A Song of Sixpence: The Story of Elizabeth of York and Perkin Warbeck (33 page)

It is all becoming too much. I cannot turn around without stumbling across some fresh disaster, some new mischance. I want to ride to Ludlow to be with Arthur, to discover for myself the extent of his illness. I write to Caterina asking for news of him and she sends straight back to me, reassuring me that he is on the mend and was well enough to wash the feet of fifteen poor men on Maundy Thursday, as is tradition.

The physicians recommend plenty of rest, and as much food and fresh ai
r
as he can get
.
Caterina promises she is doing all she can to ensure he follows the advice. Her words mollify me a little, but I send back a note full of motherly advice for his treatment. I am halfway through composing it when the door opens and Henry comes in, holding a letter. I put down my pen.

“What is it?”

“A letter from Rome, regarding the canonisation of Henry VI. You will recall I spoke to you of it.”

Henry has been pursuing this idea for months now; you’d think he could find more important things in this time of crisis. I sit up, ready to listen with feigned interest. He drones on about the late king’s goodness, his charity, his piety, and all the time his unspoken accusation screams in my ears.

My
father
had the old King Henry put to death. He was a rival, a claimant to the throne with many followers, just like my brother was, just like Suffolk is. It is Henry’s way of illustrating that he has no option, no choice. But I ask myself how many more must die for the sake of a gilded chair and a circlet of gold?

*

While the king is occupied with worldly things I am beset with worry about my son, about God’s opinion of our rule. I am tormented with fear that He may seek vengeance upon us.

I send up prayers, I make offerings, I send money I cannot afford to the church, to charity, to the aged woman who was once a nurse to my little brother. And when I am alone, I wring my hands, as close to despair as I have ever been.

I need a break, some respite from court, from Henry, from the constant fear that haunts me. I break into his conversation and he stops, his words suspended to hear me speak. “I am going to spend a few days with the Daubeneys at The Hospitaller’s House. It is quiet there, a retreat from all this madness, but I will be close enough should I be needed. I am sure they will welcome me.”

“Oh.”

He looks away. He is surprised and stutters a few words, approving my request as if I had asked his permission.

I have escaped to The Hospitaller’s House before in time of need. It is at Hampton, on the edge of the river; a moated house with lovely gardens. Since they were given the lease, the Daubeneys have spent much time and money improving the place, but it retains a sense of monastic peace. It is that peace that I need, in a place where I can feel close to God and perhaps appease His anger a little.

I have not been gone for more than a fortnight but it seems I have been missed, for Henry greets me warmly on my return. My husband excuses himself from council to share dinner with me in his chambers. The firelight, the soft music, and the undulating curtains at the open window recall our earlier days when I still had hopes of romance between us.

He smiles at me above his raised glass. “It is good to have you back with us, Elizabeth. We have missed you.”

At moments like this it is easy to forget his previous sins. He is a charismatic man when he sets out to be. I look around the chamber. It is masculine and comfortable, open books on a side table, a lute left on a chair, his dog sleeping before the fire. I realise I have missed him too; as much as he sometimes enrages me, it seems I would not be without him.

“I am sure there were plenty to keep you company.”

He chooses to ignore my hinted accusation. I can see no sign that a woman has been with him but, in my absence, Catherine Gordon will have seen to most of his needs. I am always afraid that the day will come when she eventually capitulates. He is, after all, a king.

“Can we go to see Arthur?” I blurt the words out when I had planned to lull him into a good mood first and then make my request meekly. He puts down his wine and sighs.

“I am busy this week but perhaps we can travel to Ludlow on Tuesday next.”

For the first time in what seems like an age
,
my smile is genuine. It reaches my eyes. I can feel my jaw ache, my lips almost splitting with the unaccustomed expression.

“Thank you, Henry. I was so afraid I would have to go alone.”

When we have eaten our fill, the trenchers are removed and our wine glasses refilled. We move from the table to sit at the hearth and, as is my habit, I sit on the floor, close to the fire and watch the images in the flames.

The black and red heart of the fire is like a living story book, inhabited with goblins and dragons. Henry sighs, stretches out his legs. It is growing late and I should really go to bed, but I am reluctant to leave. I want Henry to ask me to stay. I want him to put his arms around me, offer me his comfort and his body.

I straighten my back and swivel around so that most of my weight is on my right arm, for the left has lost all sense of feeling. Really I should face the fact that I am getting too old to sit on the floor.

Henry sighs again and shuffles his feet and I am tempted to shift my position so I can lay my head upon his knee. But I cannot be so forward. If he desires me, he will have to ask.

I open my mouth to ask how his communication with the pope is going when we notice a disturbance outside the chamber. The king puts down his cup and I sit up, wondering who would disturb the king so late.

We expect to see his attendants, perhaps the gentleman of his bedchamber come to put him to bed, but the figure that emerges from the gloom wears the sombre hues of a friar. I recognise him as the king’s confessor.

He takes two steps into the room, stops just outside the ring of firelight. He seems to tremble. His hands are tightly clasped, his fingers digging deep into his flesh.

“What is it?”

Henry stands up, takes a step toward him and then stops, half turns and reaches for my hand. Slowly, I struggle to my feet. Henry’s hand is cold; his fingers dig into my flesh. We both know, without being told, what news the confessor brings.

“Your Grace. I am afraid …” He stops; I see the fear in his eyes, the utter regret of the words he must speak. “We have had news from Ludlow.” He pauses, clears his throat. “It seems that after a lengthy battle, your son, the Prince of Wales …”

“No.” Henry slumps into a chair, his head to his hand, defeated before the words are out.

“… has departed to God.”

The friar looks at me helplessly, bows his head and begins to pray, mumbling about God sending us good things so that we may endure the bad.

My mind is screaming:
when in all my life has God ever sent me one good thing, and allowed me to keep it?

I cannot speak. I cannot move. I am rooted to the spot; my knees tremble, my head is reeling, my stomach curdling. Madness beckons.

And then, the king’s mother is there. She is in her nightgown, her hair in a long thin braid. She appears suddenly old, her eyes are red, her face as wrinkled as a dried up grape.

“Send for the queen’s women,” she commands as she takes me by the arm and gently leads me to a chair. She pushes me into the seat. Slowly, I look at her and wonder who it is that is crying such heartbroken tears. I turn my head and see it is the king.

Henry’s head is buried in his folded arms, his back is heaving. He is crying as loudly and as angrily as a thwarted child, harsh, anguished sobs that are breaking my heart. Lady Margaret abandons me and moves to his side, runs her old woman’s fingers across his back.

“Hush, my love,” she whispers. “Hush, my son. Tears will not help.”

“Nothing will help,” I say, and we exchange hollow glances, my eyes locked in hers. Tears are tracking down the grooves of her furrowed face. I never thought to see the king’s mother cry.

They are all weeping. The father confessor, the king, the king’s mother, my women, who come racing through the door to bear me off to bed. Everyone is shedding tears.

But my own eyes are dry. My head is clear, my mind as sharply honed as a bloodied knife. I can see the bleakness of my future, the futility of my past. My heart is quite broken but I am too wounded for tears.

I want to sleep. I want to bury myself away, close myself off from the world and curl myself into a ball and give in to the cloying misery. But I can’t. I am queen of England. Henry though, forgets he is king. For the first time in seventeen years, he ignores his status and collapses into an orgy of grief. I am alone in my apartments when the king’s mother comes to me. She still bears visible signs of sorrow, she is swathed in black, the only relief to the darkness of her figure is her parchment white face.

“Elizabeth.” Her voice is cracked. She sinks into my chair without permission and, resting her elbow on the arm, rests her head in her hand. “You must go to him. He will not respond, even to me. He needs to see that your hurt equals his and that Arthur is not his loss alone.”

She has healed enough to speak his name. I cannot bear to even think it. I place a hand on her shoulder and walk from the room. In a sort of trance I glide along the passages, servants and courtiers falling to their knees at my approach. The whole palace wears an eerie air of sorrow; it is as if we are all enchanted. There is no noise, no music, no laughter, just an awful strained, painful silence.

But, as I approach the king’s chamber, I hear one sound; the rasping, heart-wrenching sound of a defeated man.

I open the door.

Henry, still in his night clothes, is alone. He sits at the table, his plush velvet gown open, revealing sumptuous night-rail. He has pulled off his cap and thrown it to the floor and his thinning hair is standing up like a crown. He does not look up when I enter.

“Henry,” I say, but still he continues to weep. “We should comfort one another, Henry. He was my son, too.”

When he finally looks up his eyes are red, his face as white as his linen.

“He was more than a son,” he says, with almost a snarl. “He was my prince. The royal flag; King Arthur come again; the proof of God’s favour upon us and now … now, there is nothing.”

“There is Harry. He will be king now. Think of it, Henry the Eighth — it has a good sound to it.”

My voice does not sound as convincing as my words.

“He was always your favourite.”

“Henry! That is an awful thing to say, to suggest that I …”

He waves his hand to silence me but I am done with his self-pity. “I loved Arthur just as well as the others. He was my first born, my salvation! If I have not been as close to him as the others it was because
you
sent him away. It was more important to you and your mother that he was raised a prince … but he was my baby, my little boy, and you sent him away. If he hadn’t been in Ludlow maybe …”

I stop there. I will not follow the path of recrimination, of blame. The breath leaves my body; quite suddenly I can fight no more. “Henry,
share
this with me. We have lost our son; we should not fight, not now. We need to hold each other up. Henry … I am
broken
…”

I am on my knees, folded up, my arms crossed around my middle, where the pain seems to be seated. It is not my heart that is aching, it is my gut; the womb that nurtured him is mourning, screaming for him. I groan aloud. I cannot breathe. I cannot fill my lungs. In the periphery of my vision, bright lights and colours begin to conglomerate. I rock back and forth, a dirge of longing that begins somewhere in the back of my throat.

And then I feel a hand on my hair. I raise my head, turn into my husband’s arms.

“Why does God punish me so?” Henry whispers. “What have I done?”

Pushing away a sudden vision of my brother, and my cousin Warwick, I grip the back of his gown and the plush red velvet is soft beneath my fingers. The bones of his shoulder dig into my cheek and my legs are cramped, but I do not move. As we rock back and forth on the floor before the king’s hearth, I recall that this is the very spot were Arthur was conceived.

“I can give you another son, Henry. You still have an heir and I will bring forth another … if you will let me.”

*

I am ailing. The court is swathed in black damask; each lady has a handkerchief to her eye and every gentleman a sorrowful demeanour. Grief is like a tightening band around my chest. I go through the motions of being queen. I speak, I walk, I eat, yet all is undertaken with a terrible weariness, a reluctance to go on.

Even little Harry is sad. When I see him, after the formalities of greeting and offering condolence, he snuggles up for a cuddle. I rest my chin on his head and stare into the flickering fire.

“So I will be king then, Mother,” he says after a long period of uncharacteristic silence.

“Yes. Perhaps, if Caterina is not yet with child, one day, you will. You must work harder now at your lessons just in case.”

He frowns. “I would rather continue to be Duke of York. It is hard to be a king, I think. It makes you frown.”

“Frown?” For the first time since the news came I find a small bubble of amusement fermenting in my belly. I should have come to see Harry sooner.

“Well, Father frowns and always has some worry or another. I think I would prefer to be a prince, or perhaps just a knight. I want to learn to joust and be a champion of the field.”

His round red face is earnest, his enthusiasm for his sport belying the mark of dried tears on his cheeks. I ruffle his hair.

“You can be a champion jousting king then, my love.”

“Can I? Is that allowed? Father doesn’t joust.”

“Father doesn’t care for it. My father jousted in his younger day, when he wasn’t waging war.”

“Did he? Tell me about it.”

He settles back and I begin to speak of my father, of long past days before I was even born. Stories he told me of his glorious youth. Harry listens with shining eyes, his arms clasped around his knees, his red hair glistening in the firelight.

The one good thing to come from Arthur’s death is that Harry will not now be sent away. Last year Henry set plans in motion for Harry to take up his own household at Codnore Castle in Derbyshire; a long way from court. It was an idea I hated from the start and, sneakingly, I am glad that he will now be staying.