The Dragon and the Rose (34 page)

He thought he knew the seat of the trouble, too. If ever hatred glared from a woman's eyes when they fell upon him, that woman was the dowager queen. What profit she could find in such behavior he could not guess; but he could do little to seek the answer because she avoided him. The information was not of much value, either. He could see no way to separate Elizabeth from her mother completely, especially at this time.

Fortunately, Elizabeth seemed much attached to his mother, too. Henry could only hope that Margaret's influence would counter the dowager's, and he applied himself to keeping Elizabeth faithful by coddling her in every way he could think of.

They moved from London when the heat made the stench of the filthy city unpalatable, traveling by water to Richmond and then very slowly south until they settled in Winchester on September 1. Henry remained for a week and, seeing Elizabeth particularly peaceful and in good health, he told her he would have to leave her for a time.

"How long?" she asked, setting down her mug of ale suddenly.

"A week or two—not more."

Elizabeth looked away. She was hot and uncomfortable, and felt herself to be ugly and misshapen. She could hardly bear to wait until she was free of the burden she carried, and at the same time she was terrified of dying in childbirth.

"You want a woman," she said harshly.

Henry flushed, conscious of the queen's ladies whom he was sure were listening, although they were not close. "Bess," he said softly, "you know I do and I know I do, so I would be a fool to deny it. I swear that is not my purpose in going. I will swear, also, if it will make you more content, that I will not. Have I given you any cause to accuse me thus?"

"You have been under my eye too much, but you are a man. Do I need any other cause?"

"I certainly hope I am a man," he rejoined lightly. "I have surely given you reason to believe so. Elizabeth, I cannot help it. I have delayed and delayed, seeking a place where you would be happy, and I dare wait no longer. I wish very much to free the earl of Surrey from prison, but first I must be sure that Norfolk and Suffolk are quiet. They must not inflame him and, if I have guessed wrong with regard to his loyal intentions toward me, he must not be able to inflame them."

So seldom did Henry mention a political matter to Elizabeth that she blinked in surprise. Then she was flattered, for his explanation showed how earnest he was to pacify her.

"If you must …" she said uncertainly, and then, swallowing nervously, added, "but I am so near my time. You would not leave me alone then, would you?"

Regardless of the watching eyes, Henry rose and put his arms around his wife. "You will not be alone, Bess. Your mother is here and mine." Not to mention, he thought, a dozen court physicians, midwives, and God knows who else.

"But I want you."

Filled with remorse for his unkind thought, Henry kissed her hair, and then her eyes and mouth. "I will be here, I promise. I will be here."

Leaving behind any man who could not ride like a centaur, Henry galloped two hundred miles in two days. The horses were not too much wearied, for they were changed at every town, but the men were half dead with fatigue. He arrived at East Dereham on the ninth, concluded his business in that day and rode thirty miles more in the dark to Brandon Ferry.

Here Henry made arrangements for Charles Brandon, William Brandon's son, to be transferred to his care to be raised with his child. The next day he was in Downham, twenty miles north, and here problems of trade and administration delayed him for three days.

By the fourteenth, however, he had ridden to Greenwich where he spent two days with foreign deputations from France, Brittany, the Empire, and Spain, and two nights with Morton and Foxe outlining what could and could not be suggested to the foreign envoys when he was away. At dawn on the seventeenth, a messenger arrived to say the queen had been taken ill. Henry dressed, mounted, and rode the nearly eighty miles to Winchester in six hours, only to find that the signs had disappeared. Elizabeth was so grateful that he could not be angry. She pressed him to her swollen breast.

"I am glad I sent for you. You are half dead with work. You must not go back to London. You must stay here and rest. Henry, please! Your mother says it will be any time now. Please do not leave me."

"No," Henry said thickly. "No, I will stay." Misunderstanding, he gestured for a chair to be brought to the bed, but Elizabeth shook her head.

"Not here." She lifted a hand to stroke his hair. "Indeed, I would be glad to take you into my bed, but you could not sleep. Go and rest, my love. I will try not to disturb you too soon."

Henry slept the clock around and then spent the afternoon of the eighteenth nervously prowling about the palace, expecting to be called at any moment. The day, however, was completely uneventful and the evening, which he devoted to Elizabeth, seemed to prove her condition unchanged. He grew extremely irritable. It appeared as if she would not deliver for a week or a month and that he would be imprisoned among these chattering women forever. In fact, he came so close to quarreling with his wife, that Margaret was forced to drive him away.

Unfortunately, Henry had reached a state of nerves where nothing but a rousing quarrel could content him. Margaret was too occupied with preparations for the lying-in to be bothered with him. Jasper totally misunderstood the problem and absolutely refused to be drawn into an argument, no matter what Henry said or did. No one else dared quarrel with the king, and everyone slunk out of his path with such fearful glances that his temper was further exacerbated.

Henry approached Elizabeth at breakfast on September 19 with a surface calm that covered emotions approaching those of a raving maniac. The day was warm and she was flushed and short of breath. Her hair was dark and oily because her skin had grown very sensitive and she could not bear to have it brushed properly. She was sitting sideways near the open window, the light outlining the grotesquerie her body had become. Henry was revolted.

It did not take him five words to insult her and Elizabeth, who was even more miserable than he, was soon screaming like a fishwife. When her ladies tried to interfere, Henry drove them from the room. Half fled to Margaret, the other half to Elizabeth's mother, but by the time those ladies had thrown on enough clothing to be decent Henry was gone and Elizabeth was in hysterics. The king then flung himself on a horse, cursing women, children, and his own misfortune in having a wife who was such a fool that she did not know when her own baby was due.

Ned Poynings saw him careening toward the stables alone. He grabbed two cloaks and a purse and followed at a discreet distance until Henry, seeming to have galloped off the worst of his temper, reined in his mount. Poynings approached cautiously, but Henry wanted none of him or anyone else and fled again, westward across the downs. They played the game twice more.

It was nearly noon and the unseasonable warmth showed every sign of building up into a thunderstorm. By two of the clock the storm broke, pouring such sheets of rain that Henry had to stop for fear his horse would stumble and throw him. He sat still, his head hanging. Poynings covered him with one of the cloaks and was about to withdraw again when Henry spoke.

"I have ruined five months of hard work in five minutes."

"You mean you had a fight with Her Grace, sire?"

Henry nodded.

"Women do not take such matters amiss."

"I suppose," Henry sighed. "I must go back and make my peace."

"If that is what you have decided to do …" Poynings left that hanging and caught Henry's look of inquiry. It was clear that the king was filled with remorse but still in a state of nerves in which a rejection of his peace overtures would rapidly cause a reversal of his feeling and precipitate another quarrel. "I am no expert on such matters," Poynings suggested, "but I know what Devon would say."

"What?"

"That you must first let her cool well, and then eat humble pie."

"But I cannot go back and not go to her at once. I am sure that would make matters worse. And—" Henry laughed "—I would be glad to eat any sort of pie. I am most damnably hungry, having come away without my breakfast. I have not a groat upon me, Ned. Do you think anyone would believe I was the king in this draggled condition and give me a bite to eat?"

Poynings jingled the purse, blessing his foresight in having brought it. "You will not have to test your people's charity, sire."

They rode slowly together until they found an inn where, covering their too-elegant clothing with the cloaks, they ordered and ate the ordinary dinner with great pleasure in happy anonymity. Their horses were tired from the wild ride of the morning so that it took a good deal longer to return to Winchester than it had taken to come away from it. Nonetheless there had not been enough time to permit Elizabeth to cool.

When Henry presented himself, all dripping with rain, he was turned away. He did not press the point; but when he returned at night, he was again denied admittance. He hesitated. No one would dare keep him out if he insisted on entering, of course, but he decided it was too soon to force himself upon Elizabeth. He went to bed, feeling rather at a loss. This was the first time in their marriage, when they were in the same house, that he had not had some conversation and a parting kiss from his wife. It was an odd sensation and a very disagreeable one, Henry decided, as he stared at the pattern of the bedcurtains. He did, however, fall asleep eventually, only to be shaken awake some time after midnight.

"Sire."

"John, if the palace is not on fire or under attack, I will have your head for waking me."

Cheney did not blanch. Necessity was necessity. "Sire, Her Grace's woman begs you to come to her."

"Oh, Lord!" Henry said irritably.

The bedrobe was slipped around him skillfully, slippers slid onto his feet. Henry moved quickly, but he really did not expect anything more than a fretful Elizabeth who could not sleep. Still, he had made the quarrel and it was only right to mend it when Elizabeth desired. The impression was reinforced when he found her, alone, except for her regular attendant, although when he came to the bed and took her hands they were cold as ice and trembling.

"I am so very sorry, Elizabeth," Henry said contritely. "Indeed, I do not know how to explain nor excuse myself. I—"

"Never mind that now, Henry," she replied in an odd, gasping voice. "I have teased you enough in these past months for you to strike back once." Her grip on his hands tightened. "It is started. I am sure it is started."

Henry glanced wildly around the room, wondering where all the people were whose work this was. He did not realize that his constant kindness had made him Elizabeth's symbol of security and comfort, and that, for all her piety, he was a greater source of consolation to her than God.

As princess royal, her will and whims had been pandered to, but she was clever enough to realize that, after her father died and her family was deserted, those people were all self-seeking, interested in the advancement, wealth, or favor she could bestow. To her it seemed as if Henry alone, for he had her absolutely in his power, was good to her because he loved her. He never said he did, not even in their most passionate moments, but he had proved it in these last five months,
 
thousands of times in thousands of ways. She knew she was Edward's daughter and of value to him, but that alone could only have ensured her of courtesy and not of the unfailing tenderness he displayed.

"Let me call the physicians and your mother, Bess."

"No," she cried, clutching his hands more desperately, "I want you!"

The king of England, who had fought for his life and his crown at Bosworth field against superior odds and faced rebellion with relative calm, broke into a cold sweat of terror. "I will not leave you," he said, trying to speak steadily, "but I do not know what is best to be done. Let me send for someone."

"There is no need." The marchioness of Dorset, who was in attendance and had been sleeping in an adjoining room, came forward. "Her Grace was uneasy and asked for you, sire, so we thought it best that you give her your company. It will be some hours yet before aught need be done." Elizabeth closed her eyes and tightened her lips. "Lead her to talk," Dorset's wife whispered in Henry's ear, "of the child or of anything that will hold her mind. She is frightened."

So am I, Henry thought. Holy Mary have mercy on me, so am I. "Bess," he said seating himself on the bed, "if it is a man-child, what do you wish to name him?"

"Henry."

"Thank you, but I think there are Henrys enough, do you not? I am the seventh already. Let us give England a rest from Henrys. Do you wish," he said reluctantly—but at this moment he was ready to give her anything—"to name him Edward?"

Kind, kind, he was so kind. Elizabeth heard the reluctance, thought of her mother's triumph, and shook her head. She was glad when she saw her husband's relief that she had denied herself the small victory. Then her hands tightened spasmodically on his again.

"A new name, Bess? A British name?" Henry said hastily. "Arthur? He was a great hero and a great king."

"Yes, Arthur. That should please everyone."

That ended that subject. Henry cast wildly about for another, but his mind was utterly blank. Elizabeth herself saved him.

"Will you be very angry if it is a girl, Henry?"

"Of course I would not be angry. A pretty girl like her mother would be a great joy to me."

She found a small smile. "Oh, that is not true, but it is good of you to say it."

"It is true, Elizabeth. We are both young. There will be many other children. What matter whether there be a girl or a boy at first?"

It did matter to him, of course; it mattered desperately, but Elizabeth could do nothing now to change the sex of the child. Her eyes sought his, and he saw the fear in them.

Not fear that he would care, but the fear that she would die and, for her, there would be no more children nor even the joy of this one. His hands grew wet in her grasp, and he knew sweat was standing on his forehead again.