The Tudor Rose (27 page)

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VERYONE SAID THAT IT was owing to the new King's clemency that Lord Lovell, the sole survivor of Richard Planta-genet's last charge, was back at Court. Still pale from his wounds and limping a little, he waylaid Cicely on her way to Mass. “Is it really true about the Queen?” he asked eagerly.

Having lost her adolescent plumpness, Cicely now bade fair to be the beauty of the family. She was soon to be the bride of Lord Welles and felt herself to be a grown woman of consequence. “Is what true, milord?” she enquired negligently, although perfectly well aware of the latest spate of Court gossip.

“That her Grace is with child—already?”

Cicely's own excitement over the prospect of becoming an aunt was so great, and Lovell's battle record so romantic, that her spurious hauteur soon vanished. “You should know by now, milord, that my brother-in-law the King is competent in all things,” she told him, with mischievous blue eyes demurely downcast.

“I do—to my cost!” grinned Lovell, glancing ruefully at his bandaged sword arm. “And I know, too, that you are an enchanting hussy and Welles a fortunate man. But I thank God indeed for this news, Lady Cicely,” he went on with a new seriousness which became him, “and so must every man who has the welfare of the country at heart. Without this future fusing of our interests in a living heir, all that we have fought for, on either side, might well have been in vain and all to do again, drenching the land in yet more bitter hatreds and bloodsheds, I pray you suit your gay steps to my wretched limp, sweet lady, and let us go into chapel and thank God together.”

“And ask Him particularly to take care of my darling Bess,” added Cicely softly, slipping a helpful hand beneath his uninjured arm. Like herself, he had been caught young in this maze of divided loyalties but, whichever side he had fought on, his affection for her family and the Yorkist cause was beyond dispute, so that she answered his questions about the Queen's health with a good heart. “She is often sick on wakening, which is but to be expected,” she told him, assuming the matronly air of one soon to be married herself. “But, oh, Lord Lovell, there is a brightness in her eyes which has not been there since our brothers—died. She sits dreaming as she used to do, and then her lips begin to smile tenderly. Our Bess looks just like the Madonna in the Palace Chapel when she smiles that way!”

“Shall we see her there this morning?”

“No, they are in the private apartments discussing it—she and the King and the Countess of Richmond,” Cicely told him, nodding her pretty head in the direction of one of the Queen's rooms in passing.

“What is there to discuss?” he asked.

“Lord, how dense you men are!” jibed Cicely. “Where she is to
have
the baby, of course, and what physicians are to be in attendance, and who shall be asked to be godparents, and all manner of things!”

But behind the closed doors of the new Queen's apartments it was Henry the Seventh and his mother who were doing most of the discussing. Elizabeth, the mother-to-be, sat in a high-backed chair by the window, smiling at her thoughts in the way that Cicely had described; and most of the discussion flowed over her unheard. Their serious voices arranging a fitting setting for so important a national event and planning for her material needs were just a benevolent murmur filling the sunlit room. “I was so afraid it would never happen—because my husband does not love me,” she was confiding to the Mother of the Christ Child. “Yet now, before Lent—why, it could not have begun sooner!” While the two Tudor voices rambled on, Elizabeth seemed to be wrapped apart in the haze of sunlight from the window. “I hope he will look like Dickon,” she thought, certain in her happiness that her firstborn would be a boy. “Dear God, let him look just like a little Dickon—and I would not mind what I suffer or where they arrange for me to be. Almost, I could wish it to happen in a stable…Always, because of such consolation, I will strive to be humble and reverent…”

She became aware that her companions had risen from their chairs and that Henry was kindly motioning her to remain seated. “I shall leave the entire arrangements for the
accouchement
to you, Madam, since you must be more
au fait
with such feminine affairs than I,” he was saying to his mother.

“And so the whole Court will move to Winchester,” Margaret of Richmond answered on a note of triumphant finality.

“Why Winchester?” asked Elizabeth, coming out of her reverie.

Henry blinked at her in surprise—and disapproval. “Because my ancestor King Arthur is said to have been born there. And my Welsh heralds have just proved that my lineage goes back to the great British King Cadwallader. And by associating the birth of our son with Winchester I wish to impress these facts upon my people. Have you not been listening?”

Elizabeth's apologetic glance passed appealingly to her mother-in-law, who, as usual, understood. “I think our Bess is so overcome by her good fortune in bringing you an heir, Henry, that it is difficult for her to take in anything else,” she explained, with an invaluable blend of her son's calm efficiency and her own saintly gentleness. “I shall stay with you, Elizabeth, so you do not need to worry your head about material details but can rest after all your vicissitudes and dream of this new comfort which is coming to your bereaved heart—and to our country. This is a consummation, my dear children, for which I have worked and prayed during most of my adult life.”

And so by the time the Lent lilies had begun to rear their golden heads Westminster Palace was bustling with preparations for the journey down into Hampshire; and to her great delight Elizabeth found that Henry had arranged for her mother and all the rest of her family to go with her. “All but poor Warwick,” she remembered, when thanking him.

“A complete change of environment will be good for you. You have suffered too much in London,” said Henry, although she knew that that was not the reason why he was sending her.

“And may not Warwick come too?” she asked, less because she wanted her poor witless cousin than because she hated the thought of his being lonely.

“I am afraid not,” said Henry, intent upon a map he was unrolling.

“Why must you keep him in the Tower? What has he ever done?” she persisted, remembering how kind Anne Neville had been to the lad when she was Queen.

“It is not what he has done but who he is,” answered Henry, leaning over the spread map to trace a route from town to town with a scholarly-looking forefinger. “Although your Uncle Clarence was so justly attainted of treason to your father, his son is still a potential source of trouble from my enemies.”

“Yet Richard let him be about the Court,” she said. But either Richard must have had less to fear from Warwick's better claim or else he loved his wife sufficiently to take a considerable risk in order to please her. And obviously Henry—for all his vaunted lineage—was taking no more risks than he could help for anybody. “Does it concern you so much whether that good-looking nitwit comes or goes,” he asked aggrievedly, “since
I
shall not be there?”

“
You
will not be there?” exclaimed Elizabeth, forgetting all about dead Clarence's son. “But I had taken it for granted—”

“Oh, I shall be back in Winchester before our son is born,” Henry assured her, smiling at the happy thought. “But first I must go on a circuit up north. The security of the realm demands it.”

Elizabeth moved closer to the table where he stood and for the first time looked down attentively at the place where his finger still rested. “Surely you do not mean that you will be going into— Yorkshire?” she said aghast.

“Among other counties, yes,” he said, carefully placing a book and an inkhorn so as to prevent the parchment from rolling back.

Elizabeth looked up at his clever, preoccupied face. “But, Henry, you dare not!” she said, almost in a whisper.

“Dare not?” he repeated, straightening himself.

His voice was so calm that she felt she ought to warn him. “You are so lately come from abroad…I mean, perhaps you do not realize how particularly Yorkshire is the white-rose county. If you knew the passionate love they have for us—for Richard—and now for me…” she blundered, in genuine anxiety.

But Henry was so self-sufficient and always seemed to know all that was needful. “It is certainly unfortunate that you cannot come with me, since I make no doubt most of the people love you,” he said politely. “But you will be doing me a far greater service by conserving your strength in Winchester.”

He was not the kind of man whom women touched uninvited, but Elizabeth raised impulsive hands to his shoulders. Was he not her husband—the father of her unborn child—and courting very real danger? “Let me come, Henry!” she urged. “I am young and strong. I shall not mind the journey. And you do not know the temper of the Yorkists since you delayed so long to marry me and—and have not had me crowned. To them—crowned or uncrowned—I am Queen of England, and if I am there beside you, honoured as your wife, you will be safe.”

Had Elizabeth not seen those white, scholarly hands of his clench in anger she would have been deceived by the evenness of his voice. “So you resent it that you have not been crowned?” he asked coldly.

She looked back fearlessly into his small, light eyes. “Whether I resent it or not, it cannot alter the fact that I am Edward the Fourth's eldest living child,” she said steadily. “But I spoke only for your safety.”

He had the grace to look shiftily aside. “It is quite impossible for you to come, Elizabeth; particularly as I already know that there will be trouble in certain towns. But do not disturb yourself. I shall go prepared.” He spoke gently, appreciatively; but because he made no responsive movement her hands had slid foolishly, emptily, from the sober velvet of his doublet to her sides.

“What trouble?” she asked passively, quite certain by now that the troublemakers would come off worst.

As if moved by the quiet intimacy of the moment he answered her with unwonted candour. “As you so frequently suggest, my claim to the throne is not too immaculate,” he admitted, with a shrug. “So I must expect trouble. Probably as long as Warwick or any other Plantagenet scion lives there will be plottings and pretenders.”

Elizabeth searched his inscrutable face, and when she spoke her words were scarcely above a whisper. “But you would not—put him to death—like—like my brothers?”

Henry's thin lips smiled. “No,” he said. “I am no murderer.”

A sigh of relief escaped her. Had he not already proved himself magnanimous about Lord Lovell? In her gratitude for such new security Elizabeth would have liked to throw her arms about him and to infuse some warmth into their relationship; but he just stood there, with only civility preventing his attention from returning to his map. “I shall miss you—and pray for you,” she said instead, schooling her warm heart to indifference and drawing a more suitably dignity about her.

“Yes, pray for me,” he said, gratefully, apparently attaching more importance to her devotions than to her caresses.

Piqued, Elizabeth decided that, whatever the hazard of his enterprise, he could not depart soon enough; but when she saw the preparations for his departure she was secretly shocked. Plenty of money had been spent upon arms and stores and everything that was necessary—but little upon pageantry. “You forget that I have taken over a bankrupt kingdom,” he said, in answer to her protests. “Buying impressive new trappings would not help me to refill my empty coffers or make me any the more popular in the war-savaged towns I shall be passing through. I would rather be able to remit some of their taxes.”

Elizabeth acknowledged his wisdom but remembered how Richard—with full coffers or empty—had always ridden forth in a blaze of heraldry. So had her father, and her family had always considered such splendour necessary to the prestige of their blood. And, woman-like, she let her tender heart yearn a little over her impecunious but practical husband, so that it drove her out into Goldsmiths' Row to empty her own slender purse in exchange for some of the brightest jewels she could find, and then prompted her to sit up late at night with Mattie, stitching them into a shining diadem with which to adorn the serviceable plainness of Henry Tudor's helmet.

But Henry had lived too long alone to have the happy knack of making a glad occasion of a fond surprise. “It is a gift you can ill afford, seeing all that your dowerless sisters cost you,” he reminded her, bending so that she might set the sparkling helmet upon his head upon the spring morning of his departure. “And, for that matter, neither can I; but I will reimburse you for these jewels and tell Sir Richard Empson to arrange for you to draw on my estates should you need any money during my absence.”

It was the farewell of a thrifty husband rather than of an eager bridegroom. Before the assembled company Elizabeth thanked him dutifully and bade him take every care for his safety. Once more the warm impulses of her nature had been repulsed. She was a woman who loved to give and Henry seemed to need nothing from her. Because marriage was still a novelty she watched him ride away from Westminster with regret; and yet—to her shame—was conscious of relief, since his absence left her freedom to be more herself.

“Of course it was foolish of me to spend so lavishly,” she confided to Stafford's sister Jane, whom she had chosen as one of her ladies. “I should have realised that after so many years of civil war we must be poor.”

“He need not have mentioned it just then, Madam,” said Jane Stafford bluntly.