The Tudor rose

by Margaret Campbell Barnes

  And as soon as they had returned to London she had been caught up in all the bustle of preparation for her daughter-in-law's arrival. “Poor little Katherine of Aragon, having to part from such doting parents!” she had thought. “And coming from the warmth and colour of Granada, by way of a vile Channel crossing, to travel from Plymouth over our appalling roads in the cold grey of November rain!” Mercifully Henry himself had gone to meet her, and Elizabeth was sure that his satisfaction and his graciousness must have done much to mitigate the poor child's misery.

  She was still thinking how well success became him when she found him at her side. “You, too, are tired?” she said sympathetically, pouring his wine with her own hand. “I do not wonder, for you undertook that terrible journey to Plymouth, which I was spared!”

  “Sometimes I think I am always tired,” he sighed. “But it has been worth it.”

  Although he took the wine from her hand he did not look at her, but stood gazing over the body of the hall. Whatever his private weariness, there was an air of triumph about him. “I just heard de Puebla telling the French Ambassador that England has not stood so secure for five hundred years,” he said.

  Elizabeth rose and stood beside him. “That will be an even more lasting memorial to you than your beautiful chapel,” she said softly; and in the expansiveness of the moment his hand pressed hers. Among so many other things God had given him, He had even turned a Yorkist woman into an understanding wife. “There have been times I have thought that this would never happen,” Henry admitted, indicating with a nod of his neatly shaped head the distinguished company of their guests. “But now there are no more pretenders. Ferdinand and Isabella and everyone else knows that there is no better Plantagenet blood than mine left. We stand secure, unchallenged—we Tudors.”

  Elizabeth shared his sense of security, but she made no answer; for even in the midst of her thankfulness she was thinking of the price. “I like our new daughter-in-law,” she said presently, watching the girl play her part with a touching young dignity. “I like the way she looks one straightly in the eyes. She is not particularly beautiful, perhaps; but she has been well trained for queenhood, and I think that she will prove kind.”

  “Let us hope that she will prove fruitful!” said Henry shortly.

  “They are very young to be married,” demurred Elizabeth dubiously.

  Henry surveyed them dispassionately across his lifted glass. “My mother bore me when she was not much more than fifteen,” he reminded her.

  “People did in those days,” said Elizabeth. “And then, of course, she was desperately in love with your father. I do not think that Katherine cares very much for Arthur.”

  “Does it make much difference?”

  “A great deal, I should imagine. Not that I think Arthur would realize. Sometimes I think his head is full of Latin verbs and dreams about the future. You know, Henry, I have been very worried about him of late. He looks so pale.”

  “It has been a long and trying day for a lad of fifteen.”

  “But Katherine bears it well. Although she is but a year older she is much more mature. Foreign girls are, I think. But see, Henry, how Arthur keeps passing his hand across his brow.”

  “A trick he has caught from me.”

  “And then that cough he has. He tells me he got wet through waiting out on the plains while those fussy duennas of hers decided whether or not he might meet her before they were married. Just as if we lived in harems like the Saracen women!”

  “You worry too much about his health, Elizabeth. You always have worried about him more than the others because he was born prematurely,” said Henry, setting down his glass. “Well, I must go and say a few words to those Spanish priests. And after the dancing I suppose it will be time for the final procession to bed the bride and bridegroom.”

  Elizabeth caught at his arm. “But they are so young!” she repeated. “You will not let them—”

  “Come, come! I must have heirs,” he laughed. “A grandson to consolidate our union.”

  “Arthur is shooting up so. The doctors tell me he may have overgrown his strength. Would it not be better for them to wait a year?”

  “Well, I will talk to the doctors about it,” agreed Henry, half sharing her anxiety but finding it difficult to believe that anything so nebulous as an adolescent's health could interfere with his plans. “But formally they must be bedded to-night. To omit that part of the ceremony would be to offend Spain.”

  “Spain! Spain!” thought Elizabeth, watching him return to the dais to receive a group of important-looking prelates. “Must the lives of all of us revolve around Spain! He is so far-seeing, so wise. Is this merely an obsession with him, or will that country one day wax so great that it will take some other Tudor's utmost wit and strength to curb her?”

  But for the moment Henry looked more contented than she had ever seen him. He was always at his best in public—dignified, urbane and cultured. And now, it seemed, he was at the peak of his power. The respect shown him by all foreign ambassadors and envoys indicated how much his name stood for abroad. And as he sat there, a reserved but gracious host, he had something indeed to be satisfied about, for few Kings had ever accomplished so completely all that they had set out to do. The power of the barons was broken so that they could no longer make a battleground of England, the people were contented and prosperous, the empty coffers refilled, and—above everything—the royal succession assured. And better than anyone Elizabeth appreciated what it must mean to Henry Tudor that his elder son was no longer Prince of Wales only in name but, after being educated in that beloved country, was going there with his wealthy young bride to rule it. To set up his own Court where the great Pendragon and his other remote ancestors had once held sway.

  For all the Plantagenets' splendour, Elizabeth had to admit that they had seldom had such material benefits to boast about. And she was shamed at the remembrance of how often she and her sisters had secretly made fun of the way Henry rubbed his hands together in satisfaction like a successful shopkeeper. She realized now how much that element of a businessman in him had helped to bring about their country's present prosperity.

  Hearing the musicians strike up a galliard, she clapped her hands for her ladies and went back to watch the dancing. Arthur appeared to have abandoned the idea of partnering Lady Guildford and won rounds of applause performing a minuet with Cicely, and his bride chose to dance a stately measure with no man at all, but with two other ladies. But the success of the evening was when Margaret and young Harry took the floor, prancing with youthful high spirits in a typically lively English country dance. In fact, so high did Harry volt and caper and so warm was the hall that his fair skin was soon glistening with perspiration; whereat, nothing deterred, he broke up the formality and delighted the company by throwing off his fine new velvet top-coat and dancing the whole thing over again with enormous energy and enjoyment. Elizabeth laughed with the rest and Henry beamed at the pair with paternal pride.

  After a splendid pageant, during which live doves were loosened as a special compliment to the bride, she and Arthur were bedded in the Bishop of London's house, and then the young Spanish bride was given back to the care of her ladies pending her people's return to Spain and her own departure with her husband for Wales. So Elizabeth hoped that her anxious counsel to her husband had carried weight.

  And if she was a little lonely at Richmond after their departure, she was consoled by unusual demonstrations of affection from her elder daughter, Margaret, who seemed to cling to her mother more now her own time for parting was so near at hand. For as soon as it was summer and the roads became drier Margaret Tudor was to set out north with an imposing retinue to become James Stuart's bride and Queen of Scotland.

  AFTER ALL, IT WAS not her elder daughter whom Elizabeth was called upon to part with that summer. For by the time the roads were dry and the hedges green there was no marrying, only mourning. Elizabeth was still abed on the shining morning when the news came fro
m Wales.

  “It is Prince Arthur,” her women said, white-faced and stammering.

  Elizabeth, who had been dreaming, as she so often did, that she was back in the monks' deserted little garden at Westminster, sat bolt upright. “Is he ill?” she asked, as if it were news which she had been expecting. But after a moment or two she knew by their frightened silence that he was dead.

  That Arthur—the son whose throne had been made so secure—was dead. But as yet she knew it only as a fact accepted by the mind, not as a desolation to which one must learn to attune the heart. “How? What happened?” she asked.

  “We do not know,” they answered, tying the last fastenings of their hurriedly donned clothes. “It is said that there were some cases of plague—”

  “Or there might have been some accident—”

  “No,” said Elizabeth, with a mother's certainty, “it is just that his Grace has never been really strong.”

  Jane Stafford came and put loving arms about her. “We all wanted so much to let you sleep in peace a little longer,” she said. “But the King is asking for you.”

  “He needs you,” said Ann Howard, her sister, hurrying in to join them. For Ann knew well that the best help she could give was to tell her beloved Bess that someone needed her.

  Elizabeth looked at her bleakly. “I have been married to him for sixteen years and he has never really needed me,” she said, too stunned to realize that she spoke her thoughts aloud.

  “They say he is distraught,” said Ditton, tenderly holding a cup of hot milk to her mistress's lips.

  Elizabeth pushed the milk away untasted. Swinging her long slender legs over the side of the bed, she slipped her feet into the slippers they held for her. Then, tremblingly, thrust her arms into the gown they brought. She had been too suddenly roused from sleep and her mind was so stunned that she moved as obediently as a puppet. If her husband needed her she must hurry.

  Outside in the anteroom she saw Patch, hunched against her door like a dog that keeps watch. His big brown eyes, the one thing of beauty which he had, gazed up at her in an agony of compassion. For once his glib tongue was stilled, and she knew that the soul within his ugly body rendered her much of the worship which should have been his Maker's. He was only her fool, but at such times devotion takes on a higher value than degree. Elizabeth stopped in front of him. “What am I to do, dear friend?” she asked simply.

  The squat shoulders shrugged beneath their gay silk motley. “A market-woman with broken eggs in her basket, if she be wise, counts those she has left,” he muttered.

  The Queen bent down the better to hear him. “But, Patch, how can I comfort him?”

  Patch's gaze was sure and steady. “Only you,” he said, “can refill his basket.”

  Like everyone else in her immediate entourage, he probably knew that it was a long time since the King had come to her bed, and that she was content to have it so.

  She went on her way. It was odd, perhaps, to ask advice from a fool, but she saw that he was right. And when she came to the King's apartments she did just as Patch had told her.

  She found Henry sitting at the foot of his great four-poster, where, on happier mornings, they had so often sat together, resplendent in their furred bedgowns, to receive the birthday gifts of courtiers; only now Henry's face looked grey and the embroidered leopards of England sprawling across the bed-head behind him seemed to be snarling maliciously. The gentlemen-of-the-bed-chamber withdrew at sight of her, and Elizabeth went to him and laid her arms about his bowed shoulders. “As your Grace's wisdom is renowned all over Christendom, you must now show proof of it,” she urged.

  “But Arthur—” he said incoherently, his hands clinging to her encircling arms. “Arthur for whom we had such dreams and who had so much promise…Arthur who was to have been King…”

  Elizabeth smoothed her husband's thin, disordered hair. “I know, dear heart,” she comforted; and in that moment they ceased to be a politically married couple who had little in common and were but two unhappy people who had begotten and lost a beloved son. “But consider, Henry, how your mother in all these marriages had no child at all save you, and how God has preserved and prospered you. Whereas we have still another son and two fair daughters.”

  Henry sat silent, his hands still clutching her like a startled child's. All his plans lay broken about him, far bigger and more important than a child's toys. Even now he must inevitably be thinking not only of his grief but of his fine new dynasty. “If anything should happen to that reckless young hot-head Harry—” he whispered.

  Elizabeth kissed him and stood smiling down at him. Even her own grief was forgotten in her desire to assuage another's sufferings. Past affronts and frustrations were forgotten. She remembered only Patch's words. “God is still where He was, and we are both young enough,” she said, humbly offering her husband the privilege he had lately spurned.

  He rose from the bed then and kissed her with real gratitude. Some virtue seemed to have passed from her to him. His weakness had passed. He was the King again. “How can you appear so serene?” he asked, the more amazed because he was intelligent enough not to minimize her grief. “You Yorkist Plantagenets have courage!”

  It was an accolade. The only compliment he had ever paid her. And Elizabeth knew it to be sincere. But his thoughts did not linger upon her. “This unspeakable loss is something quite outside my calculations,” he said, beginning to walk back and forth in thought. “What about Katherine of Aragon now?”

  “I do not know,” said Elizabeth. “Except that we must send for her at once and be very kind to her—until such time as she goes back to Spain.”

  “Back to Spain?” The words escaped the King's thin lips sharply. “But there is her dowry. Twenty thousand scudos.”

  It shocked Elizabeth inexpressibly that he should think of it at such a time; but undoubtedly it was a contingency which he would have to deal with almost immediately.

  Henry's pace quickened. He walked briskly to the door dividing his bedroom from the anteroom and closed it against the curiosity of the courtiers who waited there. “And we arranged that Arthur should make over to her a third of his estate, you remember? But now that she is widowed—we should have guarded against this—” A new excitement informed him. It had nothing to do with the lad Arthur who lay dead. Elizabeth watched him go to the table beside his bed, take a key from his wallet and unlock a drawer. She hated the eager fumbling of his fingers, the hungry light in his eyes, the sharp look upon his face. He might have been some money-lender making certain of a payment. She was sure that for the moment he had forgotten her. “I cannot remember how it was worded. Morton and de Puebla were there…” he was muttering. He had drawn forth the precious notebook, which was always kept under lock and key or about his person. But his bony hands were trembling and, incongruous as it seemed, his eyes were still blurred with tears. He turned over the pages, holding them close to his well-shaped nose. But in his haste he waxed impatient. “Here, look for me, Elizabeth,” he ordered, pushing the book into her hands. “My sight grows worse every day. It is all those accounts. Why, only yesterday I began a letter to my mother and could not finish it. The entry should be headed 'Spanish marriage' and made some time at the end of fourteen ninety-nine or the beginning of fifteen hundred. Somewhere about here, look you.”

  Obediently, disinterestedly, Elizabeth did as she was bid. It should be easy enough to find. His small, neat writing was as clear as his high-pitched voice.

  “January, December, November,” she read aloud, flicking the closely filled pages over backwards. “It must be on this page. You began to reopen negotiations for the Spanish marriage immediately after—after—”

  Remembering, he reached out a sudden hand. “No matter! No matter! I can see it for myself now you have found the approximate date,” he said. And, noticing that she now seemed loath to relinquish the book, he almost clawed it from her.

  But not before Elizabeth's quick glance had lighted upon somet
hing which interested her very much. Although certainly it was not headed “Spanish marriage.” It was just a small, enigmatic note made a little further up the page. Against a date in the previous November her husband had written: “Tell D. to leave both doors unbolted.”

  Both doors? What doors? Even through her personal misery the significance of the entry penetrated her mind. That was the very week when Perkin Warbeck and her cousin Warwick had escaped, when Sir John Digby was Lieutenant of the Tower. Even before Henry had found the information he sought Elizabeth knew, in dazed horror, that in his circuitous way he was as much a murderer as her uncle.