Mistress of Mourning

by Karen Harper

  “But you just said—”

  “I know what I said. But lest our archenemy is targeting you somehow, guards or not, I will keep you here, and that’s that.”

  I was both relieved and upset. We were all exhausted, all on edge. Without another word, Nick spurred his horse to ride back into the well-ordered ranks of armed guards. Such indecision was so unlike him. But I concluded that, in this instance, it was also another of his indirect compliments to me, further proof I meant something more to him than an assignment from the queen.

  After nearly five grueling days on the road, I knelt at the high altar of the Abbey of St. Wulfstan in Worcester and gave thanks for my safety in all I had been through since leaving London. Then, because the funeral entourage was but a few hours behind me and my guards, I put them all to work unpacking the eight tall black funeral candles, which I set in spiked holders, four on each side of the altar. They would be lit just as the procession with the coffin came up the long central aisle. Other candles had been sent from London for this mournful occasion, so I oversaw their placement in holders and sconces too.

  When all was well inside, everyone went outside to await the funeral entourage in the street before the abbey. Why the king had decided Arthur was to be interred here, I was not sure, but perhaps so that he lay forever between the realms of Wales and England, both of which he would have ruled. Folk from the town, surrounding villages, and farms had turned out in force. The crowd looked like a dark lake lapping around the abbey, and as many as six people deep lined the main street as far as I could see.

  The rain had let up a bit, so I was glad to see the torches had been lit as the procession made its way into the city. Standing a bit apart from the Bishop of Lincoln, who was visiting to conduct the service, and a small crowd of priests with the abbot, I scanned the cavalcade, checking the wrapping over the coffin, searching for Nick. With a sideways glance, Surrey looked me over as he rode past and dismounted to be greeted by the church dignitaries.

  I walked to where the hearse halted and, with the help of several others, cut the cords binding the waxen cloth and pulled it away from the black velvet pall. No sooner had eight guards carried the coffin inside than the crowd edged forward to tear off pieces of the wet, wrinkled cloth that lay upon the ground. I thought to protest the frenzy at first, but it was in honor of the prince, for they wanted a token of this event to cherish. Soon, nothing of the yards of Westcott cloth was left.

  I hurried back inside, passing the procession waiting to accompany the coffin up the aisle. At the front of the church, I gawked and gasped. Each one of the eight tall black mourning candles I had carefully transported from London to Richmond Palace and then to Wales and now back again was broken or hacked off halfway down. Most upper parts lay on the floor, but two were bent over, held dangling by their sturdy wicks, which had not quite been severed. I was aghast at the destruction and then at what it meant.

  At the back of the abbey, I heard the mourners streaming in and ran forward. Nick was suddenly at my side, picking tops of tapers from the floor, cutting free with his sword the wicks that made the others dangle.

  “He’s here!” I said as I scrambled from candle to candle. “He’s inside!”

  “I warrant he’s gone now. He’s careful to strike, then flee to fight another day, and it’s not his way to be trapped or caught. He always retreats, the whoreson coward. It’s Lovell; I swear it is!”

  Without another word, we worked desperately to place the top halves of the candles in the holders where the entire tall tapers had been. When I saw they were different heights, I moved a few so the higher ones were at the outsides and seemed to slant toward the altar near the catafalque where the coffin would be placed. I was so furious that, for once, I felt no fear.

  As if nothing were amiss, the funeral procession started up the center aisle, the presiding bishop with a censer of incense leading the coffin, then priests, next Surrey, a boys’ choir, finally other dignitaries. Perhaps they had not seen this mess and would not realize what had happened. I prayed no one would tell the queen.

  Nick and I hastily snatched up the bottoms of the tapers, which we had dropped to the floor, and, out of breath, scrambled back behind the choir area and altar screen. Only then did I realize that two of the bottoms of the tapers were missing. Had we left them in plain view at the front of the church? It was too late to go back for them now.

  Panting for breath, burdened with candles in our headlong rush, we nearly fell into the gaping hole prepared for the lowering of the coffin into the crypt. Nick grabbed my arm, and we threw ourselves back from a ten-foot fall where the tile had been removed. And there, below, lay the two bottom pieces of the missing tapers, crudely hacked by knife or sword into some sort of shape.

  My skin crawled with horror, and I nearly threw up as we gaped down into the dim crypt together. Nick drew his own sword quietly, though the droning dirge that echoed through the nave drowned out the sound. With his sword raised to strike, he searched the area behind the altar—thank heavens, hidden from the service—and found nothing.

  “We’re going to have to be lowered down to retrieve those for evidence to show Their majesties,” Nick said. “Besides, when the prince is buried, it might look like some sort of curse and I won’t allow that. Let’s tie my belt and your girdle chain together.” We did that, but the resulting “rope” was not long enough. We ripped the ties from our capes and knotted them to the cord.

  “The thing is,” Nick whispered as the Bishop of Lincoln’s voice rolled on in Latin, “my weight might rip these ties, and you won’t be strong enough to haul me back up. You’ll have to go down.”

  I did not argue or delay, but what if it was a trap? What if Lovell was lurking in the crypt below, waiting for one of us to descend? He’d hacked apart my candles, so did he plan the same for me?

  Bracing his foot against the corner of some long-dead abbot’s tomb, Nick quickly lowered me down. The queen and the princess both had asked me to help guard and guide their prince to his resting place. Now I stood within it.

  I refused to look into the sharp shadows. Several caskets or stone sarcophagi sat on shelves in the dust of the ages down here. I began a fit of sneezing, but threw the first two-foot-long piece of black candle up to Nick. He caught it handily and leaned over for the next. I shuddered to think our archenemy had handled it, hacked at it in his hatred.

  Nick caught the other, then managed to haul me up until I could claw my way and scrape my belly over the side, where he could pull me up the rest of the way. Each holding a piece of candle before us, we hurried back around through an alcove to stand in the nave behind the mourners. It was then that I saw, even in the dim light of torches and other candles, what was carved into the once smooth black wax. In perhaps a mockery of my prettily carved angel candles, it was a grotesque, ugly face of a demon, perhaps Satan himself. No, no, I saw it now: Someone had crudely carved a crowned man—the prince, or mayhap the king—his face twisted in the agony of being poisoned, or perhaps in the torments of hell itself.

  CHAPTER THE TWENTY-FIRST

  During the long funeral ceremony, I was so exhausted, I nearly swayed on my feet. Just after the Bishop of Lincoln ended his prayers and sermon, the prince’s riderless horse, decked out in pieces of his armor and weapons, was brought in. The animal snorted, and the whites of his eyes showed his fear of the crowd and strange setting. The sight of that poor beast saddened me even more, for surely one touch from his lost master would have calmed him.

  I scanned the crowd, looking for a face I did not really know, might not recognize unless the person spoke in his rasping yet commanding voice; someone tall, of course, but many were, especially the guards. Then too, so many of these mourners had grizzled beards and hair. With the dreadful weather, some wore black cloaks.

  Was our enemy here? Was he watching and plotting more poison, or was he a murderer who took any way to eliminate his enemies? A hangman’s rope. Bows and arrows. A broken neck in the blackn
ess of a crypt like the one wherein the prince would soon rest? Or was his ultimate goal the assassination of another Tudor prince, or even a queen or a king?

  Finally, guards carried Arthur’s coffin to the south end of the altar, where it was lowered into the crypt. As many of us as could crowded in behind the dignitaries. The heavy coffin was lowered by twelve men and the ropes pulled back up. As the bishop sprinkled holy water and then dropped a ceremonial clod of earth upon the coffin below, I felt Nick’s arm around my waist. Had we not both held the horrible candle carvings at our sides, I might have been momentarily content.

  The king’s chief mourner, the Earl of Surrey, then each of the prince’s household and council broke their staffs of office over their heads and cast them down. They clattered into the tomb where the beheaded black Westcott candles had lain. Woeful cries of mourning rent the air. How I hoped I could do it all justice when I told the queen of this, I, the queen’s chief mourner here, though none knew that but Nick and I.

  Yet was Her Majesty’s grief any greater than mine when others had buried my dear son and I had watched from afar? Or was her joy deeper than mine when we bore our sons and first looked upon their tiny faces? Not a bit, I swore to myself. And that was why, queen or citizen, highborn or low, we women were sisters under the skin no matter what befell us.

  The mourners greatly disbanded after the funeral service, though some, including Nick and me, stayed on at the Two Roses Inn nearby for the night, planning to head to London on the morrow. Rhys was content to fill his belly, then sleep in the stables with the men guarding the remaining horses. I was relieved when the Earl of Surrey departed, with a kiss on my hand no less, and whispered, “No other London merchant I have met could hold a candle to you, Varina.” I was relieved he was gone, and I did not even mention the incident to Nick. What the earl would report to His Majesty—would he so much as mention Nick or me?—I did not know and was too exhausted to care.

  I kept nodding off as I sat at table in the common room, eating tough roast beef with Nick and several other guards I’d come to know. Besides, each bite reminded me of that dead steer in the bog. I soon excused myself and went off to the small third-floor chamber I shared with two women from Prince Arthur’s former household, who were being returned to London. At least they were both English, but it was sad to see how severely the princess Catherine’s household was being reduced.

  I collapsed in the single large bed, lying with my face to the wall while they whispered together near the hearth about hoping to find positions with someone else of import at court. I hadn’t shared a bed with anyone for such a long time, but the three of us would fit in this one well enough. If only, I prayed, we would not have to share it with bedbugs, or even the mice I could hear in the thatched roof above.

  I drifted toward sleep the wiser that night, glad I had no part of Surrey…and his mistresses…for I was counting not coins but the hours until I would be home and see my son again. I could not lose my dear boy, though the queen had lost hers and so much more.…

  Queen Elizabeth of York

  His Majesty and I had been forcing ourselves to eat, for we had no appetite. Sleep came no easier. I could tell he was restless too. I punched my feather pillow in the vast royal bed and said, “I do feel a bit better to know Arthur has now been laid to rest. Better, that is, unless we discover foul play, and that horrid gift of the heart seems to indicate that. My father used to say a spirit did not rest easy if it had been cruelly dispatched until his or her murder was solved and the perpetrator punished.”

  “In other words, if someone dies in battle or is executed for a crime, they lose more than their life? They are haunted, or haunt others, for all eternity unless their murderers are repaid in kind? I don’t want to hear such heresy, and not from you. It isn’t civilized, and it isn’t Christian.”

  “My dear lord,” I said, fumbling for his hand in the dark, “let’s not argue or have a philosophical discussion tonight.” He had been more than testy lately—entirely on edge. I understood that people mourned differently. A king cannot weep and wail, nor cling to painted waxen effigies of those lost as if they were flesh and blood.

  “Nor is it Christian to torture someone in the Tower. Elizabeth, besides the loss of our heir, I realize you aren’t happy that I said you should not ask me about James Tyrell’s inquisition in the Tower—that I would tell you when there was something to tell.”

  My heartbeat kicked up. “Then is there?”

  “On the rack, Tyrell admitted several things. On the initial line of questioning, he confessed that he gave shelter and succor to several Yorkist enemies of our Crown when they passed through France—gave them food, drink, and a bed. I have no doubt that he offered encouragement and mayhap funding too”—his voice rose—“in my castle there, when he had vowed to be my man! That alone is enough to bring treason charges. And Lord Lovell was one of those men.”

  “Not him again! Like a ghost, he keeps arising from rumors of his death. So they could well have been in collusion for other dreadful deeds. I vow they sound like a pair, Tyrell and Lovell! But you said Tyrell admitted to something else?”

  “Your instincts were right about him. At first he merely confessed he was in and out of the Tower at the time of your brothers’ demise, and insisted that so were others and he knew naught else on the matter of the princes in the Tower’s disappearance and fate. And then, I believe since he knew he would be accused of treason anyway, he evidently decided to cleanse his filthy soul. Without further torture, he admitted that he and two rough fellows, now both dead, did enter the boys’ chamber in the White Tower and smother them with the down pillows and coverlets on their beds.”

  I gasped and sat up in bed. Henry held hard to my hand, but with my other I instinctively threw my coverlet off and my down pillow to the floor. I wanted to collapse in sobs and beat the wooden headboard, but I continued to clutch Henry’s hand and stared into the darkness of our chamber, seeing it all, the horror and the children’s helplessness. In their last moments of life, did they think of their mother and me? Had Arthur, too, thought of me?

  “Done, I assume,” I finally choked out, “at my uncle Richard’s orders to strengthen his claim to the throne?”

  “Yes. I am so sorry to tell you all this now, with our recent loss, but it seemed so important to you.…”

  “Seemed? Yes. Yes! And my brothers’ bodies?”

  “He swears he does not know. That the other two accomplices—”

  “Tell me their names!”

  “A Miles Forest and one John Dighton, both deceased. I looked into it.”

  “And now we can tell the world what happened!”

  Though I sat stiffly away from him, he sat up and tugged me into his arms. “No, Elizabeth. Listen to me. I do not want all this brought up again, noised about to churn up rumors and lies. Publicly, we will let Tyrell die for his treachery in France, not for this, but we will know the truth. Now is the time the nation must mourn our Arthur and soon enough celebrate Henry as the new Prince of Wales, once I think he’s really ready. We must move forward, and now that you know what happened, the past must be dead.”

  I did not argue, though I disagreed with him completely. He had done what I had asked, learned who had murdered my brothers, who should have been the king and the next in line to him. But did he not know that, for me, the past was not dead? And though I might never have their bodies—bones and dust now, who knew where?—to bury with pomp as we had our Arthur, I had their waxen and cloth forms hidden away, so real they seemed almost to breathe.

  I breathed too, letting out a huge sigh. I let my husband hold me as my mind went back over all he had said.

  “Tyrell’s to be executed?” I whispered.

  “Very soon, but not too hastily, not right on top of Arthur’s burial today. Beheaded on Tower Hill and that will be the end of that for him—for you too.”

  I nodded, but, by the Virgin’s veil, I wondered whether Tyrell’s losing his head could reall
y keep me from losing my mind.

  Mistress Varina Westcott

  When we arrived back on Candlewick Street in London, I dismounted in the chandlery courtyard and, leaving Nick and Rhys behind, burst through the door and ran into the shop. This was April the twenty-fifth, and I had been gone three weeks when I had thought I was going away only overnight.

  No one was in the shop. Surely Arthur was home from school by now. I thudded down the hall and up the stairs to our living quarters. “Arthur! Mother’s home!” I shouted, and heard his voice and footsteps as he ran to meet me.

  Heedless of how big he was getting, I swept him into my arms and spun him around the way I did when he was smaller, planting wild kisses on both his cheeks before I remembered that I hadn’t so much as invited Nick and Rhys in.

  “My precious boy!” I cried, and set him down to hold his hands out from his sides to examine him. “My, but you’ve grown!” I cried as Gil and Maud ran in and gave me hugs, then began to rattle off all that had occurred in my absence. Faithful Jamie, hat in hand, appeared from somewhere and waved to me before, I supposed, heading out to the courtyard to talk to Nick.

  It was so good to be home, but I knew I could not stay, even now. Not after all that had happened. I had a half hour to bathe and change my clothes, for we were going to see the queen.

  All the way on the barge to Westminster, as Nick frowned into the river and Rhys gawked at everything and held our horses, I kept silently rehearsing what I would say to Her Majesty. I planned first to give her the comforting news. How the Welsh and English alike had mourned and honored Prince Arthur. How Princess Catherine had seemed deeply grieved and in love with him. Perhaps then I would describe the funeral service—saving, of course, the news about the two crudely carved candles for last. Nick carried them even now in a saddle pack over his shoulder to show her. How I wished I could be giving her another of my carved angel candles instead, one with Arthur’s fine features etched in it, but I’d had no time or tools to make it.