Princess of Thorns

by Saga Hillbom

  Missing is the most difficult part: Mother, each of my sisters, including Elizabeth. I write to them, but it is not the same as seeing their familiar faces. Finally, in late autumn, Welles brings me with him for a few weeks’ visit to court. I delight in the experience—he promises we can go soon again—and absorb all the news and gossip like a sponge.

  Both the Duke of Brittany and the King of Scotland have died during the year, leaving eleven-year-old Anne of Brittany and fifteen-year-old James of Scotland to inherit their domains. If only I had possessed what they now possess at such a young age! It could have been thus, had I married James as Father intended during my childhood.

  Thomas is nowhere to be found at court, but I dare not ask anyone of his whereabouts. Perhaps he is simply avoiding me, and I could not blame him.

  All these things fade to the background, though, when I learn my own piece of news: I am with child.

  Lord Welles—or John, as he now allows me to call him in private—is bursting with joy in his own subtle way, as is Beaufort. I cannot share their sentiment, yet there is one benefit of my condition, namely that my husband will demand nothing but to sleep next to me for several months, both because the goal has already been achieved and for fear of harming the baby in the last stages of pregnancy. It presents less of a challenge to be his friend than it does to be his wife. We return to Tattershall in time for the Christmas and New Year celebrations on Tudor’s instruction, to avoid traveling when I am too far gone. To my surprise, I rejoice to see my own castle again, because although I do not own it, I know every corner of every room except the kitchens and basement like the back of my hand. It gives a sense of security.

  John, Beaufort, Tudor, and the rest of them all pray for a son, naturally. I do not know what I hope for. My whole life, I have been taught that boys are the road to success, and they can achieve so much more in their own right. At the same time, my own experience has planted a seed of doubt in me, for while my brothers were thought to be the greatest success of my parents’ marriage, they are gone, while Elizabeth wears a crown. Cousin Meg is the wife of Prince Arthur’s trusted servant while Young Warwick wastes away in his prison cell. Aunt Catherine is Duchess of Darby while her brother Rivers had his head cut off, and Aunt Margaret is Dowager Duchess of Burgundy while three of her four brothers met violent and premature ends. Girls may have to take the road to good fortune through marriage, but they are infinitely safer, and what is the use of success if one is not safe enough to maintain it?

  Yes. Yes, I do believe I want a baby girl.

  Chapter XXII

  28 December 1497

  LADY MOTHER!’ Annie’s auburn locks are powdered with a dust of snow, her cheeks rosy from the cold, feet kicking up clouds of white as she tumbles towards me.

  I take her in my arms and scoop her up from the ground. Six years of age now, she is too heavy to be carried on the hip like a toddler, and I have to put her down again.

  ‘What happened to your sister?’ I ask, offering a gloved hand for her to cling onto as we walk along the outer moat.

  ‘She wanted to build a snowman to show Father. I said, I said I didn’t want to.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘It wasn’t very pretty the last time we tried.’

  ‘You mustn’t give up then, darling. Come, shall we try together?’

  Eliza—or Elizabeth, as John still insists on calling her despite my grumblings—is easy to spot in her new frock, like a dot of red in a landscape of ivory. She is rapidly growing, too, more than a head taller now than her little sister. The snowman is already half-finished; her hands work in a frenzy, as always, as if every project was a battle against the clock.

  I stroke her hair with my free hand. They ought both to be wearing something against the weather and to guard their modesty, but they are still young enough to get away with going bareheaded, especially since we have no visitors at the moment.

  ‘Look! Do you think Father will like it, Lady Mother?’

  I smile. ‘I will have him beaten about the head if he does not.’

  Both my girls, but my oldest especially, thirst too much for John Welles’ approval. I have tried to tell him thus many times, but he struggles to show his love in ways other than a friendly nod and a pat on the shoulder.

  Annie bends down for a handful of snow and pats it onto the snowman’s belly.

  Eliza pushes away her hand. ‘I can do it myself!’

  ‘Be nice!’ I say, though I do not expect her to listen. I understand perfectly well that she wants to manage on her own.

  Half an hour later, we stand dishevelled before a snowman more handsome than any of us might have hoped. Annie has tied her own scarf around his neck and stuck two sprawling sticks in the body for arms.

  I wrap one arm around each of my daughters: so small and warm, and mine alone. ‘We should go inside for supper.’

  ‘Not without Father!’ Eliza pouts. ‘He will be back soon, I know it. I can almost hear his horse yonder.’

  ‘We can wait a little longer, if you are truly not too hungry.’

  The three of us take another stroll along the moat to pass the time. The winter is hard this year, forcing the geese to waddle on the strand rather than swim, the water having frozen. If the ice was thicker, we could skate on it, like we did a few years ago. Even my husband joined Eliza and me in the merry-go-round, falling over more often than gliding. Annie was too small back then to participate—she was always small for her age, but I do not consider it a disadvantage. It means I can perhaps keep her with me a little longer before she is considered ripe for marriage, and her birth was a trivial matter compared to the first time I endured such a thing.

  In all honesty, the dull confinements were worse than both my childbeds. I was mistaken to dread them so, because while many others have bled to death, my maternal heritage did not fail me in my task. However, I have not conceived for many years now, and Welles is beginning to despair, fearing God may be withholding his blessings from us. He never speaks a word about the fact that we do not and perhaps never will have a son and heir, but I can read it in his face late in the evenings. I think he has come to love me in his own way. Yes, he loves me, and he will not cast off a wife of my status, hence I feel secure despite not fulfilling my purpose. Our daughters will be wealthy heiresses, as were Isabel and Anne Neville, and wealthy heiresses are the most sought-after commodity on the marriage market. Indeed, they not having a brother puts them at an advantage in this.

  At first, I was distraught over my so-called failure. Elizabeth has given Tudor two sons and three daughters so far; her little Prince Harry is around Annie’s age and a fierce boy. Yet the more I held each of my baby girls, watching their tiny fingers curl around mine and their precious peachy lips form gurgling sounds, the more my sense of failure subsided. To me, they are the essence of perfection, and I would not trade them for any of Elizabeth’s boys. Furthermore, they will be safe from harm, as I have long known, for who would endanger two little princesses?

  Their Lancastrian blood also protects them, as much as I hate to admit it. Nonetheless, they are Yorkist to the bone—except the colour of Annie’s hair, that is. Welles does not realise it, but Eliza has Uncle Richard’s pebble-grey eyes, and both she and her little sister devour the bedtime stories I tell them about glories gone by. They know the details of the conflict now called the Cousins’ War, although I make certain to cast it in a fairy tale shimmer and omit the goriest parts. When they are alone with me, they call Tudor by his name rather than his regal title, while in the presence of others, they show the respect needed if they are to remain in favour as they grow older. I daresay they might be cleverer than I give them credit for.

  Once did I suffer a miscarriage such as I have heard other women tell of, but it was too early to tell the sex of the babe, and I found myself unable to lament my loss for very long. Either I am heartless, or these incidents affect some to greater extent than others. I pray it is the latte
r.

  The muffled sound of hooves in snow interrupts my musings, and soon Welles reins in his horse at the sight of us and dismounts.

  Eliza lets go of my hand and surges forward. ‘Father, we built another snowman! Will you come and look?’

  Welles looks at me. ‘Er, ye-es. Yes, I believe I will.’

  After a few minutes of pointing and explaining, we all return indoors, I with a pleasant feeling in my chest.

  That evening as the girls are about to sleep, Annie, who fancies a good adventure as much as Dickie did, asks me to tell them again about the battle at Mortimer’s Cross, which paved the way for my father’s assumption of the throne.

  ‘And your grandfather looked to the sky, and there were three suns burning bright,’ I say, sitting on the edge of the bed the girls share in one of the turrets. ‘That is how he decided on his emblem, the Sunne in Splendour. One sun for each brother.’

  Annie knits her brows. ‘But…if one was King Edward’s, and another was King Richard’s, there should have been a King George, too. Otherwise it’s just two suns.’

  ‘Well—’ I hesitate. I cannot very well tell them that the third sun, Clarence, was put out in a barrel of wine.

  Welles’ voice from the doorway saves me. ‘You ought to leave these things to the nurse, my lady.’

  ‘I enjoy it.’ I place a kiss on each of my daughters’ noses and rise from the bed. Having closed the door between their room and ours, I cross my arms. ‘I was not telling them anything they shouldn’t hear.’

  My husband sighs. ‘Alas, I doubt it, my lady.’

  ‘My sister will be visiting. I had a letter from her this morning.’

  ‘She is most welcome.’

  I nod. ‘Good. And how was court? I wish I could have gone with you, for I miss it dearly.’

  ‘You had my permission.’

  I cast a glance at the door to our daughters’ bedroom. ‘You know I cannot bear to leave them for such a long time. Two months is so…much!’

  I come to think of my own mother, put away like an outdated piece of jewellery in Bermondsey Abbey. I never had the chance to introduce her to Annie before she passed into God’s hands one heat-ridden day the summer five years ago. Her burial was fit for a church mouse rather than a dowager queen, and she had only her blessing to give us in her will. Such was the result of Beaufort’s and Tudor’s workings—or at least I think that was it. Three years later, I marked the passing of my paternal grandmother, Cecily Neville, who I believe was only too happy to have outlived Elizabeth Woodville.

  My husband and I sit down by the fireplace. The old crests engraved in the stone are as familiar to me now as those of my own kindred. I pat my knee and my spotty spaniel, called Munchie after my old favourite, jumps to my lap. His fur is smoother than velvet under my hand, his tail wagging slowly.

  ‘Come, tell me all the news,’ I say.

  ‘Oh dear. I am afraid it shan’t please you.’

  ‘Now I have to know.’

  ‘His Grace treats Perkin Warbeck with the most generous clemency. He has, at last, confessed to the falsehood of his claim and will be allowed to reside at court.’

  ‘What? Not in the Tower? Tudor—His Grace, I mean—would keep Warwick and John of Gloucester under lock and key while letting the scoundrel Warbeck prance around freely?’

  ‘You forget your cousins are a threat because of their supposed claims, while Warbeck is harmless, having confessed he has no such claim.’

  ‘But…but he deserves it, and they do not! After everything he has done…’

  Perkin Warbeck, the young man who for many years now has styled himself as my long-lost younger brother, the young man who seeks to dethrone Tudor, the young man who has caused me so much pain. At first, I wanted to believe it. Every report about his looks—the blond hair, the handsome face, the Yorkist features—sounded like Dickie grown up. He was the right age, knew the right things. Aunt Margaret of Burgundy even acknowledged him as her nephew and declared she believed every word of his story: how he had been spirited away from the Tower, made to swear to not reveal his true identity for a certain amount of time, and lived on the continent under Yorkist protection.

  Of course, there was always the gnawing, increasing doubt sprung from what Uncle Richard and Queen Anne told me as well as from the letter to Buckingham that I found under the floorboard in what seems like another life. My brothers are both dead. I never believed Warbeck’s imposter wholeheartedly, yet it was an immense temptation, because he lit a spark of hope in me. Nothing hurts as badly as hope being squashed, and mine certainly was through his actions, for I knew they were unlike anything my little brother would have done. He, who was always humbler than I, would not have pursued the crown at the cost of others’ lives; he, who was always valiant, would not have deserted his own army.

  Welles takes my hand and it strikes me how much he has aged. ‘Calm yourself, my lady. There is nothing you can do to change what the King has decreed.’

  ‘That is the very cause of my distress.’

  ‘I see.’

  There is naught more to be said.

  Anne arrives a week later. It was long since I last saw her, and how I have missed those fairy-like limbs and those floating steps. She brings gifts: silk for a new gown for Eliza and a delicately crafted doll for Annie. I suspect my sister likes her namesake best, since my oldest daughter is perhaps what some would consider rowdy. Welles and I had a bicker over what to call our youngest, but since he had decided on Elizabeth for our first, I finally prevailed with the name Anne, for the late Queen and for my favourite sister alike.

  Darkness falls early, as it is wont to do in this season, enveloping the landscape in a gloomy embrace. From outside, Tattershall looks like a haunted castle, its red brick turned black; inside, hundreds of candles emblazon the vast spaces. Anne still does not like the dark, hence we sit in the most well-lit room of all, the one adjoining to the audience chamber, tucked up in the cushioned window seat. On a round table slightly below sits a bowl of dark red winter apples from the garden.

  ‘Did you hear about the Pope’s daughter?’ I ask. Ever since her father became the Head of Christendom, I have indulged in the scandal that is Lucrezia Borgia.

  Anne’s eyes widen. ‘I know. They say her husband was made to sign a confession of impotence.’

  ‘Not that bit, everyone knows that. I mean did you hear about the baby? Word is she had a baseborn son of her own while the annulment was being negotiated.’ I bite into an apple, the juice both tangy and sweet on my tongue.

  ‘She did? I wonder who her lover was.’

  ‘Some say t’was her brother. Regardless, I hope he realised his luck, catching Christendom’s so-called greatest treasure.’

  Anne pulls her knees up to her chin and rests her arms on them. ‘I think the Catholic Monarchs would consider their own daughter to be that.’

  ‘Catalina?’

  ‘Prince Arthur calls her Catherine—that other name is so…Spanish.’

  I shrug. ‘She is Spanish. I hope Tudor is finally satisfied with her Spanish gold, too, though I doubt it. The more he can stuff away in his coffers…’

  ‘They can afford it, surely, with all the riches from the New Land.’ My sister’s gaze is distant, perhaps set on the continent we have heard so many fabulous tales about. ‘Aren’t you excited to meet her? She sounds so wonderfully clever.’

  ‘If she is, she’ll know her luck. Just imagine coming here, escaping her parents’ horrid slaughtering of the Jews and Moors! I wager our weather is better, too. Our summers are more temperate, and the sunshine is not scorching, like it can be in Spain.’

  ‘You will come to the wedding, will you not?’

  ‘Of course I will. Elizabeth must give me some role to play in the ceremony if I am to be Catalina’s aunt.’

  Anne smiles. When she reaches for an apple, the lining of her voluminous sleeve slips back, revealing a broad stroke of bruises enc
ircling her wrist. The skin shifts in bold shades of yellow and purple, the kind of bruises I can only recall seeing on men returning from combat.

  Anne pulls down her sleeve as quickly as possible but she must know I have seen what she is hiding. A moment passes with the sole sound coming from either of us being the chewing of apples.

  I put mine down on the table and take my sister’s arm in a gentle but steady grip, pulling up the sleeve once more. She winces at first yet does not try to stop me. I study her arm in the candlelight, searching for more bruises, but find none.

  ‘Who did this?’ I ask, forcing myself to remain calm.

  Anne shakes her head, blushing. ‘It is of no importance.’

  ‘Yes, it is.’ I catch her other arm, and to my horror, the battering is mirrored there. ‘Tell me this very moment, Anne.’

  ‘I was terribly insensitive, stupid even. I spent all evening listening to one of the minstrels, which I should not have, it was just he sung such pretty songs and had written such pretty poetry. They were not intended for me, but Tom could not know that.’

  I gape at her. ‘Howard is to blame?’

  ‘I am to blame. It’s just he loves me so, so much, and I should not have hurt him thus by lavishing attention on another man.’

  I also thought my sister’s husband, the Earl of Surrey’s son Thomas Howard, loved her ‘so, so much’. I thought she had been blessed, him being both adroit and charismatic, only two years her senior, not to speak of the son and grandson of trusted Yorkists, despite their buttering up Tudor recently. When they were wed a few years ago, he had eyes for none but her. He was not the knight in shining armour she had always dreamed of, but it mattered not, because he compensated for his lack of chivalry with a hefty dose of adoration. Now, the thought of him makes fury burn hot in my stomach.

  I cup Anne’s hands in mine. ‘Can he truly love you if he beat you?’

  She withdraws her hands. ‘He did not beat me. He merely held me firmly and said I mustn’t act as if I were not his wife. And then he kissed me, and I think he forgave me.’