The Tudor Rose (45 page)

So she had a specially comfortable horse litter prepared for her daughter-in-law's journey and paid for the black-velvet curtains out of her own purse. For Henry, she found, was not nearly so ready to spend lavishly on his daughter-in-law now; and Elizabeth knew that, pregnant or not, the poor girl would want privacy from the morbidly gaping crowds.

She made a point of greeting her personally, treating her in public as the chief mourner in the tragedy, although everyone must have known how much deeper her own sorrow went. In spite of trailing weeds, the Aragon girl did not look at all tragic. Somehow her black only succeeded in accentuating her young fairness, and there was about her an air almost of levity and relief. “Madam, it is for you that I grieve,” she said, with a disarming generosity.

“I will try to be as good to her as Margaret Beaufort has always been to me,” vowed Elizabeth. And she realized that even if the girl had not loved Arthur she must be feeling very lonely after such sad happenings in a strange land, and very unsure of the future, finding herself no longer married to the King's heir. Although, of course, everything would be much the same were she to be the mother of Arthur's child.

“Are you with child?” asked Elizabeth, scarcely able to frame the words for thinking of her own son Harry, who might be disinherited. But to her relief Katherine shook her head.

“Then the marriage was never really consummated? You see how important this is. You must be quite sure about it.”

The Spanish girl's eyes met her with candour equalling her own. “No, Madam. Arthur talked big—how do you say?—boasted—a good deal before the pages after our wedding night. But it was only—boasting. And after that, as you know, I went back to my women. And then he seemed ill—”

“Then you are still virgin. And I am sure it will not be long before your parents find you another husband,” said Elizabeth gently.

“Then shall I be allowed to go home?” Clearly these were the pathetic words of longing which Katherine must have been saying to herself over and over again during that long, jolting journey in the closed litter; but before her mother-in-law's kindness she managed to keep their eagerness within the bounds of courtesy.

Elizabeth, who liked her, was touched. She bent to kiss the ingenuous young face. “My poor Katherine, I really do not know. Certainly not until we have heard from Spain. The King and de Puebla and all of them are in the council-chamber discussing it now. But we have been so completely stunned with grief that nothing has been arranged. So you must stay here for the present, and it has occurred to me that one of my ladies, another Katherine, who is widowed and lonely, may help to console you. But I have heard the King and Archbishop Morton speak about a house for you at Croydon where you can have your Spanish priests and set up your own household.”

“The King has been very kind,” murmured Katherine, who did not in the least want to go away to some quiet place called Croydon. “He sent me a message that he will let me have back my personal jointure which my father had put in his Grace's keeping.”

Elizabeth was surprised. Evidently Henry wanted to keep the girl's favour. “But I doubt if you will ever see the rest of your dowry again, if he can find means to keep you in England!” she thought. In the meantime Elizabeth was at a loss how to entertain her guest, seeing that the Court was in deep mourning. “How the sun shines!” she said, going to the window. “After being in that cramped litter for so many hours each day perhaps you would like to go out in the gardens? We cannot devise any entertainment in public, of course, but if there is anything you would like to do—”

Katherine joined her at the window. The lovely gardens of Greenwich were spread before them and down in the courtyard the horses were being brought round. In spite of the sad quiet that reigned within the Palace, there was bustle and laughter down there. For Prince Harry was going riding in the park with Charles Brandon and a few other lads of his own age. Although they were all dressed in sober black, one could not expect young people to be decorous all the time or quite broken-hearted. And to the Spanish princess who had spent several miserable months constrained by the failing health of a sick husband they must have looked very gay. Perhaps she remembered how her brother-in-law had made her laugh during the bridal procession. “If it please your Grace,” she said, brightening, “I, too, should like to go riding in your so beautiful park—with Harry.”

After Spanish Katherine had gone to don her becoming velvet riding-habit with the wide-brimmed hat which Harry so much admired, Elizabeth stood for a while watching him mount his horse. Whatever her husband had hoped, she was more thankful than she could say that the Spanish girl was not pregnant. Harry was a very important personage now. And what a King he would make, with those long, strong limbs, that unaffected, infectious laugh…Elizabeth turned as some one came into the room behind her. “Send the Lady Katherine Gordon to me, Ditton,” she said, and went on watching from the window until Arthur's lively widow had joined the informal cavalcade and ridden out towards the park with young Harry Tudor obviously teasing her about her strange foreign saddle. “A pity,” thought Elizabeth, looking into the future, “that there is so much difference in their ages!”

A soft footstep and the rustle of a skirt behind her recalled her to the commonsense present.

“Your Grace!”

Kate Gordon, sweeping an obeisance to a Queen she adored, was a thing of slender, lovable beauty. If she had thought to be Queen herself, it was a thing which was never spoken of between them; for both of them knew that it was love and not ambition which had induced her to follow the fortune of the man she still believed to be the rightful King of England.

“Ah, come and sit here,” said Elizabeth, inviting her to the window-seat. “I sent for you because I want you to comfort that other poor Katherine—”

“Comfort?” The word came scornfully.

“Ah, no, dear child, I know her grief is not of the heart like— ours. But just bewilderment. But you are so sweet and gentle and more of her age than I. Will you try to befriend her?”

“Anything that your Grace wishes I will do,” promised the Scots girl, thereby unconsciously accepting from a discerning mistress some measure of healing for her own deep hurt.

“My new daughter-in-law wants to go back to Spain,” said Elizabeth.

“It may bring her happiness, though for myself I have no desire to go back to Scotland. For no matter where one goes one's heart travels with one. Madam, have I leave to ask you something?”

“Yes, dear Kate.”

“Just now you said 'her grief is not of the heart like—ours.' Do you, too, believe—”

Elizabeth rose restlessly. “Oh no, no, of course not! Did I say that? I do not feel too well to-day. This morning on rising I thought perhaps—” Before her companion could ask an eager question the Queen broke off suddenly and turned to ask
her
one. “All the same, I do often think of your husband and his ridiculous claims because it concerns—I mean it might have concerned—my son. But, Kate, I am Queen of England. I cannot go around to this person and that asking about such things. Or even voice my thoughts, lest they give rise to misconception. But surely they told
you.
Surely you must know?”

Kate Gorden stared at her in bewilderment. She had never seen the serene Queen so agitated before. “Know what, Madam?”

Elizabeth glanced towards the open doorway through which she could see Jane and Ditton sewing, and lowered her voice. “How two young men, one of them feeble in mind and weak physically perhaps from long confinement, could possibly come within a hair's breadth of escaping from the Tower. Even supposing"—Elizabeth's voice stumbled a little and the colour rose in her pale cheeks— “even supposing communication between them had purposely been made possible—it could never have been intended that they should so nearly
really
escape. My brother-in-law, Surrey, said they very nearly did, and must have given the Governor of the Tower a horrible fright. It is known that they got as far as the Byward Tower. That means that there was only the drawbridge between them and freedom—out in Thames Street. I never shall understand it. There must have been scores of men-at-arms about, and those two may not have had so much as a dagger between them. It sounds fantastic, Kate!”

The Scots girl was standing before her, her head held high. “Neither of them was much over twenty, and for ten minutes they held the entire Tower garrison at bay!” she confirmed proudly, her eyes shining as if she could see them doing it.

“My cousin was no coward,” said Elizabeth, watching her. “But whatever they did must have been contrived in your husband's fertile brain. But what?”

Katherine Gordon came out of her trance of pride. “Why, Madam, do you really not know,” she said wonderingly. “But
I
know. Once they had won their way nearly to the gates, with half the garrison at their heels, Richard ran to the place where you English keep the King's wild beasts. I cannot imagine how he knew where to find the bolts. But he let the lions loose and kept their pursuers at bay.”

Elizabeth, the Queen, should have reprimanded her severely. The great Scottish Earl of Huntley's daughter had been forbidden to call her husband anything but Perkin. But the girl was so passionately excited, and somehow the Queen's words of reprimand would not come. Elizabeth really
did
feel ill. The faintly freckled face of her companion, the wide latticed windows and the sunshine seemed to be slowly fading away, and in their place Elizabeth seemed to see an arched doorway in the Abbot of Westminster's parlour and a slender boy in black walking away from her towards it. She could hear her own voice calling gauchely, “Dickon, remember the lions!” He was going through the doorway, farther and farther away like the walls and everything else. And it was growing cold. But once, before he disappeared, he turned and smiled—that far-off, gay, enchanting smile…

Elizabeth, who even in the direst moments of her varied life had never before fainted, sank down unconscious upon the cushions of the window-seat. And Kate Gordon, who had no clue with which to link her words to such sudden collapse, shouted in frightened amazement to Jane and Ditton to come quickly and send for a doctor.

N
O ONE THOUGHT THERE was anything strange about the Queen's indisposition. Her Grace had complained of not feeling well that morning; and, later, while talking to milady Katherine Gordon, she had fainted. And the royal physicians had confirmed the fact which all had suspected. Her Grace was pregnant again. “Please God the baby will prove to be a son,” prayed her friends, recognizing a dutiful effort to console her husband's grief. And in spite of young Harry's robust strength the King must have hoped this more fervently than any of them.

But the Queen herself received the doctor's assurance listlessly. There was none of her usual joyousness at the thought of another child. She would sit silent for hours as if turning something over in her mind; and her thoughts were certainly not upon her coming confinement, for when one of her ladies would try to rouse her with some question about the tiny garments they were embroidering Elizabeth would start and answer absently. Her sisters noticed that this time no tender, Madonna-like smile curved her lips. Instead of looking forward to the future it seemed rather as if she were brooding upon the past and saying farewell to someone whom she had loved. And naturally all of them supposed her sad thoughts to be wholly of Arthur, who was so like his successful father and who would have made such a wise and prudent King.

“I hope I shall be allowed to have this new baby here in Greenwich, without any fuss,” she said one day to Jane Stafford. “My mother-in-law is no longer at Court to insist upon so much ceremonial, and one has less heart for it now that our beloved Mattie is dead.”

“This place is home to you now, is it not, Madam?” said Jane.

“Yes. I like to sit here by the window and hear the younger children playing in the garden. I must be getting old, Jane.”

“Old, at thirty-seven!” laughed Jane, appealing to Ditton, who was coming in at the door. “I wonder, my dear sweet, if you have any idea how beautiful you look at this very moment with the sunlight on your hair?”

“Whatever beauty I had must be fading fast!” smiled Elizabeth. “Unlike most women, I seem to have had no love affairs to keep it warm.”

“It is only deepening and maturing,” said Jane. “And you are still so enviably slender.”

“If you have a few lines round your eyes it is because you have suffered so much, Madam,” added Ditton, setting down a bowl of the Queen's favourite pansies which she was carrying. “Lately you have seemed as if you liked to be alone, sorting out your mind perhaps. Or just—remembering. But we have all missed your Grace's laughter.”