The Tudor rose

by Margaret Campbell Barnes

  But what was there to want, save what the irrevocability of Death had taken? Other women might ask for jewels; but jewels were cold comfort when all one longed for was the warm love of a man's heart.

  “Is there anything that I can do for you?” asked Henry, as if reading the direction of her thoughts.

  But really at that moment there was nothing that Elizabeth particularly wanted—which was, she supposed, the most subtle poverty of all. So, although it was to be her coronation gift, it was only a very small thing she asked for. Because she had always loved young people she suggested almost casually, “I would like that poor Simnel boy down in the kitchens to be transferred to the mews. He might, I imagine, be much happier with hawks than herded with pitiless humans.”

  If Henry felt surprise he did not make it manifest. The happiness of a baker's son was nothing to him. He did not even enquire whether she had ever seen Lambert Simnel, nor why she should make so strange and modest a request. “As you wish, my dear,” he agreed. “I will have him apprenticed to my head falconer over at Charing.”

  Elizabeth saw him open one of his everlasting memorandum books and make a note of it, and was satisfied that he would keep his word. In her mind she saw also a pleasing vision of a clean and self-respecting young man standing beneath God's open sky again. And Henry—who had acquiesced so easily—saw, no doubt, another cheap opportunity of demonstrating Tudor clemency.

  FOR THE LONG-LOOKED-for coronation of the Queen all England seemed to be en fête. Elizabeth could have wished that it were summer-time; but mercifully the sun shone and, as Henry had promised, it was her day indeed. He had had her brought in the great state barge to London, with all her watermen wearing the new green livery with a great Tudor rose embroidered upon the breast of each. The whole width of the Thames had seemed alive with gaily decorated boats accompanying her. Young girls with flowing hair and white dresses leaned from a slender skiff to scatter red and white roses before the prow of her barge, and keeping pace with her a boatload of students from Lincoln's Inn made the air sweet with music; and for the delight of the spectators along the banks one barge was ingeniously converted into a dragon, copied from the proud Welsh emblem on the Tudor banners, which belched fire into the sparkling waters.

  King Henry met her at the Tower. Even about that he had been considerate. Knowing her natural aversion to the place, he had satisfied convention by having her stop in the royal apartments there only long enough to rest and to refresh herself. “There will be so many people crowding about you and so much to do, taking a meal and changing for your procession through the streets, that you will scarcely have a moment to think of what may have happened here,” he told her. And his words had proved true. Her thoughts had scarcely once strayed beyond the room in which they were dressing her. It was her day, and in a few minutes now she would be borne in a open litter beneath the gateway out into the City streets and in a glittering procession down the hill towards the Fleet Bridge, out through Lud Gate and along the Strand to Westminster.

  “It seems incredible that after all that has happened to me I am still no more than twenty-two!” she said with awed excitement as her ladies set the final touches to her grandeur while Ditton, her youngest lady, knelt before her to hold her new glass mirror.

  “A good thing you are reasonably tall to carry off the heaviness of this velvet!” laughed Ann Plantagenet, arranging the folds of ermine-trimmed crimson with clever fingers while Jane Stafford tied the heavy silken tasselled cords of it across the white damask of her gown.

  “A good thing, too, that the King listened to the people's wishes and allowed your Grace to go to your coronation with your hair unbound, although you are no maid,” said Mattie, who had brushed the gleaming mass of it until it outshone the golden circlet on her mistress's head and the caul of jewelled net with which they bound it.

  Out in the November sunshine they seated her in a litter draped with a cloth of gold, and the bells of all the City churches rang out as her procession started. Before her rode her ladies on white palfreys, and stalwart knights of the Bath held a golden canopy above her. Immediately before her and heralding her approach, went Jasper Tudor on his charger—an ornament to any procession, as half the women said. The familiar streets were ablaze with colour, with richly woven tapestries hung from every house. And from every window—and even from roof-tops—smiling people waved, joining their cheers with those of the populace packed tightly in the cheering streets below. For Elizabeth their welcome was the best part of her day, for she sensed that it was neither curiosity nor subservience, such as both Richard and Henry had been given, which moved them, but a real loving welcome. They had known her since she was a child and were grateful for the assurance of peace which her marriage had brought them. However much she might have been called upon to pay for it in her private life, this union of red and white roses had at last enabled them to settle down to their lives, to their crafts and their sports and their love-making, in security. So Elizabeth, the first Tudor Queen, rode among them smiling, giving them that long dreamed-of blessing with all her heart.

  As her glittering procession approached Westminster heralds sounded a fanfare which shrilled like silver against the deep-tongued clamour of the Abbey bells. In the stately beauty of Westminster Hall her ladies changed her crimson mantle for one of royal purple. Her mother-in-law followed behind her, and Cicely— pale and overawed for once—held up her train. In the sanctity of the Abbey itself mitred bishops and abbots, all in the rich colour of their vestments, awaited her. The Duke of Suffolk, her uncle by marriage—although still mourning the wasted death of his son Lincoln—was a resplendent figure bearing her sceptre; and handsome Jasper Tudor bore her crown. As Elizabeth went forward up the aisle the great west doors were closed behind her, shutting out the joyous abandon of the bells, and the swelling music of the organ took up their triumph in more solemn tones. All around was a galaxy of jewels and rich apparel, and a sea of expectant faces; and as she walked forward, head erect, Elizabeth was aware of Henry watching her from a curtained gallery which had been built beyond the pulpit. Enigmatic Henry, who, after two years' delay, was giving her a coronation so much grander than his own! Making a sign to Cicely to stop, Elizabeth pleased all beholders by sinking into a grateful and deferential curtsey before him, hoping that she had given him cause to be proud of her this day. Then, forgetting all earthly prides, she went straight on towards the waiting priests and the golden haze of tall wax candles and the blaze of gold plate upon the high altar; and all pomp and circumstance of the day was left behind her as she entered into the sacred hush of the sanctuary, to receive her crown from the hands of the beloved Bishop of Winchester and her dread responsibility from God.

  After she came out from the Abbey there was a great feast at which all the highest in the land served her, and next morning Henry joined her to hear Mass celebrated in St. Stephen's Chapel. For the first time she sat beneath a canopy of state as Queen of England; there were tournaments and masques, and in the evening the festivities came to an end with the splendid coronation ball to which her younger sisters had been looking forward for days. Never since her father's time had there been such gaiety in the Palace or such spontaneous joy outside in the streets, where the shopkeepers and their wives danced round the bonfires which their 'prentices had built. But the following day, to Elizabeth's delight, she and the King went quietly home to Greenwich and she was able to spend some hours with her year-old son.

  Elizabeth was glowing with health and beauty. The excitement of the last three days was still upon her. She knew that she had been a success, and her sense of personal triumph made all things seem possible. And now for a while she and Henry would be at leisure and done with public ceremony. “To-night he will come to me and I will show him that I am grateful,” she thought. “My foolish resentments will be gone and his bred-in-the-bone aversion towards us Yorkists will be wiped out. To-night our marriage will begin anew and be the satisfying thing of which I used to dream.�
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  She had her women bathe her and comb out her wonderful hair and put on her new brocaded bed-gown of Tudor green which she had had made to please him; and then she sent them all away and went to her mirror. Studying her reflection by candlelight, she thanked God that she was desirable. And all that was warm and generous in her—all that aptitude for physical love which she had inherited from her father—was eager to find that completion which she desired and deserved in a marriage which had been so hazardous to come by. Somewhere in Henry must burn the poetic fires of his Celtic youth, and if only she could rouse them, she supposed with almost childlike simplicity, the happiness of both of them would be attained. And surely, surely, she thought, gazing at the reflected loveliness of her body, she could fail with no man this night!

  But the evening wore on and Henry did not come. The tall candles began to gutter and burn down. And sitting in the gloaming staring at her untouched bed, Elizabeth—for no reason save that she was alone perhaps—began to think of his predecessor. Of how Richard's mocking touch had often stirred her pulses as her husband's never did. Of the strange attraction of his eyes, and of the effort it had needed not to yield to his advances. It was sin, of course. One of those shameful, half-committed sins which she had kept locked away in the back of her mind and never spoken of even to her confessor. And in the stillness of the shadowed room she could almost hear Richard's lazy, charming voice telling her that there were more subtle kinds of brutality which she might find out if she married someone else. The words had been meaningless then. But now, though Henry was no murderer, Elizabeth recognized their truth. There were brutalities of omission, committed week in, week out against a woman's happiness, which could be consistent with a man's self-righteousness and which called for no confession to any priest. It had been true, too, what Richard had said about the life of any woman who was his never lacking warmth or colour or kindness. There were some men, sensitive and imaginative, who saw to these things. But what would happen now—even if Henry came—save crude begetting, shorn of all thought for her? And, suddenly hungering unbearably for the precious trimmings of love, Elizabeth buried her hot cheeks in her hands, thankful that all the brave candles had at last burned themselves out.

  Raging, she rose and paced her room, hands still pressed to cheeks; until, worn out with frustration—with all her warm urge to give thrust back upon itself—she threw herself across the bed-foot in the darkness, not even trying to stifle her sobs. It was so difficult to believe that there was no hope of married ecstasy—so humiliating to realize that with all her beauty it was beyond her womanly power to change this unsatisfactory mating. “If Henry comes a hundred times,” she sobbed, “it will always be the same.”

  Next day Elizabeth was distrait and listless and her ladies attributed it to all the tiring ceremony of her coronation; but old Mattie, who had nursed her from childhood, knew that the newly crowned Queen had been weeping. “Shall I have the Prince brought?” she suggested, to cheer her.

  But instead of nursing him Elizabeth only stood beside his cradle staring down at him while small Arthur, who was a solemn baby, stared unblinkingly back. “He is very like his father, do you not think Mattie?” she asked. “Do you suppose he will grow up like the King in nature?”

  And Mattie, who had no book-learning, had looked into her mistress's face and read what was amiss. “His little Grace will be clever for his age,” she said noncommittally. “But who can see into the future?”

  “Perhaps that is God's supreme mercy,” sighed Elizabeth, thinking of all the sorrows which had been hidden behind the door of her mother's marriage and deciding to risk Henry's displeasure and visit the Dowager Queen in her seclusion. Grief had once battered the Woodville woman into weeping on the floor in sanctuary, but it had never made her subservient.

  And that night when Henry came to her room Elizabeth stood defensively outside the carved rail about their bed.

  “I have been busy clearing up all the documents which have accumulated during your coronation, and last evening the French envoy stayed late,” he stated briskly, as if excusing himself against her unexplained silence.

  “And you still have the matter on your mind?” she said coolly.

  “One does not want war with France.”

  Elizabeth watched him curiously. “Do you actually like fighting?” she asked.

  “No,” he laughed shortly. “And I cannot imagine how any civilized person can.”

  “My father and—my uncle—did.”

  He looked up at her uncertainly. “If you are comparing us to my disadvantage, I would remind you that I fight—and usually quite successfully—whenever I must,” he reminded her coldly.

  Elizabeth watched him lay aside the papers and the personal memorandum books which he seemed invariably to have with him, and the very way in which he arranged them infuriated her. “Do you ever do things—like the rest of us—just because you want to?” she asked, trying to keep the edge from her voice.

  “For Kings it is not so easy as for—'the rest of us,'” he said, in those cultured sarcastic tones of his, and by the light of the bedside candle she could see his thin lips smiling complacently. “Perhaps it would be more correct to say that I often find pleasure in some of the things which I am called upon to do.”

  “Which things?” she asked, sincerely trying to understand him.

  “Opening up new trade routes, for instance. Granting charters to merchants and helping to revive their shipbuilding industry as I have done at Bristol. And hearing all about strange, foreign countries.”

  “And seeing the things our seamen bring back.”

  “Yes. And talking to some of our City merchants at home. Some of them are remarkably shrewd men, and prosperous. Had I not been called upon to rule a country I think I could have quite enjoyed being a merchant and watching my affairs grow.”

  “And the money pouring into your coffers.” For the life of her she could not help saying it.

  Henry, in the act of taking off his bed-gown, looked sharply across the bed at her. But her face was expressionless, her eyes downcast. If he had suspected irony, he must have decided that he was mistaken. “Your room is chilly, Madam,” he remarked, suddenly afflicted by that cold formality with which he invariably cloaked his embarrassment at those times when any woman would look for informality and warmth. “I pray you, let us get into bed.”

  Already he was standing within the rail of Elizabeth's curtained four-poster, taking off his slippers. Irrelevantly, resentfully she remembered how he always took time to place them neatly side by side. “I am a human being capable of passion and other men desire me to the point of distraction,” she thought. “I will not be so coolly taken for granted—as a state duty or a habit!”

  But first she must give him a chance—give both of them a chance. Plead with him and show him her heart. She came slowly to the other side of the bed, spreading out her upturned palms in a hopeless supplicating gesture above the turned-back sheet. “Henry, I would so willingly have given you everything. I am that kind of woman. Do you not realize it? Can you not understand?” she pleaded, laying aside all her pride. “But there seems to be nothing you need. Nothing, that is to say, but what your mother and your clerks and a trollop could not supply you with. And it is hard to love someone who is so self-sufficient that he needs nothing at all.”

  Her lovely voice trailed away, defeated, because he just stood there with one elegant fur-lined slipper in his hand, staring at her. “Love—” he began; but Elizabeth never heard what he was going to say about that important subject, for the precise sound of the precious word on his lips struck her as so incongruous that she burst into idiotic little gales of laughter. “You don't even come to my bed because you want to, do you?” she challenged him across the place where he had lain with her in such complete silence. “You just make notes of when it will be convenient to come—in one of those h-horried little books of yours?” Trying ineffectually to stifle her merriment with one hand pressed agai
nst her mouth, she pointed shakily with the other towards his neatly piled documents. “When there is nothing more important to do or the F-french envoy has gone…”

  Henry's slipper dropped smartly to the floor. “What more do you want of me?” he demanded, the angry colour mounting to his cheeks at last. “I have had you crowned, haven't I, and spent a mint of money on it?”

  “Ye-yes, yes. It was w-wonderful,” gasped Elizabeth, striving after her lost self-control.

  “And I am not impotent, am I? I have given you a son, haven't I?”

  “I had supposed—that it was I—” she countered, going off into another gale of laughter.

  “Then what is it you complain of? And laugh about like— like that giggling young fool Cicely? Is it because I am neither a murderer nor a lecher, like the men in your own family?” If there was one thing the Tudor could not take it was ridicule. He thumped the great carved bed-post with his clenched fist. “What can you possibly have to complain of, Madam? Why, ever since the night of our marriage I have even been faithful to you!”

  But Elizabeth was beyond reasoning. Born of an emotional race, she had suffered enough of that parsimony of demonstrative affection which starves a woman's body and warps her soul. Her husband might be the first Tudor King of England, but with all her inborn Plantagenet recklessness she gathered up his discarded bed-gown and bundled it back into his arms. “Then for God's sake go out and be unfaithful and come back human!” she cried out at him. “But not to-night!”