“Yes, we all know how they love you,” laughed Jane, her brown eyes dancing again. “And then you must needs open your purse and send Ditton or Anne Percy or one of us out to them with twice as much as their gifts are worth!”
It was so true that Elizabeth had to laugh too. “Oh well, they are all so dear to me; and if I do have to go about with tin buckles on my shoes I am really a rich woman in my heart. Except, of course,” she added to herself, “that I have no man to love me.”
“Then you will not pore over such dull matters any more, will you, Madam?” said Jane, gathering up the account-book. “Surely it is enough that Decons, your clerk, is paid to do it.”
“The King likes me to keep accounts, although I must admit that I find it very difficult,” sighed the daughter of prodigal Edward. “And, Jane, when you or any of my other ladies hear people saying that his Grace is getting rich you should remind them of all the expenses he has. Preparations for war with France to help poor Brittany, which harboured him in his exile. And that lovely, lovely chapel he is building in the Abbey.”
“I hate it!” exclaimed Jane, setting down the account-book with a bang.
The Queen swung round in her astonishment. “Jane! That heavenly beautiful building—”
“Oh yes, it may be beautiful,” conceded Jane. “But Archbishop Morton says it is being built to enshrine the Tudor tombs. And I hate the thought that they will ever bury you—”
“You incredible goose! Take the account-book back to Decons now and—and try not to love me so extravagantly.”
Left alone, Elizabeth, the Queen of England, stood for a while by her table touching each humble gift as if some specially precious benison had come with them, and wondering what her life would have been like had she married Tom Stafford and had this turbulent little beauty not as a lady of her bedchamber but as a sister-in-law. She might have found much quiet happiness, she supposed; but after all that she had now experienced she doubted if that would have satisfied her.
The pattern of her life had grown so much larger since the days when she had imagined herself in love with Tom. Although Henry made a confidant of no one, save sometimes his mother and Morton, a Queen lived at the hub of things. Those things which were never confided to her between the drawn curtains of her bed she inevitably heard discussed around the white napery of her board. Affairs of the country were talked about freely by knowledgeable men like Lord Stanley and his brother Sir William; Morton and the King's family bandied the names and news of European rulers who were personally known to them, while through the Palace flowed the widening influence of foreign ambassadors and envoys, the invigorating tang of spreading commerce and the culture of all the painters, writers, architects and printers whom Henry encouraged. Although Elizabeth never meddled, she learned. She took delight in hearing the management of her country discussed, and came to have a wholesome respect for her husband's mind.
“He cares so much less passionately than Richard, who loved the very earth of England, and yet in whatever he undertakes he seems to succeed,” she thought. Conscientiously following his statecraft without the encouragement of his confidence, she came to understand it even better than some of his councillors. She knew, for instance, how hard he had tried to avoid war with France. The people, of course, clamoured for it. Through the centuries war with their nearest neighbour and traditional enemy had been the one thing for which they willingly voted supplies, the dangerous enterprise which they strained at the leash to join; and although it was their safety as well as his own that he was considering, they spoke disparagingly of Henry because he preferred to negotiate. Yet when Charles the Eighth threatened to occupy Brittany how efficiently the King of England moved! With no hatred of France inherent in his heart, he yet saw the danger it would mean to England if he allowed all the Breton ports across the Channel to fall into French hands. Although Spain and the Emperor of Rome, who seemed to be his allies, withheld their help, Henry sent forces to the defence of Brittany and, crossing to his own town of Calais, personally laid siege to Boulogne. While he was away Elizabeth made no bid for vicarious power, but wrote to him affectionately and often, telling him news of home and particularly of the progress of Arthur, who was already beginning to construe his Latin with Bernard Andreas.
The siege of Boulogne was short and resulted in no spectacular military victory. Charles, who had probably not bargained for such swift intervention, was glad to pay off his cool aggressor with good French gold and afterwards outwit him by persuading the orphaned heiress of Brittany to marry him, so that Henry sailed home in a sort of stalemate triumph which added nothing to his waning popularity. Military-minded men had sold their manors to win fame in France, the rank and file muttered bitterly because there had been precious little plunder and the hard-working populace at home wanted to know where their money had gone. But Henry returned unruffled. He had not been hankering for martial glory. Most of Charles's money had gone straight into his own pocket, England was once more at leisure to pursue her commercial prosperity, and—newcomer as he was—he had shown Spain and all the other European countries that he could manage his own affairs quite well without them.
It was some time before he found time to come to his wife's private apartments, but when he did he was rubbing his thin hands together with satisfaction. “Spain will be all the more anxious to carry on with our marriage proposals for Arthur,” he congratulated himself, caring more in his long-sighted way for ultimate results than for the present feelings of his people.
“Then, although Ferdinand and Isabella left you to fight France alone, you still want him to marry their daughter?” marvelled Elizabeth, who had expected him to show strong resentment.
“Undoubtedly,” said Henry. “I want Arthur to have the best marriage we can arrange for him; and Spain, I am convinced, is the coming country.”
“While you were away I was wondering whether you would want to cement your new peace treaty with a French alliance?” said Elizabeth, well versed in his ways.
“Later on, with one of the other children, perhaps.”
“Margaret?” murmured Elizabeth, who, like a wise woman, had already begun to school herself for the pain of parting.
“No. I would sooner send her to Scotland,” said Henry, so far forgetting himself as to take a born Yorkist into his confidence. “I have been pondering these many months upon the inestimable advantages of an alliance with Scotland. If in time the same King could reign over both countries, the way it already is with Wales—”
“And Ireland.”
“If anyone could be said to reign there at all, with my own Deputy turning traitor!” laughed Henry shortly. “I have sent Sir John Egremont to arrest him.”
“To arrest the Deputy of Ireland!” exclaimed Elizabeth. “Whatever has he done?”
“Made a complete fool of himself, I should imagine,” said Henry, ferreting for his book to make a note of something he had forgotten to tell Egremont to do. “He sent for that ridiculous young man whom the Irish believe to be your brother and questioned him, as I ordered. But instead of publicly denouncing him he seems to have fallen under the spell of this—this extraordinary person himself. And it seems he actually allowed the Earl of Desmond to write to the Kings of France and Scotland telling them some cock-and-bull story about the real heir to the throne of England being alive. Just the sort of thing they would seize on at the moment to annoy me!”
“But of course they must know it isn't true,” said Elizabeth, determined to keep a hold on commonsense and not let such things again stir up her past sorrow.
Henry took a turn or two about her room. In spite of the success of his campaign, he looked more perturbed than she had ever seen him. “The devil of it is,” he said at last, coming to a standstill before her, “that this pretender was with the King of France in Paris when I was there. Charles treats him as if he were the Duke of York and has even given him a bodyguard captained by the Sieur de Concressault. Half the army knows this, and the fantast
ic rumour will be spread all over England in a week.”
Elizabeth laid down the rings she had been drawing from her fingers. “Oh, Henry, not again! Immediately on your homecoming, and after all the trouble you had over that Simnel boy pretending to be Warwick!” she exclaimed, readily sympathizing with his annoyance. “But surely, now that you have won this campaign, you can insist that France shall not harbour him?”
“I have made that one of the clauses of the peace treaty. And unless Charles turns the impudent knave out bag and baggage he will get no daughter of mine for his Dauphin. I told you, did I not, that my succession was bound to produce a crop of pretenders? Oh, well, so long as they keep all their lunacy in France or Ireland…” laughed Henry ruefully. In spite of this fresh worry, Elizabeth was pleased that he was behaving so much more humanely, and even thought to commend her about something. “And, speaking of Simnel, that was not such a bad idea of yours, Elizabeth,” he said, preparing to get into bed. “Though how you discovered that a baker's son had any feeling about birds is beyond me. They tell me at the mews that Simnel is one of the best men they have ever had for training a peregrine or a gyrfalcon. Knows just the moment to take a young wild bird from its nest, too. You'd better come hawking with me to-morrow and see him at work. My head falconer is getting past it and I could offer your late scullion a much lower wage for the same work.”
It was the sort of small meanness which so often spoiled a pleasant concession, but next morning Elizabeth forgot it in the joy of hawking on the sun-swept heath at Hampstead. And her protégé proved himself well. He seemed quite unflurried by the King's scrutiny and more interested in the success of the birds he had trained than in a few envied words of royal praise. And as soon as the hawks were being chained again to their perches and the gay company preparing to return, Simnel himself came to lift the jessed merlin from the Queen's gloved wrist. Standing close beside her palfrey, he looked just as she imagined he would—upstanding and strong, with the wind in his hair.
That he must have worked hard she knew, and also that he was no longer a boy but a man. “You look happy, Simnel,” she said kindly, looking down into his sun-tanned face.
“I am in love,” he said simply. “She is a good country wench and will wed with me as soon as I can afford it. If one day I might bring her to the Palace to look just once upon your Grace's face—”
“I will ask one of my ladies to arrange it,” promised Elizabeth, deeply touched. “And be patient with her goodness, for I think you may have a cottage of your own very soon.”
“If ever there is anything I can do for you, Madam—” he said, inarticulate with gratitude. Elizabeth thought how dependable he looked, how typical of all that was best in rural England, and was glad when he laid his strong brown hand for a moment upon her rein. “I mean,” he added, “anything at all.”
Elizabeth called together her ladies and rode back to Westminster with a warm glow at her heart, for life had already taught her that, however exalted one may be, it is good to know of someone who will gladly serve one in any way at all.
IN ALL HIS DISPATCHES to the King of France Henry was careful to speak of the mysterious pretender contemptuously as that garçon, and Fox and Empson and his other councillors realized that he was far more concerned about the coterie of discontented Yorkists who were sneaking abroad to join him and forming quite a pseudo-royal Court. Particularly when a man as influential as Sir George Neville went. But Elizabeth noticed that her uncommunicative husband was less prone to sarcastic sallies and cracked his thin fingers less once the imposter was known to be over the French border, homeless and presumably penniless, in Flanders. Yet there was one danger which even Henry's astute mind had overlooked, and that was the opportunity it gave to a woman who hated him. Margaret Plantagenet of Burgundy, who had loved her brother Edward this side of idolatry, lost no time in sending out an invitation to the young man who claimed to be his son.
Nothing could have annoyed Henry more.
“Now that Charles the Bold of Burgundy is dead and she is only a dowager duchess she has no political considerations to bind her and can do anything she likes, I suppose,” said Cicely, when Henry's womenfolk were gathered together in the Queen's apartments to discuss it.
“But surely a Lambert Simnel sort of person would never dare to accept,” said newly married Ann. “Aunt Margaret would recognize him for an imposter at once.”
Cicely, more worldly wise, snorted over the purse she was embroidering for her husband. “Even if she did she would pretend not to!”
“She is my son's bane!” sighed the Countess of Richmond.
“He seems to believe she even started the Simnel business,” said Cicely.
“But nobody knows that she did. After all, she never even saw him,” protested Ann, who, in common with her brothers, had preferred this younger, livelier aunt from Burgundy to their staid Aunt Elizabeth of Suffolk or their shrewish Woodville aunt, Katherine.
“And even supposing this new pretender were the Duke of York, would she remember him? Well enough to be certain, I mean,” queried the Countess of Richmond. “It is a long time since she saw him.”
“His little Grace was eight years old when the Duchess came on that visit to King Edward,” stated Mattie, with the liberty of long service. “Do you not remember, my lady Cicely, how he would take the deerhound he had for his birthday to show her and how the wild puppy creature bit a hole in her best gown?”
They laughed at the memory and by Mattie's loving precision the date was incontrovertibly fixed. “I do not think Aunt Margaret would accept anyone spurious as her nephew even to enrage the King,” said Elizabeth, who had at yet contributed nothing to the conversation. “For in spite of the gown episode she delighted in Dickon.”
Whether the Duchess would accept him or not was the Touchstone for which all Europe waited. Henry sent his spies abroad and all the Court waited for news. And soon the amazing truth was rippling through the Palace and men were marvelling about it in the streets. “The Duchess of Burgundy recognized him as her nephew.” “'Like one given back to her from the dead,' she declares.” “Not to be outdone by the King of France, she, too, has provided him with a retinue.” “The young gallant goes everywhere with her.”
“So that she may instruct him what to say about his supposed family and teach him manners,” scoffed Henry.
“By what Sir Robert Clifford says he has no need to learn manners from anyone,” said Sir William Stanley, who had recently been made the King's Chamberlain; but he waited to say it until the King had gone out of the room.
“Everyone we have questioned seems to agree that this person has a princely bearing and that his clothes become him,” added Tom Stafford.
“But what language does he speak?” asked the King's mother.
“English, of course,” said Lord Stanley, with husbandly terseness.
“With a strong foreign accent, no doubt!” laughed Elizabeth, remembering how even Henry had one when he first came.
“Why, no, quite perfectly, they say,” said Sir William, evidently very much impressed. “And excellent French as well.”
“Quite an accomplished tradesman's son the Duchess has found this time!” scoffed Margaret of Richmond elegantly. And younger Margaret, copying her, set them all laughing by declaring with true Tudor incisiveness, “We want no more baker's boys here!”
“Well, well, they will no doubt be crowning him in Antwerp or somewhere as Richard the Fourth!” said Elizabeth, with a hard note in her lovely voice, brought there by the bitterness of so much unnecessary suffering.
And to small Harry's delight Patch began parading up and down the Queen's gallery crowned with an upturned charcoal brazier and sweeping all and sundry aside with the skirts of a cloak improvised from the Queen's best Syrian rug.
Although she had joined in the jibing with the rest, Elizabeth slept but ill, and in the morning she took Jane Stafford and Ditton with her and rode out over the bridge to the convent at Bermonds
ey, which was in her Mortimer heritage. For there her mother, because of failing health and Henry's displeasure, had betaken herself to be nursed by the nuns.
“Her Grace is sleeping,” said Mistress Grace, the Queen Dowager's companion, coming out to them and seeming to bar the bedroom door with her scrawny body.
“Then I will go in and sit with her until she wakes,” said Elizabeth.
“It may be a long time,” said Mistress Grace grudgingly.
“Then go and take a rest or gossip with my ladies out in the sunshine. You must be in need of change,” ordered Elizabeth, wondering whether it was anything more than jealousy which made the woman unwilling for her to talk with her mother alone. But once within the quiet room, where conventual austerity blended pleasantly with the familiar furnishings of her family, and a great carved crucifix dominated all, Elizabeth forgot everything else and sat patiently listening to her mother's laboured breathing and looking pitifully at the high, white forehead and sharpened nostrils protruding so defencelessly above the neatly turned-back sheet.
“I do not think she will last long, Madam,” said the Mother Superior, when she came in presently with a glass of cordial for her patient.
“That is partly why I came,” said Elizabeth. “I am with child and near my time, so may not see her again. Also there is something I want to ask her before it is too late. And I would like to thank you and all your sisterhood for the tender care you have bestowed upon her.”
The Tudor rose Page 24