The Border Lord and the Lady (8 page)

“Aye, my lady, I do,” Cicely responded.

“And you do sums?”

“Aye, my lady.”

“You are a good Christian maid? You make your confession regularly?” the queen continued.

“Oh, yes, my lady!” Cicely said earnestly.

The queen smiled a small smile. “Do you think you will be happy with us?”

“I do not know, my lady,” Cicely said honestly. “I have never before been away from home. But I am told in a few weeks this will be home, and I shall be content.”

Again Queen Joan smiled. “Aye, I think you will be. Then you are content to come into my care.”

“Oh, my lady, this is a great honor you do me, do my family,”
Cicely answered her. “My father is not an important man. I am very grateful for your kindness to me.”

The child had, of course, been told that the queen understood, but she seemed intelligent. She knew the advantage being given to her. Queen Joan drew the other girl by her side forward. “This is your new companion, Lady Joan Beaufort,” she said. “Joan, this is Lady Cicely Bowen. You will share a chamber, and lessons, and learn how to be great ladies in my care. My lord of Leighton, bid your daughter farewell now.”

The earl knelt and drew Cicely into his embrace. He kissed her rosy cheeks, and his eyes grew misty as she put her arms about his neck.

Then she whispered, “I will do my best to bring honor to Leighton, my lord father. I swear it on my mother’s name.”

Robert Bowen’s heart contracted. “I know you will,” he responded. Then, kissing her smooth forehead, he arose, saying, “Farewell, my daughter. We will meet again, I promise you.” Bowing to the queen, he then turned and left her hall.

Cicely stared after her father. She suddenly felt abandoned, as if she would weep.

Then a small hand slipped into hers, and a sweet voice said, “We are going to be such great friends, Cicely. I just know it!”

Turning, she looked into the smiling face of little Lady Joan Beaufort.

“
H
e’s looking at you again, Jo,” Lady Cicely Bowen said, giggling. At fourteen she was a slender girl of average height, much admired for her thick and wavy auburn hair and her beautiful, clear blue-green eyes.

“Oh, Ce-ce, please don’t tell me that,” Lady Joan Beaufort said. “He’s been staring at me for weeks now. Why doesn’t he just come over and speak to me? If he doesn’t stop mooning about, I don’t know what I will do! I wish we were back at Havering-atte-Bower instead of here at Windsor with the court.” She turned her blond head to look directly at her admirer, and her blue eyes danced mischievously when he flushed, turning away. “There!” She chuckled. “That will teach him to stare so rudely.”

“Who is staring rudely?” a deep voice inquired curiously, and the two girls turned to see that Henry Beaufort, the bishop of Winchester, had joined them. The bishop was Lady Joan’s uncle, and currently part of the regency council governing for the infant king Henry VI, who had acceded to his throne ten months prior, at the age of eight months.

“James Stewart, my lord,” Cicely said. “He keeps looking at Jo, but he will not speak to her. She finds it very annoying.”

The bishop chuckled. “The young king of the Scots says he is in love with you, my child. He would speak to your brother about a match between you.”

“He would do better to speak with me, Uncle,” Lady Joan Beaufort said sharply. “Not one word has the man uttered. He just stares. I’ll marry no man I don’t know or love. But he is not unattractive, I will allow.”

“You could be queen of Scotland,” her uncle murmured slyly.

“A queen without a throne,” Lady Joan said tartly.

“The regent in the north is dead over a year now, niece. His son is an incompetent fool, as we learned when we held him for ransom with young James years back. A pity the Duke of Albany could not find the wherewithal for his king, although he certainly managed to find ransom enough for his son. Our James will not forget that. Negotiations are already under way to return this king to his throne in Scotland. The Earl of Atholl has arrived, along with the Red Stewart of Dundonald and the bishop of St. Andrew’s. They have already discovered to their surprise that James Stewart is neither an easily manipulated weakling or a fool. He has asked them to deal with your brother in the matter of your marriage, Joan,” the bishop said. He was a tall, handsome man with piercing light blue eyes and white hair that had once been blond. He was the second of the Beaufort sons, and had been educated for the Church. He had been offered a cardinal’s hat by Pope Martin V, but his nephew, Henry V, would not let him accept it. Henry Beaufort was too valuable a politician for England.

“Then you had better discover a way for this exiled king to talk to me,” Lady Joan said. “An English queen for Scotland’s king would be a valuable asset, considering the age of our current king and the ambition of powerful men, Uncle.”

The bishop chuckled. “I wish my father were alive to know you, niece. You have your grandmother’s fair face, but you have your grandfather’s sharp mind. Others might find it disconcerting in a girl such as yourself. I, however, do not. I shall see that James Stewart makes himself known to you soon, Joan. I do believe that you will like him.” Then, with a nod of his head, the bishop strode off across the gardens.

“The bishop is so handsome.” Cicely sighed. “What a waste of a man. The priesthood should be only for ugly men.”

“He fathered a daughter in his youth,” Lady Joan said. “She is named Jane.”

“Who was the mother?” Cicely asked, fascinated.

“They say it was Alice FitzAlan, but no one can prove it for certain,” Lady Joan replied. “I saw Jane Beaufort once. She’s a pretty child, and is fostered by one of the de Bohun family. My uncle will see her well married one day.”

“Do you think His Grace will introduce you to the Scots king?” Cicely wondered.

“Aye, he will,” Lady Joan said. “With little King Henry still in leading strings, and years ahead of them to govern, my family will want an ally in the north. The little brat had a temper tantrum the other day as he was about to be brought into Parliament, and it had to be canceled until the next morning, when he was quite amenable to sitting in Queen Katherine’s lap while the lords nattered on for hours. You know, Ce-ce, I quite like the idea of being a queen,” she said with a smile. “I mean, if James Stewart is to finally return to Scotland, whom could he possibly marry there? His mother was some clansman’s daughter, not a girl of high rank. The Scots earls are a contentious lot, always squabbling, and each one of them has at least one daughter he would try to place on the queen’s throne. And then the other earls would fight one another over it. Of course, King James might seek a princess bride from France, or one of the northern countries, like the kingdom of the Danes, or even Spain.”

“You’re thinking about it!” Cicely accused. “You haven’t even met the man, and you’re thinking about it, aren’t you, Jo?”

“Of course I’m thinking about it, Ce-ce. He has to marry. I have to marry. It’s true we haven’t exchanged a single word so far, but don’t you think he looks nice?”

“They say he writes poetry,” Cicely answered, “and aye, he is handsome.”

“Maybe I’ll start smiling at him then, instead of frowning at him,” Lady Joan said mischievously, and the two girls broke into gales of laughter.

James Stewart was the only surviving son of King Robert III of Scotland and his queen, Annabella Drummond. With his mother deceased, and his older brother, David, dead at his uncle’s hands, his father, King Robert, had finally realized that his only surviving son was in danger. The king had trusted his own brother, the Duke of Albany, when he claimed that Prince David, the Duke of Rothesay, was plotting to overthrow his father. Robert Stewart understood his elder son’s ambition, and his own health had always been weak. But he was not going to give David Stewart his throne. Not yet. So he had instructed Albany to imprison David, and suddenly his strong, healthy son and heir was dead.

“Unfortunate,” Albany had said sanguinely.

But there were rumors that David had been starved to death, and denied liquid of any kind. That the prince had been hurried to his death in a most cruel manner.

“Nonsense!” Albany had declared, but he offered no explanation as to why his nephew had perished in his custody, and so quickly.

Fully aware now of where the real threat to his throne lay, King Robert did the only thing he could do: He sent his younger son, James, to safety in France. But the vessel upon which the young prince traveled, the
Maryenknyct,
which flew the flag of Danzig, was attacked and captured in the North Sea by English pirates. Learning the prince’s identity, the pirates had brought the eleven-year-old Prince James to King Henry IV, their own king. Henry had paid a goodly ransom for the boy and his companions.

Though England and Scotland were at peace, James Stewart remained in England for the next eighteen years. His captors were kind. He was treated with the respect due his station. He was educated in languages and the humanities. The king’s elder son, Henry, who would one day be Henry V, supervised his training in the martial arts.
James earned his knighthood, and even fought in France with the English prince. Yet he was unable to return home.

His father, King Robert, was not a well man. Upon learning of his surviving son’s capture, he had died quietly within the month. King Robert’s ambitious brother, the Duke of Albany, ruled as regent for his nephew, but he was unable to find the ransom necessary to return the boy king to Scotland, although he did manage to ransom his own son, whom the king had secretly sent with James in hopes that if the two cousins grew up together, they would become friends. It had not happened.

Albany, a jealous man, had considered his brother a weakling. He had no intention of giving up Scotland’s throne to a mere stripling. To return the lad and then see to his death, as he had seen to the death of David Stewart, would have caused a civil war, with the earls and the lairds taking sides. So he had left James Stewart with his English captors. He well knew that the English weren’t about to go to war for his nephew. They had their own problems to deal with now. Henry IV had died several years after James had arrived in England. His son and heir, Henry V, had died just last year, leaving the infant, Henry VI, as England’s king. The little king’s guardians had all they could do to rule England in his name.

So James Stewart had waited to regain his throne. He grew into a tall, handsome man with dark auburn hair and amber eyes. And one day, looking down on the gardens at Windsor Castle, he had spied the loveliest girl he had ever seen. “Who is she?” he asked his companion.

“ ’Tis Lady Joan Beaufort, the king’s cousin,” came the reply. “Why?”

“I am going to marry her and make her my queen!” James Stewart declared passionately, his amber eyes alight.

“You haven’t even met her,” his friend said, laughing. “Besides, her family adores her. Her grandfather was Gaunt, a king’s son. She’s royal blood. They’ll seek a very brilliant match for her.”

“I am king of Scotland,” James Stewart said proudly. “Do you think the Beauforts can find a better match for this girl than a king of Scotland?”

And, of course, they couldn’t.

Bishop Henry wasted no time in seeing that his niece finally met with James Stewart. The next day in the gardens of Windsor Castle he introduced them formally, and then took Lady Cicely Bowen firmly by the hand, saying, “I am given to understand, young mistress, that you have not made your confession of late. I shall hear it myself now in the royal chapel.”

Cicely gasped softly, then said, “But, my lord bishop, I have been good. I swear it.”

The bishop of Winchester shook his head sadly. “Ah, the sin of pride,” he lamented. “This will take some time, I fear.”

But he was near to chuckling, for he knew very well that Cicely Bowen was indeed good. From the moment she had entered the household of Queen Joan she had endeavored to bring honor to her family at Leighton. And five years ago, when Queen Joan was accused of witchcraft, stripped of her possessions, and confined to Havering-atte-Bower, Lady Cicely Bowen had behaved in a most circumspect manner as she and Lady Joan Beaufort were taken away from that lady to be resettled in Queen Katherine’s household, where they knew no one and were virtually ignored. It was that more than anything else that had cemented the friendship between the two girls.

Queen Joan had been released just the year before, and her property returned to her despite the fact that it was her confessor, Father John Randolph, who had accused her. No charges had ever been filed, and the priest found himself confined to a monastery for the rest of his days. Lady Joan and Lady Cicely, however, were not sent back to Havering-atte-Bower, being considered old enough to be in polite society. And Cicely Bowen’s good influence on Joan Beaufort was a deciding factor in allowing the two girls to remain together.