements were restricted, and he was as closely watched as I had been for the early years of my marriage. He was kept at his studies for long hours at a time, allowed to break only for prayer and the privy, and his every move was reported to Henry, who lectured him on what he had done that must not be repeated. Harry tried to escape his guards once by climbing over the garden wall. For an entire afternoon, no one could find him. Later, he was discovered hiding high up in a tree. Henry came himself to supervise Harry’s retrieval. For Henry’s dynasty hung by a thread now, as Richard’s had once done.
“You have committed a serious offense that merits severe punishment,” Henry told him.
“I’m not afraid of you!” Harry retorted.
A muscle quivered at Henry’s jaw. “Bray—”
“Aye, sire?”
“Take Prince Harry to the Tower.” Henry did not take his gaze from Harry’s face. “Make sure he is shown the teeth-ripping claws, the bone-smashing wheel, and the cat paws that shred the skin, as well as the screws and presses. And the Iron Maiden that eviscerates a man alive.” Harry listened, a look of excitement on his face.
After a pause, Henry said,“Then he is to be locked into an oubliette and denied food or water. He is not to return until he vows obedience.”
Harry’s expression changed to one of terror. “Father!” he cried as he was taken away.
Harry came back the next morning before luncheon, thoroughly cowed. I gazed at the garden bench. He sat languishing with a book open on his lap where once he had shot his arrows and engaged in wild revelry.
“Is there no other way, Henry?” I asked.
Henry joined me at the window. “We have already lost one son. We cannot lose Harry.”
“Arthur was trained in kingship. But Harry has not learned to be a king. It does not bode well for the kingdom.”
“Nevertheless, he must be carefully guarded. He is wild and might endanger himself otherwise.” Henry paused. “Besides, away from us, our enemies could get to Henry as my—” he broke off abruptly, and reddened.
As my mother got to Richard’s son.
Now I was certain, all doubt removed. I closed my eyes and saw Richard in the dream riding toward me. This is Heaven’s punishment on us. An eye for an eye.
A son for a son.
THE GOLDEN DAYS THAT HAD ONCE BRIMMED WITH joy and passed too swiftly now stretched out before me like an endless gray sea, bleak and empty. One afternoon, craving solitude, I left my ladies and went down to the walled garden below my chamber. The skies were dismal and it was drizzling, but I did not care. I sat down on the bench and drew my fur-lined cloak around me tightly. I had prayed for most of the night and read from Richard and Anne’s Book of Ghostly Grace, and also Boethius. And I had taken out Richard’s portrait from the coffer to gaze on his face. Now I needed to be alone with my thoughts, and with nature, for it was in nature that God’s hand was most clearly seen.
Birds watched me from the barren trees as I withdrew a piece of bread from my cloak and scattered the crumbs out on the path. A sparrow found the courage to appear. Nervously, he drew near and took a peck, then another, one eye fixed on me. I made no movement, yet he flew away, leaving most of the bread untouched.
If only I had fled, I thought; he could not have caught me; he could not have secured his hold on the throne.
But then there would have been no Arthur. Would I have wished my eldest son never to have been born?
I could not wish that. Queen Anne’s words came to me out of the past. You have to find a way to live. You have to decide what you will stand for, fight for, die for.
Arthur had been my way.
I banished my sorrowful thought and became aware of the murmur of voices on the wind. I turned and looked up at the palace. The tall windows of the solar stood open. I rose from the bench and drew near. I heard them clearly now.
“To survive in this world of enemies, you must see everyone as a rival,” Henry was saying.
“Why not just kill them all, Father? Then you don’t have to be concerned about any of them.”
“No, Harry, the nobility has its uses.”
“What use are they if they’re always trying to steal your throne?”
“A wise king uses the nobility to raise himself high in the eyes of the people. The commons revere them for their ancient lineage. When they see them serve us at our banquets, and walk in our processions, and lead our armies, they esteem us even more. But you must keep your eye on the nobles, especially those of royal blood. Thin their ranks once in a while, for they will band together against you, if you give them a chance, Harry.”
I groaned inwardly. Henry was growing ever more suspicious of those of my blood. My cousin William de la Pole, who had not fled England with his brothers, was in the Tower. Now
Kate’s husband, William Courtenay, who had discharged himself so valiantly in the tournament following Arthur’s marriage, and who was innocent of any crime, had been sent to join him. Where would it end?
I dared not consider that. I did not have the strength any longer.
I STOOD AT THE WINDOW AND GAZED DOWN AT HARRY, who sat on a bench, moping, as he often did these days.
“He’s been utterly miserable since Henry brought him here,” I said to Kate, who stood nearby. “He’s lost his freedom, and he’s too young to understand why.” I was unable to suppress the sadness that I felt for my boy, for well I understood what confinement meant. He was a prize in a jeweled cage, as I had been for many years.
Kate said nothing. She merely moved toward me at the window, and together we watched him. We had shared the loss of our sons within a few months of one another, and now there was William. I pressed her hand.
“Sweet sister, you cannot know how much it pains me that I am of so little help to you . . .” My voice trailed off. Henry’s troubled mind, once it had seized on treachery, would not be soothed into submission, and I’d been unable to avert this cruelty. For him, life was a war he had to fight daily to keep what had come to him on a turn of Fortune’s wheel. “ ’Tis scant comfort, I know, but one day Harry will be king and we have spoken of William. He has promised me—”A glance at Kate told me she understood. As soon as Harry was king, he would release William.
Kate wiped a tear from the corner of her eye “ ’Tis not your fault, Elizabeth. Though it breaks my heart to have William gone from my side, I am grateful for the five happy years we had. If it weren’t for you, I would have been wed to someone not of my choosing. Anne feels the same way. We have spoken of it often—how much we owe you. Dear sister, you’ve always done so much for us, yet you’ve known little but sorrow yourself.”
“Once, when I was a child in sanctuary,” I said quietly,“and you were but a babe in arms, I was given a slice of cake for my birthday. I divided it into eight pieces, one for each of us. That meant no one received more than a few crumbs. But oh, how sweet those crumbs tasted. I still remember.”
The King's Daughter (Rose of York) Page 40
