Mistress of Mourning (21 page)

“We did all we could for him, of course,” Dr. Martlet told me as Nick moved away to stand at the door. Despite the aroma of sweet herbs and aromatics, I could see why Nick retreated for fresh air. However chill it was in here, the embalming and encoffining needed to be completed at once.

“I do not question that,” I told him. Noting that the rolls of waxen cloth had been, as I had ordered, stood on end in a row rather than piled, I moved past them to view the prince.

They had covered him with a black velvet pall that draped itself to his thin form. His pointed-toed slippers peeked out the bottom as if he had been covered up in bed to keep warm.

Dr. Martlet spoke again. “Despite the prince’s ever
choleric humors—so light faced and slender, with his excess of yellow bile—I fear it was noxious vapors felled him. The princess too. Of course, diseases spread by airborne vapors can be absorbed through open pores of the body, and you might know the prince and princess insisted on venturing outside the castle on a womanly whim. Who knows what noisome vapors lurk on the walls as cave damp?”

“Cave damp?” I said. “The prince and princess were in a cave?”

“I knew curiosity could kill the cat, but what could I do?” Martlet said, with an elaborate shrug. “They did not even take us along, nor many guards. Prince Arthur wanted to see the old burial place of a king, and the princess yearned to traipse through the boggy meadow, looking for early flowers. Then too, but a few days ago, there was word of a man contracting the sweat in the village.”

Caves and bogs forgotten, my head jerked up. “The sweat? My family died of that! Could the prince have contracted—”

“I was going to say, it was simply rumor,” Enford put in, as if to take over for his medical partner. “We sent an apothecary to examine that man, and it was merely fever and ague, not the
Sudor Anglicus
.”

Yet I tucked that tidbit away, as I did the fact that Arthur and Catherine had ventured out into damp areas. I had never heard of noxious vapors seeping into pores, but I meant to examine every possibility. If sweat could go out, could not vapors get in? I oft felt fogs from the River Thames creep up all clammy on my skin. But I knew this puzzle must become clear from a hundred scattered little pieces.
And why had Nick not told me about caves and bogs, if he was one of their guards? Even if but a few had accompanied them, did not Nick at least know of it?

“So,” Martlet was saying, “of course we prescribed herbs, pomanders, and scented cloths for both the prince and princess, for she became ill too, though her stronger constitution pulled her through. She has her own physician, of course. A great, great tragedy that, despite our Herculean efforts, the prince sickened so quickly.”

“With what specific symptoms?” I asked.

“Everything went awry after their day outside the castle walls, traipsing about,” Martlet said, not answering my question. “Of course, he always took poorly to drafts and was oft racked with coughs.”

“Which we routinely treated with all sort of elixirs and bleedings,” Enford added.

“Of course, if you must know, the more ill he became,” Martlet went on, as if the younger man had not spoken, “the more His Grace became listless and had trouble breathing. Nausea, running of the reyns—”

“The kidneys. You mean heavy urination?” I asked.

“Exactly, and at the end, swift organ failure.”

“But the nausea,” I said. “How does that relate to a breathing infection?” I meant to pursue that more, then saw that Nick had advanced into the room, shaking his head so only I could see him. Evidently neither physician was going to answer my question. Was Nick implying I should not ask it, or that I had best turn to tending the body? That decision was settled by Dr. Enford’s slowly lifting the shroud from the prince, who was clothed only in a nightshirt.

For a moment, in the blazing candlelight, I stood in awe of dreadful death. My parents, my beloved son—like this, the shell here and yet the essence, the soul, departed. Arthur Tudor, Prince of Wales, looked like a waxen effigy, one I could have carved for the queen. His face was blessedly serene, his features gone slack, and I would tell Her Majesty in all honesty that he looked peaceful. And yet so young, so much promise gone because of an attack of noxious vapors he and the princess caught when they ventured out?
We shall see about that
, I thought.

“What have you done so far?” I asked the men.

“Removed the soft organs, of course,” Dr. Martlet said. He sounded more annoyed by the moment at all my questions, but the man irked me too, with his “of courses,” as if he condescended to so much as explain things to me. “We are trained as full surgeons, not like the barber-surgeons, who had best stick to cutting hair, pulling teeth, and bloodletting. And, of course, the embalming, of commoners with occasional help from you chandlers. It has been decided that the prince’s heart shall be buried here, in the castle churchyard. We have it in an alabaster-covered jar—over there—and thought you could wrap it with your waxy shrouds too.”

“Yes,
of
course
,” I said, though I’d never wrapped an organ before and had to steel myself at the thought.

“As to what we’ve done,” Martlet went on, “we washed the body cavities with sweet wine and aromatic fluids, oils of turpentine, lavender, and rosemary—not all easy to get right now, but the village apothecary was of some assistance.” He wrinkled his nose in disdain, so I assumed the ongoing
battle between London physicians and apothecaries about prescribing cures tainted their attitude even here.

“Also,” Enford said, picking up the narration, “we rubbed his skin with preservative spices and balms. The chest and belly cavities we stuffed with herbs, so we are ready for the clothing, then the wrapping of him.”

“Do you have his burial garments?”

“They have been entrusted to us.”

“Then I shall unroll the wax cerements while you dress him.”

“Save some wrapping for his heart.”

“Yes, there is plenty. Her Majesty insisted on that.”

I moved away and unwrapped one roll of the wax-impregnated cloth and approached the jar, which had been pointed out to me as holding Arthur’s heart. It sat almost inconspicuously on the stone floor in a corner. Bless Nick, for despite the crowded quarters in this small, close chamber—it almost reminded me of the room at Westminster where I’d carved the effigies—he must have recalled how tight spaces affrighted me. He knelt at my side to help me lift the heavy lid from the jar. I moved a wall torch to the sconce directly over it. Within, brown and purple, still and soft, lay the heart that had beaten for the prince’s body, for his wife and family, for his future kingdom he would never rule.

I had expected blood, but there was none, not a trace. How I wished the heart could whisper its secrets of what had happened to him. Together, Nick and I lifted it out—I thought I would be ill at the task—and laid it on the waxen wrapping. With Nick’s dagger, I cut a circle in the cloth around the heart, then wrapped the sides atop, and we slid
the organ back into the jar, then sealed it by wrapping the entire alabaster vessel.

I jumped when Enford, evidently leaning close over me, said, “I warrant they will put it in a little coffin of its own, but best to keep the water out every which way. It rains here as if Noah’s very flood were loosed again. Here, he’s ready.”

I cleaned my hands in water and wiped them on a piece of cloth and stood to regard the kingdom’s onetime Prince of Wales, garbed in fine fashion, as if he would arise for a council meeting or a wedding feast.

“I told the queen I would say a prayer over him,” I told the men. “If you would step out for a moment…”

Frowning, muttering, the doctors did, and Nick hovered in the doorway. I slipped the ring Her Majesty had sent onto Arthur’s little finger and whispered to him, in the queen’s stead, “Your mother loves you and ever will, Arthur. And she will embrace you again someday in heaven.”

I added a silent prayer. It had to be enough. Time was fleeting. I was certain the doctors had not done a good job here, either with embalming or ferreting out what had killed him.

“Let’s finish,” I said, and Nick called them back in.

We rolled and tucked and wrapped the body in double what I would have used for any other mortal shell. Then the doctors summoned guards, and six of them lifted the body and carried it out, shoulder high, to where a black velvet–lined coffin sat upon the bier. Several priests appeared to pray and chant as Arthur was laid in the coffin and the top was closed, bolted, and covered with another black velvet pall.

Over the coffin, workers raised a canopy of black cloth stitched with a white cross. Banners of the Trinity, the Lord’s cross, the blessed Virgin, and Saint George were put in place, each adorning a corner of the coffin. The bier was guarded by six other men with shiny breastplates and halberds facing outward. I quickly oversaw the placement of votive candles on and around the altar, and the castle steward arranged the flaming torches along the walls in huge sconces.

Side by side, Nick and I knelt at the coffin as others of the household were permitted to come in, then were slowly, silently ushered out. Many wept openly; some whispered prayers and crossed themselves. I told myself I must remember details of the scene to tell the queen.

When Nick and I stepped out of the little chapel, despite the mood of mourning, I whispered to him, “Did you go along or, at least, how much did you know about the royal couple’s foray outside the castle? Cave damp and bogs—”

“He used me for an emissary to the Welsh chieftains, who should soon be here. I was out for two or three days at a time, so I missed that. They had both already taken to their beds when I returned, and I did not know they’d ventured out.”

I scolded myself for my frustration at him. Surely he would have told me already if he’d accompanied Arthur and Catherine outside the castle. Ah, but I understood feeling imprisoned by the weather and the walls, for after the horror of being chased into the lightless crypt at St. Paul’s and finding
Signor
Firenze’s body, I’d felt a prisoner in my own home. And to always have the added strictures of servants, attendants, and guards, the royal couple must have suffered
from spring fever and become a bit headstrong and careless. But were they to blame for their own sudden illnesses or was someone else?

As we walked back into the great hall, a dark-haired man with a short beard beckoned us off to the side. “One of the princess Catherine’s closest advisers,” Nick whispered, and escorted me over to him.

Before Nick could introduce us, the man spoke in such a rush I could barely understand his Spanish-accented English. “I am Alessandro Geraldini,
sí
, the
Infanta
Catalina’s chaplain, as you say here, eh? I sent to say Her Grace did read the queen’s letter and she see you now.”

So, I thought, as Nick nodded and we followed the man’s quick steps, the next path of our inquiry had just been decided for us.

P
rincess Catherine did not rise to greet us, and I quickly saw why, for she appeared wan and weak. At least she was out of bed, dressed in a black brocade robe and sitting in a chair. Except for her chaplain, the lean and sallow Alessandro Geraldini—Nick had whispered to me that he was actually her confessor—she was alone.

We sank in a bow and curtsy and stayed there, heads down, until she said in English, “Rise.” The priest indicated we should sit on stools that had been drawn up, while he stood behind her high-backed, carved chair.

Although I had the feeling she understood most of what we said, Father Geraldini translated everything after her single English word. The queen had counseled that we must choose our translator carefully, but it was done for us, and surely we could trust a priest.

“Her Grace,” Geraldini told us, “says she thank you for bringing the letter of comfort from the king and especially
the one from the queen. She thinks of Her Majesty always as her English mother and by the name her people call her, Elizabeth the Good. And for your duties to the prince here, much gratitude to Master Sutton and now to Mistress Westcott.”

Tears in my eyes, I nodded. Given permission to speak, Nick explained our hurried trip and added comforting words about my care of the prince’s body for burial. Through all that, as her confessor translated, Her Grace’s eyes moved back and forth from my face to Nick’s. Finally, she put up her hand and spoke to Geraldini words he translated, frowning.

“The princess welcomes the death mistress and does know she is trusted.”

The death mistress!
What had the queen written to her daughter-in-law, or was that a misunderstanding of “mistress of mourning”? Had the queen told her outright that Nick and I would look into the circumstances of the prince’s death?

Geraldini’s Spanish, Catherine’s Spanish, then Geraldini’s English made communication slow. Longing to ask my own questions, I shifted in impatience on my stool.

“The princess Catalina, she been ill also,” Geraldini said. “She is grieving her royal husband’s delicate health not survive the attack.”