The Dragon and the Rose (38 page)

"Not your intentions. Not yours, Henry."

"Whose then?"

Her mouth opened and closed twice, and her eyes grew so wild that Henry put his hand on her forehead. "I cannot say it," she gasped. "I want to, but I cannot. You would not believe me, anyway, and it is so horrible that even when I think about it everything goes around inside my head. Where are you?" Elizabeth whimpered suddenly. "Where are you? You are gone away."

Really frightened, Henry lifted his wife, covers and all, into his arms. "No, I am here. Bess, I am here, holding you."

It was so inconceivable to Henry that his mother's interests and his own should ever differ, that he had never before considered how he would feel if he were placed in Elizabeth's position. Not realizing that his wife had cried out against the cold remoteness of his expression, not his physical absence, he was afraid he had unsettled her wits by demanding that she be the one to accuse the woman who had given her life, given her life with the same incredible suffering she had endured not three weeks past to give life to her own son.

"Hush, Bess, hush. Do not trouble so. Everything will come right." A hand found its way out of the cocoon of coverings and fastened onto Henry's jeweled collar. "Bess, speak. Can you understand me?"

"Let me see your face." She pulled away, looked at him, and allowed her head to drop onto his shoulder. "Do not go away again."

"No, I will stay here until you are better." Henry gave a distracted thought to the piles of work in his closet, to the coming session of parliament which necessitated that the work be finished, and tightened his grip on Elizabeth. "You must not fret. Do not think about this matter any more. Bess, listen. Do not be afraid. I will not hurt you nor anyone dear to you. I will never ask you another question about such matters. Nor will that harm me, for I think I know what you are unable to tell."

Her shivering seemed to be decreasing and Henry's arms ached horribly so he laid her down on her pillows. Elizabeth made no protest. Henry stood patiently by the bed holding her hand and watching for her eyes to close.

"If Warwick dies, Henry," she said quite clearly, no longer speaking in a gasping whisper, "will you kill me?"

"Good God, Elizabeth, where did you come by such an insane idea?"

"You misunderstand me. I was not asking whether you would wish to do that, I was asking you to do it."

"Bess," he sighed wearily, "if you do not stop raving and get well, you will kill
me
. I will die of worry and exhaustion. Will that content you?"

"No, because then Arthur would be all alone, and someone would kill him the way my uncle killed my brothers—"

"Be still, Elizabeth!" Henry bellowed.

They had quarreled bitterly, but he had never raised his voice to her before and the shock brought a realization of what she had done. Elizabeth had lived with the idea for so long that its horror had paled with familiarity, but that it had never crossed Henry's mind was clear from his suddenly ashen face.

I must be half-mad, she thought, to add this terror to his other burdens. If it would have given her husband any satisfaction, she would have torn out her tongue. But there was a compensation she could make. She could remove herself as a burden to him.

"I am sorry, Harry. It is only the horror of a sick mind. It could never happen. Do you believe Bedford would let anyone hurt your son any more than he allowed you to be hurt?"

"That is a comfort! That my son should run like a hunted beast as I ran."

Elizabeth did not flinch at the reference to the persecution her family had visited on him, although he had never openly mentioned it before. "Harry, come closer." She stilled the shaking of her body with an effort of will she did not know she possessed and pulled him so that he sat down beside her. "That is not what I meant, as you well know. Nothing happened to your Uncle Henry when he was a child although he was only nine months old when the king, his father, died. His uncles were not like mine. They cared for him and protected him. Would Bedford hurt your child?"

"Jasper is old."

"Oxford is not so old, nor Foxe, nor Devon, nor Nottingham. Must I name all your friends? Sick minds have sick fancies. You said yourself I was raving." She pulled him down against her breast, hoping he would not notice how hot she was. "You see, I am better now. Did I not ask you to kill me? What could be worse for you, even if you hated me—and I know you do not. How much madder could a question be?"

Elizabeth could not mend the breech she had made in Henry's wall of confidence, but she babbled on until he was able to fill it temporarily with the more cheerful ideas she presented. Finally she sent him away, assuring him of her complete recovery, apologizing for the nonsense she had spoken and the trouble she had caused, and begging him not to work half the night to make up for the time she had cost him.

She repeated several times that she knew how much there was to be done and, slyly, when the fixed expression of fear he wore was a little overlaid with a different, lighter concern, she asked for a promise that he would not rush off to work. He would not promise and Elizabeth felt a little relief. She knew her husband's ways. If he could work, he would soon put aside his fear. Perhaps he would never forget it, but he would lock it into a small dark chamber of his heart and the longer he lived with it, Elizabeth felt, drawing on her own experience, the less agonizing it would be.

She tried desperately to keep the bargain she had made with herself. She obeyed faithfully all the instructions the physician gave; she strove to quiet her mind. Henry knew and Henry would take care that no harm came from her mother's plotting. No harm ever came from her mother's plotting, she reminded herself. It had always been easy for cleverer plotters to circumvent her, and surely Henry was the cleverest man alive.

When nightmares woke her screaming, and her ladies found her burning and shaking she whispered only, "Do not tell Henry," although it seemed to her that there was no price too high for the comfort his arms would have given her.

It grew easier when her actual illness had passed, and still easier as the fear that clouded Henry's clear eyes dissipated a little, for then her guilt also lifted. There was always sufficient shadow, however, to spur Elizabeth on. She dressed beautifully and made her conversation as gay as possible.

When she was able to invite Henry to her bed again, she was more passionate than ever, making sure that her husband would be too tired to lie awake and worry once he left her. She bit her tongue when she was fretful, and if she knew she could not keep her temper she closed her mouth altogether and played the music that Henry loved, which never failed to keep him silent, also.

Fortunately, Elizabeth was not perfect. She did try to soothe her husband when he was irritable, but when he continued to snap at her sweet rejoinders, she was human enough to regress to normal and give him the satisfaction of a rousing fight. She found, too, that if she used language vulgar enough to make him blush she could usually reduce him to laughter.

For her effort, Elizabeth received the reward generally accorded to wives who struggle to make themselves over to their husbands' satisfaction. Henry spent every minute he could spare from his demanding work with her, never noticed the effort she was making, and complained bitterly when the effort failed and she was not perfectly in accord with his mood.

They moved from Winchester on October 25, and it took them seven days to cover the distance Henry had galloped in six hours. There was no need to hurry. They had four glorious, bright days out of the seven when Elizabeth insisted on mounting her horse and riding with her husband, although Henry then refused to move faster than a walk. They could not go much faster, anyway, because the great covered cart that carried Arthur and Charles Brandon moved very slowly over the rutted roads in spite of the six horses that drew it.

Even the three rainy days were delightful. On two they did not travel at all but stayed in a bare old castle where Henry gave sudden vent to a burst of high spirits. He organized all sorts of wild games—to keep them warm, he said, for the old keep was damnably cold and damp. On the last day it only drizzled and Elizabeth rode in the cart with her son and little Charles, to whom she was growing as attached as Henry.

It was delightful to cuddle Arthur, tell Charles simple stories, watch Henry dismount and swing in to join them, slapping Charles with his wet hat and making him shriek with joy. It was delightful until Charles fell asleep in the middle of a rough-and-tumble as happy, energetic babies do. Then Henry took Arthur from Elizabeth's arms, and suddenly he looked old and tired and very grim.

Elizabeth was stricken cold and mute as she watched her husband's beautiful long fingers run over the fuzz of baby hair not covered by the cap and trace the delicate curve of a tiny ear. Then Arthur's aimless hand struck his father's, and his little fingers closed by instinct over Henry's thumb. The king turned his head aside, but neither of his hands was free to cover or wipe his face and Elizabeth saw the shining tracks of tears on his cheeks. She had destroyed his joy in his son and given him fear to live with.

"Why does your mother refuse to come to London with us?" Elizabeth asked in a shrill, peevish voice. "I have begged her and prayed her, but she will not attend to me. Oh, Henry, give Arthur to me and wipe your hair. It is wet and dripping all over everything."

"She said to me that she was tired and wished to rest." Henry's voice came muffled and husky from the cloth he was using.

"And to me" Elizabeth sounded even more irritable and aggrieved "when I said it was not fair to leave me with the babies and all the state dinners, too, that she did not wish the world to say that the king took suck from his mother still."

Henry had started to clear his throat and he choked on a laugh. "Bess, she said no such vulgar thing."

"Well, it was very like. I wish you will speak to her, Harry, and make her change her mind."

"If I can, it would be the first time. Would you have me give commands to my mother? And for all she pretends humility, it would not do the slightest good. You know she really pays me no mind. Besides, it would be very embarrassing if she refused my order outright. What would I do?"

"I do not know, but you should be able to do something. And I wish you would do something about Devon, also. That odious countess of Northumberland was complaining that he is trifling with her daughter."

"Devon and Northumberland's scrawny—"

"Oh, so you have been looking her over, too! Perhaps I am grown too stout for your taste."

"Elizabeth!"

"And while we are on this subject, I must say I would have to be blind not to see how particularly you stared at Dorset's wife—"

"My God, am I to look nowhere but at the floor or the ceiling? She spoke to me and I answered her. Where should I look?"

"There are looks and looks."

"You must have eyes in the back of your head if you saw the one I gave her. We were behind you."

"I have eyes all round my head, and in my behind, too, where your looks are concerned."

"Elizabeth, you have a filthy mind."

"And what is yours like, since you always know what I am thinking?"

Henry was half-laughing, half-furious, well aware that he was being managed, prodded away from useless and dangerous thoughts. He was almost grateful, but wary, too, of the growing self-possession in Elizabeth.

Something had made her aware of him in a way that increased his difficulty in hiding his thoughts from her. In fact, he was no longer sure he could hide them at all. That would make her a dangerous opponent—one whom he grew less sure of defeating daily. Arthur gave the series of muffled squeaks that preceded the onset of a lusty wail, and Elizabeth bent her head toward him. Suddenly Henry was not sure he was willing to combat her even if she was an opponent. Certainly she belonged to Arthur body and soul, no matter how she felt about him.

"Go away, Henry," she said. "Arthur wants his third breakfast or second dinner, and I would not like you to get any ideas from looking at what the nurse has to offer him."

"How vulgar you are, Elizabeth." He laughed, and her eyes twinkled at him.

The arrival at Greenwich solved the problem that too much idleness for Henry bred too much thought. It brought him, instead, concrete worries. No sooner did a courier or ambassador from Brittany arrive than one from France was hard on his heels. Obviously neither could say anything to the point while the other was listening, but to receive one while the other waited was a serious affront.

To Henry's horror none of the envoys would willingly accept Morton or Foxe as a substitute for himself. They knew all too well that neither of these gentlemen could be influenced away from the king's position, and that neither would try to exert any influence upon him. If they could not have the king's own ear, they clamored for Bedford, Margaret, or Elizabeth.

Henry could not permit Jasper to become involved. He was useless for diplomatic work. His likes and dislikes showed too plainly on his face; he was an unconvincing liar, and his sympathies were too easily worked upon so that he might, conceivably, make an awkward promise.

Henry tore his hair and wrote to Margaret, who replied that she knew nothing about such matters, cared less, and wished to be left in peace. That left Elizabeth. She at least had sufficient training of court life never to make a definite promise, and if her sympathies were engaged, and she tried to influence him, Henry knew himself to be impervious.

Setting Foxe at her elbow, Henry tried the experiment one afternoon when he really needed freedom to talk to the Breton envoy. Francis of Brittany was proposing that Maximillian, king of the Romans, and—far more important to Henry—regent of Burgundy and the Netherlands for his infant son Philip, should marry his heiress, Anne.

Henry had to remain on good terms with Maximillian, since England's greatest trade was with the Low Countries, but he felt obliged by past favors to warn Francis that Maximillian could not even control his own dominions and would be a weak reed to lean on for help against France. He felt also that since there were two other suitors for poor Anne's hand, Francis's purposes would be best served by keeping them all dangling and offering the girl as a reward to the one who provided the most practical help instead of the most grandiose promises.