Falling For Henry (19 page)

“Here, here!” said Henry, interrupting the little scene. “What's all this over a pair of sleeves?”

“I marvel much at my brother, who doesn't keep his word about playing games, yet dares to interrupt when I am in a matter needing most serious attention!” said the child, drawing herself up to full height and looking most imperiously at Henry. He simply laughed, let go of Kate's hand, and swung the child up in his arms.

“Come for a carry, pretty Mary,” he said, “and your worries will be forgotten.”

Kate followed a laughing brother and sister up the stairs to one of Henry's sitting rooms, where he deposited the little girl onto a pile of cushions and resorted to tickling her mercilessly. Kate smiled as she remembered other tickling matches that she and Willow had undertaken when they were younger, and then felt suddenly melancholy.

“Truce. Truce!” Mary laughed, and finally the siblings sat side by side, contemplating Kate. “Why do you look so sad?” asked Mary. “You look as if your mother died.”

Taken aback, Kate could only look at the child.

“Hush,” said Henry. “You shouldn't mention that. Princess Katherine's mother died a long time ago; you've just forgotten.”

“People are always dying,” said Mary. “It's hard to keep track. Anyway, the others mention Mother's death to me all the time. They say, ‘If only her mother hadn't died she wouldn't be so peevish.' But I'm not peevish. Can't you see, I just like my nice things all around me. Like my good yellow sleeves!” Her mouth twisted petulantly.

Kate remembered, with that uncanny store of knowledge that came from Katherine, that Mary and Henry's mother had died when Mary was not quite seven. Her heart warmed to the little girl and she looked admiringly at the golden hair.

“You have the most beautiful hair,” she said honestly. “How would you like me to put it up in a French braid?”

“What's that?” asked Mary.

“Well, it's a braid that … I learned from my … uh … mother, who learned it from someone else,” Kate lied.

“Someone from France!”

“Yes!” agreed Kate.

“Well, all right,” said Mary, tilting her head on one side to consider. “If you don't pull. I hate people who pull.”

“I'll try not to,” said Kate.

Henry picked up the astrolabe that the page had left on a desk, and Kate noticed how he very gently folded it in a silken cloth and then put it away in a wooden box. He saw her watching him and nodded.

“I am fond of it,” he said. “I admit. At night when I feel lost, I take it out and mark our place in the universe. The stars never lie and, certainly, the sky isn't going anywhere.”

“Do you often feel lost?” Kate asked quietly, brushing Mary's bright tresses with a tortoiseshell brush the child had produced from another room.

“I think of all the funerals,” said Henry, an odd, tight look on his flushed face. “Sometimes I have a difficult time getting my bearings, and the astrolabe makes me feel … makes me feel as if I could always find my way home, if I needed to. If I really were lost.” Henry's voice was low and controlled but Kate could hear the emotion under his words. After a brief silence, he went on.

“Arthur's coffin, even though it was mounted on a carriage drawn by twelve horses and covered in black velvet, would, inside it, be the same as other coffins. A small dark prison, of sorts. Rather like life, at times, if you aren't careful. If you don't have … if you don't have a way of finding your direction.”

Kate watched her hands as they plaited Mary's hair. She knew exactly what Henry meant.

“Out of death, however, comes life,” Henry mused. “The civil wars, for example.”

That battle had lasted for over thirty years, Kate thought, surprising herself. Katherine's memories were becoming so entwined with her own that it was hard to tell which ideas were original, although if it had to do with history, Kate knew she could not take credit. In The Wars of the Roses, she mused, Henry's father had led the Lancastrian army to triumph. King Richard, the grand old Duke of York, marched his army up to the stronghold at the top of the hill and then, in a moment of madness, marched them down again to where the enemy was waiting.

The grand old Duke of York
, thought Kate, the ancient nursery rhyme ringing in her ears,
he had ten thousand men. He marched them up to the top of the hill and he marched them down again
.

“When Father's army won,” the Prince mused, “the house of Lancaster and the house of York were united. Just as England and Spain will be reunited.”

And when they were up they were up
, Kate chanted inside her head,
and when they were down they were down, and when they were only halfway up they were neither up nor down.
She felt hysterical laughter bubbling to her lips as she realized the history behind the words.

“So your mother was from the York family?” she mumbled quickly.

“Elizabeth of York was the niece of King Richard,” piped Mary. “She had long yellow hair, down to her waist. And she loved to speak French, but I do not!”

“Hush, Mary, do not speak of Mother by her given name—it is not polite,” said Henry, looking sternly at his sister.

“Why couldn't Father just become King without killing King Richard?” Mary asked peevishly. “He had royal blood, too!”

“Father's only a distant relative of the royal family, remember?” answered Henry. “But no one could be a stronger king than Father, so you see, in the end, he was God's choice, and it was right he took the army to defeat King Richard.”

Kate thought of the story of the two little princes in the Tower, Richard's nephews, and how, if they happened to be found as adults, they would have some claim to the throne. Their story was somehow connected to William's father, accused of plotting against the King.

“I don't like armies,” said Mary absently. “They make me a little bit sick. Thinking of all the killing. But I marvel much that perhaps you are right, brother. Out of death comes life.”

“Edmund was the first to die,” Henry continued, talking to himself now as if Kate and Mary weren't there. “And then Arthur, a year later. And then Mother, in childbirth, with the baby.” He stood and walked the length of the room, lost in his thoughts, as if pondering what good could come out of all the deaths he had known.

“It was just a doll,” said Mary, breaking into his soliloquy. “Not a real baby. Oww, Katherine, you're pulling!”

“Sorry,” said Kate, her face hot with the mix of feelings going on inside her. Yearning. Empathy. And love.

After Kate finished the child's hair, they talked of other things and, by the time they went to the lunch table, Henry's sadness as well as Mary's sleeves were all but forgotten. The depth of Kate's feelings she contained well in a mix of casual conversation and lively questions for Mary. Her heart, however, was brimming, and she was glad to see Henry finally joking happily again with his sister. Kate watched the two of them a bit longingly. They were lucky to have each other. How hard it would be to lose a sibling, and Henry had lost three. Does Willow realize she has lost me? Kate wondered, and then pushed the thought away.

I'm better off here
, she said to herself,
reaching for joy. That's my new motto!

Women are not meant to know, but to do
, Doña Elvira had told her. That was rubbish, but Kate could fit in if she kept her alternative ideas to herself. She knew with certainty that this was where she belonged.

19
The new philosophy

“HAVE YOU EVER seen the dungeons?” Henry asked, after they had dined and Jane Popincourt had bribed Mary away to study her French. His tutor was indisposed and, without lessons, the Prince clearly planned to devote his entire day to Kate.

Kate wondered if he had some particular purpose in mentioning the dungeons. Perhaps that was where William's father was detained, she mused. Then she remembered that William had said, “the Tower.” Were they one and the same place?

“You travel down narrow stone steps,” Henry went on, “feeling the air grow cooler and damper, as if it were biting into the very marrow of your bones. Then you come to the cells, manacles attached to the stone walls to hold resisting prisoners.”

Kate couldn't help but notice the boyish enthusiasm with which he spoke. The architecture of things clearly fascinated him.

“If the prisoners try to escape before we hang them,” Henry continued, “we can always tie them down, although then the rats make quick work of them.”

“The rats?” repeated Kate, feeling slightly sick.

“Not very humane, is it,” said Henry, a bit defensively. “But we do try to make sure most of the prisoners only spend a few days in captivity—otherwise it gets quite costly.”

“And then where do they go?” she asked.

“They're hanged by the neck until they are dead, of course,” he said. “And it is rather useful to have them close to the court, as barren women are advised to approach the dead ones hand to hand as a way to improve fertility. Of course, Doña Elvira would have told you that?”

“Of course,” said Kate.

“I imagine she has taught you a great deal,” said Henry. “She is a wise woman, a cunning woman, indeed. And we will always take care of her. There will be no suggestion of witchcraft as far as Doña Elvira is concerned.”

Kate kept silent. What was he getting at? she thought uneasily.

“If the prisoners are charged with treason,” Henry went on, “there is the disemboweling and quartering, as well. Traitors must be severely punished as an example.”

“And what if someone is imprisoned unfairly?” Kate blurted.

“The King is never wrong,” Henry said firmly. “No one would be imprisoned without cause.”

“But what if it were a mistake?” Kate pressed.

“The King,” Henry said loudly, “does not make mistakes!” Anger flashed in his eyes, and Kate saw that she had taken a wrong turn in the conversation. Doing away with anyone accused of breaking the law was simply cheaper, whether or not the person was guilty.

“Traitors and plagues,” Henry went on hotly, “are the scourge of the kingdom. And both are partners with death.”

“Penicillin,” Kate blurted before she could help herself.

“What?” asked Henry, startled out of his temper.

“If you had medicine to kill the virus that caused the plagues, you'd cure the illness,” she muttered.

Henry studied her carefully.

“A curious notion,” he said finally. “I had no idea you thought deeply about such things. I can see that we shall have a great deal to talk about.”

He was smiling at her, his blue eyes clear again, and merry, and Kate, charmed, smiled in return. It was a new sensation to be speaking freely with a boy she liked. Usually she found it hard to say anything worthwhile.

“The Tower,” he went on, returning to his original subject, “is for the refined prisoners who might be held for longer stays. Strong wooden grilles make fast the doorways of each of the chambers, and inside are placed a chamber pot and a stone dais that serves as the bed. White sunlight streams through the high windows, often enough to read by should occupants have book learning. There are rushes on the floor, which generally look and smell … repulsive.” He shook his head. “Unfortunately, there is little privacy.”

The princes would have been miserable in the Tower, thought Kate, remembering again the nephews of Richard III who had been imprisoned there. Poor little things. Katherine's memories opened onto the whole story. Aged ten and thirteen, the boys had been a threat to the King, and, although he had overtly placed them in the Tower for their own safety, the boys had disappeared in 1483, never to be seen again.

“Edward and Richard,” murmured Kate, recalling their names.

“What?” said Henry sharply.

“Edw—”

“We do not speak of them!” he interrupted.

“I … I beg your pardon,” said Kate. “I am not sure—”

“My mother was their sister,” Henry said. “And she forbade us to speak of them. I won't expect to remind you of this again.”

“No, of course … of course not,” said Kate. So Henry VII had married Edward and Richard's older sister, Elizabeth of York, strengthening his right to the throne even though he'd already won the Crown in battle. The King certainly wouldn't want Richard III's nephews turning up as adults to challenge his right to the crown. That explained why he imprisoned anyone suspected of looking for them, and why William's father was being confined, although William said his father was innocent.

“A person wouldn't want to cross the Crown,” said Henry. “One might end up spending a good deal of time in the Tower, or seeing a loved one there in one's place.”

“Enough talk of Towers,” said Kate. “I have not yet seen where the King's ale is made; let us go and have a look.”

Standing, he took her arm and they left the table, going past the kitchens to the brew house. Then they strolled back to the outside rooms of the great chamber, which led to the private area where the royal family resided. Kate suddenly wondered if Henry was going to take her into his own bedroom, but he did not, nor did they go back to the study where they had been with Mary. Instead, he showed her into an elegant stateroom, where signs of the zodiac decorated the walls and gray fur pelts covered the floor.
Wolf pelts?
thought Kate.

“What shall we see next?” he asked, surveying her quizzically and then unrolling a large map that was kept in a corner. “The libraries are not generally open to women; however we could make an exception with Mother's library, as we have done before. Perhaps you'd like to stroll through one of the gardens, or we could tour the orchards? Or return to the dovecots and fishpond? The well by the pond has the sweetest water anywhere, and I have been meaning to go and see about one of the gardens, where I note William has been lingering. There must be some fruit left there if he's so keen to hang about all the time. He's been known to bribe the kitchen staff to make preserves, which somehow manage to reach his father.”