Queen of Trial and Sorrow (14 page)

“You are the king!  You’re more powerful than them all.  You can do anything!”

In answer to that he gave a bitter laugh.

“But you have to punish them!” I said, raising myself on one elbow.  “Such grave offences cannot go unpunished!”

“What would you have me do?” he snapped.

I snatched my hand away, unwilling to be distracted.  “You intend to forgive them?” I demanded, aware that my voice was shrill with shock.  “The traitors who dared lay hands on you?  Don’t you see what a precedent they’ve set?  Every man with a grudge against you will believe he can resort to arms without fear of the consequences.  If the men who seized you and held you captive are allowed to go unpunished, no man need ever again fear to commit treason.”

“Bess, try to understand,” he said with aggravated patience.  “If the house of York is to flourish, it cannot be seen to be rending itself.  It must be united if it is to be strong.  The important thing now is to heal the wounds.  To move against Warwick would only create more problems – for myself and for the kingdom.”

“They killed my father and brother!” I cried.  “Murdered them!  Have you forgotten that?  I want them dead!  I want them to suffer the same kind of justice they served my father and brother!”

He sat upright, dislodging me from my position against his chest.  “I haven’t forgotten, nor will I ever forget,” he said bitterly.  “I was there.  I was forced to watch them die.  You tell me because I am the king I can do anything, but I was helpless to prevent it.  Do you think I don’t long for revenge?  The humiliations I had to endure, the murder of my friends as well as your family – I would be less than human if I didn’t.  But if I have to forego the purely personal satisfaction of revenge in order to restore peace to the kingdom whose care is my first responsibility, then that is what I must do.  And so must you.”

I shook my head violently, my hair billowing like a veil.  “No, I won’t.  I couldn’t bear it.”

“You can and you will,” he said firmly, “because you are the queen and as such your first responsibility is to me.  I don’t deny that you have the right to hate Warwick, you have the right to want revenge, but I have the right to command your complete loyalty. I did warn you, Bess,” he added, “that there may be times you don’t like being queen.”   

I drew a deep shaken breath.  “I didn’t expect anything quite like this.”

Capturing my hand again, he tried to change the subject.  “How is your mother bearing up?”

My poor mother had had great trouble.  A fellow named Thomas Wake, a Northamptonshire man who lost a son during the battle, had resurrected those ridiculous rumors that she had used witchcraft to secure the king for my husband.  They had surfaced shortly after our marriage, authored by the gullible and disseminated by those who wanted to believe Edward had been bewitched by something more sinister than a pair of green eyes.  And now was added the further absurdity that my mother was trying to bring about the death of Warwick.  Wake claimed to have found a leaden image in her possession, fashioned like a man-at-arms and broken in the middle, which he sent on to Warwick. 

“Her health has suffered.  First Father and John’s deaths, then those awful accusations.  Like a pack of cowardly dogs, they attacked her when she was at her most vulnerable.  That fellow Wake who started the whole thing turned out to be a creature of Warwick’s.  She wants to be formally exonerated, Edward.  She doesn’t want those ridiculous assertions following her for the rest of her life.”

“I will arrange for her to have a hearing before the council and I’ll make sure Warwick is there.  Let her accusers present their case if they have one and she’ll have the opportunity to answer them.  If the charges are found to be without foundation and can’t be substantiated, your mother will be officially cleared.”

“I never realized how old she is,” I said sadly.  “It’s as if all the joy has fallen from her, leaving an old woman behind.  When I saw her I felt sick to my soul.  And I can’t even tell her that she will receive justice.”

“I have no faith in the healing properties of revenge.  Were you to achieve the deaths of my cousins and brother it would not ease the pain of her loss.”

I was shaking my head before he had even finished speaking.  “I cannot bear the thought that those three foul traitors continue in life while my blameless father and brother lie moldering in their graves.  They deserve to die.”

“Oh, for God’s sake,” he said with sudden irritation.  He rubbed his brow.  I knew the burden he carried, a burden he had never expected.  But wasn’t mine heavier?  Once again attempting to change the subject, he said: “I think we’ll send the children back to Shene and summon Anthony from hiding.  It’s safe enough now.”

“Is it?” I said unhappily, and shuddered.  “I don’t think I’ll ever stop being afraid for my family.”  

“Everything will be all right, I promise,” he said.  Yet he must have known that the words lacked the power to either soothe or reassure.

“I won’t receive them,” I said.  “I won’t let them kiss my hand.  I won’t let them touch me.”

“Yes,” he said inflexibly, “you will.  You’ll do as you’re told.”

“I won’t!  You ask too much.”

He seized me by the shoulders and gave me a shake, his fingers gripping my flesh like vices.  “I’m not asking, Bess.  You are as much my subject as any potter or tinker or chimney sweep, and you
will
do as you’re told.  And you’ll do it with a smile on your face.  Understand?”

It was the first time he had ever been rough with me and it shocked me.  I think it shocked him too, for he released me with a muttered oath.  I nodded mutely, sullenly. 

“Go to sleep.  You need rest,” he said, sounding angry.

Having thumped his pillows into submission, he lay down and I lay beside him with a little space between us, not so much as a finger touching.  I stared up at the bed canopy where the amorous naughtiness of little fat cupids was hidden in the shadows.  Usually sleep came easily to Edward and he slept well, but now we were both engulfed in tension and misery and I knew he was as wakeful as I.  After a while he reached out and put a hand on my shoulder in a gesture of commiseration.  I shrugged it off.  With an eloquent sigh, he rolled over, turning his back on me.

I should have left it.  I even told myself so, but I was full of grief and my only comfort was in thoughts of revenge.  So I rose on one elbow and leaned over him.  My breasts pressed into his naked back; my hair spilled over his shoulder.  I could smell sandalwood on him, which couldn’t quite conceal the smell of our earlier lovemaking.  His skin was hot against mine, slightly moist.  “Tell me one thing,” I said close to his ear.  “Would any consideration have induced you to let your brother’s murderer live?”

He seldom spoke about Rutland any more.  After the battle of Wakefield, his boyhood companion, his dearest brother, had been held for later ransom on the bridge over the Calder, until Lord Clifford came along and exacted vengeance upon the young earl for the death of his father at the first battle of St. Albans.  It was Rutland’s cold-blooded murder that forced the rather self-indulgent Edward, given more to the pursuit of women than the quest for a crown, to grow up fast and assume adult responsibilities. 

“Clifford’s death did nothing to assuage my grief.”  His voice was as cold and dark as the tomb.  “Only time did that.  Clifford’s death taught me that revenge is an empty vessel. I understand what you’re going through, but I will not risk England’s peace in order to indulge your desire for revenge.”

“Not revenge – justice!  Give me justice!”

“Enough, Bess!  Go to sleep.”

I didn’t move away but rested my cheek against his.  “He won’t give up, you know.”

“Will you?”  he snapped.

“No, never!” 

Snarling an obscenity, he flung out of bed, threw on his bed robe and stalked off to his own chambers.  I turned my face into the pillow and wept.  The wind moaned among the chimneypots and whistled through crevices.

……….

Warwick’s smear campaign had been so successful that words such as ‘grasping’ and ‘avaricious’ were used of my family as indiscriminately as offal was thrown at a man in the stocks.  But the truth was that I had provided for my sisters and my brother John, and Edward had promoted my father to an earldom and made him treasurer; I had appealed to him on behalf of my younger brothers but his answer was always the same: he would not promote them unless they proved themselves useful.  So, on the whole, my family had benefited very little from its association with the king.  But we had certainly suffered.  We were despised for being ‘upstarts’.  We were much sought after by those in need of favors, and reviled behind our backs.  And now my father and John had paid the ultimate penalty.

It was our first real quarrel.  The worst of it was, Edward understood my feelings completely, because after his brother’s death he had not believed he would ever be whole again until Clifford was dead too.  How would he have reacted had he been required not only to accept what Clifford had done but also to rub shoulders with him, see him on a daily basis, take his hand?  No, he would never have permitted Clifford to live.  When one was wronged, nothing was more natural than to want redress – that objective was the basis of the justice system – but although my family and I had been deeply wronged there would be no justice for us.  Proving that some people were above the law.

He began to avoid me.  When the court gathered in the presence chamber, I was not there.  He didn’t come to my door to escort me to supper, so I dined alone in my chambers and he ate in the hall, commanding the minstrels to play and laughing at the antics of his fools.  He didn’t come to my bed and although I missed him I told myself I didn’t care.  When he saw me one fine afternoon strolling in the garden, he turned and walked another way.

I could see his point of view too.  But I didn’t believe that forgiving Warwick and his cohorts was the way to obtain peace.  It has always seemed to me that if you forgive a servant for a small transgression he is more likely to offend again than mend his ways. 

Alone with my ladies, trying not to show my hurt, I reminded myself that I had been a good wife.  I entertained him in bed, imperative for a man of his carnal appetites, and as an adjunct had produced three children in five years.  The fact that we had no son as yet was God’s will and could not be laid to my account.  I followed his advice and obeyed his commands without fail.  One of the things that pleased him most about me was my beauty.  It amused him to watch as men meeting me for the first time did a double take, or suddenly developed a blank look as if they’d been hit on the head with a mallet.  Stunned, then enraptured.  When we had important visitors from abroad, I often entertained them and strove to impress, and when those visitors went home it was to spread word of the lavish splendor of the English court and the striking good looks of its king and queen. 

I had tried hard to become the kind of queen he wanted me to be.  But how could I forgive the murderers of my father and brother?  How could he ask it of me?

Looking near to tears, my sister Anne knelt beside my chair.  I could see my other ladies in the background, sewing, or pretending to.  “Your Grace, I – we – have debated whether to tell you – ”

“Tell me,” I said quickly.  “Keep nothing from me.”

She bit her lip and said very low: “There are rumors…”

“What?  Rumors?”

“There are rumors that his Grace has taken another to his bed.”

How can I describe it?  My mind was simply incapable of absorbing this latest shock, this unparalleled betrayal.  With a great effort, I asked: “Who?” My voice sounded like the call of a crow.

Anne looked away.  “I don’t know,” she said.  I squeezed her fingers until she winced.  “Mistress Howard, Lord Howard’s sister.”

Another Elizabeth, another beauty.  But he would choose a beauty, wouldn’t he?  Raven-haired and blue eyed, vivacious and well educated.  And younger than me by a decade.

“What else do they say?”

“The ladies of the court are vying for his attention, but he’s only had her.” 
So far.

There was a conversation of eyes and small gestures between my ladies before I turned my face to the window and waved her away.  Rain washed the glass and dimpled the surface of the river; it poured from the mouths of the stone men peering down from under Westminster’s roofs.  I hated my attendants for being witness to my humiliation; and because I knew they couldn’t wait to leave me and spread the word throughout the palace:
Oh, she was devastated when Lady Bourchier told her.  I thought she was going to swoon clean away!  Poor thing!  Of course, she ought to have expected it.  I mean, given his past…

But I didn’t expect it, you see.  I had become used to having my way, to hearing him say: ‘For you, my green-eyed goddess, anything.’  I expected him to come to me within a day or so to mend our quarrel and give me at least a token promise that he would move against Warwick and Clarence.  Because that’s the way he was: he hated quarreling and was always quick to forgive.

I didn’t expect that he would punish me in a way he knew would hurt me deeply at a time when my grief was still raw and I was in need of his tenderness and compassion.  I didn’t think he was capable of such cruelty.

I wondered where he was, what he was doing, with whom?  I knew now what it was to be ‘out of favor,’ and it hurt.  Days of abject misery, of sly or pitying glances.  Lonely nights in a bed that was a desolate plain, wide and empty under the fatuous cupids.  Every night I thought of him, missed his heat and bulk beside me.  Sleep was an apparition beckoning from a distant shore.  Sometimes I would let my hand stray to the emptiness beside me and imagine it falling on the jut of a hip or a muscled thigh.  My mouth hungered for the taste of his kisses, my breasts throbbed for remembered caresses.  I fell asleep aching with unspent lust, wet with longing. My bitterness wasn’t strong enough to keep me from loving him and missing him, missing his smile, his presence and that way he had of looking at me that made me melt inside.