The King's Grace (67 page)

“I thank you for the news, Master Courteys. You may count on my discretion, and I shall tell Lady Katherine in my own way.” As she hurried back with the queen’s dress, a sudden thought stopped her in her tracks. He had been tortured when he confessed, Master Courteys, she wanted to go back and tell him. Certes, he would have been too frightened to know anyone.

K
ATHERINE STOOD LIKE
a statue next to Grace and Cecily on the top of the steps of Westminster Hall and stared down at the pathetic figure locked in chains and the stocks atop a scaffold made of empty wine barrels—Henry called it Perkin’s empty throne—erected in the center of the room. On most days the hall was a concourse for merchants and others meeting to discuss business, but today, the Friday of Corpus Christi, courtiers and commoners flocked into the areas known as “Heaven” and “Hell” and left “Purgatory” to Perkin. They mocked him on all sides, calling him “king of an empty throne.” Grace felt a tear roll down her cheek, but she dared not wipe it away, aware that Henry and his mother were somewhere, watching them watching.

“I cannot bear it,” Katherine murmured, feeling for Grace’s hand in the folds of Grace’s gray dress. “He has been ill-treated, I can see. There is blood on his shirt, and his lip is misshapen.”

“You must bear it, for his sake,” Grace whispered back. “See how quietly he bears it. Like a prince, in truth.” She felt Katherine’s body straighten and saw how Perkin never took his eyes from his wife’s face. “You are his strength at this moment, Katherine. Do not fail him.”

Henry ordered Perkin to be led away after only two hours, and Grace breathed a sigh of relief. Perhaps the worst is over, she thought, and he will just be put in prison somewhere where he need not face the insults.

She was wrong. On Monday Perkin was taken into the city of London and pilloried at the Standard, a gigantic post upon which the citizens would tack random notices, bulletins and ballads. It stood by the conduit in front of one of the most famous taverns of the Chepe, The King’s Head. That day the Standard’s pinned-up papers told snippets of Perkin’s life for
those who could read. For those who could not, the town crier read aloud parts of the confession as Perkin stood helplessly above the crowd on the empty barrels from ten until three and endured derision from a multitude of curious and angry citizens.

This time, Henry allowed the women of the court to remain at Westminster, and when Katherine heard how her love had collapsed from standing in the hot sun for five hours, she, too, fainted. Even Bess was overcome with sympathy for the man and his gentle wife, and she commanded that Katherine be taken to her own chamber and placed in her bed. When Katherine awoke, Grace told her that Perkin was to be locked up for his lifetime in the Tower of London.

“I
WANT TO
leave court,” Grace told Tom that night, when they met in the little garden beside St. Margaret’s chapel. “I have never liked Henry, ’tis true, but now I hate him. I want to go far from here with our children and not allow them to witness such cruelty. Is it possible, Tom?” She snuggled into the crook of his arm as they sat on the grassy excedra and breathed in the scent of roses and lilies around them. “I miss Yorkshire; I miss your mother; and I long for that simpler life.”

The heat of the day had dissipated only somewhat in the shadows of night, and Grace had worn her light worsted dress and left her long sleeves in her chamber. Tom could feel her skin beneath the fine lawn of her chemise as he turned her to him. “Then perhaps I should get you with child, sweetheart, so we shall have an excuse to return to your ‘lying-in’ manor at Westow,” he teased. He kissed her tenderly. “Tell me you love me, Grace,” he whispered. “I fear love has disappeared from this court, and I have a need to hear its name spoken tonight.”

Grace hitched up her cumbersome skirts and straddled his lap. Looking straight into his eyes, midnight blue in the light of the moon, she told him she loved him with all her heart and mind and soul. Then she kissed him, gentling open his mouth with her lips and tongue and tasting the sweet hippocras they had shared earlier. With deft fingers she untied the bow of his codpiece and gently took him in her hand. With their passion mounting in the kiss, she guided him into her, slowly rising and falling in the rhythm of love.

B
Y THE TIME
the court reached Hedingham Castle on its way to Bury St. Edmunds, it was late July and Grace knew she was expecting a child. Although she had shared the good news with Bess, who whispered that she, too, was with child again, she wished Cecily had not gone to Hellowe with her husband and daughter to escape the worst of the heat, as she would have dearly loved to share the news with her favorite sister. Then again, she remembered, it might remind Cecily of her loss. It seemed the Welleses were in no hurry to try for an heir, Grace had mused on more than one occasion, and when she had brought up the subject one evening with Cecily as they listened to ten-year-old Elizabeth play her recorder, Cecily had raised a cynical eyebrow.

“My dear Grace, my husband is nearing fifty, and I fear his seed pod has all but dried up,” she murmured. “’Tis either that or I no longer have the desired effect upon him.”

“Pish! Thomas Kyme cannot tear his eyes from you.”

“Soft, Grace,” Cecily chastised her, glancing about, but she dimpled all the same. “Do you think others notice?”

Grace shook her head and changed the subject. “Lilleth plays well. Has the dispensation for her betrothal to young Tom Stanley arrived from Rome?”

“Aye, but Jack will not act on it until Anne’s mourning year is past.”

Now, inside the Norman keep of Hedingham Castle, the earl of Oxford entertained the king lavishly. The de Veres had built and owned the castle since the Conqueror’s time, and the aging earl—commander of Henry’s van at Bosworth—was determined to leave an indelible impression upon the king’s guest, Henri de Berghes, bishop of Cambrai. Having dined earlier in the queen’s apartments in a separate building, the ladies were now present in the great hall for the entertainment—which included a dancing bear—and Grace could study the duchess’s confessor, a rather aloof but handsome nobleman in his late forties. Oxford was regaling him and the king with yet another version of how he’d single-handedly killed John Howard, duke of Norfolk, in the battle when the steward came forward and announced the arrival of a visitor.

Ambassador de Puebla, who was conversing cozily with Katherine, sucked in a deep breath. He is always fascinated by Katherine Gordon, Grace had mentioned to Tom. Tom had explained that every tidbit the dip
lomat gleaned from those intimate moments with the lady was relayed to their royal majesties in Spain, who were waiting to see what Henry would do with Perkin before allowing their precious daughter to go to England and be married.

“It must be Digby,” de Puebla murmured.

Now it was Grace’s turn to draw a quick breath and, moving out of Katherine’s earshot, she asked guilelessly: “Sir Simon Digby, constable of the Tower,
señor
?”

“He brings the pretender to show to Cambrai,” he said behind his hand. “The bishop visits on behalf of the
duquesa diabólico
—how Henry calls Margaret,” he said, chuckling. “The duchess and her stepson, Maximilian, hope to persuade Henry to release
el niño
. I am to be witness myself.” He frowned. “But you do not need to know this, my lady—
y muy importante
, Lady Gordon needs not to know.”

Henry’s advisers were in a knot about him and, after kissing Bess’s hand and waving the musicians to play on, he nodded to Cambrai and de Puebla before he marched from the room.

The next day word was whispered of a night of intense questioning. When Grace saw de Puebla hurrying towards the stables, she ran after him, catching him as he waited for his groom to bring his horse to the mounting block. He stared down at Grace in surprise, and she saw at once that he had not slept well.

“Señor Ambassador,” she begged him, “is Perkin…is he…how is he?”

De Puebla shook his head gloomily, a drip from his nose threatening to fall on her. “Ah, my lady, I fear you would not recognize him today.” He grimaced as Grace paled. “
Si
, and he once so handsome.” He drew his sleeve across his face and sniffed. “I cannot tell you all—the meeting was secret, you know,” he told her sternly, “but I understand you care about Lady Gordon and you would only console her,
no
?”

Grace nodded vigorously. “Aye,” she agreed and waited.

The ambassador stepped down from the block and paced a few steps out of earshot of the groom. Grace hurried after him. “Digby brought him in. He had
pedenae
—you know, foots chains—and more around here”—he used his fingers to encircle his neck. “But his body…his face…” He shook his head again, tut-tutting. “He was
desfigurado.
I did not recognize
him. His grace has make his face so no one say
el niño
looks like King Edward again. All broken,” he explained, making a circular motion over his face. “His hands, his fingers…also broken.”

Grace was horrified by the description, but she was on a mission and plunged ahead. De Puebla had probably divulged too much already, but she plucked up her courage and gave him her most beseeching look. “I am grateful to you, Doctor de Puebla. But just one more thing, I beg of you. Did Perkin change his confession?”

“Sagrario!”
he exclaimed. “You are gone too far, Lady Grace.” But when he saw her eyes well up and her mouth droop, he softened. “He say only that Duchess Margaret knew, like him, that”—he stopped and pondered on the actual phrase—
“si.”
He nodded, slowly repeating Perkin’s words, “‘I am not the son of who I said I was.’ Is all, milady, and I go now.” He bowed perfunctorily and returned to the mounting block.

Grace was left standing stock-still, her head and shoulders drooping as low as her spirits. Surely in this interrogation, with Aunt Margaret’s envoy as witness, he had a chance to deny his previous confession—tell Cambrai it had been made under torture—but he hadn’t. Sweet Jesu, he hadn’t!

She wanted to run, feel the wind in her face and the grass beneath her feet and find a place far from anyone where she could vent her anger and sorrow. Instead, she turned back to the imposing square keep and took deliberate steps to regain her composure. She had to think of Katherine now. Lovely Katherine, who had stayed true in her heart to the man she loved. Perhaps she already knew he was not who he said he was and did not care. Perhaps all she wanted was to lie with him and become as one with him again. To feel his body next to hers, see the love in his eyes, hear the passion in his voice and hold her cherished face in his hands once more. Grace gasped, picturing it. Dear God, what should she tell Katherine? That her beautiful husband’s face was battered beyond recognition, and those hands that had caressed her were crippled? Her thoughts returned to the young couple dancing for Henry and how Perkin had defied the king by talking to Katherine behind his pomander, whispering words of love as he inhaled the spicy scent of cloves…

“Cloves!” Grace suddenly cried out to a crow cawing overhead. Sweet Jesu, why did I not remember then? Elizabeth told me her son Richard loathed the smell of cloves.

She felt the blood drain from her face as the sad realization sank in. She had recently suspected Perkin was not her brother, but she had always hoped that he was. And now she felt betrayed not only by him but by Aunt Margaret as well. She lifted her eyes to Heaven and whispered: “How foolish I have been all this time!”

I
T WAS AS
well that Grace was not at court when a letter of apology to Henry arrived from Duchess Margaret at the end of September. It seemed she had either abandoned her White Rose or—as de Puebla wrote to his sovereigns—she hoped to buy his life with her admission of collusion.

For Perkin, his fate appeared to be to lie in a small, locked room—not completely devoid of furnishings—with one small barred window high up in the wall of the Byward Tower, directly beneath, he would learn later, Edward, earl of Warwick.

1499

C
ecily was glad of Grace’s company that Yuletide at Hellowe, as the viscount had decided to stay in London at Pasmer’s Place and be available to Henry during the ongoing negotiations between England and Spain. Due to Grace’s delicate condition and to ease her burden on the long journey into Lincolnshire, Bess had insisted that Susannah and Bella remain at Greenwich in the royal nursery to keep young Harry and two-year-old Mary company. Susannah had not complained, especially as her cousins Harry and Margaret would be joining them from Eltham for the festivities. But Bella clung to her mother, her big blue eyes pleading to be taken.

“Please can I go, Mother?” she lisped, her corn-colored hair curling around her chubby face under her blue linen cap. It was all Grace could do not to pick her up and cover her cheeks with kisses. Enid attempted to distract the girl with a rag doll, but she flung it across the room and burst into tears. “I want to go with you! I want to go with you!” she cried, clinging to Grace’s skirts.

“Let her go with you, Grace.” Tom’s cheerful voice from the doorway caused Susannah, impervious to her sister’s screams, to drop the wooden blocks she was stacking and rush headlong towards him. He reached down and swung her high into the air, leaving her breathless. Then he smacked a kiss on her laughing mouth and put her down again. He walked to Grace’s side, put his arm around her thick waist and pecked her on the cheek. “Enid is going with you anyway, so why not take the child? Susannah will not mind, will you sweeting?”

“Certes,
no
,” Susannah answered, rolling her eyes. “She is such a baby.”

She sounded so like her mother, Tom could not help laughing. “I can come and see her from Sithes Lane from time to time,” he assured Grace. “Perhaps it would be good for the two to learn to be apart. It will come soon enough. Susannah is of an age when we should send her to another house, even if you disapprove, my love. We have only to find someone willing to take on such an imp,” he teased his daughter.

“I am not an imp,” she answered, throwing her arms around him and giggling.

Grace glanced down at Bella, whose tear-stained face brightened as she sensed her mother yielding. “Ah, well, I suppose it would not inconvenience Cecily to have another small mouth to feed,” she said, enjoying the look of pure delight on Bella’s cherubic face. “You would not mind, Enid?” she asked her servant. “But you must promise to be good, Bella, or I shall send you back here in disgrace.”

“I promise, I promise!” Bella shrieked, jumping about. “Thank you, Papa.”

Tom picked up both girls and balanced them on his arms. “Give your father a kiss farewell, my poppets. I have already stayed away too long from Lord Welles.” The girls gave him loud, wet kisses and squirmed to get down. Then he took Grace by the waist, caressing her belly and grinning. “How now, my pillicock! Do I get a kiss?”

“Tom!” Grace pretended to be shocked. “Do not encourage the children to learn such words too soon.” She lifted her face to his and they shared a tender, if not passionate, kiss. “Write to me whenever you come and see Susannah, and keep yourself safe—and out of trouble, my love.”

“And you, Grace. God go with you. Look after your mother, Bella. I am counting on you,” he said, wagging his finger at his youngest.

“I will, Father,” Bella answered earnestly. “Cross my heart and hope to die.”

They all laughed, and Grace sent her husband a loving look that could last him a month.

E
NSCONCED IN
C
ECILY’S
warm solar, painted window coverings shutting out the cold rain, the two sisters watched as Elizabeth Welles painstakingly taught Bella her first few notes on the recorder. The journey had been uneventful, thanks to the viscount’s generous loan of a carriage and two armed escorts. A few vagabonds had accosted them out of Monkswood near Huntingdon, but as soon as the soldiers’ swords had been raised and Edgar’s pikestaff had knocked one of the thieves to his knees, they took off with their tails between their legs. Bella’s eyes had been as big as saucers as she peered around the carriage curtain from her warm spot under the furs next to her mother.

“Edgar hit the man,” she declared gleefully. “He fell over.”

Enid pulled her back inside the carriage without more ado. “There’s naughty you are,” she admonished her. “Alarming your mother, look you.”

Other than a dreary half day spent digging the carriage out of the mud near Stamford, Grace’s journey ended uneventfully six days later.

The Yule log had been brought in and holly and ivy decorated the great hall in readiness for the first night of Christmas. Grace was well rested after sleeping for twelve hours, and when she rose to greet Cecily and the household, she was ready to join in the festivities.

“Lilleth, take Bella to the hall for the lighting of the Yule log. Aunt Grace and I shall be down anon,” Cecily told her daughter, who obeyed without a word. “She’s a good girl, but so sad, Grace. She misses her sister greatly—I am happy you decided to bring Bella.” She sighed. “Losing a child is a dreadful thing.”

“Dear Cis, I cannot imagine your sorrow. But Lilleth will grow to be a healthy woman and give you many grandchildren, I don’t doubt.”

Cecily grimaced. “God’s bones, Grace, do not age me too quickly! I have no wish to have grandchildren until I am ancient.” They both laughed gratefully.

Now that they were alone, Grace broached the subject of Perkin.

“I confess I was wrong all this time, Cis,” she began, causing Cecily to
chuckle. “Why the laughter, pray? Ah, certes, because I am always so stubborn. Aye, perhaps I am, but now let me admit my folly, and promise you won’t mock me for it.”

“I promise,” Cecily murmured. “’Tis about Tom, I suppose.”

“Then you suppose wrong, sister,” Grace retorted. “’Tis about Perkin.”

“You mean our brother Richard?”

“Nay, I mean Perkin. I know now he is not our brother, much to my sorrow. Oh, I wanted him so much to be, but he is not. Let me tell you why.”

When she had finished, Cecily took her in her arms and consoled her. “Let us hope this foolish business is over and we can all get on with our lives,” she said. “It has consumed us—and divided us—for too long.”

Grace lifted her head. “But does it not make you wonder who he really is, Cis?” she said eagerly. “He cannot be a boatman’s son. So who is he?”

“Certes, Grace, I could give a tinker’s arse. And, if you take my advice, neither should you. Now let us go and join the girls.”

“F
EEL HER BROW
, Grace,” Cecily said with a worried frown. “’Tis like a fire in there.”

Grace rested the back of her hand on Lilleth’s forehead and shook her head. “Aye, ’tis hotter than I have known with my little ones. Sweetheart, how long have you had this fever?” she asked the girl, whose face was the color of the covering sheet.

“Since before supper,” Lilleth whispered. “It hurts here, Mother,” she said, putting her hand to her neck. “’Tis hard to swallow.”

Inflammation of the throat, thought Grace, who had suffered through a few in her childhood at the convent. She went to Bella’s side of the bed and felt her daughter’s forehead. “She’s cool,” she told Cecily. “But perhaps I should take her to our bed tonight?”

“Aye, and I shall stay with Lilleth.” Cecily nodded. “Open your mouth, sweeting. Aye, ’tis swollen back there, and red,” she told Grace, holding the candle high and peering down her daughter’s throat. “I shall send for some milk, poppet. It will soothe you.”

Lilleth was shivering. “’Tis cold, Mother. Please give me another coverlet.”

Cecily hurried Grace into their chamber to fetch a fur blanket and
Grace gently tucked Bella into bed. “’Tis best you stay here in your condition and get some sleep, Grace. I shall send for the physician in Lincoln. See if he can balance Lilleth’s humors. It must be the yellow bile that causes the fever. She needs bleeding.” Fear had crept into her voice now. “You are better at potions than I; what would you give her?”

“Brother Benedictus at the abbey believed in the benefits of yarrow and elder to break the fever, and root of goldenseal for a swollen throat,” Grace told her.

When Cecily left the room, Grace went down on her knees.
“Ave Maria, gratia plena,”
she began, murmuring the rote prayers that comforted her in telling the rosary. As she repeated the prayers over and over, she was able to think on another plane, selfishly begging the Virgin to spare her own child in case Lilleth’s illness was catching. The two children had shared a bed since she and Bella had reached Hellowe, and played closely together. Lilleth was a sturdy girl, but Bella was thin and tiny, like Grace. Grace could not count how many parents she knew who had lost a child. She accepted that it was God’s will for the young and the feeble to be called to Him so often. Hale one day; dead the next. But not
her
child, she prayed. She reached the
pater noster
bead and whispered the words out loud in case God could hear her better. Then she ended with: “Do not let Lilleth die, dear Lord. Cecily has suffered the loss of one child already. Certes, you cannot need the sister so soon.”

Yawning, she climbed into bed and snuggled Bella to her. As she drifted off into slumber, she felt her baby kick with heartwarming strength inside her, and it gave her hope.

Her sleep was disturbed by Bella’s restless movements and shallow breaths, and she came awake with a start, fear crawling in her heart. Dawn was creeping over the frosty meadows, turning the landscape into a sparkling wonderland, but Grace had no time for its beauty. Her child was ailing, she knew it. Softly climbing out of bed so as not to waken Bella, she took a piss in the jakes and then pulled on her bed robe and slippers. She waddled down the corridor to the nursery, her hand cradling her aching back. Enid and one of Cecily’s attendants were ministering to Lilleth, but Cecily was slumped asleep in a chair by the window.

“How does she?” Grace whispered to Enid, who was applying a cool cloth to Lilleth’s forehead.

“Bad she is, my lady, and too hot,” Enid replied sadly. “Had a fit in the middle of the night, look you. Aye, was a bad one.”

“A fit? You mean a spasm? Has the physician been sent for?” Enid nodded. “Good,” Grace said, looking down at Lilleth, whose eyes were staring dully at her. “Sweet child, does your throat still pain you?” The girl nodded. She was having trouble breathing, and as she moved her head from side to side, the morning light revealed rosy marks on her neck and throat. Without warning she sat up and, before Enid was ready with the basin, Lilleth vomited onto the floor, moaning in pain as she did so. The noise awoke Cecily, who jumped up guiltily and ran to her daughter’s side. Seeing Grace, she chastised her sister for coming back into the room. “Get you gone, Grace, you foolish woman. See to your child and protect your baby,” she commanded. “Doctor Rollins will be here anon. A groom rode through the night for him.”

Grace embraced her sister and reluctantly obeyed. Cecily clung to her for a moment and whispered: “Pray for her, my dearest.”

The doctor arrived by midmorning and, using his fleems, bled poor Lilleth but could not give Cecily good news. After examining the thick dark blood in the bowl and peering down the girl’s throat, he grimaced and stepped back to tell the viscountess that he believed her daughter was suffering from the rosy fever or, as he intoned gravely, “what they call the scarlet fever.”

No sooner had he uttered the words that brought dread to all present than Lilleth began to convulse again, gasping for breath, her limbs writhing like so many serpents under the covers and her head thrashing from side to side. Once calmed, she seemed to fall into a stupor, her eyes half open and her pupils dilated.

Grace stayed all day in her chamber watching over Bella, who was beginning to develop the same high fever. How she wished Tom was there, and how she wished practical Alice Gower were there to support her. She could hear the comings and goings from the room along the corridor and at one point during the day Cecily came to see her. Her face was drawn and her eyes haggard. “’Tis the scarlet fever, I think, Grace, and Lilleth will most surely die,” she said, breaking down and crying for the first time. “I cannot bear this. How cruel is this God of ours? And how I despise him,” she seethed between sobs, sinking into a chair. Grace flinched at the sacri
lege but could understand Cecily’s anger. “Jack will blame me.” When she saw Grace’s puzzled frown, she blurted out: “I am certain he thinks I have made a cuckold of him with Thomas. I swear upon all that is holy, we have not had carnal knowledge of each other. We have only kissed and spoken of our love. He has not confronted me, but I am certain Jack believes we are guilty. And now he will think God is punishing me for my sin, and he will blame me for Lilleth’s death.” More tears poured down her face and onto her apron.

Grace was not used to seeing stoic Cecily cry, and she was deeply moved. She ran to kneel beside her, gathering her sister into her arms. “Soft, dearest Cis, you are imagining things. Lord Welles was all kindness when he saw me off in his carriage, and he sent his dearest love to you. I warrant you have dreamed this up because you do feel guilty about your affection for Thomas. But feeling and acting are two different things. You are not the first to love another man, Cis, and God knows it,” she insisted, taking her sister’s face between her hands and looking into her tearful blue eyes.

Cecily let her sobs subside and used her linen apron to wipe her nose. “You do not think he hates me, Grace? I could not bear him to hate me. He is a good man, in truth, but I do not love him.” Her chin trembled again. “I love Thomas,” she wailed and buried her head in her hands.

“I know, I know.” Grace’s calm voice was soothing. “But Thomas is not the concern here, Cecily. You must hold up and go back to your daughter’s side. I wish I could be with you, but I fear Bella is on the verge of the same fever, and I am needed here.”

Cecily sniffed and pulled herself together. “Are you certain, Grace?” she asked, going to the sleeping Bella and laying her hand on the child’s forehead. “She is hot, there is no denying it. I will send in Doctor Rollins.”