Mistress of Mourning (10 page)

That jolted me from the realms of reverie. He had the ruby ring off his finger again and was holding it up between us as if it were a sacrifice. The stone glinted bloodred in reflected light.

“Above us at the high altar,” he went on when I kept silent, “Prince Arthur will wed his Princess Catherine, and I likewise ask you to be a helpmeet to me. Will you not make that sacred vow here, before the Lord, before these angels you so like to carve—and so much will be given you?”

He meant this for the last time then, the proposal here. Was it truly now or never with him? If I turned him down, would he become my enemy?

“Varina, wear my ring, for I wear my heart on my sleeve for you.”

“This…this finality is so sudden. I admire and respect you, but cannot you give me more time?”

“Sudden? I’ve been on bended knee for months! Will’s been dead a year, and you know he would want the best for you, Arthur, and the Westcott Chandlery. And that means, whether we talk business or hearts, an alliance with me.”

“I know.”

“Do you? Yet you dither like the weakest of your sex, Eve wanting the fatal apple and the tree of knowledge when she should have trusted Adam and obeyed God.”

“And I would be obeying God to wed you?”

“Must you argue like a lawyer? St. Paul said ’tis best to marry, and ’tis the natural way of things.”

“If you truly want what is best for me, you will give me just a bit longer. To sort out some things.”

“Wed me and I will help you sort them out! You must stop clinging to your grief over Edmund, for I will give you sons to take his place, make you forget him.”

I thought I said, “Never!” but I must have said it only inwardly, for he plunged on.

“You need a man in your life to tell you which way to turn, lest you wander from the path.”

Wander from the path—
the temptations of Eve and my weak sex. Yet I dared to dream, to desire someone else, to think I could control my own shop and perhaps just a bit of my own life.

“How much more time will you need to decide?” he asked, jamming the ruby ring back on his own finger. “And if I give you so much as one fortnight more, my patience, when I am not a patient man, must convince you how much I want you—esteem your favor—and is that not love?”

“Until yule,” I blurted. Surely, I thought, I would be
nearly finished with the effigies then, and my time at the palace near the queen and with Nick would be over soon after. “Until yule, for winter is a good enough time for weddings.”

“Then we shall seal that bargain,” he said, reaching over to clasp my chin with his beringed left hand. He kissed me hard, heavily. It had once been comforting to be mastered thus by Will in our bed. Yet it dismayed me that I yet did not feel the sweeping rush—like the swoop and soar of those angels over our heads—as when Nick Sutton merely looked at me.

Ah, more fool I, I thought as I followed my disgruntled suitor up the twisting stairs to the real world again.

S
inging and strumming a harp, the angel descended from above our heads. The cheering crowd hushed, and I could clearly hear Catherine of Aragon say something in Spanish. I stood on my tiptoes until my legs cramped to see her as her entourage paused in the street for a pageant, this one presented by the powerful grocers’ guild.

Ah, we had been wise to stand here waiting for two hours, even amidst the elbowing, jostling crowd. Arthur had begged to see the pageant with the red Welsh dragon and the painted canvas castle, but I had taken him there yesterday to see it being built, because I knew we’d never fight our way that far through the throngs today. The beast had even belched smoke while we had watched, so Arthur had been as enthralled with that as I was now with this flying angel.

As our future princess and queen had entered the city across London Bridge, we had heard the ovations swell. We,
who knew her route, could tell exactly where she was, and word of that spread through the crowd packed in the narrow streets like herring in a barrel of brine. We heard her welcomes as she turned down Fenchurch Street to Cornhill, then to Cheapside, where, beneath the Eleanor Cross, she was formally welcomed by the lord mayor of London before proceeding toward St. Paul’s for her Thanksgiving service celebrating her safe delivery here in England. How I wished I could await her there, but only the governors of the Worshipful Guild of Wax Chandlers were in the cathedral today to light needed tapers.

Fortunately, the princess rode not in a litter but on a brightly bedecked mount, so we could all see her. Maud and I—Gil, too, who had Arthur on his shoulders—gaped at the fantastical costumes of the
Infanta
and her Spanish courtiers. Though, as we’d expected, their garb was adorned with exquisite goldsmith’s work and bold embroidery, their skirts and sleeves were huge and bell shaped, so foreign-looking to us English of the draped gowns and close-fitted sleeves. Then too, the princess wore a little hat with a flat crown and a wide brim, like a cardinal’s. She was short and seemed nearly swallowed by her costume.

I’d heard she always wore a veil in public, but not today, for she showed her pretty, plump face framed by two huge coils of hair covering her ears. More than once, folks in the crowd whispered that her fair complexion, red-gold hair, and blue eyes were the heritage of her royal English great-grandmother, a Plantagenet. It made us love her all the more. What a fine wife for our dear Prince of Wales!

Amidst the floating banners and tapestries hung from
windows, the yet-suspended angel—it was a handsome blond lad—stopped strumming his parchment harp and gestured for silence. His bare feet must be cold dangling beneath his white woolen robe, because he sneezed. His metal halo went askew, yet stayed propped up by a wire from the bulky corset that must hold his wings—a white chicken feather floated past my face. Yet all that did not spoil the illusion for me. Was that what my Edmund would have looked like at that age?

The Spanish retinue, the English prelates, dignitaries, nobles, and knights accompanying the princess, even the raucous crowd, all hushed and looked up. Sadly, the angel spoke in Latin, which meant that few in the crowd, including me, could grasp his words, but I caught that he was portraying the angelic messenger Gabriel.

Fortunately, a fat priest behind us whispered to his companion, “The archangel has reminded the princess of Gabriel’s words to the Virgin Mary, ‘Blessed be the fruit of your womb.’ I translate that to mean that the princess’s chief duty is the procreation of children to stabilize the Tudor throne. Producing children, Gabriel explains, is why the Lord God has given mankind the capacity for ‘sensual lust and appetite.’”

“Oho!” the other man behind me said with a chuckle. “So these days the body’s passion is not only permissible but blessed? Now, why did I think lust was one of the seven deadly sins?”

“Only outside marriage, my son,” the priest said, but he was chortling too. Free wine had been flowing all day, and I warrant he’d had his share. “Most of my flock,” he went on,
“might never come to that venerable estate of wedlock were it not for the gift of ‘sensual lust and appetite.’ Speaking of which, let’s away to sample more of that imported wine Their Majesties have provided, eh?”

Though I’d never deign to argue with a priest, I could challenge the so-called wisdom of those men. The desire to wed, in my opinion, could also be spurred by a passion to possess a fine second wax chandlery and a hardworking widow’s resources. I could see a widow wedding to give her children a good father. Or in Nick’s case, perhaps a wife of rank could help him regain his family’s property and prestige. Had he not considered that, instead of clinging to his lust for blood revenge against the traitor Lovell, who truly might live today only through rumors and bitter memories?

But I did not need to conjure up Nick Sutton the way I had my lost son. No, for there Nick was in the flesh, some distance away. Decked out in Tudor green and white, he sat mounted on a huge black destrier that knights rode in the lists. Amidst rising cheers as the entourage went past, I realized Nick was with those who would be jousting in the tournaments that would celebrate the wedding during the next three days. He sat among other strapping men, holding a lance upright, from which fluttered a green banner with the stems of red and white roses entwined with that of a pomegranate.

I fancied I caught his eye in that sea of heads and hats between us. I sucked in such a sharp breath that Maud looked up at me and asked, “You all right then?”

I nodded, touched by her concern. Unable to break my
distant gaze, I waved at Nick. He nodded straight at me; that is, if he saw me at all and it was not mere chance.

Queen Elizabeth of York

Despite the glorious event of our son’s marriage, the queen’s crown was heavy and cold upon my head that day. My purple velvet robe trimmed with ermine was welcome in the chill wind. Although we were outside, our seats at St. Paul’s Cathedral were far better than had been our perch in a second-story window of a haberdasher’s house in Cheapside from which we’d seen Catherine’s entry into London two days ago. The timber scaffold on which we now sat, twelve feet square and four feet high, covered with red baize, was adjacent to the north transept of the cathedral, so we could easily progress inside for the coming mass. Within, on wooden stands, awaited the nobles of our land and many from Spain.

Of course, my lord’s mother, Margaret Beaufort, Lady Stanley, sat on the king’s other side, severe, regal, as if she had as much right to oversee this ceremony and later festivities as I. Scolding myself for not being grateful we had most of our family here, I blinked back tears as the mid-November sun glinted off our Arthur’s white satin garments. Our eldest daughter, twelve-year-old Margaret, sitting directly behind her grandmother’s chair, and recently betrothed to King James IV of Scotland, was all eyes. Little Mary had been allowed to attend and had been schooled on sitting still, yet I heard the occasional creak of her chair behind me.

But all eyes were on our second son, Henry, too, for he’d
seldom been seen in public. The boy looked older than his ten years, and the pride with which he held himself as he stood behind Arthur as his supporter made me realize again that Henry would never make a good priest, however avid he was at his studies. Indeed, Henry was quite full of himself today, for it was his duty, once these public rites were concluded, to escort our new Spanish daughter-in-law down the aisle of the vast cathedral to join her husband at the altar for a formal mass. Until both this ceremony and the mass were accomplished, the wedding would not be complete, and the festivities—three days full of feasts, dancing, and tournaments—could not begin.

The princess looked both demure and enraptured today. My hopes that I could be a second mother to her had partly been dashed by our having to speak through an interpreter, but she must, of course, learn English soon. She too wore white satin—the Spanish style, she had told me—with puffed sleeves and a huge, pleated skirt over a large cage called a farthingale. Whether or not Spanish style caught on here, I believed that Catherine would, for the crowds seemed to adore her already.

Henry Deane, Archbishop of Canterbury, and William Warham, Bishop of London, conducted the ceremony. I tried to follow the familiar Latin of the rites, yet my mind wandered. Our two lost children should be here. And if my two poor brothers were, I would be yet a king’s sister, not wife, and not have to ever bear this huge weight that sat in my stomach in my guilt for their loss, Richard’s, at least.

I had believed that the wax woman’s creation of their effigies would help ease my grief, but I realized now that
nothing except justice would ever appease me. “Justice is mine, saith the Lord,” but I must know the villain who caused my brothers’ deaths, for I craved revenge.

Their murderer could be some Yorkist zealot like Lord Lovell, who had raised rebellions and battles against us, then disappeared. If he was still alive and could be found, I would spur my husband on to see that he was executed. His very name sounded wicked to me: Lord Lovell—not Lord Love but Lord Evil. My stomach turned at the thought of him, and because I’d heard from reliable sources that he might be back in England. Rumors still? Seditious Yorkist lies? I knew not, but I feared.…

If my uncle, King Richard, were to blame for my brothers’ deaths, at least he was already dead, with those mortal sins upon his black soul. I had also been pursuing the possibility that Sir James Tyrell, who had once been King Richard’s henchman, had actually done the deed. Yet how could that be when my husband had pardoned Tyrell and granted him the command of Guisnes Castle in our holding at Calais? Twice he had been pardoned, though I must admit he had not fought against the Tudor forces in the Battle of Bosworth Field. But to invite the man back to England to joust in honor of our heir’s wedding—what was my husband thinking?

Trumpets blared. I started. The king smiled as we rose and offered me his arm. Arthur bowed to us, and Catherine curtsied in a huge whoosh of skirts. Arthur went first into St. Paul’s through the east entry, and my son Henry followed with Catherine on his arm. Oh, but we’d had a row, the king and I, about whether Arthur and Catherine should be
bedded, but, of course, my lord had prevailed. I did not know if our frail Arthur could yet perform the marital act, but after all, with these rites and the mass to come, they were truly wedded. Now, in unison, the king and I waved and nodded to the cheering crowds and turned away to go within too.