The King's Grace (73 page)

A tear rolled down the old woman’s face. “Ah, my little Jehan,” she murmured, “so, you kept your promise.” Grace leaned forward, her ears alert.

“Jehan? Who is Jehan? I thought he was Perkin—Pierrequin,” Grace said, more forcefully than she had intended. “Was he not Perkin Warbeck?” Her hands were clammy and her heart was pounding. She knew there was yet more to this mystery, she thought triumphantly.

Margaret leaned her back against the tree behind her and closed her
eyes. “He did not tell you? Not even when you went to see him and all was lost?” Grace shook her head. “He was braver than I thought—and more loyal, God rest his soul.”

Grace waited less patiently than was her wont, until eventually the duchess spoke again. “A long time ago, I brought a little boy from Tournai to live with me here in Binche. I was unable to bear children, and this child, Jehan, meant everything to me. But he was not just any little boy from Tournai,” she said, opening her eyes and looking straight at Grace. “And if you swear by all that is holy never to tell a soul, I will reveal his true identity to you.”

“Cer-certes, I swear,” Grace whispered, crossing herself and holding her hand over her heart. Margaret’s eyes went to the hand and flinched. Jehan had done exactly that when she had exhorted a promise from him fifteen years ago. How she wished she could take it back! She would have her dearest boy with her now.

“You and I are the only two people who will know this, Grace, now that Jehan and my brother Edward are dead.”

Edward? My father? What does my father have to do with Perkin Warbeck, if indeed he was not Richard? Grace wondered.

“It seems my other brother, George, spent an illicit night with a young woman once. The result was my Jehan. Poor George, his guilt must have been great, because when he knew he was to die, he begged Edward to continue payments to the boy’s mother, as he, George, had done since the baby’s birth five years before. Edward, himself full of remorse for putting his own brother to death, came up with the idea of easing his conscience by asking George’s favorite—and childless—sister to take the boy in and care for him: me. He knew I would not be able to resist nor deny the offer.”

Grace did a little calculation and realized this birth must have occurred close to her own. And thus the boy was of a similar age to Prince Richard, as Perkin had claimed all along. As Grace absorbed the gist of the story, the pieces began to fall into place. She gripped the edge of the bench and whispered: “If Pierrequin was Uncle George’s bastard, then he was my cousin. Oh, Sweet Jesu, and poor Ned’s half brother.” Then her eyes widened and she gasped. “Dear God, Ned died plotting to put his own bastard brother on the throne!” She felt dizzy with the horrible irony of it all. She got to her feet and walked a few paces away. Suddenly she turned: “Did
Pierrequin know who he really was, Aunt Margaret?” she asked bitterly. “Was he tortured and hanged while he was already weighted down with his secret?”

Margaret put her head in her hands and began to cry softly. Grace had to creep closer to hear her when she began to speak. “Aye, God help me,” she said between her fingers. “I told him in Ninety-four when he fled France to my court. I told him a few steps from where you are standing,” she said, lifting her head and waving one hand in the direction of the wall embrasure. “He knew.” She did not tell Grace how, over many days and through many tears, she had coaxed and cajoled her White Rose to do her bidding and pretend he was the duke of York. How she’d reminded him of his promise of all those years before, or how she’d dangled the throne of England like a carrot under his nose. It all made sense at the time, she told herself; it was the opportunity to wreak revenge on the hated Henry Tudor and restore the throne to York. But in the end, it was all for naught, and her beloved boy was gone. She let her tears fall; she felt old and worn out.

Grace was pacing again, her anger growing, but she held it in check because she had more questions to ask. “But if he was Clarence’s child, born in England, wherefore was he also a boy from Tournai?”

Margaret wiped her eyes with her long silk sleeve and pulled herself together. “It seems the girl’s parents were respectable Flemish weavers in London. To avoid scandal, they sent their daughter with the baby to be married to a boatman in Tournai. One Jehan Werbecque. We paid the woman handsomely for me to take her son one day when the stepfather was not home. They had too many mouths to feed, and the woman was sickly. I do believe she was ignorant of the identity of her lover that drunken night at the tavern; she knew only that money came from a rich man somewhere. As far as she knew, I was sent from the bishop to put the child in the choir school. She did not know my name.” She paused, biting her bottom lip. “I was glad to take little Jehan away. His mother was not kindly, and the man beat him, so the boy told me.”

Grace let out a whistle—an ill-bred sound that made Margaret frown. “And so, much of Henry’s confession that he made Pierrequin—Jehan—sign was true?” she asked. Margaret nodded, and Grace gasped. “What about Sir Edward Brampton, and the admiral in Portugal?”

“All true. I had to send Jehan from me after Bosworth. I was afraid
someone would find out I had another York son in my house and the boy would be in danger. Certes, Henry of Richmond could never sleep soundly while York heirs were still running around. Jehan thought he was a simple lad from Tournai at that point and accepted the plan I had made. Sir Edward and his wife thought Jehan was a charity case and were pleased to be in my debt.” A sneer curved her cracked lips. “It must have been Brampton who gave away Jehan’s name to Henry. I cannot think how else Henry’s spies knew to search in Tournai. But I have no proof.” She sighed. “Poor Jehan. All he really wanted to do in life was be a mariner. Ah, the letters he wrote to me about the voyages he took, the dreams of sailing with someone like Cristoforo Columbo or da Gama—’twas when he was happiest.” Grace nodded, remembering Perkin’s sad admission.

The bell for Compline rang from St. Ursmer’s church tower and Margaret crossed herself. “
Ave Maria
, pray for me a sinner,” she muttered, slumping in her seat.

Grace swung around, her anger showing now. “Aye, aunt,” Grace agreed. “You should seek Our Lady’s forgiveness. You have destroyed lives with your desire to avenge our family.” Margaret flinched at Grace’s harsh tone, but she let her continue. “Not only John and Perkin but Perkin’s wife and their little son.” She paused and tried to calm herself. “But your secret is safe with me, although I would like to know what has stopped Jehan’s mother from giving away his true lineage? From all I have heard, Katherine de Faro is not to be trifled with, and she and the boatman were very sure Jehan was their missing son, or so Henry told all of England.”

“Not Nicaise Farou, Grace—Nicaise was her
petit nom.
She was Jehan’s stepmother. Frieda died soon after I took Jehan, and Nicaise became Madame Werbecque. So you see, with Edward, George and Jehan also dead, you and I are the only ones to know whose son he is!”

Grace nodded disconsolately. She wished she didn’t know. If she had known sooner, she would have made sure Perkin had escaped from Westminster more successfully than he had. It was only because she came to realize he was not Richard, duke of York, and she felt sorry for him and Katherine, that she agreed to help him as far as she could without risking her own and Tom’s future. If he could have reached the coast, he could have taken a ship back to Portugal. He could be riding high upon a mast and sighting new lands over distant horizons. Poor Perkin. After all he
suffered, he went to his grave knowing he was naught but a bastard son of an attainted father. A bastard, just like me, she grimaced. No wonder I cared so much; no wonder I felt such kinship. How proud she had always been of her York lineage, but now she was repelled by its ambition, and its members were naught but lechers and liars, it seemed.

She made up her mind on the spot. “Tom and I will leave you on the morrow, madam,” she pronounced, a hint of bitterness in her tone. “I miss my children, and knowing what I now know makes me all the more determined to take them away from court and let them live long and happy, where men—or women”—she paused, sending an accusing look Margaret’s way—“cannot play fox and geese with their lives. I have done my duty by my cousin, and I pray he rests in peace now.”

Margaret lifted her head and, with a hint of a smile, remarked, “Your father would have been proud of you, Grace. You have more wisdom than any of us. May God go with you on your journey home.” She drew herself up to her full height and put out her hand proudly, and the chastened aunt was once again Margaret of England, dowager duchess of Burgundy. “I pray you, find Chevalier de la Baume and send him to me. I shall need him to return to the palace.” Grace curtsied and kissed Margaret’s ringless fingers lightly. “And so I bid you farewell, my child. May God bless you.”

“
Adieu
, your grace,” Grace responded with a finality that told Margaret her niece would not return to Burgundy.

S
TARING BACK AT
the walled city receding in the morning light, Grace went over the extraordinary story she had been told the day before. She could never tell Tom; she would keep her promise to the duchess, although she did not know what purpose the secret served now.

How could a mother give up her child for money? she wondered, returning to the part of the boy’s early tale that saddened her the most. The thought of handing Susannah to a stranger and taking a few coins in return made her stomach heave. She must have been so desperate, she thought, this Frieda. A memory stirred…

“Frieda!” she suddenly cried.

Tom jumped. “Did you say something, sweetheart?”

“Nay, nay,” she answered hurriedly, her mind reeling from the revelation.

Sweet Jesu and St. Sibylline! she mouthed. Perkin was unknowingly who he said he was. He was indeed a king’s son! He was
Edward’s
bastard, not George’s. Certes, it happened that night in London when Edward and Will Hastings played a trick on the intoxicated George and came back boasting of it to Elizabeth. Edward had sired the bastard on Frieda, as Katherine Hastings had surmised upon hearing Will conspiring to pay the girl off on Edward’s behalf.

If it weren’t so tragic, she might have laughed. Your secret is safe with me, Father, she thought ruefully, casting her eyes heavenward. Even Aunt Margaret will never know the truth. Ha! And she doesn’t deserve to, Grace decided; she will have to wait until Judgment Day.

With a satisfied smile, she snuggled up against Tom.

“Let us hurry home, Tom,” she said. “I have never had such a hunger to hold my children.”

I
f the Perkin Warbeck story had been invented by a novelist, scornful readers might have left the book on the shelf or consigned it to the wastepaper basket as preposterous and implausible. As a novelist, I am in awe of and humbled by the facts and am now a believer in the old adage “truth is stranger than fiction.”

And the truth of the matter is that, until we can produce the body of young Richard, duke of York, we shall never know if Perkin was the prince or a pretender.
The King’s Grace
is my interpretation of the facts and my best guess—and as the mystery of the princes in the Tower is still unsolved, a guess that is as good as any. I would urge anyone still intrigued to study the sources for themselves. I guarantee you will come up with yet another take on this fascinating tale. My job was to read as much as I could about the events and people involved and faithfully follow them and my instincts.

For the facts: Perkin Warbeck was first noticed in history in 1491, when Irish Yorkist supporters in Cork claimed to recognize a young seaman, dressed in silks, as the son of Edward IV. Soon King Charles of France, Maximilian of Austria, Philip of Burgundy and James of Scotland all recognized his lineage, giving Henry VII of England a nasty scare. His greatest mentor, though, was Margaret of York, dowager duchess of Burgundy, who would have been his aunt—if he was Prince Richard. It is thought by
historians that these royal heads of Europe had political motives behind recognizing the young man, and indeed he was a thorn in Henry’s side for eight years until the king captured and hanged him.

Perkin did end up at the court of James of Scotland, who was so convinced of the man’s authenticity that he gave Perkin his own kinswoman, Katherine Gordon, as a bride. I visited Scotland for the first time in 2007 and walked the Lomond Hills while staying in the charming village of Falkland, where the old palace/hunting lodge still stands. “Richard” and his Katherine spent more than a year there—an idyllic place for an extended honeymoon.

After attempting to invade England from the north with James and failing to rouse any support, Perkin was forced to leave Scotland once Henry and James signed a truce in 1497. James could not be seen supporting an enemy of his new ally, so Perkin and Katherine set sail with their little son, landed in Ireland to recruit more troops and eventually sailed for Cornwall. I walked along the wall at Exeter in Devon, where Perkin had his momentary military success before being cornered by Henry’s far superior forces near Taunton. There was something about Perkin’s midnight flit across the countryside to Beaulieu Abbey in the New Forest, abandoning his followers and his wife and son, that made me believe this young man had no real desire for kingship. He sounded like a frightened boy fulfilling other people’s ambitions, and so for me he became a tragic figure, doomed from the moment Henry’s lieutenants took him back to Taunton for questioning. Much has been written about his confession there—some of the original
*
I have used in the book—and of Henry’s spies tracing Perkin’s story back to Tournai and the boatman on the Scheldt. But despite the details in the confession, there were many who still questioned why such a puppet was able to affect the trappings of nobility and pass for royal. Being versed in English, French and Latin was not conducive to being a boatman’s son, nor were his noble bearing, ease of conversation with royalty or abilities on horseback and with a sword. These were inher
ently noble traits—not to be picked up in a few months with the help of a tutor.

Perkin did become a “guest” at Henry’s court for all those months, and Henry indeed paraded him through London and put him and Katherine on display during court festivities as though they were a freak show. And yet he was fed and clothed and considered “free” to ride and walk where he wanted—albeit with a constant escort. I could not resist using some of the poem about Perkin by Henry’s poet laureate John Skelton, although, with the help of my friend Catherine Thibedeau, the language is updated a little. Perhaps the verses were the final insult that led him to escape from Westminster. He did escape from Westminster and manage to get to Shene—but whether he had help from Katherine (and Grace) we do not know! The fire that burned some of Shene—and convinced Henry to rebuild and rename the palace Richmond—did begin in the king’s wardrobe, where it was thought Perkin had slept with his guards.

From all the accounts of the story that I read, I got the distinct impression that Perkin and Warwick died so Henry could satisfy Ferdinand and Isabella of Spain that it was safe to send their daughter to England to marry his heir. Sir Simon Digby was alerted to the plot to take over the Tower on August 3 and informed Henry, who was on his progress to the Isle of Wight, but who did not bother to return to the mainland until August 24. Then nothing was done until the end of October, by which time Henry was being pressured by Spain to make a decision on the Perkin problem, and Henry had John Taylor in his custody as well as Atwater, father and son. Someone betrayed the plotters—and there were more plotters than I have mentioned in the book—and, to me, Robert Cleymond looked like the culprit. He disappeared and was never charged.

As far as I could, I have placed the major characters in the right places at the right times. Oddly enough, very little information remains about Elizabeth of York’s movements, nor of her character during her all-too-short life as queen of England. After losing Edmund in 1500, she rejoiced finally in the marriage between Catherine of Aragon and Arthur, Prince of Wales, in November 1501. But more tragedy struck this much beloved queen when Arthur inexplicably died six months later. She became pregnant again in the summer of 1502 and gave birth to another daughter on February 2, 1503, who died that same day. Nine days later, on her thirty-
eighth birthday, Elizabeth died and was buried in the new chapel built by Henry in Westminster Abbey. Henry joined her six years later. (As a sweet footnote, the queen of hearts on our playing cards today is, as John predicts, a representation of Elizabeth of York.)

Her sister Cecily, who was reputed to have been even more beautiful than Elizabeth suffered the three losses I write about in the book. We are not sure exactly when her daughters died, but according to Welles family expert Nita Knapp, Elizabeth (Lilleth) was still alive in 1498, as the papal dispensation for her marriage to Thomas Stanley was given then. However, at the time of Viscount Welles’s death in February 1499, no mention was made in his will of his daughters, and so it is presumed neither was living. In her many years of researching this family, Nita discovered that Anne was buried in London but as Elizabeth was not and there is no record of death or burial, I chose to have Elizabeth die in Lincolnshire, separate from Anne. On a happier note, Cecily did marry her Thomas Kyme, a gentleman of Lincolnshire closely associated with the Welles family. She had two children with him. As her marriage was to a commoner, Henry stripped Cecily of much of her Welles inheritance, and it was this fact and the fact that the marriage was described by seventeenth-century historian Thomas Fuller as
“rather for comfort than credit”
that made me take the dramatic liberty of suggesting Cecily and Thomas were in love rather more sooner than after John Welles’s death. Cecily died in 1507.

As for Grace, we know only one fact about her existence, and it is from the Arundel collection of manuscripts at the British Library (Arundel MS 26 folio 29v), where it was written:
“Maistres Grace, a bastard dowghter of Kyng Edwarde, and among an other gentilwoman”
were the only mourners upon the funeral barge of Elizabeth Woodville in June 1492, along with Elizabeth’s chaplain and her cousin, Edward Haute.
*
I was intrigued as to why the dowager queen would have sanctioned Grace as a mourner—a signal honor—when the girl was a bastard of King Edward’s. I decided Elizabeth must have taken to the young woman, and so I chose Grace to be our eyes and ears at court during the Perkin Warbeck mystery. No one has been able to trace Grace’s story, which gave me license to imagine one. The Gower family was prolific in that area of Yorkshire around Sheriff Hutton, and when
I was researching there we stayed at a delightful inn in Westow. Finding a branch of the family had lived at Westow in the fifteenth century, I was determined to make it Tom’s home, although the only name I ran across in my research of the period was a George Gower of Westow, and thus Alice, Edmund, Cat and Tom are also figments of my imagination.

Central to the Perkin Warbeck story was Margaret of York, and it was Ann Wroe’s research into the Burgundian archives that brought to light the existence of Margaret’s “secret boy.” He was under her wing at her palace at Binche from 1478 to 1485, when he and his tutor-chaplain disappeared from her accounts. Ann’s conjecture that he may have been a bastard child of Edward or George of Clarence became the basis for my Perkin, although, I repeat, this is purely conjecture. Curiously, when Margaret remodeled Binche in the late 1490s, one of the rooms was named in the plans as “Richard’s Room.” The letters between nephew and aunt are invented—it was a way to depict Perkin’s life before he and Grace crossed paths in England so that he was not a stranger to the reader. However, the letter to Isabella from Margaret is reproduced from the original Latin, thanks to Ann Wroe’s generous permission. The one Perkin wrote, and that I allude to, at about the same time is also extant. Henry did nickname Margaret “the diabolical duchess,” due to her lifelong ambition to overthrow him and put the York family back on the throne. It is thought that her letter of apology to him in September 1499 was a desperate attempt to spare her White Rose’s life—to no avail. Margaret died in 1503 aged fifty-seven.

Katherine Gordon remained at the English court and married twice more during Henry VIII’s reign, but her son by Perkin Warbeck was never restored to her. There is a family named Perkins near Swansea in South Wales who claim to be descended from a Richard Perkins, son of Perkin Warbeck.

It is thought that Henry and Elizabeth were tolerably happy together, despite Margaret Beaufort’s iron influence on her son, and indeed when Arthur died the husband and wife were said to have comforted each other greatly in their loss, and when his wife died, Henry spared no expense on a lavish funeral and tomb for her in Westminster Abbey. He did not remarry, although he kept Katherine Gordon close, and he is said to have aged twenty years during the Perkin Warbeck dilemma. Even though he
helped negotiate the papal dispensation for it, Henry did not live to see his son, Henry, marry Catherine of Aragon. He died on April 22, 1509, and Catherine and Henry VIII were married on June 11. The rest, as they say, is history.

Newburyport, Massachusetts