The Tudor Rose (6 page)

“If you wish it, there is nothing easier, Madam,” he assured her. “Milord Duke sent to me the moment he arrived. He entreats your Grace to return to the Palace and to bring the children with you so that you may all be reunited.”

“Oh, Madam, and it please you, may we not go?” begged Cicely, putting a coaxing arm about her.

“No,” said the Queen, her thin clever mouth set straightly and her gaze on Richard as he tried, laughing, to teach his new wolfhound pup to beg for scraps.

The learned Abbot glanced round his cluttered room and lowered his voice persuasively. “I have also had word with Lord Hastings, and he thinks that perhaps your Grace's coming here was ill-advised,” he ventured. “He feels that the late King's brother is the man of the moment and that you insult him unnecessarily by so much display of distrust.”

The Queen was clearly tempted. She enjoyed the exalted surroundings that were due to her, all the more so because she had not been born to them. “You mean the spiritual lords who have been so loyal to us feel it would be wise for me to return?”

“They think it would be more politic both for your Grace's sake and for their own,” said the Abbot. “For you must know how hard their lordships are having to fight of late to retain sanctuary rights at all.”

The Queen rinsed her ringed fingers in the bowl a young monk had the honour to hold for her. “Then let Gloucester free my brother first,” was her ultimatum.

And so the days passed and the children became cramped and irritable. They missed their rides in the royal parklands and their pleasant springtime expeditions by barge. Even Richard's gay temper began to be affected by the mother's anxiety on his behalf. News filtered in that Edward had been taken from Ely Place to the royal apartments in the Tower, and Gloucester, instead of asserting himself by staying in either palace, was lodged at Baynard's Castle, the home of his dictatorial old mother.

They were days of anxiety and uncertainty which played havoc with everyone's temper; and they were not lightened for the Queen when the Archbishop of York came imploring her to return to him the Great Seal. The Protector had need of it so that the young King could issue sundry documents, he said, and it was as much as his own life was worth not to be able to produce it.

“The first document he will persuade that poor innocent child to sign will be a royal recognition of his protectorship!” prophesied the Queen bitterly.

“There are so many orders to be signed,” the Archbishop excused himself evasively, “now that the Duke has fixed July the fifth for the coronation.”

That preparations were going on on a lavish scale no one could doubt. The hammering of carpenters erecting stands for spectators echoed around Palace and Abbey from morning till night, and carts rumbled in from the country laden with all manner of food. The tailor who was sent for to supplement Richard's single hurriedly made suit of mourning declared that he dared not undertake to do it, because even with these long May evenings he and his workpeople were still sitting crosslegged by candlelight to finish the fine new clothes ordered for his brother, the King. And one morning, while wandering among the roses in the Abbot's peaceful little garden, Elizabeth caught sight of the Duke of Gloucester himself crossing a courtyard towards the Star Chamber, accompanied by a posse of important people. “They must be making final arrangements for the fifth,” she reported to her family.

“I wish that I could see the procession! I wish that I could ride my horse again!” fretted Richard.

All morning the great doors of the Chamber remained fast shut, but, the day being warm, the windows stood open, and lay brothers working in the Abbot's garden could overhear voices raised in angry debate. And before noon it began to look as though, after all, Richard would have his wish. For after the meeting many of the clergy came to wait upon the Queen. This time it was the Archbishop of Canterbury who led them, and the Primate's face was grave. “The peers of the realm feel it to be only fitting that his Grace the Duke of York should be present at his brother's coronation,” he told her without preamble, as soon as he had given them all his blessing.

“But surely you forbade it! Are we not under your protection here?” cried the Queen.

“No one can touch you, my daughter. Neither you nor our two elder Princesses, who are young women and of marriageable age,” he assured her. “But in spite of milord Hastings' objection and of all our arguments it has been decided in council that the term sanctuary cannot apply to children who are too young to sin. With a great hair-splitting of legal deduction it appears to have been proved that since they are incapable of guilt they stand in no need of the Church's protection.”

The Queen sprang to her feet white with fury. “It is a trick! A dastardly trick to get Richard into his uncle's hands. And only one brain could have conceived it,” she declared.

“Perhaps only with the very proper purpose of having him ride in the procession, Madam,” suggested John Morton, Bishop of Ely, trying to calm her.

“Once Gloucester has him he will not let him go,” she countered. “Is not his purpose clear? Do they bother to ask for Ann or Katherine or my baby Bridget?”

“Gloucester is now free to take him by force,” the Archbishop reminded her.

“He shall not—the child is sick,” lied the cornered Queen.

“But we of the Church want no violence,” he went on, ignoring her desperate mendacity. “And should your Grace give in with good heart to the Duke's wishes he is the more likely to deal leniently with Lord Rivers and Sir Richard Grey.”

“You mean that I must be reduced to choosing between the safety of this or that dear one?”

“He has not said so,” admitted the Primate. “Come, Madam, I think you are sadly prejudiced against him. In this matter he has common sense on his side. For apart from the fact that the people would want to see the Duke of York at the coronation, I pray you consider how heavy a burden and how great a loneliness our late Sovereign's death and your removal here have laid upon the King, who himself is little more than a child. Milord Protector, who visits him every day, says that he languishes for his brother as a playmate.”

Elizabeth, who so seldom put herself forward and who had accounted her mother's extreme suspicion as foolishness, found herself rushing in in loyal support. “Can no one else be found for him to play with? What of the young Earl of Warwick,” she suggested. “Would he not do as well, being our late Uncle Clarence's son?”

The Archbishop ceased to be solemn and shook his head smilingly, for, unlike her mother, Elizabeth had no unfortunate knack of annoying people. “Apart from the fact that he is up in Warwick Castle, I fear your brother would find him but poor company,” he said. “For as you know, my dear Elizabeth, he is but simple in the wits, having been born in that bad storm at sea.”

“More likely because his treacherous father was fuddled with malmsey when he was begetting him!” scoffed the Queen. “I would not have my poor son lonely, but surely, as my daughter says, some other lads of his own age can be found for him. He might even be more contented so,” she added, searching feverishly in her mind for yet more excuses, “for it is a known fact that children quarrel most with their own kindred.”

“Oh, Bess, when did Ned and I ever quarrel?” whispered Richard indignantly, drawing his sister away from their arguing elders.

Elizabeth smiled down at him, knowing his sweet disposition. And understanding how bad it was for him to hear himself being the bone of so much contention, she went with him to join the other children. “All the same,” he added apprehensively, “I no longer want to go.”

“But you will have a new doublet and hose and ride in the lovely procession, Dickon, and see the City all decorated,” said Ann enviously.

“Probably Bundy will bring you a new cob and you will ride next behind Edward with Uncle Gloucester,” said Elizabeth.

“And when you get back to the Tower you will be able to see all the lions and bears and tigers in the menagerie there,” added Cicely, goodnaturedly gathering round with the others to cheer him. “Don't you remember telling us how Dorset took you and Edward to see them fed and even showed you how the keepers shot the bolts of their cages?”

“Why, yes, it was as interesting as the printing press, and there was an ingenious kind of master bolt that could be worked from outside in case they turned savage,” recalled Richard, his alert young brain being easily diverted by such things.

“You said they were called the King's beasts, so they must be Ned's very own lions now,” lisped Katherine, round-eyed with awe.

“Yes, poppet, but I don't suppose he is allowed to go and look at them. Our half-brother isn't Constable of the Tower any more,” remembered Richard forlornly.

“Why not?” demanded Ann, who had entertained hopes of being taken to see the fearsome lions herself.

“Because one of the first things Uncle Gloucester did when he reached London was to relieve Dorset of his command and to put Sir Robert Brackenbury in his place,” Elizabeth told her.

“Well, Sir Robert is very kind,” said Cicely. “Perhaps
he
will show them to you, Dickon.”

The idea seemed to cheer him for a while, but their mother was still arguing with the beautifully arrayed churchmen. “Brothers have been brothers' bane, so how can nephews be sure of their uncles?” they could hear her contending in that penetrating voice of hers. “And I have such deadly enemies.”

Whatever they thought, it seemed they were too pitiful to remind her that she herself had made most of them. “Madam, though this forward generation may nibble at our privileges, Holy Church is not without considerable power,” the Archbishop comforted her.

“I know well your good intent and believe you can keep them safe if you will,” agreed the Queen at last, with a profound sigh. “But if you think that I fear overmuch, take care that you, milords, do not fear too little!” She called Richard to her and, placing a hand on either of his shoulders, gave him a little push towards them. “To your care I commit him—Richard, Duke of York, the late King's younger son—and of your hands before God and man I shall require him again.”

Frightened by her anguish and by the churchmen's solemn faces, Richard felt the budding manhood he had clung to so desperately deserting him. He turned his back on them and caught at her dress. For weeks her foolishly outspoken fears had been playing upon his sensitive nerves, sapping his courage; and now some nameless terror was being conjured up before him. She held him tightly to her, his head against her heart. “God send you good keeping,” she prayed, the tears raining down her face. Then, cupping his troubled face in both her beautiful jewelled hands, she bent to kiss him with prophetic passion. “Kiss me before we part, my sweet son, for God knows when we two shall kiss together again!”

And because she wept Richard wept too, and they clung together so that the gentle Abbot had perforce to part them. The Queen turned away, covering her eyes with a dramatic gesture and leaving the boy sobbing alone in the midst of them. It was one of those devastating scenes which the Woodville Queen seemed almost involuntarily to create.

After a moment or two the Archbishop of Canterbury cleared his throat. “Your uncle is waiting in the Painted Gallery to welcome your Grace with all kindness,” he told Richard, and at the gently spoken words the boy straightened himself. Uncle Gloucester, like his father, was a soldier and would stand for no womanish tears. His sister watched them go down the long hall to the door together, the prelate with an arm about the young Duke's shoulder so that his splendidly embroidered vestments seemed to be covering him like a protective wing.

And suddenly all the Queen's foreboding sprang to life in Elizabeth's heart. She would have given anything to hold him back—done anything to keep him. Seeing how bravely he was trying to play the man, she wanted desperately to say something to comfort him, to tell him how dearly she loved him. But no adequate words came to her. It was as if, surfeited with the prodigality of her mother's emotion, all expression of her own were damned. “Don't forget the lions, Dickon!” she called out cheerfully as he passed her.

He did not answer her, and she could have bitten her tongue for producing such an inanity. The great oak door at the end of the room was thrown open. A shaft of sunlight from outside shone all about her small brother, glinting on his red-gold hair and making a charming silhouette of his slender figure in its sad black velvet. And in the doorway he stopped, disengaging himself courteously from the Archbishop's protective arm. And to her great joy he turned and smiled at her, answering the unconscious fervour of love in her eyes.

Then there was the sharp thud of pikes as the guard outside sprang to attention, and, although the warm spring sun still shone, he was gone.