Mistress of Mourning (20 page)

Mistress Varina Westcott

The second night on the westward roads toward Wales, we stayed on the fringes of Worcester, the town where the prince would be buried. I longed to have a chance to visit the Abbey of St. Wulfstan to decide on the placement of candles, even to familiarize myself with the location of the coffin during the funeral and interment site, but there was no time now.

We stopped the third night at Bewdley, one of Prince Arthur’s manor houses, with its little half-timbered town nearby. How proud he must have been of this place he would never see again. Black mourning banners and draperies shrouded many doors and windows. As if the manor needed protection from winds or perhaps border raiders, it huddled at the side of a hill. A full staff awaited us with lit fires and
food, but despite the lanterns and torches, the site still seemed foreboding. The deep Wyre Forest bordered the property to the west, a brook to the north, and the roaring spring-melt River Severn to the east, as if we were on a little island.

“At least there are many guards about,” I observed to Nick as we finished our hearty meal, surrounded by others in the prince’s dining hall.

“It is royal property, but the area’s been in dispute for years. The argument is whether Bewdley sits in Shropshire or Worcester,” he explained. “As a result, the area harbors fugitives and criminals. Now, don’t fret about that. We’d best turn in, because at dawn’s early light, we’re off for the rest of our ride. No one will use the royal bedchambers, but you’ll have a private one with a feather mattress, and I’ll be right across the hall with some others. If you need me, just knock.”

Everyone beat a quick retreat, and the house soon fell silent. I bathed in warmed water a servant had left, then slept the dreamless sleep of the dead—a sobering thought in this fine manor that now could belong to Prince Arthur’s father, his widow, or his younger brother. I’d bet on the king.

The next morn, we ate a hot but quick breakfast of frumenty, then were on our way again. Nick looked much better, though he never looked bad to me. Yet I longed to smooth his hair, matted from his pillow, and the little creases imprinted on his cheek from a sheet or bolster. The linens and towels provided in my room, at least, had been most luxurious.

“No more questions?” he asked as we walked out to meet the others.

“Of course. Do you know what your nemesis, Lord Francis Lovell, looks like?”

“Why bring that up now? Women’s intuition? Yes, if there has been foul play in Wales, I warrant he or his lackeys could be involved, though he has always seemed to disappear alone. Lovell’s looks—no,” he said, frowning. “Only by hearsay, and his appearance could have changed with age, of course—if he’s still alive. If he is, and I find him, the bastard will not be around for long, at least, once he’s delivered to the king for questioning!”

He mounted and another man boosted me up into our saddle. The long ride had done one thing for me, besides bond Nick and me a bit closer, and that to what end I knew not: Finally, putting aside personal fears and longings, I had found the strength to become fully committed to the dangerous, daunting task that lay before us.

Ludlow loomed ahead; at least I’d been told so. Even the wearied horses must sense it, for they lifted their heads and picked up the pace. Yet I saw no sign of walls or towers through the thatchy maze of forest. No one could miss the change in the terrain, though. The low green hills of England had grown before our eyes to rolling moorlands with the hint of mountains ahead, and fertile fields edged by hedges turned to bare, reddish bracken. Thick blackthorn trees were in early blossom, with dark, spiny twigs and sprays of small white balls. Now and then, we emerged from the forest and passed pastures with ewes and their young lambs as I squinted ahead around Nick’s shoulder, looking for Ludlow.

He had described the castle to me as the mightiest of
the old York fortresses. He’d said it was originally one of the castles built by the early English kings along the Welsh Marches that bestrode the borderland between England and Wales. During the civil war that had placed first Richard, Duke of York, then our current king upon the throne, Ludlow had oft been Richard’s stronghold and headquarters.

“Wales is known for its fierce fighters,” Nick had said, “the skilled bows and spearmen of the English armies. But don’t worry, Varina. It’s no longer a barbarian place. Most of the local chieftains speak English, and, on the inside, at least, Ludlow is a residence of palatial grandeur now.”

When we rode from the final fringe of forest, there it was, of gray-white stone, huge and bulky and primitive-looking, with thick walls, battlements, and a moat. It was only as we rode into the thin sunlight that I saw what looked to be a yellow sea lapping at the skirts on one side of the castle before a stretch of bogs began.

“Those daffodils have popped out since I rode away,” Nick told me, pointing. “Their Highnesses had to search high and low for ones in early bloom when they ventured out.”

“So they did venture out? We shall have to trace their steps. But first, I must see whether those who have begun to embalm the prince will heed the advice and commands of a city chandler, and a woman to boot.”

“I’ve no doubt,” he said as we clattered across the wooden drawbridge under the up-drawn portcullis that guarded the front entry, “that, with the queen’s letters and your strong will, they will listen and obey.”

A
lthough I suppose my tears were from grief and exhaustion, they were tears of gratitude too. I cried over the lovely, small chamber I had been given at Ludlow Castle, which overlooked the River Terne far below and blue-gray mountains in the distance, and for the box of gifts from the queen. Nick, whose chamber was just across the corridor from mine, had brought me the box once we were settled. Within lay two lovely gowns, warm stockings, a night robe, a hooded cape lined with squirrel, a hat with a veil—everything in black, of course—as well as two pairs of fine leather shoes and a leather purse puckered at its top with felt cloth and drawstrings.

In addition Nick had already delivered letters to the castle steward and the two doctors who were overseeing the embalming of the prince. Those letters, in Her Majesty’s own hand, Nick said, gave me permission to oversee the final arrangements for the royal corpse.

But it was the personal letter from the queen in the box of garments that shattered my poise and bolstered even more my conviction to carry out the duties with which she had entrusted me. After Nick left me alone to change my clothes, I read the words over and over, hoping to memorize them:

Mother, queen, and friend
, she had signed. As I had come to know her, she saw herself as a mother first. And so must I be to my own Arthur; yet here I was, charged to learn about
the prince’s death, and with Nick at my side and watching my back.

I examined the plain gold ring she had fastened to the piece of parchment with a ribbon stuck through it. Both ends were caught in a blob of wax in which she had impressed her signet ring with the initials E.R. and a blooming rose. I wondered whether Christopher’s chandlery had sold the palace the sealing wax. After prying it off the page and putting it in my purse for good luck—for the queen’s crest, not the wax—I put the ring upon my own little finger, so I would not lose it. It reached only to my second knuckle. How small, perhaps a ring Arthur had worn as a child, or one that the queen herself had from her own parents.

As tired as I was, I needed to wash and change, eat something from the tray that awaited me here, then hurry to the anteroom of the chapel, where the prince’s body lay. I had been told that his two physicians had not left his side and had done some preliminary embalming, whatever that might mean. I skimmed the queen’s kind letter one more time.
Friend Varina
, she called me. Her mistress of mourning. And so I would be.

Hoping I would ever remember her written words, I held the letter to the flames of the low-burning hearth fire—what a luxury here. How well Her Majesty or Nick had prepared things for me. I watched the paper catch the flame, then curl and burn to crisp, silvery ash.

I examined the two gowns, both splendidly made, one obviously more formal than the other. I put the brocade one aside and donned the day gown, of fine, fitted wool with double sleeves and a gilt belt with a link for keys, small tools,
and my purse. Dropping the fruit knife from the tray inside my purse also, I gobbled down a chicken leg and most of a meat pie to give myself strength. In the hall, to my surprise, Nick awaited, talking low to a guard. I wondered whether, under other circumstances, the halls would be so full of men-at-arms.

“Let me escort you to the chapel,” Nick said, as his gaze swept over me. He seemed to approve of my appearance, for he nodded and smiled. He looked elegant, finely attired in black with dark green piping, with a flat, feathered hat upon his head. He had shaved; the shadow of his beard that had darkened on our full-tilt ride here was completely gone. “Time to beard the doctors in their den,” he told me, playing off the thought I had not spoken aloud, as if once again he had read my mind.

“Will the doctors be difficult, do you think?” I asked him as he tucked my hand in the crook of his arm, and we started down a narrow, curving stone staircase, just wide enough for two abreast.

“Not with the queen’s letter they have received. Not with me hovering in the background. And should they be, just give them that quelling look you have perfected and go about your business.”

“My quelling look? No, I shall save that for you. But do you know them?”

“Just these last months, and from a distance. Dr. Matthew Martlet has the most experience and has been with the prince almost since his birth. He’s the one with the silver hair. I know it’s been a huge burden for him that Arthur was never as robust as his younger brother. I’ve seen
him cringe every time Arthur coughed. The younger one, William Enford, is a climber, ever looking for ways to get closer to the king, but how can I disparage that?”

I squeezed his arm in understanding and sympathy. How honest Nick had always been with me about his ambitions. But those were one of the things that must mean we could never be everything to each other, for he would spend his life closely serving the king. I had not a doubt that Nick Sutton would someday regain his lands and family prestige, whether through finding and besting Lord Lovell or not. And I…I would be blessed just to see Gil become a member in the chandlers’ guild and to be allowed to carve my angel candles, perhaps once in a while for “my friend,” the queen.

Nick led me through the huge, high-beamed great hall, where servants were setting up tables and benches to feed many. Each long plank table was being draped with black cloth, and the dais, where no doubt the prince and princess had presided over festivities, was bare.

Nick steered me down halls with tapestries draped in black. Where did they get all of that dark cloth so quickly? That reminded me of something. “The wax cloth has been delivered to the embalming room?” I asked.

“It has.”

Inside the chapel with its vaulted ceiling, I could see the four-foot-tall bier erected near the altar with the open coffin atop it, awaiting the body. Voices came from a small anteroom across the way. We traversed the chapel, where local and visiting mourners would file past and pray before the long funeral procession to take the prince to his resting place at Worcester Cathedral would set out.

So much to do, for he was to be interred on April 23, and this was the ninth already, and he must be prepared to lie here in state by the morrow. With a procession hauling a coffin down dirt roads, how many days would it take us to get back to Worcester for the funeral and burial? I reckoned a week, so we had barely a week here, both for the prince’s lying-in-state and for Nick and me to learn what we must, to tell the queen. Would she share that with the king, I wondered, or would her secrets from him continue?

At the door of the small anteroom, Nick introduced me to the doctors. Though both wore black shawls, they were decked out in their traditional red-and-gray robes lined with taffeta and their round, brimless hats with lappets. I could tell instantly that Dr. Martlet was the senior physician, because his robe had a wider fur band than did Dr. Enford’s. Both looked extremely nervous and, the moment they spoke, seemed defensive.