Queen of Trial and Sorrow (42 page)

Their greeting was a mere inclination of the head.  Only Anne was with me. I didn’t want Bessie or Cecily to witness my capitulation.  I sat in my canopied chair at the head of the table while the three men ranged themselves on either side. 

In a silken voice, Ratcliffe said: “Thank you for agreeing to see us, Dame Grey.  I trust we find you well.”

I almost laughed at that but managed to keep a straight face.  “As you see me, Master Ratcliffe.”

“It is
Sir
Richard now.  I was privileged to receive a knighthood at the time of the Scots’ war.”

I knew that of course.  My deliberate slip was a verbal thrust in reply to his ‘Dame Grey.’  “Were you indeed?” I said with a cold little smile.  “I remember a time and not so long ago when knighthood was an accolade bestowed on a worthy man who gave his lord good and honorable service.  Now it seems…” I ended with a shrug.

He didn’t reply to this.  He looked down at his folded hands as if wishing he had some papers to shuffle.  Raising his head again, he glanced around the hall.  “It is quite cold in here.  They do not keep you short of wood, do they?  I can speak to the abbot.”

“No need to trouble yourself,” I said perversely.

He had a fleshy underlip and a thick tangle of eyebrows.  The lip thrust out and the brows lifted in ironic enquiry, as if he knew I was cutting off my nose to spite my face.  I spoke, without ever knowing what I was going to say and without consideration of the prudence of my words before they were spoken.   Such was one of the benefits of having nothing left to lose. “How is it, masters, that Gloucester is king?  How is that lawful?”

It was a complex question, and I expected it to be ignored or brushed aside, but one of the others said: “The realm is in need of a grown man at the helm, a capable soldier, a statesman and administrator of proven worth; a prince experienced in the exercise of power and with all the necessary attributes to bring the realm through the dangers she finds herself in today.  Not, pardon me – ” he ended with a smirk “ – a child with no knowledge of the world.”

I could feel my fingers curling into claws with the urge to tear out his eyes for that last supercilious remark.  So that was how they justified his usurpation in the Gloucester camp; Eleanor Butler was just a sop for the ignorant masses.  I was about to spit out an angry retort, and what I might have said I have no idea, for what was the point in holding back; but before I could remind my interlocutors that there had been boy-kings in England before and, indeed, boy-kings with uncles who managed to keep their ambitions in check, including one in recent memory, who had become king while still in the cradle and in the midst of war with France, Ratcliffe, clearly impatient with the digression, rapped hairy knuckles on the table. 

“It is lawful, Madam, because parliament has made it so,” he said harshly.  “Now, may we continue?”

“Does he sleep well at night?” I persisted.  “I hear not.  I hear he is tormented night and day.  I know how that is.  To be tormented.”

“Madam, pray let us come to the crux of this meeting.  It is in everyone’s interests to end this shameful situation.”

“It is certainly in Gloucester’s interest, Master Ratcliffe,” I snapped.  “I am an embarrassment to him, am I not?  But I fail to see how it is in mine or my daughters’ interests to put ourselves in his power.”

“His Grace the king – ”

“I will never acknowledge your master as king,” I said bitterly.  “Never, by word or deed!  Let me make that clear.”  Although I say I had nothing, I did have one thing left to me, something they could not take away from me: my pride, little enough to salvage from the wreck of my life and all the more precious. 

They glanced at one another, shifted, cleared throats.  Not so silky now, as if he had a chicken bone stuck in his throat, Ratcliffe said: “My master…wishes to assure you that if you leave sanctuary and place yourself under his protection, your daughters will be treated honorably and with the utmost care, as befits the nieces of the king.  He is prepared to swear an oath to that effect.  You, Madam, shall have a pension and a manor where you can live in peace.  So you see, there is nothing to fear.”

“How much?” I demanded, merely to be quarrelsome.

“Um… to be negotiated.”

I tugged at a loose thread on my cuff.  “No doubt he will be generous to his brother’s widow,” I said caustically.

They said nothing for some moments.  They were quite prepared to tolerate my little flights of fancy if it meant they didn’t have to return to their master and report another failure. Then Ratcliffe leaned toward me, voice hardening.  “I urge you to be reconciled with the king.  End this confinement.  If you continue with your intransigence, you may do as you please – you may stay here until your dead and rotting cadaver is carried out – but your daughters will be removed by whatever means are necessary.  The king is resolved.”

Now I did laugh and even to my ears it was an ugly sound.  I believed it to be an empty threat; after all that had happened, he wouldn’t dare use my daughters with violence.  Would he?  The threat brought to mind that I had given up my little son voluntarily. 

I said: “There was another occasion when some great men came to me and demanded that I give up my son, the Duke of York.  They swore no harm would come to him.  They said if I did not cooperate they would break sanctuary and remove him by force.  And you know what happened to him.”

Ratcliffe huffed in exasperation.  “Madam, we are not here to discuss the deaths of your sons.”

What I felt then was like a dagger thrust to the heart.  “The deaths of my sons? 
The deaths of my sons!
” I gripped the edge of the table hard, my knuckles white, my body bending at the waist and beginning to tremble.  “Is that an official acknowledgement by the government that my sons are dead?”

They glanced at each other in consternation.  Three pairs of eyes dropped to the table.  No one knew what to say.  They had made an abominable blunder. 

In the abbot’s garden the day before I had heard the first call of the cuckoo, and I remember thinking that Gloucester ought to dispense with his White Boar badge, although it was appropriate in that the animal was ferocious and unpredictable and dangerous, and adopt the cuckoo instead.  Which was also appropriate, for the cuckoo took over the nests of other birds and if there were chicks, it would throw them out, to die on the ground.

They remained silent until I had got myself under control.  Seizing the advantage, I said: “These are my terms.  Write them down in every particular.”

What I did was to tell them the terms I wanted incorporated into the oath Gloucester had said he would swear.  While one wrote, I spoke in brief harsh sentences, trying to cover every contingency because I didn’t trust him in the least.  When they returned with the written document, I saw that they had made one small but important change.  I had asked that an assurance be given that my daughters should not be imprisoned in the Tower of London or any other prison.  In the document they brought, a draft of the oath Gloucester would take, the words ‘the Tower of London’ had been omitted.

“But, Madam, those words are superfluous,” they said when I objected.

“They are not superfluous to me.  They are of the utmost significance,” I said, and walked out of the hall.

When they returned, I read the document over carefully and when I was finished I looked at the three men in turn.  My hesitation was only one final and futile exercise of power and lasted only long enough to cause Gloucester’s men a moment or two of anxiety.  I wanted them to know I could still change my mind.  If I accepted these terms I would be relinquishing what little power I had left.  Even my daughters’ lives would become his.  As would mine. 

I rose and they rose too.  I said: “Very good.  Once I hear that… he… has made the oath, in the presence of the lords both secular and ecclesiastical and the great men of London, my daughters and I will come out.  Good day, sirs.”

That oath wasn’t quite an acknowledgement of guilt, but for me it was a small triumph and what other kind could I hope for? 

All I possess in the world is enclosed within these four walls.  (I do not own the walls themselves.)  There is a small bed, two trunks for extra clothing, a table and two chairs, a washstand, a
prie-deux
and various sundries, such as candlesticks, writing materials and books.  There are no tapestries on the walls, only a plain wooden crucifix, and no carpets on the bare wooden floor.  Daily I am provided with good food (for Bermondsey is a Cluniac foundation, which is to say wealthy and worldly) a fire in the grate on cold days, a woman to help me and a church close enough that I can attend divine service on all but my worst days, and where I made my peace with God. 

I have given my estates over to the queen and live on a pension granted to me by the king.  It is enough.  What more does anyone need than these?  Perhaps it is a blessing of old age, that release and relief from dreaming and scheming, from the grasping talons of ambition.   

I have been here at Bermondsey Abbey for five years now, spending what time remains to me in contemplation and prayer, like many noble ladies before me.  In fact, it was here that Katherine of Valois, Henry V’s wife who later wed Owen Tudor, spent her last years.  The abbey is close to London but I attend court seldom.  So few faces remain from what I more and more frequently refer to as the old days and think of as the good days – that is, before the intrusion of the Usurper. 

I am not in good health.  I am very thin and so weak and in such pain that sometimes I cannot bring myself to get out of bed.  When I first came here, I used to enjoy sitting in the cloisters watching the monks gliding silently about their duties, or strolling down to the river to feed the greedy swans.  Now, even on good days I can do no more than sit in a chair and write a few more paragraphs.  But finally this narrative is almost finished.  I know that death for me cannot be far away.  I have done all I can do in this world and my usefulness is all used up.  I ask for nothing more than for my earthly remains to rest peacefully beside my dear lord for all eternity and my soul to return to its Maker.  Yet I find it hard to grasp the concept of eternity, of anything lasting for time without end. 

The Usurper is long dead.  His brief tenure of the stolen throne brought him little joy, which is as it should be.  Only a month after we came out of sanctuary his only child was dead.  Would you believe me if I said he died on April ninth, the very same day my husband died a year earlier?  Divine justice?  Perhaps.  Or perhaps it was Edward’s avenging hand reaching out from beyond the grave. 
You snuffed out the lives of my sons, now I take yours.
  Perhaps you will prefer to believe it to be mere coincidence. 

The following year his wife Anne Neville died, but he had little time to grieve, if grieve he did, for later that year Henry Tudor came again and destroyed him at Bosworth field.  I think by that time his heart must have been as heavy as his conscience was uneasy.  Deserted at the end by both Northumberland and Stanley, his allies, he led his household knights in a desperate charge against Richmond and was cut down.  It was a brave end to what had become an ignoble life.

I wonder: Did he sometimes wish he could go back, revisit the past, and undo some of the things he had done?  None of us can do that, else I wouldn’t spend another moment in this drear and empty present.  I hated him for many years.  It was like a sickness in me, agonizing, virulent and, I thought, incurable.  I used to pray that he had gone to a special place in Hell reserved for the murderers of innocents.  But now I glance over my shoulder and I see a season has gone and it is winter again and then spring.  And then a year has gone by and two, and the hatred fades with the seasons, because, you see, I understand him now.  He was no more than a product of our times: greedy, unscrupulous, ambitious, ruthless; few are the men who do not possess these attributes, and certainly they were to be found in the man I loved, from whom he learned everything he ever knew about getting what he wanted.  I truly believe that the Edward I first met and loved could never have stooped to the murder of two innocent lads who stood in his way, but of the Edward who returned from Tewkesbury, the man who gave the order for the murder of Henry and consented to the death of his own brother – of this man I am not so sure.  We are all products of our time, and we are all shaped by events. Gloucester learned from Edward that kinship didn’t count for much and the assassination of a king was a viable option when it was a matter of securing the crown.  Not that I lay the blame at Edward’s feet, not entirely.  Hastings, who didn’t see from the first that even someone whose loyalty has always been irreproachable might be tempted to seize the sovereignty if he holds supreme power; the lords of the council and the lords of the land, who sat silent and cowed during those crucial days of May and June when they must have known what the outcome would be; the members of parliament who condoned all the tyranny and gave it the stamp of Law – they all played their parts. 

And I, oh, yes, even I must share the blame; a great portion is mine, for my husband was barely cold in his tomb before I was scheming to rob Gloucester of the power Edward had entrusted him with, and who can say if things would have turned out differently now if I had acted differently then.  But that was not the end of my culpability, for didn’t I flee like a craven into sanctuary, leaving my son the king in his uncle’s cruel hands?  And didn’t I give my little Dickon into the care of Cardinal Bourchier, who no more than three weeks later placed the crown on the Usurper’s head?  And going back even further, didn’t I conspire in the death of Clarence, who would undoubtedly have stopped his brother seizing the throne – not out of love for my sons, but because he wanted it himself, and perhaps would have caused havoc enough to give my sons time to grow to manhood?  I have much to atone for.

There were many who loved my sons, yet we all failed to save them.

When he rode into Northampton that April day, Gloucester did not carry within him the determination of dark deeds, but from the moment he put my son and brother and old Thomas Vaughan under arrest, it was as if he was caught up in a millrace, flailing to save himself by any means, even at the cost of innocent lives.  So I believe now.

In the end all joys this side of the grave are turned to sorrow and ruin, and too often the best plans of the best men come to naught, sometimes by the evil designs of others but time and again by nothing more than some refractory, random chance.

Because of us, the line of York has come to an end, and so has the dynasty of the Plantagenets, who have been kings in England for more than three hundred years.  We now have a new ruling house: the Tudors.  Yes, unimaginable as it may be, Henry Tudor is king.  I have him to thank that I am once again the true wife of King Edward IV of blessed memory, my children are free of the stigma of bastardy and my son’s tragically short reign is recognized.  That pernicious document
titulus regius
is suppressed.  And I do most heartily thank him and pray daily for his prosperity.  He will not be allowed to rule peacefully – he is a usurper after all and many Yorkist dissidents still survive – but perhaps his son will. 

My daughters are all wed now to the king’s trusted men, except for Brigit who is to become a nun as her father wished. My Bessie is queen and the mother of two sons and a daughter.  He’s not a bad sort, Henry, and I think she is happy enough.  Content anyway, and contentment, as Anthony once said, is a more durable coin than happiness.  I don’t see her very often, of course, because she’s so busy, and my other daughters I see infrequently too.  But Cecily, who is now the Viscountess of Welles, comes often and always cheers me up.  She is still as high-spirited as she was as a child, but now she’s so tender and loving and patient with me that I think I must be the child and she the adult.  Also, she has an irreverent humor that is reminiscent of her father.

Sometimes, on my bad days, I think: Who are they, these women?  They are strangers, as if they have nothing to do with Edward and me.  They have husbands and children and have made lives for themselves in this strange new Tudor world. 

So the years go by and I move quickly toward the time when I will leave this sorrowful world.  There came a day when I realized that I could no longer clearly recall my sons’ dear faces, especially Ned’s, with whom I had spent so little time.  Sometimes I think I am hearing Dickon’s merry laughter, or a boy’s gesture or expression will renew my heartache.  I turn my head, searching, but he is not there.  Soon enough, I won’t even have the memory of them. 

I remember hearing a tale of the Venerable Bede, England’s first historian.  He sat in the king’s hall one night, feasting, when a sparrow flew in through a high window, circled the hall and flew out again.  And the sage said to the king: ‘A man’s life is like the flight of that sparrow.  He comes in from the dark into the warmth and the light for a brief space before returning whence he came.’

My sons had such a brief, brief space in the light.  I should like to ask God why He gave them to me if He intended to take them back after such a short time.  I should like Him to tell me why they, the only blameless ones in the world we created for them; a world in which greed for more land, more wealth, more power, was regarded as a virtue and the absence of it as a dereliction, why they, my sweet ones, must be the ones to pay the ultimate price.  But what is the point?  He doesn’t speak to His creatures anymore and, indeed, what answer could He give that would comfort a grieving mother?

I never did learn what happened to Ned and Dickon.  I suspect the truth died with Gloucester.  I have heard various theories over the years, the most prevalent being that they were suffocated beneath their pillows.  I wonder, how long does it take, once the breath is stopped, for the senses to fail and the faltering heart to shudder its last?  How long did my poor sons suffer the anguish of knowing that their lives were being snuffed out before they had really lived?  There are some who believe they weren’t murdered at all, but spirited away to the continent where they live the lives of simple gentlemen.  That is nonsense.  I have given up hope, and I only pray – oh, how fervently I pray – that their murderers possessed sufficient human compassion to bury them in consecrated ground and that their innocent souls are residing now with God, and did not take the easy and most convenient method of disposal by tipping their weighted bodies into the Thames, where their bones will lie for all eternity beneath the river mud, under the white walls of the Tower.

I’ll never know, you see.  I’ll never know.

Sometimes in the silence of the night, when I’m in that state between the long drawn-out pain of wakefulness and the brief blessed oblivion of sleep, I catch an echo of their final terror:
Not yet.  Please God, not yet.