Queen of Trial and Sorrow (12 page)

“Truly?  And this one?” 

“He stirs sometimes to let me know he’s awake but generally he is a very well-behaved tenant.”

Propping himself on one elbow, he watched as the child within caused subtle
movements of the pale and rounded hump that nurtured it.  This was not his first child; he had two bastard children but hadn’t been in a position to observe the day-to-day growths and changes in their mother. 

“Fascinating,” he murmured.  “Think of all the tiny tasks that tiny body is performing now and at every moment of every day; all the little functions that are contributing to his structure, his growth.  Think of how he is growing and stretching, unfurling like the bud of a flower. You know, I think it both foolish and a great pity that fathers are banned from the birth chamber.  If I weren’t afraid of scandalizing the ladies, I would invade that chamber and watch the process.”

“I assure you, it is not an edifying spectacle.” I sighed.  “Speaking of which, I must go into confinement soon.”

A month before her child was due, a lady was sequestered in a specially prepared chamber.  The windows were draped to keep out harmful vapors, and there she stayed in perpetual night, attended only by women, sewing and playing games and reading, those things ladies do to pass the time, until the child was born.  And every mother-to-be hated every minute of it. 

“Did you know that when she was in confinement before the birth of her son, Margaret of Anjou had her door sawn in half?” I said.  “The lower half was kept closed to satisfy convention, but the upper half, covered only by a curtain was kept open so that she could receive news from the Duke of Somerset.”

“I shall give orders.  There will be no news of the outside world to disturb your tranquility.” His hand continued to move in slow circles over my belly, as if to sooth the child within.  “He is very busy tonight.”

“It seems to me they always choose the night time for their most strenuous activities.”  

“Poor Bess.  Is it terrible for you?”

I looked into his face, shadowed and luminous in the candlelight.  “When I bear your son, all the great ladies will cease to look down on me, so please our lord.” 

A few days later, I retired from public life.  After attending Mass, I was ceremoniously conducted to the birth chamber, furnished with a cushioned and canopied chair of state, where I was served with spiced wine.  After prayers, I was escorted to the door of the inner chamber, where the king would take his leave of me.  He kissed my hand formally and then leaned down to kiss me on both cheeks.  “Be well, my love,” he whispered.

In the birth chamber, the bed had down pillows and an ermine edged scarlet cover.  A day bed stood at the foot.  The windows were hung with blue cloth of arras on which golden fleur-de-lys and crowns were embroidered.  The chamber was a haven of peace and serenity and contained an altar on which lay holy and precious relics, including Our Lady’s ring and girdle.

My ladies and I prepared to wait out the time in gentle pursuits: playing board games, reading, working on our new embroidery project, and of course, gossiping.

The court astrologer, Master Dominic, predicted the child would be a boy, confident of a reward if he was correct.  Despite his prediction, on February eleventh 1466, I gave birth to a girl, who was named Elizabeth.  Master Dominic made himself scarce for a while, as if the king was one of those Italianate despots who would strike off his head for a wrong prediction. 

I bore the birth process easily, and by the time the king and his gentlemen were admitted to the chamber I looked little different than usual, except that my ordeal had painted mauve shadows beneath my eyes.  My hair had been brushed, braided and hidden under a veil, my body washed, perfumed and clad in a gown of fine linen richly embellished by a cascade of ribbons and lace.

“Are you disappointed?” I asked, feeling disappointed myself.  Why, oh why, couldn’t it have been a boy?  That would have silenced those who said I wasn’t good enough for Edward. 

But he showed no sign of disappointment.  He took the child into his own arms and cradled her as he stooped to kiss me on the brow. 

Dynastically, a boy was essential, but girls were useful too. This one, he said, would be a queen one day. She and her sisters would spread his seed throughout the great houses of Europe.  Upon such fragile foundations did the hopes of his new dynasty rest.  But until the time came for her to go forth to her great destiny, she was his little daughter, his Bessie, as he had already dubbed her.  She would be petted, spoiled, dandled upon a fond father’s lap, whereas a boy would have to be more strictly raised.  One couldn’t so indulge a boy, especially if he was destined to become the next King of England.

“You have given me a jewel beyond price,” he told me, and I saw that he meant it.

In August of ‘67, the day after the Feast of St. Lawrence: I gave birth to another girl, our dear Mary, named for the Virgin.  At the time I could only think: Truly, God gives with one hand and takes away with the other.  The king professed himself pleased. 

Then, on the Feast of St. Joseph in ‘69, a day of damp and muffling fog, I gave birth to my third royal child: another girl.  (It was you, Cecily.  If you ever read this, pray forgive me for what I’m about to write.)  When they brought her to me I turned my face away and wept bitterly.  They placed her in the carved and gilded cradle beside my bed.  My husband had little patience with women’s tears, so I tried to compose myself before he arrived but it was too hard.  He knew I had been weeping and he knew, too, that I wasn’t given to tears. 

He leaned down to kiss my averted face.  “Come, Bess.  This will not do.”  Sitting on the bed with his back against the mound of pillows, he settled me against his chest, and wrapped both arms around me.  The bed linens had been changed and I had been bathed, perfumed and dressed in a gown of finest white lawn.

“Why am I being punished?” I cried.  “It’s my pride, isn’t it?  I’m being punished for my pride!”

“You know that’s not true,” he said, kissing the top of my head repeatedly.  “Look at her.  She is quite as lovely as her mother.  I forbid you to demean our daughter’s birth with your tears.”

I didn’t want to look at her.  I wanted to send her to Shene as soon as the ceremonies attending her birth were over so I wouldn’t have to be reminded on a daily basis of my failure.

“You really don’t mind?”  It was getting harder each time for him to maintain the fiction that he was pleased, but he was willing to pretend and I was willing, eager even, to be reassured.

“Lady Elizabeth,” he said to Anthony’s wife who was attending me at this time.  “Tell her Grace that she has a womb of tempered steel.  Tell her that princes are going to start popping out like buds in spring.”

“God grant it so,” my sister-in-law said solemnly.

“I’m not sure I like your metaphor,” I said with a wan smile.  I clutched his hand.  “Edward, what will happen if I’m never able to give you a son?”

“A man may do very well with daughters,” he said.  Warwick had two daughters, as did Louis.  Charles of Burgundy had one, Francis of Brittany none, John of Aragon had a son and Henry of Castile had a daughter.  The Holy Roman Emperor was blessed, but on the whole there was a dearth of sons among the princes of Europe.

“But who will succeed? A woman cannot rule.”

“Why do we speak so?  You and I are yet young and in good health.  We’ve years ahead of us, enough to make a baker’s dozen princes and princesses.”

“
You’re
young,” I said.  I didn’t want to think how old I was.

“No more tears, Bess.  Never show your pain.  If your enemies know your vulnerable spots, they’ll probe and pinch and stick their knives in and you’ll suffer all the more.  Always show a brave face to the world.”

I sighed.  “You’re right, of course, and I do try.  It’s just that I’m so afraid of disappointing you.  I know how much marrying me has cost you.  I didn’t at first but now I do.”

“I have no regrets,” he said and I believed him.  He had found his true mate in me.

It was after Cecily’s birth that the trouble began.

My two eldest daughters and I were sitting beside the artificial lake at Fotheringhay.  Elizabeth was looking for frogs and Mary was toddling about plucking wildflowers, closely followed by a nursemaid, when we heard the sound of a galloping horse on the road to the castle.  One of the gate guards pointed in our direction, and the rider came our way.  As he approached, I saw that his face was streaked with sweat and dust and the horse was blowing, having been ridden hard.  He slid from the saddle and went to his knees, offering me a letter sealed with the king’s signet seal.  I tore it open.  Written in haste from Nottingham in my husband’s own hand, it was startling in its brevity.

The trouble is worse than we thought.  Take yourself and the children to the Tower.  You will be safe there.  All will be well
. 
Remember that you have my heart and my love and must always show a brave face to the world.

Safe at the Tower?  What did that mean?  Why would we be
un
safe anywhere in the kingdom?  How dare he be so cryptic?

“What can you tell me of his Grace’s movements?” I asked the man.

“Only that we got as far as Newark, Madam.  We spent only one night there and intended to go on to Grantham the next day.  Instead we were ordered to turn around and ride back to Nottingham.”

“Do you know why?”

“There was some talk among the men that Lancashire was up in arms.”

There had been two risings in Yorkshire, one led by Sir John Conyers who was a cousin of the Earl of Warwick.  The second rising was enough to convince Edward that it was time to show the royal authority in the north.  He believed they were nothing more than local dissatisfactions, which he would have no trouble disposing of.  But now Lancashire was up in arms.

I hurried the girls back to the castle and sought out my chamberlain, Lord Berners.  I let him read the king’s note and repeated what the messenger said.

“I wouldn’t be too concerned, Madam,” he said steadily.  “His Grace will have no trouble disposing of these malcontents.”

“What if I were to tell you that I believe Lord Warwick is involved?”

The question surprised me as much as it did him.  But the suspicion had been lurking in the back of my mind for some time.  Now that it was exposed, I knew I was right. I wondered if the king knew it too, or was he still deluding himself that his cousin was and always would be loyal.

Lord Berners was looking at me keenly.  It was no secret at court that Warwick and I loathed one another, and I could tell he thought my question was just a product of my prejudice.  “Why do you say so?”

I shrugged.  “It is just a feeling, coupled with my knowledge of the man.”

“But your Grace knows that he is in Calais at this time, far from the troubled area.” He handed the note back to me.  “I shall prepare the household to return to London.”

I left Fotheringhay in a rush, my children and ladies in three carriages with baggage wagons trundling behind, all piled high with the furnishings and personal possessions that went with me wherever I travelled.  An escort of one hundred men rode before and behind, dressed in blue and murrey livery, to guard us from the dangers of the road.  The banners of York were borne aloft by pursuivants and snapped smartly in the wind.  We stayed in religious houses or occasionally in the home of a noble family along the route and with luck supper would be waiting for us when we arrived but never any news of what was happening in the north.  Bessie and Mary would be allowed to go outside to play before evening prayers and bed.  Next morning the servants would repack everything that had been unpacked the day before and everyone would hear Mass and eat breakfast before squeezing back into the carriages. 

Arrived safely at the Tower, we were at the business of unpacking when the constable, Lord Dudley, was announced. 

“Greetings, my lord.  What news?” I asked him eagerly.  I knew nothing more than when I had left Fotheringhay.

“Madam, word has reached the city of a great number of men under arms in Lancashire. Not a rabble but an army.  Not a local disturbance but a fully-fledged rebellion, and captained by the same Robin Mendall who led the Yorkshire uprising in March.” Sir John Conyers, I remembered, Warwick’s cousin. 

I noticed Lord Dudley was holding a roll of parchment, which he handed to me.  “Copies of this have been found in various public places in the city.” 

I began to read.  Before I had got very far a hand of cold dread clutched my heart and I had to sit down.  It purported to be a manifesto of the rebels’ demands, but by the time I had finished reading one thing was clear to me: “These are not the grievances of some anonymous northern malcontent.  No matter what name it bears, Warwick is the author.” 

“So I believe,” said the constable.

“He has finally rebelled against his king.  I didn’t really believe he would do it.  He must have taken leave of his senses.” 

I had handed the document to Lord Berners.  He read it and looked at me sadly.  “You were right, Madam.  There can be little doubt. His Grace is compared to the three deposed kings, Edward II, Richard II and Henry VI, in that he is guilty of excluding from his councils the lords of the blood and heeding only the advice of unworthy favorites.”

“Which is manifestly unfair,” I said, outraged.  “Warwick is a member of the council to this day!  When he chooses to put in an appearance, which isn’t very often.”

Reading again, Lord Berners exclaimed: “Oh, Madam!” And I knew he had come to the list of so-called favorites.  “He names Earl Rivers, his wife and sons, Lord Herbert, Lord Stafford, Lord Audley, Sir John Fogge and others of their persuasion.”

“Our
mother!
” my sister Anne gasped.

“Anyone who incurs his enmity,” I said.

“There is more,” Lord Berners continued.  “His Grace is accused of impoverishing himself to satisfy his favorites’ greed, which has led him to levy unjust taxes on his subjects, and to accuse of treason men hated by his favorites so that no one can be sure any longer of his life and property.  He is also accused of suffering the practice of maintenance!”

“How absurd!” I was quite unable to remain composed in the face of such inequity.  “His Grace would dearly love to suppress such abuses as livery and maintenance, which it is not in the interests of a king to suffer as it keeps him in the power of his barons.”

Lord Dudley nodded at the offending document.  “It is very clever, that manifesto.  In claiming that his purpose is to remove the king’s favorites, Warwick is making a bid for the support of the other lords; or at least for less opposition, which is almost as good.” He bowed.  “By your leave, Madam.”

I nodded, distracted, and remembered to call my thanks after him as he strode from the room.  What terrified me as much as reading those beloved names was that two of the three deposed kings mentioned had been murdered by those responsible for their depositions – and most horribly.  Henry VI was more fortunate – so far.

I went to join Bessie and Mary in saying their prayers before being put to bed.  My heart was full of fear for my menfolk.

……….

Warwick came up from the south coast and arrived in London just two days after I did.  He made no attempt to trouble us.  He had more important things to deal with.

Every day brought worsening news.  The first was that George Neville, the Archbishop of York had officiated at the wedding of the Duke of Clarence and Isabel Neville in Calais.  Clarence now had the added cachet of being Warwick’s son-in-law, and that brought its own kind of power.  Sufficient inducement, apparently, to tempt him to treason.

The very fact that Warwick had defied the king by going ahead with the marriage he had expressly forbidden suggested that George of Clarence had become as important to Warwick’s future plans as Edward himself had once been.  I wondered if Clarence believed that Warwick intended to snatch the crown from Edward’s head and place it on his own.  Why else would he stand with Warwick against his brother? 

Knowing Warwick and his monumental pride as I did, I could well understand how he might resent the diminished role the king’s maturity had forced him into.  But what excuse was there for Clarence?  What excuse was there for any man who turned against his mother’s blood?  As a child he had been the spoiled pampered darling of the family, because if he wasn’t properly pampered, he set up such a ruckus of screams that everyone hastened to do his bidding just to shut him up.  A strategy that worked very well in the nursery. Now that he had emerged into the adult world, tantrums wouldn’t serve and he found to his chagrin that he was no longer the center of attention. Edward was the important one, the adored and revered one; Edward was the one with the power to get whatever he wanted with just a snap of his fingers, and he, George, was no more than a fly buzzing around the vast central authority vested in his brother.  And all because of a hiccup in the birth order. 

No greater crime could I imagine than his betrayal of Edward, for it was a betrayal of the whole family.  There were dangers inherent in a fledgling dynasty.  We must stand together or we would all fall.

  The day after the wedding, Warwick threw off all pretense by writing an open letter, signed also by Clarence and the Archbishop of York, stating that as the king’s true subjects in all parts of the realm had come to them beseeching them to find a remedy against the odious rule of Earl Rivers, his wife etc. they intended to go to the king and lay a petition before him, and they invited their friends and supporters to join them with all the men they could muster.  I don’t suppose anyone was taken in by this implausible mendacity but it was a convenient pretext. 

Warwick had been Captain of Calais and Warden of the Cinque Ports for so many years that he had many friends and adherents in Kent and he was still tremendously popular with seafaring men because of the piratical nature of his activities toward the close of the last reign. So when he raised his standard at Canterbury there was no shortage of men to join him.  Even in London, which was generally pro-Edward, he picked up a few men and managed to persuade the mayor and aldermen to part with a loan of a thousand pounds, before moving northward to join, it was presumed, with Sir John Conyers.

Being vastly outnumbered by the rebels, the king moved cautiously south from Nottingham to rendezvous with the reinforcements he had summoned under Lords Herbert and Stafford, who would give him a fighting chance against the forces Warwick had assembled.  The rebel army was moving south, too, keeping itself between him and his reinforcements.  And now Warwick was coming up from the south.

As we heard it in London, the two lords were camped some distance from each other Sir John Conyers, his own force swelled by a contingent Warwick had sent him, fell upon Herbert in the parish of Edgecott.  All the archers were with Stafford putting Herbert at a grave disadvantage, but he was an experienced fighter and gave a good account of himself. Although he sent immediately to Stafford for help, and Stafford responded promptly, by the time he arrived it was too late.  Sir John Conyers had the victory.  Stafford fled along with his men.

William Herbert and his brother Richard, two men who had been friends of Edward since he had been Earl of March and had served him loyally since he became king, were taken to Northampton, where Warwick and Clarence had arrived, and were beheaded.  I heard later that William had begged for his brother to be spared, pleading his youth, but his pleas fell on deaf ears.

A tremor ran through me at hearing this news.  That Warwick would dare execute the king’s friends… I thought: What would he not dare, this man whose pride to mine is as Mount Olympus to a pimple on the brow of a swineherd?  When I was sure of my emotions, I lifted a hand and touched two fingers to head, breast and belly.  “They were good friends and loyal servants,” I murmured.  “May God grant them mercy and everlasting life.”

This reverse left the king in danger.  The victorious rebels were to the west and the man who dared anything to the south, cutting him off from London and he with few troops.  He was at Olney in Buckinghamshire when he learned the Archbishop of York was on the road with many men and they were not clerics and he was coming to take him. 

Edward dismissed the troops still with him and waited at an inn with his brother of Gloucester and Lord Hastings for the arrival of the archbishop.  George Neville was wearing armor under his archiepiscopal finery. 

“But you can’t make a soldier out of a fat prelate,” John Gunthorp, my secretary said, and someone else added: “Nor a man of God out of a Neville.” 

After bidding farewell to Gloucester, Hastings and his household men, the king mounted his horse and rode away to Coventry, where Warwick soon joined them with son-in-law Clarence in tow.  It must have been a bitter moment indeed when Edward saw his brother standing with men he now knew to be his enemies.

I told Lord Berners to instruct the household to pray for the safety of our lord the king and for the souls of those noble lords foully slain in his service.

……….

From the Garden Tower, I could look south across the river to the Southwark bank, or west into Thames Street and across the roofs as far as St. Paul’s.  When news of the king’s captivity reached London, she gave herself over to increasing violence.  Gangs of apprentices roamed the streets at night looking for trouble and usually finding it.  Fights broke out, either with the watch or with other gangs.  Crowds of respectable citizens gathered in open spaces to indulge in incendiary talk.  Houses were barricaded and ladies were frightened to go abroad even in daylight.