Mistress of Mourning

by Karen Harper

  She was mad, I thought, and that was that. She was old but claimed to be older, mayhap believed she was. But did she have visions of Wales’s onetime would-be deliverer from English rule, or did she make all that up to either bring others here for business or to keep them away? I was intrigued by her but disturbed too.

  Yet I accepted the fragrant lavender from her. “That for you,” she said. “And for the new widow, I shall give you some rue in a black ribbon, for in the future she will rue her future, her marriage to the king.”

  Yes, she was crackbrained, I thought. “You do know the prince died?” I asked, wondering whether she was hard of hearing or forgetful. “The princess is now not wife but widow, so will not wed a king.”

  “Ha! Wait and see. For Glendower lives, at least our new Glendower, eh?”

  “And who is that, the new Glendower?” Nick asked, his voice rising.

  “Why, one and the same. I must be off to my gathering now, but this lad will show you where to look for him, eh, Rhys?”

  “Aye, Mistress Fey. And Da says if you pack up some rosemary to ward off bad dreams, he has need of such to sell, and I’m to fetch it on the morrow.”

  “Canna have enough of that, eh? Everyone has bad dreams.” Turning her head away from Nick and Rhys, she looked straight at me. Her pale blue eyes seemed to brighten, to bore into mine, and I fancied for one moment in the dimness that she was young again. Was she a witch or sorceress? Gooseflesh skimmed my arms, and I shuddered.

  In my free hand, I took the small bouquet of rue, indeed wrapped with a black ribbon, as if she had known we were coming and that we could take it to Princess Catherine. It resembled a small bough of grayish evergreen and smelled pungent—bitter. Nick took my elbow and steered me outside. He turned back only to give the woman an entire gold sovereign with the king’s likeness on it, which she squinted at as if trying to make it out—or, I thought, to give him the evil eye.

  Nick and I thanked Mistress Fey, and Rhys told her something in Welsh that made her chuckle. Was I the one going mad? I had feared for my sanity after I had lost my child, even that day in London, when I fancied the angel dangling above us for Catherine of Aragon’s parade was my Edmund as he would look in the future. Was the queen’s obsessive nature, to refuse to let go of her dead, rubbing off on me?

  “Don’t cling to that too hard,” Mistress Fey said, pointing at the rue. “It will rub off on you—leave a rash.”

  I could only nod. Had she just read my mind about the queen rubbing off on me? No, mere coincidence, happenstance, all of this. Or had this woman cast a spell on me? I should stop sniffing the lavender she’d given me too; we must discard the gift of rue for the princess. For when we rode away, even after I whispered to ask Nick whether she had looked young to him until we came close to her and he said no, I glanced back. And I swear by all that’s holy, I saw a young, comely woman standing there again, just watching us.

  As we headed for the ancient cromlech, I suddenly dreaded seeing it. The strange old woman’s claim that Glendower was seen near this ancient tomb or on the battlements of the castle made me want to flee. I pictured again the man Nick and I had seen there, his sword flashing and his cape flapping, as old Fey had said.

  Yet I did not want to discuss my feelings in front of young Rhys. How did I know he wouldn’t tell Fey or someone else what I had said? Hail-fellow-well-met the lad might seem, but I was more than ever convinced that evil lurked here and could have harmed the prince and princess. How would I ever explain that old herb woman and such nebulous fears to the queen? Though I had leaned back and twisted around in the saddle to drop the lavender and rue into my saddle pack, their scents clung to me, curled into my nostrils as if they would reach my brain.

  “Tell us about this cave tomb,” Nick was saying to Rhys. He also leaned over to put a quick, steadying hand upon mine on the reins, so he must have noticed I was trembling. I had to buck myself up. I was with Nick and a Welsh lad he trusted. Surely all would be well.

  “I heard tell,” Rhys answered Nick, “the Irish call such tombs giants’ graves, but here’bouts we call this Glendower’s cave. ’Tisn’t truly a cave but a chambered tomb cut back into a hill, and folks say if’n you pull out a small stone from it, it grows a new one. But it’s mostly huge stones, with a portal to go in, like to another world—you’ll see.”

  We did see, as the massive blocks, one balanced on two upstanding others, emerged from behind the next scrim of trees. The tomb was indeed built against a hill. Two protruding stones made a small forecourt entry. A square stone partially blocked the entrance. I suppose it once could have been moved to block it entirely.

  “Amazing,” Nick said. “There are huge, ancient standing stones in England, though I’ve not seen them. What a fine monument this is to some ancient king or chieftain.”

  “And to Glendower,” I heard Rhys mutter under his breath, but I saw him cross himself as if he too were anxious about going in.

  I had a good nerve to stay with the horses, for I realized it would be an enclosed area in there, a dark coffin of sorts. I wished we had brought lanterns or candles, lots of them. But after my time in the crypt of St. Paul’s, how dark could this be? Some light must filter in. And I would be with Nick. Obviously, the prince and princess had survived being here—or had they? Noxious vapors seeping into the body’s pores suddenly did not seem so silly as when the doctors had first mentioned them. Cave damp? And with bogs nearby?

  No, I was being female and foolish, I scolded myself, and straightened my backbone as Rhys held my horse and Nick helped me down. Rhys led the way in. “Takes a bit for your eyes to see,” he said. “Course, the lordship’s body was buried way back in, but this here chamber’s the one where Glendower sits or paces sometimes—some folks got a glimpse of him and his cape, heard his sword scrape on the walls.”

  After dealing with Mistress Fey, I almost expected to see the old Welsh warrior here, but, of course, there was no one.

  “I saved it for a surprise for you,” Rhys said, extending his arm at the portal of the next chamber. “When Prince Arthur was here, he left battle flags, Tudor ones as well as ones of the Welsh griffin and dragon, like the one at old Fey’s. Till he died and folks figured it be bad luck, they been coming out here to see them. Some say it’s an honor they been left by the Prince of Wales, but some who don’t like it say it’s sacrifice—or, ah, sacrament—”

  “Sacrilege?” Nick said.

  “That’s it. See, in here.”

  The boy started into the narrow passage to the final chamber, but he jerked back so fast he bumped into Nick. “Can’t be!” Rhys muttered.

  “What?” Nick said, and stepped forward, tugging me close behind him with one hand and drawing his sword with the other.

  Nick gasped, and I saw for myself what must have recently happened. The banners Arthur had left—the two bright green ones, at least, with the Tudor and York roses entwined—were slashed to shreds. The Welsh ones with the dragon and the griffin seemed to have fared better but were spattered with what looked to be blood, no doubt the same in which was written on the wall in huge letters, GWELL ANGAU NA CHYWILYADD.

  “What does that say?” Nick demanded of the shocked lad.

  “‘Death rather than dishonor,’” Rhys said, his voice trembling. “’Tis Glendower’s old curse ’gainst English rulers.”

  Nick gasped, then turned to mouth the words to me alone: In English, that’s Lord Lovell’s motto too!

  CHAPTER THE SIXTEENTH

  Staying to guard the cromlech, Nick sent Rhys and me back to the castle to summon the king’s representative, Thomas Howard, Earl of Surrey, to view and assess the damage to the prince’s property. I quickly changed into my woman’s garments—was I right to wear my best brocade gown to attend an earl?—then rushed to see him, flushed and out of breath, with my hair poorly pinned and only half-veiled.

  I had to ask directions to his suite of chambers. At his door stood a guard to whom I gave my name and said I ha
d been sent to give His Grace immediate information about the ruination of the prince’s royal banners. My legs shaking from my haste, and from facing an earl—the Lord High Treasurer of England, no less—I was quickly admitted. I curtsied as he rose from behind a desk in a small anteroom. Up this close I could see that his narrow face, lofty eyebrows, and aquiline nose gave him a haughty look. He was nearly as tall as Nick.

  “Ah, the young woman sent to oversee the prince’s burial,” he said as his gaze swept over me once, then again, much the way Christopher used to scrutinize me. He came around his desk and stopped but a few feet away. “Trouble outside or inside the castle? Say on, mistress.”

  I blurted out all I knew—how the Welsh claimed the ancient tomb was haunted, how the prince and princess had visited it, and how it had now been defaced with Glendower’s old curse against the English—though I did not mention that Nick had said it was Lord Lovell’s motto too. I explained how the banners were all shredded and bloodied. “And, my lord, a Welsh lad named Rhys Garnock is waiting in the outer ward to be your guide to join Nick Sutton there to assess the situation,” I concluded breathlessly.

  “I’ll go at once. I am here as the king’s emissary, and we will brook no insults to the prince’s memory or the right of Tudor rule. Sirrah, to me!” he shouted so loudly that I jumped. When the door behind me opened, he said to his man, “My horse, ten armed guards, all in breastplate and helm!

  “I would take you along, Mistress Varina,” he said, all business now as he donned a leather jerkin from the back of his chair, “but it will not be a proper place for a young, fetching woman—and you did come to fetch me, did you not?”

  Despite his haste, he shouted a little laugh and gave me a tight smile as he assessed me again. I wondered whether it was obvious I had dressed in great haste. Should I not have worn so grand a gown in the midafternoon? I should go, but he had not dismissed me. Instead he kept talking, perhaps to himself. “It’s worth knocking a few Welsh heads—just as hard as the Scots, I wager—to have a pretty lass come calling. That is all—for now, mistress,” he said as his man rushed past me with boots and spurs. I curtsied again and backed away.

  Well, I thought, the lad Rhys could not do much better than to work his wiles on a more powerful man about serving in London. I just hoped that my carelessness in dress and flushed face had not given him ideas that I wanted to work my wiles. No doubt a man of his power and place, however long wed and with the large family Nick had mentioned, was used to “young, fetching women” vying for his attention.

  As I returned to my chamber and paced there—six steps to the window, six to the door—I felt powerless, and that would not do. I had been sent on an important mission, and I had thrived on my brief taste of action to fulfill it. I stopped and changed to my woolen day gown with difficulty, but I did not want to summon my maid.

  So here I was again, a mere woman on my own in a man’s realm, a woman to be sent back to the castle, one who could not join the Worshipful Guild of Wax Chandlers or ever hope to be a member of the guild of the Holy Name of Jesus—oh, no, not those who blamed women alone as far back as Eve in the garden for the sins of mankind! It wasn’t good and it wasn’t fair! I took to hitting my fist on the window ledge each time I passed, as my mind leaped from thought to thought about what I had seen today.

  I realized now that the most telltale thing old Mistress Fey had said was something that had slipped out and then slipped right by all of us. “Glendower lives,” she’d said, “at least our new Glendower, eh?” At first Nick had picked up on that and asked her, “And who is that?” Though she swiftly changed the topic, I swear a living man she knew had slashed the prince’s banners and left that curse in the cromlech. Perhaps there was a method in her madness to mislead us.

  I had thought she was a soothsayer to know we were coming, for she had that bundle of the rue herb tied up for the princess. But she could have meant to deliver that to the castle herself when she went out to seek herbs. Had she read the wishes of my heart, to call Nick and me lovers, or was it just observation on her part, mere coincidence?

  I jolted at the rapping on my door. Nick back already? I ran to open it. My maid, Morgan, stood there. I was about to tell her I did not need her services when she said, “Mistress Westcott, the princess Catherine requests you attend her at once. Her confessor priest sent word and says you know the way. And what’s happening that all the men rushed out?”

  “I—I’m not certain, Morgan. We shall have to wait until they return.”

  “Rhys Garnock says you didna see Glendower at the cave, but that he’s back! Oh, wait till I send my folks in the village word of it!”

  “Morgan, Glendower is not back. He lived and fought nearly a hundred years ago. He was a man. Men die.”

  “Well, my folks always said if the old herb woman could live that long, he could too!” she replied, and flounced away.

  I went into the hall and closed my chamber door, then, on second thought, went back and locked it with its big iron key, put that in my purse, and wended my way through the maze of corridors to wait upon Princess Catherine. Both Nick and I must be more careful, even here at the castle. I was not certain whom we could trust. And since I didn’t believe the man up on the parapets had been a ghost, but flesh and blood, that meant he somehow had access to this well-guarded fortress.

  The Princess of Wales—though I reckoned she would not hold that title long, since Prince Henry must surely be named to take his brother’s place—looked much as I had left her. Same chamber, same chair, same black velvet robe with the priest Geraldini standing behind her. However, she had ordered a chair pulled up for me in place of the lower stools on which Nick and I had sat. And I was more used to the slow pace of having to use an interpreter, though now and then she interjected some English words of her own.

  “Tell me what did happened at the old cave tomb,” she bade me in English, so I told her. She replied, “The prince loved those banners, loved the Welsh, and they proud of him, their Prince of Wales.” Tears gilded her eyes, but her voice was strong.

  “I warrant this was done by one person, one enemy,” I assured her, “not the Welsh people he well served.”

  “The angel candle you carved is lovely,” she said, surprising me with her sudden change of subject as she switched back to her interpreter. Geraldini translated her Spanish: “I shall take it back to London, and it will be on my privy altar wherever I go. I believe you wished to ask me more yesterday about when the prince and I went out, two young people in love. Only wed six months and now a widow.”

  “Yes,” I said before melancholy could overtake her again. “And I must tell you that I have also met the old herb woman named Fey.”

  “What a wonder—and a puzzle. Not a witch, I suppose, for the holy words say, ‘Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live,’ and she has lived long among these Catholic people, despite their folktales.”

  “At times, I thought she could read my mind,” I confided in her, despite the fact Father Geraldini raised his eyebrows and shook his head. “And at first, when I saw her from afar in the slant of sunlight, I thought she was young and pretty—but then…”

  “I too. I too!” the princess said, leaning forward as Geraldini translated. “But I asked Arthur, and he said it was mere woman’s fancies. Ah, he had such plans that day, plans for us, for our children, though everyone here whispers we had not yet performed the conjugal act. Have you heard that talk?”

  I was astounded she had brought that up. Making love, making a child—had she or Geraldini called it “the conjugal act,” as if it were some legal or political maneuver? But then, to royalty who were expected to reproduce themselves to hold the throne, perhaps that is exactly what it was.

  “I…No…” I floundered. “I came not to inquire of that.”

  She gave a hearty sigh, and Father Geraldini looked much relieved not to have to pursue it further too. “Since you came from the queen,” she said, her pale cheeks coloring, “I thought per
haps you were here to learn of that. They will wait to name Arthur’s brother, Henry, Prince of Wales until they are certain I am not with child, but I am not—sadly. Whatever will become of me? Shall I go back to Spain or stay in my new land?” she asked, but I knew she did not expect or want my opinion.

  Tears glazed her eyes and, fearful I would be dismissed, as Nick and I were before, I addressed the key question among the many I wished to ask: “Could you please tell me what you ate the day you took ill? And I beg you, Your Grace, though I had it from the prince’s doctors, can you tell me the progress of your illness and what you know of the prince’s too?”

  “Ah,” she said. Then, not going through Geraldini, she added in English, “You or Her Majesty think poison? My parents, Their most gracious Majesties Ferdinand and Isabella, always they have food tasted twice and we here too. But when Arthur and I go out, we take some things—bread and cheese, wine—all tasted, nothing else.”

  She ticked off on her fingers and had translated what they had eaten for breakfast and the noon meal. My mind racing, I nodded to encourage her. “Oh,” she added, with Geraldini still speaking for her, “we did both eat the wild garlic, both had to eat it or the breath, it kill you when you kiss, yes?”

  Wild garlic? Old Fey had mentioned that but said it was too early to gather. Had she lied?

  “You got it from the herb woman?” I asked.

  “Oh, no—she have none of that,” she answered for herself. “From the man across the bog—our horses splashed our clothes, and we did laugh so hard.”

  “What man across the bog? Which bog?” I asked, sliding forward on my chair seat.

  “The one close, that way!” she said, pointing to what I figured was westward. I could tell that she was tiring again. Her voice, which she had raised in excitement, was slowing, and her gestures seemed to exhaust her as she dropped her hands in her lap.