The Tudor Rose Part 5

"That day I left Westminster Cicely said I might see them again," persisted Richard, craning his neck in the likeliest direction. "And Bess called after me 'Remember the lions!'"

"They said it to cheer you, I expect," said Edward, listlessly turning over the pages of his book.

"Do you suppose Uncle Gloucester would let us?"

"Is it likely, since he keeps us cooped up in these two rooms and will not even let us dine in hall any more?"

"We could perhaps ask Will Slaughter to take us," suggested Richard, sliding restlessly to the floor.

"You could ask him. Surely it is not to be expected that I should ask a servant to let me see my own lions?" replied Edward pompously. "Besides, he will do anything for you."

"I expect n.o.body dares to disobey an order from Gloucester now he is King," decided his younger nephew, after turning over the chances in his bored but fertile mind. "Well, let us play at something instead."

"You can play soldiers with your chessmen," said Edward more kindly. "It will help to pa.s.s the time until Slaughter, or that ruffian Forest, brings the next abominable meal."

Richard stuck out his underlip at his chessmen. He was tired of playing alone. Cicely and Ann, although they were girls, had always entered into his ideas and been fun to play with. When he had first left them his uncle had received him charmingly and everybody at the Tower had been kind. Aunt Anne Neville's distrait gentleness had soothed his homesickness, and there had been amusing minstrels at mealtimes and his cousin Edward's puppy to play with. But now Will Slaughter or his cross-eyed underling, Miles Forest, always bolted the door when they went out, and it was days since he and Edward had seen anyone else. Sighing, Richard drew from his wallet two or three pieces of Master Caxton's leaden type and set them upon the table. There were not enough of them to build a castle, but somehow the sight and feel of them comforted him. He had been playing with them when he last stood by his father's table, and now he kept them as a kind of talisman. Gloucester, or the Council, had taken away his family and his fun and even his dukedom. He was plain Sir Richard Plantagenet now, so they told him. They could not take away his knighthood, he supposed. That and the little pieces of lead were all he had left of the wonderful things his father had given him. But it was not in Richard's nature to repine. "If you won't play let us learn to dance," he suggested, sweeping the type back into his wallet and tugging irritatingly at his brother's book.

Edward was much bigger than he, but, to Richard's surprise, instead of cuffing his head he flung away from him and went and stood with his back to him by the empty hearth. "It would be better to learn to die!" he said, in a strangled sort of way.

"Why, Ned!" exclaimed Richard, all the teasing eagerness wiped from his face.

And suddenly, as if strained beyond endurance, Edward covered his face with both hands and burst into tears. "Now that that fiend has taken my c-crown I pray to G.o.d he will at least leave me my l-life!" he blurted out between sobs. Richard watched his heaving shoulders and was terribly sorry for him; but this was the wild dramatic way in which their mother sometimes talked, and during his sojourn in sanctuary his highly sensitive nerves had been too often rasped by it. "Who should want to kill a boy of thirteen?" he asked. "What have you ever done to hurt anyone?"

"It is enough that I was born my father's eldest son," said Edward, who had been made to read more history.

"Well, at least we are with our own relations here," said Richard, trying to soothe him. "Not hunted, as our father was, by our enemies the Lancastrians."

"An enemy in one's own camp is more dangerous than a dozen outside," said the lad who should have been King, slouching despondently back to his chair. "I do not like it that n.o.body comes near us-or knows where we are."

"Perhaps the new King is busy and has forgotten us," said Richard forlornly. And then, seeing that his brother would not be comforted, he fell to dancing by himself. Up and down the sombre room he went, every now and then pa.s.sing the high arched window through which a shaft of moated sunlight fell upon his graceful, childlike figure. And because it was not very amusing to dance alone he had soon invented a partner. Each time he reached the end of the room he would bow to her, handing her gallantly in and out of the intricacies of the dance and making her admiring little speeches under his breath as he had seen his father do when leading the dance with witty Jane Sh.o.r.e. His vivid imagination had created a world beautiful with candlelight and elegantly dressed guests and lilting music, and so happily was he living in it that he failed to notice the quiet opening of the door.

Edward's fair head was still hidden desolately in his arms on the table, so it chanced that neither of them saw their uncle standing there watching them. "So you can still dance?" said the new King, after a moment or two.

At sound of his pleasant voice Edward's head shot up angrily. His chair was sc.r.a.ped back with a gesture of defiance even while he made a shamed and futile effort to hide his tears. Young Richard, arrested in some strange dance steps of his own invention, just stared in surprise; then, recollecting himself, bowed politely.

As Will Slaughter closed the door from the outside King Richard came forward into the room. "And who is your partner?" he asked, still ignoring his elder nephew.

It was seldom that young Richard was tongue-tied, but, as he had once told Bess, he was never certain how to take the uncle for whom he had been named.

"Some May Day sweetheart? Or your wife, perhaps?" rallied the King, entering into his imaginings so as to set him at his ease.

"My wife is dead," said Richard solemnly.

The King looked momentarily bewildered and then laughed. "Why, yes, of course I remember. When you were about six they betrothed you to the rich Duke of Norfolk's daughter. Another of your mother's clever moves!"

"It was an honour for the Mowbrays of Norfolk!" spluttered Edward furiously from the middle of the room.

The new King's eyes narrowed dangerously, but mercifully at that particular moment Richard found his tongue. "Her name was Anne too," he volunteered; and either the name or the sudden thawing of the boy's shyness must have averted the older Plantagenet's anger. "So we two not only bear the same names but are both married to an Anne," he said, his manner wholly delightful.

"And it was my wife I was dancing with," confided his younger nephew, trying to pull forward a carved chair which was considerably too heavy for him. "We met only once, at our betrothal. You were away in Scotland, I think, Sir. But I wish you could have seen her. She was sweet as a rosebud, was she not, Ned? And she had a wreath of white roses on her hair. But the ceremony in St. Stephen's Chapel was very long and she grew very sleepy towards the end. I think I could have loved her almost as much as I love Bess."

At his invitation the King seated himself in the high-backed chair, stretching his long supple fingers along the arms of it. "You all seem to love your sister Elizabeth very much," he said. "I have been away soldiering so much that I scarcely know her. And when I come back your mother insists upon shutting you all up in sanctuary. What is she really like?" He paid them the compliment of talking to them as if they were grown people, and looked particularly at Edward, trying to charm away his sulks and draw him into the conversation; and possibly expecting from him a more disinterested report.

"She is not clever like our mother," answered Edward, more civilly.

"So I should suppose," said the King, his thin lips twitching to a smile.

"But when things go wrong she always knows what to do," put in Richard. In his eager loyalty to Bess and his joy at having a visitor he went and leaned against the arm of his uncle's chair much as the little Prince of Wales might have done; and the King, knowing himself to be awkward with children, was secretly pleased. "You mean that she has ingenuity?" he asked.

Their two intelligent, sensitive faces were close together and young Richard looked back at him, trustingly. And it was the trustfulness, more than the older boy's antagonism, which hurt. "I am afraid I am not quite sure what ingenuity means, Sir," he confessed. "But when Ned let his pet monkey loose at a banquet it was Bess who covered it quickly with her skirt so that it shouldn't pick walnuts off the French Amba.s.sador's plate."

"I can easily suppose that too," said the King, realizing that, after all, he had not managed to get all the danger that was to be reckoned with safely imprisoned in this one small room.

Edward hated him the more for his sarcasm, but was learning the advantages which might accrue from courtesy. "It was kind of you to come to see us, Sir," he said.

The King seemed to pull himself back from the long vista of his thoughts. "I came to see you, Edward, because I am going away. To make sure that Will Slaughter is looking after you as befits the son of Lady Elizabeth Grey."

The sternness of his voice seemed to escape Richard. "Where are you going, please, Sir?" he asked, with the liberty which his own father had allowed his extreme youth.

Mellowed by the thought of being in the saddle again, the King settled himself more comfortably in his chair. "Up through the Midlands to Oxford-a few days in Gloucester, of course-and then to our own town of York." In speaking to this eager little kinsman he found himself talking of it quite involuntarily as "our" town.

"You will like that much better than stuffy council-chambers!" grinned young Richard, with quick intuition. "And will Aunt Anne-the Queen, I mean-go with you?"

"She will go direct to York. A gesture to our northern subjects which every wise Sovereign should make after his crowning in the south."

"And Cousin Edward?"

"We are both hoping so. But he is rather young for so long a journey considering that he has been sick these last few days."

If the King's anxiety was patent, so was his nephew's envy. "I am a little older and not at all sick," he stated, not daring to ask outright. And then, as the King did not answer, he fetched a prodigious sigh and added, "I do so ache to be out in the sunshine. The Duke of Buckingham gave me a new pony and I have scarcely ridden him."

The King laughed, rumpled his red-gold hair and got up, conscious of a queer reluctance. "Clearly, my dear d.i.c.kon, your duty is to stay here and cheer your brother until we come back," he told him, glancing disapprovingly at his elder nephew's slovenly, untied points. "It would be a good thing perhaps if you could teach him-to dance."

Disappointed, Richard watched him go. "Could you perhaps, of your kindness, give our love to Bess?" he ventured, seizing his final chance. "I think she may be anxious about us."

"Why should she be anxious?" enquired the King, in that thin kind of voice which made people feel foolish and uncertain.

"I-do not know," faltered Richard, made conscious of a lapse of manners which he scarcely understood.

"I would willingly be your messenger," said the King. "But short of pushing past the crozier of every bishop in the country I cannot."

They could hear him for a while talking with Will Slaughter just outside the open door. Telling him which horse he intended to ride on the morrow, discussing the state of the roads, and even laughing ever some campaigning incident of the past.

"He is certainly more at home in camps than council-chambers!" muttered Edward the Fourth's elder son contemptuously, though well aware that it was the same forthright manner with the common people which had made his father so beloved.

But presently Richard, who was nearer the door, began to prance noiselessly in pantomimic exultation. "Move them into the room in the Garden Tower," he could hear the King saying. "They will be able to get out into the sunshine sometimes."

The door was closed almost immediately, but Richard did not mind. It would not be for long, he thought.

Only Will Slaughter heard the end of the crisply spoken order. Heard it, and wondered. His hand was still on the bolt and the man he had always served already a few paces along the pa.s.sage. "And by the way, Slaughter," he said, halting in his tracks.

"Sir?" From bending over the bolt Slaughter straightened himself smartly to attention.

"That younger one has courage and gaiety," said the King, without turning his head. "Whatever happens while I am away I would not have him unnecessarily-hurt."

BESS HAS A CROSS bear on her back," complained little Katherine, whose nurse often used the old household expression during her own childish tantrums. And Elizabeth realized with compunction that it was true. All day she had left the children to their own devices and then, trying to lose herself in the sweet imagery of her new book of verses, had been furious with the noise they made. Even the fine singing of the monks at vespers had failed to restore her usual serenity. Half her mind was still seething over the coupling of her name with Henry of Lancaster's, and the other half kept straying to her brothers in the Tower. She longed to go out and see for herself what was happening in the outside world, and the monotony of austere monastic walls was beginning to suffocate her. The summer evening was so warm and lovely that she ached to be on the river or riding beneath the great beeches at Windsor. "But it must be worse for the children," she thought compa.s.sionately; and after a cheerless supper she went to see what they were doing.

She need not have felt so much compunction.

Guided by shrieks of merriment, she found them gathered in a room shared by Cicely and Ann, and the whole place in the wildest confusion. They had opened two old oak chests which had been brought from the Palace and which had stood in some dark corner ever since. Garments of all kinds were strewn across bed and stools and window-seat, and all four of them were playing at the age-old game of "dressing up." Even baby Bridget, half asleep in her nurse's arms, had her fair curls rakishly crowned with a garland of roses which one of her ancestresses must have worn as Queen of Beauty at some bygone tournament.

"I hope, Madam, it does not matter their ladyships creasing up all those lovely velvets," apologized her old nurse Mattie anxiously. "But it is so difficult to find occupation for them these long evenings."

Elizabeth smiled rea.s.suringly. "They are only old things, Mattie, and it is good to know that my sisters are young enough to be happy in spite of everything."

"Come and dress up too," begged Cicely, who was struggling into a pair of hose considerably too tight for her.

"Take them off before you split them," advised Ann, with sisterly candour.

"But here is the doublet to match," said Cicely, diving afresh into one of the coffers. "It's the one with the green ruffles which d.i.c.kon fancied himself in so last Christmas. Do you remember?"

"Put it back," said Elizabeth sharply, remembering only too well.

"Well, come and dress up in something yourself," urged Cicely goodnaturedly. "Here is a lovely flowered gown which would suit you to perfection."

How dear of them to be so eager for her to join in their play, thought Elizabeth, and to bear her no grudge for her day-long churlishness! "I would willingly try it on but that it appears to have been made for a giantess," she laughed, perching herself companionably on a corner of the nearest chest.

"Then wait while I find you something smaller," offered Ann obligingly, turning over a mounting pile of garments.

"Look! There's brother Ned's suit with the roses," pointed out small Katherine, as well as she could for the flowing veil in which she imagined herself to be a bride.

"Bess doesn't want to dress up as a boy, pet.i.te imbecile!' said Ann, throwing the favourite old suit aside. But Elizabeth picked it up and examined it attentively. It was made of plain black velvet with white roses of York st.i.tched all over it. "Edward is so tall for his age I believe I could get into it," she said, beckoning to one of the women to unhook her dress.

The children were delighted. Willing hands helped to fasten the doublet and to tie the points of the long black hose. "Why, you look wonderful, Bess!" exclaimed Ann, whose dress sense already bade fair to be excellent. "Here, cherie, let me tuck some of your hair under this black-velvet cap. And put your feet into these square-toed shoes. They are distressingly clumsy, but I cannot find Ned's." Dainty Ann knelt back on her heels and stared in astonishment at the transformation she had wrought. "You know, Bess darling, you make a wonderful boy. No one would ever guess, would they, Cicely?"

"You look like another person-the way you did in that grand French wedding gown," said Cicely, gaping with astonishment. "Only now, I am glad to say, you don't look grand at all. Except for the silk roses, of course."

"Bring me the mirror," said Elizabeth, and, suddenly finding herself in urgent need of more mature confirmation, raised questioning eyes to kind old Mattie.

"Truly, Madam, you might be his young Grace the King," Mattie told her.

"Or one of the pages, with those shoes!" giggled a gawky young nursery girl who had come to carry Bridget to her cradle.

"If only d.i.c.kon were here he would make up some play for us to act now that we are all dressed up," sighed Ann, exquisite in somebody's flame-coloured pageant dress.

"I will try to invent one in his stead," said Elizabeth, looking down with particular satisfaction at the incongruous shoes.

They clapped their hands with delight, and when it was acted and the hour-gla.s.s had run down to bedtime the girls declared that never since their father's death had they enjoyed so good an evening's entertainment; and the waiting-women were no less pleased because a considerate Princess insisted upon her sisters helping to tidy the room. She even began folding things up herself; but while they were all busy she slipped away, and none of them noticed that she had taken her own impromptu costume with her.

Far into the night, almost to the last gutter of her candles, Elizabeth, the King's daughter, sat diligently unpicking white silk roses; and in the morning as soon as the kitchen fires were being raked she dressed herself carefully in the plain black velvet, trying to hide the gleaming length of her hair as Ann had done. She drew close the curtains of her bed so that the servants might think she slept late, then donned the square-toed shoes and, with pounding heart, crept softly down the backstairs, uncomfortably conscious of the unaccustomed draught about her slender, tightly hosed legs.

As a child she had often seen inside the Palace kitchens, and by comparison the Abbot's looked intimately small. She had counted upon there being more people about so that she might slip out unseen. But on the other hand there were no complicated pa.s.sages to negotiate. Near the backstairs entry, in which she stood, some of the servants were sitting on a bench still finishing their breakfast ale, while beyond them a couple of scullions hung freshly filled pots on the chains above the great open fire. A lay brother appeared to be superintending the cooking, and in the middle of the stone-flagged room a tall monk sat at an old refectory table with an account book, chequerboard and several little piles of coins in front of him. He was bargaining for country produce as the carters brought in their wares, and the going and coming through the outer door at the far end of the room was considerable. Through the blunt Norman arch of it Elizabeth could see the open courtyard and groups of peasants unloading fresh vegetables. Some of them, their produce sold, were already throwing back their empty sacks and departing. It should be easy enough, she thought, to pick up a sack and walk past the unsuspecting guard beside them; and once outside the Abbey precincts she knew the way to the Palace water-stairs. Ferrymen were always hanging about at the moorings. She had only to call "Hey, there, a boat for below bridge!" and step casually aboard as she had seen young 'prentices do a hundred times when going about their master's business. And then, once out in the early-morning sunshine, she would be borne swiftly away from the stifling walls of sanctuary upon the sparkling tide. There would be the breath-taking thrill when the boat shot expertly through a narrow arch of the bridge, and beyond it, solid and white and strong, would be the Tower with the water swirling through the portcullis of the gate into the sullen moat, and the grim, battlemented towers above.

Perhaps in a few minutes from now she would see her brothers again. If she were fortunate, one of them might wave-though, to be sure, they would not recognize her in doublet and hose. And if they were not yet up she would tell the boatman to row back slowly at slack tide, hoping to see them on her return journey.

Elizabeth had never in her life stepped into a swaying boat without the help of obsequious hands, nor had she the least idea how much the hire of a public one might be; but she had been careful to put some gold pieces and a groat or two into the little wallet attached to Edward's leather belt. As she felt with moist, anxious fingers to make sure they were still there someone hurrying in from the backstairs pa.s.sage jogged her roughly, elbowing her out of the way. "Have you no errands to do, blockhead, that you must c.u.mber the doorways?" demanded a consequential young soldier whom she recognized as a corporal in John Nesfield's guard.

It was a new experience for a Princess of England, but Elizabeth had the sense to keep her mouth shut. She moved obediently into the kitchen and looked about her, accepting a mug of breakfast ale with the rest.

The corporal called loudly for a gla.s.s of the best Malvoisie. With reluctant but unruffled courtesy the tall Benedictine sent a servant for it and went on with his accountancy, setting to shame the young lout's self-importance. For, as everyone knew, no one in the new King's guard had any right to penetrate even as far as the kitchen.

"Thinks he owns the Abbey just because the Captain sends him to report to the Tower ev'ry mornin'!" grumbled the old man who grommed the Abbot's mule, sore because the soldier had upset his ale.

"What is there to report about in this celibate backwater?" enquired a discontented scullion.

"Everything the Woodville widow and her clutch of daughters do, I suppose," laughed a coa.r.s.e-looking individual sitting on the bench close by Elizabeth's side.

"But what's the good of sending reports about anything to London when the new King's gone up north?" asked someone.

"He's left trusty people here to act for him, never fear!" vouchsafed the corporal, overhearing him. "Gloucester never did leave anything to chance. He's the best soldier we ever had."

As he set down his empty gla.s.s and swaggered out into the courtyard the lay brother turned from the fire with a skillet in his hand. "A pity Sir Mars does not bring reports back again about what's going on in the Tower," he said, voicing the uneasiness of all.

But uneasiness and curiosity were drowned in laughter as a shock-headed swineherd drove in an unwilling pig for sale, and the Benedictine monk, after poking its lean ribs, sent him out again. During the scuttling and the merriment Elizabeth edged her way farther along behind the fast emptying bench. It was no good standing still like a frightened hen, or being shocked by the way the servants really spoke. She noticed an honest-looking farmer selling Father Ambrose a fat goose while his two boys waited with a basket of more delicious plums than ever reached her mother's table. "I will go out with them," she decided, settling the unaccustomed belt more snugly about her slender hips and looking for somewhere to set down her mug.

But before she could reach the table to join them the sunlight was momentarily blocked from the open doorway and the swineherd came running back again. He ran so fast and so blindly that he cannoned into the lay brother, who was in the act of tasting the steaming contents of the skillet with a long-handled spoon. "The Devil take you!" yelled the poor man, as drops of boiling liquid slopped over his sandalled feet.

The lad did not even apologize. "Have you heard?" he panted.

"Heard what, you clumsy numbskull?" growled the enraged Benedictine, sinking back on to a stool to hold his scalded toes.

"What they are saying all along the strand."

"The strand is always buzzing with some silly tale or other."

"People with nothing to do but hang about for fares have time to invent them," scoffed a second lay brother, coming in hot from the hard labour of kneading the day's dough.

In spite of so discouraging a reception, the country lad stood his ground in the midst of them all. "'Tis about the two Princes," he said, still too excited and short of breath to elaborate.

Cooks and scullions turned from their tasks, and the breakfasting servants ceased chewing with bread still bulging their cheeks. Involuntarily every man stopped to listen, for what was happening to the late King's sons was the subject upon which the ears of all London hung.

"Well, what about the Princes?" asked the monk in charge, grudgingly, thereby lending the uncouth newsmonger the prestige of his notice.

"They've been murdered."

The stark words, roughened by a rural burr, seemed to drop into the expectant stillness as separately as hard stones. Their harsh impact created a horrified hush, followed by a babel of questions.

"Where?"