The Uncrowned Queen (56 page)

Holy? He looked more like a murderer than a saint.

It was a warm night also within the Palace of Westminster but, as the long dusk deepened and night came down, there was no rest for the queen. She'd last seen the king when, after coursing for hares in the grounds of the palace, he'd decided to visit his favorite hunting birds to see how they were faring in the heat of this summer.

Time slipped away and the hour for evening prayers and supper loomed ever closer, yet still the king did not return. So that she would not be shamed by Edward's absence from the public events to come, the queen instructed her ladies to tell the king's chamberlain, Hastings—newly returned from a mysterious six days' absence from court—that she was suddenly ill. The court could shift for itself tonight; she would not be present at its revels.

Behind the barred doors of the queen consort's opulent range of rooms in Westminster Palace, the queen's body-servants and her ladies of the bed chamber prepared Elizabeth Wydeville for sleep. First her silver-gilt hair was unpinned, let down, and brushed with ivory-backed horsehair brushes. Then her women sectioned the flowing mass and polished each hank with silk until it glowed. After which, braids were fashioned into a crown for the night. This ritual was conducted in silence since the queen had forbidden them to speak.

Reverently, the women removed the queen's day clothes and dressed her in a sleeping gown. Ever fashionable, Elizabeth Wydeville
had decided to adopt this new mode from Italy. While she knew her body was still fair—she had the largest silver mirror in England to tell her so—she worried what the king thought when he saw her fully naked. Since Edward had returned and they had been reconciled—it seemed only she remembered the long months of brooding estrangement even before he'd fled the country—she'd been tempted to insist that all candle flames be first extinguished when he came to her bed. But that was tedious, and a passion killer. Edward did not enjoy coy women.

Therefore, the silk sleeping gown, semi-diaphanous and artfully arranged to reveal just a glimpse of flesh. With it Elizabeth had regained confidence that she could still provoke her husband's lust. She believed she'd proved it to her own satisfaction, and his, several times since he'd returned to their kingdom. Now she was not so certain. Perhaps it had been duty alone that had brought him to her.

“Go!” Elizabeth Wydeville clapped her hands after the last of her rings was removed. A giant pearl nested among diamonds, it was a belated gift from the king rewarding her for the birth of their son. “All of you, go. I will sleep alone.”

One by one her seven attendant ladies and each of the thirteen body-servants descended into curtsies, bending their heads and bodies before the queen. They would stay there, knees creaking, until Elizabeth gave them the signal to rise. A petty tyranny, this, but one she employed when feeling out of sorts—such as when the king chose to be absent without cause. Such as tonight.

In the early days of Edward's reign a clutch of lady companions and six or seven body-servants had sufficed to tend Elizabeth, sleeping and waking. Now that the queen's fortunes were restored, she considered thirteen body-servants to be the minimum number she could accept. Thirteen was the number of the blessed Apostles plus the Lord himself, she said. Vanity incarnate was the whisper about the court; an aging body in need of special, extra services to keep her beauty unnaturally bright, they said.

“You may rise.”

It was profound relief to unlock shaking knees and stand
again. Even the queen's mother, the duchess Jacquetta, had not been spared since she'd been present in the queen's rooms tonight.

“Not you, Mother. Stay with me until I sleep.”

The duchess felt her heart descend deeper in her chest—a physical sensation brought on by the shining malice in her daughter's glance.

“Come, sit with me.”

The newly restored queen of England patted the coverlet of her bed companionably. This moment, observed by anyone outside the knowing circle of the court, might seem like the careless intimacy of any daughter, any mother. Jacquetta knew differently. Elizabeth wanted something.

The duchess sat gingerly on one corner of the great bed, some distance from the queen, her daughter.

“Closer. We can't speak properly if you're all that distance away. Here. Sit here.” The queen patted the surface of the embroidered counterpane again.

The duchess stood and swallowed a sigh. Smoothing the floating billows of her skirts—a rich, flattering black (not actual mourning, of course, just because it suited her)—she trailed to her daughter's side, all whispering silk, and sat where indicated. For a moment there was silence between them, then the queen beckoned Jacquetta even closer. “What have you heard, Mother? Tell me.”

The command was clear. Nervously, the duchess glanced around the vast and empty room. There was one open casement in the range of windows that looked down upon the river, however the sluggish air around the bed was undisturbed, for it lay fully twelve cloth yards distant. The casement was much too far away for them to be overheard, all supposing an athletic spy could have scaled the walls from the river terrace more than thirty feet below. The queen saw where her mother was looking and narrowed her eyes. She nodded. “Close it, certainly. We can't be too careful.”

The duchess dreaded being her daughter's confidante. Time was, when Elizabeth had first come to court, that Jacquetta had welcomed and fostered every evidence of intimacy she could persuade from her daughter, for they'd all risen together, all the
Wydevilles, out of the queen's miraculous marriage to Edward Plantagenet. But as time passed, and especially after the recent upheavals, the queen's mother had become deeply anxious about Elizabeth's increasing reliance on her for personal support.

Ten months since Edward had lost his throne, nearly six since he'd regained it, and in that time Elizabeth had become utterly paranoid about the motives of those who surrounded her. She'd decided that the members of her family were her only true allies, but there was a danger in this too. To be close to the queen, part of the suite of courtiers who saw her every day, was to become trapped in a breathing, dark miasma of relentless suspicion, and no one was immune.

Elizabeth's paranoia had grown even greater since the longed-for return of the king to London. She'd become convinced, rightly, that most court women actively sought to seduce Edward Plantagenet. In response, Elizabeth had forced her mother to spy within the court, driving the duchess to secure information that she, the wife of the king, could not. But it was never enough. Elizabeth Wydeville never knew enough, never heard enough. Tonight's intimacies between mother and daughter were the marker of that.

Duchess Jacquetta struggled to pull the heavy casement closed and retraced her steps to the queen's bed. She looked dispassionately at her daughter's face. Perhaps the queen's anxiety was justified. Even by candlelight, fine lines were clear beside Elizabeth's eyes and there were the first faint creases on the upper lip, the dreaded “purse strings.”

“What are you looking at?” The queen was sharp; she'd seen her mother's appraising glance.

For once, the duchess spoke unvarnished truth. “I was thinking, daughter, that you must control your scowls. You should smile more. Though gently, of course. As it is, you use your face too much and in ways that are not flattering.”

Fear turned the queen's eyes black. “What are you saying?”

“Lines, my daughter. On your face. I can see them clearly tonight. Relics of your bad temper, I fear. Soon they will not smooth away with the morning.”

“One has only to gaze on your face, Mother, to understand my
fate in time.” Soft as poisoned cream. Mother and daughter smiled at each other as tension crackled between them. “But what have you heard? Where is the king?”

Jacquetta thought for a moment that she might avoid telling what she knew—if only for her daughter's peace of mind—but in the end there was little point postponing the inevitable. Elizabeth would force her to tell, one way or another.

“He's been followed since he left the palace this evening, though I'd thought to spare you this.”

The queen almost frowned, and then remembered to smile. She sat up straighter. “And so?”

“He was alone; he took a horse from the stables in the late afternoon when he received a message.” The duchess held up one hand to her daughter's look of inquiry. “No, I don't know what it said. He rode straight to that troublesome mercer's house.”

Nuns' fingers had worked for months to embroider the queen's new and delicate sheets, but her hands twisted the precious fabric into a bundle of creases. “Mathew Cuttifer and his sanctimonious wife. And then?”

Duchess Jacquetta of Luxembourg took a very deep breath. “He left there not long afterward, when it was close to dark. He had a woman with him and they were riding together on his horse. They went down beside the river to a private house. That is all I know.”

The queen's face was chalk white in the gloom of her bed. Her voice struck like a whip. “No. There is more, I can tell. What is it?”

Jacquetta grimaced. The queen was, after all, her own daughter. And she was suffering. “Ah, my child…”

She would not say it if she could avoid it, but Elizabeth Wydeville fixed her mother with a cool eye.

“Go on, Mother. Tell me. You must tell me if I command you to. I am the queen.”

“Very well. Since you desire to know. The king and that woman are both still there, at this house. The gates are locked and the lights have been put out.”

The queen repeated the words as if tasting them. “The lights have been put out.” Suddenly, she turned on her side and began to sob. The duchess was struck with pity and fear both. If the queen
fell, if she lost the king's favor, perhaps the house of Wydeville would fall as well. She leaned across and stroked her daughter's brow.

“There, daughter, there. It's not so bad. This woman is plainly just a doxy. When has he ever spared more than a day or two for a doxy? You are the queen. The mother of his son.”

Elizabeth turned to face her mother so fast she was a striking snake. Hers were tears of rage, not desolation.

“It's her; it has to be. Anne de Bohun; she's the mother of his eldest son. And he loves her, not me.”

It took a moment for Jacquetta to gather her wits. “But, child, kings have had bastards before and they will again. You are Edward's legitimate wife. Love of the kind you fear does not last. Position does.”

The queen turned on her side once more.

“Go away, Mother. You don't understand. You just don't understand.”

“Wake, my darling. They've rung the bells for tierce. It's morning.”

And it was. Blissful morning. Anne stretched langorously in the disordered bed as light filtered through her closed lids. Then she sat up, shocked. “The Cuttifers!”

The king stopped tying the points on his breeches. He laughed and leaned across the naked girl to kiss away the strand of hair that had fallen across one soft breast. Then he stood and stretched, his eyes roaming this beloved woman, tumbled and supple in the chaos of the sheets. It was a deeply satisfying sight. Unbidden, his belly contracted as images of the last, long night provoked his senses once more.

Would he put his shirt on? No. He sat on the edge of the bed, half-dressed.

“All is well, my darling. They've received word.”

Anne was worried. She covered her body, determined to preserve modesty, belatedly. “What word? What did you tell them?”

“That you were praying for your sins with the good sisters at Sion and would not be back for some days.”

Anne yelped. “Some days? Edward, that is a terrible lie! I must dress.” She swung her legs out of the bed. But she wasn't quick enough. Casually, the king leaned forward and pushed the girl down against the pillows, catching her wrists in his hands. He was
not especially gentle. Anne protested and the sheet fell down most engagingly in the little tussle. Edward held her arms wide.