It was the first time that Anne had disbelieved anything that Richard had said. “Please God she does not think, in her distraction, that I am the reason!” thought Elizabeth.
“Why is he arranging marriages for your sisters and not for you?” asked Anne suspiciously, after tossing and sighing a while.
“Probably because he thinks mine is more important,” suggested Elizabeth, carrying a cloth and a dish of rose-water to the bedside.
“Because you are the real Queen of England?” jibed Anne.
Elizabeth said nothing, but gently wiped her friend's hot forehead.
“Perhaps after I am gone he will marry you himself,” went on Anne, determined to provoke an argument.
“He is my uncle,” said Elizabeth coldly, setting down the basin.
“You could get a dispensation from the Pope. The Spanish Duchess of Infantasgo and some of the Austrian royalties did.”
“Possibly. If we both wanted to. But it takes two to make a marriage,” said Elizabeth. “And if there is one thing you can be sure of, my dear, it is Richard's love.”
The words melted Anne momentarily to tears. “Oh, Bess, forgive me!” she cried weakly. “It is just that everything seemed to go wrong when we lost our son.” But she spoiled her lovable contrition by adding with a hardness which seemed all the more terrible considering her natural child like naïveté, “You got what you wanted then, didn't you?”
“Oh, Anne, don't talk so wildly!” implored Elizabeth, struggling with her anger.
“Well, if you didn't, your mother did. And whatever happened to your precious brothers they have been well avenged!” muttered the dying woman, hunching herself back among her pillows.
Long after Anne had fallen into an uneasy sleep Elizabeth sat by the window with her stirred and troubled thoughts. Had the poor Queen's words been so wild after all, she wondered? Or had she herself during these last few weeks been merely imagining things? That Richard's attitude towards her had changed must be patent to all. Her status at Court was very different now and many enjoyments came her way. To have been glad of it was only human; although with everything that she accepted from him went the self-abasing thought that she was being disloyal to her brothers. But now, reviewing her own feelings in the light of remorseless candour, she asked herself whether there had been something more? Some excitement because he singled her out—some strange attraction? Something unnatural, shameful, vile? Could it possibly be that Anne was right?
So often of an evening now that Anne was sick in bed, when supper was over and the musicians were filling the hall with sweet music from their gallery, she would find Richard at her side. Richard at his most charming. A grown edition of her younger brother— highly strung, mercurial, amusing, quick in mutual exchange of thought—speaking the same easy, expressive language of her breed. The sort of companion whom she so much missed.
As the threads of poor Anne's life grew more tenuous and she called constantly for them both, inevitably they were thrown more and more together. And when Anne died, as she had said she would, before the spring flowers were well in bloom, they shared a common sorrow. When the Archbishop finally folded the pale hands of the mighty Kingmaker's daughter across her small, cold breasts, for the first time in her life Elizabeth heard the hard-bitten Plantagenet sob—and yet by now she was almost sure that Anne's suspicions had not been groundless.
There were all the outward forms and ceremonies to go through, the solemn obsequies in the Abbey to be borne; and even while taking part in them Elizabeth was aware that some of the spectators remembered her replica of the dead Queen's dress at Christmastime and whispered, looking upon the withdrawn harshness of the King's face, that his tears had been the final hypocrisy. The mysterious disappearance of her brothers had dimmed his popularity, making people so suspicious of him that they were prepared to pin upon him any crime. There were even some of them, she was told, who whispered that he had hastened the passing of a barren Queen for the sake of young and healthier beauty. Elizabeth wished with all her heart that she could go away. But there was nowhere else for her to go. She was in Richard's hands. And, as the weeks passed, likely to become so quite literally.
“I suppose you avoid my touch because you still believe I butchered those brothers of yours?” he jibed, hating the way she tried to withdraw herself from his hold when the Court began to dance again.
“Produce them then!” she challenged, being now so much more familiar with him.
“But that is not the real reason, my sweet Bess,” he said, ignoring her challenge and speaking too low for the other dancers to hear. “It is because you are afraid of what my touch does to you.”
The tell-tale blood had sprung instantly to her cheeks and he had laughed, his eyes mocking her as he handed her in and out of the intricacies of the dance. His green eyes were flecked with brown and singularly beautiful, she noticed; and although he had not her father's grace, yet, being a man who took pains to be proficient in all he did, he was by far the best dancer in the room.
To all outward appearances their evenings were spent quite formally. No one overheard the frightening jibes and compliments he made and there was no one to whom she could speak about them save old Mattie. And as often as not there was nothing to speak about, because she and Richard would forget their antagonism and fall into natural discussion.
“You are no longer frightened of me,” he stated one morning, as they rode leisurely through Windsor Park with Lord Stanley and Cicely and a string of courtiers dallying somewhere behind them.
“Oh, yes, I am—but only at times,” laughed Elizabeth. “You change like a chameleon, Sir. You are so many different sorts of person.”
“Convenient, perhaps; but rather exhausting,” said Richard, interested.
“Convenient?”
“It always gives one the initial advantage not to look exactly what one is. If you had seen me for the first time sitting in a tavern—dressed in decent homespun, say—what would you have guessed me to be?”
Elizabeth turned to consider him in the clear June sunlight. “You might well be a scholar or a priest,” she told him, unaware how devastating she looked when wrinkling her nose in thought. “Or even, when you are tired and with those long lashes of yours,” she added wickedly, knowing how much it would enrage him, “a woman in disguise. One of those interesting-looking women who are nearly, but never quite, beautiful.”
“God in Heaven, how horrible!” exclaimed Richard, almost letting his horse stumble into a rabbit warren. “But never by any chance a King?”
“Not in worsted,” decided Elizabeth, remembering how her father would have looked like one in anything. “Not unless you spoke,” she was quick to add in fairness, remembering Richard's voice.
“Nor yet a soldier?” There was nothing pompous about him, but her candour was hard to take. “Surely you would guess I was a soldier?”
“Only when I looked down at your hands.” She looked, now, at his hands on the reins, trying to picture a side of him she had never seen. When he had been “the young Duke of Gloucester” men had clamoured to follow him into battle, and he was not much older now. “What is it like to go into battle?” she asked, knowing it for the foolish, womanish question it was.
Richard tried his best to answer her, however inadequately. “For different men it is different things, I suppose,” he said. “Some go into it without fear or imagination, like well-trained chargers. For me it is plain hell beforehand, and once my sword is in my hand the wildest exultation this side of Heaven. Afterwards—well, it has been a proving to one's self of one's manhood and a bringing of the right to enjoy one's worldly status and one's woman. It would be just the same for one of my archers, I imagine.”
“There is so much of your lives we women do not know,” sighed Elizabeth.
Richard grinned down at her from his tall horse. “That is mutual,” he said. “Do you not suppose that we often wonder about childbirth and the tigerish love you bear your children and w
hat you really say about us when you are alone together? It is to these hours which a man and woman cannot share that their shared hours owe excitement. If there were no mystery one might just as well kiss one's page.” He had turned in his saddle to beckon the others on. “That young sister of yours is practising her wiles even on burly Stanley!” he complained lightly. “Look, she is keeping the whole party waiting while she gathers pink chestnut blossoms to twine in his unfortunate sorrel's mane!”
But all their encounters were not so light. All summer Elizabeth walked with proud discomfort beneath the speculative glances of his courtiers. And then the thing which Anne had foretold happened. One August evening when the sweet scent of stocks was drifting in through the open casements Richard asked her to marry him.
“But you are my uncle!” she cried out, shrinking from him in horror.
“And the Pope is infallible!” he mocked, grinning at her across the chairback against which he leaned. “It would not be the first time he has given a man permission to marry his niece in order to insure the peaceful succession of a state.”
“It is horrible,” said Elizabeth.
“Why more horrible than cousin marrying cousin unto the third and fourth generation, which most of us scions of royal houses have to do until we become so inbred that we produce specimens like my brother Clarence's Warwick?” He crossed the room and lifted her chin with his fingers, the better to scan her lovely troubled face. “You and I are both intelligent people and of very suitable ages,” he said.
“After all you have done to my mother's family how can you pretend to love me?” she flared indignantly; and could have bitten her tongue out afterwards, for Richard merely laughed at her.
“But I am not,” he said cheerfully. “I have never pretended to love anybody but my fragile, uncomplicated Anne, God rest her sweet soul! And you of all people, Bess, should know that is true.”
She did know—and knew, too, that some shameful part of her wanted him to make love to her because the cool, casual touch of his fingers stirred her more than the ardent kisses of Tom Stafford had ever done. That earlier madness had been but a prelude, the awakening of an inexperienced girl's senses; whereas now she was a woman emotionally awake, with all her father's capacity for ardour coursing through her veins, beginning to promise and torment.
“Of course I know you never wanted anyone but her,” she answered awkwardly, jerking herself from his hold.
“Then we understand each other and can discuss this thing frankly,” he said, wandering to the window. “It is an heir I want— born of your Plantagenet blood.”
“You are brutal,” she said, watching him warily as he stood there with his back to her.
“There are different kinds of brutality, as you may find out for yourself if you marry someone else,” he said, shrugging that right shoulder of his which was almost imperceptibly higher than the left. “God defend me from being the kind of brute who leaps in and out of his wife's bed for the plain intent of getting himself a son and does not try to beautify the business for her by courting her mind!” He turned towards her as he stood in the window embrasure. There was that manliness about him which must, as he had said, have been bought in battle, and having come from some tournament at Smithfield he was wearing the straight tabard with the gorgeous quarterings of England and France which suited him best. “If you could bring yourself to trust me I do not think you would be unhappy,” he said. “The life of a woman who was mine would never lack warmth and colour and kindness.”
Because she knew this also to be true, Elizabeth made herself repel him the more frigidly. “You cannot force me to this. I am not your ward as my brothers were. My father left our marriages to my mother, and everyone in the country knows it.”
“That is why I am asking you. I am not a humble man, but I am trying humbly to woo you. Or perhaps you consider the word coerce more fitting?”
Recognizing his ultimate power, Elizabeth shifted her ground. “And why do you want a son from me, whom you have publicly called bastard?” she demanded.
“Do you really need me to tell you?” he said, coming back to her. “You who are Edward's favourite daughter must know that both he and I would have done almost anything to keep the Lancastrians out.”
“He himself once offered me to Henry of Lancaster.”
“Only as a bait to get him into his hands. I was with him when he discussed it. He offered you to a number of men for political reasons, but I doubt if he was ever serious save for the King of France's son. Nothing less than a throne would have satisfied him for you.” He stood there pushing the signet ring up and down on his finger. “To keep this throne strong I have let those priests and lawyers argue about your legitimacy; and for the same reason I will make sure that you do not marry Henry Tudor, with his Welsh blood and his Frenchified ways. He is sure to have heard of my unspeakable loss. As long as my son lived the Lancastrian's invasion would have been more of a gamble; but now, I suppose, to a good many of the people it looks a pretty good gamble. They don't want any more uncertainty about the succession. A few more years of civil war would so drain England that she might become a mere appendage of France. But with you as my wife there would be no more uncertainty about the succession, and no incentive for Henry Tudor.”
He faced her with expressive hands and shining eyes, letting her see the whole purpose of his life. He looked almost fanatic—a man with one idea who had staked everything upon his hazardous convictions and who had hitherto been strong enough to sweep aside all opposition to his will.
“But, on the other hand, would not the people be repelled from you by the thought of incest, even with the Pope's permission?” she reminded him, momentarily half persuaded.
“To get a dispensation would take months, but you have their love—their complete trust,” he said, speaking less fervently.
“Since you do not love me, are there not plenty of princesses in Europe whom you could ask?” she suggested.
“Say that I like you the better of two evils?” he countered, with a smile. “You are very beautiful.”
“As you liked my brother Dickon the better of two evils?”
“As I like Dickon,” he agreed, changing the tense.
Swift as a singing lark hope rose in her, just as it had when she chanced upon an entry among poor Anne's papers for the ordering of two silk doublets for “the Lord Bastard,” and then realized that it really proved nothing, since Richard had a natural son of his own. “Then he is alive?” she cried, all question of marriages forgotten.
But Richard turned on her in anger, gripping her by the shoulder until it hurt. “Must you always come back to that?” he snarled. “Consider young Warwick. Since Anne's death you know very well—everyone knows—that I have had him sent to one of my castles up North at Sheriff Hutton. No one at Court sees him any more. Yet nobody supposes that I have had him destroyed. He has his apartments, his servants, his horse to ride every day—he could have a tutor, though much good it would do him! Ask Stanley—ask anybody—if that is not so!”
“Then if you will but let me see Ned and Dickon…” began Elizabeth, prepared to bargain.
Richard made a great effort to control his anger, but he either could not or would not answer her appeal. He walked away to the window, stood there as if engaged in some sharp mental struggle, and then swung round suddenly. “I swear to you on my wife's soul that I did not destroy your two brothers,” he burst out. “Does that satisfy you? Now will you marry me and keep the things we both care for safe?”
For a moment Elizabeth stared at him in speechless joy; but she did not really believe him. He would say anything to persuade her to his purpose. Because he was King he could force her to marry him to-morrow, she supposed; but if it seemed that she was his unwilling victim he would have pushed the people too far. “Give me time! Give me time to decide!” she entreated desperately.
He let her go then, sending for Mattie to attend her. But once free from his presence, from the strang
e hold he had over her, she found there was no need to decide—only to pray for strength of purpose equal to his own.
“The King is superstitious. He would scarcely add blasphemous perjury to his crimes,” argued Mattie, her only confidant.
“It might be that he has only sent them abroad and could not produce them,” pondered Elizabeth. “Yet in my heart I feel sure that he lied. That if he considered it necessary, however much he hated the means, he would trick me.”
“Whatever the Pope may say, and whatever they do in other countries, an incestuous marriage is sin,” muttered old Mattie.
“And I would sooner die than marry my brothers' murderer,” said Elizabeth; and going to her prie-dieu she fell upon her knees. “Forgive me for succumbing to his spell upon my senses,” she prayed. “And somehow, dear God, show me a way to escape the widening web of his machinations!”
Elizabeth lay awake all night. And somehow, whether by prayer or by a process of elimination in her mind, the only possible source of help seemed to be shown her.
THERE WAS USUALLY so much coming-and-going in the Lord Steward's room, and so much urgent transaction of Court business, that Elizabeth was fortunate in catching Lord Stanley alone. She had waited while some foreign envoy concluded his interview, and Heaven had helped her by sending the secretary hurrying out after him with a bundle of forgotten papers. She could see Stanley standing by the window, momentarily alone, and had seized her opportunity to slip in through the half-open door. “As you were my father's friend, milord,” she begged in a low voice, “take his place and help me now!”
He looked up in surprise from a map of the world he had been searching for some foreign city and tried good-naturedly to hide his annoyance. “Why, have they found you yet another objectionable husband?” he teased, as lightly as though he were speaking to young Cicely.
“Yes. This time it is the King,” said Elizabeth.
The laughter left his round, jovial face immediately and he strode to the door and kicked it shut in the face of an astonished clerk and a couple of importunate place-seekers. “My dear Lady Bess, you are distraught!” he said more formally, but with obvious agitation. “You must go back to your apartments. This public rabbit warren is no place in which to speak of such things!”
The Tudor rose Page 14
