Mistress of Mourning (34 page)

As if he must spew out that name before it poisoned him, Nick cried, “Yes, I concur it is Viscount Francis Lovell, Your Majesty.”

“Varina?” the king said.

“Yes, I agree. But why he has an interest in me, I am uncertain.”

My eyes met Her Majesty’s wide gaze. I could read her
thoughts:
If you believe it is because Lovell knows about the effigies and hopes to hurt them or me, say nothing else.

“Perhaps,” the king plunged on, “it was because you carved a few candles for the princess, and he thought he could bribe or coerce you to gain access to the palace. What a spider’s web! We have recently learned that Lovell was housed and hidden in France at our castle by another dangerous”—he looked at the queen—“and murderous man, Sir James Tyrell, who has long deceived us with his true loyalties. Tyrell has just been executed for his treason. But Lovell, that slippery serpent, was not there when we recently besieged and took the castle. Perhaps he was in Wales, eh?

“Nick, I must call upon you for another dangerous quest. I told you in the missive I sent to Wales that Lord Lovell was back, but my people may now have discovered the lair wherein he hides himself between his vile deeds. Bold and wily as ever, he goes to a site he loves and knows, but a place so obvious he must be betting we’d never search there: His own long-forfeited Minster Lovell, the castle where he grew up. I’ve had spies in the area, for I once gave the estate to my dear uncle—which no doubt galls Lovell all the more. My informants there have caught distant glimpses of someone they believe might be Lovell outside the place, near it, walking toward it—but then he vanishes, and they can’t locate him.”

“As ever,” Nick said, “the ghost who wreaks havoc and disappears.”

I could see that his hands were trembling. I too stood aghast at how the pieces came together. Nick had been right about Lovell, not merely obsessed with him. While the
queen and I stood silent, Nick told the king how Lovell had led on, then deserted Nick’s beloved brother, Stephen, in the Battle of Stoke, and then melted into the mist. For a moment, I thought Nick had made a massive mistake in reminding the king that the Suttons had fought against him once, but I had misjudged Henry Tudor.

He gripped Nick’s shoulders and told him, “Besides your loyalty to your country, we have a cause in common then. Before Lovell does us more harm, we must find and stop him, and I swear that God has set you before me as the man for this righteous task! And, Varina—Mistress Westcott,” he said, turning to me and taking my hand in his cold one, “because Lovell is a man of disguises, a man of deception, and you have evidently seen him of late more than once, I ask you to go along with Nick, not to put yourself at risk, but to identify Lovell once he’s caught. Both of you, get a good night’s rest while I assemble your guards and lay plans. Be back here day after tomorrow to ride to Minster Lovell. And, of course, you will both be well rewarded.”

“My reward will be justice at last,” Nick said.

My heart was beating so hard at the mere thought of facing Lovell again that I could only pray we’d capture him easily and he would kill no one else. And since I had been given a day’s precious leave, I was going to spend it with my own beloved Arthur.

T
he driving rainstorm reminded me of Wales, and delayed us so that it was the next afternoon before Nick and I rode into the chandlery courtyard. As the skies cleared and the late-afternoon sun came out, I prayed good weather boded better things to come. I was so anxious to see my boy again. I knew he would not be back from school yet, so I would surprise him with open arms.

Nick dismounted and went out back looking for Jamie, while I greeted Gil. “Don’t fret now,” he said, and patted my shoulder. “Maud left in plenty of time to accompany Arthur home. He’s missed you sore and will be jumping for joy.”

“If I’d been a bit earlier, I’d have gone in her place and wouldn’t he have been surprised?” I said, clapping my hands in excitement as if I were a child myself. Surely, after a short journey to Minster Lovell—and facing down that demon who had been bred there—I could return to my family and
all would be well. Well, that is, if I could only keep Nick in my life.

While Gil turned back to overseeing the apprentices, I went outside and led my horse toward the stables where Nick had gone to find Jamie. I was approaching the door when Nick stepped out and gestured to me:
Keep quiet and come here!

I let go of my mount’s reins and tiptoed to him.
What’s amiss?
I mouthed.

He thrust a finger over his lips and pulled me inside. I heard men’s voices, Jamie’s and another I recognized, that of his brother Silas, the Tower guard who had told Jamie dreadful stories of what went on there. I peered around the beam of the first horse stall. Yes, it was Silas Clopton, a hulking man with ragged-cut hair. He had bright blue eyes, but I shuddered to think what those eyes had seen in the depths of cells or dungeons. Jamie had told Gil that Silas oversaw some of the torments, the dreaded rack and who knew what else.

“Aye, strange indeed,” Jamie was saying. “Why wasn’t Tyrell allowed to say a word afore he was beheaded? ’Tis tradition.”

“Ne’er heard the like. He chattered like a magpie in the Tower. Guess the first time being racked was all he could take.”

“So then, you heard him talk when he was tortured?”

“Aye, and it haunts me still, when none o’ that usually frets me. I be so used to it, and prisoners are mostly villains to the core.”

“And Tyrell wasn’t?”

“Oh, aye—the worst,” Silas said, and lowered his voice so I had to strain to hear. Nick seemed to be holding his breath, and he gripped my wrist hard. “The king’s inquisitor asked him what he did the night the two young princes in the Tower went missing. I wasn’t turning the screws that first day, but I heard it all.”

“They think he hurt those royal lads back then? If so, maybe he died for that, as well as for disobeying the king’s order to give up the French castle and come back to London.”

“Oh, aye, the wretch admitted he hurt those boys, ’stead of swearing by all that’s holy he was guiltless like he done at first. He’d confessed real easy to other things, like hiding some other blackguard name of Lovell. He kilt those boys and must have got rid of their bodies, but on whose orders? Why didn’t they ask him who put him up to that, aye?”

Nick scowled, and I pressed a hand over my mouth. Tyrell had murdered the princes in the Tower! But why had that not been trumpeted far and wide as a major reason for his execution? No doubt the princes’ evil uncle, King Richard, had them killed to clear his way to the throne, but why would the Tudors not want to proclaim Richard’s guilt in the most public manner?

I leaned against Nick, shaking, picturing the waxen images of those young princes I had carved for the queen. They had looked so real after
Signor
Firenze painted them and she’d had them garbed and wigged that even I would swear they merely slept. Finally, she must know who had killed her brothers! A conspiracy against the Crown, indeed.
Lovell, following in Tyrell’s footsteps for dispatching heirs, had murdered Prince Arthur. Now that Tyrell was dead, if Nick could capture Lovell and he was executed, would not the Tudors finally rest easy on their throne?

Tears in my eyes, I was about to tiptoe outside again when Jamie cracked out, “If Tyrell killed those lads, he deserved to be racked and beheaded! Why, two young boys, just like us years ago, Silas. So why should it fret you if he got what he deserved?”

“’Cause of the way he confessed,” Silas said. “On the rack, he kept saying to the king’s inquisitor, who come special for the task, ‘Just tell me what you want me to say! I’ll say anything he wants if you’ll just stop. God will know the truth, God will know the truth, and the king does too!’ You know,” Silas added, “once he said that, the king’s man said to halt the torment and asked Tyrell for no more details, like they usually do. Not about how he did it, not about where the bodies been hid. And since Tyrell wasn’t allowed to give no speech from the scaffold ’fore he lost his head, I been thinking…”

“Listen to me!” Jamie said, his voice tense and desperate. “You’d best not think about it more, best not be telling me this, not anyone. Let it be. He confessed, he’s dead, and that’s that. You go talking more about this and you’ll be losing your own head!”

“I had to tell someone. I do good work there, have a strong stomach, but this time—something’s strange, that’s all.”

On trembling legs, I slipped out of the stables with Nick right behind me. As we hied ourselves toward the back door
of the house, I said, “Silas is right. Why would the king keep all that quiet? It sounds as if his inquisitor tried to make Tyrell say something that wasn’t true.”

“I know not, but we have another task. We must concentrate on finding Lovell—letting him share Tyrell’s fate. Jamie’s right that it’s best not to question all this, at least not now and not aloud. Varina, I’m off to Whitehall, but I’d treasure a moment with you first, and I know your boy will be home soon and then I won’t get so much as a hug or a kiss.”

He pulled me into the house and closed the door behind us. We hurried up to the solar, where I was hoping to surprise Arthur when he and Maud returned. They were a bit late.

“Since you will have all day and night with Arthur, I’d covet a bit of attention right now,” Nick whispered into my wild hair. He seemed hurried, almost panicked by what he’d heard in the stables, and I was distraught too. We clung together, trying to shut out everything but our last moments for a while.

He crushed me to him as his lips took mine. I lifted my arms around his neck and held on hard. Nick’s hands went everywhere, caressing me, moving, cupping, grasping until I thought I would go mad. We did not break the kiss, our mouths open, our tongues dancing and demanding. If he had taken me there, standing, I would have welcomed it. This was madness, after all we’d been through, in midafternoon, soon to be facing danger again. But it was a wonderful madness.

He laid me flat on the floor and threw himself down
beside me. I arched my back as he stroked, then kissed my breasts right through my gown. My entire being sprang alive as he slid one hand up my leg, ruffling my hem above my knees. His lips skimmed down my throat, down— And if Arthur and Maud rushed in…

“We can’t—right now,” I said, breathing as hard as if I’d run miles.

“I know. Besides, I can’t tarry. Varina, at the last moment, the king asked me to go ahead without you, and you’ll follow with guards on the morrow. I didn’t want to tell you before—have you worry or argue. He didn’t want to wait another day before I searched Minster Lovell. And that will give you more time with Arthur, if not me.”

Nick sat us both up and lifted me to my feet. He held my chin in one big hand to stare down into my eyes. “I vow to you, Varina Westcott, we will find the time to make things right between us. Then will you say yes?”

I would have said yes to anything he wanted, because I wanted him at any cost. Our different stations in life, our unfinished quest, and Lovell lurking aside, I would have ridden out with him to fight the world bare-handed if he had but asked.

“I know not to what question,” I whispered, “but yes. Yes!”

He kissed me hard, set me back, and stomped out.

Leaning breathless against the inside door to the once familiar solar, I listened to Nick’s quick boot steps fade. I heard his horse’s hooves strike the cobbles as he rode out of the small courtyard. I ran to the street-side solar window to watch him go, but the latch jammed, so I saw him distorted
by the thick panes of glass as his form shrank and disappeared.

And what would Nick ask of me? I wondered as my skin still tingled from his touch. To let him possess my body? To be his mistress or—dared I dream so—his wife? But now, where were Maud and Arthur?

Queen Elizabeth of York

I was praying on my knees before the block of wax from which Varina Westcott would carve my beloved lost Arthur when I heard quick footsteps in the corridor. Fearful of anyone rushing about, I turned and rose as my last living son, Prince Henry, burst through the door.

“Mother!” he cried before I could say a word. “What’s all this?”

He was out of breath and red in the face. I was shocked to silence, and flushed that he had stumbled on my secret place.

“Oh, you can’t be here,” I cried foolishly. “This is my privy room, and whatever are you doing running hither and yon, as if someone’s chasing you?”

“Margaret and Mary are, but they’ll not find me. Never do when I give in to their pleas to play hide-and-seek. It just allows me to be free of them for a few moments. But this…I—I didn’t know—obviously…” he said, gawking at the figures.

It was too late to thrust him from the room or try to cover the obvious with a lie, not to clever Henry. But how to keep him from telling his father? Or was it time to tell the
king so that he understood the depth of my brokenness in these children’s loss, even before Arthur’s murder? My son didn’t understand, of course. Would my husband?

While I wrung my hands as if I were of no account at all in this, Henry gaped at each waxen figure. “These are my dead brother and sister—but these?” he demanded, pointing at the carvings of my young brothers. “Are these the princes in the Tower—my lost uncles?”