Mistress of Mourning (12 page)

But now I saw five children crowding in above me, not just the four I had carved and which
Signor
Firenze’s paints had brought to life. The fifth one—my Edmund! His sweet
mouth opened so slowly and he cried,
Mother, Mother, help me, Mother.… I don’t want to die.… I want to live, not to leave.… But farewell…Farewell…
Then they all cried out as in a roaring crowd at a parade or a joust:
Help us; save us! We don’t want to die—to diiii—ee.…

Soaked with sweat, I gasped and sat up. Church bells were clanging, clanging—twelve tolls, midnight. I was alone. No children, no voices but those in my head and heart. A nightmare, just like those I used to have that my father’s waxen effigies had come to life.

I put my head in my hands and sobbed. I had held back tears for four days, since I’d been returned from the palace with a full purse and an empty heart. And not escorted by Nick, whom I might never see again, but by his substitute, Jamie Clopton, who knew only that I carved candles for the queen. How I treasured my talks with Nick, our single kiss that day of the jousting before he had to return to the lists.
This is the favor I covet
, he had said,
the joust I would like to have.
Had they been mere seductive words or a strange good-bye?

Now this nightmare had assailed me when I had hoped to move past Edmund’s death. It was well-known, Christopher had said, that overmuch grieving was unhealthful and showed a lack of trust in God’s will. Another clock was clanging in my head, marking off the days before I must give Christopher my answer to wed him or not. Some stubborn core in me screamed,
No!
but my head knew it would be best for my future. The Westcott Chandlery’s future, at least.

What a jolthead I had been to fall for Nick Sutton or to think that the queen might buy a huge supply of candles
from my shop. Though she had praised my skills, and I’d seen tears glaze her eyes as she beheld the finished faces of her fallen family, her last words to me had been stern, almost as if I were a child:
I want you to vow you will tell no one what has happened here or what you leave behind in my care. Lest someone from the palace or anywhere should question you, this must go no farther than Nick,
Signor
Firenze, Sibil Wynn, and you. These thick castle walls will keep the wax cool and preserved in summer or in winter, but you must forget what you leave behind here. Swear it!

I swore not to tell, but I would never forget. How deeply it had disturbed me that my final farewell to my finest work seemed to be under the weight of not a vow but a threat.

Queen Elizabeth of York

As I lay in the royal bed, I thought I heard a child’s voice calling me. Even the words were distinct enough to awaken me:
I don’t want to die. I want to live.… But farewell. Farewell! Help us; save us!

My first thought was to calm myself by running to the little chamber where the four beautiful effigies lay, but I was sleeping with Henry this night. When we bedded together—as now, usually in his chamber, not mine—he was always Henry to me, not the king. I would be thirty-six at my next birthday, but my body yet responded to his lovemaking. Perhaps there would be yet another prince or princess, though never ones to take the place of those I’d lost.

My heart still hammered in my ears from the echo of
little voices I surely must have heard only in my head. Henry still slept, though fitfully, tossing, moaning, breathing hard in spurts as ever. From his earliest years, he’d confided once, he’d never had a sound night’s sleep, not even with trusted guards at the doors, not even when, at last, the throne was his.
Especially
not then. In our earlier years, he had even slept with his crown by the bed, fearful lest someone would come and snatch it.

Although I knew it would be unusual if I left him before morn, I carefully extricated my hair, which was caught under his shoulder, and edged toward the far side of the bed. I could tell the guards in the hall I had a queasy stomach and needed my own chamber. I vow that was nearly the truth.

“Are you all right?” came Henry’s sleepy voice. “Is all well?”

“Yes. I was just awakened by worries,” I told him, deciding he might insist on sending for a physician and make much ado if I told him I felt unwell. I wondered what he would say if he ever learned what lay in the secret chamber off my bedroom. I could not stifle those little voices in my head demanding,
Save us…help us!
Perhaps, though they were long lost, I could help myself. But first I must mention something I would give in to before asking for a great favor.

“You’re not fretting again that we should stay here for Christmas instead of Windsor?” His voice came slowly, dragging out his words. “Tradition is important in establishing the Tudor name.”

“Not that,” I told him. True, I had not wanted to leave my secret chamber for so long, but I did love Windsor all decked out for yule, and hoped the change of setting would
help to heal my heart. But I had to get this precious and precarious moment back on track. I’d capitulated on Windsor and now must give in on something else.

I told him, “I admit I’m still fretting about Arthur and Catherine leaving us before yule and riding to the Welsh border in this bitter weather.”

“Is that it then? I told you, my dearest, it’s best that they establish themselves in their own household there. He’s not called Prince of Wales for nothing. Besides, you know I named him Arthur to remind our subjects that the Tudors claim a heritage from King Arthur of Camelot, that good and glorious kingdom of yore in that very area where Ludlow now stands.”

“I know. But our Arthur is thin and has that cough.” Though I had meant this already settled issue as a diversion, I shuddered at the thought of Ludlow Castle with the winter winds and sharp spring off the Marches that divided England and Wales. I lay back down in bed, feeling overly warm instead of chilled. Now. Now, I told myself. I must broach the issue I had wanted to for weeks, indeed for the sixteen years we’d been wed, and especially these last long ten years when I had covertly pursued my inquiry. Seeing my dead brothers brought to life had made me bold and desperate.

I cuddled back against his warmth, and he put his arms around me so that we lay spoon fashion, as we oft did after our union. I did not have a loveless marriage, for this loyal, clever man truly cared for me beyond the blending of our blood and lineage—I knew that and must trust it now.

“Of course you are right about Wales,” I said in a rush before he fell back asleep or was tempted to take me once
more. “But there is something I need and want very much, I beseech you, Henry.”

He kissed my naked shoulder. “And not this?” he asked, his voice teasing.

“No—that is, not yet. I bear a burden you could ease, though I know you would rather leave the issue buried—I mean not deal with it, as busy as you are.”

I turned in his arms to face him, to whisper even more quietly, as if some evil being would hear my plea, however much we lay in a curtained bed in a room and palace guarded to the hilt.

“Speak, my dearest, if I can do aught to ease your mind and heart.”

“It yet haunts me that my brothers disappeared. No doubt they are dead, but there is no one to answer for it—murder and regicide.”

I felt his body stiffen. I held my breath.

“So long ago,” he said.

“But new to me each day. I still blame myself for counseling my mother to let her second son go—and I should have told her to protest little Edward’s being taken to the Tower, son of a king—a king himself!”

“Yes, yes, but King Richard, who no doubt had them harmed by one of his lackeys, is dead and buried, and I’d like to keep it that way. Some Yorkist wolves are still on the prowl, and we don’t need another uprising with a pretender to my throne, which could happen if I stoke those fires of Richard dispatching your brothers again.”

“Such rebellions could be cut off by proving the boys are dead—bodies or bones found, a murderer’s confession,
something! Could you not make more inquiry in a privy way? It would satisfy me—and the justice on which our Tudor kingdom must be established—if it were handled secretly, but I must know.”

He knew I was distraught, yet I held back the depths of my vehemence. If the boys’ murderer still lived, I would see that he or they were assassinated or executed—send Nicholas Sutton secretly to do the deed, if need be. Lately, though, he had gone from my service to the king’s, and had been assigned to Prince Arthur’s personal guard for the coming journey to Wales.

It haunted me too that there were Yorkists the king had taken back into his good graces, such as Sir James Tyrell, who helped to hold Calais in France for us. Even our Lord High Treasurer, Thomas Howard, Earl of Surrey, had once stood for the Yorkist cause. Since Henry needed their talents and services, he had given reprieves to both men, but they might indeed still be on the prowl. I vowed that, whether my brothers’ murderer hid inside or outside of our court, I would be a she-wolf to discover him!

Henry pulled me closer, tucking the top of my head under his chin. I could feel the pulse in his neck, the very thudding of the heart that had the power and ruled this kingdom. He had not said no. He was weighing all the options, as he always did.

Mistress Varina Westcott

Because Christopher had gone on a journey into the shire of Kent to bargain with the beekeepers who provided all of us
with wax, he had allowed me to deliver candles from my chandlery to the chapel of the guild of the Holy Name of Jesus in the crypt of St. Paul’s. Ah, he was trying to tempt me with all the good things he could do for me and mine if I would agree to wed him.

I took two of our apprentices along—over Gil’s protests that he should be the one to go with me—because it would have come to a spat when I told him he could not accompany me down into the crypt. Christopher had been adamant about that. The lads would guard the horse and cart I had loaded with the longest tapers we sold. These were black ones, thick four-foot-long candles priests usually carried in funeral processions but which the guild of the Holy Name of Jesus had ordered for their secret ceremony on this day. Christopher would be back to attend, so I wanted everything to be set up just right.

I was not nervous, for I knew I would not be alone in the chapel. According to Christopher, the increasingly popular
Signor
Roberto Firenze had been hired by the holy guild to paint soaring angels on the ceiling. Hoping those did not remind me of my nightmare, I was anxious to see them. Christopher had also said that he had no doubt that the
Maestro
, as he oft called Firenze, would use my face for at least one of them—and he’d bribe the man if he did not.

“We ought to get a cut of his fees from assignments to which your portrait has given him entry,” Christopher had said. “I hear he’s painted some very important people of late.” I had almost laughed aloud; he would have erupted had he known the little Italian had painted wax figures for the queen—ones I had made.

“You lads, wait here and guard all well,” I told John and Piers, fifteen-year-old twins, in their second year of apprenticeship to us.

“But those big ones be heavy,” John said as they handed me two of the six tapers and I balanced them in my arms.

“Yes, but you can’t enter the chapel with me, so I’ll be back—twice.”

Fortunately, I found the door unlocked and the stairwell well lit, though closing the door behind myself took some doing. As I descended carefully, I fancied I could hear Firenze below singing or humming. What a blessing to be happy at one’s work, I thought. I could cling to that in the future if I found the courage to turn Christopher down. I prayed that he would not hurt our chandlery from spite, since he had the power of the guild behind him and we had no representation there. Just to show me how much I needed him, he must be delaying acceptance of Gil’s request to join.

“
Signor
, it’s me, Varina,” I called as I neared the bottom of the stairs, not wanting to startle Firenze and have him spatter paint on an angel’s face. But he was not painting angels and not on the ceiling; on each of the side walls he had sketched outlines of five women, all holding lanterns, five thrusting them forward, five sadly holding them down at their sides.

“Ah,
mi bella
Varina,” he sang out, turning away from his task. His curled mustache tilted up in a welcoming smile. “I did hear you might be coming.”

“But I heard you were painting angels on the ceiling,” I said, looking up at it before I laid the two long tapers carefully on the floor.

“Later. Right now ze five wise and five foolish virgins
from ze Bible, eh, from the Lord’s own parable. Half of them had their lamps lit, prepared for when ze bridegroom come, ze others not and want to borrow a light, but too late, and they are left behind, calling, ‘Lord, Lord,’ in the darkness. Has something to do with the guild’s secret rites in this place, eh?”

So far, only the outline of the maidens’ faces and hands holding their lanterns were completed. They looked like ghosts emerging from the white plaster, as if they’d risen from their graves out in the crypt and were able to pass through walls. Strangely, it popped into my head that Nick had called the detested Lord Lovell a ghost, but I thrust that thought aside.

“I hope you’re doing the wise ones first,” I told him. “Christopher said you might use my face. If you do, I hope it’s one of those.”

“Of course, of course! But, speaking of being prepared, I must ask you something.” He came closer. His face was streaked with smudges of paint, just as he’d looked when he painted my portrait and the queen’s effigies. It rather gave him a wild look, I thought, and I somehow liked him the better for it. Besides, I was forever burning myself with wax, getting it in my hair or clothes or under my fingernails. I knew how it felt to be totally absorbed in one’s work.

“What is it?” I asked him when I saw how distressed he looked, yet how he hesitated. “Does working so far down in this small place bother you too?”

“Not that. I think I been followed. And someone outside my door at night—ze hall floor creaks. I look out through ze keyhole and only see black clothing. I call out and open ze
door and someone running down ze steps at the inn, but no one below seen a stranger. Ze lady who hired us lately—she was so—ah, what is ze word?—adamant I keep her secret, I fear she sends someone to keep their eyes on me that I not talk. You have anything like that?”