A Dangerous Inheritance (21 page)

“How is Jane taking this?” I ask her.

“I did not see her. Your father broke it to her that she was no longer Queen, and himself tore down the canopy of estate from above her head. She took it well, saying she put off her royal robes far more willingly than she had put them on—and then she asked if she could come home. At that, knowing he had to do all he could to preserve our lives and fortunes, your father left her, and went to Tower Hill, where he proclaimed Queen Mary. Then we made all speed to return here.”

They had escaped and left Jane behind. They
had
abandoned her to her fate. That made two of us they had used for their own ends and ruined. Suddenly I am no longer a child, unquestioningly accepting the wisdom of my elders; suddenly I have become aware that they have feet of clay.

My lady is pacing up and down now, her muddied train swishing behind her.

“Where is my father?” I ask.

“He has gone into hiding,” she tells me. “It is better for you that you do not know where. If the Queen’s men question you, you can say with truth that you have no idea where he is. But it will not come to that.”

“Why?” I ask.

“Because I am going to the Queen! I am going to plead for Jane and for your father, and convince her that they were forced by Northumberland to act against their wishes. Northumberland is finished. His
capture is only a matter of time. Nothing I say now can make any difference to his fate.”

“But what of me and Harry?” I cry. “Will you not plead for us, my lady?”

“You must have patience. There are matters far more pressing, and you are not the only one to be abandoned. Your sister Mary has been repudiated by Lord Grey.”

“That is no loss to her! Harry and I love each other, and it is a fit match. We are wed in the sight of God!”

My mother’s eyes narrow. “Sometimes one has to achieve what one wants by subtle means. If I can persuade the Queen to pardon your father, and she takes him into favor, as I pray she will, then Pembroke will know it, and your marriage may be mended.”

My heart feels instantly lighter. There is, after all, hope, something I abandoned forever earlier when I left Baynard’s Castle. How strangely that wheel of fortune revolves. All may not yet be lost! My mother is still my mother, fierce, omnipotent, and capable. Once again she is in control, and the world may right itself—and my sweet Harry and I may be reunited.

June 22–26, 1483; Baynard’s Castle, London

“Never, in all my days, did I think to hear that vile calumny again!” the Duchess Cecily stormed, her habitual calm shattered. She had burst into the solarium like an outraged black crow. “Conceived in adultery, eh? How could he do this to me? It is Clarence all over again. Was ever a mother so betrayed by her sons?”

Anne hastened to comfort the old lady, who crumpled in her arms as Kate looked on helplessly. Cecily was breathing heavily, and Kate feared she might collapse or die.

“Now, my lady,” Anne said, “pray tell us what has happened.”

“My chamberlain has just returned from Paul’s Cross, where he
goes every week to hear the Sunday sermons,” the duchess related, less agitated now, but still angry. “Today, it was the mayor’s brother, Dr. Shaa, who mounted the pulpit. And do you know what he took as his text? ‘
The multiplying brood of the ungodly shall not thrive, nor take deep rooting from bastard slips.
’ ” The duchess was shaking. “He has corrupted that preacher, who did not blush to say, in the face of all decency, that the sons of King Edward should be instantly eradicated, for neither could be a legitimate king, nor could King Edward’s issue ever be so.”

Anne’s hand flew to her mouth.

“Who has corrupted Dr. Shaa?” she cried.

“My son—your husband,” the old lady said contemptuously. “That I should live to see yet another day when my own blood should so shamelessly slander me!”

“Oh, sweet Jesus!” exclaimed Anne. “Tell me what exactly was said, I beg of you. Do not spare me the details.”

The duchess snorted. “That priest had the effrontery to claim that my son, King Edward, was the fruit of my adultery—and was in every way unlike my husband York. Then he said that Richard, who altogether resembles his father, should come to the throne as the legitimate successor. It was then that Richard—I will not call him my son anymore, for he is no son of mine—it was then that he made an appearance with Buckingham, but they had miscalculated the mood of the crowd, who booed and jeered at them, and yelled at Shaa that he was a traitor. How can I ever show my face in public again, after Richard has publicly insulted and slandered me?”

Anne knelt beside her. She spoke gently. “You can, because nothing can rob you of your good fame and virtue, dear madam. You can hold your head high because everyone will know you have been unjustly slandered.”

“It is not to be borne!” Cecily raged.

“You should lie down. This has been too much for you. Let me assist you to your bed.”

“Lie down?” the duchess retorted. “Nay, I am going to the Tower to see Richard and demand an explanation, and then I am going to complain to all the noblemen who will hear me of the great injury that he
has done me. Nay, do not think to prevent me. I will have my chariot made ready now.”

“Are you sure this is the best course, my lady?” Anne asked.

“It is the only course,” the duchess answered emphatically. “Richard owes me filial obedience and honor, and I will remind him of that!”

Anne exchanged glances with Kate, whose mind was in turmoil. This could not be happening. The duchess’s chamberlain must surely have made a dreadful mistake.

Her grandmother stalked out of the room, an outraged and determined figure in black. When she had gone, Anne said nothing; she just went over to the window and gazed out at the Thames.

“This slander is no new thing,” she said. “Your uncle of Clarence and my father Warwick dreamed it up many years ago when they were plotting to overthrow King Edward. You see, they hated the Queen and the Wydevilles. My father thought that he, the greatest nobleman in the realm, should be the King’s chief counselor, and he resented the Wydevilles bitterly, as did many other lords. So there was a rebellion, and King Edward was deposed and fled abroad. When he came back, there was a big battle at Barnet.” Her voice trailed away. “My father was killed. Of course, no one believed the slander about your grandmother. My father and Clarence had claimed that she’d betrayed York with a common archer called Blaybourne, but it was mere propaganda; there was no truth in it. What made it doubly shocking was that it was her son Clarence who put this tale about. And now, it seems, another son has repeated the slander.”

“But why? Why would my father do that to his own mother?”

“Because,” Anne said, sighing, “he wants to be King. I have long suspected it.”

Kate sat stony-faced, listening, unwilling to believe what she was hearing.

“There was something that did not ring true about those weapons that my lord claimed the Queen’s party were plotting to use against him,” Anne went on. “Some say they had been placed at the ready before the King’s death, for use against the Scots. And then there was poor Lord Hastings, who was hurried to his death barely shriven, and without trial. What is that, Kate, but tyranny?”

“But it is my father of whom you speak,” Kate protested.

“And my husband, who has become as a stranger to me!” Anne cried, showing rare passion. “I have loved him, as God is my witness, and I have been a good and true wife to him, but I do not know him anymore.”

Truly her father had changed: he was no longer the gentle and loving lord of Middleham, but Kate loved him still and would defend him to the last. She could not believe all this of him, even though Anne—trustworthy, honest Anne—was saying it.

“He is weighed down with the cares of his office,” she insisted to her stepmother. “His very life is in danger. I’m sure he truly believed that those weapons would be used against him. And maybe—maybe—he believes too that there is truth in the slander against my granddam. Wicked people may have persuaded him …”

“He is no fool,” Anne declared. “He can make up his own mind and not be swayed by persuasion. If he believes it, it is because he wants to believe it.”

“How can you say such a thing of my father?” Kate retaliated, weeping. “He is a good man, and you should know! And maybe it
is
true about my granddam and that archer!” And she hurried from the solarium to the sanctuary of her chamber.

Kate did not see her grandmother until dinner the following day, and then Cecily did not refer to her meeting with the duke; she just ate her sparse meal silently, listening to her chaplain, who always read aloud from devotional books during mealtimes. Anne sat beside Kate, toying with her food as usual, although none of them had much appetite. Kate would not look her way. She was still very upset at what her stepmother had said the previous day. When dinner was over, and Cecily had retreated to her chapel, Kate got up and left too, sketching the briefest of curtseys to the Duchess Anne before going out into the garden, where she sat brooding under a tree.

The mood in the house did not lighten that week. The Duchess Cecily would not be drawn out on what had happened in the Tower—“That is between the duke and me,” she said reprovingly—and Anne kept her distance. Kate sensed that Anne was somehow disappointed
in her when, really, it should have been the other way around. But she would not, could not, believe any ill of her father.

There had still been no word about the coronation. London seethed, packed with restless, suspicious citizens, and lords and gentlemen, up from the country, complained about the delay and the ruinous cost of staying indefinitely in the capital. When Kate and Mattie gave their elders the slip, and slunk past the gateward to go to the market at Smithfield, even though they had been warned it was not safe to go out, they became aware that the City was alive with rumors and gossip. The latest word was that the Duke of Buckingham had gone to the Guildhall to address the mayor, and many Londoners were making their way there to find out what was going on. Kate and Mattie went along with them, and were among the crowds who watched Buckingham emerge and go his way. Then the mayor and his aldermen and sheriffs came out, and were immediately besieged by the mob, demanding to know what the duke had said. But Kate hung back. She was afraid of being crushed in the press—and of what she might hear.

Mattie had no such qualms. She pushed her way nearly to the front, and because she was so pretty, most of the men let her through, one or two pinching her bottom as she sidled past. Kate’s last view of her maid was of the girl giving a saucy grin to an apprentice. But when Mattie came back, she was no longer grinning.

“Let’s go somewhere quiet, my lady,” she urged. “There are things you should know.” Something in her face made Kate catch her breath; she guessed that what Mattie had to tell her would not be easy to hear.

They escaped into the quietness of the nearby church of St. Lawrence Jewry. There was no one there except for an old woman on her knees near the altar, so they sat on a bench at the back and Mattie talked in hushed tones.

“The Lord Mayor said Buckingham had come to tell them that my lord of Gloucester should be their rightful king.”

Kate clapped her hand to her mouth to stifle a gasp, and Mattie laid a kindly hand on hers. “There’s more, my lady. The mayor said my lord of Buckingham had spoken so well that all who heard him marveled, and that he said that he wasn’t going to say anything about the
bastardy of King Edward, since the Lord Protector bore a filial reverence toward his mother. Then he said that King Edward had been secretly precontracted to another lady when he wed the Queen, so that the marriage to the Queen was no lawful marriage, and their children are bastards, so the poor little King in the Tower has no right to the crown. You can imagine the uproar when the crowd heard that.”

Kate could not take this in. “Who was the lady to whom King Edward had been precontracted?”

“Lady Eleanor somebody,” Mattie supplied. “I couldn’t hear properly, as people were muttering all around, some saying it couldn’t be true.”

It couldn’t be, could it? But surely her father would not have made this public without knowing it to be an indisputable fact?

They hastened back to Baynard’s Castle. Kate was coming to terms with what she had learned, and she could also feel a rising sense of excitement, even relief. For at thirteen it was a fine prospect to be the daughter of a king, and bastard though she was, she would still be a very important young lady. At last all had been made clear: the reason for her father’s long absence in the Tower, when he had surely been investigating these matters; the worrying rumors she had heard, which she now knew to be based on ignorant people’s mistaken assumptions; and the reason why the duke’s enemies had feared him. It was no wonder, for they had had much to hide! He had uncovered a dreadful scandal, but his ascension of the throne would put everything to rights, restoring the legitimate heir and retrieving the honor of the House of York.

She had been right not to doubt her father.

That evening the Duke of Gloucester came to Baynard’s Castle to dine with his family. He was once again wearing sober black garments, although they were of the most sumptuous velvet and damask. He looked tense, but was clearly making an effort to be good company. Toward the Duchess Cecily, he was more than courteous and considerate, as if to make amends for the injury he had done her, but the duchess remained frosty. Anne allowed him to embrace and kiss her when
he had raised her from her curtsey, yet she too stayed aloof, her manner remote and cool.

No sooner had dinner been served than the Duchess Cecily broke the ice. “Do the people believe this precontract story?” she asked suddenly.

“They must believe it, for it is the truth,” the duke said.

“That does not answer my question. A king must be accepted by his people. If they question his title, how is he to command their obedience?”

The duke was visibly riled by that. “You think I am seeking a crown,” he said. “I assure you, I know it is no child’s office. I do not want it, but I will accept it if the people press me to it.”