The Tudor Rose Part 20

"You see," said Katherine Gordon triumphantly to all who would listen to her, "were he not really your Richard of York how could he have known that sanctuary was at hand?"

"He had time to look round," snapped Jane Stafford, knowing how this constant use of the name affected her mistress. "A n.o.ble priory with acres of land could scarcely be mistaken for a farmstead."

But for once the Queen overlooked the use of the forbidden name and drew their guest gently aside. "I am sure that it was the Palace, not the Priory, he was originally making for," she consoled her. "He must have loved you very dearly to risk his life to see you, Kate."

In spite of her anxiety, the girl's fair face flushed with happiness. "But how could he possibly have known that we were coming here?" she asked, after a moment's consideration.

But that the Queen had no intention of telling her.

"Well, at least he is safe," they both sighed.

But he was not, for there was an end even to Henry's patience. This time the King disregarded the laws of Holy Church. Perkin Warbeck was a disturber of the public peace, he contended firmly, and demanded that the Prior should deliver him up. It was well known that Henry never offended the Church if he could help it, and more and more frequently he had made valuable religious foundations and bequests; but the common sense of his request roused so much sound backing throughout the country that the Prior agreed to hand over the pretender on condition that his life should be spared. And judging from the spirited way in which he bargained with the King, it seemed probable that during the few short hours of his unwanted guest's sojourn the wise old Prior, too, must have succ.u.mbed to some inherited Plantagenet charm!

The whole nation marvelled when Henry acquiesced, merely having the impudent impostor set in the stocks for the whole of a forenoon before Westminster Hall and then again at Cheapside, and then imprisoning him for life. "Put him in one of those cells beneath the Earl of Warwick's room," she heard Henry tell the Lieutenant of the Tower. And there, presumably, he would eat his young heart out, forgetting the warmth and sunshine and the song of the birds, not being even allowed to walk on the battlements as her poor Cousin Warwick did.

The year limped away and Elizabeth resolutely turned her mind from that grim place. More and more she spent time and money on the sick and the distressed so that she came to be known as Elizabeth the Good. She tried not to criticize anything that her husband did and to keep her mind dutifully upon the concerns of her own household and family. Now that her mother-in-law had withdrawn from Court, Elizabeth relied more and more upon her own judgement; and although she never sought any of the spectacular power so beloved by the Woodville side of her family, she was pleased to find that within her own sphere she had much quiet influence. Her children adored her and she counted herself fortunate in the frequent companionship of her sisters. Although Katherine Plantagenet was now one of the Devon Courteneys and absorbed in their affairs, and young Bridget was already a novice, Ann-who had married the brilliant Earl of Surrey-was often in attendance upon the Queen. And when Cicely's rich old husband died it was Elizabeth to whom she came for advice. For life was blossoming anew for Cicely because she need no longer make a secret of her love for Sir Robert Kim, a gentleman of Lincolnshire. "But of course the King would never hear of my marrying him," she would sigh.

"What he does not hear of he cannot prevent," pointed out Elizabeth.

Cicely stared at her favourite sister in surprise. "You mean that you, who took "Humble and Reverent" for your motto, seriously advise us to marry without his permission, Bess?"

"Only if you are prepared to live away from all the gaiety of Court. In some quiet country manor perhaps. Think well, my sweet. You need to be very sure, you who have always been so lively and so feted."

"Oh, Bess, for Robert I would live anywhere!"

"Then that is the answer," said Elizabeth, with a new firm a.s.surance.

"And you would do what you could for us if the King is angry?"

"I would do what little I could."

"I suppose I should not ask this of you, but you do not know how awful it is to be married while one is still young to a man whose touch is like salted fish on Good Friday!" explained Lord Welles' new young widow.

Elizabeth took her sister's piquant face between both her hands and kissed her very tenderly. "Darling Cicely, I understand better than you suppose," she said quietly. "I was heir to a throne and had no personal choice. But for one whose happiness I desire above all things I would say 'Take a man who will be your mate.'"

That her elder children could not marry for that reason Elizabeth knew and accepted. But James of Scotland was manly and generous, and the Spanish girl by all accounts had been well brought up. So she did what she could to prepare the characters of Arthur and Margaret and their knowledge of foreign languages, and their wardrobes for their approaching marriages, in spite of the fact that the Spanish sovereigns seemed still to hesitate. "But Henry is sure to find some way to persuade them," she told her anxious friends, being more confident than ever of his power and wisdom.

And then one day all London was suddenly agog with the news that Perkin Warbeck, whom people had baited in the stocks, had tried to escape again.

"But surely, n.o.body ever escapes from the Tower!" exclaimed Elizabeth, when her brother-in-law, the Earl of Surrey, came to tell her. She was sitting talking with Thomas Stafford and his sister, and her old friend Lord Stanley, and in her sudden agitation she rose from her chair, scattering her embroidery silks upon the floor.

"n.o.body ever will, Madam," Surrey a.s.sured her. "But few people have ever succeeded so nearly as he. They were by the Byward Tower-almost on to the drawbridge-when they were taken."

"They?"

"Your Grace's cousin, the Earl of Warwick, was with him."

"Warwick!" exclaimed Jane Stafford, down on her knees gathering up the silks.

"It appears they had concocted some sort of plot-" explained Thomas Stafford, who had heard of it before but been warned by his sister not to speak of it before the Queen.

"My cousin of Warwick concocted a plot!" protested Elizabeth. "I ask you, my dear Tom, would he not be hard put to it to arrange the simplest hawking party?"

"Then it must have been this Perkin who concocted it," surmised Lord Stanley, whose mind had been slipping from Court affairs since his brother was executed. "No doubt Warwick, tired of years of constraint, lent a willing enough ear. We all know that obliging way he has. He probably did everything Perkin Warbeck bade him."

"What puzzles me, milords," said Jane, squatting back on her heels with the silks in her lap, "is how, if Perkin were locked in one of those terrible cells, the two of them could meet?"

"The cell was found unbolted," said Surrey. "True to type, he must have managed to make friends with his guards."

"But they were all four specially chosen. Strangeways, Blewet, Astwood and the man they call Long Roger. I heard the King appoint them," said Elizabeth, unaware that she was providing his stepfather, who had cause to know Henry so well, with a possible clue. "Each of them had already proved himself zealous in serving the King."

"Perhaps they were serving him," suggested Stanley blandly.

Elizabeth swung round on him in understanding surprise. "You mean that this time the clever pretender was fooled? That he was the bait?" she demanded angrily.

"Well, anyhow," summed up Surrey, trying, as usual, to smooth matters over, "they are both taken now and held for trial. And we all know what the end of them will be."

"Oh no!" cried Elizabeth. "The King would not do that! Everyone knows how merciful he is, and he must realize as well as we do that whatever happened Warwick could not really have been responsible."

"But no doubt-saving your Grace's presence-it would clear the path to the Spanish marriage miraculously were the trial to go against him," remarked Stanley.

And this time Elizabeth said nothing. She was recalling those words of Archbishop Morton's which she had accidentally overheard. "So long as Warwick lives there will be no Spanish marriage." And she shivered as if someone walked over her grave. Was her son's marriage to be paid for in Plantagenet blood? Just as Henry made his wars pay, had he used the cat's-paw of Europe for his own ends at last?

When the day came for Edward, Earl of Warwick, to be executed on Tower Hill, Elizabeth the Queen, as was most fitting, went alone into her oratory to pray for the pa.s.sing of his gentle soul. There were tears in her eyes for his untimely death and for the pitifully useless days of his life. But the thoughts of her heart were really at Tyburn, where another young man who had wished him no harm, and who probably deserved to be hanged, waited beneath the common gallows. Even in the midst of her prayers Elizabeth pictured him standing on the scaffold in the morning sunlight, gay and dramatic, above the gaping English crowd, confessing to the last, with an engaging smile, that he was the son of a merchant of Tournay. And it was almost as if she could hear his voice saying again, in the warm, walled garden, "Since my day is done, let it be indubitably your son."

ELIZABETH STOOD ON THE dais in Westminster Hall with all the wealth of Tudor pageantry around her. It was her elder son's wedding day and the culmination of the hard-won union of two great powers. Spanish splendour, in which the elegance of black played so effective a part, vied with the more richly hued familiar devices of the English. All the previous week there had been magnificent comings-and-goings to meet the Princess of Aragon, and a scurrying of servants to prepare for the impressive reception of her numerous entourage. And on this happy day itself the bells of all the churches had rocked their steeples, and the people, packing the street, had thrown their caps in the air and shouted a spontaneous welcome to the youthful Prince of Wales and his auburn-haired bride. The water conduits ran with wine, altars and sideboards gleamed with gold plate, and all the best horse trappings and heraldic banners in the country had been brought out. Never, since the Tudor mounted the throne, had there been such lavish expenditure.

"A wildly successful procession through London, a wedding in St. Paul's, a tournament in front of Westminster Hall, every kind of masque and mummery, and now a state banquet-truly so much celebration is exhausting!" laughed Elizabeth. "By your leave, Henry, I will go and rest a little while before the final spectacle."

"I would that I might join you!" smiled the King, in rare good humour. "As you say, a week of playing hosts upon such a scale is apt to bring it home to us that we are not so young!"

"But it is so wonderful, Madam!" protested their younger son Harry, escorting her to a secluded gallery and setting a chair for her. "I beg you not to stay away long."

"Do you never tire, child?" she asked, marvelling at his enthusiastic energy as she brushed his flushed cheek with loving fingers.

"How should I when there is so much to see and hear and do? I wish Arthur were married every day. And how I wish I could have tilted out there with Uncle Courteney and Thomas Stafford and all the rest!"

"Perhaps one day you may do better than any of them," she foretold, regarding his tall muscular body with pride.

"Then it will be your favour and no silly chit's that I shall wear in my helm," he vowed, setting a stool for her feet and then bestriding it as if it were a horse. "Tell me, dear one, did I carry it off well, escorting my new sister-in-law through London to St. Paul's?"

"It was nice of the King to let you," Elizabeth reminded him. Looking down upon the procession, she had in fact been eaten with pride in him, but she always tried not to feed his exuberant vanity.

"Katherine is quite human really, once one can get behind all that rigid etiquette with which those priests and duennas surround her," he ran on, not really noticing whether his mother had answered him or not. "And she has such exciting clothes. That wide-brimmed Spanish hat she wore when she was riding her Andalusian mule beside me, and the long lace thing they call a mantilla she had on in church. But oh, Madam, did you notice her ladies in the procession? Each of them accompanied by one of our Court beauties. A charming thought. Only our fool of a Chamberlain had forgotten that in Spain side-saddles are girthed from the opposite side, so that the poor things had to ride back to back as if they had just quarrelled violently!"

"Harry, you must not speak so disrespectfully of milord Chamberlain!" she reproved him. But the boy could see that she, too, was smiling.

"Even the Aragon girl had to laugh," he chuckled, rising restlessly as some fresh frolic was started in the hall. "They will be beginning the dancing soon. Did you hear that Arthur is so afraid of making some mistake in those slow stately dances the Spaniards do that he has decided to play for safety and partner Lady Guildford in an English one? You know, Madam, whatever sort of a buffoon I made of myself I would dance with my bride, not with my sister's middle-aged governess!"

"But then Arthur is more prudent than you. He looks ahead like his father and so avoids mistakes."

The Tudor's second son indulged in a ribald grimace which he had learned from one of his grooms. "A good thing it is he who will be King and not I," he remarked without rancour. He was tall and ruddy and vital. He had none of the fineness of feature or sensitivity which her beloved d.i.c.kon had had as a boy, nor was he unduly concerned for her weariness as her small brother would have been. But Harry was her son. As yet there were no other loves in his life, and she was still the centre of his world. He needed the sweetness of her approval as a budding rose needs dew. "I am going to dance with Margaret after Katherine and Arthur and their partners have finished," he told her. "You will come back before then and watch me, will you not, Madam?"

"I shall come and watch Margaret. She dances very well," said Elizabeth, because she thought the snub was good for him; but there was a smile in her voice as she said it. Not for worlds would she have missed the dancing of any of her children; but just now she must rest for a minute or two.

"Shall I tell the servants to bring you some wine?" he asked, craning his neck to see what was going on below.

"Please, Harry," she answered. "And do you go back to your revelling. It is a shame that you should miss any more of it for me."

After he was gone Elizabeth leaned back against the cushion he had brought her and closed her eyes. She seemed to have spent hours listening to exalted personages speaking through interpreters. And then she had had to make suitable replies and try not to muddle up their foreign t.i.tles or offend against their complicated Court etiquette. And all the time part of her mind had been worrying a little as to what her exquisitely mannered little daughter-in-law would think of the outspoken utterances of her own more freely brought up family.

Elizabeth sipped the wine which had been brought her and tried to relax. From where she sat she could see the glittering company of her guests pa.s.sing to and fro about the central hearth, from whence leaping flames lit up the great hammer-beam roof of this loveliest of halls. The whole Palace seemed to be full of lights and laughter, music and movement; yet here, in her curtained recess, it was comparatively quiet and cool. She chided herself for needing to rest; but since last year she had not been so strong. Not since the shock of those two young men's executions, she supposed, for some spring of vitality seemed to have snapped in her then. And it had been a hot, airless summer, with the plague rife in London again, and she had been grateful when Henry had taken her across the sea to their town of Calais. Knowing that he was not the kind of man to run away from the plague on his own account, she had thought it very considerate of him. But it had turned out that, like most of his kindnesses, it fitted in with plans of his own, for Calais, it seemed, was a very suitable place from which to throw out feelers for a good European marriage for their small daughter Mary. Of course Elizabeth knew that Henry had been acting like a wise father; but to her Mary was still an adorable bundle of childish curves and amusing laughter, and she did wish that her husband would not be so secretive. Why could he not have taken her into his confidence before leaving England and discussed so personal a matter with her instead of talking of it cautiously behind closed doors with Archbishop Morton? But Elizabeth was glad now that she had accepted the situation meekly enough. The King's plans always turned out for the best; and she had more reason than she could ever explain to be grateful to him for so complete a change of scene and thought.

And as soon as they had returned to London she had been caught up in all the bustle of preparation for her daughter-in-law's arrival. "Poor little Katherine of Aragon, having to part from such doting parents!" she had thought. "And coming from the warmth and colour of Granada, by way of a vile Channel crossing, to travel from Plymouth over our appalling roads in the cold grey of November rain!" Mercifully Henry himself had gone to meet her, and Elizabeth was sure that his satisfaction and his graciousness must have done much to mitigate the poor child's misery.

She was still thinking how well success became him when she found him at her side. "You, too, are tired?" she said sympathetically, pouring his wine with her own hand. "I do not wonder, for you undertook that terrible journey to Plymouth, which I was spared!"

"Sometimes I think I am always tired," he sighed. "But it has been worth it."

Although he took the wine from her hand he did not look at her, but stood gazing over the body of the hall. Whatever his private weariness, there was an air of triumph about him. "I just heard de Puebla telling the French Amba.s.sador that England has not stood so secure for five hundred years," he said.

Elizabeth rose and stood beside him. "That will be an even more lasting memorial to you than your beautiful chapel," she said softly; and in the expansiveness of the moment his hand pressed hers. Among so many other things G.o.d had given him, He had even turned a Yorkist woman into an understanding wife. "There have been times I have thought that this would never happen," Henry admitted, indicating with a nod of his neatly shaped head the distinguished company of their guests. "But now there are no more pretenders. Ferdinand and Isabella and everyone else knows that there is no better Plantagenet blood than mine left. We stand secure, unchallenged-we Tudors."

Elizabeth shared his sense of security, but she made no answer; for even in the midst of her thankfulness she was thinking of the price. "I like our new daughter-in-law," she said presently, watching the girl play her part with a touching young dignity. "I like the way she looks one straightly in the eyes. She is not particularly beautiful, perhaps; but she has been well trained for queenhood, and I think that she will prove kind."

"Let us hope that she will prove fruitful!" said Henry shortly.

"They are very young to be married," demurred Elizabeth dubiously.

Henry surveyed them dispa.s.sionately across his lifted gla.s.s. "My mother bore me when she was not much more than fifteen," he reminded her.

"People did in those days," said Elizabeth. "And then, of course, she was desperately in love with your father. I do not think that Katherine cares very much for Arthur."

"Does it make much difference?"

"A great deal, I should imagine. Not that I think Arthur would realize. Sometimes I think his head is full of Latin verbs and dreams about the future. You know, Henry, I have been very worried about him of late. He looks so pale."

"It has been a long and trying day for a lad of fifteen."

"But Katherine bears it well. Although she is but a year older she is much more mature. Foreign girls are, I think. But see, Henry, how Arthur keeps pa.s.sing his hand across his brow."

"A trick he has caught from me."

"And then that cough he has. He tells me he got wet through waiting out on the plains while those fussy duennas of hers decided whether or not he might meet her before they were married. Just as if we lived in harems like the Saracen women!"

"You worry too much about his health, Elizabeth. You always have worried about him more than the others because he was born prematurely," said Henry, setting down his gla.s.s. "Well, I must go and say a few words to those Spanish priests. And after the dancing I suppose it will be time for the final procession to bed the bride and bridegroom."

Elizabeth caught at his arm. "But they are so young!" she repeated. "You will not let them-"

"Come, come! I must have heirs," he laughed. "A grandson to consolidate our union."

"Arthur is shooting up so. The doctors tell me he may have overgrown his strength. Would it not be better for them to wait a year?"

"Well, I will talk to the doctors about it," agreed Henry, half sharing her anxiety but finding it difficult to believe that anything so nebulous as an adolescent's health could interfere with his plans. "But formally they must be bedded to-night. To omit that part of the ceremony would be to offend Spain."

"Spain! Spain!" thought Elizabeth, watching him return to the dais to receive a group of important-looking prelates. "Must the lives of all of us revolve around Spain! He is so far-seeing, so wise. Is this merely an obsession with him, or will that country one day wax so great that it will take some other Tudor's utmost wit and strength to curb her?"

But for the moment Henry looked more contented than she had ever seen him. He was always at his best in public-dignified, urbane and cultured. And now, it seemed, he was at the peak of his power. The respect shown him by all foreign amba.s.sadors and envoys indicated how much his name stood for abroad. And as he sat there, a reserved but gracious host, he had something indeed to be satisfied about, for few Kings had ever accomplished so completely all that they had set out to do. The power of the barons was broken so that they could no longer make a battleground of England, the people were contented and prosperous, the empty coffers refilled, and-above everything-the royal succession a.s.sured. And better than anyone Elizabeth appreciated what it must mean to Henry Tudor that his elder son was no longer Prince of Wales only in name but, after being educated in that beloved country, was going there with his wealthy young bride to rule it. To set up his own Court where the great Pendragon and his other remote ancestors had once held sway.

For all the Plantagenets' splendour, Elizabeth had to admit that they had seldom had such material benefits to boast about. And she was shamed at the remembrance of how often she and her sisters had secretly made fun of the way Henry rubbed his hands together in satisfaction like a successful shopkeeper. She realized now how much that element of a businessman in him had helped to bring about their country's present prosperity.

Hearing the musicians strike up a galliard, she clapped her hands for her ladies and went back to watch the dancing. Arthur appeared to have abandoned the idea of partnering Lady Guildford and won rounds of applause performing a minuet with Cicely, and his bride chose to dance a stately measure with no man at all, but with two other ladies. But the success of the evening was when Margaret and young Harry took the floor, prancing with youthful high spirits in a typically lively English country dance. In fact, so high did Harry volt and caper and so warm was the hall that his fair skin was soon glistening with perspiration; whereat, nothing deterred, he broke up the formality and delighted the company by throwing off his fine new velvet top-coat and dancing the whole thing over again with enormous energy and enjoyment. Elizabeth laughed with the rest and Henry beamed at the pair with paternal pride.

After a splendid pageant, during which live doves were loosened as a special compliment to the bride, she and Arthur were bedded in the Bishop of London's house, and then the young Spanish bride was given back to the care of her ladies pending her people's return to Spain and her own departure with her husband for Wales. So Elizabeth hoped that her anxious counsel to her husband had carried weight.

And if she was a little lonely at Richmond after their departure, she was consoled by unusual demonstrations of affection from her elder daughter, Margaret, who seemed to cling to her mother more now her own time for parting was so near at hand. For as soon as it was summer and the roads became drier Margaret Tudor was to set out north with an imposing retinue to become James Stuart's bride and Queen of Scotland.

AFTER ALL, IT WAS not her elder daughter whom Elizabeth was called upon to part with that summer. For by the time the roads were dry and the hedges green there was no marrying, only mourning. Elizabeth was still abed on the shining morning when the news came from Wales.

"It is Prince Arthur," her women said, white-faced and stammering.

Elizabeth, who had been dreaming, as she so often did, that she was back in the monks' deserted little garden at Westminster, sat bolt upright. "Is he ill?" she asked, as if it were news which she had been expecting. But after a moment or two she knew by their frightened silence that he was dead.

That Arthur-the son whose throne had been made so secure-was dead. But as yet she knew it only as a fact accepted by the mind, not as a desolation to which one must learn to attune the heart. "How? What happened?" she asked.

"We do not know," they answered, tying the last fastenings of their hurriedly donned clothes. "It is said that there were some cases of plague-"

"Or there might have been some accident-"

"No," said Elizabeth, with a mother's certainty, "it is just that his Grace has never been really strong."

Jane Stafford came and put loving arms about her. "We all wanted so much to let you sleep in peace a little longer," she said. "But the King is asking for you."

"He needs you," said Ann Howard, her sister, hurrying in to join them. For Ann knew well that the best help she could give was to tell her beloved Bess that someone needed her.

Elizabeth looked at her bleakly. "I have been married to him for sixteen years and he has never really needed me," she said, too stunned to realize that she spoke her thoughts aloud.

"They say he is distraught," said Ditton, tenderly holding a cup of hot milk to her mistress's lips.

Elizabeth pushed the milk away untasted. Swinging her long slender legs over the side of the bed, she slipped her feet into the slippers they held for her. Then, tremblingly, thrust her arms into the gown they brought. She had been too suddenly roused from sleep and her mind was so stunned that she moved as obediently as a puppet. If her husband needed her she must hurry.

Outside in the anteroom she saw Patch, hunched against her door like a dog that keeps watch. His big brown eyes, the one thing of beauty which he had, gazed up at her in an agony of compa.s.sion. For once his glib tongue was stilled, and she knew that the soul within his ugly body rendered her much of the worship which should have been his Maker's. He was only her fool, but at such times devotion takes on a higher value than degree. Elizabeth stopped in front of him. "What am I to do, dear friend?" she asked simply.

The squat shoulders shrugged beneath their gay silk motley. "A market-woman with broken eggs in her basket, if she be wise, counts those she has left," he muttered.

The Queen bent down the better to hear him. "But, Patch, how can I comfort him?"

Patch's gaze was sure and steady. "Only you," he said, "can refill his basket."