The Crown of Destiny (The Yorkist Saga)

by Diana Rubino

  "She granted me a divorce. I spoke to the King at Greenwich and then went to the Tower to see her and to see the lads."

  "They are well?"

  "Aye! Though it breaks my heart that they are prisoners, I am glad they are alive. I told her I was in love with you and wanted to marry you. We both knew there was no reason for us to remain married. She no longer needs me, and God knows she owed you enough favors. I shall get the dispensation at once. Soon you will be out of mourning and we will be married!"

  "This must have been Henry's doing! He must have finally convinced her!"

  "She did not mention the King at all. She made it look like it was her decision."

  "Pish posh! This is Henry's doing, I know it! He wanted me to..."

  She stopped dead in her tracks, for she was rushing ahead of herself. "Oh, Matthew, that is wonderful news!"

  "You look happier than I have seen you in a long time, Amethyst. Please tell me you love me... It would make it all complete if you just let me hear those words I've been longing to hear!"

  "Of course I love you, Matthew. I've loved you for such a long time. But what good would it have done to tell you? I was married, you were married—"

  "But now we are both free! We must tell your mother, and Harry!"

  "You, er, you met Harry?" She searched his eyes for some sign of perplexity, but saw nothing but the brightness of love and happiness, as brilliant as the crisp autumn air gliding through the windows.

  "I just met them by the stables with his pony. He's going to be quite a man."

  He'd already met his son. But she need not dread it now. She was finally free to tell him. It was impossible to deny this man his son any longer. She dreaded his reaction, hoping their love would supersede his resentment. "Matthew, there's something I must tell you."

  He took her hand, squeezing it gently, and she clasped his hand fervently in return. He circled her palm with his thumb, remembering Topaz's skeletal claws as they curled around his hand, baring her frailty.

  "Let us first tell Sabine and Harry the good news."

  "Nay, Matthew, this will not wait a moment longer." She grasped his arm and guided him over to the cushioned window seat where they could see Sabine guiding Harry around on the pony. "I must tell you this, but Matthew," Her gaze permeated his deeply, begging him to forgive what she'd done to him. "Please, you must understand, it was the only thing I could have done."

  "What?" he questioned simply, not able to imagine anything that would diminish his love for her.

  "About Harry. The truth is, well, Matthew, Harry is your son."

  His gaze flew from her down to the courtyard, straining to see the figure that had just ridden through the gate, out of his sight.

  "Harry? Mine? Whatever do you mean?"

  "Matthew, we conceived him that Christmas when I visited you at Kenilworth."

  He looked back at her, not with anger or resentment, but with awe, as if she were a saint that just performed a feat of healing a wound that had plagued him for a long time.

  "You were married to Topaz, I could never have told you then. The King flew into a rage, because he thought he and I were about to be married. So to punish me, he married me to Mortimer. I went into confinement and didn't emerge until three months after the baby was born, to quell any suspicion... Oh, Matthew, how it tore me apart to have kept this from you! But Topaz wouldn't let you go, and.."

  She covered her face with her hands and released the anguished sobs she'd harbored for so long. Now it all poured forth, the truth finally dispelling the lies she'd been living, and it felt so relieving.

  "Amethyst, my darling...it is all right. I understand. We've all done things to survive and thrive and there is nothing to forgive. Except possibly for you to forgive me for hating you so much for making a worldly match with Mortimer instead of a love match with me."

  "I died a little every day I wasn't with you, but I endured what I had to for the sake of our son and the love we bore each other."

  He held her to him as though he would never let her go. "Sush, now, sush," he said, near tears himself. "One day you shall tell me. But I promise you, dear heart, it's all in the past. What matters is now, the future. A future the three of us will share with love.

  "Now, let us go join our son. I think he did take a bit of a fancy to me just now," Matthew said, wrapping his betrothed in his arms, "and I can't wait to start making up for lost time with you both."

  One week later to the day, Topaz fired off an impatient note to the King asking when she could see her sons. She had granted Matthew his bloody divorce. Now she wanted Henry to uphold his half of the bargain.

  But to her dismay, her note remained unanswered. The boys remained in their cell, Topaz in hers, teeming with impotent fury.

  Hampton Court Palace

  On the day Matthew was granted his divorce, King Henry stood side by side in the queen's closet with Katherine Parr before Archbishop Cranmer and exchanged wedding vows. She was an educated, wealthy, twice-widowed, childless woman of thirty-one whom he'd chosen to care for him, coddle him and nurture him through his old age and eventual infirmity. She was as different from Catherine Howard and Anne Boleyn as any woman could ever be.

  Amethyst sat with the King on the eve before his marriage, attending upon him in his inner chamber. She strummed her lute and they sang together as they always had, not forgetting a word, not missing a note.

  His body was bloated and painful, restricting his movements, depriving him of most of the sensual pleasures he had once known so long ago. Although he was no longer able to strum his lute or harp, his voice still retained the sharp and melodic tone of his youth, and they still harmonized beautifully.

  "I am so glad you are taking Lady Latimer as your wife, sire," she said as they toasted each other with goblets of May wine. "She seems so kind and understanding..."

  "...but much too young, I am afraid," he finished. "I hope I can make her happy. I was thinking I needed someone of my own generation to walk with me through these final stages, to grow old and sluggish with me, to sit when I cannot dance, to walk when I cannot run, to retire when I can no longer stay awake. But in the end I just could not. An old man like me, and here I am with that ever-roving eye for a pretty young lass."

  "But you are not old, sire. Why, my mother is older than you and she is as sprightly and energetic as ever."

  "Ah, yes, and she has regained her youthful figure. Look at me, Amethyst. I am a huge mountain of a man. The days of my youth are gone, and I have not many days ahead of me. I would be a fool to think otherwise."

  "Do not talk like that, sire." It upset her so, knowing that the end of his reign would mean the end of an era... And the end of the lengthiest, most significant chapter of her life. How tragic that it could ever possibly come to a close. "You have many years ahead of you, my dear, with the right woman to look after you."

  "I just hope I can make Kate happy. Lord knows, all my other marriages were such mismatches, except Jane, my dear Jane. The first two were not even marriages in the legal sense; they were mockeries of the holy sacrament of matrimony. Not one of them had a happy ending, Amethyst. Five times married, and every one ended in tragedy or farce."

  "You have Mary, and Elizabeth, and Edward. You shall leave quite a legacy."

  "And if God be with this kingdom after my departure, I trust he will make Edward the greatest monarch it will ever see."

  "There have been queens who have been great, my lord. There was Matilda, and Eleanor..."

  "Aye, Amethyst, and do you know what the witch told me just days before her death? That Elizabeth would one day be the greatest queen that ever lived. Imagine!"

  She shrugged one shoulder. "Stranger things have happened."

  His laughter ended in a fit of coughing. "That sprightly minx, a great queen? Already she is an incorrigible flirt. She will willingly offer her hand to the first handsome rogue that captures her heart and damn the kingdom. Nay, Elizabeth is out of the running. She's got t
oo much of Anne in her to ever give a passing glance to the crown, even if she were to ever have a chance of the succession."

  "Aye, I suppose you are right, my lord. Elizabeth's heart is just itching to be captured. She is such a bright girl. Pity, though. She would have made quite a skillful leader." She could not help but think of her sister as she said the words.

  Topaz screamed for the guard and he nonchalantly walked up to the iron bars separating the prisoner from the outside world, for he had nothing else to do at the moment.

  "What is it that you want?"

  "I want you to send a message to Henry Tudor, a verbal message, for written ones do not seem to reach him!" she shrieked. "Tell him I want to see my sons! He told me he would reunite us when I granted my simpleton husband his bloody divorce! He is about to marry my sister, and I still have not seen—"

  "Cease!"

  Topaz's shrill wails and the guard's command echoed together in clamorous discord and faded into the shadows.

  "The King will grant you your wish when he sees fit. It is not my duty to cater to prisoners! I am not a messenger!"

  With that he spun on a heel and marched off.

  She reached between the bars to grab his cloak but he yanked it away, his footsteps dying into silence.

  "I want to see my sons!" Topaz screamed at no one, banging her fists on the iron bars, shaking them, rattling them on their rusty hinges. "That Tudor bastard! He will rot in hell for this!"

  Amethyst and Matthew were married in the chapel at Hampton Court Palace one year to the day after Mortimer's death. The King gave the bride away, and this time she was radiant, glowing with the promise of a new and happy life with her beloved.

  On that same day, her cousin Geoffrey Pole and Roland Pilkington were executed on Tower Green for treason.

  The Pilkington line had ended, and she was still alive and fortunate to have survived. She forced that chapter of her life into history forever by selling off all the Pilkington estates and donating the proceeds to all of her favorite charitable causes.

  Henry had arranged for Archbishop Cranmer to marry them, and after exchanging vows, she heard the Archbishop say to Matthew, "You may kiss the bride."

  Matthew curled one strong finger under her chin and she tilted her head, wetting her lips just enough to prepare for his kiss. His thick lashes cast spidery shadows over his cheeks as his eyelids closed slowly. She placed her hand on his forearm, feeling the quivering passion as they shared their first kiss as man and wife at last.

  Henry's wedding present to them was the generous gift of Pendennis Castle, a fortress on the Cornwall coast, a delightful getaway as well.

  "You will take care of Pendennis, Matthew," Henry told the new groom, "and make sure she is always well fortified. She is in a most strategic spot, a mile from Saint Mawes, my other fortress guarding the mouth of the River Fal. They are just a mile apart, overlooking each other on opposite points on the coast of Cornwall, where the sea crashes up against the shore and the spray will wash over you like a cleansing of the soul. It will do you some good to escape this heat... And Lord knows our souls can use a cleansing now and then."

  "That sounds grand, my lord," Amethyst said. "It is so generous of you. I haven't been to the coast in such a long time, and we will take meticulous care of our new little fortress."

  With a cook, a groom, two of their chamberlains, and a nurse for their son, the newly married couple headed west towards the craggy shores and misty sea breezes of Cornwall. Pendennis was a round fortress built specially to guard against the French during sea-battles, as war with the adversarial France was always imminent.

  Pendennis had been built for defense and durability first and beauty second, although the exquisitely cut granite stones boasted grotesque gargoyles and embattled turrets carved into the tower. The central round keep held several gun decks, and the lower battery, circular also, held fourteen more gun positions. Lodgings were inside a separate entrance block attached to the main tower. The castle was built at the end of a tiny peninsula jutting out into the sea.

  Across the narrow inlet she could see Saint Mawes, its high round rising out from three lower semicircular bastions in the shape of a clover leaf. It was barely visible behind the mighty stone wall that surrounded it, built into the jagged boulders jutting out into the sea.

  She stood in the small but comfortable lookout post, gazing out towards the sea, where pink and purple fingers of alabaster streaked the sky, the sun sinking before her, off to the right. Matthew walked about her in circles, surveying the lower battery beneath them, marveling over the five thousand pounds the King had spent on each castle.

  He shaded his eyes and looked over her head beyond the sparkling River Fal to an even more distant horizon.

  "A place like this will keep the bastards at arm's length," Matthew proclaimed, his frustrated warrior's spirit ringing in his voice. "Firearms, that is," he said, running his hand over one of the brass cannons facing out to sea.

  "Aye, let us hope so. For I fancy a quiet life with my new husband."

  In the small dining hall, glowing by a roaring fire, the round table was arranged so that they sat next to each other. The table was elegantly set with fine china into which she casually stole a glance, wondering at the beauty of the service.

  The server poured them each a glass of wine and he proposed a toast: "To Lady Amethyst Gilford, my new wife, many years of happiness within the realm that we are about to create. With this plate and glassware as a gift to my beloved new bride."

  "Oh, thank you. They are lovely indeed. I've been admiring them all evening."

  "Not as lovely as you, my dear."

  They clinked glasses and she sipped the cool wine, which turned warm as it passed her lips. She caught his gaze twinkling in the soft glow of the firelight as the yellows and oranges flitted about his hair, forming an aura around his head.

  The wild land which surrounded their citadel gave her a feeling of recklessness, matching the untamed savagery of the rugged coastline. She wanted to act impulsively, to behave in a primitive manner unrestrained by court etiquette and the stuffy morés of the society in which they'd been bred.

  "Matthew, let us be as wild as the land around us!" she purred, taking his hand and lifting the heavy velvet robe off his shoulders, letting it spill to the floor. His fingers laced through her hair and it tumbled out of the headdress, which she tossed aside.

  She ran into the bedchamber and yanked off the coverlet. They ran down to the beach, where all was silent except for the hammering the waves bruising the rocks below.

  A spatter of storm clouds stained the sky. The wind was sweet and flowing, the perfect backdrop to the wild expanse of rugged coastline and uninhabited land, its native dwellers speaking the primitive language of Cornish, the countryside sparsely populated. The stars lit the sky like multi-faceted diamonds and enhanced the landscape of velvety blues and moss greens, the sweet earth, the expanse of the dark seas about them.

  He watched as she ceremoniously spread the coverlet on the cool sand on the terraced platform overlooking the sea. The air was chilly and she shivered as goose bumps broke out all over her accompanied by a hot thrilling rush. She batted away his roaming hands; her eyes spoke her desire to play the dominant role. Beside her on the coverlet where she had pulled him, his arms rested above his head. He moaned when her mouth tasted his lips and throat, and her darting tongue flicked down his chest and lower still.

  Her passion was uncontainable. He was her husband and she wanted all of him, everything he had to give. She wanted him to feel with her as he never had with another woman. As she tossed her hair, tickling his chest and stomach with her silky ends, their explosive coupling shattered the night.

  The surf clamored at their feet as it slapped the shore, the sweeping sea air soothing their hot, entwining bodies. They became one with the sand, the sea, and the heavens as a cloud passed in front of the moon, like a curtain drawn against the silvery glow, filtering out all but the pales
t bands of light.

  Gulls cawed plaintively, then soared away into the night. Once again all was silent but the lovers' delighted breaths, in unison with the feathery breeze. The man in the moon looked down and smiled upon them.

  Beyond him she could see shadows of the angular rocks in a staggered formation, blackened in the shadows, their jagged peaks reaching out into the night. The sky was a velvet canopy above, strewn with glittering jewels of every magnitude. They twinkled in unison with the lights of distant boats on the water, as if sending esoteric messages from the earth to the heavens.

  She ran her hands over his arms, drinking in the warmth of his body as it mingled with the sweet pungent wine they'd imbibed, a lord and his lady at the royal court, two savages by night in the Cornish wilderness.

  Henry sent Amethyst and Matthew an invitation to court to celebrate his first wedding anniversary to Kate Parr. She accepted readily and, leaving Harry in the care of his nurse and groom, they packed their most ornate carriage and began the journey to London.