The Tudor Rose (43 page)

“A wildly successful procession through London, a wedding in St. Paul's, a tournament in front of Westminster Hall, every kind of masque and mummery, and now a state banquet—truly so much celebration is exhausting!” laughed Elizabeth. “By your leave, Henry, I will go and rest a little while before the final spectacle.”

“I would that I might join you!” smiled the King, in rare good humour. “As you say, a week of playing hosts upon such a scale is apt to bring it home to us that we are not so young!”

“But it is so wonderful, Madam!” protested their younger son Harry, escorting her to a secluded gallery and setting a chair for her. “I beg you not to stay away long.”

“Do you never tire, child?” she asked, marvelling at his enthusiastic energy as she brushed his flushed cheek with loving fingers.

“How should I when there is so much to see and hear and do? I wish Arthur were married every day. And how I wish I could have tilted out there with Uncle Courteney and Thomas Stafford and all the rest!”

“Perhaps one day you may do better than any of them,” she foretold, regarding his tall muscular body with pride.

“Then it will be
your
favour and no silly chit's that I shall wear in my helm,” he vowed, setting a stool for her feet and then bestriding it as if it were a horse. “Tell me, dear one, did I carry it off well, escorting my new sister-in-law through London to St. Paul's?”

“It was nice of the King to let you,” Elizabeth reminded him. Looking down upon the procession, she had in fact been eaten with pride in him, but she always tried not to feed his exuberant vanity.

“Katherine is quite human really, once one can get behind all that rigid etiquette with which those priests and duennas surround her,” he ran on, not really noticing whether his mother had answered him or not. “And she has such exciting clothes. That wide-brimmed Spanish hat she wore when she was riding her Andalusian mule beside me, and the long lace thing they call a mantilla she had on in church. But oh, Madam, did you notice her ladies in the procession? Each of them accompanied by one of our Court beauties. A charming thought. Only our fool of a Chamberlain had forgotten that in Spain side-saddles are girthed from the opposite side, so that the poor things had to ride back to back as if they had just quarrelled violently!”

“Harry, you must not speak so disrespectfully of milord Chamberlain!” she reproved him. But the boy could see that she, too, was smiling.

“Even the Aragon girl had to laugh,” he chuckled, rising restlessly as some fresh frolic was started in the hall. “They will be beginning the dancing soon. Did you hear that Arthur is so afraid of making some mistake in those slow stately dances the Spaniards do that he has decided to play for safety and partner Lady Guildford in an English one? You know, Madam, whatever sort of a buffoon I made of myself I would dance with my bride, not with my sister's middle-aged governess!”

“But then Arthur is more prudent than you. He looks ahead like his father and so avoids mistakes.”

The Tudor's second son indulged in a ribald grimace which he had learned from one of his grooms. “A good thing it is he who will be King and not I,” he remarked without rancour. He was tall and ruddy and vital. He had none of the fineness of feature or sensitivity which her beloved Dickon had had as a boy, nor was he unduly concerned for her weariness as her small brother would have been. But Harry was her son. As yet there were no other loves in his life, and she was still the centre of his world. He needed the sweetness of her approval as a budding rose needs dew. “I am going to dance with Margaret after Katherine and Arthur and their partners have finished,” he told her. “You will come back before then and watch me, will you not, Madam?”

“I shall come and watch Margaret. She dances very well,” said Elizabeth, because she thought the snub was good for him; but there was a smile in her voice as she said it. Not for worlds would she have missed the dancing of any of her children; but just now she must rest for a minute or two.

“Shall I tell the servants to bring you some wine?” he asked, craning his neck to see what was going on below.

“Please, Harry,” she answered. “And do you go back to your revelling. It is a shame that you should miss any more of it for me.”

After he was gone Elizabeth leaned back against the cushion he had brought her and closed her eyes. She seemed to have spent hours listening to exalted personages speaking through interpreters. And then she had had to make suitable replies and try not to muddle up their foreign titles or offend against their complicated Court etiquette. And all the time part of her mind had been worrying a little as to what her exquisitely mannered little daughter-in-law would think of the outspoken utterances of her own more freely brought up family.

Elizabeth sipped the wine which had been brought her and tried to relax. From where she sat she could see the glittering company of her guests passing to and fro about the central hearth, from whence leaping flames lit up the great hammer-beam roof of this loveliest of halls. The whole Palace seemed to be full of lights and laughter, music and movement; yet here, in her curtained recess, it was comparatively quiet and cool. She chided herself for needing to rest; but since last year she had not been so strong. Not since the shock of those two young men's executions, she supposed, for some spring of vitality seemed to have snapped in her then. And it had been a hot, airless summer, with the plague rife in London again, and she had been grateful when Henry had taken her across the sea to their town of Calais. Knowing that he was not the kind of man to run away from the plague on his own account, she had thought it very considerate of him. But it had turned out that, like most of his kindnesses, it fitted in with plans of his own, for Calais, it seemed, was a very suitable place from which to throw out feelers for a good European marriage for their small daughter Mary. Of course Elizabeth knew that Henry had been acting like a wise father; but to her Mary was still an adorable bundle of childish curves and amusing laughter, and she did wish that her husband would not be so secretive. Why could he not have taken her into his confidence before leaving England and discussed so personal a matter with her instead of talking of it cautiously behind closed doors with Archbishop Morton? But Elizabeth was glad now that she had accepted the situation meekly enough. The King's plans always turned out for the best; and she had more reason than she could ever explain to be grateful to him for so complete a change of scene and thought.

And as soon as they had returned to London she had been caught up in all the bustle of preparation for her daughter-in-law's arrival. “Poor little Katherine of Aragon, having to part from such doting parents!” she had thought. “And coming from the warmth and colour of Granada, by way of a vile Channel crossing, to travel from Plymouth over our appalling roads in the cold grey of November rain!” Mercifully Henry himself had gone to meet her, and Elizabeth was sure that his satisfaction and his graciousness must have done much to mitigate the poor child's misery.

She was still thinking how well success became him when she found him at her side. “You, too, are tired?” she said sympathetically, pouring his wine with her own hand. “I do not wonder, for you undertook that terrible journey to Plymouth, which I was spared!”

“Sometimes I think I am always tired,” he sighed. “But it has been worth it.”

Although he took the wine from her hand he did not look at her, but stood gazing over the body of the hall. Whatever his private weariness, there was an air of triumph about him. “I just heard de Puebla telling the French Ambassador that England has not stood so secure for five hundred years,” he said.

Elizabeth rose and stood beside him. “That will be an even more lasting memorial to you than your beautiful chapel,” she said softly; and in the expansiveness of the moment his hand pressed hers. Among so many other things God had given him, He had even turned a Yorkist woman into an understanding wife. “There have been times I have thought that this would never happen,” Henry admitted, indicating with a nod of his neatly shaped head the distinguished company of their guests. “But now there are no more pretenders. Ferdinand and Isabella and everyone else knows that there is no better Plantagenet blood than mine left. We stand secure, unchallenged—we Tudors.”

Elizabeth shared his sense of security, but she made no answer; for even in the midst of her thankfulness she was thinking of the price. “I like our new daughter-in-law,” she said presently, watching the girl play her part with a touching young dignity. “I like the way she looks one straightly in the eyes. She is not particularly beautiful, perhaps; but she has been well trained for queenhood, and I think that she will prove kind.”

“Let us hope that she will prove fruitful!” said Henry shortly.

“They are very young to be married,” demurred Elizabeth dubiously.

Henry surveyed them dispassionately across his lifted glass. “My mother bore me when she was not much more than fifteen,” he reminded her.

“People did in those days,” said Elizabeth. “And then, of course, she was desperately in love with your father. I do not think that Katherine cares very much for Arthur.”

“Does it make much difference?”

“A great deal, I should imagine. Not that I think Arthur would realize. Sometimes I think his head is full of Latin verbs and dreams about the future. You know, Henry, I have been very worried about him of late. He looks so pale.”

“It has been a long and trying day for a lad of fifteen.”

“But Katherine bears it well. Although she is but a year older she is much more mature. Foreign girls are, I think. But see, Henry, how Arthur keeps passing his hand across his brow.”

“A trick he has caught from me.”

“And then that cough he has. He tells me he got wet through waiting out on the plains while those fussy duennas of hers decided whether or not he might meet her before they were married. Just as if we lived in harems like the Saracen women!”

“You worry too much about his health, Elizabeth. You always have worried about him more than the others because he was born prematurely,” said Henry, setting down his glass. “Well, I must go and say a few words to those Spanish priests. And after the dancing I suppose it will be time for the final procession to bed the bride and bridegroom.”

Elizabeth caught at his arm. “But they are so young!” she repeated. “You will not let them—”

“Come, come! I must have heirs,” he laughed. “A grandson to consolidate our union.”

“Arthur is shooting up so. The doctors tell me he may have overgrown his strength. Would it not be better for them to wait a year?”

“Well, I will talk to the doctors about it,” agreed Henry, half sharing her anxiety but finding it difficult to believe that anything so nebulous as an adolescent's health could interfere with his plans. “But formally they must be bedded to-night. To omit that part of the ceremony would be to offend Spain.”

“Spain! Spain!” thought Elizabeth, watching him return to the dais to receive a group of important-looking prelates. “Must the lives of all of us revolve around Spain! He is so far-seeing, so wise. Is this merely an obsession with him, or will that country one day wax so great that it will take some other Tudor's utmost wit and strength to curb her?”

But for the moment Henry looked more contented than she had ever seen him. He was always at his best in public—dignified, urbane and cultured. And now, it seemed, he was at the peak of his power. The respect shown him by all foreign ambassadors and envoys indicated how much his name stood for abroad. And as he sat there, a reserved but gracious host, he had something indeed to be satisfied about, for few Kings had ever accomplished so completely all that they had set out to do. The power of the barons was broken so that they could no longer make a battleground of England, the people were contented and prosperous, the empty coffers refilled, and—above everything—the royal succession assured. And better than anyone Elizabeth appreciated what it must mean to Henry Tudor that his elder son was no longer Prince of Wales only in name but, after being educated in that beloved country, was going there with his wealthy young bride to rule it. To set up his own Court where the great Pendragon and his other remote ancestors had once held sway.

For all the Plantagenets' splendour, Elizabeth had to admit that they had seldom had such material benefits to boast about. And she was shamed at the remembrance of how often she and her sisters had secretly made fun of the way Henry rubbed his hands together in satisfaction like a successful shopkeeper. She realized now how much that element of a businessman in him had helped to bring about their country's present prosperity.

Hearing the musicians strike up a galliard, she clapped her hands for her ladies and went back to watch the dancing. Arthur appeared to have abandoned the idea of partnering Lady Guildford and won rounds of applause performing a minuet with Cicely, and his bride chose to dance a stately measure with no man at all, but with two other ladies. But the success of the evening was when Margaret and young Harry took the floor, prancing with youthful high spirits in a typically lively English country dance. In fact, so high did Harry volt and caper and so warm was the hall that his fair skin was soon glistening with perspiration; whereat, nothing deterred, he broke up the formality and delighted the company by throwing off his fine new velvet top-coat and dancing the whole thing over again with enormous energy and enjoyment. Elizabeth laughed with the rest and Henry beamed at the pair with paternal pride.