The Tudor Rose Part 19

"How can anything that you do affect my son? Or anyone seriously suppose you to be a Plantagenet?" she demanded. "Men of my family do not persuade their allies to retreat. They fight like the third Richard fought at Bosworth, or ride out alone to face an angry mob like the second Richard did in the Peasants' Revolt."

The colour rose hotly in his cheeks. "Neither of them had to see their own country ravaged for the sake of destroying it, or Englishwomen raped by foreigners," he said.

He was too readily plausible, she decided. And then, just when she was sure of his guile, he was down on one knee beside her, neither parrying nor posing, but unfeignedly sincere. "I pray you give me news of my wife," he beseeched. "I hear that she is with you."

"She is well," said Elizabeth, looking down into his ardent face and thinking what a lover he would make. "I should like to be able to tell you that she is happy. But at least she is kindly treated."

"Everybody says you are the kindest Queen in Christendom!" he cried gratefully, bending to kiss the hands that lay in her lap.

In spite of herself, she was pleased with the compliment. She would have liked to touch his bent head. "Your Kate is easy to be kind to," she said smilingly.

"She gave up everything to follow me. She is sweet as the heather on the Scottish hills," he said. "Could you tell her that you have seen me? That I am shamefully well. And give her my undying love-"

Elizabeth released her hands from his eager hold and held up one to stay his importunity. "How can I tell anyone that I came here?" she reminded him. "Do you not suppose that I took some risk to do so?"

"Of course you must have done, ingrate that I am!" he agreed, rising to his feet.

But, seeing the disappointment upon his sensitive face, Elizabeth found the same difficulty in refusing him which had so often betrayed her into doing things for her young brothers. "She is coming to Richmond with me to-morrow, and one day I shall probably find means to rea.s.sure her," she half promised him.

"Bess-Madam-I will make a bargain with you," he began; and it was well done, she thought, that artfully dropped name even in the midst of his real sincerity. "If you will go on being kind to Kate I will go on playing Warbeck. I owe that much to her now-and to you."

"You have no choice," said Elizabeth, trying to speak coldly. "The King has made you confess yourself an impostor and may do so again."

"But if ever I came to the scaffold I could say anything. No one could prevent me in those last moments. And I look so inconveniently like you."

It was uncomfortably true. Sitting near him in the sunlight, Elizabeth could not deny it; and although she had almost persuaded herself that he was not d.i.c.kon, the idea of anyone so like her brother standing on the scaffold was unbearable. "What do you remember about your father?" she asked abruptly, as if to allay the thought.

Instantly his wariness seemed to change to pleasure and there was a reminiscent smile upon his lips. He seemed to be upon sure ground and there was no talk now of the Tournay merchant. "Chiefly how tall he was, and how good to look upon. And how pleasantly his clothes smelt of musk or amber. There was a locket, he wore, I remember, and straight bands of pearled beading across his breast."

"Most of which you could have gathered from his portraits," said Elizabeth.

"Of course," he agreed without offence. "But no painting could show how the room came alive with his vitality when he came into it, or how even the most ordinary things suddenly became interesting. How he was always laughing and telling Will Hastings to do all the dull things. And how, when he had time, he made one love his books and yet seemed always to be either coming in hungry from the chase or in a tearing hurry to go to it!"

"Aunt Margaret could have told you all that."

"But she couldn't make you feel it, could she? Not the laughter and the security. When I was small and he lifted me on to his knee and let me build castles on his table. Or the bursting pride in my breast when he swung me up high above his head and called out in his great voice: 'By Christ's breath, Will, this youngling of mine is the most diverting companion of them all!' It is one's feelings one remembers."

Elizabeth was leaning forward, spellbound. "What did you build your castles of upon his table?" she asked.

He stopped in full spate and frowned uncertainly. "I do not really remember. It is so long ago. Little blocks of wood of some sort, I suppose."

"Pieces of type?" she suggested eagerly-and saw her mistake too late. How useless to ask leading questions and then be beguiled into supplying the right answers.

She was watching him so intently that she caught the momentary gleam of satisfaction on his face; yet his voice sounded indifferent enough. "Yes, it could have been something like that," he said, and began negligently exploring the contents of the purse at his belt.

"Do you remember watching his funeral from a window?" she persisted, and immediately he described it. But he was clever enough to talk mostly about the wooden effigy clad in the King's state clothes which would naturally have made most impression upon a small boy.

His pa.s.sing reference to the hole made in the Palace wall when they went into sanctuary sounded convincing and the sort of thing a child would remember, but of course he could have been told that too. She must think of something which he could not possibly have been told. "And do you remember what I said to you when-when I last saw you? As you went out of the Abbot of Westminster's door?"

He stared at her for a moment, seemed about to say something and then changed his mind. Playing for safety, no doubt, she thought. Finally, he shook his head. "It is so long ago," he murmured. But d.i.c.kon, who loved her, would have remembered.

It was queer. She could swear that he remembered some things-up to a point. But not those more recent things which were most vivid to her. Probably her mother's explanation was right. "But of course you remember Mistress Grace?" she asked carelessly.

"Grace? Grace?" he repeated; and she supposed that he must be picking his words very warily now. "I seem to remember the name."

"She was always about the Court."

If he knew who she was he kept a noncommittal silence.

"She is said to have been a love-child of my father's and was devoted to my mother, who, of her charity, brought her up."

In her intense desire to make him betray himself Elizabeth leaned towards him eagerly; but he only shook his head. "My life has been so wandering, and spent in different countries. I have met so many people since then," he explained. Which was, of course, reasonable enough.

"Like me, this Mistress Grace had a younger brother," added Elizabeth meaningly.

"And you think that I am he?"

"I think that so many people have told you so many lies about yourself for their own ends that-"

"By now it is difficult for me myself-"

"To know which to believe."

He was uncannily quick at picking up her ideas, but was smiling broadly as he recapitulated them. "Then you will go so far as to permit yourself to think that I am one of the King's b.a.s.t.a.r.ds? And that this Grace woman, to please the late Queen in her last illness, sent me to the d.u.c.h.ess. That is very ingenious."

"It is at least as likely a story as any."

They were talking now in quick, half-finished sentences as only those can whose minds are intimate. Not since the older Richard rode to Bosworth had Elizabeth talked like that with a man who seemed to be of her own blood. And she found it a mental release to talk so again, with someone who picked up her half-spoken thoughts, who did not kill conversation by taking light expressions literally-someone whom she could argue with and yet like, disbelieve in and yet trust. And it made her realize sadly how stilted had been all her conversations with Henry Tudor-and how impossible it was for even a lifetime of such barren utterances to lead them to see into each other's minds.

"I do not deny that you may be half Plantagenet," she conceded. And because the scent of the lime tree was so languorous and life had been so hard-because she took such pleasure in his looks and the time she dare stay with him was so short-Elizabeth let the peace of the moment steal over her. With an almost drowsy gesture she patted the bench beside her invitingly and when he sat down she leaned against him. "I am glad you have this garden and not some horrible cell," she murmured.

"The King's kindness has been-incomprehensible," he said. "I hope he is kind to you?"

"Kind?" Thoughtfully Elizabeth stirred the little pebbles of the path with the point of her shoe. "Yes. If you call it kind never to be rough-nor inconsiderate about my comfort. He never forgets to buy me anything he promises-nor what he paid for it. He makes notes of everything I am to do in his little day-book."

"How horrible!"

"It probably helps to make up for all the years when he wasn't important enough to arrange even his own life."

"What a way to talk about your husband!" laughed her companion.

"How should I talk about him?" asked Elizabeth, rousing herself to look up at him.

"One does not a.n.a.lyse a person one loves. One just loves them as they are."

"But I did not say I loved him," said Elizabeth, and her head went back comfortably against his shoulder.

"Have you no other lover?" he asked after a moment or two. "Surely anyone as beautiful as you-"

It was not the first time the idea had occurred to her. She wiggled the point of her shoe and looked down at it consideringly. "Would a woman dare to, who was married to Henry?"

"I suppose not. His mercy is so much more terrible than Uncle Richard's ruthlessness. But for a woman who is made for love as you are-"

"I try to fill my life," Elizabeth said. "I have my children. And there are so many pleasant and amusing things-"

"Which would be so much more than pleasant or amusing shared."

"Ah!" The shadow of the great Abbey was creeping over the gra.s.s, pa.s.sing as inexorably as one's most precious hours. In a few minutes the bells would be ringing for Matins, and she had promised to go then. She felt her companion's arm slide warm and comforting behind her along the back of the seat, and suddenly, inexplicably, she found herself telling him things of which she had never spoken even to her sisters or to her confessor. "There is nothing that we really share, except our formal strutting through a reign of history-towards that grand tomb which Henry is preparing in Westminster. Have you seen it?"

He shook his head.

"Even our coming together physically is-routine. Though we had to marry-to graft the Tudor roses-it should not be, should it?"

"It should be a losing of oneself to find ecstasy. A fire, a completion, a fusing of flesh and spirit. Human comfort-yet the moon and the stars."

"As it is with you and your Kate?"

"Yes."

"And even though you are separated-though she may lose you for all time-she has had that ecstasy. She is richer than I," sighed Elizabeth.

"My poor Bess!"

She thought that his lips touched her hair. Even though she did not really believe in him-even though young d.i.c.kon was dead-it was sweet to hear him say her name much as d.i.c.kon might have said it. Unutterably sweet to let herself pretend to believe-for the s.p.a.ce of these few minutes which were left. "It is so hard to know that life is pa.s.sing. That I am thirty-five. That I have beauty and the capacity for pa.s.sion. And that neither in marriage nor illicitly have I lived through one single night in the arms of a lover. There are women who accept my kind of marriage meekly, I suppose; and men who think we have no desires. Or never think of us at all. Oh, I know that I should strive after patience and righteousness. And if I strive hard enough I may even attain a small heavenly crown," she finished, with a little shaky laugh. "But never in this life shall I have known-the moon and the stars!"

"I suppose that women in convents who take vows-" he began, seeking for some way in which to comfort her. But her interruption was sharp with bitterness.

"They are not nightly reminded of what might have been-and then frustrated," she said.

He withdrew his arm from the bench and leaned forward, grinding fist in palm as though, in his almost feminine sensitivity, he endured some part of her raging against the way life had cheated her. "Odd that such men are so often respected-that there are such different kinds of brutality!" he muttered incoherently.

Elizabeth sat up very straight and stared at him. "Why do you say that? Whom have you heard say it before?" she demanded.

His surprise was patent, and the question brought them both back to the commonplace. "No one, so far as I know. But it is true, is it not?"

"Yes, yes," she agreed, with hurried self-consciousness. "But I do not know what made me speak of such things. And above all to you."

He was smiling again, his charming, casual smile. "Because you are not likely to see me again," he suggested. "And so it will not matter."

"Yet I came to question you-not to talk about myself."

"It may ease you to have found someone to whom you could speak of it-just once."

"Because we speak the same language."

"Then why do you find it so difficult to believe me to be d.i.c.kon?" he asked.

"It is not difficult. It might be desperately easy if one had no common sense. And if the King had not disproved it." Elizabeth was quick to forestall any protest with a question of her own. "Why do you sometimes talk as if you might soon die?"

He shrugged and turned away. "I do not want to. I love life. But I am a restless sort of person," he said lightly. And even as he spoke the great Abbey bell began to ring.

Elizabeth, a creature of kept promises, stood up immediately; but it was difficult to go. "I have always worn this," she said challengingly, drawing the miniature of her brother from the bosom of her dress. "Surely if you claim to be the Duke you must have something which belonged to our father?"

"When a terrified child with his brother's screams still in his ears is carried from the scene of murder and put into a swaying boat he does not stop to collect his childhood treasures," he told her grimly.

"No, of course not. It was foolish of me to ask. And I really knew that James of Scotland had tried to prove you with the same question, and that you could produce nothing."

The young man's hand went again to his wallet. "Only these," he said, holding out a few pieces of a printer's type. "And they scarcely seemed worth showing to a realistic King like James."

With a little cry Elizabeth was bending over his open palm, turning them about. "d.i.c.kon!" she cried. "They are Master Caxton's. See, they have the impress."

"They must have been in the pocket of the old coat they bundled me into that night. I suppose I kept them-sentimentally-or as a kind of mascot."

"Of course. You were building a castle with them on the King's table. Don't you remember that day when-" Elizabeth stopped abruptly. This time she had the sense not to give him a clue.

For her it would always be the day when the Dauphin jilted her. But d.i.c.kon had been too young to realize. Breathlessly, alternating between hope and fear, she waited for him to say eagerly, "Of course! That day when we younger ones played weddings in the garden. And I brought in the big book and found you sitting crying in the King's chair. And I asked you why, if it were not particularly comfortable, so many people wanted to sit in it."

But he just stood there looking at her. Either he could not or would not supply the all-important words. And why had he not produced the little blocks of wood before? She had looked up quickly-quickly enough, she fancied, to catch the triumphant quirk of an eyebrow. And then she remembered. "How clever of you!" she said, in a voice low with anger. "But, of course, Caxton was with Margaret of Burgundy before ever he came to us. You might have picked them up anywhere-as a novelty. And a while back, when I was fool enough to mention them, you felt in your wallet to make sure they were there."

She walked swiftly away from him, her head held high. She was not even aware that he followed her. When she reached the garden gate she detached the heavy old key from the chatelaine swinging against her skirts and let herself out. The ordinary world looked desirable enough in the June sunshine. She could hear excited voices from somewhere in the direction of the Palace and guessed that the escaped falcon had been found. Simnel had probably beguiled the impostor's guards into joining in the chase. Neither of them was in sight. Elizabeth put the key back in the outside of the lock, paused for as long as it takes to make a sudden, crazy decision, and then went on her way. "Madam, you have forgotten to lock the gate!" a gay voice called after her. He must be standing at the little grille, watching her go up the Palace path. Was he mocking her because he knew that she could not find it in her heart to go back and lock it? How dared he stake such an undreamed-of chance of liberty upon the a.s.surance of his charm? Most men would have profited in silence by a woman's whim of kindness, not given her a chance to change her mind. Or was he actually warning her, at his own expense? Giving her a chance to undo such dangerous foolishness? In any case she was sorry she had taunted him with cowardice. For he had proved himself to be sensitive and kind. And in a world where there were so many different kinds of brutality, might there not be different kinds of courage?

PERKIN WARBECK'S ESCAPE was a nine days' wonder. Why should he have wanted to escape at all, people asked, when he had little further hope of raising a following and was at least reasonably safe? Everybody about the Palace precincts had been concerned all morning about the King's lost falcon, and it was not until they took Perkin his midday meal that his negligent warders found that a much more important prey had escaped.

The Queen's ladies rushed to tell her the news, and in their excitement about the doings of a man whose strange adventures had for so long intrigued everybody they chattered so much that they scarcely noticed how little the Queen herself said. And it was not surprising, of course, that deaf old Mattie, who knew all her secrets, should make no remark at all. And soon the arrival of Katherine Gordon made them start discussing it all over again.

"What will they do?" Perkin's wife asked distractedly.

"The King has closed all the ports," they told her.

"And even if he had not, do not raise your hopes that your husband will get any more following abroad," Elizabeth warned her.

"He might get back to Scotland?" the girl suggested hopefully.

Elizabeth put down the book of devotions she was pre tending to read. She was sane now, freed from the spell. Cured, she supposed. "Scotland, Flanders, France-what difference does it make?" she asked wearily. "As soon as he left each of them the King, in his wisdom, made friendly alliances with each country so that they could never invite him back. Do you suppose that your Cousin James would risk for an adventurer's sake his own marriage with our daughter?"

But Elizabeth's own hopes were still divided. She wished that Perkin would get clean away and never trouble them again. Yet so long as he lived and was at liberty Henry's anxiety would be as it was before. Anxiety which had prematurely aged him. Elizabeth had acted upon the spur of the moment, and now that she had time for reflection she was afraid of the enormity of the thing she had done; afraid both for herself and for the King's head falconer. Yet, strangely enough, not even the guards were called to account; and when she next saw Henry he looked neither angry nor unduly worried. He even went hawking in Richmond Park the very next day-perhaps in order to show his subjects of how small consequence the matter was. But during the weeks which followed Elizabeth often caught him watching her with that thin-lipped, mirthless smile which gave him what old Mattie so disrespectfully called his cat-and-mouse expression. And recalling what her daughter had said about his looking down from his anteroom window, Elizabeth began to wonder if he could possibly have seen her leaving the garden that day.

Torn by a variety of emotions, she was glad of the distraction afforded by their removal to Richmond. It had given her something fresh to think about and less time to see the strained anxiety in Katherine Gordon's eyes. "If he can get abroad and make some sort of life for himself, however humble, I would live with him," the poor girl kept saying. "Do you suppose, Madam, that the King would let me?"

"No," said Elizabeth uncompromisingly. "Is it not enough that his Grace is kind to you and makes you an allowance? You should thank the blessed saints that you were not with child by this impostor or he might have been forced to act differently."

"But, after all, I am his cousin, and I think he likes me," mused Katherine.

"Yes. I am sure that he likes you," replied Elizabeth, pausing before her mirror and deciding that it was not only Henry who was ageing. The strain of all that she had been through was beginning to tell on her, and for the first time she discerned faint lines which might in time mar the serenity of her beauty. She had brought to her husband the benefit of her popularity and given him a fine family to unite the red and white roses, which was probably all that he had ever wanted of her. So perhaps the reason why he did not often come to her bed now was that he liked this pretty Scottish cousin of his too much. The thought annoyed but did not hurt her. "And I am afraid I grow more and more apt to misjudge him," she thought.

During the days that followed Elizabeth strove hard to keep her thoughts from Katherine Gordon's attractive husband and all that had happened in the monk's old garden. And the simplest way was to make up her mind once and for all. She was convinced that she could never have felt that kinship with him and opened her heart to him had he not had Plantagenet blood. For the sake of her own peace of mind she accepted her mother's solution of the matter. He was some b.a.s.t.a.r.d brother who looked extraordinarily like d.i.c.kon. How else could he have had that fineness of feature and that charm of manner? And her mother, she guessed, had secretly contrived the affair with her all too willing sister-in-law, Margaret of Burgundy. Ill as the Dowager Queen was at the time, Mistress Grace, who was so devoted to her, could have sent her own younger brother as the tool that Margaret sought. A tool so likely that he must have appeared to her as a gift from Heaven with his looks, his knowledge of Court life and his inherited charm. A counterfeit so plausible that for more than six years he could put fear into even the self-sufficient Tudor. But whoever the young man was Elizabeth did not like to think of him, hunted and hungry, hurrying from one watched port to another, pitting his nimble wits against her husband's.

Her imaginings were groundless, for in the end the King's men caught him within a stone's throw of Richmond Palace. Even then he dodged like a hare and escaped them and managed to enter the sanctuary of Sheen Priory.