~~~~
Henry arrived at Jasper’s manor at Thornbury on December twenty-first, just in time to say good-bye.
February 1496
A light blanket of snow covered Sheen Palace’s lawns and gardens. A chill breeze snuck in through the window that Elizabeth sat by but she took no notice of it. Her mind was looking ahead to the coming spring that would melt the snow, moistening the ground for the new life that would soon spring from it. In the meantime, the snow was beautiful, at least from a distance. She had no desire to run outside to play in it as her children did. The way it covered the ugly dead leaves and scarred ground served to remind her of the purity that covered the sins of all who believe in the Savior.
She had ordered the children’s attendants not to allow them outside for too long. Illnesses that seemed of no consequence could quickly turn deadly, even in the royal nursery, as Eliza’s death had proven. Arthur was away at his own household at Ludlow, attended by cousin Margaret and Sir Richard Pole, and would likely be too concerned about maintaining his dignity to play outside. She was glad to not have to worry about him, so important was he as Henry’s heir.
Harry’s hair shone particularly red against the white of the snow, and Elizabeth couldn’t help but allow a smile to turn up the corners of her mouth as she watched him allow his sister to pelt him with snowballs. Already learning the rules of chivalry, he dared not toss any her way, but instead focused his attack on the king’s ward, Charles Brandon.
Charles was the son of one of Henry’s most staunch supporters, William Brandon. William had been killed by King Richard at Bosworth, and, therefore, never saw his friend take the throne. In return for this loyalty, Henry raised Charles at court and allowed him almost the same advantages given his own sons. Harry, at five, adored Charles, who was a very worldly eleven year-old. Charles seemed to enjoy having the king’s son follow him about and was more than happy to humor him and teach him things that Elizabeth would rather he did not know quite yet. They were nearly inseparable.
Charles displayed his budding skills of flirtation as he helped little Margaret up when she slipped on the ice. Though she was only six, a red flush covered her cheeks when she looked up at the handsome boy. Elizabeth told herself that the flush was certainly caused by the cold but also made a note to watch young Brandon around the girls at court.
Clasping her cloak more tightly around her, Elizabeth wondered that the children seemed perfectly comfortable outside while she was cold in her window seat. She sent an attendant for mulled wine to warm her from within but was surprised when the door to her chamber opened again almost as it closed. She looked up to see not the servant she had just sent, but a page from the hall. He knelt before her and did not deliver her message until she had granted him permission to rise.
“The dowager duchess of Buckingham requests an audience with your grace,” he said with the formality of one new to the position and very nervous about performing it perfectly.
“Katherine?” Elizabeth asked, taking a moment to connect Henry Stafford’s title to her. “Of course I will receive her.”
She assigned the tasks of arranging chairs and refreshments near the fire to the closest of her ladies and asked another to ensure that her hair and dress were acceptable. By the time her mother’s sister entered the room, Elizabeth looked as though she had been waiting all day for her to arrive.
Elizabeth stood and embraced Katherine as she entered the room, immediately removing any formality from the visit. She noticed that Katherine was not wearing widow’s weeds though Jasper was not two months gone. Instead of appearing sad or weepy, her aunt looked rosy, content, and more vivacious than most women of thirty-eight.
“Aunt, you look stunning,” Elizabeth said, holding her at arm’s length. “I was so sorry to hear about Jasper. Henry was thankful that God allowed him a last visit before his passing.”
“Jasper was a good man,” Katherine said without much emotion, the way one might comment on an old tutor or distant relative, not a husband.
Elizabeth guided Katherine to the arranged seats near the hearth by a hand on her arm and nodded to the attending lady to pour the wine.
“Your marriage was happy?” she inquired quietly once the attendant had left them in semi-privacy.
Katherine smiled slightly. “It was not unhappy. Jasper was indeed a good man, but he was also a man who had been single until he was fifty-five years old. Besides the obvious, he had little idea what to do with me.”
Elizabeth laughed and Katherine was encouraged to continue.
“Though I did mourn Jasper, I must tell you, Bess, that I have found happiness.”
A cold heaviness centered in Elizabeth’s chest as she wondered what her aunt meant by this. She was afraid she knew. Saying nothing, her eyes widened and indicated that Katherine should continue.
“Please forgive me, Bess,” Katherine said, setting aside her wine cup and taking up Elizabeth’s hands. “I know that Henry will be wroth with me, but I need you at least to understand.”
Forcing a smile, Elizabeth said, “I do not know what it is you wish me to understand.”
Katherine shook her head. “You are right. I am nervous and not making any sense.” She took a deep breath and reminded herself that this was her niece she was talking to. “I am married.”
The truth of this statement knocked the wind out of Elizabeth. She wasn’t sure which was worse, the fact that her aunt had remarried within weeks of her husband’s death or that she had done so without the king’s permission.
“Before you say anything, let me explain.”
Elizabeth was more than content to let her do so. She nodded.
“I have been married twice, both times to the man that the king chose for me. My Harry and I grew up together and it felt like it was meant to be. I never questioned that he should be my husband. It never occurred to me that I might marry someone else. When he died . . .”
The fact that Harry had been executed by Richard, the man that Elizabeth had thought she loved at the time, hung in the air.
“When he died, I truly mourned him. I still miss him.”
Elizabeth remained quiet as Katherine mentally took a short trip into the past.
“I married Jasper without complaints and was not altogether unhappy to do so,” she continued. “But since then, I have met someone who makes me truly happy.”
“Go on.”
“I was faithful to Jasper, you can assure Henry of that, but once he died I saw no reason to not grasp at happiness while I could.”
“No reason other than the king’s permission which you were lacking.”
“He would not have given it,” Katherine said matter-of-factly. “So I did not request it.”
“What man was worth this?”
“Sir Richard Wingfield, a man that you would not likely remember if you have ever had occasion to meet him. The king has no need for concern. I am not likely to provide Richard with an heir since I was not capable of providing Jasper with one. It appears that I did not inherit the Woodville fertility.”
“But you do seem to have been blessed with your mother’s skill for making a scandalous marriage,” Elizabeth pointed out wryly. Elizabeth’s own mother’s marriage had been no less a scandal, though in that case it had been she considered too common compared to the king. Elizabeth’s grandmother, Jacquetta had married a squire in her late husband’s household.
“Will you tell Henry for me, Bess? Honestly, will he be furious?”
Elizabeth tried to put herself in Henry’s place and imagine how this news would filter through is mind.
“There will certainly be a fine,” she said. Angry or not, Henry would impose any fine that he felt he was owed.
“I expected that,” Katherine agreed with a nod. “But do you think he will have it annulled?”
Elizabeth almost reacted with an immediate denial, but then she remembered her sister, Cecily, who had been forced from the arms of the husband Richard had allowed her
to select and into the one of Henry’s choosing. She more carefully considered her words.
“I do not believe so.” She knew it wasn’t the reassurance her aunt was looking for, but she also did not wish to give her false hope. “I will speak to him as soon as I am able. How long are you able to stay?”
“I had planned on being here a fortnight.”
Elizabeth nodded. Katherine had thought things through after the fact at least.
“We will see this settled then, and I will do my best for you.”
~~~~
Henry was furious.
“How could she defy me this way?” he said in a low voice, but Elizabeth wished he would just shout.
She let possible responses flash before her mind’s eye, but none she found would have the effect of calming him so she remained silent.
“What is it with Woodville women that they think they can just marry whomever they please?”
Again she discerned this to be a rhetorical question. Without speaking, she glided across the room to fetch a flagon of wine. Her womb was heavy with the child that would soon be entering the world. Of course, Henry’s mother had been urging her to go into confinement. Apparently the idea of being locked away from the world for weeks at a time was much more appealing to Margaret than it was to Elizabeth. Henry took the wine from her hand and moved toward the hearth.
As he stood near the fire, leaning against the wall, Elizabeth thought he looked more worn than she had ever seen him. The grey at his temples seemed to spread daily, and this late in the day there was a hunch to his back that did not exist when he first rose in the morning. The burdens of running a kingdom slowly caused him to stoop until he could get another night of rejuvenating sleep. Still, she could not bring herself to curse her aunt for grasping at happiness and love while she could. She wondered what it would be like to marry for love, to fall into bed with someone you were ravenous for. Shaking her head to rid it of immoral wanderings, she approached her husband.
“Henry, I do not quite know how to say this, but I do not believe that she was thinking of you at all. She did not do this to anger you, but was following her heart.”
“Rubbish!” he exclaimed, shaking off the tentative hand she had lain on his arm and crossing the room. He glared out the window before stomping back to the fire. Sitting heavily in a chair, he gulped down his wine and held the cup out to her.
She took the cup but did not immediately move to refill it. “Did you have plans for her, Henry?” She couldn’t believe that he would have already chosen a groom for Jasper’s widow, but, until Katherine had confessed, she wouldn’t have believed that she was already remarried.
“Of course not,” he denied unconvincingly. Sitting back in the chair, he stretched his legs toward the fire and held out his hand for a cup.
Elizabeth hurried to refill it. Weariness washed over her and she decided that she would indeed enter her confinement chamber next week. Quiet solitude seemed quite attractive at the moment. Handing the cup into his waiting hand, she said, “Surely the marriage market can spare one barren Woodville bride.”
“Yes, I am sure you are correct.”
The anger had drained from him, and she should have been happy. Somehow, she sensed that he had replaced Katherine’s potential marriage with another scheme.
When Henry announced that the young duke of Buckingham, Katherine’s son, would be fined for his mother’s impetuous nuptials, Elizabeth was, for the first time, embarrassed to be Henry’s wife.
March 1496
On the 18th of March, Elizabeth gave birth to a daughter, who was named Mary for the Virgin Mother. As she stroked the cheek of her newborn babe, she thought of Eliza and a single tear traced a path down her face.
She was thirty years old and not certain she wanted more children. Each confinement brought greater fears of the sickness and death that can arrive in the wake of new life, but she trusted that God knew the time he planned to call her.
As she had spent the two weeks before the birth in the quiet company of her ladies, she had found peace in not bearing Henry’s problems for him. She had also heard of his continued insults to the duke of Buckingham, Edward Stafford, that he deserved simply for having more royal blood than Henry did. John Morton was out collecting taxes for Henry with his scandalous greed and manipulative practices. Whispers were growing more outspoken that Henry was all but obsessed with the man he called Perkin Warbeck, who was in Scotland with his noble bride.
Elizabeth sighed as she looked down at the innocent babe attempting to focus milky blue eyes on her mother. She did not want to reenter the world where she battled to win Henry’s trust and mediated for those who did not wish to approach him. Though she would never share it, even with Cecily, she was no longer sure if she desired her husband in her bed.
She dared not voice this thought. It was the occupation of all women, and especially queens, to bear children, sons as heirs and daughters as tools for alliances. Despite the love that swelled in her heart when she gazed down at her tiny daughter, she felt in her heart that this should be her last one. Surely, Henry would see the reason in that. Four children were sufficient for their purposes without the fear of fighting among them as they grew. She desperately wanted to make sure that a better life was left for her children and her kingdom than what had existed through the bloody battles of her father’s generation.
As her head spun with these new ideas, she kept her conversation to the topic of little Mary. Elizabeth had not ordered windows opened and candles lit as she usually did once her labor was complete. She desired sleep and quiet time with the new baby. The outside world was not beckoning to her despite the fact that she had been isolated from it for three weeks. Her ladies shared looks that quietly acknowledged the difference, but none spoke of it.
Four days after the birth, it was Cecily who attacked Elizabeth’s moroseness head-on. Throwing open the shutters and ordering a bright fire to counter the refreshing breeze, she did not look to her sister for approval until the deeds were done.
“Bess, you need some sun and spring air. Why have you kept it closed up?”
Elizabeth just sighed. She didn’t really know what to say or how to explain that she felt content alone in the dark room with her baby. Cecily brushed hair from Elizabeth’s forehead as she examined her face.
“Why don’t you let me brush your hair? You will feel better sitting near the window.”
With a shrug, Elizabeth began rising from the bed. Cecily jumped up and moved a chair near the window with a flourish. “Your grace,” she said, giving her sister a curtsey as she sat.
A smile flitted across Elizabeth’s face so quickly that Cecily was not sure that it had ever been there, but she refused to be discouraged. Elizabeth was always there for others, and she was determined to return that generosity of spirit. Cecily’s hands ran through Elizabeth’s golden tresses that seemed to grow more red than gold with the passing of years. She chatted about inane topics as the comb eased out tangles and took no offense when Elizabeth did not respond.
With slight resentment at being drawn from her bed, Elizabeth had given in to her sister’s request because it was easier than denying it. Cecily’s voice droned on, but Elizabeth closed her eyes and concentrated on the sensation of the cool air moving in through the window contrasting with the warmth from the fire. The scents of fresh buds and wet ground were carried on the breeze, and Elizabeth was reminded of how much she enjoyed walking in the garden this time of year.
She remembered walking in the gardens at Westminster with Richard. The memory could be reviewed without stabs of regret or anger now that over ten years had passed. As long as she kept the memory separate from the question of her brothers’ disappearance, she could recollect her love for her uncle as if looking at someone else’s life and being slightly amused by it. God had ordained that Henry, not Richard, should be her husband, and she could be content with that at thirty as she had not been at twenty.
Elizabeth thought abou
t interrupting Cecily in her story about one of her ladies being discovered in an indiscreet situation in order to ask her about their brothers. Did she think they were alive? Did she believe that Perkin Warbeck was really Richard? No, she could not handle such a conversation right now. Better to enjoy the spring air and the feel of her sister’s hands in her hair.
“Bess, are you asleep?”
Cecily’s voice roused her from what had indeed been a slight doze. “Of course not,” she objected. “I was simply relaxing.”
Patting the intricate braids one last time, Cecily moved to face Elizabeth. “Soon you will be churched and we can be outside again rather than just at the window.”
A smile that did not reach her eyes formed on Elizabeth’s lips for a moment as she rose to return to bed.
“Bess, what is it? You do want to leave this room don’t you?”
“Don’t be ridiculous, Cecily. Of course I want to leave the room.”
“Fine. I will not push. Maybe your spirits will be raised by Henry’s visit.”
“What?” Elizabeth paused half in and half out of her bed. “He is here?”
“He rode in moments ago. I am sure that he will be here as soon as he can be made presentable. I will bring Mary to you.”
With that she spun to leave before Elizabeth could object to her plan.
When Henry entered the room, Elizabeth was not prepared for the feelings that exploded in her chest. Far from the feelings she had been having since Mary’s birth, joy rose within her at the sight of him. How did she think that she was going to treat him only as a partner in raising their children and governing their kingdom? Keep him from her bed? What an absurd thought! She willingly rose from bed for the first time since entering the chamber to go to him.
“Bess, you look beautiful. Praise be to God for your health and that of our new daughter.”
Plantagenet Princess, Tudor Queen: The Story of Elizabeth of York Page 23