Mistress of Mourning (25 page)

As I returned to my chamber and paced there—six steps to the window, six to the door—I felt powerless, and that would not do. I had been sent on an important mission, and I had thrived on my brief taste of action to fulfill it. I stopped and changed to my woolen day gown with difficulty, but I did not want to summon my maid.

So here I was again, a mere woman on my own in a man’s realm, a woman to be sent back to the castle, one who could not join the Worshipful Guild of Wax Chandlers or ever hope to be a member of the guild of the Holy Name of Jesus—oh, no, not those who blamed women alone as far back as Eve in the garden for the sins of mankind! It wasn’t good and it wasn’t fair! I took to hitting my fist on the window ledge each time I passed, as my mind leaped from thought to thought about what I had seen today.

I realized now that the most telltale thing old Mistress Fey had said was something that had slipped out and then
slipped right by all of us. “Glendower lives,” she’d said, “at least our new Glendower, eh?” At first Nick had picked up on that and asked her, “And who is that?” Though she swiftly changed the topic, I swear a living man she knew had slashed the prince’s banners and left that curse in the cromlech. Perhaps there was a method in her madness to mislead us.

I had thought she was a soothsayer to know we were coming, for she had that bundle of the rue herb tied up for the princess. But she could have meant to deliver that to the castle herself when she went out to seek herbs. Had she read the wishes of my heart, to call Nick and me lovers, or was it just observation on her part, mere coincidence?

I jolted at the rapping on my door. Nick back already? I ran to open it. My maid, Morgan, stood there. I was about to tell her I did not need her services when she said, “Mistress Westcott, the princess Catherine requests you attend her at once. Her confessor priest sent word and says you know the way. And what’s happening that all the men rushed out?”

“I—I’m not certain, Morgan. We shall have to wait until they return.”

“Rhys Garnock says you didna see Glendower at the cave, but that he’s back! Oh, wait till I send my folks in the village word of it!”

“Morgan, Glendower is not back. He lived and fought nearly a hundred years ago. He was a man. Men die.”

“Well, my folks always said if the old herb woman could live that long, he could too!” she replied, and flounced away.

I went into the hall and closed my chamber door, then, on second thought, went back and locked it with its big iron
key, put that in my purse, and wended my way through the maze of corridors to wait upon Princess Catherine. Both Nick and I must be more careful, even here at the castle. I was not certain whom we could trust. And since I didn’t believe the man up on the parapets had been a ghost, but flesh and blood, that meant he somehow had access to this well-guarded fortress.

The Princess of Wales—though I reckoned she would not hold that title long, since Prince Henry must surely be named to take his brother’s place—looked much as I had left her. Same chamber, same chair, same black velvet robe with the priest Geraldini standing behind her. However, she had ordered a chair pulled up for me in place of the lower stools on which Nick and I had sat. And I was more used to the slow pace of having to use an interpreter, though now and then she interjected some English words of her own.

“Tell me what did happened at the old cave tomb,” she bade me in English, so I told her. She replied, “The prince loved those banners, loved the Welsh, and they proud of him, their Prince of Wales.” Tears gilded her eyes, but her voice was strong.

“I warrant this was done by one person, one enemy,” I assured her, “not the Welsh people he well served.”

“The angel candle you carved is lovely,” she said, surprising me with her sudden change of subject as she switched back to her interpreter. Geraldini translated her Spanish: “I shall take it back to London, and it will be on my privy altar wherever I go. I believe you wished to ask me more yesterday about when the prince and I went out, two
young people in love. Only wed six months and now a widow.”

“Yes,” I said before melancholy could overtake her again. “And I must tell you that I have also met the old herb woman named Fey.”

“What a wonder—and a puzzle. Not a witch, I suppose, for the holy words say, ‘Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live,’ and she has lived long among these Catholic people, despite their folktales.”

“At times, I thought she could read my mind,” I confided in her, despite the fact Father Geraldini raised his eyebrows and shook his head. “And at first, when I saw her from afar in the slant of sunlight, I thought she was young and pretty—but then…”

“I too. I too!” the princess said, leaning forward as Geraldini translated. “But I asked Arthur, and he said it was mere woman’s fancies. Ah, he had such plans that day, plans for us, for our children, though everyone here whispers we had not yet performed the conjugal act. Have you heard that talk?”

I was astounded she had brought that up. Making love, making a child—had she or Geraldini called it “the conjugal act,” as if it were some legal or political maneuver? But then, to royalty who were expected to reproduce themselves to hold the throne, perhaps that is exactly what it was.

“I…No…” I floundered. “I came not to inquire of that.”

She gave a hearty sigh, and Father Geraldini looked much relieved not to have to pursue it further too. “Since you came from the queen,” she said, her pale cheeks
coloring, “I thought perhaps you were here to learn of that. They will wait to name Arthur’s brother, Henry, Prince of Wales until they are certain I am not with child, but I am not—sadly. Whatever will become of me? Shall I go back to Spain or stay in my new land?” she asked, but I knew she did not expect or want my opinion.

Tears glazed her eyes and, fearful I would be dismissed, as Nick and I were before, I addressed the key question among the many I wished to ask: “Could you please tell me what you ate the day you took ill? And I beg you, Your Grace, though I had it from the prince’s doctors, can you tell me the progress of your illness and what you know of the prince’s too?”

“Ah,” she said. Then, not going through Geraldini, she added in English, “You or Her Majesty think poison? My parents, Their most gracious Majesties Ferdinand and Isabella, always they have food tasted twice and we here too. But when Arthur and I go out, we take some things—bread and cheese, wine—all tasted, nothing else.”

She ticked off on her fingers and had translated what they had eaten for breakfast and the noon meal. My mind racing, I nodded to encourage her. “Oh,” she added, with Geraldini still speaking for her, “we did both eat the wild garlic, both had to eat it or the breath, it kill you when you kiss, yes?”

Wild garlic? Old Fey had mentioned that but said it was too early to gather. Had she lied?

“You got it from the herb woman?” I asked.

“Oh, no—she have none of that,” she answered for herself. “From the man across the bog—our horses splashed our clothes, and we did laugh so hard.”

“What man across the bog? Which bog?” I asked, sliding forward on my chair seat.

“The one close, that way!” she said, pointing to what I figured was westward. I could tell that she was tiring again. Her voice, which she had raised in excitement, was slowing, and her gestures seemed to exhaust her as she dropped her hands in her lap.

“I should like to get some of that garlic too,” I told her. “Do you know the man’s name? Does he have a cot there?”

Geraldini was translating again, and looking alarmed as he did so. I could tell he was hearing this for the first time. “I know not. But he was a poor man with a wooden box of herbs carried before him, and a leather thong around his neck to hold it up.”

“An itinerant?” I asked, but Geraldini didn’t know that word. “A traveling peddler?” I reworded it.

“Oh,
sí—
yes,” she blurted, speaking for herself again. “The man, tall and speak well. Clear from somewhere with name Colchester.”

“The man’s name was Colchester?”

“No—the place where he come. A kind man and did tell to us wild Welsh garlic make men sire many children, so Arthur eat a lot and I a little and we all laugh. But it rain then—we come back. The last time I see him, my husband, he give me a sweet kiss. Coming back through the bog, Arthur have mud spots on clothes, but I remember him always in shining armor in my heart. And then we sick—stomach pain,” she said, pressing her hands to her flat belly through the robe.

“Nausea, vomiting, diarrhea,” Geraldini put in.

“And hard to get breaths, so bad for the prince!” Catherine added. “Ah, it still so hard to get breaths when I think all I lost.”

The men still had not returned from the cromlech when I finished my interview with the princess. I went back to pacing, to thinking. Morgan had left me a tray of food. I considered sending for her and insisting she eat it with me, but was I becoming too suspicious?

What to do? What to do with what I had just learned? The royal couple could indeed have been poisoned—but with wild garlic, which Arthur evidently loved and had oft eaten before? With wild garlic, old Fey said, that would not be ready to find about the area yet? And Prince Arthur had kissed his wife good-bye with a sweet kiss. That must be because she’d eaten the garlic too, so she could not smell or taste it on him. Was it true that wild garlic made one fertile, or was it just an old wives’ tale—or a strange peddler’s? Perhaps Nick and I could ride into the village to question Rhys’s apothecary father. But something else was troubling me. The peddler from across the western bog had spoken well and told them he was from Colchester. That didn’t make sense, yet there was something just out of my reach about it that I could not recall.

I decided not to eat this food but to get something from the great hall, where the visiting mourners were being fed. A herd of beeves had been brought into a field near the castle to provide for everyone. Surely their meat could not all be tainted if someone was out to harm those of us who were mourning the prince’s death.

Then I would go outside garbed as a lad again with one of the guards who had ridden in from London with us. Nick would no doubt have much to tell when he returned, but I would have much—even more than what Catherine had told me—once I took a look around the western bog. Lovell’s motto might be “Death Rather Than Dishonor,” but I was going to take for mine the new chandlers’ guild claim, “Truth Is Light.” And come hell or high bog water, I was determined to learn the truth.

I changed my garb yet again, back to a lad’s garments. Sim, perhaps twenty years old, a brawny but kindly royal guard who had come with us from Richmond Palace, was willing to go out with me. “So long’s we don’t lose sight of the castle,” he said.

“Just across or, hopefully, around the bog to the west,” I assured him, but I was having trouble assuring myself. At least, I prayed, Nick would be pleased when he heard I had taken an armed guard. Time was of the essence in all we did here. On the morrow, we had promised to help the Earl of Surrey plan the order of the funeral cortege. Lest I let that honored task go to my head, I told myself that we were simply included because the queen had singled us out. And, I told myself, we needed to both interview Rhys’s father about wild garlic and revisit old Fey to see whether she would change her story about when it grew. Either she was wrong that it was not available yet or she had told some fellow conspirator that the prince wanted such and he had managed to slip the royal couple tainted—poison—garlic.

We urged our horses onto the well-worn marsh path of
beaten-down reeds that served for a passage here. This moss and peat bog seemed to merge with a distant meadow and then rolling moors. The area we traversed bore patches of knee-high, new spring grass but also pockets of last year’s dead, hollow reeds standing as tall as bushes, with their new growth pushing up between. Our horses’ feet made a sucking sound.

“Did you ever harvest wild garlic as a child?” I asked Sim.

“Wild garlic? No, mistress. Or should I call you ‘boy’?” he said with a chuckle. “I like garlic and onions too, though, and my grandmother made fine rabbit stew with ’em, God rest her soul.”

“Did the wild garlic ever make you sick, especially if you overate it in the spring?”

“No, but burped it bad for hours; that’s sure.”

“Do you know what it looks like?”

“Oh, aye, gathered it many a time. In the spring, green leaves but no blossoms. Flowers come in the autumn and bulbs dug in the spring, but reckon it’s a bit too early now. Still, I’ve not been to Wales afore, so not sure.”

You might know, I thought, a storm would come up. Gray clouds clustered on the westward horizon, creeping over the mountains in the direction we were riding, and I heard the faint rumble of thunder. By the saints, I tried to buck myself up: Rain would just make this jaunt more like the day Arthur and Catherine came this way. They must have come out of the forest from Fey’s cot nearly at the edge of this bog, so how could the old woman possibly have had time to tell someone to find early wild garlic and approach
them with such? Pieces of the puzzle were not fitting yet, and I must be careful not to force them into the wrong places.

Now and then a frog croaked or jumped out of our way. Despite our reedy path, our horses often sank into fetlock-deep water. The swishing sound was constant. Finally, we emerged on the far side of the bog, onto a grassy path with solid soil beneath and occasional new-leafed trees offering shade and shelter if the storm came. But not one with lightning in it. At the first sign of that, I would have to make this quick and head back. Besides, I had no doubt that, despite the fact that Nick had shuffled me aside today, he would be panicked or irate if I were missing when he returned to the castle. He and I must find time to return here early on the morrow if I had to leave in haste because of the storm.

“Don’t see hide nor hair of anybody. Where to now, mistress?” Sim asked, keeping one hand on his sword.

“I’m not sure. I want to look around for signs of some sort of cot, maybe an herb patch or two, even a small planted field.”