“Why is Uncle George so angry?” I asked Nurse as she laced up my gown one morning.
“His wife died in childbirth, and his babe died a few days later. He’s grieving, and he blames your mother for their deaths.”
“Why?”
She didn’t reply right away. Then she said, “I suppose he must blame someone, poor man.”
Though I had many good times with Mary and my three-year-old brother Dickon, I was only too aware that all was not well in my father’s kingdom. In good weather and bad, somber-faced messengers hurried across the lawns and pathways of the Tower, Westminster Palace, and Windsor, delivering their missives to my father. This time it was not the Kingmaker but my uncle George of Clarence who was making trouble for Papa. When my father forbade him from putting himself forward as a suitor to Mary of Burgundy, but allowed my Uncle Anthony to do so, Uncle George was roused to fury. I comforted my father in his chamber, sometimes playing my lyre, and at other times, my lute. Often, I sang to him, for he said I had a voice like an angel, but to see him droop in his chair made me ache with sadness. One day, I massaged his broad shoulders. When I was done, he reached up and took my hand.
“Why is Uncle George always so angry with you, Papa?” I asked gently.
He drew me to his lap. “George has always believed himself to be the rightful King of England, Elizabeth. He calls me a bastard.”
I gave a gasp of horror. “Papa, everyone knows you are rightful king. Why does he say such dreadful things?”
“We don’t know. We think there’s something wrong with him. He saw some terrible things when he was a little boy. Henry’s queen, Marguerite d’Anjou, captured the town of Ludlow and made him watch what her soldiers did to the townspeople. That may have unhinged his mind, we just don’t know . . .”
My father drifted into his thoughts. Finally he spoke again, “Now he has accused your mother of sorcery.”
I tensed, swallowed hard. The image of my mother and grandmother and the old friar in the wine cellar at the abbey conjuring up the fog at Barnet rose before me.
My father’s voice came again, soft and distant. “ ’Tis a deadly charge, witchcraft . . . Punishable by banishment or death.”
I forced my dismal thoughts away. Now I understood the full urgency of my mother’s pleading with my father to silence Uncle George. The night before last, I’d come upon them arguing in Papa’s privy chamber. Mother had been down on her knees, wringing her hands, sobbing. She had never seemed so anxious about anything since the dreadful days of sanctuary. “Send him to the Tower!” she’d cried. “You can’t let him spread the tale! You can’t let him live! He’ll destroy us—destroy our children—Edward, for the love of God, do it—”
Some things were still unclear to me. How would the charge of sorcery against my mother destroy us, his children? I shrugged inwardly. Some matters would probably never be explained, but one thing I knew for certain: I didn’t want my mother banished. Though sometimes I thought I hated her, I loved her too. Not as I loved my father, but I didn’t want anything ill to happen to her.
The news was not long reaching us. Uncle George had been taken to the Tower. Papa received a visit from my Uncle Richard soon afterward, and I listened at the chamber door as they argued.
“Release him, Edward!” Uncle Richard cried.
“I cannot. Nor will I. He doesn’t deserve it.”
“He is our brother.”
“He is a traitor, and a dangerous one at that. I would be a fool to release him.”
“You’ll have God’s scourge on you if you don’t! Remember Cain and Abel.”
That made me shudder.
I had seen little of my uncle Richard of Gloucester over the years. After Barnet and the war with France, he’d changed and no longer smiled much. He’d returned to the north and rarely came to court anymore. I was unsure what to make of him. With his dark looks, he didn’t resemble the rest of our family, since we were all golden-haired and fair complexioned. And unlike my uncle George of Clarence, who always had plenty to say, my uncle Richard of Gloucester never said much. He kept his thoughts to himself, like me. In that, he was also unlike Uncle Anthony, my mother’s brother, who talked a great a deal about poetry and literature and his travels to faraway places. I found myself very curious about this strange and brooding uncle who was so different from anyone else I’d ever known.
I went down to the palace kitchens, where I always picked up information. I loved sitting by the fire listening to the scullery maids chatter as they worked. The head cook never failed to make me welcome with sweets and other delights, and was more prone to answer my questions than Nurse, who said little to satisfy my curiosity.
“See who’s a-come visitin’!” exclaimed the head cook with great excitement. She was a round old woman with a round face, and round apple cheeks, and a wide smile. She came out from behind the long table, wiping her hands on her apron, and dropped me a curtsy. “ ’Tis a fair day when such a golden princess a-comes to see us, is it not? Ye are joy to look upon, my beautiful little princess. All that bright yellow hair and those big blue eyes, I vow ’tis like lookin’ on a fair summer’s day.”
Everyone smiled at me, and I felt as if I were wrapped in a cozy cocoon of love on this cold and windy November afternoon.
“I wish I could come and see you more often,” I said, “but I am kept at my harp and lute lessons, and my French lessons, and embroidery and tapestry lessons, and Latin, and I am scolded when I slip away.”
“O my poor sweet princess, who could be sharp with ye? Here, have a seat on the stool and I’ll fetch ye some marchpane. We just finished preparing it.”
The marchpane was delicious, but I was careful not to gobble it up the way I wished to do, for I also had to mind my manners, being a princess. When they had feted me, they returned to their work, and forgot I was there. That was when I learned about Uncle George.
“Poor child,” someone whispered. “To think there’s such doings around her, and she’ll soon be mourning an uncle.”
“Surely the king will pardon his brother in the end?” came another whisper.
“Nay. They say the queen is determined to have Clarence’s blood for accusing her of murdering—”
“Shush, man! Ye’ll have us all in the Tower, if ye’s not careful!”
No one I questioned liked to talk much about my uncles, and it was during a kitchen visit that I’d learned about Anne Neville laboring as a scullery maid. Now I knew my Uncle George lay under sentence of death at the Tower, but I still didn’t know why my Uncle George blamed my mother for the deaths of his wife and child when all she’d done was send her own doctor and midwife to tend my Aunt Bella. Though his shadow hung over us during the Yule celebrations, the palace was soon merry again, for there was to be a royal wedding at Westminster. My four-year-old brother Dickon was marrying the richest heiress in the kingdom, eight-year-old Anne Mowbray, Duchess of Norfolk.
In January, as soon as Yule was behind us and church bells had struck the arrival of the new year of 1478, preparations for Dickon’s wedding moved forward with full force, though my Uncle George remained in the Tower.
Court glittered with candles, torches, fresh silk draperies, new tapestries, much gilt, and boughs of greenery and fir. Hundreds of nobles had braved the harsh winter journey to London from the far corners of the kingdom to attend Dickon’s wedding, and my parents were determined to make it a grand and unforgettable occasion, perhaps to take everyone’s mind off the troubles with Uncle George. But during the feast, I noticed the anxious glances cast at my father and mother.
As I danced with Papa, it seemed to me that the laughter that the court jesters elicited from groups of wedding guests was not as gleeful as usual. Between drumrolls, varlets rushed about offering a succession of courses of swan, roasted boar, and jellied partridge. Other servers poured well-spiced sauces and soup over the dishes at a nod. Still others distributed pies, tarts, and fine white bread, as well as fritters, pancakes, fruits,
and vegetable dishes, but though everyone smiled as they conversed and drank, I had the feeling their merriment was forced. My father and I made our way back to the high table, back to my glum uncle, Richard of Gloucester.
He sat with his wife, Anne Neville, the Kingmaker’s daughter, barely touching his cup or his food. They both watched us take our places at the table solemnly. They seemed very uncomfortable, as if they’d rather be somewhere else. Then my uncle Richard of Gloucester seized my father’s arm, leaned close, and whispered something to him in an urgent tone. I didn’t catch what it was. All at once, without a word of acknowledgment—at least, none that I heard—my mother and father both pushed out of their chairs and went to dance. Whatever Uncle Richard had said, I knew it had to do with Uncle George, for neither my father nor my mother smiled.
Though my Grandmama Cecily didn’t attend Dickon’s wedding, she came to court as soon as all the other guests had left. She stayed only one night and no one saw her but my father. Then she returned to her castle of Berkhamsted, where she lived the life of a nun. I heard from the kitchen help that she had vowed never to come to court again so long as she lived. My uncle Richard of Gloucester and his wife left for the north at the same time, but not before I heard one of their household whisper something that disturbed me greatly. “Thus is the queen avenged on yet another of her most bitter enemies.”
I had little time to ponder this. On the heels of their departure came the news that my uncle George of Clarence was executed in the Tower. Strangely, no one knew how he died. Listening to the palace whispers, I learned that my Uncle George chose his own death and drowned in a butt of the sweet malmsey that was always his favorite wine. My father fell into a terrible depression and did not emerge from his chamber for a week. Though he had left orders not to be disturbed, I sneaked in to see him.
He was sitting at a table drinking alone, empty wine bottles lolling about at his feet. It broke my heart to find him this way, my loving, laughing father. I stood for a moment, taken aback at the sight.
He glanced up at me and looked away again, but he put out one hand to me as he covered his face with the other. I took it and sat on his knee as I used to do when I was little. I placed my arm around his neck and gave him a tender kiss.
“Papa, Papa . . . if you didn’t wish Uncle George to die, why did you have him executed?” I asked. “You are king, after all, Papa, and can do anything you wish.”
He didn’t answer for a long time, and I thought he hadn’t heard me. Then he said, very softly, “Sometimes a king must do what he knows is wrong, what is hateful to him. For the peace of the land.”
I had the strange feeling I would never forget my father’s words.
CHAPTER 3
Sister of the King, 1483
I MUST ADMIT I DIDN’T MISS MY UNCLE GEORGE. IT seemed to me that another cloud was banished from the realm, and with his death revelry and joy returned to court. My father soon recovered his spirits since my uncles were not there to stir argument. Neither did my mother trouble my father with her demands, for she went to work deciding which of her many relatives should receive what from Uncle George’s rich estates. She was also occupied arranging advantageous marriages for her more distant family members now that her twelve brothers and sisters had secured the land’s dukedoms and earldoms. Then, like a tempest out of calm skies, sorrow struck again.
Uncle George’s namesake, my baby brother George, died within months of my uncle’s execution. It was a dreadful thing, and it brought sadness and weeping back to court. My mother feared that his death was an omen, but my father, who didn’t believe in such things, dismissed it.
“Pull yourself together, Bess. It was an infection that took him. Children die of infections every day,” he told her. Then he went back to his mistress, Jane Shore.
I wondered if Mother knew about Papa’s mistress. It was said he loved her dearly, though she was only a mercer’s daughter. Gossip held that she was not only very beautiful, but also kind and gracious. Although she refused my father’s gifts for herself, those who encountered misfortune in life could rely on her to set matters right for them. Grants of money would be given them; justice would be dispensed, if that was what they sought; their relatives would be released from prison or the Tower, and the charges against them dropped. My father would do anything for her.
Marked by the birth of two more sisters, Katherine in 1479 and Bridget in 1480, and attended by christenings and other blessed occasions, the next few years passed in serenity and celebration. My father’s sister, Margaret of York, Duchess of Burgundy, paid us a visit in 1480 amid great rejoicing. My father had not seen her for twelve years after she left for Burgundy to wed her husband, whom Papa liked to deride as Charles “the Rash,” instead of “the Bold,” for Charles liked to attack other countries for no apparent reason, and was killed besieging Nancy, a town of no consequence.
It was such a happy time that I forgot she had come on a most serious matter. My Aunt Margaret wished to wage war against Louis of France, who was threatening Burgundy, and she sought England’s help. Though Papa did not grant her request, he went to great lengths to make her visit a memorable and happy one, with much pomp and circumstance and the giving of gifts, banqueting, and celebration.
Life was full for me in these days, and time passed too quickly. I practiced my Latin and my French, in both of which I had grown fluent, and I taught my younger sisters the art of embroidery and music, in which I excelled, though this did not please Cecily. I also received petitioners in my mother’s stead, for dispensing patronage was part of the duties of a queen and my mother did not care to do it. Then, every evening, we gathered as a family to play chess and backgammon in the solar, to listen to music, to sing, to dance.
My fifteenth birthday occasioned much festivity, for it meant I had reached a mature and marriageable age and King Louis of France would surely send for me soon to wed his son, Charles the Dauphin. It pleased me to see my father happy. He laughed heartily, and ate and drank with more gusto than ever, for he had few worries, and no more challenges to his rule since all his Lancastrian rivals were dead. The only claimant was someone named Henry Tudor, who lived in exile in Brittany, but Tudor represented no serious threat, for his lineage was tainted with bastardy on both his maternal and paternal sides. He was put forward simply because all the legitimate Lancastrian claimants were dead in the Wars of the Roses, and he was the only one left.
With King Louis’s gold pouring into our coffers, Papa took his ease and was no longer obliged to beg Parliament for money. Nor did he have to work so hard at the business of governing, for he had many capable men around him after nearly twenty years of rule. One of these was his Master of the Rolls, a bishop named John Morton.
“I don’t care for him, Papa,” I told my father one day when I passed the bishop leaving my father’s chamber. Short and corpulent, with small dark eyes that reminded me of a dead fish, I had observed him berating his servants in a sneering manner.
My father roared with laughter. “Neither does your uncle Richard of Gloucester, but he is a great favorite of your mother’s, for he was a Lancastrian, and like her own family, he fought against me at Towton. If I didn’t favor him, she’d make my life miserable! When you are Queen of France, my dauphiness, you can advise your royal husband about who shall have his ear, and make his life hell if he doesn’t do your bidding! Just like your mother.” He burst into another round of laughter and took a long sip of wine from his jewel-studded goblet.
“I shall never do that, Papa.”
He interrupted his drink to regard me solemnly. “No, I dare say you will not. You are not your mother. You are too sweet and gentle by nature, and more than likely your husband will always have his way.” Then my father drew me to him and cupped my face in his broad hands. “But, my child, don’t let him make your life bitter.”
A knock at the door announced Bishop Morton. I gave my father a kiss on his cheek and quitted the room. At the threshold, I paused to liste
n for a moment.
“Your Grace, France continues to threaten Burgundy, and the matter grows ever more dire,” said Bishop Morton. “Your royal sister, the Duchess of Burgundy, urgently requests your assistance for her stepdaughter, Mary of Burgundy, against Louis of France. She has sent another missive reminding Your Grace that our own commercial interests are at stake.” He offered my father the letter.
“Never,” Papa replied, waving the missive away. “We cannot risk losing our pension from Louis. And what about the princess Elizabeth’s betrothal? We cannot put that at risk. When she is Queen of France, all will be set right. My sister Meg merely needs to wait. Tell her that—to wait.”
I shut the door quietly.
We celebrated another wonderful Yuletide, but the new year of 1482 rode in on a hailstorm, and few were celebrating, for it seemed the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse rode loose across the land. The harvest had been the worst in many years, and starvation exacted a heavy toll with the onset of winter. The news from Burgundy was not good, either, and this troubled my father, who wanted neither to lose Burgundy’s trade, nor Louis’s pension. In March, my terrier, Jolie, died, and I was inconsolable for the rest of the month.
Another urgent missive soon came from Aunt Margaret in Burgundy. In March, Mary of Burgundy was killed in a fall from her horse. Her husband, Maximilian of Austria, desperately needed England’s help against King Louis of France, who claimed that in the absence of a male heir, the duchy of Burgundy had reverted to France with the death of Aunt Margaret’s husband, Charles the Rash. But more troubling to my father than Burgundy was France. I had reached my sixteenth year and was well past marriageable age, and King Louis still did not send for me. To my father’s inquiries, he returned vague excuses.
The King's Daughter (Rose of York) Page 4