by Betty Younis
“The answer is clear: we must go to Rome. It will allay Lady Margaret’s fears, make her feel successful in her scheming. Meanwhile, Henry has much to learn and accomplish in the coming months. Remember, he was a second son, never tutored in international politics, in law, in the myriad issues a king must know and deal with – King Henry only ever tutored Arthur in those subjects. Our Henry has much catching up to do, and the near future is overfull for him now. We will not be yet another burden for my love. We will do as his grandmother wishes, but we will return at the first opportune moment. And in the meantime…”
“Yes?” they asked in unison.
“In the meantime, we must find a safe conduit to Henry, for he will need to know that we have gone to seek indulgences and manuscripts, and that we will soon return. We need a conduit for my letters to him, and his to me.”
Thomas nodded his head in agreement, realizing the wisdom of Elizabeth’s words. Even Agnes recognized the danger of their situation and understood the need to outwit the old woman by doing exactly as she wished. They watched as Thomas opened the purse given them by Lady Margaret and counted the gold coins within. After a moment, he looked up.
“We have much to do,” he began, “And the first consideration is to decide who will manage Coudenoure in our absence. Then, we must consider how one prepares for such a thing as travel to Rome.”
As though in answer to his questions there was a heavy knock upon the front door of the manor. After a moment, two people were shown into the library by a servant. They were an older couple, clearly not peasants but also not of highly ranked or station. The woman wore a faded frock of a brown but fine material, gathered at the waist. The sleeves were long and frayed near the wrist. Her partner, also in brown, wore a simple shirt with a vest whose buttons had disappeared. His pants were almost threadbare at the knees. Neither had a coat. The look was familiar to Thomas, Agnes and Elizabeth, for when their own clothes became too worn and faded for continued use, they passed them along to their servants and others. Clearly that was the provenance of the outfits of the couple who stood before them. The old man took off his hat, bowed and spoke, confirming Thomas’ thoughts.
“S-s-s sire,” he stuttered, “We are from Greenwich Palace, where we serve Lady Margaret Beaufort.”
“Indeed,” muttered Agnes.
“We have been i-i-instructed to look after Coudenoure in ye’re a-aab-absence.”
Thomas nodded and the old woman took up the narrative.
“And sire, Lady Margaret has graciously sent her packaging cases so that your wardrobes and the items you will need for your journey may be safely stored until you reach your destination.”
Yes, thought Agnes, the old witch had thought of everything.
“And your wages?” asked Elizabeth. The old man and woman looked at her in disbelief.
“Young maid, we are not accustomed to speaking of such matters with such a young –”
Elizabeth cut the woman off mid-sentence.
“I am sure, and ‘tis no concern of ours. I repeat my question – your wages? We have no money to pay you.” She ignored the pile of gold coins in Thomas’ lap – they would need it all on their voyage.
“Lady, Lady Margaret has generously agreed to pay our wages. You needn’t worry your head about that.”
“I had no intention of doing so,” Elizabeth replied tartly. “Now, bring the packing cases into the house and have Cook prepare you a meal. When we are ready for your services, we will call you.”
With that, they were shown out and Thomas, Agnes and Elizabeth began the hard task of planning a journey for which they had no desire to a place they had never known in pursuit of items yet to be dreamed of.
Chapter Eight
Elizabeth had never been beyond Greenwich. Her physical world consisted of Coudenoure Manor and its grounds, Greenwich Wood and its associated meadowlands, and the path along the Thames which ran at the foot of the estate. Her childhood had been that of any gentlewoman of noble birth: restricted and male-dominated. She had never really considered travel beyond her small sphere for the simple reason that it was not offered nor was it considered even possible. She had been content with what the estate and the surrounding woods and fields had to offer. But the ordinariness of her rural life, her utter lack of first-hand knowledge of the world, stood in sharp contrast to the one she inhabited intellectually. She was fluent in four languages, had read the Classics, and could discuss politics and international law with a confidence of thought and articulation that was almost unheard of in a woman. Her abilities, honed as they were by conversations with her father and the reading of the many volumes in their library, had moved from those of an amateur scholar to what, under any other circumstances, would have been considered formidable – a rare thing, even among men of the nobility.
Her father and Agnes had never forced segregation of class among the few children who lived on and around the estate, and as a result, Elizabeth was conversant with widely divergent cultural mores. She slipped easily and naturally between the vernacular of the servants and the Latin of English bishops and Primates. Concomitantly, the childhood games she knew stretched from those which required fine steeds and finer upbringing still, to those played by the ragtag band of ruffians who ran about the estate on which their parents served. Even Henry, taught to strictly to observe class boundaries, had been known to romp with them. But among all of these children, even among those closest to her, Elizabeth stood out. It was a matter of aloofness, they said, a matter of her holding herself apart. As years passed, it was put down to her education, and was much cited as an object lesson in why women should not be educated. But the truth was far more complicated.
Elizabeth preferred the company of books. Her father’s avocation, combined with her own naturally curious nature and her unorthodox upbringing, had produced a rare creature, one who could choose which world to inhabit. Did she want to be a child today and play with the others, or did she want to visit her friends who lived in the books and manuscripts she read? Almost always, Elizabeth chose the latter. She had never known anything beyond Coudenoure and so did not realize the oddness of her situation, the sheer audacity of the intellectual world in which she lived. Unconsciously, she assumed that everyone lived in a similar manner.
There had been no time to conjecture about the trip to the Vatican. So sudden was the order from the King that the small household had been thrown into chaos. Two days! Again and again Elizabeth circled back to the suddenness of the directive, but no sooner did she begin to feel she understood it and the complexity it engendered than a servant, or Agnes, or Thomas, burst into the room demanding her attention to this detail or that one concerning the impending voyage. But it was only impending for a day. The second day, the day of their departure, arrived in the form of a brusque knock upon the manor door in the early morning. It was Lady Margaret’s groomsmen, arrived with a small army of porters, to manage their departure from the estate and onto her river barge. The low-keeled, decadent Thames’ transport would take them down river where other servants of Lady Margaret’s would assist them onto the ship.
“She is quite resourceful, is she not?” mused the old man. Agnes could barely contain her disapproval as one crate after another disappeared out the front door and down the drive towards the river. “You should know, Lord Thomas, this is on your head!”
Thomas ignored her as did Elizabeth. Despite the desperately hasty arrangements, and the invidious nature of the event, they both found themselves looking forward rather than backward. It was done, this thing, and both father and daughter became more and more excited about it as the day passed. When the barge finally pulled away from the small dock which had serviced it, only Agnes was looking back towards Coudenoure. Thomas was deep in discussion with the ferryman who steered their passage. Elizabeth felt the fresh breeze coming from the direction of the port. She already missed Henry, but there was naught she could do. She stood and faced towards the sea.
*****
>
The rays of the late afternoon sun cut a low arc across the small, Kentish village of Woolwich. Situated on the banks of the Thames, it hosted minor sea traffic as a southern port for London. International merchants frequently preferred to load and unload from Woolwich rather than London. Wharf workers were cheaper to come by, and the trip on up river into the heart of the commercial district could be left to the middlemen, those who bought in bulk and sold in singles. Passage in and out of the tiny port was easier than navigating the busy shipping lanes of the Thames further north, and the facility of access to the great North Sea further enhanced its appeal. It was here that Lady Margaret Beaufort had directed her pilot to drop anchor.
Elizabeth, Agnes and Thomas watched in amazement as their possessions were unloaded from the barge onto a cart for the short trip to a galleon anchored nearby. At dock in Coudenoure, Lady Margaret’s river-craft had seemed enormous. None of the three could swim, and anxious moments had ensued as they had carefully boarded the boat as it rocked and swayed with the river’s tide. Now, however, they saw that experience and the barge itself in truer perspective. It was dwarfed by the three ships which were in port that day, especially the one which they saw was accepting their luggage. Another wagon appeared and they were helped onto it.
“Holy Mary, Mother of God,” began Agnes when she realized where they were being taken. She crossed herself repeatedly. Even Thomas, who had more world experience than Elizabeth and Agnes combined, paled at the sight before him. The sails of a great three-masted vessel picked up the fading western light and reflected it onto the muddy waters of the Thames. Pennants sporting the heraldic Tudor rose, red with a white center, flapped merrily from the tops of its sails and its bow and stern. Its long beak extended far beyond its bow and was wrapped in Tudor colors. As if that were not enough to impress, a wooden maiden extended from the end of the ship’s beak, clothed in Tudor colors as well. A rickety gangplank stretching from the ship’s center section to the dock was swarming with laborers laden with all manner of sacks, crates, bags and barrels. Mixed with the oleo of cargo was the family’s own baggage.
“How do we board that beast, pray tell?” Agnes asked, aghast as the answer dawned upon her. “By that? That narrow piece of wood? Never! I say to you, Lord Thomas, this is on your head!”
Thomas nodded with his mouth open in consternation. Elizabeth was simply agog and soon lost the power of speech altogether. The day had been so full of strange sights and sounds and people that she still had not collected herself, but was at this point floating along barely tethered to the earth, absorbing it all. Thomas had to be carried up the gangplank, and Agnes insisted on being carried as well. Only Elizabeth, confident but overwhelmed by the day, walked up the swaying contraption under her own power, in silent awe of what was happening to her and her family. Almost as soon as her feet were firmly upon the ship’s deck the captain began calling orders.
“Clear the dock and pull up the plank!”
His command was echoed down the ship, across the gangplank and onto the wharf by porters and sailors alike.
“Set the sails! Weigh anchor and we are gone from this place!”
A wild scurrying took hold and made the previous chaos seem like that of a child’s nursery room. Thomas and Elizabeth clung to the railing of the deck as the ship began a slow lurch into deeper water. Agnes threw up. Elizabeth felt her heartbeat rise as the dock grew further and further distant. Activity continued up and down the wharf from which they had just departed. Men with heavy packs on their backs still scurried about with their loads, distant, rough shouting and commands could still be heard, dories still plied the shallow wayside of the dock. Each movement and shout seemed choreographed to the time and place, random and yet not random in a ballet of intricate precision, played out against the river and the tide and the village with the sure monotony of eternal practice. Elizabeth watched it all in a trancelike state, feeling the ebb and surge of the current beginning to take her away, gradually ever farther from the scene ashore.
Suddenly, the pattern of activity on the dock was visibly interrupted. Elizabeth strained her eyes against the last of the fading light to discern the cause of the disruption.
“Father – what is happening there, back on the dock? And there?” She pointed as she spoke.
“Yes, child, I noticed too, but I cannot make it out. It is too distant now for me to see clearly in this light. What do you see?”
“There are horses but we are much too far now to hear any shouting. I can see two men, yes, there are two. They are, they are…father, I can no longer tell. It looks like one of them has waded into the river with his arms raised aloft, but that would be most strange. No doubt the gathering darkness is playing tricks.”
“Aye,” agreed Thomas. “Indeed. Well, daughter, ‘tis of no interest to us now. Take Agnes by the hand and let us see what accommodations this ship and its captain will offer us.”
They made their way back to the center deck where the captain awaited them.
Chapter Nine
Henry woke from a fitful sleep, not certain where he was. The weeks since Arthur’s death were only a whirlwind of unsettled memories now, filled with a jumble of grief, of processions, of government ministers inspecting him like a prized gelding, of his mother and father clinging to him as though their very lives depended upon his existence, and of midnight rides to palaces and fortresses he had previously only known through his father’s and Arthur’s descriptions. In normal times, any one of those would have given rise to deep consideration and a plan rooted in the context each engendered. But that was impossible in the swirl of events which Arthur’s death unleashed. The only unifying theme which motivated great and small alike was young Henry’s safety, for if the Tudor line had no successor, civil war would undoubtedly come again. It had been less than a generation since Bosworth Field had put an end to the great feud between the clans of the Lancasters and the Yorks. Their war had split England asunder, bringing grief and famine and chaos to all of England. The War of the Roses? Thought Henry. Laughable how such a poetic name could be used to describe such a godless conflict.
And so Henry had gone on an endless progress from estate to estate, passed from noble hand to noble hand, so each might make a display of loyalty to him and his ancestors. From one to another he had ridden with a faithful cadre of his father’s men, always on the move lest the dreaded plague, or the terrifying sweating sickness, catch up to him. Fear of insurrection infused every conversation at every great estate with fear and disquiet. Some reacted well to the stress of a change in the succession and the Tudor line from England’s land; others did not. Exhaustion had long since set in, and his father’s command – that he stay on the move until the risk of an uprising or disease passed – had been his only imperative. He had been denied the right to attend his brother’s funeral. The fears regarding his safety precluded any natural expressions of grief from young Henry, and the constant eyes upon him meant he dared not show weakness through tears.
As Henry lay in bed and sleepily watched the breeze rippling the leaves on the tree just beyond, he realized he was finally back at Greenwich in his mind, and he knew he still had not adjusted to the strain of being next in line to the throne, to the constant adulation and attention now showered upon him. As a second son, he had known rights reserved only for those of the highest rank. He knew deference, indeed, had always routinely practiced it in the presence of Arthur and their father the king, and had been shown the same by those whose rank was below his. But this, this was different. Men and women alike now bowed deeply upon his entry to a room. Every word he spoke seemed to be taken seriously and was repeated throughout whatever the venue happened to be at the moment, even by men three times his age. Young maids who three months earlier would have laughed at the spindly, awkwardness of his youth now blushed attractively and smiled invitingly when they happened to catch his eye. Their mothers displayed a willingness to put their daughters on show for Henry and whispered invitation
s in his ear that would have embarrassed a common pimp. Fathers managed to work their daughters’ names into almost any conversation, and at palace after palace, manor house after manor house, he was waited upon by women in their best clothing, displayed to their best advantage.
It was strange to consider that he would be king. Never in his life had he imagined such a thing. He had dreamed of chivalric wars and rescuing desperate damsels, but always in the role of a nobleman battling for King and country, never as the king himself. His upbringing had reinforced this notion, for King Henry had envisioned a smooth succession of the Tudor dynasty to Arthur – he wanted no talk of rival claims or fractured clans and families. Young Henry’s vision of his future had been one filled with adventure and feats of derring-do, but at the end of each fantasy which played through his head on occasion he had gone home to a country manor where his wife would be waiting for him, and he would spend his time devising architecture, writing music and studying philosophy and such. And there was always another critical element at the end of each of his fantasies. Elizabeth.
She was the wife who would be waiting for him at the end of a long and wearying crusade; it was she who would bathe his wounds and assuage his tired mind with her loving body and keen mind. Elizabeth would be a loving partner, warming his bed at night and his mind by day. At what moment, what age, his fantasies began ending with the cozy and familial theme he could not say. Perhaps he had always known that Elizabeth was the one person whom he trusted beyond all others and loved beyond measure. He was not sure. His need for her was simple, direct, and constant.
With a sudden kick of the eider down comforter which lay over him he jumped up and shouted for a servant. The day was well advanced and he had things to do.
“Charles!” He called to his friend in the adjoining bedroom. No answer.
