Queen of Trial and Sorrow (41 page)

This could not be disputed, so Morton had to make a slight adjustment.  He pointed out that the duke was so closely associated with the usurper and his crimes that if he declared himself a candidate for the throne, he would garner little support, while Tudor, albeit virtually unknown, was at least unblemished.  The bishop declared that Tudor already had the support of his fellow exiles in Brittany, principally his Uncle Jasper, the Earl of Pembroke, and the Earl of Oxford, along with my son and my brothers.  (Lionel was there, along with Dorset, Edward and Richard, and had been deprived of his See of Salisbury.)  If Buckingham threw in his lot with Tudor, and if with their combined strength they should succeed in destroying the usurper – and why should they not, for he was growing in unpopularity every day, and the murder of the princes would cause every honorable man in England to turn his face from him – after they had succeeded in this, why, then it could be decided in parliament who had the better right, an English duke of ancient lineage or an unknown Welshman.     

All of this was predicated on the assumption that my sons were dead, and I knew none of it at the time, only that Gloucester’s right arm was willing to be severed, and no matter his motivation it was not an opportunity to be passed up.

“Madam, as you know, the Lady Margaret is very wise.  She has pressed upon me the task of persuading your Grace of the advantages to be gained for all concerned, and indeed for the welfare of England itself, of marriage between the Earl of Richmond and your eldest daughter.”

I blinked in surprise.  Thank Heaven he didn’t expect a response from me at once for I was made speechless by the temerity of a Tudor daring to aspire to the hand of a princess.  “I pray you, Madam, think on it.  Such a marriage, mingling the blood of Henry VI and King Edward, a union between the houses of York and Lancaster, will finally put an end to the divisions that have split the kingdom asunder for thirty years, and the children of that union will, by God’s Grace, rule in peace.”

The blood of Henry VI!  How was that?  The blood of his French mother, I’ll grant, but that was nothing to boast of.  She was the daughter of Charles the Mad who believed he was made of glass and would shatter if anyone touched him.  I glanced at my daughter, who had her eyes on the floor, her face carefully neutral.  She was now her father’s heir, and marriage to her would validate even Tudor’s tenuous claim.  That was my first thought and my second – I admit it – was that, although my sons would never reign, my daughter would as queen consort, and she would carry our blood, Edward’s and mine, into future generations of kings, so please our Lord.

Later that night, as she was helping me undress for bed, Anne said: “It will mean much to them if you agree.  It could mean the difference between success and failure.”

I picked up my mirror and saw that I looked like a ghost, white and haggard, except for the dark smudges under my eyes.  I felt quite empty now.  “She ought to be Queen of France.  It is such a waste.”

“Better to be Queen of England.” She hung my blue mourning gown in the press.  “So will you agree?”

“I will think about it.  I’ll talk to Bessie in the morning.  I won’t force her, or bring any pressure to bear.  If it’s what she wants.”

I was given a cup of warm wine with an infusion to help me sleep, but nothing helped.  I feared I would never have a good night’s sleep again.  I lay awake tossing on the horns of a dilemma and heard the bell calling the monks to matins, and when finally I slept my sleep was fragmented by hideous terrifying images of my sons’ death throes, and then I would awake, drenched in sweat and tears.  

“You should pray,” my sister said.  “You’ll feel better if you share your suffering with God.”

But I could not pray.  I didn’t want to speak to Him.  What did He care for my suffering?

……….

Dazed with grief and fatigue, I spoke to Bessie the next morning.  She was at Brigit’s bedside, trying to spoon some mush into her.  My little girl’s face was a pale triangle, pointed cheekbones and chin, and eyes too big for such a tiny face. I kissed her and thought:
Oh, don’t die, my little one.

“Yes,” Bessie said at once, “I want to marry him.”

“Are you sure?  Do you know what it means?”

“It means I may waste my maidenhead on a penniless adventurer and remain a bastard, or become Queen of England.  If Tudor succeeds it will mean the end of war.  York and Lancaster will be united.  That above all.  It is a gamble worth taking, I think.  But no matter what happens, I will always have the blood of my father in my veins.”

She must have gotten that from me, that gambling instinct.  Yet I was surprised.  My daughter, my sweet Bessie, born in a palace and now an inmate of sanctuary for the second time in her young life, had become a woman, hardheaded and clear thinking.  I could not but approve her choice and her reasons for making it.

“It also means,” I said, “that we support his claim to the throne.”

She nodded, accepting this also.  “Better him than Gloucester.”

I wrote to Lady Margaret, informing her that if her son would agree to marry my daughter, I would do all in my power to influence King Edward’s friends to take his part, and if he overthrew the usurper I would recognize him as king.  The conspiracy moved forward quickly, and Doctor Lewis came frequently to bring messages from Lady Margaret, who could not visit me herself, and from many others, most expressing outrage and sympathy.  My pen was no less busy than hers.  It seemed she was the prime mover in all this, or at least the facilitator.

It was a large enterprise.  In Brittany there was Henry, with Jasper Tudor, Oxford, Dorset and my three brothers, and in Wales and the marches Buckingham with his immense power, and my late husband’s household men, who had been stirring up trouble in the south and west ever since Gloucester’s seizure of the throne, and several small groups made discontented by his promotion of northerners.  Also, ironically, because a Lancastrian claimant had now emerged, all the die-hard supporters of that house joined the movement and it was a coalition of York and Lancaster against the tyrant. 

Far from removing the cause of rebellion, as Gloucester had hoped, my sons became a greater threat to him in death than they had been in life.  Rumors of their murder only gave these disparate elements better grounds and caused many neutrals to turn against him.  That so many were willing to believe the worst of him, that he was guilty of such a heinous crime, was an indication of how unpopular he was.  And not in England alone.  With so many of our people in Brittany, the news soon spread abroad, and in the courts of Europe for years to come opprobrium was heaped on the name of Richard III, for as hard and as brutal as is the world in which we live, such a foul deed as the murder of children, and especially royal children, was abhorrent to everyone.  I have heard that men wept openly upon hearing of it.  He could so easily have answered the accusations by producing live children, if alive they were, and although I hoped, it was a faint hope.  To the best of my knowledge, he never even made any attempt to deny the rumors.

……….

It was a frigid night with a wind that unerringly percolated through the many chinks in the walls to spend itself against a warm cheek or a busy pair of hands.  The fire in my chamber was crackling cheerily, but the windows that let in sun and light during the day allowed easy access to chill draughts.  I stood by the window, looking out into the darkness.  All I could see in the warped glass was the pale oval of my own face, like a wraith looking back at me, looking in at the warmth and light from beyond some great void. 

The rising was over, swept away by the weather – of all things.  The rains began early October.  Every morning we awoke to low, thick, swollen clouds that released great torrents of gale-driven rain, seldom slackening, pelting hard against the windows, bouncing off roofs as high as a man’s knee, battering down the shrubs in the garden.  The mouths of the stone men gushed water and all over the country low-lying areas were flooded.  All I could think was: Thank God the harvest is in. 

I should have known from my husband’s own battles that the weather can play an important role, as it did in this case, for the torrential rains had devastated the southwestern counties.  Rivers had burst their banks, bridges were swept away, houses demolished and livestock and people drowned.  Thwarted by the weather, Buckingham was stranded, unable to cross the swollen Severn and join up with the rest of the rebels.  Demoralized, the men with him began to drift away until he was left with but one companion, who betrayed him to the Sheriff of Shropshire.

“The storms gave Tudor a good buffeting too,” Nesfield told me cheerfully.  “When he finally made land he had only two ships and when he found the rebels had scattered he scurried back to Brittany like the whey-faced craven he is.”

I gave a little shrug.  “What Tudor does is of no concern to me.”

I kept my back to him so that he couldn’t see my face.  Also there was sufficient draught coming through the window that the air was sweeter there.  How I wished he would go away.  

“Buckingham was ‘headed in Salisbury that same day, All Soul’s it was.”  That would have been my Ned’s thirteenth birthday. “Good riddance, say I and all loyal men.”

“And so say I.” All we had lost was a diabolical traitor.  Gloucester had lost his boon companion and right hand man.

“My lords of Audley and Dyneham were so impressed by the king’s quick dispersal of the rebel threat that they have given their allegiance to him.”

That was a bitter pill to swallow.  Edward had raised Dyneham up from a mere country squire.  I would have sworn he would remain loyal.

“He’s now busy with mopping up operations and filling all county offices that fell vacant in the south with good and true men from the north.”

But Brother Adolphus said by these moves he was making himself even more unpopular.  I could understand that.  The great men of the shires were a very close and insular breed: they didn’t like it when outsiders came among them, taking over offices that they were accustomed to sharing between themselves, and this would be particularly true if those outsiders belonging to that strange, brutal northern race. 

When he had gone, unhappy at having received such a tepid response I hoped, another pale face appeared beside mine in the window. 

Bessie said softly:  “Mother, will there ever be an end to our confinement?”

I put my arm around her shoulder and held her close to me, pressing my cheek against her soft hair.  “We live in uncertain times, but one thing we can be sure of.”

“Yes?”

In the space of a few moments my mind flooded with forty years of memories, right back to the time when I had left my parent’s home as a seven year-old to take up residence with my future in-laws.  “Nothing lasts for ever,” I said.  “Nothing.”

In sanctuary, we were guarded more closely than ever.  All writing materials were taken from us and Master Nesfield came in at odd times to rifle through our belongings, looking, I presume, for evidence that we were involved in a new plot.  Our trickle of visitors dried up. 

Christmas was coming and I was determined to do all in my power to make it a happy event for all of us.  There was neither holly nor evergreens in the abbot’s garden, but we ruthlessly snipped live boughs from the shrubs to make into garlands to decorate the hall for the Holy Season.  Many things we would have to do without, but my sister Anne, Bessie, Cecily and I had been busy for some time making presents for the three younger children. We were gathered at the table, huddled in our cloaks because it was so cold, with the greenery spread before us and I was carefully unpicking a scarlet ribbon from one of Anne’s gowns.  I said we could sew it back on once Christmas was over, and she said: Yes, some things can be put back as they were.  I ignored the comment; it was unlike her.  We had white ribbon also, snipped from one of my nightgowns, and one of the bushes had yielded red berries that we harvested before the birds could steal them.  A meager fire burned in the grate because we were short of firewood and Bessie was sat beside it on a stool hunched over and staring into the flames.
“Come and join us, Bessie,” I said.

Whereupon, she jumped to her feet, clutched up her skirt and ran into the bedchamber.  Cecily followed me as I went in after her.  She was sitting on the floor, her neck bent like the broken stem of a flower, and the tears she had been holding in were streaming down her cheeks. 

“What’s the matter, dearest?” I asked, kneeling before her.

“I can’t bear it!” she sobbed.  “The thought of spending the Holy Season here… fills me with such despair.”

I took her by the shoulders and gave her a gentle shaking.  “Bessie, if you are to be queen someday, you must learn to bear what God sends.”

She lifted her head at that and glared at me through streaming eyes.  “I shall never be queen!  Henry Tudor will always be a pretender and I shall always be a bastard and no man will ever want me and we’ll have to spend the rest of our lives in this awful place.  And I hate it here!  I hate it!”

“No, it’s not true.  Now that he knows what kind of support he has, Richmond will come again one day, you’ll see.  Do you think any man likely to give up the chance for a crown so easily?  No, Bess, let me assure you men are not made that way.  And no matter what Gloucester says, you know your father and I were legally bound, don’t you?  Don’t you?”  I gripped her shoulders harder until I had drawn a reluctant nod from her.  “You will always possess the blood of kings.  You are a prize, my dear.  All of you are.  Remember that.”         

Cecily sat beside her sister and stroked her back while Bess sobbed and hiccupped.  “Mama, have you heard from Lady Margaret?” she asked.

“No, but that means nothing.” 

Lady Margaret’s role in the rebellion had not gone unpunished.  Her servants had been withdrawn, all her lands and possessions forfeited to her husband, Lord Stanley, and she had been placed in his close custody.  Even so, I never doubted that she would already be at work trying to lure her notoriously changeable husband from his allegiance and meantime contriving some method of remaining in touch with her son.

“Mama.” Bessie lifted her tear-drenched face to mine.  “Everyone wants us out of here, even Uncle Gloucester.  Why can’t we just…
just leave?
”

So it was ‘Uncle Gloucester’ again now!  The tyrant had assumed an avuncular face.  “No!  Put you and your sisters into the hands of the man who murdered your brothers?  No!  Never!”

“We don’t know that for sure!  We don’t even know they’re dead!”

“You believe
only what you want to believe.”

“Perhaps you do, too!”

I raised my hand then and slapped her as hard as I could.  It was the first time in my life I had struck any of my children and I was immediately assailed with guilt.  Bessie sobbed again and flung herself into my lap and Cecily encircled us both within her arms.

It meant nothing.  Bitter words spoken from the depths of disappointment and sorrow. 

When she had calmed down, I spoke to her soothingly, assuring her that Henry Tudor would come again.  I believed that.  I just wasn’t certain that he could ever prevail against Gloucester, still less that the people of England would accept a man with so little royal blood as king. 

……….

In spite of our best efforts, the Christmas of ’83 was a cheerless one, and it was hard for all of us not to think about Christmases of the past.  Whenever someone said: ‘Do you remember when – ’ Or: ‘In the new great hall at Eltham – ” the words would be cut off abruptly like thread severed by scissors, followed by one of those awful silences where, no matter what one says, it sounds like false heartiness.  It was hard, too, not to think about all those loved ones who had been taken from us in the past year.  Of the adults Cecily, God bless her, put the best face on things.

In January came the long-delayed parliament.  Its purpose, of course, was to confirm the Usurper in his title to the throne, which it cravenly did.  Thinking of Margaret Beaufort and Margaret of Anjou, I said to Anne: “It’s a pity women cannot sit in parliament.  They have far more stomach for a fight.”

Anne said: “Perhaps only because they don’t expect to be beheaded.”

Gloucester presented a petition called
Titulus Regius
, which was taken largely from the speeches Buckingham had made at the Guildhall and Westminster in June, and began with an attack on my husband’s government, but made no mention of the Duchess of York’s supposed adultery, except for the phrase that Buckingham had used, that Gloucester was the ‘undoubted heir of York.’  The four reasons why the king’s marriage to me was not in accordance with the law and customs of the land were laid out, the last of them being the precontract, of which, again, no proof was offered.  I have been told many times by many doctors of canon law that not even parliament has the jurisdiction to judge the validity of our marriage.  Only the church has that right.  No matter.  It was done.  Not only by Gloucester’s will but also by the Law of the land, I was King Edward’s ‘pretended’ wife and my children were bastards.

If there really had been a precontract someone must have known, else how could Gloucester be in possession of the facts?  There must have been a priest and there must have been witnesses if the ceremony was to have any validity.  And yet no witness ever came forward.  It wasn’t until about this time that I learned that ‘proof’ of the precontract story had been brought by Robert Stillington, the Bishop of Bath and Wells, my husband’s chancellor of many years, who had brought the story to Gloucester and even claimed to be the officiating priest.  There was even some wild speculation that he had been in the Tower at the same time as George of Clarence and had spilled the secret to that volatile duke and that was why Edward had him put to death.  The truth, as I knew it, was that Stillington did spend some months in the Tower in ’78 but not until Clarence had departed, and even if he had somehow conveyed the secret to the duke, why would Edward, who did not stay his hand from a king and a brother, allow the bishop to go free after a few months to babble his story elsewhere?  Stillington, I concluded, was another detail added later to give the tale more authenticity.      

Not until late in January did we learn that on Christmas Day, Henry Tudor had gone to the cathedral in Rennes and sworn on holy relics that he would take Bessie to be his wife.  “You see,” I said to her.  “He has not forgotten.”

She nodded and tried hard to smile.

I believe it was in order to nullify the threat that such a union posed that Gloucester sent three emissaries to offer terms for our withdrawal from sanctuary.  He wanted my daughters to come to court and promised to wed them to gentlemen of good standing and offered to swear in an assembly of great men and upon whatever holy things I chose that he would do them no harm.  Gentlemen of good standing!  I knew what that meant.  His creatures and so poor they would never have the means to raise the flag of rebellion in favor of their wives.

I sent them away with a firm refusal, and at once became the target of a conspiracy to make me change my mind.  Not only Bessie and Cecily but also my sister joined forces against me, and they even enlisted the support of Katherine, who wailed and wailed until I had to stop my ears.  No, I said.  To give in was to absolve Gloucester of his vile crime.  Or to admit that we really didn’t believe he had done it. 

“You cannot believe he intends any harm to the ladies,” Anne said reasonably.

I swung on her, furious.  “Did you ever think for one moment that he meant to harm my sons?”

She hung her head but after a moment added meekly: “The girls are no threat to him.”

“No, not by themselves, that’s why he wants them wed meanly.  He’ll wed them to Yorkshire farmers and they’ll have to learn how to milk cows and pluck fowl and work in the fields with a child at the breast and another in the belly.”  I intercepted a look of wide-eyed alarm between my eldest daughters and struck again.  “And how can Bessie marry Richmond if she’s in Gloucester’s clutches?  How can she ever be queen?”

“Mama, it’s not going to happen,” Bessie said softly, as if speaking to a child.   

Cecily said: “Bessie and I want to be married and have children.  She’ll be eighteen soon.  She’s wasting her youth.  Surely you can understand.”

“Please, think about it.  Please,” Bessie added.

I did think about it, and I did understand.  Nine months we had been in this unnatural confinement with no end in sight.  I had nothing left.  All the properties that had been settled on me, my palaces of Shene and Greenwich, every piece of furniture and stalk of grain, every cow and sheep, tree and pond had been taken from me as easily as they had been given and I was again what I once had been: Dame Grey, an impoverished widow.  Only this time no handsome king would come to woo me and the only relief I could see was to throw myself on the mercy of another king who was neither handsome nor kind.  Of the five sons I had given birth to only one had died of natural causes, three had been murdered and one lived yet, my firstborn, and I didn’t know if I would ever set eyes on him again.  I didn’t even have my beauty.  I was almost forty-six, my life to all intents and purposes over.  But for all my losses, I’d had my days of glory and my marriage had brought me great joy, although, in the end, an equal degree of sorrow.  Well does the holy book remind us that this world is a vale of tears. 

But my poor daughters: Bessie and Cecily had seen their dreams of grand marriages shattered.  They had been degraded to mere royal bastards.  Like me they had nothing, and because of me they had no future.  Although I still thought of them as princesses, they were typical young girls and wanted the things we all want at their age: marriage and children, a settled life.  For a while Bessie had cherished ambitions of being queen, but Henry Tudor and the crown were too insubstantial after the failed rising.  And what of Anne, Katherine and Brigit, whose lives were only just enfolding.  How could I, their mother, deny them the hope of a normal life, even with all its trials and sorrows?  Whenever I thought thus, I felt I had to give in for their sakes. 

I did not want to stay there.  Every day was more hopeless than the one before.  When I awoke each morning in the gray gloom of the abbot’s bedchamber, I would think about the day ahead and try to find in it some grain of comfort, some glimmer of happiness, but there was nothing.  Nothing to look forward to and the past too painful to dwell in, and then I would think: Anything is better than this living death.  But whenever I thought of my sons, which was often for the grief was still raw, I resolved again never to put my daughters into the hands of their murderer.

Even before Gloucester had begun his campaign to persuade me to leave, Abbot Esteney was applying his own brand of pressure.  He rebuked me at every opportunity for the burden my small household put on the resources of his abbey.  The truth is, the food we were served was plain and meager; meat when we had it was like offal; any wine that came to us was of the poorest quality and watered down; we never had enough water for our needs; and now in the dark of winter we were kept so short of firewood that we had to wear warm cloaks indoors and often had to sit huddled around the fire.  It was mean and cruel, but this, along with the entreaties of my sister and daughters, wore my resolve away and persuaded me to receive the emissaries again.  I had no choice, really.  I couldn’t keep them there forever and watch them grow into bitter bickering women, old before their time. 

The emissaries brought a chill with them as they entered the hall.  I knew only one of them, at least I knew
of
him.  His name was Richard Ratcliffe; he had risen from nowhere to become one of Gloucester’s most secret and confidential councilors and he spoke with a dreadful northern accent, as did the rest of them.  A lampoonist had written an apt doggerel: The Cat, the Rat and Lovel our Dog rule all England under a Hog.  The Cat was Catesby, the rat Ratcliffe and the hog was a reference to Gloucester’s White Boar badge. Also his name was linked to the murder of my sons. Possibly he was the one Gloucester had entrusted with that most secret task.  Possibly he had been the one to actually plan it and hire the men to carry it out.  He looked the part: heavy build, pitted skin, cold fish eyes and a nose that had been put out of joint at some time and allowed to set askew.