"What will you do about the Frenchmen?" Guildford asked above a yawn, as if Henry's thought was contagious.
"Send them back to the Regent Anne and Orleans," Henry said, laughing again. "That plague belongs in their country."
"And Shaunde?" Jasper wanted to know.
"Him I would keep if I could. He has done me good service and is a fine soldier. Uncle, will you put that question to Oxford? Ned, are you nodding because you agree, or—"
"I am nodding because I am falling asleep, sire. I beg pardon," Poynings replied, jerking himself upright.
"You need not. We are all in the same case. If naught else needs doing here and now, let us snatch what rest we can." As the others left, he held Jasper by the arm. "Uncle, will Oxford be content with high admiral? I will make no other man but you earl marshal. I will hold the place myself rather than give so much power into another's hands."
"I cannot, Harry. I told you before. Look at me, child. I am nigh to three score years old. I am sore weary. I cannot support the burden of the whole land's defenses. Find some younger man."
Henry's grip tightened fiercely. "I pray you, uncle, do not say to me that you are old. Who will dare love me now that I am king save you and my mother? I do not need much. You and she are sufficient, but I cannot spare you."
"As long as God gives me leave, I will stay by you."
"Oh, uncle—"
"You are overweary, Harry. Come now to bed."
"There is so much yet to be done."
"A dead king accomplishes nothing. Come to bed, Harry."
Henry let himself be led away and was soothed when Jasper dismissed the squires of the body and helped him undress. Jasper's hands were warm and strong, and, though his hair was now nearly white, Henry was comforted because his uncle's back was straight and the flesh firm on his face and throat. He has many years yet, the king thought, but I must not press duty on him to ease myself no matter how' sore my need. I must not kill him with overwork. There are others who will labor for gain or for fear. He alone loves me for myself … even when he fears me. Jasper bent above him and kissed him.
"Sleep, child. There is tomorrow for what you wish to do. There will be many tomorrows."
It was true enough, but each tomorrow was as full as each yesterday. The realm had been so much shaken since Edward's death that nothing ran aright. Henry dictated to clerks as he rode, signed writs before he broke his fast, and worked far into each night after days of speeches and formal receptions. He also drove his poor council to the brink of exhaustion, as merciless to them as he was to himself. He found time, nonetheless, to walk beside the litter which carried Courtenay, for Edward would not be left behind and begged to ride if Henry felt the litter would be too slow. He managed, too, to make much of the council's work light by his jesting. Only it was
his
jesting. Neither Jasper nor Ned Poynings was given to lightness in that way, and the others feared him too much to jape with him even though they loved him. Each day was busier—and lonelier—than the day before it.
Today would be different, Henry thought. Today they would come to Saint Albans and there, at last, he would meet his mother. The sun was midway in its afternoon decline when Henry pulled rein in the courtyard, and he found himself trembling between anticipation and fear. What if Margaret was not the woman he remembered? Could any woman be so beautiful? So good? It had been fourteen years since they had looked into each others' eyes. And now he saw things in people's eyes, things he did not wish to see. They knew it, too. Jasper was sometimes afraid of him. Would his mother be frightened, also?
Henry had intended to go to his own chamber first, to wash the dust of the road from himself and don fresh clothing so that his mother would be proud. Now he said roughly to the man who opened the door for him, "Where is the Lady Margaret?" And when the servant took time to bow before he answered, Henry could have struck him with impatience. She sat in the hall, he was told. Somewhat else was said, but Henry did not wait to hear.
Unable to abide the slow ceremony of servants and announcements, he flung the hall door open with his own hand. And—she was there.
Two steps walking, remembering dignity, the rest running, dignity cast to the wind, brought him past a glory of gowns to fall to his knees and bury his head in Margaret's lap before she could rise. He said nothing, and she only stroked his bright hair, from which the cap had tumbled in his violence, murmuring his name over and over as if it gave the moment reality. It was wonderful; it was heaven. A sob shook him.
"Henry," Margaret said, "we are not alone here." He stiffened as if she had struck him a blow, and Margaret bent low. "My love, dear love, I do not care, but later—you would."
Now the real meeting could no longer be delayed. Henry lifted his head, and Margaret's eyes were full upon his. "May a son not weep for joy when he greets the mother for whom he has longed for fourteen years?" His lashes were wet, but his lips laughed. There was only joy and a burning love in his mother's eyes. If there were other things in her soul, those had been washed away in this moment.
"You are too thin and too tired, but happy?"
"Oh, yes. I am happy."
"Your fame outruns you. You have done well, my Henry."
"When did my mother think her only chick other than perfect?"
It was Margaret's turn to laugh. "I never thought that." Then she sobered, searching his face. "Nor are you perfect now, though you have passed through purgatory already." Please God, she prayed silently, that I have not sentenced him to hell with my ambition for him.
"Send your women away, mama," Henry urged. "I have so much to say to you."
Margaret laid her hand on Henry's mouth, her eyes warning. "They are not my women, beloved. The queen has come to greet you bearing her daughter." Her hand increased its pressure as she saw the expression on Henry's face. "I know Queen Elizabeth will pardon you for greeting me first. She understands a son's affection, longing to greet her own son, Dorset."
Margaret's eyes still warned, and though Henry flushed red as fire and then grew pale as alabaster, he was silent. He kissed both of Margaret's hands, which now lay over his in her lap, set his cap on his head, and rose to his feet. He should have known. The servant tried to tell him, and he should have realized from the brilliance of the gowns. Margaret's ladies always dressed soberly, as she did herself. True, they were all resplendent in green and white today, but he had passed a rainbow, not a bed of lilies. Margaret had come to her feet, also. Now with tears in her eyes she made ready to curtsy to the ground and kiss the king's hand. Henry caught her.
"No! You shall not bow to me."
"Will you deprive me of the right of every other Englishwoman, sire?" Margaret asked playfully, but still warning.
Henry hesitated. It was policy, and his mother was ready to do this, as she was ready to do anything else, for him. Yet policy had to stop somewhere or a man would become a monster like Gloucester. For Henry, policy stopped with his mother and his uncle. "I will not have you bend your knee to me, mother, nor call me sire. Have I done so ill, become so shameful, that you will have me no more for a son?"
That, too, was said lightly, as a jest, but Margaret heard the cry of loneliness. She cupped her hand around her son's face and smiled without speaking. Nonetheless, Henry had his answer. He brushed her hand again with his lips and turned from her. Margaret saw his slight form brace as if he steeled himself to some great trial, but a moment later he had lifted the dowager queen's hand to his lips in such a way that he drew her from her chair to a standing position.
He did not bow, did not even bend his head to kiss her hand; he brought that up to his mouth, uncomfortably bent. She had been easy to identify since she was the only woman in the room besides Margaret who had been seated. Now, reluctantly, his eyes scanned the ladies who stood beside her seeking the Elizabeth who was to be his wife.
She was not hard to identify, either, for she was as beautiful as her mother once had been, with a lush ripeness that Henry found faintly repellent after his mother's delicacy. Her huge almond-shaped eyes, blue as the best water sapphire, and her full, sensual lips were her mother's. The fine straight nose, the long upper lip, were Edward's. The coif covered her hair, but Henry knew it to be as golden as his own, and her skin was whiter than milk. He gazed at her, waiting—so obviously waiting that the room was hushed as if no one dared breathe.
Elizabeth, staring back, received several minor and one major shock. Somehow, in spite of what Margaret had told her, she expected an heroic figure. Henry was thin to emaciation, his temples and cheeks sunken, his eyes ringed with the mauve of sleeplessness. Beyond that, Elizabeth was so accustomed to the handsome faces of the men of her family that she was repelled by Henry's plainness.
His face was not even redeemingly harsh so that it could be called manly. He had a complexion as clean and fair as a girl's, and hair that was a delicate, golden glory, but the too-long nose, the grim, too-thin lips, the long, heavy, forward jutting jaw combined to produce a countenance that was not even engagingly ugly but simply unhandsome—plain. And the eyes! Elizabeth felt herself growing cold. One could fall into those too-widely spaced, too-long, too-narrow wells of grey light and be lost forever.
Slowly, reluctantly, as if the eyes had exerted a physical pressure and pushed her down, Elizabeth's knees bent and she went into the curtsy Henry had forbidden his mother to make. And as flowers bend before a wind, every lady sank in obeisance to England's king.
"Madam, we give you glad greeting," Henry said to the dowager, inclining his head graciously now that he had received his bow. He moved away quickly, extending his hand and lifting Elizabeth to her feet before she could rise of her own volition.
"Lady Elizabeth," he murmured, saluting her cheeks formally in the French style.
Their eyes were level, for he was short and she was tall. Elizabeth lowered her lids demurely; it was impossible for Henry to tell whether she hid hate or fear, or acted merely out of habit. That she could really be shy or demure, he dismissed. She was no green girl; she was more than twenty-one years of age and she had lived in a loose court, intrigue-ridden and sex-oriented, for most of her life.
The dowager queen, recovering from the shock of having been outmaneuvered, began to make her formal speech of welcome and congratulation. Henry turned to her courteously, noting that his faithful council had filed into the room, that Jasper was kissing Margaret as though he would never stop. Cheney and Poynings were sidling down the room, their eyes fixed on their master. True these were only women, but they were Edward's women; Henry was totally unarmed, and it was not unknown for a madwoman to slide a poniard between a man's ribs.
The speech went on, but Henry's mind was on the weariness of Ned's stance. Henry decided, as he smiled like a wax image, that the additional burden of guarding him must be removed from the council's shoulders. He would employ a guard as the French king did. Not foreign mercenaries, however, nor yet gentlemen's sons who might have their own games to play at. He would use good solid yeomen, English born, English bred, well paid, and with no ax to grind but Henry's own. They would serve both to enhance his dignity and to protect him. Henry felt a trifle better humored. At least he had been able to employ the time that woman yapped at him to some practical purpose.
"… and as our gratitude to you is great, so is our loyalty, which we hope will be rewarded by the restoration to us of what has been reft from us unjustly."
Henry heard that. Loyalty—as exemplified by Dorset's attempted desertion and the dowager's lack of protest when Gloucester planned to snatch his bride from him. Henry felt himself flush with rage, but his sense of humor came to his rescue. After all, knowing what she was, what could he expect? Besides, he held the whip hand and she would get what he chose to give.
The Dowager Queen would have to have her dower property restored, of course. Gloucester had confiscated that when he declared Edward's marriage invalid and his children bastards on the grounds that Edward had a prior betrothal. Since Henry could not afford to have his wife called a bastard, her mother's marriage had to be valid and the property was hers. It was unfortunate; Henry resented having to give her a penny, but perhaps it was better than trying to support her out of the royal income, and he could not let his mother-in-law starve even if he would like to.
"What was yours as Edward's wife, will be yours again." That was not what the dowager had meant, exactly, but before she could speak again Henry had turned to Elizabeth. "And what have you to ask of me, my lady?"
Color flamed in her face as if milk had been stained with blood. Was it for this that she had withstood Richard? Had she brought insult upon herself by her poor tokens of a ring and a brooch—the only things she had to give at that dreadful time?
"Naught," Elizabeth said proudly.
She heard her mother's breath hiss inward, and she grew pale as wax as she remembered she had been told to plead for her half brother Dorset's ransom. The dowager had not wished to mention Dorset's name, since she had been involved in his desertion and she did not want Henry to be reminded of that to her discredit. Characteristically, she had pressed the task upon her daughter.
Elizabeth had agreed willingly, for she was fond of Dorset in spite of his selfish weakness. In fact she hardly noticed a trait so common to her family as to be a natural thing. It was only that she had been so deathly weary last night when her mother had harangued her on the subject. Two hundred miles she had come in four days, all the way from the prison at Sheriff Hutton in Yorkshire where Gloucester had hidden her. From one prison to another, she now feared, another perhaps more terrible, although she might not be physically confined. That and her anger had made her forget poor Dorset.
"Except—" she faltered, as Henry began to move away.