Thy Name Is Love (The Yorkist Saga)

by Diana Rubino

  When they brought Marguerite of Anjou over to be his bride, he was the one who blushed, all the way to the marriage bed!" Fond memories of the dull-witted King Henry aside, Father Carney had no recollection of ever baptizing a child that year.

  But one priest, Father Welde, who looked nowhere near his age of fifty, had a dim recollection of a man giving an infant to King Henry at a Mass held in his chambers when the King was too ill to attend chapel.

  "Can you remember who else was there, Father?" she implored, her heart racing, her palms breaking out in that familiar cold dampness.

  "‘Twas a Christmas service, if I remember, aye, I officiated, now let me see, oh, everyone was present, all the top councillors, Buckingham, Northumberland, Queen Marguerite, King Henry's doctor..."

  "That is right! I was born in ‘fifty-seven. Can you remember who the babe's parents were?"

  "Oh, I am sorry, child, there were so many bodies in those chambers that Christmas, and it was so long ago." She shook her head and placed her hand gently on his sleeve. "Oh, please, Father, that infant may have been I."

  "I shall tell you what, my child," Father Welde said. "I shall sequester myself in the chapel straightaway and pray God I remember, and when I do, I shall summon you forthwith!"

  "Oh, thank you, Father!" She took his hand, kissed his ring, curtseyed to him as if he were the King himself, and removed herself immediately as not to interrupt his train of thought.

  Perhaps this is it! she thought. Her heart pumped in excited thumps as she flew over the uneven flagstones out of the Abbey. If God's servant could not help her, then nobody could.

  Leaving her mount with her groom, she walked back home alone. Oblivious to the merchants' shouts and rumbling carts, she looked straight ahead, focusing on not the outside world, but inner thoughts. She was so close to finding her family, she knew they were just beyond her reach now. Being this close, she couldn't even go back and relive those moments of helpless despair, the dead ends, Elizabeth's many evasions and deceptions.

  She was someone—her loved ones were walking the streets just as she was now—they lived, she knew it! Somewhere in this kingdom were her siblings, or even her parents.

  Did they think about her? She was almost afraid to ask herself that question. Had they spent the last twenty years searching, or at least, wondering? She reached her garden and strolled through her orchard, thinking of Cristoforo Colombo. Where was he now? Was he much closer to his dream than she was to hers? Would she ever know?

  A door slammed and she turned to see Valentine striding up to her, his forced half-smile of contrition telling her what didn't have to be said.

  "I met and talked with a dozen priests who all had fond and not-so-fond recall of King Henry, but did not know anyone named John who would have held an infant in 1457."

  He shook his head and stepped forward to take her in his arms, but she felt the need to comfort him this time.

  "I'm so sorry, my darling." He looked like he was about to cry.

  "Don't be sorry." She grasped his hands and he sensed her mood at once.

  "You found something out, didn't you, love? What did you find out?"

  "Valentine—Father Welde told me—"

  "You want to sit down?" He motioned to her favorite bench facing the river.

  She remained standing. "Valentine, Father Welde was there at Christmas when they held Mass in King Henry's chambers when he was too infirm to attend in the chapel. Father Welde saw a babe, and he remembered baptizing me. Well, it could have been me." she blurted out all in one rushed breath, having to pause and gulp air before she could speak again.

  "‘Tis all right, Dove, slow down," Valentine spoke in a pacifying tone, stroking her arms slowly. "You can get it all out much more easily in a slow steady stream than in a fire of rapid spurts like that. Now tell me, who else did he say was there?"

  "Oh, everyone, the King, the Queen, King Henry's doctor, many folk, but he is trying to remember who was holding me...er, the babe...he thinks he should remember correctly if he thinks about it." At that moment she saw Valentine's eyes light up and catch the glow of the setting sun behind them. He raised a hand and his rings glittered as his fingers drummed his chin.

  He was looking at her, but his eyes had a faraway look, narrowing and growing darker as he sank more heavily into thought. She never dared interrupt him when he was thinking this deeply, whilst searching for that perfect phrase in a letter to a foreign diplomat or plotting battle maneuvers. So she stood in stony silence. Her lips were clamped shut, but her heart was beating wildly.

  "What?" she mouthed, but didn't dare speak out loud.

  Finally, he swept off his cloak and dashed inside, calling over his shoulder, "I am going to check something. I shall be back."

  Valentine entered their silent empty chapel. He lit a single candle, sat in his first-row pew, elbows resting on knees, his head in his hands, and began to think very hard. It was something she'd said about who'd been at that service in King Henry's chamber in 1457. Then it came to him, fragments of memory, piece by piece and it all began to fit together.

  King Henry had never been in his right mind, even from childhood. Valentine had many recollections of Richard's mother and brothers discussing ‘King Henry's curse' or ‘King Henry's affliction' or ‘King Henry's incontinence.' The feeble-minded King always had a doctor at his side, constantly examining him, spewing forth diagnoses of his illness, one more outlandish than the next. This doctor had also been a preacher.

  When Valentine had gone to live with the Plantagenets, they had often visited court and he had a distinct memory of King Henry—old and infirm even then. He leaned on a cane, and had always been on this preacher's arm; Valentine could see his face as a distant blur in the foggy recesses of his memory.

  Then he could see the man's face more clearly, because he'd seen him again not long ago. The Franciscan preacher who had proclaimed King Henry's title to the throne was with George when he'd burst into King Edward's council chamber at Westminster on the way to his final destruction.

  It was the first Privy Council meeting Valentine had ever been invited to attend.

  He remembered seeing that same preacher with King Henry when Valentine was a child. He never left the King's side.

  He slapped the bench with his open palm. "That's it!" The man's name was Father Goddard. Father John Goddard.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

  King Richard was in his solar at Nottingham enjoying a distracting game of chess with the Earl of Devonshire's son, when Thomas Stanley, ignoring protocol, burst through the open doorway and nearly knocked the protesting, stammering guards off their feet.

  "Your...Your Grace!" Richard moved a piece, looked up, and waved the guards away with a nod of dismissal. Still muttering in confusion, they bowed out, bumping into each other along the way.

  Stanley, Richard's Constable of England, was already down on the floor in a deep, sweeping bow. Richard motioned with his hand. "All right, rise, Stanley." He nearly fell over as he stood. He was red and panting, sweat staining his doublet.

  "Christ Almighty, Stanley, what is it?"

  "My liege, Henry Tudor and his army have reached Shrewsbury, and he already has two thousand Welshmen flocking to his colors. Sir Gilbert Talbot has declared for him with several hundred retainers at the ready," he blurted out in one breath.

  All this reinforcement in the Tudor camp made Richard wonder what side Stanley was going to be fighting on.

  But he only took a leisurely swig from his tankard and wiped the ring it had left on the table. "Very well then," he said. "At dawn we take our departure for our final battle with the Lancastrians, their destriers, and the biggest horse's ass of all, Harry Tudor."

  He gave Stanley his leave with a casual wave of his bejewelled fingers and focused back on the chessboard, to his opponent's stunned disbelief.

  "Are you not going to prepare in haste, Your Highness?" the boy asked, his voice quivering with the knowledge that his question was pr
esumptuous at the least, disrespectful at worst. But he was just too shocked to keep it in.

  "Nay, lad, Tudor can wait. He can't fight the battle without me, now, can he?" Gulping loudly, the youngster nodded and resumed the game, confusing the pieces and mistakenly putting Richard in check with his own knight.

  Richard responded with a smile: "‘Tis hard enough to win a battle without my own knights turning against me." He grasped the lad's hand, calmed the trembling. "Worry not about the Tudor, lad. When he retreats from this battle, the only way to tell him from those ugly French slags is that he'll be wearing my broadsword for a codpiece."

  Richard and his generals arrived in Leicester two days before the battle and took rooms at the White Boar Inn. As grooms assembled the King's bed on the top floor, Valentine and Richard sat at a nearby table, their tankards holding down the maps spread before them.

  "Remember the preacher who took care of King Henry, Dr. John Goddard?" Valentine asked the King, who rose and began carefully hiding away gold coins in a drawer in the frame of his bed.

  Richard nodded. "Aye, he was with George that time he burst into the Privy Council. I could hear Edward's blood boiling clear across the chamber."

  "He's the one. Dove told me this Father Welde was present when a babe was presented unto King Henry by a physician. I have the strangest hunch," he rose and paced back and forth, "the physician may have been John Goddard.

  Do you know his whereabouts?"

  "Aye, he dwells in Chelsea, not far from my townhome."

  "And he liveth yet? I don't want to have her hopes shattered again."

  "Aye, ‘twasn't so long ago I saw him last." Richard sat and began polishing his war helmet.

  "Grand! I shall dispatch a message to Dove and tell her to call on him. I shall not be a minute in composing it. ‘Twill give her something to do when we're at battle as well." Richard nodded and began polishing his helmet. "Well, it should keep her busy, but I don't reckon it'll take any more effort to push back Tudor than it'll take her to journey to London. At least it won't be snowing," he added.

  He knew Richard was joking about the simplicity of defeating Tudor; the King's hands trembled as they buffed the helmet.

  Richard continued polishing, but his mind was somewhere else.

  Valentine located a sheet of parchment and some ink and began writing. "I want this as badly as she does, for her to have family."

  "You mean just in case we don't come out of this battle and she loses a husband." Richard attempted a smile, but it was as shaky as his hands.

  "Nay, Dickon, I know we shall beat Tudor's army." But there was no use denying it to his closest friend. They both knew the reality of this situation. They had followers who could turn on them with a change in the wind, the most volatile of them all being Thomas Stanley.

  "You know how much this has always meant to her." Richard placed his helmet down and spread the cloth over it. "Whoever they are, I hope they love her as much as you." Denys entered London's Aldgate far ahead of her retinue, Valentine's note tucked in her bodice. The sentries posted at the gate bowed to her and offered her polite greetings, but all she could think of was that John Goddard was her last hope.

  Upon reaching Chelsea, she inquired at a goldsmith's stall where to find John Goddard's residence. As she knocked on the door of the modest townhouse, her grooms caught up to her and remained mounted in a semi-circle without. She tried to calm her breathing as the door opened. "Good day, I am here to see Father Goddard," she told the kitchen maid.

  The maid's widened eyes swept over the regal figure adorned in finery. Then she glanced over Denys' shoulder at the retinue outside in their colorful livery. Backing off and bumping into the door, she bobbed a rapid curtsy, turned, and rushed back inside, screaming, "Father! Father! Th...the...the Queen is ‘ere...'tis truly the ghost of ‘er ‘ighness Queen Guinevere come back to the living and standing ‘ere at our very ‘umble doorstep!" Her shrieks echoed through the narrow foyer.

  "Me Lord! Me Lord! ‘Tis the Queen! Guinevere, she come back to life and does stand right ‘ere!" Denys hid a smile in her palm just as John Goddard appeared and, doffing his cap, gave a respectable bow. He ushered Denys into what he called the great hall, a simple affair with a trestle table, hard benches and small hearth.

  "Please, please forgive Maisie, milady. She goes off halfcocked and sees folk long dead she never did see alive—I'm so sorry." Valentine had mentioned Goddard's coal-black hair, the youthful athletic stature and clear eyes from way back when he took care of King Henry. Although he seemed to retain that ruggedness, it was disappearing beneath a wrinkling and pouchy face.

  She smiled and reached out to touch his arm, as further reassurance that she was indeed real—and not the legendary Queen Guinevere. "Tis quite all right, Father Goddard.

  I am Denys Starbury, Duchess of Norwich. I'm here to ask you a few questions about the murky past. But more recent than Guinevere, I daresay."

  "Oh, please. If you will, milady. Do ask. I am at your disposal."

  "You were engaged in the services of King Henry the Sixth as his personal physician, were you not, Father?" He reddened, grabbed the back of a chair, sweat breaking out on his brow and upper lip. He began stammering, "Ah...aye, but that were...that were mighty long ago, milady, my allegiance to the House of Lancaster ended way back even before King Harry died, then when I were with King Edward's brother the Duke of Clarence—"

  "Do be calm, this has naught to do with allegiance," Denys explained. Her unruffled tone immediately put the doctor at ease, for Goddard loosened his white-knuckled grip on the chair and settled back into his round-shouldered posture.

  "It concerns a babe who was a ward of King Henry. You were there at her first Christmas in 1457 during the Mass in the King's chambers, do you recall?"

  "Fifty-seven, Christmas, that was...aye! The lass, the silver-haired lass." Silver-haired. Her heart took a tumble at those words.

  "Where did the King get her? Do you know anything of her parentage?"

  "Are you sure you do not want to sit, milady?" She couldn't think of sitting. Her body was one rigid column of numbness.

  "Nay, pray carry on." She urged with her hands.

  "King Harry became her warden, when her young mother handed her to me. She were of royal bloodline, but I know not how thick. So I baptized her and gave her to King Harry, saying ‘take good care of her, sire, she may be of value someday.' Then the King, with the blankest of looks on his face, knowing not what to do, looked round, then handed her over to a nursemaid straightaway."

  "Was the baptism recorded in the parish records at Westminster?"

  "Aye, it should have been. But under what name, I know not."

  "Woodville, perhaps? Elizabeth Woodville adopted me after my mother died. Father, that babe may have been me."

  "Oh, God Jesu. I doubt it, lass." He shook his head.

  "‘Twould likely be your father's name, as he were still alive then. But he weren't there; I've no way of even knowing who he were."

  "Do you know my mother's name, Father?" she asked, her voice breaking, for her heart was racing so, she could hardly breathe.

  "I—my memory betrays me." He pressed his hand to his eyes, shut them tightly. "For the love of God, I can't remember the woman's name. Oh, Jesu, let that name come to me!"

  "Please—" she whispered, her breaths ragged with sobs.

  "My memory fails me as my eyes fail me. How my wits do abandon me! But I shall try, lass. I shan't let another thought enter my silly head until I remember her name." Oh, let him see this face and remember! She slipped the miniature out and held it before him. "Father—could this be she?" He opened his eyes and blinked rapidly, then took it from her and held it closer, then farther, trying to focus.

  Recognition lit up his face and he nodded. "Aye—aye, ‘tis she! As if she stands before me and breathes! That necklace—she wore it that very day in the chapel!" She looked down at the miniature as if seeing it for the first time. Now she knew fo
r certes. By the grace of God, those were the eyes of her mother looking up at her. "Ma mere." She'd never said those words before in her life.

  "And you can't remember her name, Father?" She turned away and stepped into a beam of warm sunlight that shone gently through the window. She looked up at the sky from whence it came, tried to gaze straight through to heaven.

  "Please let him remember," she whispered. "Father," She turned to him and held out her hand.

  "Come stand here. In this light. Look how peacefully it lies upon the earth, like a smile from God. Mayhap the answer is there. He's trying to tell us. Stand here and let God speak to you." He approached the light. She backed out of his way, studying his silhouette as he stood, head bowed, brow creased, in the sunlight pouring from heaven, encircling him in its warmth.