The Dragon and the Rose

by Roberta Gellis

  However, neither Henry's winning ways nor Foxe's agile reasonings were able to break the deadlock between Regent Anne and the duke of Orleans. Both professed themselves eager to help Henry win the English throne, but neither could agree on ways and means or, for that matter, endure that the other should have a scrap of credit.

  Their obstructiveness nearly destroyed Henry's health but also brought him another piece of good luck. In the seven long months of argument, the earl of Oxford, whose connections were wider and whose family was more powerful than Courtenay's, convinced his Yorkish jailor that Richard of Gloucester was a monster and that Henry Tudor was the hope of England. Prisoner and jailor who had, despite their positions, become close friends in the ten years of Oxford's confinement, fled to Paris. Another wedge was driven into Richard's hold upon England.

  With the acquisition of Oxford, however, the pendulum had reached its apex and began to swing backward. Richard had time to work upon the gullible dowager queen, and she sent messenger after messenger to her equally volatile son, Dorset. Seeing no sign of movement in Henry's favor at the French court, Dorset was easily convinced that his best chance lay with Richard.

  With the ingratitude and lack of loyalty characteristic of the Woodvilles, Dorset deserted, stealing out of Paris at night to ride for the coast. The action did not catch Henry unaware; Dorset had given away his uneasiness and his intentions in myriad ways. Jasper went thundering after him and brought him back before news of his defection could get out and do harm. Under strict commands from Henry, Jasper smiled and spoke sweet words, but murder glared from his hot eyes and Dorset returned meekly, uttering glib excuses and protestations of loyalty.

  Henry turned his eyes from the window to the papers strewn on the table, but the figures on them were blurred by a mist of unshed tears. Dorset was the first; all too soon there would be others. His men were weary of exile and poverty. The hope upon which they had fed was proving to have little nourishment in it, and their spirit was steadily failing. The mercenaries had long since been dismissed; Henry had no money with which to pay them. England seethed with discontent, but there was no one to organize that discontent into active rebellion. If he invaded England now, Henry thought, would they not surely fail if they had failed when supported by a man like Buckingham? Yet if he did not move now, he would soon have no support at all.

  "I am afraid," Henry whispered to himself, "oh, I am so afraid. If I fail, I will die."

  The word hung on the air, and Henry considered it with slowly rising anger. Had Edward left him in peace, he would never have been a threat. He could have been won to loyalty. Had Richard permitted Edward's son to rule and resisted the temptation of making a bloody shambles of England's nobility, he would have married Anne of Brittany and lived in peace. What sort of life had the men of York left him? Even if he renounced his claim, would Richard cease to persecute him? To die was better than to live in fear. Henry opened the door to the antechamber of his room and told the servant to summon his council—except Dorset, he added thoughtfully.

  "Gentlemen," he began after kissing Jasper affectionately, "we can do no more here. As long as we linger in Paris, Orleans and the regent will block each other and do nothing. More important, the spirit of the men fails and the hopes of those in England become weaker. It is time to risk all, for soon we shall have nothing to risk. This, at least, is how it seems to me. Do any of you have reason to believe otherwise?"

  From Brandon, Courtenay, Pembroke, and Oxford there were sighs of relief. The negotiations had tried their martial spirit. Poynings, Edgecombe, and Guildford muttered approval. Foxe alone spoke.

  "I think if you begin to act, my lord, we will get some help from the French. It will not be what we need—we will never get that—but it will be something. "

  "Money?" Guildford and Edgecombe asked together. "Ah, yes. Well, that outlook" Henry gestured toward the account-laden table "is not overly bright."

  "I can pledge my lands," Oxford offered. "Since they are not now mine, that will not bring much, but some banker will surely risk a few thousand crowns."

  Henry smiled. "You do not speak often, Oxford, but when you do you say something."

  There was no need for anyone else to speak. All were busy stripping off every item of value that remained to them and piling the things on the table. Henry knew that their winter furs, their extra clothing, everything but arms and armor would soon be in the hands of the moneylenders and the coins would come to swell his meager treasury.

  "I will get what I can from the men," Guildford offered.

  Foxe sucked his thin lips. "You may count on twenty or thirty thousand livres upon my part. You have friends, my lord, and we priests"—he smiled—"are experts at extortion."

  "And I think I can have the same, or more, from the French," Henry said.

  "How?" Jasper asked. "You told us but a moment since that no more could be looked for from them."

  "No more freely given help. This money will be borrowed upon good surety."

  "In God's name, what surety have we that is not already pledged?"

  Henry laughed softly. "Dorset." He laughed again at the general look of incomprehension. "He is the best. If we fail, Richard must have him back to keep the dowager queen from making more trouble, so he will repay the loan. If we succeed, I will be obliged to ransom my wife's half brother." A flicker of distaste showed in Henry's face and as swiftly disappeared. He did not relish a marriage with Elizabeth of York, but it was the path to the throne and he knew he must tread it.

  "Ay, ay," Foxe nodded, "I can make most excellent play with those thoughts. Leave it to me, my lord, and I will have more than you hope for by playing one group against the other."

  "Then, we will leave for Rouen to gather a fleet on the Monday following the Sunday of the next full week. Bourchier may stay to guard Dorset until we have the French gold. After that we need not trouble about him. The French will look to their own surety."

  The plan moved smoothly enough, although Foxe also remained in Paris to squeeze out every penny he could and to keep eyes and ears alert for any favorable or unfavorable sign regarding Henry's cause. Vessels were commissioned, and Henry and his men made ready to move to Harfleur to board ship.

  In the bleak north of England, Elizabeth had been no happier than Henry. Although her freezing terror had receded into a little cold core in her heart as day followed dreary day, her boredom and loneliness were becoming almost as hard to bear. Her warm and affectionate nature yearned for a friendly face; her mind yearned for some stimulation. Even in sanctuary there had been people to talk to: the priests, for instance, had often visited her to discuss books and music. Finally, as reports that she was pining drifted back to King Richard from Elizabeth's keepers, some contacts with the world were allowed. Now and again a priest or a friar came to discourse on the will of God and the beauties of submission to that will.

  One day a lay brother bearing a packet of books and letters from the dowager queen craved and gained admittance. After the letters had been read and the books had been examined to be sure no treasonous matter was in them, the young man was brought into Elizabeth's presence. The ladies stood watching. They were not suspicious, but they had been instructed to overhear all of the princess's conversations.

  If the ladies were fooled, Elizabeth was not. Books from her mother? There could not be a more unlikely gift. The cold began to creep outward from its place in her heart, but she could do nothing, only stare at the jeweled missal in her hands. Underneath the rich velvet cover, there was a raised oblong area. She would never have noticed it—as the ladies had not noticed it—if the young lay brother who brought her the gift had not pressed her fingers against it as he placed the book into her hands.

  After he left, Elizabeth sat silent with the book in her lap. Did she dare open it? If any of the women who served her found the missal with its cover torn, Richard would be informed she had received a message. Trembling with nervousness, Elizabeth began to turn the pages of
the book.

  When she came to the prayers for the dead, her breath caught and she thought for a moment she would faint. Very small, beside the illuminated capital, in Lady Margaret's fine hand were the four letters: ANNE. It could mean only one thing: her Aunt Anne, the queen, was dead. Elizabeth had to get that scrap of paper. Lady Margaret had dared much to send this to her; she was under house arrest, Elizabeth knew.

  One of the ladies Richard had appointed to serve her, and spy on her, had told Elizabeth gloatingly that she need no longer look for succor to her great friend the wife of Lord Stanley. He had barely been able to save her; only his nearly hysterical insistence had preserved Lady Margaret from being sent to the Tower, and Lord Stanley had done himself no good by his devotion to his wife. The king no longer trusted him much, and his eldest son by his first wife, Lord Strange, was in the king's household as a hostage for his father's fidelity.

  Clutching the missal to her breast, Elizabeth made her way to her small private chapel. The ladies followed, of course, but they knelt behind her. Holding the missal so that her body shielded it, she began to pray while her fingers fumbled at the back cover. It was fortunate her hands were trembling, for one of the erratic movements of her fingers sent her pointed nail through an almost invisible slit. Suppressing a cry, Elizabeth slid another finger into the slit and slowly withdrew a tiny scrap of paper.

  "Dear child," she read, "God protect you. Have courage. Try to resist. He who loves us both comes soon!'

  Soon? How soon was soon? Would soon be soon enough?

  Henry heard the news that Richard's queen was dead and that a strong rumor that he would marry his niece Elizabeth was current only a few days later at Harfleur. His months of frustration and nervous tension erupted in a fit of screaming rage such as Jasper had not seen since his nephew's early childhood.

  "The murderous, incestuous devil," he stormed, pounding his fists against the wall. "I will see him dead or be dead myself. There is not room on the earth for such filth as that."

  "Harry, you will hurt yourself," Jasper cried, taking his nephew into his arms to restrain him. "Do not rage so. It is but a rumor. How can he get a dispensation for such a marriage?"

  "I swore I would not kill my enemies," Henry panted, writhing in his uncle's grip as the cramps which accompanied his rare rages tore him. "I swore I would not let blood like those monsters of York, but Richard of Gloucester will die."

  "Ay, ay, to that we are all pledged," Jasper soothed. "Come, lie down. Even if Richard should contrive to marry the girl by some evil ruse, Edward had other daughters. The girls are all equal as heirs general. You need not marry the eldest. Do not fret yourself so."

  "She is mine, I tell you. He cannot have her." Henry's voice rose again, quivering on the edge of hysteria.

  Jasper knew that Elizabeth had written to Henry several times and had even sent him a token of her hair in a ring, but Henry had never given the slightest sign that these advances had more than political significance for him. "Have you taken a fancy for the girl, Harry?" he asked now.

  "Fancy? How could I have a fancy for the daughter of a man who hunted me like a wild beast and whose mother cozens the murderer of her own children?" Henry propped himself against the bolster of his bed and pressed his hands against his flat abdomen. "What has my fancy to do with these matters?" he said more calmly. "She is the best known of the princesses, the one who stands for Edward in the minds of the people. Moreover, she was promised to me. She is mine, I say, and no other man will have her."

  Jasper drew a chair to his nephew's bedside and patted his hand. At this point the child Jasper remembered would have burst into tears, but the man merely drew up his knees, pressed the heels of his hands into his eyes and did silent battle with his pain-racked body.

  "We cannot wait much longer, uncle," he said wearily at last. "Will you tell those whose duty it is to hasten the readying of the ships and supplies."

  "Harry, you are sick. You have not been well for months. You know we cannot leave here until you have your health again. We go to battle, not to a May Day feast in England."

  "I will be ready when men and ships are ready. I tell you, uncle, there will be neither peace for my mind nor health for my body until that dirty beast called Richard of Gloucester is dead."

  Jasper was surprised and uneasy when Henry's mood was unchanged the following day. It was not like him to act in passion nor, because he knew too much of men as a whole, to condemn anyone man harshly. Usually Henry was far too tolerant for Jasper's taste; it was not natural for him to be vindictive.

  Protest being useless, however, preparations were hurried along, and it began to seem as if the low ebb had been reached and the tide would turn in their favor again. Foxe came hurrying from Paris accompanied by Philibert de Shaunde with an armed force of doubtful quality and mules laden with heavy coffers. Then from Wales came a letter from one John Morgan, promising Henry the support of Rhys ap Thomas and Sir John Savage, the two leading figures in Wales. Margaret was still technically a prisoner, but, Morgan wrote, Bray had collected a fine sum of money which was in his hands ready for Henry's use. Bray's activities, although supposedly unknown to Lord Stanley, probably had his concurrence, so there was still good hope that Stanley would change sides.

  On August 1, 1485, Henry stepped aboard the soundest ship of his little fleet. Two thousand men made up his entire force. Most of these were the dregs of the French gutters and prisons, but this unsavory group, led by Philibert de Shaunde, was bolstered by Englishmen desperate to win back their lands and a decent life. All were ready to embark. There was no confusion, no disorder. The tide began to run out, the evening breeze to blow off the land; the sun set in glory. In Wales, the land of his birth, Henry would seek rebirth as king of England.

  This time there was no storm. Each day the sun rose; each day a steady, strong breeze blew. They sailed west, rounding the Pointe de Barfleur, past Cherbourg and round the Cap de la Hague. Henry strained his eyes southward, seeking across the unquiet waters the tiny town on the coast of Brittany that had welcomed him fourteen long years before. He could not see it, but he knelt on the deck and prayed for Francis and for the country that had been so kind to him. When he rose, he looked only northward where the coasts of Devon and Cornwall lay. They sailed well west of Lands End, not desiring to be spotted from that point and so give warning of their coming. Then north and east again with the wind backing and changing as if it had been instructed to aid them. No ship was lost, and even Henry, a notably bad sailor, suffered only the slightest mal de mer.

  In the forenoon of the seventh day, the kindly green land showed clear. Henry gripped his uncle's arm with fingers that made the newly donned mail bite into the flesh.

  "Pembroke, uncle, there is Pembroke."

  "Ay." Jasper's voice shook and the land was blotted out by the tears that filled his dark eyes. "You were born there, Harry, and I love it as I love no other place on earth."

  Steadily the land drew near. Quietly, without challenge or opposition, the ships sailed into Milford Haven. Despite restraining hands, Henry broke free and was the first ashore. He dropped to the ground and kissed the earth, bareheaded, indifferent for the moment to the dictates of caution that ordinarily ruled his behavior. There was little danger, for Brandon, Poynings, and Pembroke had leapt ashore after him full-armed and with drawn swords. For once Henry produced a really startling effect without consciously seeking it. When he lifted his face from the earth, he lifted his voice in praise of God out of the fullness of his heart, and the men picked up the hymn and sang it as they marched ashore.

  "Iudica me, Deus, et decerne causam meam," they thundered, following Henry's pleasant tenor, and the volume of sound startled him from his dream and made his fair complexion flush.

  Henry looked at his three scowling guards and laughed. "Do not be so cross. No harm can come to me this day."

  Before the words had left his lips, however, a mounted man, fully armed and with drawn sword, approached them.
"Henry of Richmond," a deep voice bellowed, "bide where you are."

  As one, Brandon, Poynings, and Pembroke leapt before Henry, but the antics of the man who had accosted them prevented them from attacking. He dismounted, shed his helm and began to struggle, one-handed, to remove his breastplate. This accomplished, he left his audience goggle-eyed by lying down on the ground.

  "Come," he roared, "step over me."

  Henry shouldered past a stupefied Brandon and Poynings, but Jasper caught his arm. "It is a trick. He will thrust up at you from the ground."

  "But, uncle," Henry choked, "what an uncomfortable and unusual method of assassination."

  Still laughing, he stepped across the body to where Brandon and Poynings, recovered from their shock if not from their surprise, waited for him with drawn swords threatening the giant's unarmed body.

  "Ha!" the great voice offered. "I have fulfilled my oath." He proffered his sword, hilt first, to Henry and added in a rather lower roar, "Do you know me, sire?"

  Fourteen years flashed away in Henry's mind. He saw again the massive form before the gates of Pembroke, heard the bull-like bellowing voice. Morgan ap Thomas he knew was dead, but this must be his kinsman Rhys.

  "You must be Rhys ap Thomas," he ventured.

  "That I am, sire, Rhys ap Thomas." The man was flattered that his fame had preceded him. "I swore to King Richard that you would enter Wales only over my belly—and so you have done."

  Henry gurgled and his guardians gasped. "My dear Rhys," Henry said in the halting Welsh he had learned as a child as he handed the sword to Pembroke and extended his hand, "do let me help you rise. Never again shall I say that a Welshman does not keep his oath."