Royal Mistress

by Anne Easter Smith

  “Go in peace, Jane Shore,” he said after giving her the blessing, “and sin no more.”

  The monks helped Jane to her feet, then bowed to the bishop and returned to their monastery. She limped toward the door, and sat down heavily on a stone seat in the darkness of a little side chapel. She was afraid to exit the church; she had endured enough humiliation for one day. Besides, the gloom hid her tears and her shame.

  It was there that Ankarette, carrying a pail of water and clean bandages, found her mistress a few minutes later. Jane had never touched her servant before, but when she saw the faithful woman’s round, cheerful face, she let Ankarette fold her in a comforting embrace and rock her exhausted body and bruised soul.

  Jane did not remember the first week at Sophie’s house. Whether from the deprivation and filth of the prison or from the infected sores upon her feet, a fever ravaged her that caused Sophie to send for a doctor. He bled his patient then prescribed bed rest and quiet. The Vandersand children tiptoed around the loft where the family slept and spoke softly when downstairs, earning praise from their mother and smiles of approval from the faithful Ankarette, who would not leave Jane’s side, along with Poppy, who, ecstatic to see her mistress again, lay curled on the bed at Jane’s feet.

  Toward the end of July, when the king had left on his progress, Sophie and her daughter, Janneke, dragged a wooden tub into the house and began heating water in kettles over the fire. Clothed in one of Sophie’s billowing homespun dresses, Jane, even thinner after prison and sickness, crept gingerly down the wooden stepladder to an eagerly anticipated bath. Sophie put her second daughter in charge of Pieter, and rolled up her sleeves. Ankarette had picked rosemary, lavender, and rose petals to sprinkle in the warm water, and when Jane finally sank into its scented depths, she sighed with pleasure. Her arms and legs were spotted with bedbug bites, one or two festering, and the herbal water soothed them.

  Sophie and Janneke had been shocked by Jane’s uninhibited stripping to her bare skin, never having exposed their nakedness even for a bath, but Jane laughed at them. “Come, come, we are all women here. You both must have cleaned me, changed my linen, while I was ill,” she chided them. “Surely I hold no secrets from you, now?”

  Ankarette tut-tutted, Janneke grinned broadly, and Sophie tittered. “Ja, you have no secrets, Jane,” Sophie told her. She leaned into her friend conspiratorially, “And we know which man you vant to see. Tom. You call his name many times in your fever, lieveling.”

  Jane’s face fell. “I may call his name, but he has not come, has he? Does he know where I am?”

  Sophie nodded. “But Jehan told him not to come vhen you are so sick, Jane. Soon you vill see him.” She had been unimpressed by Tom Grey’s nonchalance when told of Jane’s illness, but Jehan had excused the marquess on the grounds he was concerned his hiding place might be discovered if he ventured forth too many times from the Pope’s Head.

  Jane forced a laughed. “A pox on him! I think I have had enough of men, Sophie.” She wagged her finger at Janneke. “I hope you have learned from my mistakes, my dear. If I had listened to my father and stayed with my husband, like an obedient wife, my life would not have come to this.”

  “Was it very frightening, Mistress Jane? The walk I mean,” Janneke ventured shyly. “I would have died if it had been me.”

  “Enough, daughter. Mistress Jane does not vant to talk—”

  “Ah, but I do, Sophie,” Jane cut her off kindly. “I will never forget it, but if I do not talk to someone about it, it will fester in me like a canker and I shall never laugh or love life again.”

  And for the next ten minutes, while Ankarette sponged her hair with a mixture of lemon juice and camomile, and Janneke and Sophie gently scrubbed away the rest of the grime of Ludgate goal and the city’s streets from her body, Jane described the sadness, anger, hate, and humiliation she had experienced in every agonizing step on her penitential journey. Her eyes full of love, she thanked Sophie for her daring outburst of support in the street, and she shed tears when she recalled her parents’ pain and Amy’s gentle gesture of sympathy. By the time she had finished, all three of the women around the tub had stopped what they were doing and were deep in reflection about what Jane had gone through.

  “I made my choices, right or wrong,” Jane admitted, shaking her head, “and I have lived like a queen, but none of it was worth the depths of indignity and despair I have gone through in the past few months since Edward’s death. And there were nights in Ludgate when I believed the devil had gnawed at my soul.”

  Then seeing the compassion in their faces, she was quick to reassure her friends. “Never fear, poor, poor Mistress Shore is quite reformed.” She cupped Janneke’s round face in her fingers. “And I would exchange any of the years I spent wallowing in luxury for holding my own sweet child, like you, in my arms.”

  The midday meal was a merry one when Jehan arrived home. He grinned at Jane and nodded his approval. “You look well again, Jane. That is good.”

  He waited until the younger children had been sent outside to play afterward before regaling the women with the latest rumors from the weavers’ hall where he worked. “A plot was foiled to rescue the two little boys from the Tower,” he announced, and lowering his voice, he added: “Jane’s marquess was part of it, they say. With the king far from London and the nobles and their retinues disappeared back to their homes in the country, the time was ripe to try.”

  Jane was quizzical. “Why would anyone want to rescue them? They are now no longer important. Besides, why would they need rescuing from the comfortable royal apartments?”

  “They say the boys were in danger,” Jehan declared.

  “Who says?” Jane retorted. “And in danger from whom? The king is crowned, the boys are bastards, and there is an end to it. Richard may have executed my friend Will for no good reason that I can see, but Will opposed Richard, so he was vulnerable.” Jane had been surprised to learn from one of the newest inmates in Ludgate that Richard had so far not attainted Will, and in fact he had even placed Katherine Hastings and her properties under his protection. Jane believed it spoke volumes of the guilt Richard must have felt for his swift elimination of the loyal councilor.

  “But as much as I hate Gloucester—I mean, the king,” she continued, “I do not believe he would harm his nephews. He is too moral for that, and he loved his brother too well.” She thought for a moment and then decided, “It would seem more likely that the queen and Dorset would want to use the boys to try and mount a rebellion. That is not the same as claiming they are in danger.”

  Jehan persisted. “The duke of Buckingham thought it was important enough to stay behind when the king left. He is often seen at the Tower with the new constable, Brackenbury. ’Tis said they foiled the plot.” Then he leaned forward with more urgency. “The second rumor is”—and he savored this one with more relish—“that the boys have been . . .” And he drew his finger across his throat.

  At this his audience gasped in unison, and Jane felt a frison along the backs of her arms and up her neck, as though Jehan’s words had cast a shadow over her. “No one has seen them in the garden playing for nigh on a week,” he said, placing his finger to his lips, as though the king had a spy hiding in the Vandersand loft. “They used to play with their bows and arrows every day. So where are they?”

  Sophie snorted. “Ill. They are perhaps ill, Jehan. Our Jane vas ill for one veek. Any mother knows a child can be ill for a veek, maybe two. You should not listen to such gossip, husband,” she admonished him, and Jane hid a smile.

  “I am simply telling you what I have heard,” Jehan replied, sulking. “Now fetch me some more ale, wife, and get on with your woman’s work.”

  Sophie, Ankarette, and Janneke rose to do his bidding, but Jane sat quietly pondering Jehan’s disturbing rumor.

  Behind the sanctuary walls of Westminster, Elizabeth had also been made aware of the possibility that her sons were dead. It was her son Tom who sent her word, throug
h a trusted messenger, regretting the failure to rescue the boys and saying that he feared they had been murdered. Elizabeth only half believed him; she had known Richard of Gloucester for a long time, and in her heart, she could not reconcile him as a murderer of children. She preferred to think he had sent them away, or that Tom had been listening to drunken gossip.

  Besides, the queen had done with weeping. It was time she found another way to regain what she and Edward’s other children had lost. Elizabeth had ignored Richard’s emissaries asking that she leave sanctuary and saying that Richard would do right by her and her children. She did not trust the man to keep his promise, and therefore her self-enforced confinement continued.

  She was now officially addressed as Dame Grey, her marriage to Edward declared null and void. Her girls could now only look forward to meager matches, and so Elizabeth, from the safety of sanctuary, was ready to negotiate with whomever she could to improve their lot. Now was the time for action, she determined, and within a few days, through her chaplain, she had had the first of several conversations with Lady Margaret Beaufort, otherwise known as Lady Stanley, mother of the exiled Henry Tudor. In Lady Margaret, Elizabeth found her match; both were ambitious women adept at political scheming. United in their disgust of Richard of Gloucester’s perceived usurpation of the crown, the two unlikely allies made a mothers’ pact to support a betrothal between Margaret’s son Henry and Bess, Edward’s oldest daughter.

  “But I do not know this man, Tudor,” Bess complained, when her mother took her aside and explained that Bess was lucky to be considered by a man who had a claim to the throne.

  Elizabeth contained her exasperation. Bess appeared to have inherited none of her mother’s ambition and drive, and was in danger of being as passive about political matters as her father in his later years. “My dear daughter, I have no wish to keep reminding you that you are no longer in a position to expect much more than a husband of the lesser nobility now that you and your sisters are illegitimate in the eyes of the church. Henry Tudor—should anything happen to Richard and his puling brat—could claim the throne through his mother. She has a direct line to King Edward the Third.” Failing to mention that it was the excluded Beaufort bastard line, she hurried on, “And if Henry is agreeable to wed you, you have the chance of becoming queen of England.” She ended on a triumphant note, anticipating an improvement in Bess’s sullen countenance. She was disappointed.

  “I will say again, Mother, I don’t even know him. I want to be happy with whomever I marry—like you and father,” she persisted, knowing her mother had no defense against that argument. “If I am not to marry the French prince because I am a bastard, then let me find someone I love.”

  “Pah! Love,” Elizabeth spat. “Your father and I were lucky at first, ’tis all. And our marriage was not all it seemed. Remember Jane Shore?”

  Bess blushed. “I hardly think this is the time to talk about Mistress Shore. I prefer to remember the late king as my loving father.” She looked at her mother defiantly then. “He once told me that both sets of my grandparents married with love. Was that ‘luck,’ too?”

  “Ah, Bess, you exasperate me. Maybe I should offer Cecily to Henry instead. Of all your sisters, she is the one who might see sense.”

  Bess tossed her head but demurred. “I am sorry, Mother, I will do as you say.” Then a thought occurred to her. “Can a bastard be a queen? Nay, I thought not,” she said, seeing her mother’s doubtful expression. “Then why would Henry wed me?”

  “As soon as Henry is king, he will undo Richard’s declaration and make you all legitimate again, do you not see?”

  “But if Henry makes your children legitimate, Mother, then what does he do with Ned? My brother would then have to be the king. It makes no sense.”

  Elizabeth took a deep breath. She would not give up hope that this nightmare would end, that Stillington would confess he had lied about the precontract and Ned would be restored to the throne. But in the worst case that Tom’s rumor was correct, she had to prepare her daughter. “I do not know how to tell you this, but Tom believes Ned and Dickon are gone.”

  Bess gripped her mother’s hand. “What do you mean, gone? Away? Abroad?” She watched her mother lower her eyes, and her face twisted in pain. “Are you saying my brothers are . . . are dead? How can that be? Have they been ill?”

  Elizabeth shook her head, and now she felt like crying. Was that why Richard had ignored her pleas to be reunited with her boys? What other explanation was there? “What can we think but that Richard ordered their deaths,” she said. “But, as much as I loathe him for disinheriting us, I cannot believe he would snuff out the light of those innocent babes. ’Tis said, however, they have not been seen for nigh on a fortnight, Bess, and even Ned’s physician Doctor Argentine is forbidden entry into their apartments. It must mean they are no longer there.”

  Bess was aghast. “Perhaps they were secretly sent away. Uncle Richard loves Ned and Dickon. He may not like you, Mother, but he is not a murderer.”

  “Nay?” Elizabeth retorted. “Do not forget your stepbrother, Richard, nor your Uncle Anthony nor poor Will Hastings.”

  But Bess was thinking. “Then someone else must have . . .” She could not bring herself to say the painful words. She patted her mother’s hand. “We must believe he has sent them somewhere safe. To our Aunt Margaret in Burgundy or up to one of his northern castles.”

  “Safe from what, from whom if not himself?” Elizabeth snapped. “I am the only one who wants them back, bastards or not. They would be safe here with me,” she said, and finally, after having stoically borne her tribulations in the cramped confines of sanctuary for so many weeks, her face betrayed her genuine anguish. Kindhearted Bess gathered Elizabeth into her arms and rocked the frail woman as a mother might a child.

  “Are you mad! Did the devil himself spawn you?” Richard shouted at his cousin, Buckingham, as the duke stared aghast at his enraged king. Richard grasped Harry’s arm and almost dragged him to the garderobe, where they might not be overheard.

  Harry threw off Richard’s hand and felt for his dagger. He was afraid for his life. Had he not been so self-centered, he might have empathized with Hastings’s fear on the day of the chamberlain’s arrest and execution. He was now experiencing the full force of Richard’s wrath, and it was formidable. All he knew now was that he had made a terrible mistake in believing Richard would be glad he had rid the king of his bastard nephews. He had galloped hard to Gloucester from London, asked for a private interview, and had been welcomed gladly by his king, who had clapped him on the shoulder and called him his “dear cousin.” In the spirit of such a warm reception, he had simply blurted out his news. “Your grace, cousin, you need never again worry for your crown. I have taken care of the boys in the Tower. They cannot threaten you anymore. They are with God.” Sweet Jesu, he had never seen a man’s face change so quickly. Should he now deny it? Say he had been joking? Should he blame Brackenbury?

  “Take your hand off your weapon, my lord,” Richard’s icy voice broke into Harry’s jumbled thoughts. “Sit down,” he commanded, pushing his larger cousin onto the wooden garderobe seat, “and tell me exactly what you have done.”

  Harry put his head in his hands and began to mumble his terrible tale. Several times Richard prodded him to speak up, confess his sin, and omit nothing. As he listened in horror, Richard’s stomach contracted little by little with every odious detail, and a deep sorrow gradually fell upon him. What was he to do? He had raised his cousin up to heights that nearly touched his own. Everyone knew the two were hand-in-glove from the moment they arrived in London from Stony Stratford with young Ned. He had consulted with Harry on everything and embraced his only royal cousin as councilor.

  So who would believe that Harry had acted on his own? Who would believe Richard himself had not ordered the deaths of the princes? If he accused Harry, who among those nobles who had only halfheartedly supported his taking of the crown would believe the two of them had not
planned this scheme together? And then ’twould be his word against Harry’s, for surely Harry would swear Richard had been complicit. He forced himself to listen to this man for whom all respect was now cascading down the garderobe chute with its customary effluence.

  “The boatman rowed us out of sight of the lights at Westminster, and once on land among the trees, I promised the boys fresh horses sent from you would be waiting.” Buckingham was all but sobbing now.

  Richard stiffened. “So not satisfied with lying to them about the ‘adventure’ you were secretly taking them on, you let them believe ’twas I who planned it. They died believing their Uncle Richard would take them to safety in the morning. Dear God, Harry, you have consigned both our souls to hell!” he hissed. “Continue! I would hear you confess your crime, make you relive it, and for my sins—because I see you believed I would condone this heinous act—so imprint it on my mind that I shall never rest again. Now, tell me!”

  “They felt no pain, I swear to you. They were sleeping peacefully and I bundled up my mantle and smothered . . .” He could not finish as the memory of first one and then the other young prince wriggling and struggling for breath overcame him, and he blubbered like a child. Richard was so sickened by this monstrous crime that he threw his cousin from the privy seat and vomited down the chute. Harry was crouched on the floor, wiping his nose on his sleeve when Richard dragged him up against the wall and rasped in his face: “What did you do with them? Did you at least give them a decent burial?”

  Harry had had enough. He pushed the smaller Richard off him roughly. “I said a prayer, covered them with branches and ferns, and left them where they lay.” He walked out of the confined space and pulled himself together. Why should he feel remorse for a sacrifice he believed he had made for Richard? Certes, his cousin had never voiced such a wish, but Harry was sure Richard had secretly desired it. And besides, he was a Stafford with Plantagenet blood in his veins and should not be mistreated like a lackey. His resentment mounted.