Mistress of Mourning (17 page)

Queen Elizabeth of York

“E
nter!” I called out at the flurry of knocks on my privy chamber door at Richmond Palace, where we had resided since leaving Windsor after Christmas.

I knew something was wrong when Sibil Wynn rushed in rather than walking circumspectly. I glimpsed her flushed face before she nearly collapsed in a curtsy.

“Word from the king,” she said in a trembling voice. “He wishes your presence forthwith. A courier has come from Wales.”

It was April the fourth, just after dark. Dared I hope Arthur’s bride was with child? “What news?” I demanded, striding for the door.

“I know not, only that the king sent for you in haste and—”

With Sibil and several other ladies scurrying behind me, I walked as fast as I could, covering the eternal length of
corridors between us. What would it have been like, I thought erratically, to be a commoner, to live in a small place, to make one’s own meals and clean one’s house, to always share the same board and bed? Why, it took a retinue of attendants to pad the mattress, check for concealed weapons, perfume the sheets and blankets, and draw the curtains of the royal bed.

Fear stabbed me as others sank into bows or curtsies as I passed. Faces blurred by. Could someone who was cleaning Westminster have stumbled on my secret chamber with the wax effigies and sent word to the king? Perhaps he had news for me of who had harmed my brothers in the Tower? No, no, he was secretive about all that. Besides, I’d heard he had allowed James Tyrell to return to France, so surely he had questioned him and cleared his name. The courier from Wales—it must be something concerning our dear Arthur and Catherine.

My heart sank when I saw my husband, slumped, silent. Worse, his confessor, Father Martin, was with him, gaunt and grim faced. “My lord, what has happened?” I demanded.

Henry leaned against the back of a chair, gripping it with both hands. He opened his mouth to speak but could not. Breathing in and out, in and out, he had not yet looked at me.

In a soothing voice, Father Martin said, “As I have told His Majesty, if we receive good things at the hands of God, why may we not endure evil things? Your Majesty,” he said to me, “your dear son Arthur has departed to God.”

At first I was so stunned I could not catch his meaning. I gaped at him, even as the king shuffled toward
me—suddenly looking old, so old—and pulled my cold hands into his trembling ones.

“Arthur…” he choked out. “Took ill—died. A chill, ague—I know not, but more details will come forthwith.”

My knees gave way, but Henry held me up. My dear son, firstborn and heir—another lost child—the hope of England’s future, the next Tudor king…dead? Had he said dead?

Dry gasps racked me. I swayed on my feet; we swayed together.

“C-Cather-ine,” Henry stuttered. “She t-took ill too, but is better. But so sudden—our Arthur…”

I held him, tried to comfort him as I heard Father Martin leave the room and close the door. “My dear lord, we must see that he is cared for—a fine burial,” I choked out.

“Not clear back here. At the abbey in Worcester. I swear it shall become a cathedral, a shrine! Now only willful Henry, a mere boy, stands between us and oblivion for the Tudor throne, for our daughters can never secure the kingdom. Fighting—battles—chaos again.”

I know not where I found strength to so much as speak. “Do not say so. We are yet young, my lord. We have lost children but have hale and hearty ones. But there will never be another Arthur, so beloved, so—”

I needed to sit down. I felt ill, faint. I tried to get to the chair but instead fell into Henry’s arms. He lowered me to the floor and sat beside me, both of us wailing and weeping and tearing our hair and clothes. Curse royal restraint or decorum, however much we were alone. My two brothers gone, my two babies, now our hope for the future in our dear
Prince Arthur. Despite his weak health, sudden, so sudden. Too sudden?

I sat up straighter. Had we—the king—sent our son into danger to a distant Welsh castle just as blindly as Mother and I had sent young Richard to the Tower with our young King Edward V? No, no, I must not imagine a traitor in every tower, and yet…

“We shall make plans from here for his burial,” Henry was saying, his voice not his own.

“Indeed we shall.” I got to my knees to rise. “The necessary things must not go undone, and I shall see to that.”

Mistress Varina Westcott

Though the early April breeze was brisk, I kept my bedroom window ajar so I would not feel so closed in. After many sleepless nights, fearing, despite Jamie’s watchfulness, that the man who had killed Firenze would seek me out, I was sleeping somewhat better lately. As I had expected, Christopher had also become my enemy, though he was evidently wary enough of my court connection that he had proposed Gil as a guild member. Still, I had heard naught from the palace or Nick and steeled myself that I might never again. I’d gleaned no word from customers that the Prince and Princess of Wales and their retinue would be returning this spring.

As the night bells of St. Mary Abchurch and St. Swithin’s ended their twelve tolls for midnight, I heard a horse. That alone was unusual, for there was a curfew and the night watchmen walked their routes. The hoofbeats
came fast, close, on cobbles. A rider in our courtyard beneath my window? But had Jaime not locked the gate?

I slipped from bed and peered out into the darkness, kneeling in the new spring rushes on the floor. One wan lantern threw a square of pale light into the courtyard. Yes, a rider here, dismounted. Men’s voices. Oh, thank God, Jamie was greeting him. He must know him and have let him in.

But who could it be? My stomach cramped. Jamie had said he would not admit anyone at night. Who would know to knock on the shop door where Jamie slept on a pallet he removed each day? Now the two tall men bent in huddled talk before they disappeared beneath my window.

He was letting the stranger into the house! No doubt through the door leading to stairs that came directly up into the back hall near the bedchambers!

All the fears I’d fought to keep at bay beat against me. That murderer who had pursued me in the crypt…I should not have trusted Jamie—was he just biding his time? I had believed that the queen had sent him to guard me, that she could have naught to do with silencing Firenze.

At least my Arthur’s chamber was down the hall. Should I hide? No. Then they would search for me and rouse or harm the others. I had no weapon here but a heavy pewter washbowl and ewer.

I shot the bolt on the door and darted over to dump the rest of the wash water from the ewer, accidentally spilling most of it down my breasts so that my night rail clung to me. The floor was slippery, but I stood beside the door and lifted the heavy thing with both hands like a club. Though it came muted, the rapping on the wooden door thudded through me.

“Mistress Varina! ’Tis Jamie. You have a visitor from the palace!”

My pulse pounded so hard I shook. In the middle of the night? Did he mean to lure me out with the same lie my pursuer in the crypt had used?

“What’s amiss?” I called, my voice not my own.

“Nick Sutton’s here from Wales with sad news and a command.”

“Nick?”

“’Tis I, Varina,” came that unmistakable voice. “The Prince of Wales has died. I’m to take you to Richmond Palace as soon as you can get your things together. The queen needs funeral candles, winding sheets—and you.”

I could barely take in his words. Her Majesty’s son, the pride of the Tudors, dead? She wanted funeral goods for him, but why send for me too?

I unbolted and opened the door a crack, then looked out. Jamie held a lantern; I blinked into its light. Yes, praise God, Nick Sutton in the flesh, looking harried but handsome. When his eyes dropped from my face to my breasts, I remembered my sopped night rail clung to me. He swallowed hard and glanced back to my face.

“I’ll have to dress,” I said.

“We’ll be riding hard and fast. I’ve brought boy’s breeches, and you’ll ride with me for now. I’ve packhorses and guards waiting in the street to carry candles and waxen cloths, and I’ll leave a bag of coins to cover things with Gil.”

He thrust at me a lace-neck shirt, breeches, woven cap, boots, and cape, all of blackest hue, perhaps to hide me at night but also for the formal period of mourning.

“I’ll have to tell my family, say good-bye to my Arthur,” I said, stunned at the sadness and speed of all these events. As much as I had yearned for Nick’s return, was I dreaming, this time not about the loss of my own child Edmund? That is when it truly struck me that the death was not only of our prince but of Her Majesty’s son, another of her cherished, lost children she so grieved. I wondered whether she wanted a waxen effigy of Arthur too. No, if I was reasoning all that out, I surely was not dreaming.

Keeping his voice low, Nick said, “I understand if you want to wake your son and then leave him. But Jamie and I think you’d best tell just Gil and let him and your sister handle things here. Waking your lad—saying good-bye—could confuse or upset him.”

“Yes, all right. I’ve never been to Richmond, but it isn’t far. I’m sure I can be back on the morrow.”

I was certain he started to say something else but held back. I closed the door and scrambled into the clothing, which fit amazingly well, however foreign it felt to be garbed as a man. I pulled my hair back in a horsetail, tied it up, and pinned it as best I could beneath the leather cap.

Jamie had roused Gil, who gaped at me as I clomped out into the hall in my manly garb and unfamiliar boots. Tears trickled down my cheeks as we went downstairs into the workroom and storage areas below. Gil quickly pulled out and rolled six huge sheets of wax-impregnated cloth—far too much for one corpse, but I didn’t say so, for perhaps that is what had been ordered and paid for. Among the forty votive candles we counted out, I wrapped six black candles, then added two angel candles, one for the queen and one for
Princess Catherine, a widow so soon, so young. Just think, I marveled: Westcott cerements would enclose the body of our dear Prince of Wales, and our candles would light his tomb.

“There’s a certain way to wind these cloths,” Gil was telling Nick, who hovered close, as if they’d been boon companions for years. “They’d better have someone skilled in Wales to do it lest they crack.”

“I will see to that,” Nick assured him. For once, I doubted something the man had said, but perhaps on the way to Richmond I could give him advice to pass on to the embalmers there.

Even though he was all brusque business, I drank in the sight and sound of Nick Sutton. He was truly here, and I was going with him to see Her Majesty. I’d somehow forgotten how tall he was and failed to recall completely his gray eyes and the way his eyebrows could slant when he frowned. His hair looked shorter, his face paler, and new frown lines seemed to furrow his forehead. Perhaps he had lost a bit of weight, for he looked leaner.

Gil and Jamie carried out what we had selected. “Jamie,” I told him on his way back in, “please keep a special watch over Arthur—and no more frightening tales of torture in the Tower.” He nodded and went to lug out another load as Nick came closer, watching as I stuffed a few more things in a satchel in which I had already put a day dress and a better gown, a hairbrush and slippers.

“I’m sorry things are rushed, so desperate,” he said, lifting a hand to cup my chin and caress my wet cheek with his thumb. “You’ll have to trust me on this, trust the queen too.”

“I am honored to serve her in her dark hour.”

“We’ll talk later—on the barge from Westminster to Richmond,” he promised.

“I’ve seldom been outside London.”

I sensed he wished to say something important, but he only nodded, then said, “Clothing and goods will be provided for you if you are away a little while. Let’s ride.”

It became even more obvious that I had been sent for in all haste, for barges seldom plied the Thames at night. But the oarsmen were skilled and fought against the incoming tide. They bent their backs against the current as we headed westward on the Thames. It might have been the same barge in which Nick first fetched me, for we sat on a similar padded bench, close together in the chill April air, holding—no, gripping—each other’s hands.

“Soon the entire city will waken to the dreadful news,” Nick said, scanning the darkness on both banks of the river.

“How did it happen—his death?”

“Both he and the princess took suddenly ill late last month, over a week ago in Wales. Events and symptoms are yet unclear. Some sort of throat infection…difficulty breathing, weak lungs, which he’d had all his life, of course, and had recovered from. He became unconscious and died on April second, and his body is lying in state at the castle, but needs better—formal—tending before his funeral and burial on the twenty-third of this month. There will be a huge funeral cortege between Ludlow and Worcester, with many nobles in attendance. Their Majesties long to be there,
but protocol and tradition deem it otherwise, of course, even for lesser folk.”

“I always thought it sad that the family are seldom the chief mourners.”