Mistress of Mourning (32 page)

The skin on the back of my neck crawled as I remembered poor Sim flying backward off his horse when the arrow pierced him. My throat tightened at the memory of the sight of Fey’s scrawny, ravaged throat.
Signor
Firenze’s
neck had been broken. Each one murdered at the neck, yet in different ways. Was it the mark of one killer who was skilled with strong hands and a bow?

I sat erect in the saddle, though I wanted to duck, to cling to my horse for protection. Had the poisoner taken my other horse and Sim’s so that he could keep up with us on fresh mounts?

Even the support we felt when we stopped at manor houses or inns along the way, and finally when we reached the town of Bewdley and stayed in the prince’s own manor house again, did not lift our spirits. By the third sodden day, when the horses could no longer pull the weight of the hearse, Nick ordered them replaced by four white oxen he had held in reserve at the rear of the procession. They were slower and not so fine-looking, but otherwise we would have all bogged down.

Nick oft rode by my side but elsewhere in the long procession too, making certain all was well. Each time he disappeared, though I rode amidst guards and with Rhys behind me, I began to tremble. At times it seemed Nick simply vanished into the crowd or the scenery, when I wanted to cling to him. I took to watching the prince’s riderless horse, carrying only his armor and poleax. It was as if the prince too, like the man on the castle roof, in the cemetery, in the crypt, and in the bog, had simply vanished into the mist.

At each comfort stop, I scrutinized the wrappings over the black velvet coffin, retying or adding layers when the rain soaked through cracks in the cloth. I prayed that the deluge would stop before we reached Worcester so that the torches and my tall black mourning tapers could be lit and carried in
the procession. For still the skies, like those who lined the roads, wept.

One day out from the abbey where the prince’s body would be interred, Nick leaned over from his horse to squeeze my gloved hand. “I need to stay with the entourage, but since your charge from the queen includes preparing the funeral candles, would you be willing to ride ahead with a contingent of guards and your packhorses? I’ll send Rhys as your errand boy and see you at midday on the morrow.”

“It would help me to have time there to see things are arranged, though I’d rather stay near you.”

“A great compliment, since that means you’d be out in this cursed weather almost an additional day. Varina, I don’t want us to separate either, but I’ve given orders that the men guard you well, both in the abbey and at the inn where you will sleep this night. And Surrey, of necessity, must stay with the cortege, so you—I—won’t have to worry about him harassing you.”

Nick’s face was so intent. Just as all of us, he looked like a half-drowned cat rescued from a well. “No,” he said suddenly, as if to himself. “I’ve changed my mind again. Rather than your spending an entire night there, I’ll send a contingent ahead with you when we are closer to Worcester on the morrow.”

“But you just said—”

“I know what I said. But lest our archenemy is targeting you somehow, guards or not, I will keep you here, and that’s that.”

I was both relieved and upset. We were all exhausted, all
on edge. Without another word, Nick spurred his horse to ride back into the well-ordered ranks of armed guards. Such indecision was so unlike him. But I concluded that, in this instance, it was also another of his indirect compliments to me, further proof I meant something more to him than an assignment from the queen.

After nearly five grueling days on the road, I knelt at the high altar of the Abbey of St. Wulfstan in Worcester and gave thanks for my safety in all I had been through since leaving London. Then, because the funeral entourage was but a few hours behind me and my guards, I put them all to work unpacking the eight tall black funeral candles, which I set in spiked holders, four on each side of the altar. They would be lit just as the procession with the coffin came up the long central aisle. Other candles had been sent from London for this mournful occasion, so I oversaw their placement in holders and sconces too.

When all was well inside, everyone went outside to await the funeral entourage in the street before the abbey. Why the king had decided Arthur was to be interred here, I was not sure, but perhaps so that he lay forever between the realms of Wales and England, both of which he would have ruled. Folk from the town, surrounding villages, and farms had turned out in force. The crowd looked like a dark lake lapping around the abbey, and as many as six people deep lined the main street as far as I could see.

The rain had let up a bit, so I was glad to see the torches had been lit as the procession made its way into the city. Standing a bit apart from the Bishop of Lincoln, who was
visiting to conduct the service, and a small crowd of priests with the abbot, I scanned the cavalcade, checking the wrapping over the coffin, searching for Nick. With a sideways glance, Surrey looked me over as he rode past and dismounted to be greeted by the church dignitaries.

I walked to where the hearse halted and, with the help of several others, cut the cords binding the waxen cloth and pulled it away from the black velvet pall. No sooner had eight guards carried the coffin inside than the crowd edged forward to tear off pieces of the wet, wrinkled cloth that lay upon the ground. I thought to protest the frenzy at first, but it was in honor of the prince, for they wanted a token of this event to cherish. Soon, nothing of the yards of Westcott cloth was left.

I hurried back inside, passing the procession waiting to accompany the coffin up the aisle. At the front of the church, I gawked and gasped. Each one of the eight tall black mourning candles I had carefully transported from London to Richmond Palace and then to Wales and now back again was broken or hacked off halfway down. Most upper parts lay on the floor, but two were bent over, held dangling by their sturdy wicks, which had not quite been severed. I was aghast at the destruction and then at what it meant.

At the back of the abbey, I heard the mourners streaming in and ran forward. Nick was suddenly at my side, picking tops of tapers from the floor, cutting free with his sword the wicks that made the others dangle.

“He’s here!” I said as I scrambled from candle to candle. “He’s inside!”

“I warrant he’s gone now. He’s careful to strike, then flee
to fight another day, and it’s not his way to be trapped or caught. He always retreats, the whoreson coward. It’s Lovell; I swear it is!”

Without another word, we worked desperately to place the top halves of the candles in the holders where the entire tall tapers had been. When I saw they were different heights, I moved a few so the higher ones were at the outsides and seemed to slant toward the altar near the catafalque where the coffin would be placed. I was so furious that, for once, I felt no fear.

As if nothing were amiss, the funeral procession started up the center aisle, the presiding bishop with a censer of incense leading the coffin, then priests, next Surrey, a boys’ choir, finally other dignitaries. Perhaps they had not seen this mess and would not realize what had happened. I prayed no one would tell the queen.

Nick and I hastily snatched up the bottoms of the tapers, which we had dropped to the floor, and, out of breath, scrambled back behind the choir area and altar screen. Only then did I realize that two of the bottoms of the tapers were missing. Had we left them in plain view at the front of the church? It was too late to go back for them now.

Panting for breath, burdened with candles in our headlong rush, we nearly fell into the gaping hole prepared for the lowering of the coffin into the crypt. Nick grabbed my arm, and we threw ourselves back from a ten-foot fall where the tile had been removed. And there, below, lay the two bottom pieces of the missing tapers, crudely hacked by knife or sword into some sort of shape.

My skin crawled with horror, and I nearly threw up as
we gaped down into the dim crypt together. Nick drew his own sword quietly, though the droning dirge that echoed through the nave drowned out the sound. With his sword raised to strike, he searched the area behind the altar—thank heavens, hidden from the service—and found nothing.

“We’re going to have to be lowered down to retrieve those for evidence to show Their majesties,” Nick said. “Besides, when the prince is buried, it might look like some sort of curse and I won’t allow that. Let’s tie my belt and your girdle chain together.” We did that, but the resulting “rope” was not long enough. We ripped the ties from our capes and knotted them to the cord.

“The thing is,” Nick whispered as the Bishop of Lincoln’s voice rolled on in Latin, “my weight might rip these ties, and you won’t be strong enough to haul me back up. You’ll have to go down.”

I did not argue or delay, but what if it was a trap? What if Lovell was lurking in the crypt below, waiting for one of us to descend? He’d hacked apart my candles, so did he plan the same for me?

Bracing his foot against the corner of some long-dead abbot’s tomb, Nick quickly lowered me down. The queen and the princess both had asked me to help guard and guide their prince to his resting place. Now I stood within it.

I refused to look into the sharp shadows. Several caskets or stone sarcophagi sat on shelves in the dust of the ages down here. I began a fit of sneezing, but threw the first two-foot-long piece of black candle up to Nick. He caught it handily and leaned over for the next. I shuddered to think our archenemy had handled it, hacked at it in his hatred.

Nick caught the other, then managed to haul me up until I could claw my way and scrape my belly over the side, where he could pull me up the rest of the way. Each holding a piece of candle before us, we hurried back around through an alcove to stand in the nave behind the mourners. It was then that I saw, even in the dim light of torches and other candles, what was carved into the once smooth black wax. In perhaps a mockery of my prettily carved angel candles, it was a grotesque, ugly face of a demon, perhaps Satan himself. No, no, I saw it now: Someone had crudely carved a crowned man—the prince, or mayhap the king—his face twisted in the agony of being poisoned, or perhaps in the torments of hell itself.

D
uring the long funeral ceremony, I was so exhausted, I nearly swayed on my feet. Just after the Bishop of Lincoln ended his prayers and sermon, the prince’s riderless horse, decked out in pieces of his armor and weapons, was brought in. The animal snorted, and the whites of his eyes showed his fear of the crowd and strange setting. The sight of that poor beast saddened me even more, for surely one touch from his lost master would have calmed him.

I scanned the crowd, looking for a face I did not really know, might not recognize unless the person spoke in his rasping yet commanding voice; someone tall, of course, but many were, especially the guards. Then too, so many of these mourners had grizzled beards and hair. With the dreadful weather, some wore black cloaks.

Was our enemy here? Was he watching and plotting more poison, or was he a murderer who took any way to eliminate his enemies? A hangman’s rope. Bows and arrows.
A broken neck in the blackness of a crypt like the one wherein the prince would soon rest? Or was his ultimate goal the assassination of another Tudor prince, or even a queen or a king?

Finally, guards carried Arthur’s coffin to the south end of the altar, where it was lowered into the crypt. As many of us as could crowded in behind the dignitaries. The heavy coffin was lowered by twelve men and the ropes pulled back up. As the bishop sprinkled holy water and then dropped a ceremonial clod of earth upon the coffin below, I felt Nick’s arm around my waist. Had we not both held the horrible candle carvings at our sides, I might have been momentarily content.

The king’s chief mourner, the Earl of Surrey, then each of the prince’s household and council broke their staffs of office over their heads and cast them down. They clattered into the tomb where the beheaded black Westcott candles had lain. Woeful cries of mourning rent the air. How I hoped I could do it all justice when I told the queen of this, I, the queen’s chief mourner here, though none knew that but Nick and I.

Yet was Her Majesty’s grief any greater than mine when others had buried my dear son and I had watched from afar? Or was her joy deeper than mine when we bore our sons and first looked upon their tiny faces? Not a bit, I swore to myself. And that was why, queen or citizen, highborn or low, we women were sisters under the skin no matter what befell us.

The mourners greatly disbanded after the funeral service, though some, including Nick and me, stayed on at the Two
Roses Inn nearby for the night, planning to head to London on the morrow. Rhys was content to fill his belly, then sleep in the stables with the men guarding the remaining horses. I was relieved when the Earl of Surrey departed, with a kiss on my hand no less, and whispered, “No other London merchant I have met could hold a candle to you, Varina.” I was relieved he was gone, and I did not even mention the incident to Nick. What the earl would report to His Majesty—would he so much as mention Nick or me?—I did not know and was too exhausted to care.