Daughter of York

by Anne Easter Smith

  “No work today, ladies,” Margaret had said as she sat on the edge of her bed that morning ready to be dressed. “Put away your needlework, your spinning wheels and looms, let us keep our hands idle but our minds busy. It is my special day, and I would have you each read a favorite passage to me. Fortunata, you will show us some of your tricks, and this time we shall win the three-cup game.”

  And thus they had forgotten the dreary day outside and Margaret had been indulged. She invited Richard to join them later in the afternoon, and the ladies had fussed around him, embarrassing the quiet youth. Margaret observed him as he discussed a piece of prose with Jane. A strong nose and jutting chin dominated his face, which was handsome enough, Margaret decided, although not in an obvious way like George’s. She saw a kindness in it, perhaps emanating from the deep-set, slate gray eyes, as his mouth was rather thin and straight. He turned when he felt her studying him.

  “’Tis rude to stare, Meggie,” he said, grinning. “What do you look for, pray? I am no dissembler. What you see is who I am.”

  And much too astute for your fourteen years, my lad, Margaret wanted to say, but instead she said, “I do not see you often enough, Dickon. I was thinking we should remedy that. I am astonished at how you have grown right under my nose. You have always just been my little brother.”

  “And so I still am, my lady. How would you like to play chess with me? You would only play with George, and how I used to wish you would deign to play with me.”

  Margaret instantly felt ashamed. She had indeed dismissed Richard so many times during those years together with George.

  “Come,” she invited, “let us see how you have progressed.”

  She quickly found out and laughed away her defeats with a great deal of pleasure in Richard’s prowess. As she wished him good night, she said in a moment of intuition, “I predict you will go far, Dickon. Farther even than George.” He looked puzzled, and she shrugged. “In truth, why I said that, heaven only knows! You are only the third son, after all.”

  As he left the room, Master Vaughan appeared and beckoned to Fortunata. Margaret looked enquiringly at her steward, who bowed and said that Fortunata was wanted downstairs. Margaret nodded and waved them away.

  A few minutes later, Fortunata nonchalantly walked into the chamber where the other ladies were readying Margaret for bed and put her finger to her lips when she caught Margaret’s eye. As the curtains were drawn around the big bed, Fortunata tucked something under the pillow and whispered, “It is for you. I will leave the light to read it, madonna.”

  “I give you good night, ladies. May God keep you safe,” Margaret called, and her women chorused good night before all except Beatrice, the oldest of her ladies, and Fortunata filed out. She heard the door click shut and Fortunata and Beatrice preparing their truckle beds before she reached under the pillow and pulled out the letter.

  “I greet you on your birthday, dearest Elaine. I hope you have not forgotten your knight, who pines for you.

  Lancelot.”

  Under the elegant signature, Anthony had translated one of the sayings by the writer Christine de Pisan:

  “True gentleness can be no other thing

  But the place where honor is dwelling.”

  Margaret ran her fingertips over the parchment as if to absorb Anthony’s essence from it. She put it to her nose and inhaled deeply, hoping to smell something of his scent. Then she kissed it, tucked it under her chemise next to her heart and blew out the candle.

  • • •

  THREE WEEKS LATER, a dusty rider made his way to Carter Lane and the Wardrobe bearing news of a crushing defeat for the Lancastrian rebels in Northumberland. Margaret and Richard sat together to listen as the messenger from the earl of Warwick spoke.

  “My lord’s brother, the lord Montagu, was given intelligence that the rebels were encamped in the Tyne valley, much farther south than was comfortable for us. Although the main royal army was still in Leicester, Montagu deliberately chose to attack the rebels at Hexham. I presume, my lord, my lady, you know the duke of Somerset had turned his coat and was now among the rebels.” Margaret and Richard nodded. “’Twas his last time to turn his coat, in truth”—his voice rose triumphantly—“for he and four others were executed that very day.” He paused as he waited for their reaction.

  “Somerset dead?” Margaret exclaimed. “Why, that is the best news for Ned, Dickon. The man was a traitor to his master, Henry, and then was traitor to Edward, who had shown him naught but kindness.” She turned back to the messenger. “You say others were executed. Who, pray?”

  The man shrugged, “I know not their names, my lady, but two days later, Lord Roos and Lord Hungerford were among five others who met the same fate at Newcastle. The day I left my master at Middleham to bring you the news, as many as seven more were to be chopped.” He grinned, dragging his finger gleefully across his throat. Margaret shuddered.

  “And Henry, King Henry,” Richard asked, bending forward. “Was he captured?”

  “Not as far as I know, my lord duke. He was not on the battlefield but nearby, as I heard tell.”

  “God’s nails!” Richard exclaimed, causing Margaret to gasp at his uncharacteristic blasphemy. “We need to capture that madman before the She-Wolf finds him. He will be a danger to Ned until we do. If we have him safe, then she is powerless.”

  Margaret was surprised by Richard’s grasp of the situation. She frowned. “But would it not be better for Ned if Henry had been killed? Then he would not be a threat at all.”

  “Certes, but Edouard would be, Meg. Do not forget Margaret’s cub, Edouard,” Richard pronounced the French name with disdain. “I warrant she would be happier to fight for her son’s crown than her addle-pated husband’s. We are better off with Henry alive and captured than Henry dead with Edouard on the rampage. The son has a stabler banner for Lancastrians to rally around than his father’s.”

  Again Margaret was impressed by Richard’s assessment. She nodded and then dismissed the messenger, thanking him for his pains and sending him off with the steward for lodging.

  Later, as the brother and sister walked arm in arm over the private bridge from the Wardrobe to the priory next door to give thanks to God for Montagu’s victory, Richard stated, “’Tis my belief the rebels are finished once and for all, Meg, provided Ned joins the northern forces and pushes the rest of their broken army back into Scotland.”

  Edward must have read Richard’s mind, for at the end of June came news of the surrender of the final rebel castle at Bamburgh—not to Edward, though, who had remained in York, but again to Montagu—and the beaten Lancastrians slunk back over the Scottish border pursued by the royal army. Brave Montagu was rewarded with the earldom of Northumberland. Pitiful Henry, abandoned by his followers, was left to wander and hide in the northern hills all alone for many months to come.

  MARGARET AND RICHARD were chafing at their long sojourn at the dull Wardrobe until one day in early July, when a kitchen boy came running back from the fish market near London Bridge.

  “Plague!” he cried as he ran headlong into the head cook. “There be plague, master!”

  Margaret and her steward made a quick decision, and within a day of hearing the dreaded word, a letter was on its way north to Edward, requesting permission to remove the household to Greenwich.

  “Greenwich,” groaned Margaret to Richard. “’Tis so dull there! But safer to be away from the city with plague, in truth.”

  “I like Greenwich,” Richard replied. “I can hunt and fish, and it smells sweeter. But I’d rather be with my brothers in the north.”

  “Soon enough, Dickon,” Margaret replied. “You will be living at Middleham soon enough.”

  They waited ten days for a response from Edward, and during that time the little kitchen boy died. Several other servants were showing symptoms: the black buboes, sweating, bloody flux and high fever. Fortunata told Margaret that she had recovered from the plague when she was ten, thanks to a less virule
nt case and the care from her physician mentors. They had assured her that she now had God’s grace and might be free of it for the rest of her life. Even so, she managed to convey to her mistress that when la peste had revisited Padua, she had remembered how the physicians wrapped their fingers in muslin and tied cloths around their faces when they treated patients, protecting themselves from la miasma, as they called the poisonous vapors that came from the plague victims. So she stayed as isolated as she could under the archways of the palazzo and had torn off a piece of her skirt to tie about her mouth and nose. She was taking no chances, God’s grace or not. She also prayed fervently to St. Sebastian and told Margaret that she was convinced the saint’s intervention had much to do with her salvation.

  During the next few frightening days at the Wardrobe, Fortunata became a familiar figure in the servants’ quarters, her dark eyes peering kindly over her gag and her gloved hands stroking hot heads and feeling for swollen armpits and groins. She knew to quarantine healthy folk from ill, and soon Margaret and her ladies were helping to fill the gaps left by ailing servants. Ann was disgusted that she was expected to dispose of the piss pot shared by the waiting women in Margaret’s chamber each day, a job Margaret assigned her when Ann turned up her nose at removing the leftover food from the table.

  “Too lowly a task for you, Lady Ann?” Margaret asked, smiling sweetly. “Then we will ask Beatrice to do it. You may take her daily duty, Mistress Nose-in-the-Air!”

  “B-b-but Lady Beatrice cleans the …”

  “Piss pot? Aye, she does, and without complaint. Certes, she will be happy to take your terrible task, my dear Ann. Now, pray, leave me! ’Tis enough that my household is dying before my eyes. I do not have time for milk-livered babies. Go!”

  Ann had run from the room in tears, Margaret staring sadly after her. How she missed the stoic Fortunata during these frightening days and nights! It was as though her right hand had been struck from her. Jane tried to take Fortunata’s place but she could not read Margaret’s moods as Fortunata did. A window had opened when Fortunata had come into Margaret’s life. She had recognized an old soul in the dwarf and was immediately drawn to her, especially when she discovered they had something in common. One day, while at her prayers, Margaret had whispered her usual plea that she might wake up dainty and pretty like other girls at court.

  “Why do you wish to be small like me, madonna,” Fortunata had whispered back. “Everybody stares at me, not you. You are beautiful and tall like a queen. I cannot see from a window, I cannot see the faces of people. All I see is their chin and nose above me. I cannot see their eyes. I do not know if they are honest or not.”

  Margaret had not realized she had spoken out loud, and she turned and looked curiously at her servant. So she does care, she thought. The dwarf had such an air of confidence about her that Margaret had been convinced Fortunata did not mind her odd appearance.

  “Aye, I can see where that would be a disadvantage.” Margaret still believed her plight was worse, however, and was determined to prove it. “’Tis humiliating when your brother tells you most men would prefer a small, plump creature in their bed than a lanky woman like me,” she grumbled.

  “No man will ever want me in bed,” Fortunata whispered, her dark lashes wet with a few unashamed tears. “I will never have love and I will never bear a child. I know this. So I pray to St. John every night to make me tall like you,” she said fervently. “He is the tallest apostle, you know.”

  “I did not know that, pochina,” Margaret replied. “Who is the shortest? Certes, perhaps I should petition him.” The ridiculousness of this struck them both simultaneously, and both suppressed laughter. In that moment, an unspoken bond was sealed between them.

  MARGARET HAD PROTESTED when Fortunata told her she would stay with the sick and not reappear until the plague was over. Margaret had clasped the dwarf to her, begging her to stay, afraid the girl might die with the others, but Fortunata was adamant that she would not attend the sick and Margaret at the same time.

  “Non, madonna. If I stay away, you will not get sick. It is right,” she said, stroking her mistress’s hand and fixing Margaret with her huge black eyes that were all anyone could see of her now. “I am going now, and you must stay here.”

  Margaret picked up her silver coffer and beckoned Fortunata to follow her. They went into a tiny antechamber, where Margaret’s private priedieu was set up, a purple satin cushion on the wooden kneeler and her precious book of hours open on the shelf. A tiny window gave them some light, as did a dozen candles Margaret kept lit day and night to the memory of her father. She opened the lid of a chest and searched among her jewels until she found the ring she was looking for. The ruby winked in the light of the candles, and the tiny filigree leaves that decorated the rest of the rosy gold shone with a warm glow. Margaret held it out to the servant, who pulled her kerchief from her mouth and gasped, “Non, madonna Margherita. This cannot be for me. Is too rich!”

  “Too precious for the best servant a woman could ever ask for? No, Fortunata, you deserve it. If something should happen to me, I want to know you will not have to beg on the streets again. Now hang it around your neck on this—under your clothes, you understand,” she said and pulled out a long gold chain from the box. “If God blesses us and we come through this safely, and if you are ever in trouble, you have only to send it back to me and I will help you. Do you understand?”

  Fortunata searched Margaret’s face for any signs of dissembling, and when she was satisfied Margaret was serious, she tentatively took the gift. She sank into a curtsey and kissed the hem of Margaret’s gown.

  “Thank you, madonna. God bless you.”

  “And now, let us pray to our Lord Jesus Christ and all the saints to keep you safe, to keep us all safe until we may leave this place.” Margaret knelt on the cushion and Fortunata on the stone floor, holding their peace in silent prayer.

  SEVEN IN MARGARET’S household died during the next few days, including one of her older ladies-in-waiting. When the messenger arrived bearing Edward’s permission for his two siblings to move to Greenwich, the latest victim of that July plague was being carted from the Wardrobe to be thrown into the communal pit and covered with lime for quick disintegration of the infected flesh.

  It took Margaret many hours of planning with her steward to ready the two small households to move to the country. Rather than wind their way through the streets and risk more infection, Margaret sent to Baynard’s to ready the barges for the next day’s journey. Cartloads of furnishings, coffers and chests rumbled down Athelyng Street to the Yorkist castle on the river, and once Margaret received word the baggage had been loaded onto the boats, she climbed into her litter, drew the curtains around her and was whisked down to the water’s edge. Holding her nose against the stench of rotting flesh, she then gratefully stepped into the luxurious barge with twenty of her illness-free retinue. Only Fortunata was missing. Margaret had not seen her masked face gazing glumly from an attic window as the litter was borne away. The faithful servant had turned back sadly to attend to a dying laundry woman.

  Margaret’s barge led the convoy, Richard following closely, and others piled with the trappings of a royal household on the move bringing up the rear. They could hear the bells of the more than a hundred churches and monasteries in London tolling for departed souls, priests and friars chanting the last rites, the weeping of wives and mothers, and the carters jingling their little bells and calling, “Bring out your dead!”

  When they approached London Bridge, the water bucked and chopped as it prepared to shoot through the many arches of the stone structure. Margaret always held her breath at this point, watching as the oarsmen lifted their oars in unison at the command of the captain to keep them safe from the slimy bridge walls and the sturdy man at the rudder steered them expertly into the rapids.

  As they were about to pass under the bridge, a body in a crude shroud was tipped from the window of a house directly above them into the river bel
ow. The captain bellowed, “Heave to! Heave to!” and shook his fist at the disappearing figures in the window who had thus divested the house of a plague victim. The women cried out in alarm, but the rudderman deftly evaded the missile, and within a few seconds, the party had navigated the dangerous passage and shot through to the other side, leaving the weed-covered walls behind.

  Calm water in London’s wide Pool was greeted with smiles and a smattering of applause for the crew as the boatmen again took up the chant of “rumbelow, furbelow” to regain their rhythm. Margaret breathed a sigh of relief as the towers and spires of London receded behind her and the watermen expertly avoided the many tall-masted ships and their anchor lines as they pulled for the marshy flats of the Isle of Dogs on the left side of the river and the wooded banks of Greenwich on the other. Her thoughts were all of her faithful dwarf left behind to care for the sick. She had sent a message to Fortunata commanding her to stay until it was safe for her to join the rest of the household.

  “I believe you do have God’s grace, my little friend,” she had written. “I shall see you again anon, have no fear. God stay with you.”

  But she was by no means certain she would see Fortunata again, and as the boatmen kept up their long, lazy rhythm, Margaret slipped into a melancholic doze.

  EVEN THE INVIGORATING air at Greenwich could not seem to bring Margaret out of her lassitude. She spent hours at her prie-dieu surrounded by candles, and her ladies could hear her weeping.

  “’Tis not right to be so devoted to a servant, and a malformed servant at that,” Ann remarked to Beatrice one day in early August. They were walking along the river, having left Margaret seated under a huge beech tree, her back against the smooth bark, her book unopened on her lap and her eyes closed. She did not want anyone near her, and for the first time in her service, her ladies feared her tongue. Once comfortable under the tree, she had shooed the women away. It worried her that she had fits of melancholy that she could not control. Often they began with a headache, and then a black humor would descend and stay with her for hours. She gazed through the rustling leaves to the flower garden beyond, and self-pity overcame her.