The Rose at Twilight (14 page)

G
RITTING HER TEETH, ALYS
made a deep curtsy. Elizabeth’s voice had been gentle, filled with concern and goodness. Alys glanced at the other two women in the room, wondering if they knew Elizabeth as she did. She did not know either of them.

The elder, a plump woman with several chins quivering above the neck of her gray-fur-trimmed green dress, had risen to her feet when Alys’s name was announced and stepped forward now to greet her. The younger woman, slimmer and garbed in lynx-trimmed rose velvet, also got up but remained standing beside Elizabeth. All three wore simple cap-and-band veils over their hair, instead of the butterfly headdress that had been the fashion for years.

“Lady Alys,” the older woman said, “I am Lady Emlyn Lacey, and my companion is Lady Beatrix Ffoulkes. We are pleased to greet you. Her highness has spoken of you frequently and has been looking forward to enjoying your company, however briefly.”

“Briefly?” Rising from her curtsy despite the fact that Elizabeth had made no sign that she might do so, Alys looked at her, certain that she detected a glint of malice in Elizabeth’s pale blue eyes. Repressing the anger she felt to see her so elegantly garbed in sable-trimmed blue damask, and showing no sign of mourning the uncle she had professed to love, Alys said carefully, “I had been given to understand that I was to be taken into the king’s ward. Is that not the case after all?”

“Certainly it is,” Elizabeth said more gently than ever, “but surely you do not think that that means our lord king will keep you always in his company, Alys dear. You are to be housed in the Tower, I believe, just as dearest Neddie is, until his sovereign highness has decided how best to dispose of you.”

“Dispose of me?” Alys raised her eyebrows, hoping Elizabeth could not see how the words frightened her. “If he does not want me, why did he not leave me in peace in north Nottinghamshire?”

“Do not be tiresome, Alys.” Some of the gentleness had gone from Elizabeth’s voice, but with a glance at the other two women, she added in her normal tone, “You must know you will be safer in London than at Wolveston, though I trust you were not so foolish as to linger in the city today but passed straight through it.”

“We did, but why should that concern you?”

“There is talk of a new plague there. ’Tis why I am housed here at Greenwich instead of at Westminster Palace with my mother. And after taking such care to remove ourselves from harm’s way, we would not wish you to infect us.”

“I know something of this plague,” Alys said, repressing a shiver at memory of her illness, and of her grief for Jonet. “Indeed, I have suffered it myself and have—”

“Do not talk nonsense,” Elizabeth said almost tartly. “It is said that strong men fall dead in the streets—men who but moments before were in a state of perfect health. Even the Lord Mayor has died. You cannot have had it and survived to boast of it. You say so only to make yourself interesting.”

“If you like,” Alys said with a shrug. “In any event, I cannot infect anyone. We rode straight through the city.”

“Where are your women?”

“I have none.” She hid her sorrow. She would give Elizabeth no new weapons to use against her.

The corners of Elizabeth’s mouth tilted up. “Poor Alys. How very dreadful for you to have traveled so far without proper maidservants to attend you. I had assumed you would be provided with a suitable litter and a host of your own servants.”

“There was no litter to be had, and most of my father’s servants had died of the sweat. Those who did not were gone from Wolveston, but I was served well enough. My escort was led by a Welsh knight who serves the king. I was quite safe with him.”

“Who is this knight?”

“He is called Sir Nicholas Merion.”

Elizabeth dismissed him with a gesture. “I do not know him, so he is of no importance. You will want to change to a more proper dress, I’ll warrant, before the Lady Margaret sees you.”

“The Lady Margaret?”

“The king’s mother, of course.” There was a flicker of annoyance in Elizabeth’s expression, but Alys could not determine whether it was aimed at her for not realizing of whom she spoke, or at Margaret Beaufort, Countess of Richmond and wife of the traitor Sir Thomas Stanley.

“She is here?”

“Of course. Where else would she be? In truth, it was she who decided that I should remove from Westminster to Greenwich, where I should be safer from the sweating sickness.”

Alys was surprised, not because Elizabeth had left her mother, or had been allowed to leave, but because she had somehow supposed Margaret Beaufort would be in the north with Stanley. But, of course, the woman would prefer to be with her son. She had fought as hard as anyone to see him on the throne, so it was not odd that she would want to enjoy the benefits of his hard-won position. What was odd was that Margaret Beaufort should express such concern for a daughter of the House of York, unless the rumors of an impending marriage were accurate.

“It is true, then,” she said, speaking her thoughts aloud. “You are to wed the king.”

“I told you so, months ago,” Elizabeth said, not attempting to conceal her satisfaction. “He made a vow, after all, on the high altar of the cathedral at Rennes. Surely you do not think Henry Tudor the sort of man to disregard a sacred vow.”

Since under the present circumstances Alys could scarcely express her true opinion of the Tudor, she said carefully, “I cannot say what manner of man he is. I have never met him.”

“Well, you may certainly believe one thing,” Elizabeth said complacently. “I shall soon be queen of all England.”

“It is settled then? When are you to be married?”

“As to that, the date has not been determined, for Henry is not yet crowned king. ’Twas thought best to delay his coronation until the sickness has passed, for he wishes to be crowned with all due pomp and circumstance at Westminster Abbey.”

“Perhaps God wills it otherwise,” Alys said daringly, “and that is why He has visited such dreadful sickness upon the land.”

There was a long silence. The two waiting women glanced at each other, but neither spoke. At last, quietly, Elizabeth said, “You’d do well to guard that unruly tongue of yours, Alys, for the sort of impudence in which you delight will not be tolerated here. Henry is king by God’s will, through right of combat. His coronation is a ceremony to please the people, nothing more.”

“How can you say he is king by God’s will?” Alys demanded, her good intentions overwhelmed by Elizabeth’s self-righteous attitude. “He killed the rightful king! And he cannot marry you, in any event, for you are no proper princess. Your father was not properly wed to your mother!”

“That is a lie,” Elizabeth said, rigid with fury, her eyes flashing. “My uncle merely used that lie as an excuse to steal the crown from my brother Edward.”

“Then what of Edward?” Alys snapped. “We hear naught of him or of Richard of York. What of them? If ’twas a lie and your family all legitimate, then one of them is rightful king, not your precious Tudor!”

“They are dead,” Elizabeth said. There was no grief in her voice, only certainty. “No one speaks of them, and when it was suggested that my uncle might have killed them, he failed to produce them, to prove they lived.”

“You know perfectly well that the accusation, made as it was in the French parliament, was naught but French spite against France’s greatest enemy; and even so, ’twas merely an observation on the frequent fate of those who aspire to the throne. No one in England paid it any heed, for even Richard’s worst enemies knew him to be too honorable ever to do such a thing.”

Elizabeth shrugged. “No one hears from them now, so they must be dead. My mother says they are not, but that is because she does not want Henry Tudor to feel too secure upon his throne, for fear he will change his mind about marrying me if he believes my brothers are safely dead, that he will then marry some foreign princess instead of fulfilling his vow to unite the houses of York and Lancaster. But I know he wants me in any case, just,” she added with a challenging look, “as my Uncle Richard did.”

White-hot anger washed over Alys, blinding her to the dangers of her position, and she had taken two steps toward Elizabeth with no other intention than to murder her, swiftly and painfully, when she was halted in her tracks by the sight of Elizabeth rising swiftly to her feet and sinking into a deep curtsy, her attention riveted not on Alys but on a point some distance behind her. Ladies Emlyn and Beatrix were also bowing low, and Alys required no great astuteness to know that someone of importance had entered the ladies’ chamber.

She turned slowly, half-expecting to find herself face to face with the Tudor himself. Instead, she beheld a slender, fragile-looking woman in her mid-forties, dressed in dully red, sable-trimmed velvet, with a white coif and a banded, black-velvet hood. The woman held a jeweled rosary in her right hand, a satin-covered prayer book in her left. Her hazel eyes were hard-looking, like agates, and shrewd. Her voice was like ice when she said, “I shall do you the courtesy to forget what mine eyes have just beheld. You are Lady Alys Wolveston, I warrant. Do you not know how to behave in the royal presence?”

Sinking swiftly to a curtsy as deep as any of the others, Alys told herself firmly that it was no business of hers to suggest that the only person with any cause whatever to claim a royal presence just then was male. It likewise did not strain her intellect to deduce the identity of the newcomer. “Forgive me, Lady Margaret,” she said calmly. “I did not hear you enter, or hear your name announced.”

“I do not require to be announced,” declared the Countess of Richmond. “You may rise, all of you, and explain to me what has transpired in this chamber that Lady Alys Wolveston dares to approach the Princess Elizabeth without due courtesy.”

Alys suddenly felt the same way she had felt on certain occasions in her childhood when she had been called to account by her tutor or by Anne herself. Fighting an impulse to look down at her toes, she held her head erect as she straightened, and kept silent. Elizabeth likewise made no attempt to speak, and the silence lengthened until Margaret Beaufort broke it.

“I trust,” she said quietly, “that the Lady Alys will recite a few extra decades of her rosary when next she attends to her devotions. Perhaps our Lord, in His infinite mercy, will then see fit to guide her to behave in future with proper submission.” Then, without missing a beat, she turned to Elizabeth and added, “I have ordered silks and canvas for you and your ladies. It is our wish that you work some altar cloths for the chapel here. And I have asked your lady mother to allow your sister Cecily to join us. I would not have it said that you were separated from your family by any will of mine or of his sovereign highness. Your mother, too, if she desires it, is welcome to join us here.”

“She knows that, your grace,” Elizabeth said in a tone of gentle submission. “In faith, she would be the first to express gratitude for your kindness to me, to all of us, but I know that you, of all people, must understand her desire to remain mistress of her own establishment insofar as that is possible.”

Alys blinked, controlling her countenance with difficulty. She knew Elizabeth Woodville only by reputation, but she felt a sense of growing respect for Elizabeth of York that she could so easily (and without turning to stone on the spot) describe in bland terms her mother’s well-known, implacable obsession for power. Elizabeth Woodville, as Edward the Fourth’s queen, had exerted every effort on behalf of herself and the huge Woodville family, gaining honors and positions for them far beyond the station God had allotted to them; for Elizabeth Woodville—as everyone but the Woodvilles themselves had known—had been no great prize for Edward the Fourth to marry, which was why he had kept his marriage secret until he was forced to acknowledge it.

And now that Alys came to think of it, Margaret Beaufort was known to be as hungry for power as Elizabeth Woodville; however, Margaret’s ambition was centered in her son, not in herself. If the Tudor had any claim to England’s throne, it was only because Margaret had had the same claim before him. But the Lancastrian claim was a faulty one, relying upon the feminine line, and two illegitimate connections at that. The Yorkist claim was both legitimate and masculine. Realizing suddenly that if Edward or Richard Plantagenet were still alive Henry Tudor would be the last man to assume that their illegitimacy barred them from the succession, Alys felt an icy shiver of fear race up her spine.

While she had allowed her thoughts to distract her, Lady Margaret had said something else to Elizabeth, but now she said directly to Alys, “You will be taken to a chamber to refresh yourself and prepare to be presented to the king. He might not see you today, but you will await his convenience. That he has expressed a desire to see you and to speak to you personally is a measure of his compassion and mercy toward his enemies.”

There was an ominous note in Margaret’s voice on the last three words, one that prevented Alys from saying anything more than “Yes, Lady Margaret.”

“We will hear mass in an hour,” Margaret said to the others in a tone of dismissal. As she turned away, the ladies all sank quickly into deep curtsies again.

When she had gone, Alys felt a sense of profound relief and glanced at Elizabeth, wondering if she felt the same. But there was nothing to be read in the princess’s expression when she straightened to her full height. She was taller than many women, certainly taller than Alys, and very slender. She wore a blue cap-and-band headdress, and as she turned toward Lady Emlyn, Alys saw that her shining flaxen hair was unconfined beneath the short veil at the back. The fine, straight, silken tresses hung like a sunlit sheet to the backs of her knees. Alys remembered with a glow of satisfaction that Sir Nicholas had said it was too pale.

“Emlyn,” Elizabeth said, “prithee, be so kind as to go with Alys and see that she has all she needs to make her comfortable. With no waiting women of her own, she will feel sadly discomposed in such strange surroundings.”

For once Alys had no wish to dispute a point of Elizabeth’s making. Even before the appearance of the awesome Lady Margaret, the great palace of Greenwich had seemed a foreign place, a place of strangers who wished her, if not ill, at least no great good. Swallowing hard, and despising herself a little for wishing she need not leave Elizabeth, who was at least a familiar enemy, she turned to follow Lady Emlyn from the room.