The Tudor Rose (33 page)

“He might be one of us!” exclaimed Cicely, now a mother herself. “He does not look at all like the King.”

“He is the adorable thing I have always wanted,” said Elizabeth, holding him close. “You know, Cicely, I was ashamed to say so of so dear a son, but when they first showed me Arthur I was disappointed because he did not look at all like Ned or Dickon.”

“This one may turn out a little like tall, handsome Ned,” decided Cicely, reviewing the crumpled faced mite consideringly, “but he will be much bigger than either of them. Look at those limbs of his, Bess! Is it decided yet what they are going to christen him?”

“He is to be called after his father.”

“How confusing!”

“It always is, but we can call him Harry,” said his mother. “It is a jollier, more dashing sort of name, and somehow I think he looks like a Harry.”

And because he was a second son Elizabeth was allowed to see more of him. While Arthur, the studious, was with his tutor, Bernard Andreas, at Croydon being taught all those grave things which were considered necessary for his future kingship, little Harry romped boisterously at Richmond or Greenwich and gurgled with laughter at the antics of Patch, who adored him—or, as he grew older, stood at his mother's knee listening attentively while she played upon her harp or her virginals. For even in the midst of his most exciting games the sound of music lured him, and as he grew older this formed a fresh bond between them. In the years to come Elizabeth was to remember with nostalgia all those care-free, homely hours. Looking back upon the days of Harry's childhood, it seemed to her, quite absurdly, that the sun must always have been shining then at Greenwich. And that, like most sunny days, they passed all too quickly.

For red-headed Harry was still only a toddler when Elizabeth first overheard someone talking about another mysterious young man in Ireland. Two clerks were loitering with their heads together outside the council-chamber as she passed, and when she enquired gaily of whom they were speaking so earnestly they bowed low and turned red about the ears and said they didn't know his name, but they believed he was someone the Earl of Kildare had befriended. He'd been mentioned, it seemed, in the despatches which had just arrived from Dublin.

And when Elizabeth mentioned the matter later among her women they all fell silent. But their very silence piqued her curiosity so that the same evening she questioned the King.

“Who is this young man in Ireland who was specially mentioned in the Deputy's despatches?” she asked, looking up from the score of a madrigal which she was striving to compose.

“Only another pretender,” answered Henry carelessly, without raising his eyes from his book.

“And whom,” asked Elizabeth, inking in a gay little semiquaver, “does he pretend to be this time?”

Henry looked up then, but it was a moment or two before he spoke, rather as if he were debating within himself whether to tell her or not. But the matter seemed so negligible, so patently absurd, that he told her the truth so far as he had been bothered to corroborate it. “People are always inventing fresh absurdities,” he said, in that clear, rather expressionless voice of his. “They say this one is your young brother—Richard, Duke of York.”

The half-finished score slipped from her lap and Elizabeth's heart seemed to miss a beat. “Dickon!” she breathed, almost inaudibly. And for a moment or two, instead of her solemn husband and the excellent furnishings of his room, she saw with the eyes of memory a slender young boy in black smiling back at her from the austere arch of the Abbot of Westminster's doorway.

“It is the sort of story these crazy Irish
would
think of!” said Henry irritably, turning over a page.

“Of course it is impossible,” agreed Elizabeth, almost instantly, “when everybody knows that both my brothers were—murdered in the Tower.”

T
IN BUCKLES ON THE Queen of England's shoes! Oh no, Madam, I protest! Let me order silver ones,” exclaimed Jane Stafford, holding out the worn footgear destined for repair.

“Four pence for hemming up the bottom of my old blue kirtle. Eight pence each for the bargemen's wages. Ten shillings to the carpenter for making that music chest,” muttered Elizabeth, without looking up from the accounts before her. “But, my dear Jane, I cannot afford silver every day.”

Tom Stafford's sister regarded the diligently bent head of her mistress with passionate devotion. “But the King can!” she ventured boldly.

Elizabeth laid down her quill and looked at her reprovingly.

“Will you not
ask
him, Madam?”

“Since you must know, Jane, I have just asked him for some more money. For my mother. And his Grace has increased her allowance almost to what it was before the Lambert Simnel affair. She is failing sadly and needs it.”

Obediently, Jane laid the little shoes by ready for one of the pages to give to the shoemaker, which reminded her darting mind of some gossip she had heard outside a shop in Eastcheap. “They say the London merchants have made his Grace another loan,” she said, taking advantage of the liberty which was often allowed to her loving, garrulous tongue.

“Because, to their amazement, he was punctilious about paying off the first one on the day it fell due.” Elizabeth sat there smiling to herself and marvelling that some of the older men hadn't had apoplexy, considering their former less satisfactory dealings with a line of persuasive but impecunious, Plantagenets. “His Grace has even found better markets for their produce among the towns which he knows abroad. Our London merchants are beginning to find that it pays them very well to lend money to the King; and personally I suspect that he is a rather better business man than any of them.”

“Everyone says he is growing rich,” agreed Jane eagerly. “Which is all the more reason why—”

“It is no reason why he should keep all my relatives,” snapped Elizabeth, hating the Woodville reputation for cupidity and determined to live it down.

Jane was on her knees in a moment, all repentance and concern. “Oh, Madam, we of your household know only too well where your money goes—always to your mother and sisters. Master Andreas, his little Grace's tutor, was saying only the other day that the love you bear your family is incredible. Fifty pounds each for the Princesses' private expenses,” she ticked off on her fingers, “all manner of pretty gifts and an annuity to their husbands—”

“You run on about things you do not understand,” reproved Elizabeth proudly, closing her account-book. “It is true that owing to the civil wars and my father's death my sisters have neither dowries nor suitable marriages with foreign princes. But they are still Plantagenets, and surely you do not expect us to be beholden to their husbands for the very food they eat?”

Jane bent her head very humbly to kiss the Queen's hand. “No, Madam,” she murmured, “but it grieves me that your lovely generosity should leave you so poor.” And because Elizabeth had a fellow feeling for any woman who had the courage to pursue her own argument, she lifted the girl's troubled face and kissed her. “God knows, I am not poor in love!” she said softly. Then, rising, she went to a side-table which, as usual, she had found strewn with an assortment of humble gifts. “Only look at the things my people have sent me this morning!” she cried gaily. “A fat chicken from some Surrey farmer, baskets of cherries brought in on their early-morning market carts— even vegetables from cottage gardens. And always the first of their crop, bless them! And posies,” she added, picking up a tight little bunch of pansies and burying her face in their country fragrance. “Precious posies from the children!”

“Yes, we all know how they love you,” laughed Jane, her brown eyes dancing again. “And then you must needs open your purse and send Ditton or Anne Percy or one of us out to them with twice as much as their gifts are worth!”

It was so true that Elizabeth had to laugh too. “Oh well, they are all so dear to me; and if I do have to go about with tin buckles on my shoes I am really a rich woman in my heart. Except, of course,” she added to herself, “that I have no man to love me.”

“Then you will not pore over such dull matters any more, will you, Madam?” said Jane, gathering up the account-book. “Surely it is enough that Decons, your clerk, is paid to do it.”

“The King likes me to keep accounts, although I must admit that I find it very difficult,” sighed the daughter of prodigal Edward. “And, Jane, when you or any of my other ladies hear people saying that his Grace is getting rich you should remind them of all the expenses he has. Preparations for war with France to help poor Brittany, which harboured him in his exile. And that lovely, lovely chapel he is building in the Abbey.”

“I hate it!” exclaimed Jane, setting down the account-book with a bang.

The Queen swung round in her astonishment. “Jane! That heavenly beautiful building—”

“Oh yes, it may be beautiful,” conceded Jane. “But Archbishop Morton says it is being built to enshrine the Tudor tombs. And I hate the thought that they will ever bury you—”

“You incredible goose! Take the account-book back to Decons now and—and try not to love me so extravagantly.”

Left alone, Elizabeth, the Queen of England, stood for a while by her table touching each humble gift as if some specially precious benison had come with them, and wondering what her life would have been like had she married Tom Stafford and had this turbulent little beauty not as a lady of her bedchamber but as a sister-in-law. She might have found much quiet happiness, she supposed; but after all that she had now experienced she doubted if that would have satisfied her.

The pattern of her life had grown so much larger since the days when she had imagined herself in love with Tom. Although Henry made a confidant of no one, save sometimes his mother and Morton, a Queen lived at the hub of things. Those things which were never confided to her between the drawn curtains of her bed she inevitably heard discussed around the white napery of her board. Affairs of the country were talked about freely by knowledgeable men like Lord Stanley and his brother Sir William; Morton and the King's family bandied the names and news of European rulers who were personally known to them, while through the Palace flowed the widening influence of foreign ambassadors and envoys, the invigorating tang of spreading commerce and the culture of all the painters, writers, architects and printers whom Henry encouraged. Although Elizabeth never meddled, she learned. She took delight in hearing the management of her country discussed, and came to have a wholesome respect for her husband's mind.

“He cares so much less passionately than Richard, who loved the very earth of England, and yet in whatever he undertakes he seems to succeed,” she thought. Conscientiously following his statecraft without the encouragement of his confidence, she came to understand it even better than some of his councillors. She knew, for instance, how hard he had tried to avoid war with France. The people, of course, clamoured for it. Through the centuries war with their nearest neighbour and traditional enemy had been the one thing for which they willingly voted supplies, the dangerous enterprise which they strained at the leash to join; and although it was their safety as well as his own that he was considering, they spoke disparagingly of Henry because he preferred to negotiate. Yet when Charles the Eighth threatened to occupy Brittany how efficiently the King of England moved! With no hatred of France inherent in his heart, he yet saw the danger it would mean to England if he allowed all the Breton ports across the Channel to fall into French hands. Although Spain and the Emperor of Rome, who seemed to be his allies, withheld their help, Henry sent forces to the defence of Brittany and, crossing to his own town of Calais, personally laid siege to Boulogne. While he was away Elizabeth made no bid for vicarious power, but wrote to him affectionately and often, telling him news of home and particularly of the progress of Arthur, who was already beginning to construe his Latin with Bernard Andreas.

The siege of Boulogne was short and resulted in no spectacular military victory. Charles, who had probably not bargained for such swift intervention, was glad to pay off his cool aggressor with good French gold and afterwards outwit him by persuading the orphaned heiress of Brittany to marry him, so that Henry sailed home in a sort of stalemate triumph which added nothing to his waning popularity. Military-minded men had sold their manors to win fame in France, the rank and file muttered bitterly because there had been precious little plunder and the hard-working populace at home wanted to know where their money had gone. But Henry returned unruffled. He had not been hankering for martial glory. Most of Charles's money had gone straight into his own pocket, England was once more at leisure to pursue her commercial prosperity, and—newcomer as he was—he had shown Spain and all the other European countries that he could manage his own affairs quite well without them.