The Dragon and the Rose

by Roberta Gellis

  There was a continuing sense of puzzlement under his satisfaction, though, because Henry could not understand what Elizabeth was trying to accomplish. Any danger to him must be a danger to her. She was his wife, but not crowned queen—and England would not accept a ruling queen anyway. Surely her position was better as his wife than of, say, the aunt of Warwick if he should be put on the throne.

  Unless she hated him enough to think the whole world well lost for the sake of revenge? Henry's body did betray him. He shuddered involuntarily, and Elizabeth who was half-asleep herself tightened her grip on him and murmured, "Hush," as to a restless child.

  No, not that. It was not the Woodville way to sacrifice person or profit to any purpose. Henry relaxed again, but with an effort. Unconsciously, seeking solace, he began to rub his lips against Elizabeth's breast, sucking the fragrant skin gently. Still half-asleep, she sighed and turned a little toward him to facilitate his caress.

  The sickness that had been rising in Henry's throat dissipated. Woodville she was, and lustful as her mother. Thank God for that. Even that adder, the dowager queen, had never struck at the man who satisfied her lust. As long as he contented Elizabeth in bed, she would never hate him enough to harm him.

  Only when Edward strayed out of his matrimonial bonds had his wife formed factions counter to his purpose. Edward must have been mad, Henry thought, as his caress became more ardent and more purposeful. Who would wish to stray when passion and profit were so intermingled?

  Henry had not meant to spend the night this time, but dawn was lightening the sky when he rose to leave. "I have given you little rest," he said as Elizabeth sat up too. "Lie abed. When it is warmer we will rise together so that you may hunt with me."

  "I hope I shall have as little rest then." Elizabeth laughed.

  It was frank sexuality, a thing of which she had never been taught to be ashamed, but Henry took it for a warning. "You will never have more rest than you desire," he replied lightly. "I try to suit the feeding to the appetite."

  She laughed again, but grew grave quickly and touched his hand. "We spoke last night. Do you remember?"

  "Henry never forgets anything," he repeated, and gave back her list of names.

  That, too, was a warning, but Elizabeth either did not care or did not understand. She clapped her hands delightedly. "Oh, you do not forget. Wait, Henry," she said, reaching for him as he turned to go. "Will you come to me every night?"

  "Every night?" His brows rose.

  Elizabeth blushed a trifle and shook her head at him merrily. "Nay, I know there will be times when you or I are too tired, or when I cannot receive you—that way. I did not mean that as it sounded. Only … there is never any other time when we may be together to talk privately. At other times, if we send our courtiers away, they wonder what we are saying to each other."

  He leaned forward so swiftly to kiss her that Elizabeth did not see his eyes. When their lips parted, the Tudor's expression was merely tender. "I will come every night that it is humanly possible. There will be times when we are parted by necessity." He leaned forward again and touched her face gently. "At such times I will write you a letter every night—or a little every night if I have not time for a whole letter." The more she believed him to be in her power, Henry thought coldly, the harder she would strive to keep him there and to keep him king.

  Elizabeth lay back when the door closed behind her husband. She was both spent and content. Henry was certainly kind, as Margaret said, when he was well used. That message yesterday had been a bad mistake, but fortunately his hurt had been easily salved—more easily than she deserved for her carelessness, Elizabeth thought. It was natural that the scion of a Welsh adventurer would stand more upon his dignity than trueborn royalty. She must take care never to offend that sensitive and only half-buried sense of unworthiness. Her pride could afford to bend—privately. She was the daughter of a king and of a line more legitimate even than that of the original Lancastrian usurpers.

  It would also be necessary to have a care not to ask for too much nor to ask too often. Not that Elizabeth feared it would drive Henry from her bed just yet. His pleasure was too intense and too new. This power must be wielded cautiously, however, lest the victim become aware of the trap and reluctant to fall into it.

  Her mother had made that mistake. Elizabeth's contentment vanished at the thought of her mother. She had been feeling sleepier and sleepier and putting the feeling off. Now, wide awake, she wished she were asleep.

  What would she do if she found by her mother's reaction that something beyond simple charity lay under the wish to appoint those men to her household? Tell Henry? Her every instinct revolted at letting a stranger—satisfactory lover and husband notwithstanding, Henry was still a stranger—see the washing of dirty family linen. No, she would handle her mother herself.

  However, long before Elizabeth rose to break her fast, her family's linen was being firmly thrashed against the rocks of policy by Henry, Foxe, and Reginald Bray.

  "Where did you get this list, sire?" Bray asked, plainly unhappy.

  "I think I will keep my own council on that," Henry responded with a smile. "You know them?"

  "I know them because it is my business to know such things. Mostly they are believed favorable to you, but Brodrugan will be in, or start, the first rebellion against you, sire. Broughton, the Harrington brothers, and Beaumont are a trifle more cautious, but will not be far behind."

  "Gloucester's men?" Foxe asked.

  Bray shook his head. "Oh, no. They hated Gloucester sore, which is why they are accounted your friends. But they are legitimists—or that is what they call themselves—Yorkist legitimists."

  "Would they accept Her Grace as a ruling queen?" The question seemed almost idle, for Henry still looked very sleepy as he lounged beside the fire in furred slippers and bedrobe.

  "I do not think they are mad enough for that," Bray said. "They would elevate Warwick. Indeed, it would ease my heart, sire, if you would say who proposed these men to you. They are dangerous. Whoever named them should be watched."

  Henry laughed. "Do not trouble yourself for that. Are they dangerous to me personally? Would they use poison or a knife to rid the land of me?"

  Bray hesitated. "In an ordinary way I would say not. They think of themselves as honorable men, but I would not wish to be responsible for vouching for them in this case. Why not order their arrest?"

  "On what charge?" Foxe asked.

  "I am a lover of justice," Bray replied with a troubled frown. "Yet if I had a shadow of a cause, these men would already languish in a safe prison or be even safer in their graves."

  "God forbid!" Henry exclaimed. "It is sheer foolishness to slay the goat that leads the sheep to the slaughter pens. Foxe, find me appointments for each of them, nice safe employment that will keep them in the court but not too close to my person. Do you not find yourself in urgent need of assistance, Richard? How about Morton and Edgecombe and Poynings? Are they not all overworked? And you, Bray?"

  Two grim faces reflected no image of Henry's half-smile. "You play at a dangerous game, sire," Bray protested.

  Henry's smile broadened, and he stretched and yawned. "When I was six, Edward summoned me to court. If my mother had taken me—I would have died. When I was fourteen, my uncle fled with me to Brittany in the teeth of a gale that promised to drown us because death was more certain if we stayed. When I was eighteen Edward offered my present wife as bait—and sent two murderers to fetch me. When I was twenty-six, Richard bribed Landois to slay me or send me hither to slaughter. I do not count the assassins who came, tried, and failed. What did you say about danger?"

  "There are more lives than one hanging on the single thread of yours now, sire," Foxe said reprovingly, pulling his lip. "Mine is one. I would like to see you use more caution. Nonetheless, I can also see the merit in this move. Strict watch will be kept."

  "They will make five little windows to see into many more dark hearts," Henry murmured. "Bray, let
me have a list of whosoever else leans this way." His breath caught at the appalled look in Bray's eyes, but he changed the tiny sign of fear easily enough into a choke of laughter. "The ringleaders, man. I do not expect you to list the name of every non-Lancastrian male in the country."

  "There are women, too," Bray replied miserably.

  "Women, too, then," Henry agreed easily, though a weight seemed to be pressing his breath out of him. "For now, Reginald, that will be all." When he was gone, Henry said softly, "My little Foxe, you will check him. Bray is a lover of justice with too many scruples and too many fears. Eventually you must take over his work. Kings cannot afford scruples."

  "He will be better testing and watching the judges," Foxe agreed. "He will do you much good, for it will give him pleasure to ferret out that kind of corruption, and you will get a name as a lover of justice."

  "Richard, I love you," Henry murmured. "So often you save me from needing to speak my own thoughts."

  "And I you, sire, because great affairs are as meat and drink to me, yet I could not be patient to lead a stumbling, blind ruler. But speaking of justice, is it not time for another visit to the prisoners in the Tower?"

  "Yes. It is time also to free Northumberland. How goes the truce with the Scots?"

  Foxe understood. As soon as that was signed, Northumberland could be released. Any treachery he contemplated, if he should be untrustworthy, could then be nosed out sooner and reported by Henry's spies in the north and at James's court.

  "Near done. The envoys are very agreeable."

  "Too agreeable?"

  "I think not. They do their king's will in this, and James is a peaceful man. Sire, I would say orisons for his good health."

  "You think it in danger?"

  "From a slipped word here and there, I think his son will have the throat out of him—and then out of you—if he can."

  Henry stared into the fire. "A viper in the bosom is good reason for peace abroad," he said lightly, turning and turning the ring Elizabeth had given him on his finger.

  Some hours later, Elizabeth invited her mother to breakfast. This, in itself, was offensive because the dowager queen believed she had the right to walk in and out of her daughter's apartments whenever she wanted, and this seemed a clear indication that Elizabeth did not intend to permit such freedom. Elizabeth, she concluded, arriving in high dudgeon, was an ungrateful, unnatural child, and if ill befell her she would deserve it.

  The dowager queen's once-beautiful face was drawn into ugly lines of dissatisfaction and self-pity. The children who loved her were all reft from her, and she was left with mean-spirited daughters. Elizabeth, grown so high and mighty since she married the bastard Welshman that she needed a whipping, and also those two puling younger ones who clung to their sister, ignoring their duty to their betrayed mother.

  "I suppose I should curtsy right down to the ground to you," she snapped after she haughtily dismissed the queen's ladies.

  Elizabeth made no protest at the dismissal. They were better off alone. "Not to me, mother," she replied. "If you curtsied at all, it would be to my office."

  "Well, I will not. Even that—that—"

  "The king, mother?"

  "Call him what you will. He is no king to me. Even he forbade his mother to bow to him."

  Elizabeth's eyes dropped. She was ashamed—not for teasing her mother about curtsying, but for the difference in the relationship that permitted Henry to fall on his knees before his mother without fearing the result. Perhaps she was doing an injustice. Her mother's life had been so bitter, flickering unsteadily between too-great brilliance and too-dark obscurity.

  "Nay, mama, it was a naughty jest. You know how light of wit I am. Indeed, I have tried my best to accomplish your will. I begged the … my husband softly, and I received what I asked. The gentlemen will have appointments. Henry's own secretary, Dr. Foxe, brought the warrants."

  The queen's mother grasped the parchments, saw that they were signed and sealed, and began to read. "You fool!" she gasped.

  "Fool?" Elizabeth paled, her worst fears confirmed.

  "I said appointments in your household, you idiot, not his!"

  "But what difference can it make? They have a livelihood now. Is that not what you desired?"

  "What I—?" The dowager saw her daughter's mouth quivering, and she softened her expression. How she and Edward, who both loved power, could have been cursed with such weak-minded children she did not know. She must, however, soothe her daughter or the puling fool would be idiot enough to tell her bastard husband that her mama did not approve the appointments.

  "Elizabeth, my love," she said patiently, "your husband was forced by the love the people still have for your father into marrying you. Do you not see that his one desire must be to rid himself of you? Therefore, he has set your household full of spies."

  "I am not afraid of spies, mama," Elizabeth said sturdily. If this was her mother's reason, she was relieved. She did not fear Henry; she had seen his face all soft, his eyes swooning with passion. The lips that touched her breasts so eagerly, the hands that sought the secrets of her body so gently, would never be used to order her away. "I shall never do anything a spy could report to my disfavor. What is there to fear?"

  "Idiot!" her mother spat, losing control again. "Cannot evidence be made? Besides, how can you be sure you will never receive a person or give charity or a gift to someone who is secretly disloyal? You must begin again and free yourself of these watching eyes. I will find some other men suitable to your service."

  "I can ask for nothing more just now," Elizabeth said slowly.

  The dowager queen groaned. "Now is the time, now, before he tires of you, before he fills his bed with whores. Refuse him until he grants your desire. He cannot bed a mistress yet. Even his own men would frown if he did so before you were with child. They need a Yorkist heir to bolster their worthless claim to your father's throne."

  You have just outargued yourself, Elizabeth thought. Henry can wish me no harm if he needs a Yorkist heir. If the men in my household are spies, are they not here, perhaps, to protect me from the dangers you threatened me with? In any case, to rid myself of them, would that not prove me guilty of evil intent? Tears welled into Elizabeth's eyes and rolled down her cheeks. She did not know whether her fear that her mother could be right or her renewed fear that she was hatching another conspiracy was more dreadful.

  CHAPTER 15

  "What do you think of the temper of the Londoners?" Henry asked John Morton who was now archbishop of Canterbury, the winter having slain the aged Bourchier.

  "Towards you, Your Grace?" Morton nodded at Henry's smile. "The priests tell me there have never been so many unpaid prayers so fervently said for any man's health before. I dare believe that if an enemy to you fronted this city, it would close its gates and fight."

  Henry sighed. "A tribute I pray it may never need to make me."

  The archbishop contemplated the raindrops coursing down the small, glazed panes of Henry's private closet. It was a small, pretty room behind his bedchamber, fitted with sybaritic splendor and meant for confidences. Henry used it when he wished to work alone or to confer privately with someone. All in all, the time he spent in it was not much, but it was invariably important.

  "There is no reason to delay your progress, except, of course, the weather." Morton paused, then said slowly, "You should go. You need the change. You are tired, my son."

  The word was a reminder of the confession Henry had just made. The king bit his lips. "Am I overanxious? Elizabeth is not herself." How could she be, he thought. What sort of a marriage is it? I watch her. She watches me. "I dare not take her," he added tensely, "and I dare not leave her behind."

  "You are tired," Morton repeated. "You must leave her here, sire, both for your health's sake and for policy."

  Henry stirred restlessly. He knew it was not Elizabeth's physical demands upon him that were dangerous, in spite of Morton's reference to his health. "She desires to
go. I do not wish to offend her."

  "Promise her the next progress. It is necessary that this time you appear alone as king. The north is—"

  A quick gesture of irritation curbed the repetition that the north was too strongly Yorkist and might greet Elizabeth as queen rather than Henry as king. "How goes the business with the French?"

  Morton showed no surprise at the switch in subject. "I have not yet received word, but I expect daily—nay, hourly—to hear that the treaty is ratified."

  "And they will surely free Dorset?"

  "It is the second condition."

  "I wish to know at once, day or night, whatever the hour. Send to Her Grace's chambers for me if you cannot find me in mine."

  Now Morton was surprised. All discussion of affairs of state were sedulously kept away from Elizabeth's quarters. "Yes, Your Grace. Is there aught of speciality in this treaty of which I am not aware?"

  "No. It is the draught of honey to make the bitter purgative go down. When we first met, Her Grace desired that I free Dorset. She has respoken that request more than once, having a great natural affection for—" Henry paused "—her family. When I have news that he is free, I will tell her I cannot take her on progress and offer her her brother's company as consolation."

  The archbishop stifled a sigh of pride and relief. All of Henry's advisors had set their faces against Elizabeth's accompanying him. As ever he had listened patiently to them, but until this moment he had refused to commit himself as to whether his wife's desire or his ministers' advice had more influence.

  In fact, the news of Dorset’s release came three days later, most conveniently when Henry was transacting the normal business of the day. There was a letter from Dorset in the packet, also—just the right kind of letter, filled with glib thanks and meaningless protestations of good faith. It would please Elizabeth; that was more important than the nausea it raised in himself, in Henry's opinion.