Queen of Trial and Sorrow (26 page)

It did no good.  One cannot so easily cheat Fate.  Our little George did not thrive.  He never saw his second birthday.

……….

With our respective attendants streaming behind, the king and I made our way to the dining hall.  Trumpets blared.  The diners rose to their feet and allowed a respectful silence until we had taken our seats.  Many denizens of Westminster ate at the king’s table and at his expense, but not all ate the same quality of food.  Only those at the high table were served with the best of the palace cooks’ inventive creations, fragrant white bread made from the best wheat and the finest wines of the royal cellars.  Those at the lower tables had a different menu and those seated below the great saltcellar had a different one again.  These, generally below the rank of knight, had to make do with food left over from the concoctions prepared for the delectation of those at the high table served up in a stew, bread made from barley or even rye, and ale to wash it down.  On fast days, they might be served with kippered herring or salt fish, while the delicious aromas of eel pie and baked fish drifted down from the high table.

Today was not a fast day, so instead of eel pie there was game pie, and Edward allowed himself to be served with a large slice.  All the plate on the high table was gold; the goblets winked with jewels.

“Mmm.  It’s very good.  Try some, Bess.” Edward savored the pie with an appreciative sigh, and I consented to a sliver.

When dinner was ended and the king was engaged in a conversation with the Cardinal/Archbishop of Canterbury, my son Thomas, now Marquis of Dorset, leaned down beside my chair.

“Watch him,” he whispered.  “His Grace says he won’t eat or drink under the king’s roof.”

I had no doubt that he was talking about Clarence.  His latest folly was to intrigue with the Duchess Margaret for the hand of Mary of Burgundy, Duke Charles having departed this world while laying siege to Nancy, his naked and despoiled body found frozen in the snow.  When he learned of it Edward told them both in no uncertain terms that he wouldn’t countenance it.  The very idea of his erratic brother having so much power was enough to spoil his sleep. 

Since Edward’s failure to support his ambition he was quite unable to hide his frustration.  He sulked in our presence and whispered in corners with his cronies.  And what he whispered was dangerous.   

“What maggot has got into his brain now?” I said in vexation.

“He fears poison.”

Like Louis’ brother.  There were rumors… but poison was not an Englishman’s weapon.  “Who does he suspect?”

“The king.  You.  Me.  The Lord Chamberlain.  Take your pick.”

“Would you poison him, Thomas?”

He gave me his saucy grin.  “Is that a royal command?”

I laughed.  “Don’t put yourself to the trouble.  He will destroy himself soon enough.”

He leaned closer and put his hand on my arm, compelling my attention.  He had my green eyes and his own golden-blond hair and a long, slender body that moved with languid grace and ease like the predatory sway of the tawny cats at the Tower.  “There’s more, Mother,” he said softly.  “My servant Greene heard it from his chaplain that he is telling his friends that he ought in very right to be king because at the time of the readeption he was named by parliament to succeed to the crown if the heirs of Henry and his son failed, and, just in case that’s not reason enough, also because Edward is base-born, got on the duchess by an archer named Blaybourne – ”

“Oh, that old slander.  I’ve heard it before.  No one believes it.”

The breath hissed through his teeth.  “It matters not that no one believes it.  What matters is that he feels himself safe enough to say it.  He believes he can say and do anything he likes without being punished.”

That he was suspected of conspiring with the Archbishop of York and the Earl of Oxford, and of having a hand in a recent rising in Worcestershire, were minor transgressions compared to the heinous treasons he had committed in company with Warwick and been forgiven, because he was clever enough to turn his coat at just the right time.  He’d been given ample reason for believing that he was above the law; that no matter what he did he would go unpunished.

“What’s worse,” said Dorset, “is if Edward’s right to the crown is tainted by a suspicion of bastardy,
so is the prince’s
.”

These words caused a sudden flare of panic in me, but only for a moment before reason asserted itself.  It was Warwick who had first raised doubts about Edward’s legitimacy, just as he had about Margaret’s son, to whom at least he had been generous enough to suggest a noble sire in the person of a duke of Somerset.  No man of sense took seriously such tales, recognizing them as no more than the hackneyed tools of political conflict.  That Edward had been in possession of the throne now (ignoring the readeption of Henry, which I always did) for sixteen years, the last six being years of peace, prosperity and consolidation, rendered such declarations invalid.  There was nothing to fear.  I was confident Edward would do whatever he had to do to ensure the peaceful succession of our son.

When the king had finished his conversation, I said to him: “Your brother looks disconsolate.  Why don’t you send him a cup of hippocras?”

He looked at me suspiciously – as well he might.  “Why don’t you?”

“He won’t accept it from my hand.  He will insult me by refusing it.  But he can hardly refuse it from you.”

He glanced down the table to where his brother sat alone, ignored by those around him, wearing his usual sulky expression.  Summoning a server, he told the man to take a cup of hippocras to the duke.  We both watched as the man approached the duke and offered the cup on bended knee.  The duke shook his head and waved him away, and then he looked our way to make sure the insult had not gone unnoticed.  I heard Edward suck in his breath.

“I swear he grows more offensive every day,” I hissed.

“Leave it, Elizabeth,” he said wearily.

“He has just snubbed you at your own table!” I said hotly.  “After all you have done for him, how can he be so – ” But I was speaking to his turned shoulder.  He had resumed his conversation with the cardinal.

The duke came less frequently to court but when he did I watched him.  Storms seldom leave the terrain through which they pass unscathed and Clarence’s tempests and tribulations had left him as scarred as any old soldier home from the war: a deep line slashed between his brows and two smaller lines rising perpendicularly from it, forming three sides of a square; his mouth tugged downward in a more or less permanent petulant droop. I saw it was true that he refused all food and drink.  Even when offered wine from the same flagon from which the king and others had been served, he would wave the servitor away and glance furtively around to make sure that some had taken note of the defiant gesture.  Which we found most strange as he had the reputation of being overly fond of wine.

……….

The news was so bizarre we could not at first believe it to be true.

On a night of violent storms, some eighty of Clarence’s men rode into Somerset and seized the person of Ankarette Twynho, while another group grabbed John Thoresby, both former servants of the late Duchess of Clarence.  They were carried to Warwick, thrown in prison and indicted at the duke’s demand, Mistress Twynho for the poisoning of the duchess and Master Thoresby for doing away with the newborn baby!  In fear of their lives (so they claimed and who can doubt it?) the jurors brought in a verdict of guilty, and the pair was hanged at once, protesting their innocence to the last.

This flouting of royal justice – this entirely unwarranted persecution of the innocent, this taking of the law into other hands, this corruption of jurors either by bribes, threats or other coercion – was the kind of evil that his Grace the king had been struggling against since the beginning of his reign and, coming from a member of his own family was intolerable.  And yet, while some members of the council demanded that the duke be called to account, it was the king himself who resisted. 

“He has taken leave of his senses!” I said when I saw him.  He did not speak of it, but he had a face of thunder.  When would he act?

Two years earlier, while making war on France, Edward had been laid low by a tertian fever and for a while there had been serious concerns about whether he would live.  By the time I learned of it, the crisis was passed and he had recovered. But the fever returned intermittently, sapping his strength and vitality.  The strong capable body that had served him so well through the hardships of the last two decades was beginning to fail him now.  Whenever he became angry, which happened more frequently in these days of peace, his face became rubious and a thick vein dark as wine pulsed in his brow.  These signs coupled with his increasing weight alarmed me.

……….

Even while the court was still reeling in shock and the council was debating what must be done about the duke, another controversy arose like a dead fish floating to the surface that touched us more closely.  John Stacy, a clerk of Oxford, already having a reputation as one who studied the stars for dark and baleful purposes, was arrested and accused of attempting to bring about the death of Lord Beauchamp at the instigation of his unfaithful wife.  When he was examined, more serious and frightening crimes came to light.  Stacy made a full confession and afterward Thomas Burdett, a member of Clarence’s household and a faithful henchman, was caught in the net, along with another Oxford clerk, Thomas Blake.  Despite the fact that by law and the decrees of holy church men may not meddle in matters concerning kings and princes, Burdett who bore a grudge against the king and hoped to elevate himself (through his master, undoubtedly) was accused of causing Stacy and Blake to study the natal charts of the king and the Prince of Wales to determine when they would die, of attempting to bring about their deaths by the use of necromancy, and of declaring to certain of their cronies that the king and prince would die in a short time; also, by the by, of publishing certain letters in public places inciting the king’s subjects to rebellion.

We live in a superstitious age.  The king and I had been given good reason to believe in signs and portents, and we were truly alarmed by these revelations. 

As may be imagined, the trial created a sensation, and many of the lords came from their country homes to witness it.  What it revealed was that Burdett had been the instigator and prime mover of these evil events, but, naturally, the question on everyone’s lips was: How far was the duke involved?  Would Burdett have dared such an undertaking without the approval and consent of his master?  And who had more to gain from such knowledge than the man whose name began with the letter
G
?
 

All three men were condemned to death and were accordingly hanged at Tyburn where, as I heard later, Burdett made a moving and spirited declaration of his innocence and devotion to the Crown. 

There were stormy council meetings during which the lords tried to persuade the king to do something about the duke and received the short end of his temper for their pains.  He still shrank from punishing his brother as he deserved.

……….

With the coming of the hot weather, plague had broken out in London.  Parliament was prorogued when several members of the Commons died, and the courts were suspended.  Plague was our annual curse, rising up with the mists and miasma from the river to take the lives of we poor sinners.  So the churchmen say.  Physicians say it’s the rats, which pop up in unexpected places and scuttle about shops chased by broom-welding boys.  As their population increases, the creatures become ever more brazen and aggressive in their hunt for food, making their appearance in broad daylight and darting between the feet of pedestrians.  They are chased from shops even in prosperous neighborhoods.  You might see them scuttling around the stalls in Billingsgate Market, or darting into doorways in Chepe.  Rat catching is a growing trade in London, and there is a proliferation of a breed of dog that hunts them.

Furthermore, the king needed a rest.  Two days after the executions the court removed to the more salubrious air of Windsor, and to Windsor came Thomas Rotherham, who was now Bishop of Rochester and chancellor since Stillington was forced to resign his office, having been summoned to Rome to answer charges of neglecting his pastoral duties and (a much more serious offence in the eyes of the church) irregularities in the collection and sending on of tithes.  Rotherham, a tiny little man with silvery hair and eyebrows and eyes of so light a color – I might say silvery also – that he had an altogether ethereal quality, was a protégé of mine and much more to my liking. 

He found the king and I at leisure in the park, in a clearing close by the river, with tables loaded down with picnic fare and our children, save only the prince, at play around us.  They had been brought from Shene to enjoy a brief holiday with us, and their various toys were scattered around the clearing.  Edward had done some hunting; there was no pressing business as there were no ambassadors in England at the moment, a circumstance bound to change and very shortly, for he was negotiating with the Holy Roman Emperor, with Spain, Burgundy, Brittany and France. 

But on that lovely summer day, alive with the singing of birds and the hum of insects going about their industrious lives in the dark, moist places beneath grass and last year’s fallen leaves, no one was thinking of Louis or the Duke of Clarence.  Such thoughts had no place on such a day.  I was thinking of my little son, and perhaps the king was also.  Certainly Dickon himself was thinking about what he had been told the previous day: that he was shortly to wed Anne Mowbray, daughter and heiress of the late Duke of Norfolk.  Although the king favored European matches for our children (and I’m not insensible of the irony) here was an opportunity he couldn’t resist to gather that rich inheritance into the hands of our family.