Mistress of Mourning (11 page)

It was then that the hair on the back of my neck prickled and my knees went weak as water. I felt a sharp pain between my shoulder blades, as if I had been struck there. Someone hateful, someone evil wished us ill among all the hurrahs. Though royalty was watched by many eyes, this felt far different.

As the king turned to wave again and I followed his lead, my eyes skimmed faces I could see from this height. The warmth of the crowd washed over us like a river, and yet, even at this moment of triumph and joy, dark fear nearly swamped my strength.

Nonsense, I told myself. On to the mass and the banquet at Baynard’s Castle, on to a blessed, charmed life for our Prince of Wales and his new princess. Yet I trembled as we walked into the shelter of St. Paul’s.

Mistress Varina Westcott

The next morning, I was most distressed to see my escort to the palace was Sibil Wynn and a guard I’d never seen. He seemed a brooding man but well favored, introduced to me as Jamie Clopton. Like most of the palace guards, he was tall and strong, though Sibil later said he’d lost his right thumb at swordplay and had retrained his left hand to hold sword
or lance. She also told me he always wore black gloves with stuffing where his thumb would be so no one would know—though everyone did.

“Is Nick unwell?” I asked Sibil as I mounted the third horse they’d brought. “I saw him in the parade yesterday.”

“Glorious, wasn’t it? The banquet and dancing lasted till all hours,” she said with a yawn and watering eyes, as if to prove her point. “The queen didn’t want you to miss a day at your task, though she’ll be busy with the festivities. No, Nick is jousting in the lists at Westminster this afternoon, asked at the last minute by the king in person, so he was happy for that. He asked me as a favor to take you up to the parapets so you can watch a bit of the joust—before I return to the queen’s stands, of course.”

She heaved a huge sigh, whether in annoyance at having to tend to me or just from weariness, I did not know. At least I could see Nick joust. Even in his excitement at the king’s attention, he had thought of me. But what if he were injured? The barber-surgeons had told me they were to be at the ready if anyone in the tournament was hurt.

“Speaking of favors,” Sibil went on as we boarded the barge, “Nick will be wearing mine today—my scarf—on his lance, and of course that of the queen and the new princess too, but mine is bright yellow, so if I forget to mention it later, you must look for it when he tilts.” She sighed again.

When he tilts…
Her last words echoed in my mind. Nick Sutton had tilted askew my head and heart, but I was foolish to think he gave a fig for me. Had this woman set her cap for him, or was she just pleased he’d wear her colors before the court?

I tried to force my thoughts back to the business at hand, the only reason, no doubt, that I was of any consequence to the queen or, sadly, Nick either. Today I would begin the effigy of Her Majesty’s brother Richard, Duke of York, for I wanted to leave for last the boy King Edward. A week ago, I had received permission from Her Majesty to ask
Signor
Roberto Firenze if he would paint the wax faces and hands. I had sworn him to secrecy—only the queen, I, Nick, and Sibil knew of the effigies—and the artist had already painted the waxen flesh of Princess Elizabeth and Prince Edmund to fine effect.

In high praise that I valued more than the generous money Her Majesty gave me through Nick each week, she had claimed that I had sculpted perfect corpses in repose and the
Maestro
had given them life.

That midafternoon, when Sibil summoned me from the door to my work chamber—how I hated being there without Nick to keep the walls from closing in—my silly dreams of him took flight again. Sibil, obviously in a rush to complete her task so she could return to my betters, led me up curving stairs to a flat, crenellated portion of the roof. I had never seen her so beautifully gowned before. But then, she’d been garbed only to go outside the palace. Today, her matching bejeweled necklace, rings, and earrings sparkled, and I realized that beyond serving the queen, she must have a wealthy family. Or perhaps a besotted suitor who showered her with gifts. She seemed enamored of someone in the crowd below, blushing, waving, to whom I could not tell, but at least it could not be Nick, who was not now in sight.

“Nick bade me explain things to you,” she said with a sweep of her arm at the panorama in the tiltyard below. The hubbub of voices reached my ears before I peered over at the stands and jousting area with its gay tents and fluttering flags.

It was brisk and windy up here, but I didn’t care. How far I could see, as if I were a bird about to soar over the Thames. The city lay behind us, and the great gray-green river like a wide ribbon separated us from the Southwark forests cloaked in their brown and yellow leaves clear to the fertile fields beyond. But what a vantage point from which to behold the glorious pageant below!

“You cannot see the king and queen from here,” Sibil said, “but just as well, as they’ll not see you. I’m sure Nick did not ask permission for this.”

Her voice was dismissive, even snippy. She resented, of course, having to take time with me and perhaps away from whomever she kept eyeing and waving to in the crowd below.

“I hardly think anyone will see me,” I told Sibil, “for I will simply stand behind this projection and watch for a while. I’m sure you would like to return to your friends.”

“Yes, I shall, but, as I said, Nick asked me to give you a bit of an explanation. Have you seen jousting before?”

“Only when boys played at the tilt rail in the streets.”

“Well, then,” she said, wrinkling her nose at that, “those tents are where the knights are armored. Though Nick is not a knight per se, he’s filling in. You won’t be able to pick him out until he removes his helm at the end, but I’m to tell you he will wear a red-plumed one and his cape will have a swan on it—something to do with the family coat of arms of the man he’s replacing.”

Poor Nick, I thought, to have his people so disgraced and to be so hastily included here that he could not represent his own family. Sibil’s voice droned on, but I came alert again when she said, “He’s to joust with a man who used to be a York loyalist but now serves this king, Sir James Tyrell, summoned from France for these festivities.”

Was that not the man Nick and Her Majesty had mentioned as possibly having been involved in her brothers’ murders? And the queen had said that His Majesty had invited Tyrell home to joust for this occasion. Oh, if only Nick could pin him down, force him before the entire court to tell all he knew of working as King Richard’s henchman, whatever that entailed. No doubt I would not be the only one cheering Nick on over Tyrell today. Would not he be much more skilled than a younger man?

Then, though Nick was still nowhere in sight, came the rush and clash of the first jousters. On their third pass, a lance splintered against a shield. One man was unseated, crashed to the ground, and writhed under the weight of clattering armor. But all was well, as squires helped him to his feet and both jousters stood to bow in fine fashion to the royal box and the cheering crowd.

“Has Nick had much practice at this?” I asked Sibil.

“They all do, of course. Well, then, I’ll away. Are you certain you can find your way back down? Nick said you should stay here but a little while, as Her Majesty is anxious for your project to be completed.”

She started away, then turned back. “And Nick is too, of course, so he can return to more manly pursuits.”

I glared at her back as she flounced away, but I did not
want to miss the excitement unfolding beneath me. Wait until I told my Arthur of this! How I wished he could be here with me.

I stood entranced for at least an hour before I could force myself to go below to my little room and the creation of wax children of the lost, those who would never ride a horse or cheer at a joust. Besides, I was fearful someone would see me on the roof or stairs and question what I was doing in the palace. But I must say, when Nicholas Sutton rode out in chain mail and armor, which gleamed like polished silver in the sun, and charged Sir James Tyrell and unhorsed him at their very first pass, I shrieked his praises like a fishwife.

I was beginning to wonder whether Sibil would return to escort me home from the palace when I heard the clink of spurs. Nick, divested of his armor, stooped to enter the little chamber. He was bareheaded, and his thick blond hair was mussed and damp. My insides cartwheeled at the mere sight of him. He bore a tray of food—cheese, meat pies, a flagon, and two wine goblets. I smiled broadly but for a moment was tongue-tied.

“Your cheeks are rosy,” he said, “so I think you were up on the parapets for a while.”

“Oh, yes, it was wonderful. My thanks for sending Sibil to fetch me. You were magni—did so well.”

“I bested him smartly, did I not?” he said, beaming like a boy. “The queen was so pleased to see bested a man she mistrusts, she sent a purse of coins back to the tents, even as my squire removed my armor. But I pray the king doesn’t mind
that I unhorsed Tyrell. I wanted you to be watching, lest he did me in and I needed a waxen effigy for my funeral,” he added with a shouted laugh. I could see he was ecstatic. His mere presence lifted my spirits. “Here,” he said, setting the tray down. “I did forget to tell Sibil to feed you. You must be famished.”

“In truth, I am.” I sat down on my familiar end of the bench where we always ate. He poured us wine, sloshing a bit of it on the cheese. “I—I suppose you need to hurry back.”

“True, but I’m exhausted with everything,” he said, and flexed his big shoulders. I longed to rub his sore muscles, but I took the goblet he offered and downed a swallow of the delicious wine. “Those Spanish women the princess brought with her don’t dance like we do at all,” he told me. “I had to watch I wasn’t trampling their feet and those bushy skirts—‘keep away,’ they seem to say.”

“And so you should,” I dared with a little laugh. Our eyes met and held—always a thrill and a danger for me—before I looked down and sliced the bread. “And how do the bride and groom in all of this festivity?”

“People are talking, wagers being made about whether or not they bedded last night,” he said, his mouth half-full of cheese. “I mean, they had the bedding ceremony, the bishop blessed the bed, and they were left alone, but the prince is not the most robust of men. He boasted a good deal this morn about wanting wine because he had had such hot work and had spent last night ‘in Spain,’ but odds are they did not perform ‘the conjugal act,’ to put it in legal terms.”

“But if he so boasted…”

“Still doubtful,” Nick said with a shake of his head. “I heard the bride looked untouched and told her maids so, though the two of them had best get to it, since the king needs not just a family but a dynasty. If the prince and princess are sent to big, drafty Ludlow Castle in Wales, I can’t picture that being a snug spot for newlywed lovebirds.”

“But the winter wind makes it best for cuddling and bedding,” I blurted.

“Does it?” he asked, turning toward me. His eyes widened, and he looked me over as he sometimes did. “I’d like to prove the truth of that, but I rather favor lying on the grass under the trees in the lusty month of May with a willing wench.”

He grinned like a lad with his hand caught in the sweets jar, so charming and alluring. I smiled back, and then the unthinkable happened. He leaned closer, slowly, slower, as if giving me time to bolt, while I sat stock-still, gripping my hands in my lap around a piece of bread I smashed, mesmerized by the depths of his eyes, where I could see myself framed by his fringe of eyelashes, sinfully thick for a man’s.

“Today,” he whispered, his face so close to mine that I could feel his breath, “I was given several ladies’ favors to wear in the joust. But this is the favor I covet, the joust I would like to have.”

I sat stone still in anticipation. His lips touched mine, coaxed them open a bit. He did not need to take my mouth, for I surrendered it freely, and even tipped my head so we missed noses and fit perfectly, moving, tasting, exploring. I forgot to breathe. Besides my mouth, he touched only my cheek that day, stroking my skin there with a calloused
thumb that sent shivers through my entire body and made something hot as melted wax settle in the pit of my stomach. Neither of us moved closer—at least, our bodies did not with the tray between us—but it was as wild a move for me as if I’d thrown myself off the parapets of the palace before the entire court.

A
ll was silent in the house one night about a week after I’d left the palace for the last time. The dead children opened the curtains of my bed and hovered above me like angels in the cold December night. Surely they could not be the waxen effigies I had made, because they moved; they breathed. Their wings fanned my face, and their bare feet dangled as they held out their arms to me beseechingly. Unable to budge or scream, I lay horrified yet mesmerized, staring up at them.

The heads of the last two effigies I had done, the little princes, wore small gold crowns like halos. How fine they had looked when I had finished with my work. Only then, though bedecked in their fine satin and velvet garments, they’d been lying on their little beds the queen had made.