Queen of Trial and Sorrow (35 page)

My three younger daughters, Anne, Katherine and Brigit, didn’t understand at all what was happening or why.  They cried for their favorite nursemaids and beloved pets, and their constant refrain was: I want to go home!  I don’t like it here!  When will we go home?  And I repeated my own refrain: As soon as your brother is crowned.

My sister became our willing servant.  She supervised our baths.  She washed and braided our hair.  She made the beds and dusted the furniture and put things away where they wouldn’t be tripped over.  She dealt with the monks, asking for some variety to the unappetizing fare we were invariably served for our meals, which Katherine and Brigit had to be coaxed into eating; begging for better quality candles to spare our eyes and nostrils the smoky offence of tallow.  Mostly her efforts were in vain but she had developed a stubborn streak.  Could the water for our baths be heated?  (She won that one.)  Would it be possible to change the rushes on the floors?  (Not until the end of the month.)  By the end of the month it was too late.  We all had flea bites.  In spite of being layered against a chilly spring, the vile creatures managed to burrow through our clothes.  My younger children could not be prevented from scratching, and their hands and faces became infected with open sores.  I was horrified.

……….

One day Doctor Serigo came to see me.  Not even Gloucester could prevent a visit from my Italian physician, although I’m sure he would have liked to.  I was very glad of his attendance; I had been suffering heart palpitations.  After examining us all and promising to return as soon as possible with a salve for the children’s sores, he gave me the latest news.  At a later council meeting, Gloucester had been taken to task for his lack of consideration for the dignity and welfare of the queen mother.  The council in general did not view me as a threat to his position and in fact sympathized with me.  Hiding his chagrin, Gloucester assured the members that no one wanted me out of sanctuary more than he did.  My presence there was a constant reproach, with its implication that he was a danger to my children and me.  He then resolved to remove the guards he had placed around the sanctuary and urge anyone who wished to visit me to do so. 

“It is true, Madam!  They are gone. 
Poof!
” said the doctor, in his delightfully accented voice, which squeaked with excitement as he added: “Dear Madam, a committee is to be formed, headed by the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Duke of Buckingham, to negotiate your withdrawal from sanctuary along with their Highnesses, the royal children.  Your ordeal will soon be over.”

My two eldest daughters exclaimed in pleasure, but I had my reservations even then, and when the archbishop and his delegation came I asked what guarantees they could offer that we would not be persecuted as other members of my family had been. I was particularly concerned for Dorset and Lionel.  They appeared to be shocked at the mere suggestion, and yet they could offer me nothing more than their own flimsy reassurances.

“Reverend Father, my lords,” I said, addressing them from my chair of state while they stood before me, “you are asking me to put my faith – and the safety of my children and myself – into the hands of the man who says he must be protector of the realm and governor of the king because it was will of his late brother, and yet who – in clear contravention of his brother’s will – has confined the king’s councilors without justice or judgment; has ordered the capture of my brother Sir Edward –
dead or alive!
– when he was engaged in a commission to which the council appointed him; has seized the lands of my brother Rivers and my elder sons as if they have been attainted by parliament, or are dead.  These acts are manifestly illegal and the man who committed them a
tyrant!
” 

I paused to allow that final word greater impact, and when Buckingham would have spoken I held up a hand to silence him.  Much to my surprise, he obeyed the gesture and remained silent.  “Furthermore, as I hear from many people, he has imputed to my family and me and our supporters all manner of crimes and never loses an opportunity of heaping calumnies on our heads and exciting public opinion against us.  I tell you plain, sirs, never will I leave the safety of sanctuary while such a man is in power.” 

Then I allowed sour-faced Buckingham to speak: “The protector has neither the time nor the patience to deal with people who obstruct him.”

The archbishop, whose face reminded me of a swatch of crumpled fabric, all creases and bumps, prevented him from saying anything further by interrupting.  “The duke is sometimes intemperate, Madam, but he means well.”

Oh, poor fool, I thought, you have lived too long with kings and courts to believe that.  He does
not
mean well.  He means to ride high on the shoulders of my son.  But I said only: “With all that’s happened in the last two decades, I find that hard to believe.”

“Madam, let me be the first to assure you that if you emerge you will be treated with the respect and dignity deserving of a great lady and the mother of our king.  You will be free to enter into honorable retirement in an institution of your choice.  Your children will be reunited with their brother.  It would be a great solace to him to have them with him.  These are trying times, Madam.  I beg you not to make them worse by remaining here when it is so unnecessary.  You have nothing to fear.”

“Eminence, I know you for an honest man, but your reassurances would mean more if the captives in the north were released and the order for my brother Sir Edward’s arrest rescinded.  I have no more to say.  Good day, my lords.”

They did not give up but returned several times, first one man importuning me and then another.  I remained firm.  I believe most were sincere, but I also knew without doubt that Gloucester was by now in firm control of the council and there was little they could do should he decide that we, too, needed to be confined.  Why exchange one confinement for another?

After the withdrawal of the guards, our lot improved.  We began to receive visitors again and were free of the odoriferous Nesfield.  The men who had once been members of my husband’s household, who had lived most closely with him and cherished his memory, came frequently to pay their respects and their visits were little spots of sunshine in the murky gloom of my days.  Many visitors brought news and gifts.  Even Lord Hastings sent a tun of good wine, which I hoped was an indication of unbending on his part and perhaps even the beginning of disillusion with the protector.

I asked all my visitors about my son: Have you seen him?  How is he?  How does he look?  Everyone reported that he seemed well.  Although they were his uncle’s people, his new attendants treated him with courtesy and kindliness, and their several skills offered diversion and amusement.  Nor was he wanting for visitors, for every day brought people seeking audience: the city dignitaries bearing gifts, tailors to measure him for his coronation robes, the nobles who hadn’t yet returned to their country manors after the funeral and new ones arriving every day for the coronation.  He particularly enjoyed Lord Hastings, who made him laugh and evoked memories of his father.  Every night when he said his prayers, he always prayed for his mother and his siblings and remembered to include those other loved ones who had been snatched from him at Stony Stratford.  As did I, you may be sure.

Although he had little to do with the business of running the kingdom, he took an interest in the documents he signed and in the decisions of the council.  Writs had been drawn up summoning parliament to meet three days after the coronation.  There was no need for new elections in the towns and shires because the last parliament had never been dissolved.  All official documents were issued in the name of Edward V and always ‘by the advice of ‘our dearest uncle the Duke of Gloucester, Defender and Protector of our Realm, and by the advice of the lords of our council’.  Ned might ask a few innocuous questions concerning the documents placed before him, but he generally signed without demur.  The Bishop of Worcester, who dearly loved him, drew an intimate picture of him for me.  Although both dukes treated him with the utmost deference in public, the bishop told me that Buckingham frightened him.  As for Gloucester, he was such a cold, remote man and Ned showed his dislike and mistrust with a stiff and formal manner.  He wore his resentment like armor.

……….

One night, toward the end of May, I jerked upright in bed, my heart thundering, and my hands clenched so tightly the fingernails had bitten into my palms.  One of the girls murmured something in her sleep.  Anne, sleeping beside me, sat up and took me in her arms.  I clung to her like a terrified child. 

“Hush, dearest.  It was just a nightmare.”

I shook my head vigorously, like a wounded animal trying to dislodge the instrument of its pain, and when I could speak I whispered: “Not a nightmare.  A memory.  Oh, God!  Oh, God!  Why didn’t I see?”

“What, Bess?  What has distressed you so?”

“Master Dominic’s prophecy.  Do you remember?  He said the name of the next King of England would begin with the letter
G.
  We all believed it referred to George of Clarence and never gave a thought to Richard
Gloucester.
”

“Master Dominic!” she sniffed.  “He was such a faker.  You didn’t believe that nonsense then – why do you credit it now?”

She urged me to lie down but held me close and murmured soothing words until I had stopped trembling.  I remembered what Edward had said at that time: ‘What if it was all in vain, all ambition, all striving, all the panoply and glory?  The legions of dead who fought to secure my throne: how they would reproach me if no son of mine ruled after me!’

In the early days of June Gloucester moved his household from Baynard’s Castle to Crosby Place, a house he had leased in ’76 for his use when in London, and his wife joined him there.  Anne Neville was a pale, thin, frail-looking woman, a homebody who loved Yorkshire and wanted nothing to do with the world beyond its borders.  The birth of their one child seemed to have depleted her physical resources.  Gloucester esteemed her because of the fabulous inheritance she had brought to their marriage: far-flung estates, great wealth and the northern affinity that had accepted him not so much for his own sake but for hers, the Neville heiress, and had served him well. 

From that point on the council was divided: Gloucester met at Crosby Place with his chief supporters, among whom were Buckingham, Viscount Lovel, Lord Howard and a lawyer, Richard Ratcliffe, a member of Gloucester’s northern council; the rest met in the Star Chamber to discuss the coronation and deal with routine business.  So what did that leave Gloucester and his cronies to deal with?  There were portents here, certainly, of things to come. Various committees began to meet in each other’s houses.  Factions were forming, and factions within factions.

No one shared their suspicions with me.  Nevertheless, some instinct told me that the ‘protector’ had become a threat to my son’s sovereignty.  No, it was not instinct at all, for instinct has no basis in logic.  When I examined the matter as calmly and rationally as I was able, it seemed so clear to me that I wondered I hadn’t seen it sooner.  Why would he not?  He had already removed much of his opposition, and had done so without losing the support of the majority on the council and the lords; even the Londoners favored him and put their faith in him.  Furthermore, he had an army at his disposal in the north and, although I didn’t know it until much later, he had already sent a frantic letter to the magistrates of York, informing them that he was in imminent danger from the queen mother and her kin and other traitors who were plotting his destruction and the destruction of all honorable men, and asking that they send troops to his aid with all due diligence.  He had to have known that he had lost the trust of his sovereign and earned the undying enmity of the Wydevilles for his tyranny and insults.  Once Ned had been consecrated, we would move heaven and earth to strip him of power.  He stood to lose everything.  Did he, really, have any choice?  It seemed to me he had fought himself into a corner.  Perhaps he had even convinced himself that he could see God’s purpose in removing from his path all three of his elder brothers, leaving only two boys.

And yet, I told myself in an agony of doubt, he must cast his line in desperate waters to come up with some pretext to support his own claim.  Surely the council, the lords, the people, collectively, were strong enough to thwart him should he cherish such an evil design.

……….

I was in the garden when the door opened and Thomas emerged followed by a small figure, cloaked and hooded. 

“I told Mistress Shore you wouldn’t bite her,” he said with a grin.  “At least not until you’ve heard her message.”

The woman threw back her hood and went to her knees with her head humbly bent.  As well she might!  How dare she come here?  What could she possibly have to say that I would want to hear?

“Shall I stay?” Thomas asked.

“No, go.  And take that creature with you.”  I turned my back on them.

“Give us a moment,” I heard Thomas say, and then he took a very firm grasp of my elbow and steered me toward the far end of the garden. 

“Consider carefully, Mother,” he said urgently.  “You need all the support you can get and Mistress Shore is popular with the common folk of London because whatever influence she had with the king she used on behalf of the needy.  She is a freewoman of the city, which is an accolade granted to women but rarely. 
And
she comes from Hastings.  Have you not said you wish he was our ally?”

“Hastings?  Are you sure?”

“Be kind to her, Mother.  She’s a good woman.”

He went into the house, pausing to kiss Mistress Shore’s hand, and I was left looking down at her bent head.  

Although Edward had been no more faithful to her than he had been to me, yet she had proved more enduring than any of the other women who had sullied his bed over the years.  It was not her beauty that had attracted his interest and kept it for more than a decade, for she lacked the requisite attributes to be considered a true beauty.  What had kept the interest of a man who could have almost any woman he wanted for the asking was her wit.  She was his Merry Harlot.  She lightened his cares and made his burdens more bearable with the simple gift of laughter, and he liked to laugh. And perhaps when she came into his life he had reached that stage where beauty of face and form were no longer enough, and he wanted a comfortable and undemanding companion to settle into middle age with.  She was still pretty, but plumper than she had been when she first came to court.

“So are you sharing Lord Hastings’ bed now?” I asked coldly.      

She said nothing.  Her head drooped lower.

“Did you care for him so little?”  I don’t know what made me say that. It really was no concern of mine.

“I cared for him a great deal.  I loved him.  But with his death everything changed and I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t matter to anyone anymore.  I knew I would have to give up my apartment in the palace and make a new life in a world that generally regarded me as wicked, and I had no idea how to go about it.  Someone had always taken care of me: father, husband, king.  Now I was alone and defenseless and so full of grief, I didn’t know how to survive in a world that no longer contained him.  A woman like me needs a protector.  I needed protection from the men who would come flocking around me.”  She lifted her head and looked at me with brilliant blue eyes.  “Your Grace, I am a harlot and everyone in London knows it.  I dare not even occupy my own house, the one his Grace was kind enough to give me.  As soon as it’s known I’m there, I’ll have a stream of men at my door eager to woo the woman who once shared a king’s bed, and some none too gently.  His Grace always treated me with the greatest respect and kindness and made sure everyone else did.  I can’t bear the thought of being used like a… like a piece of meat.  Lord Hastings is a good man.”

What she said was true: she would not have been left alone to live in peace.  A woman possessing her own house and with a collection of jewels and rich gowns would naturally be a prize worth pursuing.  Add to that a glamorous yet immoral past and there was no doubt in my mind that without a protector (oh, hated word!) she would be hounded unbearably. 

I don’t know if it was done with calculation, but her speech made me realize suddenly how much I had in common with this creature of fancy and fantasy, this whore with a heart of gold.  Someone had always taken care of me, too, and now that I was alone I felt defenseless and inadequate.  I didn’t know how to cope with this changed world, and the only thing that kept grief at bay was my fears for my family.  Another thing we had in common: we both missed him.

Thus I softened my tone.  “Why have you come to see me?  I cannot help you.”

“No, Madam.  It is only that Lord Hastings entrusted me with a letter – ”

“Give it to me.”

She produced a small package from inside her sleeve.  I went to sit on the bench, turning my back to her.  I wasn’t as good as I ought to have been by now at composing my features and I didn’t want her to see my reaction when I read the letter.  Opening it, expecting I know not what, I read:

To the right worshipful Elizabeth, Queen Dowager, from Lord Hastings.

Madam, I can no longer doubt the rumors.  There are some who claim to have known his wicked design ever since my lord of Gloucester took possession of his Grace on the road to London, for my part in which act I am deeply and eternally sorry. Having known Gloucester well and having faith in the inherent goodness of his character and in his loyalty to both the late king and his son, I believed the rumors to be no more than the product of anxiety, occasioned by the transition between one reign and the next.  I no longer doubt their validity because the truth was proved to me conclusively when my lord of Buckingham, on Gloucester’s behalf, sounded me out on the matter.  I replied that what England needs most at this time is a peaceful transition, not another fight for the crown and
I would accept and support him as protector but not as king.  Gloucester is publicly denying the rumors, but I fear he will go ahead with or without my backing. 

This writing is to inform and reassure your Grace that the king is not alone.  I have the support of other members of the council: the Archbishop of York, the Bishop of Ely, Lord Stanley among others, and we are pledged to do all in our power to thwart the would-be usurper.  You and I have had our differences in the past, Madam, and may do so again in the future, but we hold in common our desire to see the son of our beloved late sovereign lord elevated to the throne and honors to which he was born.

I lowered the letter but continued to stare blankly into the space it had occupied.  He assumed I knew but I had heard no such rumors.  For all the visitors I had received, not one had mentioned that Gloucester was suspected of having designs on the throne.  But wait… Sir Thomas St. Leger, the Duchess of Exeter’s widower, had once asked me if I had heard the rumors, and when I asked him what rumors he had looked at me speculatively for some time before reporting some banality.  The abbot and monks had said nothing.  Was that because they hadn’t heard, or were they trying to spare me?

“Come with me,” I said, and went inside.

I sat at the small table that served me as a desk and wrote a brief message in response, thanking Lord Hastings for his words of reassurance and begging him not to desert my son in his hour of need, and to kindly keep me informed of progress.  I concluded by warning him to have a care for his own safety.

Entrusting the message to Mistress Shore, I dismissed her with thanks.  As soon as the door closed on her I was afflicted by bodily weakness. I began to shudder, great spasmodic tremors that shook me from head to foot and had my limbs twitching and jerking like the branches of an alder in a fitful wind.

Anne came to my assistance, holding me firmly as she guided me to my chair and then pressing a cup of wine to my lips until I had drunk sufficient to be able to master my wretched body.  In a tremulous voice, not my own, I told her what Lord Hastings’ letter contained.

“God be with our dear prince now,” she said and crossed herself.

Oh, Edward, I thought, if only you hadn’t left us so soon our son would be able to shift for himself.  How was it that you trusted that viper so perfectly – your brother, yes, but Clarence’s brother, too.  I know the answer.  Family: He was family.  Yet I believe the loyal younger brother would have remained just that had you lived to a ripe old age.  But you died and threw temptation in his path.  What prince, who had shown himself to possess few scruples when it came to satisfying his limitless greed and ambition, and faced with the possibility of stealing the throne, would be able to resist the temptation?

……….

That night I sat beside the fire in the hall after Anne and the children had gone to bed, trying to choke down my fear.  In my mind Gloucester had become an evil and implacable creature of darkness who would destroy my son.  Dorset and Lionel were sat at the table, heads bent together.  Occasionally I heard an urgent whisper but I wasn’t paying any attention.  We had talked about it all night, about what Gloucester might do.  Everything that could be said on the subject of his possible intentions had already been said and the only conclusion we had reached was that there was absolutely no legal reason for him to seize the crown.  Although my husband had won the crown at Towton, he never claimed it by conquest, which would have opened the door to other would-be conquerors, but because he had the better right and parliament had previously made his father Henry’s heir.  Gloucester could claim it by neither primogeniture nor conquest.  Yet I could not shake off the fear that somehow he would find the means.

I picked up the poker, intending to stir up the fire but then my thoughts got in the way and the poker drooped in my hand.  It was very late and I was unbearably tired.  The house was quiet.  The hall was dark.  A single candle sat amidst clusters of wax on the table, flickering over the faces of the two men, and the embers of the fire glowed in the hearth.  I stared into the dying fire and caught a glimpse of Hell.  Caverns of blistering heat where tongues of flame leapt and cavorted like gleeful demons and sparks shot like Christian souls into the darkness of the chimney, into the void of everlasting night.  I saw
his
face in the midst of the flames. 

My thoughts flitted around like bats in the gloom, never alighting.  I thought of Hastings and veered away.  I thought of Edward but the grief was still there, still waiting in the recesses of my mind to leap through the walls and ambush me.  I thought of Margaret of Anjou and wondered how many times she had sat staring into a fire, thinking hopeless thoughts.  I thought of Edward’s ‘dearest treasure’, our sweet son, but could not, dare not, dwell there.  I thought of
him
in the heart of the city, snug in bed with his would-be queen.  No, there was no place my thoughts could wander to find tranquility.

Quietly, as if fearing to disturb me, Dorset came to kneel by my chair.  He took my hand and kissed it and I gazed into his handsome face.  Lionel was standing behind him.  “Mother,” he said, “you must see that Hastings’ letter changes everything.  You cannot tell me that all will be well after Ned is consecrated, because now we know it might not happen.  I am of no use to you here in sanctuary, whereas if I am free I can work against Gloucester, and no matter what happens I will not rest until my brother has his rights.  Give me leave to go.”