Even before the funeral procession started she had sent for him, and almost at that moment he came, that modish half-brother of Elizabeth's, hurrying to kiss his royal mother's hand. “What news of young Edward?” he asked.
“I have written to your Uncle Rivers to bring him south immediately—with all those stalwart archers young Dickon has just been talking about,” said their mother, holding out to him the letter she had been perusing. “If you will have a trusty messenger ride with this to Ludlow within the hour they should both be in London by May Day. Then you must send out a strong armed guard from the Tower to meet them, Tom.”
Thomas Grey, Marquis of Dorset, thrust the letter rather reluctantly into his wallet. “Would it not be better to wait for the consent of the Council?” he warned.
But the woman who had had him made a marquis only laughed. “Never fear but what I shall get my way with them! Have you ever known me to fail?” she reassured him. “But this will give Rivers time to have all in readiness, and every hour counts.”
“For my part I shall be glad to see Ned safely crowned,” muttered Dorset, biting upon his nails as he was prone to do in moments of anxiety. “But I doubt if even Uncle Rivers—brilliant as he is—can raise the militia privately without an order under the royal seal.”
To Elizabeth it seemed almost indecent that they should be thinking of such things before her father was halfway to his burial; but someone, she supposed, must think of them. Having been so set down by the Dauphin of France had sobered and shaken her so that she believed that she herself would never have the cunning so to spur forward fate, yet she admired and envied those who could. And towards evening when the candles had been brought and the younger children were gone to their beds she saw that her mother was right.
The Archbishop of York came in a great flurry of episcopal robes to hand over the Great Seal of England that it might be held in trust for young Edward.
Dorset returned secretively from his errand. One after another men of consequence, returned wearily from Windsor, began to fill the room; and a hurried Council was called.
“We must prepare everything against the coronation of our Sovereign Lord King Edward the Fifth,” began Lionel Woodville, Bishop of Salisbury, platitudinously.
“The first thing is to get his Grace quickly to London,” urged Dorset. “I will send an escort as far as Highbury to meet him.”
It seemed that all present were in agreement, except the rich Lord Stanley. It may have been because his own large band of retainers had not been offered the honour or because he had married the Lancastrian Duke of Richmond's widow, or merely because he considered too many Woodvilles had spoken. “Why so great a fever of haste?” he enquired, being a man of less impetuosity who liked to wait upon events and see which way they turned.
Everyone appeared to have forgotten Elizabeth standing in the shadows by the drawn window-curtains; and from where she watched, the men gathered round the candle-lit table looked like actors on a lighted stage, or like some Flemish painting in which the sitters' sombre garments throw into revealing relief the expressions on their faces. Just so the Queen's finely drawn features were illuminated as she sat at the head of the table, and the light emphasized the strength of Lord Hastings' profile as he stood at the foot. Elizabeth knew that her mother played in part a deceiver's role and that honest Hastings, come straight from a loved master's funeral, was too sore for subtlety; and with sensitivity rare in one so young she was aware of the antagonism between them. For years Hastings had practically ruled England. Scores of times Elizabeth had seen her father smile at him and say in that charming, careless way of his, “Do as seems best to you in the matter, my good Will, so long as you don't expect me to give up a whole day's hunting!” And she realized now how Hastings, who had never once betrayed that easy-going trust, must hate to see a managing woman sitting in Edward's seat and trying to ride him on a tighter rein.
“I suggest, milords, that word be sent to my brother Rivers to bring his young Grace immediately,” she was saying as smoothly as though she had been presiding over the Council all her life, as guilelessly as though she had not already forestalled them. “Also that he calls out the Cheshire militia in full strength. If the roads are in good condition they should arrive by May Day. Pending the coronation, as is customary, his Grace will lodge in the royal apartments in the Tower. And if our good Lord Mayor will spare no pains to have his preparations under way I see no reason why we should not fix on May the fourth?”
“With milord Bishop of Salisbury, no doubt, to round off a family affair and do the crowning,” muttered Stanley unpleasantly.
The royal widow's ears were as sharp as her still lovely features. “Why, no, my dear Lord Stanley. Who is more appropriate for that honour than our own Archbishop of York?” she reproved suavely. “But for the moment the main thing is to have someone to crown, and for that blessing I count the hours. For once within the capital my son will be safe.”
She was carrying the meeting well until William Hastings roused himself from his cloud of surly gloom. “Safe from whom, Madam?” he demanded.
Elizabeth marked the start of surprise swiftly hidden by a bland smile on her mother's face. “From any who are his foes, milord,” she was saying lightly. “He is so young…”
But Hastings was in no mood to be put off with vague evasions. His firm chin shot out aggressively. “And who does your Grace imagine are his foes?” he persisted, his deep voice thick with rising anger. “Valiant Gloucester, who has enough on his plate with holding down Scotland? Or our good friend Stanley here? Or myself, perhaps?”
Every man about the table grew tense with interest and the Queen's white hands were raised in pained surprise. “My dear Lord Hastings,” she protested, “could the Yorkist heir be safer in any man's hands than yours, who served my husband so devotedly?”
The very fact that she could call a Plantagenet husband was a running sore to most of the proud nobility gathered about her. A sore which no longer need be kept decently covered. “Yet he must be brought to London by Lord Rivers, your brother—met by Dorset, your son—with a whole army of the best troops in England to lend lustre to the progress!” burst out Hastings.
“A fine fanfare for the power of the Woodvilles,” scoffed Stanley, with a peculiarly unpleasant smile.
The sudden brutal words shook young Elizabeth. Although they were not aimed towards herself, they showed her where she stood. Never in her life had she heard anyone dare to speak even impudently to the Queen, and she could see her mother's face flush to red and knew just how hard an effort she must be making to rein in her fierce temper for young Edward's sake.
“I put it to the Council that the King be brought to London with all speed,” she began again, ignoring Hastings.
“Madam, upon this we are all agreed,” they chorused.
“Save for the archers,” insisted Stanley.
“Are they not in my royal brother's pay,” demanded Dorset insolently.
“And is not England a civilized country?” soothed the Archbishop of York, laying a churchman's appeasing hand upon the Queen's shoulder.
“I would have you consider, Madam, how little honour you do the late King in so belittling the love and loyalty his subjects bore him,” pointed out Hastings, more gently.
Elizabeth Woodville, twice widowed, was hearing men's true untempered opinions for the first time. “During the time I have been Queen I have seen much disloyalty in unlooked-for places,” she faltered.
“That is true, Madam,” agreed Hastings, remembering how she and her young children had had to take sanctuary during the brief resurgent power of the Lancastrians after the battle of Edgecot. “But do you not suppose that seeing the new King escorted by a powerful army will set men's minds back to those very times? Can you not see that it is timorous folly to act as if there were any question of his being King?”
The Queen sat silent and rebuked. But this time it was not the Lancastrians she feared. Yet how to voice t
he instinctive mistrust she felt? Or how to make these well-meaning men see that had the suggestion of the archers come from any save a Woodville they probably would not have opposed it.
It was at that moment that the Lord Mayor of London suddenly saw fit to speak up, backing in Hastings a man who had done much for London's trade. “Let milord Rivers bring the King and I will answer for the welcome our citizens will give the sweet lad,” he said bluntly. “But I do assure your Grace the sight of an army of hungry northerners and Welshmen bearing down on us will but drive my people to bar the city gates. They remember too well how their victuals have been eaten and their houses fired during their betters' arguments in the years of civil war.”
“Then we are all agreed?” concluded the Archbishop of York; and the growled assent of twenty weary men went round the table, so that a mere woman's will could only batter itself against the barriers of their long pent-up jealousy.
“They are all so sensible. But, dear God, let them see that this time she is right!” prayed the slender Princess standing unseen in the shadows.
When she uncovered her eyes she saw that her mother had risen to her feet. Because she was no longer play-acting there was an appealing dignity about her. “Milords, if I have meddled in the past, or presumed to advance my family unfairly, I pray you forget it now,” she begged. “I grant there is wisdom in what you say, but sometimes women have a kind of insight which outpaces wisdom. I…” For a moment complete candour trembled on her tongue, but the name of the man she mistrusted was too high above suspicion to be spoken, so she substituted other words. “I have here the Great Seal,” she said, lifting the symbolic thing from the table before her, “and seeing that my son is but a minor, can make any order valid in his name. I entreat you once more, milords, to call out his loyal archers!”
For a moment or two it looked as if the Council, impressed by her earnestness, would be bewitched into believing in her fears. But Stanley broke the pregnant moment by flinging aside from them with a barely smothered oath, and Hastings strode forward to thrust a briefer order beneath the upraised seal. “You allow your womanish whimsies to ride you, Madam,” he said roughly. “You cannot really believe that I—or any of us—would break our freshly made oath to him whom we loved and served, or leave anything undone which we deemed necessary for the protection of his son?”
The Queen could have refused to use the seal, knowing that in the absence of the Duke of Gloucester none other would have dared; but her brief essay to take command had burnt itself out. At the first shock of combined opposition her high-handed assumption of authority had dissolved into self-pity. In her blood was no stain of royalty to sustain her. “Then I must let myself be overruled by your counsel,” she submitted. “And I pray God none of us assembled here may live to rue it!”
RAIN BEAT UPON THE painted windows of the Abbot of Westminster's parlour, and every now and then a large drip from the smoke louvre high up in the middle of the roof would fall with a melancholy plop upon the May Day branches decorating the hearth. The tall candles guttered in the draught from a hole in the wall through which men had been bringing in furniture and chests of clothing from the adjoining Palace. And on the floor, low among the rushes, sat the Queen. She stared straight before her, scarcely noticing the strange disorder, and the pale hair which had once enmeshed an impetuous King hung like a yellow cloak about her.
Seeing her mother all abased and desolate like that seemed worse to Elizabeth than looking down upon the splendid coffin of her father—except for the fact that she loved him more.
“Do you remember, Bess, how we made our own May Day fun when we were in sanctuary before?” asked Cicely, picking wistfully at the withering green branches. To Elizabeth, sobered early to womanhood by the shame of a broken betrothal, the loss of such revelling meant little; and the others were too young to remember. But to fifteen-year-old Cicely small present disappointments assumed as big proportions as the portentous news that Uncle Gloucester had somehow intercepted Uncle Rivers and their younger half-brother Grey and imprisoned them in Pontefract Castle.
“We could not in any case have kept May Day with our father dead,” young Richard reminded her, looking up from the book he was reading as he lay on his stomach by the Queen's side.
“All safe in sanctuary! Safe in sanctuary!” chanted small, pink-cheeked Katherine, dancing round and round the fireless hearth with outspread skirts. To her and to eight-year-old Ann, their change of fortune was all a new kind of game.
Only Elizabeth knew that it was not her daughters' safety, nor yet her own, that their mother was nearly crazed about. It was the thought of Edward in Uncle Gloucester's hands. Each time Richard would have sprung up to join in the younger ones' play the Queen's restraining hands reached out to fondle him. “As long as I keep them apart each is safe,” she had said more than once, looking across the boy's smooth, burnished head to seek the comfort or corroboration in her eldest daughter's eyes.
This had been the Queen's instant answer to the ill news—her supreme strategy. Even with anxiety for her brother and her son Grey weighing upon her, she had roused the children of her second marriage from their beds and appealed to the Abbot for sanctuary, and he, poor man, not deeming it fit that they should share the asylum of felons claiming the Church's protection from justice, had given up to them his fine hall—never dreaming that in her desire for speed and secrecy the Queen would move in so precipitously as to wreck his masonry. Her move had taken everybody by surprise. To the saintly Abbot it must have seemed scarcely necessary, considering that the young King was already coming southwords in his royal uncle's care and had been proclaimed King in York by Gloucester's orders. But to the Queen's more suspicious mind, nurtured as it was on years of strategic struggle for the succession, the keeping of her younger son where no one could touch him seemed the most necessary move of all. As long as Richard was in safe keeping there could be no point in harming or dethroning Edward. “It takes a woman to outwit them,” she had said triumphantly, as soon as they were installed.
Yet even Elizabeth felt that her mother was consumed by an unreasonable obsession about Gloucester. “After the beautiful letter of condolence he wrote you surely you cannot believe that he means harm to either of them?” she said consolingly.
“No harm!” flared the Queen. “When he throws my own relatives into prison!”
“Madam, may he not be only detaining them because it seems to him that they interfered—or at any rate acted too hastily?” ventured Elizabeth.
But the Queen was not to be placated. “Who is he to talk of haste when he swooped south like a vulture to intercept them at Northampton?” she said.
“I wonder how Uncle Gloucester could march a hundred miles farther than Uncle Rivers and yet catch up with him?” said Richard, closing his book.
“He could not have had the news so quickly either,” added Elizabeth thoughtfully. “Unless, of course, the Earl of Northumberland or someone warned him.”
“He can make his men do anything, your father used to say. Make them march without sleep—and go without himself, no doubt. He looks like it with that pinched face of his!” their mother railed shrewishly. “And as to interference, you talk like a fool, Bess. Had not the Council ordered my brother to bring the King? By the authority of the Court Chamberlain.”
“It is true that milord Hastings was Chamberlain in my father's lifetime, but is he now?” began Elizabeth uncertainly.
“Had he let me order out those archers this would never have happened,” said the Queen, with truth.
“Poor Uncle Rivers!” murmured Richard, sitting up and hugging his knees. “He used to show us the loveliest illuminated manuscripts and make all the old legends come alive.”
“He is the most cultured man in the country; and of what can that misshapen clot of cold arrogance accuse him save of being my brother?” agreed the Queen despondently.
Elizabeth went and knelt beside her and began braiding back her hair. “I know how terr
ible it must be for you,” she said, motioning to a hovering lady-of-the-bedchamber to bring a fresh headdress. “But, after all, perhaps the people expect Uncle Gloucester to bring him.” Being a Plantagenet herself she could scarcely remind her mother that Anthony Woodville, Lord Rivers, was not.
Baby Bridget was asleep in her cradle and the two younger girls had wandered to a window, where they had drawn back a curtain and were whispering together excitedly. “What are you two looking at?” asked the Queen, instantly alert. “What is out there in the street?”
“Soldiers,” reported Katherine stolidly.
“Soldiers with lighted torches,” elaborated Ann.
That was too much for Richard. Feeling himself to be the only man of the party, he evaded his mother at last and ran to join them, clambering on to the window-seat. “Uncle Gloucester certainly can march!” he exclaimed, his nose flattened against a window-pane.
Elizabeth helped her mother to rise and went to look. “Are you sure they are his men, Dickon?” she asked, peering through the trickling raindrops.
“See the boar on their badges!” pointed out Richard conclusively. “And, look Bess, there is Uncle's old groom, Bundy, who taught me to ride my first pony. Over there, standing in the light of a torch.”
So it was true. Gloucester had reached London.
“Come back, Richard!” called their mother.
The boy obeyed reluctantly, and Elizabeth could not help feeling that to be singled out for such express anxiety was bad for so imaginative a child.
“The yard is full of them. Do you suppose they are trying to surround us?” asked Cicely, beginning to be scared.
“They cannot harm us, foolish one. Not all the soldiers in the land can make us come out from here,” Elizabeth reminded her.
“But they could prevent anyone else from getting in,” pointed out Richard, the quick-witted.
“You mean they could starve us?” groaned Cicely, to whom no worse calamity was conceivable.
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