Mistress of Mourning

by Karen Harper

  Wide-eyed, with my back against the solid stone, I could only nod. Even should she bestow honor and fortune on me, by all the saints, what had I gotten myself into? A chill snaked up my spine, for she wanted much more than I could create with a simple candle. Was our dear queen—was I—devoted or demented?

  CHAPTER THE THIRD

  Bundled in my robe with warm wool mules on my feet, I paced my bedroom that night. I could not believe my good fortune—or was it to be misfortune? Could I abide laboring long in that chamber like a tomb wherein would lie the waxen forms of four dead children?

  And did I have the skills? What if my work did not please the queen? I had no doubt I could carve the faces, the hands too, but they must not remain the waxen hue of death. Elizabeth of York wanted sleeping figures on beds, not corpses on biers. I still had my father’s handwritten herbal of what roots could stain wax to lifelike shades. Although I had watched him tint wax, I had never tried so much as a colored candle, other than the black ones we sold daily for funerals. Or I could arrange for someone else to paint my wax to lifelike likeness. Perhaps the Italian artist Signor Firenze was a possibility I could broach with the queen. Then too, Christopher’s chandlery made the best wax for sealing letters, and he added colored powders mixed with oil to molten mixtures to create reddish hues. It could be that just a touch of his vermilion would turn that fine cera bianca the queen had bought into a healthier flesh hue. And how was I to keep all this from my family and friends—and from Christopher? I must cobble up some sort of excuse, one even those closest to me would credit.

  When I heard the midnight bells toll from St. Mary Abchurch and St. Swithin’s, I blew out my candle and made myself lie down in bed. I drew the bed curtains tight against drafts, pulled little Edmund’s ring-toss rope and ball to me, and stared up at the dark underside of the tester while all the queen had said plodded through my mind again…of the loss of her dear daughter and son.… I saw my Edmund’s face.… I must not carve my own child’s countenance for the queen.

  And then her two young brothers, the so-called lost princes in the Tower. Their uncle Richard, Duke of Gloucester, brother to King Edward IV, had put them there supposedly for safekeeping after their royal father died. The true heir, King Edward V, was but twelve then. Soon Gloucester had himself named king as Richard III, claiming the boys to be illegitimate, since their father had supposedly signed a marriage precontract with another woman before he wed their mother.

  The boys’ mother, the widowed queen, and their sister, the current queen, had fled to sanctuary at Westminster Abbey after Edward V had been taken to the Tower. Our present queen was the eldest child and a protective sister to the rest of the brood, a spate of sisters and the other son who was still with them, Richard, Duke of York. But King Richard’s councilors and bishops had coerced the royal family to allow the younger prince to join his brother in the Tower as a companion.

  Then disaster, the mystery of our age. Both boys simply disappeared. Rumors ran rampant, claiming their uncle Richard had them dispatched to clear his way to the throne. Yet enemies of Henry Tudor, the current king Henry VII—and there were still many, despite his God-given victory at Bosworth Field over King Richard—whispered that Henry Tudor had ordered the boys murdered, so that they did not stand in his way. He wed the boys’ sister to unite the warring factions of Lancaster and York, and that was that for the lost princes. But obviously it was not the end for Her Majesty. Or now, for me either.

  Queen Elizabeth of York

  After everyone in the palace had quieted—I could hear my ladies’ slow, even breathing from their trundle beds across the room—I arose and wrapped a cloak about my night rail. Like a barefoot penitent, I went in the darkness toward the small stone room I would henceforth think of as another bedchamber. As the arras whispered closed behind me, I shuddered to think what would happen if I were discovered missing and my ladies set up a hue and cry and called for the king. How I wished that such a panic and search had ensued when my brothers had disappeared from the Tower. But for days no one had so much as said that they were missing. By that time, we knew they were gone for good—that is, gone by someone’s murderous hand.

  I kept a single, huge candle burning in this chamber, with the wax blocks laid out on boards that I would later transform into three small beds and a cradle. I regretted that this was once a garderobe with a chute that dropped human refuse to the Thames before this new era of close stools replaced mere chamber pots. But, saying I would use it for a private chapel that no one else was to enter, I’d had the chute blocked and the walls scrubbed and a back entrance hewn through from the servants’ hall. That way the wax woman and her guard—I should use Nicholas Sutton, for he was eager to earn his way back into our good graces—should enter and depart. Poor Nicholas, for, like others, his people had cast their fortunes with the losing side in the war, and I knew he was ambitious to make amends and rebuild his family’s future.

  I stroked one of the blocks of fine beeswax, smuggled in by some contact in the countryside Nicholas had found for me. Smooth as a child’s cheek, which, mayhap it would become. I prayed she was good, Varina Westcott. I knew her chandlery produced excellent wax-impregnated cloths for winding sheets and smooth, smokeless votive candles she could carve so cleverly that, gazing upon the one I was given, I could almost hear that angel sing.

  In this private sanctuary my dear ones would rest where I could guard them…but again I saw my brother Richard on that last day. In danger of our lives with our father dead and the kingdom in chaos, we had sneaked into sanctuary in the abbey with our jewelry in bedsheets. Everything had gone down, down from there. Only two sons among us seven daughters, precious sons who should have had the throne. The eldest boy, Prince Edward, proclaimed the new king, had been brought back from Ludlow Castle in Wales and put in the Tower by Uncle Richard—for his protection, it was said. Alack the day! Lies, all lies. We huddled in fear, all of us women—Mother, me, my sisters—around young Richard when they came for him, saying he should join his brother, be his playfellow.

  “I cannot let my last son leave my care,” my mother had insisted, her once lovely face gaunt and white as she faced the bishop and the guards our uncle had sent. “Bess, what shall I do? Whatever shall I do?” she whispered to me, for as the eldest child at age seventeen, I was the best she had for counselor and comforter in our isolation after Father’s death. “We cannot allow Richard to go too.”

  “But they are right to say Edward will be lonely there,” I had argued. “We must keep his spirits up, for he is the rightful king. How it will cheer them to be together!”

  Richard had pleaded too. “Yes, Mother, if you please, I want to go. I beg you, do not be afraid.” He had blond curls and was blue eyed like all of us children, the inheritance from both of our handsome parents. At age ten, of course, his voice had not changed. I could hear it yet, sweet, almost a piping sound as he said, “I will help Edward, protect him, study and play with him, and when he is released to rule, I will be at his side.”

  “Bess, I cannot bear it,” Mother said, as if he had not spoken.

  “We have been given the bishop’s word, Uncle Richard’s word,” I told her. “Should not the boys be together to comfort each other, even as you and I do for each other here?”

  That decided it for her, I vow. More fool I to trust my uncle, to trust a man, especially one ravenous for power, especially one who had made himself, even as my husband later did, the king.

  Mistress Varina Westcott

  The next morn, just after dawn, I was surprised to see that only Nick Sutton awaited me outside—with one horse. He was dressed more plainly too, in scuffed riding boots and a wool jerkin and short cape. Had something changed? Was I not to go today? I darted out with my leather satchel crammed with carving and smoothing tools. A copper kettle and coals to heat it would be my first request, for Her Majesty said I could have anything I needed.

  I felt myself flush at that thought, for I needed someone like Ni
ck Sutton. Strong, handsome, daring, like Lancelot in the Arthurian tales, I fancied. At least in my wildest, most foolish dreams, I wanted someone like Nick Sutton to be courting me, not Christopher Gage.

  We bade each other good morning. He explained straightaway that Sibil was indisposed and Her Majesty wanted no one else to know where to find me either at the palace or in the city, so he alone would be fetching me from now on. I saw he simply assumed that the queen’s word—and his—was to be obeyed, but then, I understood her need for secrecy. Was she keeping her passion for a privy memorial to her children and her brothers even from the king? I did see, though, that I would have to give my family, mayhap my friends too, a better story of why I was riding off each day with a handsome man of obviously good breeding, however he had dressed today.

  Nick stowed my goods in his saddle pack and boosted me up to ride behind him. I was a bit shy to hold on to him as I mounted behind him and he said with a deep voice, “Let’s away!” Strangely, in that small moment, I didn’t give a fig whether Christopher saw us, for I’d thought of a story to cover the truth, though I’d probably pay the piper one way or the other. But, truly, riding close behind this man, my thighs tight to his rear in the slanted saddle as we bounced along, I was not only content but thrilled.

  “You know the truth of why I’ve been summoned?” I asked as we turned toward the river.

  “I do, for I’m to lead you in and out of your work chamber the back way and guard you. I’ll try not to distract you while you work.”

  Was he jesting? Surely he did not know how he affected me. Or perhaps he just knew how he moved women in general, for indeed he must. I wondered whether he was wed, if not to Sibil Wynn then to some other woman. Deciding to change the subject, I said, “You are dressed far different today.”

  “Attire borrowed from a royal stable groom. Depending on the task for Their Majesties, I dress up, I dress down, I ride to the country or stay in town.” He chuckled and I felt his ribs lift, then fall.

  “You serve them both and not just the queen?” Though I spoke to his broad back and the street hubbub was increasing, he seemed to hear me well enough.

  “Mostly the queen, though it is His Majesty’s goodwill I admit I covet. But that is a long story.”

  At the Steelyard water stairs, he helped me onto the same barge as before, though now stripped of its fringe.

  “You are young to be so skilled,” he said, turning toward me as we set out on the river. His perusal was so intense that I almost missed speaking to his back. But if I blushed the more, he might think it was from the sharp autumn wind.

  “I learned much of chandlery and wax sculpture arts from my parents, especially my father. Do you have a family?” I blurted, before I could stop myself.

  “To put it plain, Mistress Westcott—”

  “You may call me Varina, for you said I should call you Nick.”

  “So I did. My family was on the wrong side in two battles against the king. My father and uncle died at the Battle of Bosworth Field. I was only thirteen at the time and so was summoned to court as a mere page, perhaps as surety of my family’s future good behavior toward the Tudors. But I have learned well and served loyally.”

  “And have risen far?”

  “Not far enough by far,” he said, looking quite serious despite his wordplay. “I hope to earn my way in this Tudor world, for, however His Grace came by the throne, I believe he unifies the past warring factions and makes England stronger. This coming marriage of our Prince of Wales with Catherine of Aragon will help shore up the realm and show France we have the powerful kingdom of Spain as friends. Of course, the Tudor throne yet has internal enemies of whom we must be wary—disgruntled Yorkists, fervent loyalists to King Richard, however dead he lies in his grave.”

  “And you are a fervent Tudor loyalist?”

  “I admire a man who can pull himself up by his own bootstraps, as did our king, and it seems to me God’s guiding hand is on him. So, for now, I am guard and guide for the wax woman, as the queen has called you. But you look fair flesh and blood to me.”

  I knew not whether he meant that as a tease, a compliment, or just more wordplay, but by the saints, that mere turn of phrase pleased me more than had all of Christopher’s pretty endearments and vows of love.

  I labored long that first day at the palace. Tempus fugit, as my father used to say. I was ever aware of Nick’s presence and his gaze upon me. Though he made it clear the queen had asked him not to speak while I worked, it surely helped me to have him there, to keep the walls from closing in. But when I began to carve the first face, that of the princess Elizabeth, I became lost in the shaping and smoothing. As I worked, sometimes he watched me; other times he hunkered under the array of candles that gave me good light, and wrote letters, to whom I knew not, mayhap his lady love. His presence there—our physical closeness—felt both reassuring and awkward.

  As though he were the tavern keeper of Westminster, Nick disappeared only to bring us both food and drink or to leave me if I needed to use the chamber pot in the corner of the room. We spoke briefly as we ate, but he took that time to go out and tell the queen how things were progressing, so I was soon back to work.

  Her Majesty came in but once, for Nick said she was busy being apprised of the final preparations for the entry of her future daughter-in-law to London for the royal wedding. “Oh, yes, you have the shape of the head there,” Her Majesty told me with a tremulous smile. She was beautifully gowned and bejeweled, so did she dress that way every day? “Nick will have the kettle and coal fire for you to melt wax on the morrow. And I have not forgotten that you shall have your glimpse of my younger children, so that you can copy noses and chins. I know I am asking a great deal of you when you begin to carve my brothers, of whom I have no portrait to show you, have no remembrance of them to share.…”

  Her words drifted off; her clear gaze misted over under her furrowed brow. Suddenly she was not here, but in some distant memory or imagining, until she shook her head and stroked the cheek of her deceased daughter that I had carved, however yet roughly hewn and uncolored.

  “I shall see you are paid each week, and I do understand you have another life and your own child, your Arthur,” she said.

  “Yes, Your Majesty—about that. When my family and fellow chandlers discover I am to be sent for on many days, I fear they will ferret out to where, and the false tale of Nick and his wife having lost a child will be found out. May I not say you admired the angel candle and are asking that I carve wedding gift candles for the Spanish bride’s household—flowers, birds, and such?”

  “Yes, perhaps a better idea, and the fact that it is a royal request will help protect you too. Tell them you are carving the roses of York and Lancaster and the pomegranate of Spain, for it is Catherine of Aragon’s emblem and the symbol of fertility. New princes and princesses for the nursery soon, I pray,” she added with a glance again at the blocks of wax. “Nicholas, you take good care of her for me,” she threw over her shoulder as she departed as quickly and quietly as she had come.

  “I shall, Your Grace,” he said, though we were then alone, momentarily frozen in a bow and curtsy that seemed, suddenly, only for each other.

  I soon had the dressing-down I had been dreading. I had delighted Arthur, Maud, and Gil with my story of carving candles at the palace, but Christopher came storming in at the shop’s usual closing time that afternoon. I was on edge already. My back and neck hurt from reaching and bending, and my right hand was numb from handling knives, spoons, and spatulas. Indeed, I hated myself for lying to my son and kin, although the truth would have been even more remarkable than my fabrication. And if gossip flew about that the queen was yet tormented for the loss of her brothers, who had more right to the throne than the last and present king, I could be completely undone. Yet I managed to walk calmly around the counter to put it between Christopher and me and leaned against it to steady my knees.

  He dared to lock the shop door behind him. He wa
s red in the face, as if he had run miles. “By the rood, a little bird tells me you were not here when our artist Signor Firenze came by to set up the time for your first sitting!” Facing me across the counter, from his left hand he took the large ruby ring he had offered me twice for a betrothal and dropped it on one side of our large scales. The balance trays bounced slightly askew. “And,” he added, “you rode off with a man. I’ll not have you looking like a common woman, a doxy, not the woman I wish to wed! Others know I favor you, and they will think you have rejected me.”

  “I did ride to the palace this morn with a courtier and royal guard, and now have permission from the queen to explain why.”

  He gaped at me like a beached fish. “The queen. The queen? Leave off!”

  “It is true. Yesterday she sent one of her ladies with that courtier to fetch me and asked me to carve candles for the new Spanish princess’s wedding gifts. She desires to have them carved at the palace, a special, secret gift.”

  “Angel candles?”

  “No, but finely decorated ones. I assured her that though I am, as a woman, not permitted to be a member of the Worshipful Guild of Wax Chandlers, they would understand and support my efforts, and I knew when I told one of the governors of the guild, who was my friend, that he—you—would respect her privacy in this matter.”

  He had not yet blinked. May the Lord forgive me—for I was already deep in lies, but I decided to push my great good luck even more. Not to request admittance to the guild, for I knew full well that only a few guilds, such as weavers, broiderers, and brewers, permitted female members. Besides, that plea would give Christopher another reason to insist how much he could do for me in wedlock.