The Stolen Crown: The Secret Marriage That Forever Changed the Fate of England (9 page)

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out of her shoes to walk upon the striped cloth spread for her to make her way to the high altar. He made a motion with his mouth that could have been a grimace or a hint of a smile.

I decided to take it as a smile.

Behind Harry, a group of earls and barons, my father and my brother Anthony among them, and the newly made Knights of the Bath led my sister inside the abbey, Grandmother Buckingham still holding her train for dear life. It must have been heavy, for she looked as nearly as grim as Harry had, but she rallied as the procession started up again. Behind her were my mother and the king’s sisters Elizabeth and Margaret, and behind them was—me. Snaking in back of us was a group of other richly clad ladies, including a few of my sisters. I knew not to look for the king, for it was not the custom for him to attend, but I did think it sad that he was missing all of this splendor. Perhaps he had found a secret place to watch, I hoped.

Bessie at last reached the altar and knelt as the Archbishop of Canterbury began to read in Latin, words that were incomprehensible to me but which Harry appeared to be following quite well, an accomplishment of which I knew his tutor, Master Giles, would be duly proud. At least the effort had distracted Harry from the indignity of being carried, for he no longer looked sullen but attentive.

The archbishop paused in his Latin, and my sister prostrated herself gracefully (a feat I would not have thought possible to accomplish gracefully until my sister did it) upon the red velvet cushions. More Latin followed, then Bessie rose. I watched impatiently as her circlet was removed and she was anointed with oil on her head. Then her gown was opened at the lacings specially provided for that purpose so that she could be anointed on the breasts. I would have giggled or shivered or blushed if the archbishop had been touching me so, I was sure, but my sister took this all with perfect composure; no one could have guessed that she had been threatening to faint not at all long before. A ring was blessed and put on Bessie’s finger.

All eyes turned to the jewel-encrusted crown that had been sparkling on the altar all this time. The archbishop blessed it—an endless process

4 8 s u s a n h i g g i n b o t h a m as far as I was concerned—and a coif was placed on my sister’s pretty hair to keep safe the holy oil with which she had been anointed. Then, at last, the golden crown was placed on my sister’s head, and she was led to her throne.

The squire who had carried me patiently on his back all this time looked up as one, then another, of my tears of pride splashed on his forehead.

“Happy day, eh, Duchess?” he whispered.

“Oh, yes,” I whispered back.

Bessie’s crown must have carried with it some special powers, for a few weeks later, as I was sewing in her outer chamber, the queen gasped and without a word of warning ran into her inner chamber, where we heard the unmistakable and very unroyal sound of retching. My sister Anne, who was one of her ladies in waiting, hastened to help her, while Mama sat smiling on her chair. “The third time in three days,” she said when Bessie finally emerged, looking decidedly greenish. “Have you mentioned this to the king?”

“I would like to wait a month or two, Mama, just—just in case. But I am certain. I was just as miserable when I was carrying Tom and Richard.”

I gasped. “You mean you are to have a baby? That I am to be an aunt?”

“You already are an aunt,” Anne pointed out as Bessie nodded blearily.

“But this is different,” I said. Tom was a couple of years older than I, Richard about the same age. They hardly counted as nephews. Besides, this would be a royal baby—perhaps even a king. I stared at the queen’s belly in awe. “How long?”

“February, I think. But keep quiet, Kate! The king must hear it from me first, and no one else, and not until I am quite certain.”

“I can’t tell even Harry?” I pouted.

“No. He might tell Humphrey, and Humphrey keeps nothing to himself.” I nodded gloomily. Telling anything to Humphrey was equivalent to passing an Act of Parliament.

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“John?” He was a great secret-keeper, having never revealed the unfortunate accident that had befallen Mama’s best hennin two years before when I sneaked it from her chamber to try it on. (How was I to know that my puppy would find it so irresistible?) “Oh, all right. But tell him it is a secret.”

“Now?”

“Oh, go. You’ll be good for nothing if you don’t.”

Grinning, I raced down to the stables to find my brother.

Bessie had not been mistaken. On February 11, 1466, at Westminster, she bore the king his first child—not the hoped-for son, but a fine girl, whom the king named after Bessie. I helped attend my sister during her confinement in her last days of pregnancy and during the childbirth itself— men were not allowed in the birthing room, so Bessie had needed as much help as she could get—and came out of the ordeal with the certainty that whatever exactly Harry would have to do to get me with child, it could well wait for another ten years.

Little Elizabeth’s birth proved to be the impetus needed to get Cecily, Duchess of York, to court. I suppose like any other woman, she wanted to see her grandchild, no matter what she might feel about her daughter-in-law. The king, moreover, added a sweetener by asking her, along with my mother, to be one of her godparents.

All was being put in readiness for the christening of Bess, as she was called among the family, when the arrival of the Duchess of York was announced.

She kissed the king, who was standing by the cradle admiring the dexterity and cunning with which Bess took a nap, as casually as if she had just seen him the previous day, and she greeted my sister as graciously as if Cecily had made the match between her and the king herself. The queen responded in kind, and the rest of us took our cue from her. It was as if we had known each other always, except that we didn’t know each other at all, which would have made for some awkward moments had it not been for Bess

5 0 s u s a n h i g g i n b o t h a m choosing to awake at that moment and to commence howling at the top of her lungs. She was not a terribly attractive sight when she did this, and I decided that Harry could wait yet another five years before he begat any such creature on me.

Cecily nodded approvingly as two nurses nearly banged heads in their haste to comfort Bess. “She has her father’s lungs,” she said, turning to the king. “My, you would scream at the least provocation. And you had the finest nurse in all of Rouen.”

I watched with interest as the quicker of the nurses picked up Bess and put her to her breast. Being the youngest of twelve, and of an age with or younger than my nephews, I had no experience in taking care of babies.

With Bess quiet, she was considerably more appealing. I flicked out a finger and touched the fuzzy hair on her head. “It’s so soft,” I said reverently.

Cecily, wonder of wonders, looked at me and smiled. “One of your girls?” she asked my mother.

“Yes. The Duchess of Buckingham—Kate, that is—is my youngest.”

“Ah, Harry Buckingham’s wife. I remember him when he was a little lad.” The Duchess of York’s eyes took on a far-off look. “Much has changed since then.”

By-and-by, it was time for the christening. The Duchess of York and Mama were little Elizabeth’s godmothers; the Earl of Warwick—smiling and genial—was the godfather. His brother, George Neville, the Archbishop of York, officiated. I was not much given to thinking about such things then, but to older observers, the christening must have boded well: the king and his mother on good terms again, the Kingmaker content with his role and looking positively avuncular as he stood at the font with the king’s firstborn child.

The older observers, of course, would have been dead wrong.

v

June 1468 to August 1468

I was jealous. Margaret, the king’s youngest sister, was going to Burgundy to be married to its duke in July, and my brothers Anthony and John were to be in the wedding party accompanying her across the seas.

I was not. “I could be of plenty of use,” I told Harry and Humphrey, who were bearing all this with remarkable patience. “I could keep her gowns in order, and fetch things for her, and—”

“Kate, the king himself is staying here! So is almost everyone else in England. It’s not as if you’re the only one not going.”

“Well, it feels that way,” I said, and flounced off to heap a little guilt on John’s shoulders.

I told my tale of woe to John as he sat studying my sister’s stable accounts, but he only smiled. “Be reasonable, poppet. We all can’t go.”

“But you are going!”

“A lot of tiresome ceremonies, I’m sure.”

“And jousting.” John loved to joust.

“Well? It’s not as if you can joust, after all.”

“I ought to go! I am a duchess, after all. The youngest Duchess of Norfolk is going—and Harry’s dukedom is far greater than the Duke of Norfolk’s.”

“Oh, the ducal nose is out of joint? That is the problem? Methinks your head has swollen a little, poppet.”

I was silent. It was true that I did enjoy my position very much. Whenever there was a procession, I was near the front of the ladies, behind only the

5 2 s u s a n h i g g i n b o t h a m king’s sisters, and I loved wearing my small, jeweled, golden coronet, which glittered so prettily on my sandy head, on those grand occasions. Perhaps I had also been a bit too forward lately in reminding my own sisters (all married now, but none higher than to earls’ heirs) of my superior rank.

John was my favorite brother; I could never pretend otherwise. I loved him even better than my father, whom I had not seen as much when I was little. To have him looking disapprovingly at me was more than I could bear. “Am I that awful, John? Truly, I didn’t mean to be!” My eyes began to well with tears.

“Kate! For God’s sake, don’t cry. Tone it down a little, is all I advise. We know you’re a duchess, after all.”

“All right, John. I will mend my ways, I promise.” I tried to look as humble as I could. “I will go now and read my Book of Hours.”

“Stay a while, sweetheart, before you turn too holy on us. We haven’t talked lately.” He patted the seat beside him, and I settled in happily. “I’ll tell you, though, our family has put some noses out of joint lately. Truth be told, that’s probably why of the family, only Anthony and I are accompanying the Lady Margaret abroad.”

“How?”

“Well, with myself and you married so well, and all of the other girls married now—”

“But their husbands were happy to marry them! I know that some of them asked the king for the chance. Bessie said so.”

“True, but people think what they want to think, and some want to think that the men were given no choice. And with other girls—though none as fair as the Woodvilles, I’ll grant—going begging for matches, some are upset.”

“Oh, you are speaking about Warwick’s girls again, I wager! I don’t see why they can’t marry the king’s brothers and be done with it.”

“Me neither, but I’m the queen’s Master of Horse, not the king’s adviser.

And when Bessie bought the Exeter girl’s marriage from the duchess, it made things even worse with Warwick.”

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Warwick’s nephew, young George Neville, had been expected to marry the Duchess of Exeter’s little girl, Anne, who would inherit all of the Exeter estates. Then Bessie had bought the marriage for her own eldest son, Tom, for four thousand marks. They had had a lovely wedding at Greenwich, though not as lovely, I thought complacently, as my own. “Well? She paid a fair price for it, and the Duchess of Exeter was well content.”

John shrugged. “True. But to Warwick it was just something else snatched from his hand. Then there is Father. His having been made an earl, and treasurer and constable of England—”

Papa had looked so pleased and so proud when he was girded with his earl’s belt. Earl Rivers! “But why should he not be? He does his work well; I heard the king telling someone so.”

“He deserves it. But for some it’s a matter of too far, too fast. And the king has raised others as well, which doesn’t suit the likes of Warwick.

William Herbert, for instance. And now Warwick’s in another huff because of this upcoming marriage of the Lady Margaret’s. He wanted a match with France.”

There was a lot, I realized, I was missing in my snug little cocoon at Greenwich.

After my talk with John, I made a conscientious effort to be rather less irritatingly grand, and I was duly rewarded by heaven (as I saw it) when I was allowed to travel in the entourage taking Margaret to the coast. The Earl of Warwick, again putting his displeasure aside (he did a lot of that in those days, I must admit), was one of the party. He rode beside Margaret, though, well away from my brothers.

Harry too went with us to Margate, from where the future Duchess of Burgundy set sail, not to return to England for many years. Humphrey stayed at Greenwich, for consumption, which had been clawing at him for years, had him firmly in its grip. The winter had been a bad one for him, and the milder conditions of spring and summer did nothing to restore him.

5 4 s u s a n h i g g i n b o t h a m My sister called in the best physicians for him, but to no avail. The next person she sent for was Harry and Humphrey’s mother, Margaret, Countess of Stafford.

Though the countess was my motherin-law, I had never met her, for she never came to court. For one thing, she was a Beaufort, and the Beauforts were not in favor with the king. Harry’s maternal grandfather, Edmund Beaufort, the first Duke of Somerset, had died at St. Albans. His sons had kept up the fight. For a time, Henry Beaufort, the eldest—whom my own father had served in his Lancastrian days—had appeared to accept King Edward, but he had turned traitor and had led troops against the king, leading to his execution four years before. The other sons, Edmund and John, had escaped and were living in Burgundy.