“Why do they call him so?”
“Because he is dark and hirsute, I suppose.”
“Let us pray it be for his hair and not his heart!” she murmured.
Seeing her blue eyes all awash with tears, Stafford put aside ceremony and lifted her little hands in his strong ones to cover them with kisses. “Do not worry so for them, dear Bess!” he entreated, his dark head bent close above her fair one.
For a blessed moment or two they stayed close in that sweet companionship. How good, she thought, to have a strong man hold one—a man who cared. So must girls feel, she supposed, who were answerable only to their husbands and not to the State. How easy, she thought, to care for some small country manor, living to please one man. How doubly sweet to bear and bring up children. Against the warmth of Tom Stafford's shoulder her generous mouth curved into a happy smile. For a moment she imagined herself playing with his children on some ordinary sunlit lawn. But even the escape of dreaming was short-lived. She was a Plantagenet and must obey her destiny, walking head high with tragedy if need be. “I will try not to worry, dear Tom,” she promised, gently withdrawing her hands. “But perhaps you could come again and give me news of them—after the coronation?”
Much as he longed to come, Stafford hesitated. “I am no longer of the Queen's household—”
Elizabeth laid her fingers persuasively on his sleeve. “I know how she insults you, and the risks you run. But if it be possible come to me here. I will walk alone in the cloister before vespers. I have lost so much happiness that it would be hard to think I shall not see you again.”
Daring and ardent was Stafford's kiss on the palm of her hand, but brief as ardent. A memory for a girl to live on. Not enough to hold her his, perhaps, but a stirring of the senses strong enough to teach her hunger for some other man's love.
It was days later before Elizabeth saw him again, and then it seemed impossible to recapture the enchantment of their former mood. All the fanfares and shouting of the coronation were over and only the deep-toned vesper bell vied with the renewed clamour of carpenters now taking down the stands.
“It seems incredible how orderly the streets look again after so much preparation,” Stafford said, standing in the shadow of the cloister wall and having to shout unromantically against the cacophony.
“So much careful preparation,” Elizabeth repeated dully, thinking of all the plotting which must have gone on within the lovely walls of Baynard Castle, and of how persuasive her domineering old grandmother could be.
“Anne Neville's purple dress looked gorgeous,” he said at random, trying to break the constraint which lay between them.
“Did you see my brothers?”
“No.”
“Then, after all, Richard did not hold her train?”
Stafford shook his head. “No, Bess. The Countess of Richmond held it.”
“And she a Lancastrian's widow!”
“She is Lord Stanley's wife now. And Stanley has so many retainers it pays to keep in with him. In his quieter and more calculating way he almost becomes a kingmaker, like the new Queen's father, mighty Warwick, was.”
“I know. I suppose that is why Gloucester freed him almost as soon as he had got rid of poor Will Hastings. At least there is one thing nobody has accused my uncle of yet, and that is of being a fool!” Stafford noticed that her voice had borrowed some of her mother's bitterness so that she seemed far removed from the girl whose tears he had comforted.
There was a lull in the half-hearted hammering, so that only the Abbey bell broke the afternoon peace. “It was unbelieveably good of you to come; but I must go now or they will miss me,” she said; yet still stood a while, the book of prayers her father had given her clasped whitely against the sombre velvet of her skirt.
Tom Stafford waited for what he knew she would ask. He realised that, although he had risked much to come, her ultimate thought was not with him. “And you are sure my brother Richard was not there?” she insisted. “Not anywhere?”
“No,” he answered grimly. “The only one of that name was King Richard the Third, with pale Anne Neville, his Queen.”
DEAR TOM, WHAT HAVE you brought us?” chorused the younger Princesses, running to greet Stafford when at last he contrived to visit Westminster again. After weeks of dull seclusion they would have welcomed any visitor from the outside world, but he had always been such a favourite with them that they danced around him in delight.
“I give you three guesses,” he teased, trying to keep their marauding hands from the basket of gifts which his servant had just deposited upon the Abbot's table.
“A new dress!” cried dainty Ann.
“Some new toys to play with,” lisped Katherine, most of whose childish treasures had been left in the Palace.
“And you, my lady?” asked Stafford, smiling across their bobbing heads at their grown-up sister.
“A new dress would scarcely come amiss,” laughed Elizabeth, ruefully holding out the worn folds of her one-and-only black velvet. “But just to see you again is the best surprise of all.” Inevitably their visitor went red with pleasure, and, embarrassed by her own spontaneous candour, she turned hurriedly to her fifteen-year-old sister. “And what about you, Cicely? What do you hope Tom has brought us in that intriguing basket?”
“Food,” said Cicely, with equal if less romantic candour.
Elizabeth made a shocked little gesture of reproof and Thomas Stafford was all concern at once. Having shared in the culturally rich life which their parents had hitherto provided for them, the idea that they might need the bare necessities of life had never occurred to him. It shocked him so much that he left his open basket to be rifled by Ann and Katherine and came to look more carefully at Elizabeth. She had always been attractively slender, but now it struck him that she had become altogether too fine drawn for a girl of eighteen. By the light of a long window by which she stood he could discern small hollows beneath the lovely moulding of her cheekbones so that it seemed for the first time that she bore some resemblance to the sharper beauty of her mother. “Does that mean that you are actually hungry?” he demanded, with rising indignation.
“No, no, of course not!” she denied cheerfully. “It is just that Cicely, as you know, is a horrible little gourmand. All the same,” she admitted, compelled by his searching gaze, “it seems a long time since poor little Katherine had any sweetmeats, and I do wish the good lay brothers would sometimes devise some dainty morsels to tempt the Queen's appetite. Though I suppose it is ungrateful of me to say so when we must all be such a sore burden to them.”
“But surely you can send your servants out to buy whatever her Grace fancies, or your friends can bring in a capon or some fruit?”
“It used to be so until a few days ago, Tom, but now it is not so easy. I am sure we are quite safe in sanctuary, for my uncle is not the man to violate the protection of Holy Church. But, as my astute brother foretold, he can set a guard outside to prevent anyone from getting either in or out.”
“Set a guard?” exclaimed Stafford. “I had not heard of it.”
“It has happened only within the last day or so.”
“Come and see, Tom,” invited Cicely, catching at his hand and drawing him closer to the window. “Look, there is John Nesfield, that horse-faced squire of his, barking orders at the men-at-arms. Bullying them for allowing you to pass, no doubt.”
“How did you manage to pass?” asked Elizabeth, who had been too overjoyed at seeing him to think about it before.
“No one challenged me, and I am afraid I did not even notice Nesfield's men,” confessed the warlike Duke of Buckingham's son, shamed by his absentmindedness.
“Then you must have been making up a sonnet to Bess's eyebrows!” giggled Cicely.
“The fact is that as soon as the Countess of Richmond had your message she asked me to bring her physician to see if he could be of service to the—to your lady mother. I suppose she must have persuaded her husband, Lord Stanley, to get the new
King's permission, for certainly Doctor Lewis was conducted immediately to your mother's room.”
“That was very kind of the Countess, and I pray you convey to her my deep gratitude. Although her sympathies must be Lancastrian, I sometimes think she is one of the best and ablest women in the realm.”
“And certainly the greatest patron of learning. You should hear the students up at Oxford and Cambridge singing her praises!”
While Cicely joined her younger sisters and shared in the gifts he had brought to relieve their tedium, Stafford beckoned to his servant to bring the book of poems he had chosen for Elizabeth, and they sat for a while reading some of his favourite passages.
“I so much miss the books my father used to bring me,” she said gratefully, poring over the exquisite illuminations. “This will help to pass the hours and be a kind of—escape.”
“You do not need to stay here. King Richard would willingly have you all at Court, you know.”
“In his power, you mean.”
“I think he would be kind.”
“Ah, well, my mother is so certain this is best for our security; though, for myself, I would barter security for freedom.”
“Because half your heart is in a place you cannot get to.”
“Yes. I would sooner be a servant in the Tower so that I could make my brothers' bed!” Elizabeth forgot the poems and began moving restlessly about the room. “Is there still no news of them, Tom?”
“My father, although loyal at heart to all of you, is often called there to Council-meetings, and he makes what enquiries he can,” answered Stafford, quietly laying aside the book. “But no one in the royal household ever sees them.”
“They do not play with Anne Neville's little son? Nor share his tutor?”
“Not that I ever heard of.”
“Nor ever go out riding in the sunshine, of course. Oh, Tom, how they must long to speak to us, and how heavily the hours must hang!”
“At least I have something to tell you which may comfort you,” he said, having kept his best tidings to soften the rest. “I invented some errand which took me by boat down-river, and as we rowed past the Tower I saw them looking out from the walk upon the battlements. I was not near enough for speech, of course, but one of them waved to me.”
“Oh, that is wonderful! How kind of you!”
“It is no more than many others do. I do assure you that many a good citizen of London grows anxious for them and takes boat that way. And several swear they have seen them.”
“Then it is certain they are alive!”
“Why, Bess, my dear, you must not let yourself think like that!” he remonstrated, taking her firmly by the shoulders so that she must stand still and heed him. “We, who have grown up in a country rent by civil war, know only too well the danger of a weak King from whom any man with ambition may try to snatch the throne. It is to prevent such wanton bloodshed that my father and Lord Stanley ultimately supported those who offered Gloucester the crown. But neither of them would have done so had he not sworn to them that no harm should befall the Princes. They say that when Stanley was released, after Hastings' execution, he made that a condition in return for his powerful allegiance. The times we live in have forced your uncle to violent deeds, but he is not an inhuman monster. Why must you torment yourself so?”
Elizabeth turned her head aside and stood plucking at the tassel of a cushion, as if debating within herself whether to tell him something. “I had a terrible dream,” she said at last, with slow reluctance.
“When?” asked her cousin, releasing her.
“A few nights ago. Just before Gloucester set the guard, I think.”
“What was it?” asked Stafford, gently taking the cushion from her and throwing it onto the stone window-seat.
She tried to smile at him, as if deprecating her stupidity. “Truly, I cannot remember. It was one of those nebulous nightmares, full of feelings rather than of facts. You know how sometimes one does not even see the people in one's dreams but is only aware that they are there?”
“Yes, of course.”
“It was Ned. He was crying out to me. Calling me in some horrible fear, and I could not get to him to help him. That was really all. Except that my feet felt heavy as if I were shod like a warhorse so that I could not hurry. I tried and tried, and all the time his desperate, pitiful crying grew fainter and fainter until it was smothered in the blackness of the night…”
There was such urgent horror in Elizabeth's voice, and she— unlike the rest of the family—was a person so little given to imaginings, that even Stafford, who wished most to reassure her, could think of nothing to say.
“It may have been because I was worrying about my mother's health,” she added, striving to speak more lightly. “Or because someone told us that ever since he understood that the coronation was not for him Edward has seemed to care for nothing. That he is not eating his food or bothering to dress properly. Poor handsome Ned, who used to think so much about his appearance! But, there, it may not be true. One hears such rumours!”
“I should try not to give heed to them,” advised Stafford. “After all, as I told you, I saw them with my own eyes standing in the morning sunlight.”
“But how long ago was that?”
“Only a week, perhaps.”
“Ah! Before my dream.”
“Please, Bess—”
“Oh, I am sorry. I know I am behaving as dramatically as my mother,” she apologized, blaming herself for scant filial sympathy in the past. “But tell me this. Did the boys recognize you?”
“I imagine so since one of them waved.”
“Which?”
“Dickon, I feel sure.”
“It must have been a great comfort to them. Oh, how much I wish I could go on the river too. To see them. Just to see them!”
“You worry about the Dowager Queen's health and she is prostrate with grief, while you go about your daily affairs. Yet I think the love you bear your family is beyond hers. It is incredible,” said Stafford, watching her pitifully. “You try to hearten and instruct your sisters here while half your heart is caged with your brothers in the Tower. And best of all I believe you love that young imp Richard. Or ought I not to have said that?” he added, as she did not reply immediately. “Do I, perhaps, presume?”
Elizabeth laid a reassuring hand upon his arm. “No, dear friend, you who have cared so much for my griefs and joys could never presume. And you are more discerning than I had supposed a man could be. Yes,” she admitted, almost as though voicing some newly realized truth to herself, “I do not know why, but best of all I love Richard.”
“Better than she will ever love me,” thought Stafford. “And why must I try to make her, since in all men's minds she is still the King's daughter and it could only bring her useless pain?”
And so he stood in silence until her glance, happening to come to rest upon the lad who had carried the book, gave birth to an idea. “Tom, that yellow-haired page of yours,” she began tentatively. “He is about Edward's height, would you not say? Do you suppose he would like to have some gay old suit of the real King's, if I can find one, and leave that plain serving-man's livery behind?”
It was some moments before Stafford picked up the trend of her thoughts. “I can only imagine that he would be delighted,” he laughed. “But I would not let him.”
“Not if I asked you?”
“Not if you bribed me with all the kisses that I hunger for,” he told her, with intentional lightness. “I can guess what is in that fond and desperate mind of yours, but I care for your safety even more than for forbidden ecstasies. There will be no boat-rides past Gloucester's well-manned Tower for you, my lady.”
“Then I must wait and pray for patience, I suppose,” shrugged Elizabeth, turning away. There was an edge to her pleasant voice which betokened nervous strain. “Doctor Lewis is a long time with the Queen. I thought her Grace would have sent for me,” she complained presently. “I trust he finds her no worse
.”
Even as she spoke a door was flung open at the far end of the parlour and the sound of Elizabeth Woodville's voice reached them, lilting to laughter. “On the contrary, she sounds much better,” smiled Stafford. “It would seem that he has effected a cure, and—since I fear my royal aunt's tongue even more in health than in sickness—I will, by your leave, await him in the garden.”
To Elizabeth's surprise, her mother, whom she had left propped up in bed, walked almost briskly into the parlour leaning on Doctor Lewis's arm. It was weeks since she had looked so well, with brilliance in her dark French eyes, a spot of colour high on either cheek and much of her old becoming vivacity. “Bess, my child, you were wise as usual,” she called gaily, as Elizabeth rose from a formal curtsy. “I am glad you persuaded me to see the dear Countess's physician. See how much good he has done me already!”
Glancing at the grizzled, simian-looking little man, Elizabeth decided that he looked clever enough to cure the Devil. “What have you prescribed, Doctor?” she asked, in that kindly way she had of putting even the humblest people at ease. “Some potent elixir of youth, I should imagine!”
“At least something to live for,” laughed the flattered patient. “Come and sit beside me, Bess. Margaret Beaufort, Countess of Richmond, has sent us a message, and as it is confidential we will send the others away.” With a wave of one bejewelled hand Elizabeth Woodville cleared the parlour, but to her daughter's surprise the physician remained. “Doctor Lewis will be attending me frequently. He understands my symptoms,” explained the deposed Dowager Queen, with apparent irrelevance.
“Is it about the Princes, Madam?” asked Elizabeth eagerly, the moment the three of them were alone.
“No, there is no more news about them, alas! I begin to doubt if I shall ever see them again.”
“Then what particularly is there to make life more attractive?” murmured her daughter, seating herself reluctantly.
But even while the pessimistic Dowager Queen sighed over her misfortune her acquisitive mind seemed to have moved on to some fresh field of interest. “The Countess sends me word how gifted and personable a young man her son has grown,” she said.
The Tudor rose Page 6
