The Sunne in Splendour: A Novel of Richard III (145 page)

pointed at sight of her, said, "You came alone? None of Lisbet's daughters be with you?"
Grace shook her head. "Bess's lying-in has begun. And Cecily is on her husband's estates in the West
Country. I doubt she knows yet that her mother be ill." She made no mention of the three younger girls, not knowing what to say. Bridget was now eleven, Katherine thirteen, and Anne sixteen, and they were virtual strangers to Elizabeth, having been separated from her during the most formative years of their lives.
"I see," Katherine said, her mouth thinning.
"How ill is she?"
"She's dying," Katherine said flatly and Grace gasped.
"Her doctor holds out no hope, says it be only a matter of days." Katherine's eyes filled with tears. "He says she's not fighting it, says she wants to die. . . ."
Grace did not fully believe Katherine until she was ushered into Elizabeth's bedchamber. She had seen her own mother die, had been at Edward's bedside during his last hours, had watched Anne suffer the ravages of consumption, and she recognized the aura of death, saw it indelibly imprinted upon Elizabeth's face. She leaned over the bed, shocked by the frailness, the feeble clasp of the hand she grasped between her own, and said, "It's me, Madame. . . .Grace."
Elizabeth's lashes lifted. "You came alone?" Her voice was husky, uneven, but the green eyes were quite lucid.
"Bess's time is nigh, Madame. But we've sent for your other daughters."
Elizabeth closed her eyes again. "They'll not come," she whispered. "Tom, either. He fears Tudor, you see. ..."
Grace was at a loss for words. She'd always thought that her Uncle Dickon and Anne Neville's courtship and marriage was a love story as touching as any celebrated in the courtly love ballads she'd doted on as a child. It occurred to her now that her father's relationship with Elizabeth was no less romantic a tale: the handsome Yorkist King and the beautiful Lancastrian widow. ... So how, then, had it come to this? Her father dead at forty, a gutted candle flame, burned out with his wenching, his excesses, and Elizabeth dying alone and unmourned.
"Madame. . . . Bess asked me to give you this." Grace dropped a rosary of silver and turquoise down on the pillow; Elizabeth's eyes flicked toward it, then away, without interest.
"Passing strange," she said after some moments of silence, "that you should show yourself to be more loyal than my own blood. . . ."
"You were good to me, Madame."
"Was I?" Elizabeth sounded faintly surprised. "I suppose I was. . . ."

Grace leaned over, squeezed Elizabeth's hand. "Madame, I ..." She hesitated and then concluded simply, "I'm so sorry, for so much."
"So," Elizabeth said, "am I." She sighed. "God spare you the regrets I've lived with, Grace. So much I'd have done differently, so much. . . ."
That Grace could well believe, thinking of the mistakes Elizabeth had made, her failures as a wife, a mother, a Queen. "What do you regret most, Madame?" she asked softly.
Elizabeth's eyes came up to Grace's face. "The truth? My greatest regret is that I heeded Ned's threats, that I didn't dare act on my own to silence Stillington. ..."
She saw Grace's shock, and the corner of her mouth twisted into something much like a smile. "Deathbed honesty, Grace. But my soul be safe; I'll repent it all when the priest comes."
She was obviously tiring, and Grace started to rise. But as she did, Elizabeth's hand tightened on hers.
"Grace, wait. . . . You must tell Bess for me . . ."
Her urgency was compelling. "I will, Madame. Gladly will I give her your love, whatever message you wish. I promise."
"Tell her ... I want to be buried at Windsor, to be buried with Ned . . . as a Queen."
BESS sought without success to make herself comfortable in the bed. This was her fourth pregnancy in six years of marriage, and she looked to her coming confinement with secret dread, for childbirth was a painful and prolonged ordeal for her. It was, she thought, a grim jest of God that she conceived easily and delivered hard. She gratefully accepted Grace's assistance now, shifted so that her sister could position a pillow behind her back.
"Poor Mama," she said, and sighed. "How it would have vexed her, to be buried with so little ceremony.
..."
Elizabeth had died that past Friday. Grace alone had accompanied the coffin to Windsor, and late
Sunday night Elizabeth had been laid to rest in Edward's tomb, again with only Grace in attendance. A
few days later Elizabeth's younger daughters and Thomas Grey arrived for a brief memorial service.
There was something both shabby and surreptitious about the entire proceedings, and Grace looked at
Bess with sympathetic eyes, knowing that Bess was reproaching herself for her inability to fulfill her mother's dying request, to be buried with the dignity and pageantry befitting a Queen.
"She's with Papa now, Bess, as she wanted," she said consolingly. "That be what's truly important."
I

"I suppose. ..." Bess said, and sighed again. Grace felt a throb of pity. Rarely had a Queen been as popular as her sister; Bess was beloved by her subjects as her husband was not, as her mother had never been. But rarely had a Queen been so powerless, either.
Bess was allowed no voice in Tudor's government, had no part in his life beyond a shared bed. Grace thought now that if Bess had married Tudor hoping to draw the protective mantle of queenship over her family, her disappointment must be bitter, indeed. She'd not even been crowned until more than two years after their marriage, and Henry himself had not bothered to attend the ceremony. She'd so far borne him two sons and a daughter, but that had not kept him from briefly imprisoning her half- brother
Thomas, from immuring her mother in Bermondsey, from forcing her sister Cecily into a miserable marriage with his uncle, a man much Cecily's senior. Her cousin Jack de la Pole was five years dead, slain at Stoke Field. Her cousin Johnny lived in the deepening shadows of Tudor's suspicions, and the most tragic figure of aU, Edward of Warwick, still languished in the Tower; he was seventeen now and for seven years had been a prisoner of state, condemned for the sin of birth, for the Plan- tagenet blood that gave Henry Tudor such constant unease.
He be a ruthless man, in truth, Grace thought, with a shiver of dislike. And yet to be fair, he does treat
Bess more decently than not. He doesn't argue with her in public, spares her pride before others, has never beaten her. He's faithful to her, too, has never shamed her with court favorites the way Papa did, the way most Kings do. And for a man as tightfisted and miserly as Papa and Uncle Dickon were free-spending, he doesn't stint Bess's wants, pays her debts without too much grumbling, and even indulges her generosities. No, there be wives far less lucky. . . . Cecily, for one. Her wretched marriage to Viscount Welles has so far brought her naught but grief and two dead babies.
"Henry is quite pleased about the coming birth of this babe. He even went so far as to say that if it be a girl, I may choose the name," Bess said, without apparent irony; she was no longer the young girl whose vulnerabilities and emotions were open for all to see. "I think if it is a daughter, I shall name her Elizabeth.
Mama would have liked that."
"And if it be a boy?"
Bess shrugged. "In that case, Henry will insist upon naming him." A faint smile touched her lips. "Even if he didn't, he'd never allow either of the names I would like to give my sons . . . Edward and Richard."
Their eyes met, held. "No," Grace agreed slowly, "I don't suppose he would."
"Grace . . . have you ever heard of a man named John Rous?"
Grace was startled. "Yes," she admitted. "He was a chantry priest irt Warwickshire, and a year or so ago wrote what purported to be a history

of our times ... a despicable collection of lies, slanders, and preposterous myths. You . . . you've read it, Bess?"
Bess nodded. "He dedicated it to Henry, after all." She was frowning down at her hands, twisting her wedding band. "Never have I read anything so poisonous, Grace; every page be saturated with venom.
He accuses Dickon of the most heinous crimes, not only of murdering our brothers, but of poisoning
Anne, even of stabbing Harry of Lancaster with his own hand!"
"Not to mention claiming that Dickon was a monster, a tyrant, born under an evil star and two full years in his mother's womb!" Grace said, and grimaced. Rous was a charlatan, the most contemptible sort of lickspittle, for when Dickon was alive Rous had described him in glowing terms of praise, as a ruler concerned with justice and fair play. But the true blame must lie with Tudor, who encouraged such slanders, Tudor, who seemed obsessed with making a monster of the man he'd dethroned but could not defeat. That was not something, however, she meant to say to Bess.
"Grace, you live in the North now, in York. How do they remember Dickon there? Is he still mourned?"
"After what befell the Earl of Northumberland, need you even ask?"
They both fell silent, remembering. The North would have risen up in rebellion after Redmore Plain had
Tudor not at once issued a false report that Jack de la Pole and Francis Lovell were slain, too, on the field, but for months afterward, the North Country seethed with resentment and none was more hated than Henry Percy, Earl of Northumberland. Three years ago, he'd been sent into Yorkshire to quell protests over a Tudor-imposed tax. At Cocklodge near the town of Thirsk, he encountered a large, angry crowd. His order to disperse had been refused, tempers flared, insults were traded, until Richard's name was thrown at Northumberland, the accusation that Richard's blood was on Northumberland's hands. And it took no more than that. Northumberland's escort fled. Northumberland was dragged from his horse and murdered by men who had not forgotten Redmore Plain.
"Dickon loved the North," Bess said at last. "I'm glad they've not forgotten him, that these ugly stories have not taken root in Yorkshire."
"Nor will they, not in the North; but in London, in those parts of the realm where Dickon was not known
..."
Bess was frowning again. "You think that there be people who do believe what Henry's been saying of
Dickon, people who can be fed the lies of a man like Rous and take them as true?"
"Yes," Grace said reluctantly, "I do. All do know by now that our brothers have not been seen for nigh on nine years, that they disappeared while in our uncle's care. Moreover, for seven years, your husband has

been doing all he can to discredit Dickon's memory, and if lies be repeated often enough, people become accustomed to hearing them, even begin to believe them to be true. I think the day might come, Bess, when all men will know of Dickon is what they were told by Tudor historians likeRous."
"Jesii, no!" Bess sounded both appalled and emphatic. "You mustn't think that. Whatever the lies being told about Dickon now, surely the truth will eventually win out. Scriptures does say that 'Great is truth and it prevails/ and I believe that, Grace."
Bess straightened up in the bed, shoved yet another pillow against her back. "I have to believe that," she said quietly. "Not just for Dickon's sake, but for us all. For when all is said and done, the truth be all we have."

Afterword
WITH the backing of Margaret of York, Francis Lovell sought to invade England in June 1487. He was joined by Jack de la Pole, Richard's nephew, and they faced Tudor across a battlefield at Stoke. Jack died on the field; Francis was never seen alive after the battle, and the most likely story told is that he drowned swimming his horse across the River Trent.
John Scrope had been dispatched by Richard to keep watch over the English Channel, and, like the men of York, he didn't get to Redmore Plain in time. Probably for this reason, he was not attainted. But he then implicated himself in Francis Lovell's rebellion and, as a result, was under house arrest until 1488. It may be that he escaped further punishment because of his wife's kinship to Tudor. Elizabeth Scrope (here renamed Alison to avoid a confusion of Elizabeths) was a half sister to Tudor's mother, Margaret
Beaufort.
William Catesby did not take part in Richard's fatal charge down Ambien Hill. He was captured after the battle and executed three days later at Leicester. He hoped the Stanleys might speak for him. They did not.
Robert Stillington, Bishop of Bath and Wells, was incarcerated immediately after Redmore Plain (now called Bosworth Field). He was pardoned by Tudor's parliament for "horrible and heinous offenses imagined and done" against the King. He was arrested again after involving himself in Francis Lovell's rebellion, and died in prison in 1491.
The three men who betrayed Richard and thus gained Tudor the crown did not prosper as they had hoped. Thomas Stanley fared best, was made Earl of Derby; but he was never entrusted with the political

power he had wielded as Richard's Lord Constable. William Stanley was accused of treason, on rather dubious grounds, and beheaded in 1495. The Earl of Northumberland was murdered by a vengeful
Yorkshire mob four years after Redmore Plain.
After his release from the Tower in 1487, Thomas Grey made sure he did nothing to incur Tudor's displeasure again. He died in 1501; the ill- fated Jane Grey, the Nine-day Queen, was his great-granddaughter. Katherine Woodville Stafford wed Henry Tudor's uncle, Jasper Tudor, in
November 1485. After his death in 1495, she married a third time, choosing a husband some fifteen years younger than she, Sir Richard Wingfield. She died two years later. Her eldest son by the Duke of
Buckingham was put to death by Tudor's son, Henry VIII, in 1521.
In December 1487, Tudor restored to Anne Neville's mother her Beauchamp estates so she could then legally turn them over to him. He allowed her to retain the manor of Erdington, where she lived until her death in 1492, at age sixty-six.
Cecily Neville, Duchess of York, died at Berkhampsted Castle between May 31 and August 27, 1495, at age eighty. She was buried, at her own request, at Fotheringhay beside her husband and son Edmund.
Margaret, Duchess of Burgundy, turned her court into a haven for disaffected Yorkists. She supported
Francis Lovell in 1487, gave refuge to Sir John Egremont, the man responsible for the Earl of
Northumberland's murder, and later backed the prolonged impersonation of a young Fleming named
Perkin Warbeck, who claimed to be Edward's second son. She died at Mechlinia on November 28, 1503, at age fifty-seven.
Bess's married life was marred by tragedy. She bore Tudor seven children; three died in early childhood, and her eldest son Arthur died at age fourteen. She died on her thirty-seventh birthday, February 11, 1503, nine days after giving birth to her seventh child. Her son Henry assumed the crown in 1509 as
Henry VIII.
Cecily was wed to Tudor's half uncle in 1487-88; they had two daughters who died in infancy. After his death, she made a love match with a man of no rank, left the court in disgrace, and went to live with her husband on the Isle of Wight. They had two children, Richard and Margaret, before her death on August
14, 1507; she was thirty-eight.
Their youngest sister Bridget became a nun, and their sisters Katherine and Anne made what were considered good marriages. Their Plantagenet blood proved to be a dangerous legacy, however, and
Katherine's son was later executed by Henry VIII, as was Edmund, a younger brother of Jack de la
Pole; a third brother, William de la Pole, died in the Tower after a lengthy imprisonment. History has not recorded the fate of Edward's illegitimate daughter Grace.
Margaret, George of Clarence's daughter, survived into the reign of Henry VIII, but when her son fell into disfavor, he took his revenge upon