By His Majesty's Grace (23 page)

Lady Margaret paused in her pacing to stare at Isabel. “The idea is not new.”

“But the manner in which Rand was lured to the scene of Mademoiselle Juliette’s murder adds weight, do you not agree?”

“If only we knew who came for her. Yes, and where she was taken.”

This was the point Isabel had been waiting for. “You could discover it, Lady Margaret,” she said, hiding her fisted hands in the folds of her gown. “You are the king’s mother and most beloved by him. No one can or will deny whatever you request. More than that, I am told you sometimes hold council on minor matters with the king’s blessing, that you hear petitions and make judgments so His Majesty may direct his efforts toward more weighty matters. Could you not hold a tribunal on this affair?”

“A tribunal.” The older woman’s face turned thoughtful.

“With your influence and under seal of your orders, the captain of the men-at-arms who spirited the Frenchwoman away from Braesford might be located. The midwife who delivered the babe could be brought before you to be questioned. The owner of the keep where Mademoiselle was killed could be produced so he might explain how she came to be lodged there, or at least why she died in that place and not some other.”

“You are suggesting I undertake this while Henry is absent from Westminster. Yes, and otherwise occupied with this insurrection.”

Isabel flushed. “I had not intended anything quite so…so devious. It’s only that the time is now.”

“As you say,” the king’s mother agreed with a dismissive gesture before turning away again, allowing her gaze to rest on her prie-dieu of black oak with a velvet-covered kneeling bench, which sat in a corner. Her voice dropped to a whisper. “But what if the answers turn out to be…wrong?”

“I dare not think they will,” Isabel answered. “But if so, you must make the matter right, Your Grace. You cannot be who you are and bear in good conscience that it should be otherwise.”

Silence descended between them. Somewhere men chanted in voices low and serene yet thrumming with restrained power. A dog barked and earned a reprimand. Hens cackled in alarm, then sang into quiet. Isabel stood so stiff and straight that her knees hurt. She began to sway, a faint movement that grew more pronounced with every passing second.

“No,” Lady Margaret said at last, “I refuse to believe Henry can be guilty. Nor can I accept it of Sir Rand. If something is to be done, it must be soon and it must be in Westminster. There is where I have access to account rolls showing who was paid, when and for what service, also to heralds to send here and there and to the official seals that will force answers.”

It was full agreement, Isabel saw. She had won. The relief was so intense that her knees sagged with it, forcing her to recover with a jerk.

Lady Margaret gave her a swift glance. “Of course, I would have to leave Elizabeth.”

“Yes, but the queen consort has some weeks yet before her time, I believe?”

“So does everyone else, counting back from the wedding. I am not convinced. But no matter. We must depend for her security on her doctor and those who hover around her like wasps around ripe fruit.”

“I am certain all will be well. Her Majesty may not be…of a robust nature, but neither is she a weakling.”

“As you say.” Lady Margaret drew a deep breath, forcing the air from her lungs in a rush. “I will require aid if the business is to be done in good time. Once back at Westminster, you must remove to a chamber near mine and become my scribe for the messages that will go out under my private seal. We want no chatter about this business. If all goes well, we may be able to sort out this madness and keep safe the lives of the men we love.”

The king’s mother thought she loved Rand. Isabel opened her mouth to refute it, but closed it again. Allowing the suggestion to stand might be an advantage. With a lift of her chin, she said, “If you will recall, Your Grace, the chamber I shared with Rand was near the king’s apartments.”

Lady Margaret gave a nod. “So it was. Excellent. Go, then, and make ready. We leave for Westminster as soon as everything is in order.”

Isabel accepted her dismissal with a deep curtsy. A moment later, she was outside the solar with the door closed behind her. She stopped there, staring at nothing.

She had won.

The concession she had thought to extract had been allowed her.

She should be joyful. Euphoria should flood like a millrace in her veins, filling her heart to bursting. Instead, she was suddenly tired, so tired. And repeating endlessly in her mind was the question the Lady Margaret had whispered to the God she consulted at her prie-dieu.

What if the answers discovered in tribunal turned out to be wrong indeed?

Preparations for the return from Winchester took forever and a day, or so it seemed. Servants ran here and there with stacks of folded linen. Menservants knocked beds apart to be loaded, and packed silver and gold plates, cups, basins and ewers. Horses and mules, carts and wagons, were gathered. Heralds were sent flying ahead to arrange changes of horse and announce their coming at the tavern where they would rest the night. Squabbles among Lady Margaret’s attendants over who would go and who would stay had to be settled.

Isabel waited in a fever of impatience. She would have liked to harry the servants, forcing them to move faster. She wanted to mount up and gallop away as swiftly as she had come. Neither course was within her power. The servants were not hers to order and she could not offend the king’s mother by leaving ahead of her.

It was on the third day of packing, as Isabel sought patience in the priory garden, that she came upon Elizabeth of York. She had seen her in passing and at meals, of course, but Henry’s queen was usually so surrounded by ladies-in-waiting, nuns and courtiers that it was impossible to speak to her. Now here she sat, gilded by spangles of summer sunlight falling through an arbor of roses, reading a book with marble covers. She looked up, her face apprehensive, at the sound of Isabel’s footfall.

“Ah, Lady Isabel, it’s you,” she said, her features relaxing into a smile.

“Forgive me, Your Majesty,” Isabel said quickly as she dropped into a curtsy. “I did not mean to intrude.”

“By no means, you are most welcome. I only thought it might be…” She paused, drew a quick breath. “Suffice it to say it is not you I seek to escape. Come, join me here on the bench. It is more than wide enough for two, even considering my present size.”

To refuse a royal request was not possible. With a murmur of gratitude, Isabel complied. They sat exchanging the usual pleasantries for a few moments.

“You are anxious to be off, I expect,” Elizabeth soon said with the glimmer of a smile in her fine sea-blue eyes. “The requirements of royalty can be tedious, can they not?”

“Oh, I would not say so.”

“No, being much too polite. I say it for you, who suffer it every day.”

“In truth, I wonder that you can support it, especially just now.”

The queen’s gaze turned wry. “Your departure may make it easier.”

Warm color suffused Isabel’s face. “I apologize if I have caused difficulties for you by coming here.”

“No, no, I only meant that you take my mother-in-law when you go, a great boon.” She moved a gently rounded shoulder. “Lady Margaret is a strong woman, stronger than I for all her small size. Her ideas of what is required to bring a royal child into the world clash with those of my mother, who gave birth to eight while married to my father so considers herself an expert. Their endless arguments, their conflicting rules and instructions, quite overset me.”

“I can see how they might.”

“I do carry a future king, of course, the progenitor of a new Tudor dynasty, as we are told. My lady mother-in-law is accountable to Henry for his safety, and so I must abide by her strictures above all else.”

“I wonder that she has agreed to leave you.”

“As do I, believe me. I can only suppose the need to be severe.”

The faintest intonation of a question was in the gentle comment. It was on the tip of Isabel’s tongue to relate the cause and the events that had brought it about, but she caught the words back in time. How horrifying it would be if she so upset the queen that she went into early labor. “I am sure Lady Margaret will tell you everything if you ask.”

“And I am sure she will not,” Elizabeth of York said. “I am cocooned against all unpleasantness for the duration. Or forever, as the case may be.” She put a hand on her swollen abdomen, rubbing it in a gentle caress. “I don’t repine, knowing it is for the good of the child I carry, which is also my father’s heir, and my own.”

Isabel met the queen’s gaze, her own softening as she understood the daughter of Edward IV was well aware that the royal Plantagenet line of her family would continue, on the distaff side though it might be. After a moment, however, the true force of the words spoken by Henry’s queen consort struck her. Her brows drew together in a frown as she said, “If you know the matter is unpleasant, then…”

“Oh, I know far more than that.”

“Ma’am?”

“I am aware that Henry, naturally enough, brought a mistress with him from France, also that the woman had a child. I’ve heard whispers that the babe did not live, and am inclined to believe it after the mummery at your wedding to Sir Rand.”

It made sense, as Isabel had thought before, that Elizabeth would learn these things at a court where anyone who resented her connection to the Yorkist regime might take revenge by disturbing her peace with gossip. Compassion for the lady, set about with those who were less than friends if not downright enemies, shifted through Isabel.

“I am truly sorry,” she said in quiet sincerity.

“You have a kind heart, Lady Isabel, but I beg you won’t refine upon my circumstances too much. I am where God and my fate intend that I should be. I only mention the small discontent in order to explain my gratitude for the respite you are providing. For that, as well as for the friendship you have so freely given, I should like to offer a boon. If ever there is anything I may do for you, you have only to ask.”

It was a precious gift, and Isabel knew how to value it. Elizabeth of York did not scheme or pretend to influence in her husband’s court, but that did not mean she was ineffective. The woman who slept with a king and bore his children would never be without power.

Isabel expressed her appreciation as best she might. Afterward, the two of them sat long under the arbor with the scent of roses surrounding them and petals drifting down like gentle rain. And in the two days that followed, she and Elizabeth of York met often in that same place, speaking there of a thousand things, including men and their foibles, of being wedded with reluctant consent, of learning to live with a strange husband. Isabel was briefly sorry, after all, when the time finally came to go.

Depart they did, however, on a hot day as August came to an end. When the walls of Winchester were left behind, the column of outriders, guards, courtiers, servants, baggage wagons and provision carts moved with the slow and majestic state. Isabel, reining in her mount to the deliberate pace preferred by Lady Margaret, soon had a headache from heat, dust and improving lectures on everything from how to wear her caps and veils to the frequency of her prayers. She must act the smiling companion for the sake of future favors and, above all, be grateful that the inquiry into the death of Juliette d’Amboise had been set in motion, even if at such a deliberate pace. Never in her life had she been so glad to draw near the great sprawl of London and the shining ribbon of the Thames, or to turn with a great clatter of hooves into King’s Street, which led to Westminster Palace.

She was soon installed back in her bridal chamber near the king’s apartments with her sisters near at hand. The next few days saw messages imprinted with Lady Margaret’s seal speeding in all directions. But though various nobles and king’s soldiery tramped in and out on the order of the king’s mother, no one could say who had commanded the detail that traveled north to take the Frenchwoman away from Braesford. No one had any idea who had served in it or where they had gone afterward. Some hinted the men-at-arms might have been mercenaries pressed into service and fitted out with royal accoutrement, but not a soul ventured a guess as to who had supplied them or for what reason. What could it matter, after all? The woman was only the king’s mistress, little better than a whore, so hardly worth the time it took to answer questions about her.

Isabel, noting the attitude, could not but wonder if those questioned imagined they were protecting the king’s interest, and that of the house of Lancaster. It would explain much.

But no, that was unacceptable, for if Henry was guilty, what did that say for Rand?

In due time, the midwife who had been at Braesford was brought to Westminster, surrounded by the escort dispatched to find her. She was hustled directly to Lady Margaret’s council chamber, a long room fitted with paneling and wall hangings embroidered with a portcullis, the badge of her Beaufort family.

Anticipation hummed along Isabel’s veins as she stood at Lady Margaret’s right hand, next to a discreet scribe who knelt with pen and paper resting on his bent knee while he recorded the proceedings. It seemed they might learn at last what had actually occurred at Braesford.

The midwife, a plump woman with wide hips, round face and soft, almost shapeless nose seemed frightened out of her wits. Her face was pasty white, her eyes bulged and her lips trembled. Her clothing was rough and travel stained, and the plain linen scarf that covered her head had slipped to one side so she appeared half-tipsy.

Isabel felt a pang of sympathy for the woman’s weariness and terror, but hardened her heart against it. The more in awe the midwife was of her surroundings and the person asking the questions, the more likely they might finally hear the truth.

“Your name?” Lady Margaret asked as a preliminary.

The midwife went from white to fiery red. She pushed at her head covering, though without improving its appearance. “Dame Agnes Wellman, milady.”

The questions went on, establishing the woman’s status as the widow of a freedman, where she resided, how long she had lived there, if she had children, how long she had been a midwife, how she came by the trade, how many babies she had delivered and how many had lived and a dozen other things. Finally, the crux of the matter was reached.