A Secret Alchemy (36 page)

Mark holds me. I can’t speak or even see much. “It’s all right, Una. Cry if you want to. It’s all right…”

He holds me so that I don’t even think that it’s his arms, that it’s not Adam, just that I’m safe.

I don’t know how long it is, but at last I can hear rooks cawing and smell the peaty wind coming to us over the fields.

“Do you want to go?” he says gently, loosening his hold, so I can pull a tissue from my jeans pocket, but not letting go.

I give my nose a last wipe. “I’m fine. Thank you…I’m just so glad you’ll do it. Shall we go and find the church? I like the sound of the tombs.”

Elysabeth—the 1st yr of the reign of King Richard the Third

I had no hope, yet hope would not die. How could I hope, when all
reports told of my boys’ servants dismissed? How could I believe they lived, when the word was they were not seen even at the Tower windows seeking a breeze that might thin the stench of London’s heat? How could I not believe them dead, who had
known what the sons of York had done to Henry of Lancaster, or their own George of Clarence? Thus did I try to kill all hope that my boys still lived.

But it would not die, not mine, or my girls’.

“My uncle Clarence’s children are kept close for fear of their royal blood,” Bess said once. “Perhaps Ned and Dickon are but kept closer still. At Middleham or Sheriff Hutton. We would not hear reports from there. Ned was ever a good boy who would do as he was told. He would not plot, or try to escape.”

How could he plot? I would think. He is but a child. But I said nothing.

Antony and my son Richard Grey I mourned with tears and prayers, and bitter anger too, for, though I had agreed to a poor escort in bringing Ned to London, it was they who lost my Ned to our enemy. And had they not lost him, Dickon might yet be safe as well. But I was bitterly angry with myself also. Had I not given Dickon up, as surely as a mother who leaves her babe naked in the woods, when I could have kept him safe? Sometimes I thought my grief and rage and fear would tear me in two along the scars of sorrow for my husband John, for my father, my brother John, for Edward, for my babies Mary and George.

They are with God. But for Ned and little Dickon I could not bring myself to say,
“Requiescat in pacem.”
Whatever they suffered, I could not hold them. I could not even know. And I had delivered them to that suffering. But I would not believe them killed; I must believe them alive, imprisoned, fearful at every hour for their lives, perhaps, but living still.

Sometimes the turn of Cecily’s head would make the light fall across her face so that it might have been Ned who stood by the window, singing a catch under his breath. Sometimes when I held
Katherine on my knee, patting her better from a tumble or telling my mother’s tale of
le petit chaperon rouge
, the smell of her neck and her small warmth in my arms made me seem to be holding Dickon.

“And what do you think the little girl did when she saw it was a wolf in her grandmother’s bed?”

“Tied him up,” said Katherine.

“That’s right. She was a clever little girl,” I said, holding her close.

But Katherine wriggled off my knee and left my arms empty. “Where’s Dickon? He want his knights back to kill the wolf.”

“Dickon’s safe with Ned,” I said. “God will look after them.”

“When will we see them?” Anne asked, as she had asked so often before. “Are they truly safe?”

Anne was eight by then, not a child for much longer, and lies now would serve her ill. “I know not. I pray so. We must all pray,” I said, but could say no more.

But as the yellowing leaves dropped under the weight of the autumn rains, as sleet slashed past the windows and the lamps must be lit before a stitch could be set, she ceased to ask.

Even by day there was little enough to keep my fears and my crazed hopes at bay. I had no household. We lived on the Abbot’s charity, even for food and firing, and the girls squabbled and fought for idleness and lack of bodily exercise. I would not let them fall into lethargy, though, and every morning they set to on their lessons: law, and accounting, and the ruling of a household. Even their stitchery was practical, for their linen must be mended. Bess was translating
Le Chanson de Roland
into Italian, and Cecily had vowed to learn by heart Antony’s
Dictes and Sayings of the Philosophers
in memory of her uncle. Anne cared little for her book, and had to be bribed and beaten to learn even a few
pages of
The Life of Saint Francis
, though I had thought the tales of the animals he tamed would delight her. Katherine cared more for swords than needles but a knight we met in the sanctuary garden—taking refuge on account of what crime I did not ask—taught her a sword dance, and she would sit with her hornbook long enough if I said she might get the swords out afterwards. Baby Bridget was slow to speak, and must be helped to learn her prayers. In the afternoon we danced, or played at shuttlecock or bowls, or anything that stretched their limbs, made them laugh and leap, and brought a glow to their cheeks. In the evening we played at cards and chess. At prayers we prayed for my boys, but I could not bring myself to say
Nunc Dimittis
.

Cramped and confined as we were, if one sickened we all did: an ague or a quinsy throat quickly overtook us all, slack as our bodies were with enforced idleness. Idleness bred fears in my mind, too. What would become of the girls if I were to die? And whether I lived or died, who would protect them? Who would marry them honorably? Failing her brothers, my beautiful Bess was the true heiress of England, and Cecily after her, and both were of an age and more to be married. Bess was our hope, and that was her greatest danger. Would she be a pawn as Warwick’s girls had been, the weight of their father’s ambition all but drowning them? Be brought to bed like Isobel on a tossing ship barred from harbor and the child die? Forced into marriage to seal the bond between enemies, as her sister Ann was to Queen Marguerite’s boy? Most men think Isobel was poisoned and not by the woman that was hanged for it but by her husband, George of Clarence. And now Ann, we heard even in sanctuary, was mortally sick and Richard Gloucester urgent to be free of his wife that he might marry some great princess now that he called himself King.

And in Bess I saw another danger too: in how she moved, in the way she hid in a corner to read yet again of Lancelot and Guinevere, in how she watched a new novice in the Abbey garden or the urgent gaze of a messenger, in some small gestures when she thought I slept. She was eager for the pleasures of her marriage bed. I could read her thoughts, the heat that burned in her, the flesh that yearned for a man’s hand, because these things I once knew so well in myself. So many marriage plans we had made for her when her father was alive: she knew her value, and that of her maidenhead. But now, with no hope of marriage, how could I be sure her desires might not prove too strong for her virtue? We were cabined, dull, so weary of one another that even the air of our chambers was stale with boredom; a new face quickened our spirits for an hour or a day. I could see how to Bess—full of a woman’s desire but with no hunting or merrymaking to still it, no flirting to relieve it—the blush of a stammering novice or the bow and smile of a gentleman messenger was like strong wine. There was little that could happen in secret, so little privacy had any of us, but even a rumor that she was not chaste, creeping out into the court at Westminster and beyond, could do infinite harm to our cause.

So it was not only to make us safe that I began to lay our plans, it was also to give my girls a reason to be patient. And we could lay plans in sanctuary, for none could prevent Margaret Beaufort’s doctor visiting me. We were careful, but messages came and went: offers of help, counsel, small steps toward safety and freedom. By this route I heard, at last, that my son Thomas Grey and brother Edward were safe in Brittany, with Margaret’s son Henry of Richmond. There was much to arrange, and much to hope for.

But by night there was nothing to ease my terrors. Often I took Bess or Cecily into my bed, that I might find the strength to stop
my tears and even take some comfort in their young scent and the quiet of their breathing. But still I would lie listening to the soldiers stamping and calling beyond the sanctuary walls. Each unaccustomed sound—shouts, a horse ridden hard, the rumble of wheels—made me lie rigid, straining my ears for what might be toward. To be the cause of such a desecration would be a crime, a sin it would be hard to bear. Even silence, when I expected the watch to be calling, made me sweat, for Richard might choose to seize us by stealth rather than make a public show of strength against mere women. But they would not kill us, surely. Even Richard of Gloucester could not do such a deed, could he? And yet, even so must Antony have thought, on the long, hard road to Sheriff Hutton. Would we be forced to take the same road?

And when at last my weariness was stronger than my fears, the nightmares began. Like black-winged demons they showed me what the day denied: the manner of my boys’ dying. Night after night I heard their cries, knew their choking in my own throat—blood, wine, or bitter cloths—felt their arms clutch for mine, and be dragged away.

It was a relief to wake, even with sore eyes and aching flesh, though by day the night’s terrors still hovered in the dark edges of my mind. And even by daylight fear and grief for my boys lay in my heart, as heavy as lead. The days wore on, and we lived almost as straitly as if we were indeed in prison.

Still, we planned. It was my sweet, smiling baby Bridget who found the lucky bean in the Twelfth Night cake, and sat clapping her hands with her paper crown awry as her sisters danced. On the morrow the first part of my plan was accomplished, when we heard that on Christmas Day in Rouen, my old friend Margaret Beaufort’s boy Henry Tudor, Earl of Richmond, had been
betrothed to Bess. For all that Richard of Gloucester—for I would not call him King—had declared my marriage to Edward void, and my children bastards, the last of the Lancasters would marry the heiress of York. The invasion would take time to plan, but it would come.

On the day after that I woke, and knew that I must act as if my boys were indeed dead, and Bess the rightful Queen of England.

She nodded. “If you…think it best, madam, so be it. I wish we had not come to this.”

“I know. But wishing will not bring them back from…wherever they are. We must work as we can.” I wiped my eyes. “Besides, when your brother was born, you hit Mal when she said you were no longer Princess of Wales.”

She smiled. “Did I? I had forgotten. It will be good to be in the world again. Sometimes I hate this place so much that it’s as if I’m being smothered. I want to scream, but my gorge rises until I could not.”

“We cannot help your brothers now. But I will not leave until I know it is safe. Not if we must stay here till Doomsday.”

She sighed and, after a moment, turned away to the window. Snow lay on the sill, but she forced open the casement and let in a draught of icy air, which made the flames of the fire shiver. I did not reprove her. How often had I opened a window, just so that I might believe our cage not made all of iron?

Not so much iron as steel. Always, beyond the walls, we could hear and see the soldiers, waiting for us: the clang of pikes, the tramp of boots and clatter of arms, the call of the sentries, day and night. Time and again Richard sent envoys to argue that we should leave sanctuary. The only future for my girls lay in the world, that I knew, but there was no safety for them there. Time
and again I refused, until he swore an oath before the bishops, lords, and commons that I and my daughters would be safe, that he would protect them and provide for them. And then I could perhaps trust that Richard would not willingly endanger his soul or his throne by breaking such an oath, for he was a man of faith as Edward was: it was not he, fool that I had been, who had sworn that my boys would be safe.

Enough, I told myself. I must work for my girls, find them not just an unmarried girl’s place in the world but a husband and a secure estate, the means to live comfortably, even perhaps a measure of happiness.

And for me? If I could but know they were provided for, I no longer cared for my own state. I was too weary to wish much for myself: grief for my boys ran in my veins like a wasting sickness, yet I could not wish it gone, for to do so would be to wish them dead. I had no hope for them, I chose to act as if they were dead, yet I could not let hope die.

So it was that one morning we walked of our own free will from sanctuary, through the Abbey gardens toward the gate. I would not show my fears, and Bess and Cecily must not either, I had warned them; we must behave fittingly for what we were, the greatest ladies in the Kingdom.

It must be so, yet the solemn oaths and assurances, the letters and messages, all the good sense and reason had not been able to still my fears. Was I delivering my girls to our enemies, even as I had delivered Dickon thus? The March wind was no colder than my fears, and I shivered.

The porter stepped forward to let us out: I stopped to thank him and give him gold, for I would let no man say we
were less than royal, not even the least of those who had once been my subjects. Then he opened the gate, and we saw what lay beyond.

A small relief from fear rushed through me: all but a handful of the soldiers were gone, and those who remained were not guards, but mounted and formed into an escort. “Enough for safety, few enough for speed,” Edward would have said, and the memory stung. As we walked out into the world, the wind caught at our shabby cloaks and buffeted our faces so that Bridget began to cry. Katherine stared at the hunting dogs, pedlars, and hurrying squires, for she scarcely remembered such things. Bess picked up Bridget and gave her a sweetmeat.

There was only one man waiting by the horses who was not a soldier.

“Master Nesfield?”

He sketched a bow. “Dame Elysabeth, well met. I trust you will not find our journey too wearisome.”

I forbore to quarrel with the form of his address but looked directly at him. I needed to know how straitly we were to be kept, and in knowing that would learn much else. “I have not been told where we are bound. Why not?”