The Dragon and the Rose

by Roberta Gellis

  He brought the letter with him when he made his customary visit to his wife that night. Love first and news after, or news first and no love, Henry wondered. There was no physical urgency in the thought, for Henry's sexual cravings had been fully gratified for nearly two months. He merely would have liked to know which pattern would be least likely to irritate Elizabeth. She had become increasingly nervous the last few weeks, increasingly prone to break into shrill argument over nothings. If this was the sweet nature Margaret had praised, Henry found it hard to imagine what his mother would consider shrewish. When he complained to her, however, Margaret had looked blank and advised him, most infuriatingly, not to annoy his wife.

  The question of news first or love first never arose. As soon as she saw him, Elizabeth sat up and gasped nervously, "What is wrong, Henry? What is the matter?"

  "Nothing is wrong. I have news for you. Some will disappoint you, but some is very good."

  "Bad news?"

  Her voice trembled and her eyes stared wide, showing their whites like a terrified horse. Henry wanted to scream at her that she should confess and relieve her soul, that he would pardon her whatever she had done. Instead he said soothingly, "Not bad news, good news. I have made a treaty with the French. In a few weeks your brother Dorset will be home."

  Elizabeth shook her head. "No, that is not what is in your face. Not unless—you do not mean harm to Dorset, do you?"

  Henry closed his eyes and took a deep breath. "I do not mean harm to any man or any woman who does no hurt to me. Do calm yourself, madam."

  "Madam! Madam! I have a name. Can you not call me by name?"

  "Elizabeth, control yourself. If you wish the sour mixed with the sweet, then here it is. I have decided not to take you on progress. It is clear to me that you are not well—"

  "I must go! I will go! Henry, you cannot leave me behind. I want to go."

  White-faced, she slid from the bed and came toward him, opening her robe to expose her body. Before he was conscious of the emotion and could master it, Henry's face displayed such revulsion that Elizabeth screamed and shrank away. Instantly the door sprang open, Cheney and Willoughby appearing with half-drawn swords. As swift as they had been, Henry was quicker. He had twitched Elizabeth's robe together and put an arm around her. He turned his head toward the door and smiled.

  "Her Grace is a little overcome at hearing of the French treaty and her brother's release. Send in her ladies."

  "No," she whispered, clinging to him, "no. Henry, do not go. I want to talk to you."

  "We will have time enough to talk when you are more composed. I do not leave tomorrow."

  "Henry, I did not mean it. I was not thinking of what you thought. I am so cold."

  That was true. She was trembling, and where her fingers clutched his robe Henry could feel them like ice above the velvet. He gestured and the maids of honor and ladies-in waiting withdrew again.

  "Perhaps if you told me why you are so anxious to go with me—"

  "I do not know. I am afraid."

  "Of me or for me?"

  She acted as if she did not hear, but her eyes were fairly starting from her head. "They say you never change your mind once you have made a decision."

  "That is not quite true, but I will not change my mind about this."

  His certainty seemed to calm her. Elizabeth drew a shuddering breath and said, "Come to bed." Henry's hesitation was infinitesimal. It was a small price to pay, he thought, if it would keep her from making a scene, but when he began to caress her automatically she caught his hands. "Oh no. Please. I could not."

  "Then what is it you want of me, Elizabeth?"

  "Hold me. Hold me. I am afraid."

  Henry complied, but his efforts to conceal his relief and his real, if temporary, distaste for her were apparently not successful, although he could sense nothing different in his manner. Elizabeth wept anew, quarreled bitterly with him, and sent him away. Henry restrained his fury and braced himself for several weeks of hell, but the scene had an effect he did not expect. In the three weeks he remained in London, Elizabeth never again raised the subject, and thereby caused him more mental distress than she had at any time in the past.

  Elizabeth turned suddenly dull and docile, as she had been before they married, neither inviting nor rejecting his attentions, and Henry began to learn how much he had depended upon her witty tongue and gay manners to enliven state dinners and formal entertainments. He even missed her waspish quarrelling, for there had been a stimulation in it, a blessed change from political conferences in which no one dared quarrel with the king.

  An argument against his opinion might be presented, but it was offered logically and without passion. Elizabeth was never logical; she was often hardly coherent and always totally impassioned when she argued. Too often, now, his nightly visits ended after an exchange of formal courtesies, but Henry's growing resentment could not blind him to the fact that Elizabeth was suffering some terrible strain. She grew daily paler and thinner.

  It was both agony and relief to kiss her goodbye in the morning on March 10, to mount his horse and know he would not have to come to her that night. At noon his enormous entourage baited their horses at Ware and took refreshments. Henry drank deeper than usual, and his spirits soared. He teased Ned Poynings and John Cheney, who was almost as strong as William Brandon, into a quarterstaff match, and he tried his own skill with the longbow against Oxford. Both of them were so bad, neither having had much use for archery in his military training, that the professional archers dissolved into mirth.

  Royston received them that night with a right royal welcome. Bonfires blazed, the people cheered; Henry and his entourage ate at someone else's expense, and Edgecombe chuckled and counted up what the household had saved. The next morning brought them to Cambridge.

  Both the town and the university did the king honor, but Henry's easy courtesy did not hide the fact that it was the colleges that attracted him. He went from one to the other, listening to the professors, examining the facilities, and agonizing Dynham and Lovell by promising liberal financial help. They spent an extra day at Cambridge, and the court energetically cursed whatever or whomever gave Henry so ardent an interest in education, for the next day it poured rain. Since they could stay no longer in Cambridge without bankrupting their hosts, perforce they rode on.

  Not one whit were Henry's spirits dampened. He rode through the downpour merrily swinging his sodden hat at anyone who braved the rain to see him, and laughed at his uncle who tried desperately to keep him dry by changing his cloak as often as a new one could be procured for him.

  His teeth were chattering with cold by the time they reached Huntington, but Henry even found that amusing. He demanded his hot wine in a silver goblet, refusing the fine Venetian glass one his hosts proffered. The man was frightened, for silver was supposed to be a remedy or a warning against poison. Henry clapped him on the shoulder and laughed some more. He might have bitten a hole in the glass, he explained, his teeth having grown suddenly rebellious against the majesty of his cold head.

  Fortunately the storm abated that night. It was still drizzling the following day, but they moved forward. Henry said the rain was not enough to disturb a true Englishman who was born wet, baptized wet, and usually drowned if he left his country.

  By March 16 they were in Peterborough where Henry spent hours examining the architecture of the cathedral with Bray who was, as a sideline, devoted to the subject. They attended several masses, Henry listening enraptured to the voices of the choir, which seemed to be wafted heavenward through the great arches. He marveled, too, at the flat land, having been born among the hills of Wales and seen little since his conquest beyond the rolling country of the midlands.

  In any case it seemed as if nothing could displease him. Everyone received smiling and courteous attention, from the masters of great corporations, who knelt before him to offer a rich purse, to the poor woman who humbly and timidly brought him a nest of baby rabbits. She had seen
him in church, she said, her voice so low with awe that Henry had to bend above her to hear, and she thought if the king so loved God he would not scorn to receive even this poor gift in thanks for the peace he had brought.

  Henry found a gold coin for her, knowing with the cynical part of his mind that the hope of reward and not his love of God was what had brought her. Yet he carried one of the baby rabbits about with him for hours, stroking its soft fur and feeding it tidbits of greenery. That night he dispatched the rabbits with the letter he had faithfully been writing, a few lines at a time, to Elizabeth, particularly recommending the little bits of fluff to her care.

  Stamford and Ely were more of the same. Henry was still happy, but very glad, by April 4, to get to Lincoln where they would spend a week and he would have some privacy. He was growing a little tired of being constantly on exhibition at grand ceremonies.

  Easter was celebrated in Lincoln with due solemnity. Henry heard several masses and then went to the porch where, gorgeous raiment notwithstanding, he knelt and washed the feet of twenty-nine beggars. He passed on foot through the worst parts of the city, giving alms to the poor, to the prisoners, and to the lepers for whom he prayed. The acts were traditional, but the king's sincerity and lack of self-consciousness won hearts. Lincoln loved him.

  The feasting a few days later was no less impressive. Henry never drank much, but that night he drank enough to make him cling to Poynings and Cheney as they escorted him to bed. None of the party was too steady, and there was much laughter before Henry's clothes came off. With the bedcurtains drawn, he was just beginning to enjoy a slightly frightening sensation of floating when his uncle was shaking him.

  "Harry, Harry, wake up. There is news you must hear."

  Such news could only be bad. Henry sat up slowly and blinked as if he were not completely awake to gain time. "Very well." He yawned. "What is it?"

  Jasper gestured and Hugh Conway strode into the room. His bow was brief, but indicated no disrespect. "Sire, Lord Lovell and the Staffords have left sanctuary."

  Henry licked his lips and passed his hand across his face. "Did you have to wake me up to tell me that?" he asked mildly. "Can no one beside myself give order that attainted traitors be taken on sight?"

  "Harry, wake up," Jasper repeated irritably. "Those men of Gloucester's have sat still for more than half a year. We have applied no new pressure to them. If they have fled sanctuary it is to join a rising, and the only part of the country that would support such a rising is where we are going—Yorkshire."

  "I am awake. Do you come from Colchester, Conway?" Colchester was where the rebels had been in sanctuary.

  "No, sire."

  Henry closed his eyes as if the light hurt them. He did not want to ask the next question. "Where did you have this news then? I left you in London."

  He heard the thud as Conway went down on his knees. "Pardon, sire. I have been your man since I first came to you in Brittany, but I swore I would not betray my informant. I am faithful. I rode as fast as I could. I have given you the message exactly as I had it, but I cannot tell you who bid me come to you."

  "So?"

  "You may rack me apart, sire. I swear I will not speak."

  "When have I given you reason to expect me to put my friends on the rack? Now that you are here, Conway, stay. But go to bed, man, and do not talk nonsense." Henry reopened his eyes and looked coldly around at his anxious gentlemen. "I must say that I cannot see why God has seen fit to saddle me with such a pack of fools. I will not inquire as to who proposed this harebrained scheme of waking me in the middle of the night to tell me it is necessary to go where I am going anyway. However, I suggest that it should not happen again. Uncle, you are not included in this rebuke. I know all too well they make you do what they are afraid to attempt themselves. Good night."

  They went; they could not do otherwise. Then they found that the situation did not seem as serious after talking to the king as it did before. Cheney apologized in a shamefaced fashion to Bedford, but Henry's uncle told him he had acted just right and that he should do the same in any similar situation.

  "This time, of course, His Grace is right. What can we do in the middle of the night? And we are headed for Yorkshire anyway. But another time there may be need for action at once. Come to me any time. I will take the responsibility."

  Henry did not hear his uncle, for the walls were thick and the door well-fitting, but he knew what Jasper was saying. There was no need to fear that his rebuke would breed future carelessness. He pulled the bedclothes tighter around him, but it was useless to pretend to himself that his shivering was caused by cold. She knew, he thought, unable to bring himself to give Elizabeth her name. His shivering increased until he was afraid the bed would creak and bring his gentlemen.

  The real question important to him was not Elizabeth's knowledge but her complicity. Knowledge was nothing.

  Perhaps she did not understand that with adequate warning a conspiracy could be nipped in the bud, and doubtless she was trying to shield those dear to her. Henry did not assume that Elizabeth's sexual response indicated any fondness for him. She was merely made that way; she would respond to any man who was strong enough to satisfy her. After all, he enjoyed her himself without any—

  With a muffled groan, Henry turned and buried his face in the pillows. Curse her and rot her and damn her, her white body and her quick wit and her sharp tongue—she was dear to him. The acknowledgment made no difference. What he had to do would merely hurt him a little more.

  Even if she were not implicated in the plot … How could she be? She was watched by a covey of hawks. Even her ladies were spied upon. Nonetheless, she must be taught a sharp lesson. Good God, what was wrong with him that he constantly sought excuses for her? She was implicated by her own actions, even though the spies could find no evidence against her.

  Were they trustworthy themselves? Her charm could blind a man. It was blinding him. Doubtless this was the reason for the hysterical insistence on traveling north with him. She would have "slipped away to join the rebels," perhaps even taken him prisoner or murdered him in his bed: Plainly the spy system was not adequate. Elizabeth would have to be confined.

  But the next day Henry could not bring himself to do it, nor the next. Aside from Conway's report, the country seemed quiet. Wherever Henry went people lined the roads and cheered him; the nobles and country gentry came readily to kiss his hand and repeat their oaths of loyalty. Henry sent out the lesser gentlemen of his suite to seek news secretly and prepare to move from Lincoln to Newark.

  Outside this city, however, the deputation met him in tears. There was plague in the city, they said. He was welcome, more than welcome, but for his own safety he should move on. Henry made no attempt to test the truth of the statement. He returned the gift of money the city offered, to be used to aid the sick and pay for masses for the souls of the dead, and he moved on to Nottingham.

  Here on April 11 he was greeted with almost hysterical relief. There was definite news of a rising in Yorkshire. Lord Lovell had raised a strong force around Middleham—the castle that was Richard of Gloucester's favorite home—and the Staffords were planning to attack Worcester. Henry looked around at his stricken suite and shook his head.

  "No one would ever believe you raised rebellion for me and swore to die on Bosworth field if we did not succeed. Chickenhearted—that is how you look. Can eight months of authority have so weakened you that you cannot hope to put down the mistaken enthusiasm of a handful of fools? Guildford, we will need no heavy guns on this venture. Ride back to Lincoln and raise a force there. Devon, ride to Northumberland and tell him to raise a levy of men and come to me. Oxford, you will command as usual, organizing the men as they come in."

  There was some embarrassed laughter. Of course they were more anxious now than when they had nothing except their lives to lose, but Henry, who had the most to lose, did not seem anxious at all. He continued to designate tasks calmly until only his uncle and Ned Poynings were n
ot assigned.

  "And for God's sake," Henry said at last, "do remember that this is a matter of no account whatsoever. The whole of a loyal country is at our backs. Keep your heads. Ned, go get some rest. You will have a long ride before you. Uncle, remain with me. To your business, gentlemen."

  When the others were gone, Jasper put his arm around his nephew's shoulders. "Are you as easy as you seem, Harry? You lie abed, but I see from your eyes that you do not sleep, and you have not been eating well."

  "Oh, this rising does not trouble me. They have no real leader to follow nor even a straw figure to put up as king. I think I know who is behind this, also, but I am not sure how to move." He shook his head as Jasper was about to question him. "Nay, I am so unsettled in my own mind that I would rather not speak of it. Now, uncle, we will have to divide our forces. As soon as some men arrive, you will take them and march on Lovell. Oxford and I will remain here, ready to come to your support or to protect Worcester."

  "You know I never dispute your commands, Harry, but— I would rather bide with you, child." Jasper walked away to stare out a window. "Once I came too late …"

  Henry joined his uncle and embraced him affectionately. ''There can be no fear of that. I will have the stronger force and, I think, will never be engaged at all. It is you who are going into whatever danger there will be. Frankly, I do not wish to fight if it can be avoided. Therefore, as you move, you will proclaim full pardon for any man who lays down his arms and proceeds peaceably to his home. This is why you must be the one to go. The entire country knows the love that lies between us. They will believe that what you promise I will perform—and they might not believe that if another promised."

  "Very well, Harry, you are right. You have an older head and a steadier heart than I." His face flushed. "Stupid, rebellious fools! They do not realize what a treasure God has given them."

  "Ay," Henry laughed, "a treasure am I." Then he sobered. "But you spoke aright. They are foolish, not evil apurpose. Be gentle. It is not wise to beat a foolish child to death."