Mistress of Mourning (18 page)

“But the king and queen are making the plans,” he said, as if to defend them.

“Yet it seems wrong that even Princess Catherine won’t attend. When my husband died—little Edmund too—I cloaked and masked myself and slipped into the graveyard to watch the interment from a ways off. I’ve never told anyone else that.”

“You brave and bold girl, my little iconoclast, yearning to be in the chandlers’ guild, breaking in on that holy guild’s secret service—and turning down a profitable marriage proposal from an influential man. Jamie told me about all that, and how Master Gage has reacted since then.”

I nodded to all he had said and clung to his praise, however much I longed to know what “iconoclast” meant. A female who did not keep to her place? Someone who broke the rules? I did not intend to be any of that, but this was no time to argue, and I changed the topic.

“You brought the dreadful news back to Their Majesties from Wales?” I asked. “What a burden to have to be the bearer of that.”

“At least they did not kill the messenger, as they say. I’ve been blessed that they have seemed to trust and employ me more and more.”

He nodded proudly, but I saw light from the lantern in front of the barge reflected in a single tear track on his left
cheek. Was he thinking of the royal family’s losses or his own? Either way, I understood, and longed to comfort him.

“When I reached Richmond,” he went on, “I told the king’s confessor, and he related the tragic news. They both took it terribly hard, then sprang into action, making decisions. The queen sent for me and, again secretly, for you.”

But why secretly this time, I wondered, if the funeral would be public and we were simply selling and delivering funerary goods for it? I did not ask that question. Rather, I yearned to tell Nick I had missed him and thought of him incessantly. I wanted to ask what it really meant to him that I had turned down Christopher Gage’s ultimatum to wed. I wanted to throw my arms around Nick and hold tight, to climb into his lap, but we huddled together, almost cuddling. I felt strangely safe, my thigh pressed to his through my man’s garb instead of my thicker skirts, my hands between his, skin to skin. The barge thrust on through the Thames, push, pull, up and down, my exhausted mind spinning ’round and ’round.…

I must have dozed, slumped against him. He started too as one of the bargemen called out, “Richmond! I can see the towers and turrets!”

The oarsmen had an easier time of it now. Not only was our destination in sight, but Nick said the tide turned here, which would help their rowing. Dawn pearled the sky, silhouetting the intricate, many-storied buildings and fantastical towers as we came closer. It was so rural here, the palace set among forests and orchards. A long row of flowering cherry trees stretched along the riverbank before the palace, so it
seemed the rosy brick and stone buildings emerged from a sea of foaming white.

“The king was once the Earl of Richmond, you know,” Nick said as I gathered the sack of my wrinkled garments and the wrapped, carved angel candle I would give the queen. “When old Sheen Palace burned on this site, he helped design Richmond, and, I warrant, loves it best of all his royal houses. It was finished only last year, and—the wonder of the age—has running water in the royal chambers. The wooden floors still smell fresh, and even the ceilings are painted and gilded to the hilt.”

Indeed, the beauty of the palace awed me. When I had first entered Westminster, I had been excited. Now, soon to face the sorrowing queen—and for what secret purpose?—I felt reluctant. Perhaps she did want an effigy of Prince Arthur. But at least, through it all, Nick was with me.

“What is that mournful sound?” I asked him as, with unsteady legs, I disembarked upon the landing. “Could they be holding a funeral mass already? It’s like distant voices humming or singing.”

“When the wind is right, you can hear it rushing past the painted and gilt weather vanes that protrude from the onion dome cupolas on the towers—the singing weather vanes they call them. It always sounds eerie, and yes, it seems as if the palace itself is mourning.”

Sunlight was peeping over the forest and tall stone walls when we entered the palace by the front gate, which guards flung open for us. I still clung to my sack of garments, for surely I would not be taken to the queen or even to one of her ladies
looking like a lad. But evidently I was much mistaken—and mistaken about what else?

We strode across an outer courtyard, where only a few guards were astir. Beyond that enclosure, I glimpsed gardens with sanded paths adorned with clipped, low bushes and guarded by the king’s painted and carved stone beasts as at Westminster. Nick kept one hand on my elbow, steering me along as we strode into the inner quadrangle, where a huge fountain splashed.

“The privy lodgings,” he told me as we went through a door on the far side, “a labyrinth of them. We’re to go straight to the queen.”

“But I…Looking like this? I need a moment’s privacy.”

“I understand, but do not take time to change your clothes.” Nick gave me a moment to relieve myself in a small garderobe, one decorated no less with golden griffins and dragons on the walls.

We went upstairs, then down corridors as my wide gaze devoured timbered ceilings painted azure between beams and Tudor roses picked out in gold. Huge bay windows opened to the outside. It staggered me to realize how bounteous must be the royal wealth, but then the prince’s death, my summons here, and Nick’s presence all stunned me the more.

I rejoined him, and we turned into a narrow hall, a back way in again. Did all the royal residences have secret doors and chambers, perhaps for trysts or for escape—or for servants to be brought in covertly for particular favors? How sad that after sixteen years of rule the Tudors could not rest easy that the throne was indeed theirs. Now to lose their
future, though no doubt the young Henry, Duke of York, would be elevated to become Prince of Wales.

As Nick knocked on the door, I recalled how the guards had called out for the crowd to uncap when Arthur and Catherine rode past en route to Wales. I removed my cap, accidentally snagging my hair, which spilled down my back. I swear, it was my only proof I was not a lad. My old acquaintance, Sibil Wynn opened the door. Though she was attired in black mourning garb, not prettily gowned and jeweled as usual, for one moment I felt as if the clock had been turned back to my first royal summons. But the smile on her face when she saw Nick sobered me.

“She’s been waiting,” she told Nick with no greeting but a narrow-eyed glance at me. “She hasn’t slept.”

We entered and passed through two more small chambers, elegant but empty. Ahead, through an open door, I could see Her Majesty within the last chamber, pacing. She too wore black, and ebony satin draped the tapestry I could see from here. At least two lanterns glowed on a cluttered table. She heard us and turned. Her once beautiful complexion looked sallow and blotched; gray half-moons hung under her red, pinched eyes. Like mine, her long blond hair was loose and wild. Nick closed the door behind the three of us.

He bowed and I curtsied, though I felt my attire meant I should bow too. “Blessed saints, you are here,” she said, drawing us both up by our hands. Her skin was clammy and cold.

Dared I speak before she said more? “Your Majesty, I was undone to learn of the loss of our dear prince. I have
brought you an angel votive candle in his precious memory.” I unwrapped and extended the candle to her.

She took it, cradled it as if it were a baby, then did not look at it again, but only at me, then Nick. “Yes—yes—I thank you. And Nick for fetching you. The best funeral goods have been selected? Plenteous winding sheets for the damp Welsh spring?”

“Yes, Your Majesty,” Nick assured her. “Packed on fresh horses and waiting to head west.”

“Varina, I am in desperate need of your services again,” she said, drawing me a bit away from Nick. “I greatly regret that someone harmed the brilliant Firenze, and I vow to you that I am—indirectly—pursuing who might have murdered him and tried to harm you.”

“I thank you for sending Jamie Clopton—and now Nick.”

Merely nodding, evidently intent on her own thoughts, she pulled me down beside her onto an ornately carved and thickly padded bench. That intimate move shook me. We were sitting close, eye to eye. Our knees almost touched. For one swift moment it was as if we were kin, both with our blond hair spilling over our shoulders, both in mourning for lost sons. In that moment, I felt closer to her than I ever had to my own sister, Maud.

Not only grief but desperation emanated from the queen. As she had been in her compulsion to possess the effigies, again she seemed driven by demons. The little butterflies that beat in my belly turned to flapping bird wings.

“I am not asking for an effigy this time,” she went on in a rush, as if she’d read my mind. “Not now, at least. I need
someone I can trust utterly to attend the prince’s body, oversee his doctors or rustic embalmers to be certain all is well-done in that wild place—a place still teeming with Yorkist loyalists, I vow. You see, Ludlow Castle, though it has been in Tudor hands for these years of our reign, was once the mightiest of York fortresses. Our enemy, my uncle King Richard, used it as his stronghold and headquarters from time to time in the battle against my lord’s forces. Two villains we discussed before—Sir Francis Lovell and Sir James Tyrell—have been familiar with the area, as has the Earl of Surrey, whom His Majesty is sending to Wales as our chief mourner. It was a necessity that the Prince of Wales be sent there with his council to command the area, but it was a…a risk—I did not realize how much—and now…”

She hesitated as tears flowed again. Evidently, she realized she was still cradling the carved candle in one arm, and laid it down between us on the bench. For the first time, I caught a glimpse of what she might want from me. To personally take the Westcott funerary goods to Wales? To go
clear to Wales
to oversee the prince’s embalming? I almost blurted out that I could not bear to leave my son Arthur without a fond farewell, but his very name almost on my lips made me sit mute.

And nod. Dear Lord in heaven, despite my reservations and fears, I had just nodded my understanding, which the look on her face said she read as my agreement!

She nodded too, pressed my hand in hers, and that was our bargain.

“Nick, to me,” she said, raising her voice, and he came
over. Evidently to avoid towering over Her Majesty, he knelt before us, between us. “Varina has agreed,” she told him, “to go to Wales to tend the prince’s body and to accompany the funeral procession to Worcester and help to oversee arrangements for the service there.”

I had? I had agreed to all that?

“I know you will guard her with your life, Nicholas Sutton. The king has agreed to this service from both of you. But there is one more thing I speak only to the two of you, and I need your sworn vow of secrecy for the task. This boon must be kept secret from everyone—everyone!—unless I give you permission otherwise.”

She stared at Nick. “Yes, I swear it, Your Majesty,” he said.

She turned her head toward me. However bloodshot her eyes were, they bored into mine. “Yes, I swear all secrecy, Your Majesty.”

“I fear—I think…” she whispered, her voice breaking before she went on. She cleared her throat and began again. “It occurs to me that our son and heir could have met with foul play. Though the Welsh chieftains, untamed as they still are, are loyal to our throne, Yorkist remnants remain of those who do not wish us well. Having lost my dear brothers in what was surely vile murder, I must know the circumstances of the illness and death of Arthur Tudor. It…it could be the same villain, though I must have proof. I have written letters to his widow giving both of you access to her presence, permission to inquire for me about all that led up to…to their illness and his death. You must find someone to interpret her Spanish for you, so choose that one carefully, and
do not overly distress the princess, if that is possible. She is, of course, like me, distraught.”

“You fear poisoning, Your Majesty?” Nick asked.

“I fear evil, and I bid you both beware. If you can find what Their Graces did, where they went—yes, what they ate or drank that might have brought on…brought on what happened…”

She heaved such a huge sigh that I thought her already slumped form would deflate further. But she was strong even with the burden of this crushing loss, as I must learn to be, so that I too could bear my son’s loss. So that I could take on this task she had laid upon us. So that, even though I would have Nick at my side, I could weather this dangerous duty in distant Wales.

“I
understand why she chose me…to oversee…care of…his body.” My words to Nick came out jerkily as we jolted along mile after mile on the same huge horse. “But I’ve never tried…to find out why someone died.”

Had I made a statement or asked a question? And it had sounded like a rhyme.

“Later,” he said only. “Later for much more.”

And what did that mean? I longed to ask. I had the strangest urge to laugh, though being garbed as a lad still sobered me. How I had yearned to be part of the all-men chandlers’ guild and their secret society; now here I was, looking like one of a band of men in service to Their Majesties. I found a sense of heady freedom in all this. Freed from my long skirts, my daily duties, even from the confines of London, I dared to feel that I was momentarily free too of the rules that bound women. I was important. I knew I had some power, though I felt frightened and exhausted.
Still, Nick had not answered my question, and I could not even think beyond right now.