by Saga Hillbom
Something Mother does allow me to do is venture outside the college hall to pray for our safety in the age-old Chapel of the Pyx. At least that is my alibi—it makes me wonder how well she really knows me when she does not question it. However, the abbot must accompany me there and back again, in the event that all the soldiers have not yet dispersed, or that the guards now permanently placed around Westminster Abbey grow rash and unruly.
The chapel is situated in the eastern corner of the abbey, across from the cloisters. When the abbot, showing strength I had not expected in such a corpulent little man, opens the robust oak doors, I am enveloped in a gust of pungent air. It is a small room, smaller than the college hall, yet it gives the impression of a vast crypt. Thick columns curve to vaults melting into the low ceiling; dark brown tiles cover the floor; two lone candles animate the plain altar where a silver cross stands erect.
‘Thank you, Father,’ I say in my most reassuring tone. ‘I can manage from here. I would like to pray in solitude.’
The abbot, who, not by any fault of his, knows me even worse than Mother, nods. ‘Naturally, Your Royal Highness. I’ll wait for you in the deanery.’ He backs out of the room with his swan-down hair fluttering in the breeze from the cloisters, leaving the doors half- open. I am glad. I might not share Anne’s fear of darkness and enclosed spaces, but I doubt I could push those doors open on my own.
Naturally, I do not pray. Not properly, at least. I know I should, I really should, for I have been negligent in my piety lately, but the moment is too precious to waste. I remove my slippers, placing them by the foot of by the altar, hitch up my skirts in one hand and send God a cautionary apology for exposing my ankles in this holiest of places.
I have to imagine the jolly tune in my head. The floor tiles are smooth and cool against my bare feet as I trip between the columns and make skipping steps before the cross. In one of my twists and turns, the sable fur lining on my sleeve is a finger’s width away from catching fire from the candles. I squeeze my eyes shut until white spots flicker against the black of my eyelids. Everything is the way it used to be. Father is healthy as a horse. The court is sparkling. No one is feuding. And I’m the golden yolk of it all—
‘By Saint Edward’s toes, what are you doing?’
I falter in my step, stumbling, my head colliding with the wall with a thump. Pain shoots out from my forehead to my temples and neck. My eyes still closed, I reach up to feel for blood, but my fingers find nothing except a sore spot.
Slowly, slowly I squint at the young man by the oak doors. He stands wiggling on his feet, watching me through dark coils of hair.
‘That’s “Your Royal Highness” to you.’ My face is burning, and it is not from the saltarello.
‘Sorry. What are you doing, Lady?’
‘Nothing for you to be concerned with.’
‘But your head—’
‘I said it is nothing.’
Thomas pulls at the hem of his doublet—a plain though well-tailored garment made from dark grey brocade—as if trying to correct some error I cannot see. Silence hangs dense in the air, worse than any ruckus.
‘So,’ I say at last, ‘what was it you wanted?’
‘Your sister sent me to tell you to come.’
‘Which one, Sir?’
‘The old one, with teeth like a hare. Lady Beth is her name, is it not?’
Laughter bubbles up and spills over my lips despite the throbbing ache in my head and the embarrassment still fresh in memory. I have never noticed any hare’s teeth in Elizabeth, on the contrary, but the image is marvellous.
Thomas mirrors my smile. ‘I’m only jesting, but it worked. I have not seen you smile at all since the prince, the little one, left for the Tower.’
The laughter dies down inside me at the thought of Dickie. I must keep in mind we will be reunited within days. ‘Mayhap I have not, but I shall smile a whole lot soon. I know it.’
‘Will you return to court then, Lady? Once the King is crowned? I’ll miss you—and the others. Brings a bit of life to this old place,’ Thomas says, finally standing still.
‘You speak out of place.’ I try my best to arrange my skirts smoothly, then drop to the floor and retrieve my slippers. They are stiff and warm after the stone tiles, like climbing back into a prison cell after a brief excursion outdoors.
‘You often do that yourself, I’ve noticed.’
‘Well, that is… That is different! I am not a servant like you. And I try not to, anyhow.’
Thomas raises one eyebrow, strolling further into the chapel. I count his steps: one, two, three, four, before he halts foolishly close to me.
‘You have not answered my question.’
‘I will be glad to leave this place as soon as Ed is crowned and Lady Mother can take her rightful place in the regency council.’
A shadow crosses his face. ‘What about the allegations, what about the letter? If the Protector was willing to execute Hastings—’
‘No!’ I inch closer so that I can lock his gaze with mine. ‘They must come to terms. My uncle will drop the accusation, and my mother will not attempt to diminish his influence in the north or anywhere else. That way, we can have unity, like Father wanted.’
‘I don’t care much about all that.’ His hair hides his eyes from me once again. ‘But I do know one thing: there isn’t enough power to satisfy every greedy mouth in this land. Some will have to go hungry.’
I shove him aside, gathering my skirts in a knot in my fist to avoid stumbling on the hem as I race down the cloisters and through the Deanery, past the slack-faced abbot and back into the college hall. Stupid, stupid… And I thought there was nothing but awkward kindness in that peculiar commoner!
Everything happens horribly, ruthlessly quick. I could elaborate on every time we receive another blow, but I fear our misery—especially Mother’s—would do little good to repeat. As misfortune hails down like nails pouring from the sky, stinging us bloody, I eventually grow numb. Thomas, Agnes, and the rare messenger boy do their best to bring us news, but said news is never joyous.
First, Ed’s coronation is postponed until November. This is the second time Parliament sets a new date, and it is starting to appear as if they intend to wait forever.
Then, on the twenty-second day of June, Parliament declares that Father’s marriage to Mother was invalid to begin with, claiming that he had already made a plight-troth to a Lady Eleanor Butler. The lady in question has been dead for years, and thus there is no way of proving the declaration false. His liaison surfaced when the Bishop of Bath and Wells came forth and confessed to having officiated the plight troth, just as a priest later officiated the wedding ceremony between Father and Mother, a wedding kept secret for months afterwards.
I press myself flat to the wall, as does Anne, while Elizabeth and Dorset try to console our mother with words soft and foul respectively. Dame Elizabeth Grey, as Parliament now refers to her, paces up and down the college hall for hours at length, teeth gritted, repeating that it is all a venomous lie. I want to believe her, of course I do, because I must. If the bishop is in earnest, every single one of my siblings and I are bastards. Bastards. The word tastes sour on my tongue. Some would say it contains an unspeakable shame, but that is a splinter in my finger compared to the loss of the title Princess of York. As if that is not enough, Father is also said to be born on the wrong side of the blanket, shedding light on the old rumours about his mother and a common archer. This part of the story, however, is easy to dismiss, at least if one knows my rigidly moral grandmother, Cecily Neville.
What follows trumps the declaration, though. My uncle Anthony and my half-brother Richard Grey are executed on the same charges that they were arrested: of plotting against Uncle Richard and the rightful government, among other things. I weep because I know I should; I weep with my eyes burning, curling up in Agnes’ strong arms, letting her stroke my dishevelled hair. Even Dorset sheds a tear for the two men close
st to him all his life, before resorting to kicking the wall until his foot starts to bruise and swell.
Mother says nothing, nothing at all. She is motionless, a sculpture, as beauteous that day as she must have been at twenty. Looking at her from afar, one would assume her serene, even, but her eyes are often where her emotions lie. They are black as charcoal now, demanding divine retribution. This is the second time she has lost two of her dearest family members to a son of York, and I fear she will confuse recent events with those that took place more than a decade ago.
Is Uncle Richard responsible for all this? Buckingham and the other advisors—Catesby, Ratcliffe, Lovell—may have considerable influence, but my uncle is a man of his own mind. There are so many questions tumbling in my head, questions I want to ask to his face, if only I could. I want to scream and shout and stare him in the eye. If only I could. I am not merely thwarted with my uncle, though, but also with the world at large, with my father for his womanizing, and with my Woodville relatives for conspiring against better judgement. The follies of mankind will ruin us all.
The final blow is what truly strikes me. Parliament offers Uncle Richard kingship, since the boy-king Ed is baseborn and Clarence’s only son is barred from the line of succession through the act of attainder passed after his father’s treason. Naturally, the protector accepts the offer. Only a saint or a half-wit would not. King Richard III.
Thus it is that I become the daughter of a king, the sister of a second, and the niece of a third, all in less than three months.
Chapter V
I SQUINT IN the dark. Two smudged silhouettes stand by the open door. Chilly whiffs of air stream through the slit; I wrap my blanket tighter around my shoulders and press closer to Anne’s warm little body next to me. Whispers under heavy breaths, a sheer chemise, boots tramping on the spot, impatient. A lingering kiss. Dorset’s cloak flaps around his legs as he turns and slips out of the room, melting into the darkness. Agnes pinches the fabric of her chemise and pulls it up a hand’s-width by the shoulders so as to raise the neckline, hiding a considerable patch of skin. I always wished I had skin like hers, soft like cream. When she turns around, I half-expect her to discover that my eyes are open and give me a scolding for spying on her, but the gloom is too heavy.
I should have known…I should have connected the dots long ago. I have watched Dorset drool after damsels—in distress after he finds them if not before—for well over ten years, and what better way to pass the time in this dreary den? Elizabeth, perhaps Anne also, would be in a state if they knew the woman who combs their hair at night is as chaste as a courtesan in a Southwark alehouse, but I am not. At least Agnes has found a way to cure boredom. There is only so much a woman of her status can do to further herself, and mistress to a high-ranking nobleman is not for shame.
What truly sparks my curiosity is the whereabouts of her lover. None of us are supposed to leave the safe harbour of sanctuary, least of all in the midst of night, least of all the man who has the most obvious prize on his head. Dorset is the only one of us who risks his life if he is caught, because the House of York does not wage bloody war on women and children. He must understand that, fool or not, when mere days have passed since Rivers and Grey’s gore poured thick over the block. For all my uncle’s startling actions the past month and his advisors’ poisonous words, he loves us girls, and his attachment to chivalry is too deeply ingrained for him to execute a woman like Mother rather than imprison her—but Dorset? I admit I fear for him, or rather fear for Mother, who unlike myself loves him with ardour.
When dawn’s soft light cracks through the blackness and morning arrives, he is still gone. No one dare speak a word of what our glances communicate. At last, Mother confirms to us what has happened.
‘We discussed it, he and I. My son was never one to make sensible decisions or bide his time. Methinks he will join Ned.’
My uncle Ned left England with the fleet, which he commanded, before the better part of said fleet abandoned him and surrendered to Uncle Richard’s authority. Having fled with two ships and the ten thousand pounds that Dorset doled out from the royal treasury, Ned is thought to be in exile in Brittany together with some upstart named Henry Tudor. I believe Tudor is Margaret Beaufort’s son from her first marriage, a banished Lancastrian boy, but I have no memory of him, and I wager his name would not spark recognition with many Londoners. I shudder. Henry’s fate is one I dread beyond most things: faded away into obscurity in exile, living day by day eating crumbs from the hand of the Duke of Brittany.
‘Will he be back, Mama? Will he?’ Kate cranes her neck, boggling her eyes at Mother.
‘I do not know just when, darling.’
That same evening, when Agnes sees to my nightly routine after the others have dozed off, I subject her to my curiosity.
‘Do you love him? And he you?’
Her face freezes in the mirror. ‘What did you say?’
‘Dorset. Thomas Grey. You know him, I’m sure.’ I fail to disguise the smirk playing at the corner of my mouth.
Agnes gives my braid a firm tug. ‘Never you mind that, love. Should ‘ave shut your eyes and ears both.’
‘It would be dreadfully romantic.’
‘I never thought you cared ‘bout romance.’
‘Agnes! Of course I do!’
‘Hmm. With all your talk of prosperous matches?’
I sigh, for it is a common enough misconception. ‘That comes first hand, and then we have love. If one has to choose, one chooses the first—but if one can have both… Isn’t that delightful?’
‘You think that knave would marry the like of me?’ Amusement glitters in her pale sage eyes, emblazoned in candlelight. ‘Doubt it. For what it’s worth I’d not wed the like of him, either.’
‘He is a bit of a mediocrity,’ I concede. ‘And perhaps silly.’
‘Silly and with a temper worse than yours. But there is so little else to do in this hellhole.’
I bite my lip. ‘Are you not worried? What if—’
‘I ‘ave my secrets.’ She winks at me in the mirror, the spotty silver blurring her features slightly. ‘Nothing that I’ll tell you, love.’
I cannot hide my flaring red cheeks, not even in the dim candlelight.
‘Don’t worry your pretty little head. You won’t ever be preventing babes, just squeezing ‘em out as often as you can.’
I want to laugh but it is impossible; the air knots in my throat and swells as if to choke me. Blood-soaked linen, cramps, skin transparently pale, a tiny heart beating too faintly to survive, like a sparrow with broken wings… The thought sends chills all the way to my fingertips. I have not kept record of the women—not to speak of all the infants—I know of who have languished in childbed. My second cousin Isabel, Clarence’s wife, is the example that springs most readily to mind, as well as my aunt, the former Duchess of Exeter. Then there are those who keep their life and their health, but who are unfortunate in their fertility, like Uncle Richard’s wife Anne and the Lancastrian Marguerite d’Anjou, both of whom have had only a single surviving child.
I should be reassured by the fact that my mother and my grandmothers have performed their wifely duties with admirable success. But no, I feel less reassured with every passing day, because each nightfall brings me closer to when I will find myself under the crushing pressure of childbearing, Woodville hips or not. It is the price I must pay for a high-ranking husband: the continuation of his dynasty.
I am grateful when Agnes diverts my thoughts.
‘They’ll start preparing the coronation soon, just you wait. Of course, we won’t be able to see a thing, but maybe hear some of it. To think they’ll be about in this very building!’ she says, opening a small wooden tub and dipping her finger in the salve.
First, I think she is going to attack me with the rancid, milky-white substance, but then she starts massaging it into her own cheeks and forehead.
‘What is that?’ I crinkle my nose
.
‘Goat’s fat and valerian. Keeps the skin young.’
There is no use in reminding her that she is far from old. Instead, I return to the subject of the impending coronation, for it has been on my mind the whole day.
‘I hope Ed and Dickie will be there, so that Mother can feel reassured. We have not heard anything more of them. And how I wish I could attend, too! Just picture all the splendour—’
‘Thought you hated the lot of ‘em,’ she says.
‘I cannot, though I suppose I should. Part of me does, but not all, because I have been thinking properly about it, and I…I understand. My uncle holds land seized by the crown from George Neville, Agnes, and George died this May, meaning the lands can pass to his heirs rather than remain with my uncle. If Ed had been crowned, he would have listened solely to the Woodvilles, since he grew up with them, and all this might have left my uncle and his family with nothing all of a sudden. Add to that the fear of turmoil under a feuding regency council, and his own ambitions for England... I believe I would have done the same thing.’ I draw a shaky breath. This is the first time I have dared voice my musings in their entirety, and guilt over my final conclusion stings.
Agnes throws up a hand in the air. ‘I still don’t see why you’d attend.’
‘You don’t see? Because I feel too many things to name—hate and fondness and… I used to sit on his lap sometimes when I was this small—’ I put my hand at the seat of my chair to demonstrate. ‘—and wanted to play with his gold chains. He was awfully uncomfortable, I think, but never brushed me off, not like Father could when there was some prettier girl to occupy his attention.’
‘Prattle, prattle.’
‘Agnes, be serious. I know I have too much emotion, and sometimes it drives me mad, but if I can nurture the nice ones and not dwell on the rest… There are to be winners and losers in all this, and I do not want to lose. I do not.’
