Rosamund (35 page)

“And then there was you, Rosamund Bolton. It did not matter to you what anyone might say or think. You did whatever you could do to help my mistress because it was the right thing and because you believed in her. You did what any good Christian woman would do. They, these superior English miladies, did not. They will avoid you and ignore you for the most part, though some might be kind; others will speak harshly to you when they think the queen is not about to hear. You must not be disheartened.”

“I know that I do not belong here,” Rosamund replied. “I came because the queen asked me. Thank God I have my cousin!”

“Sir Thomas Bolton?” Inez laughed again. “He is the most amusing fellow. Of course there are those who say scurrilous things about him.”

“Much is said, I am certain,” Rosamund answered, “but what has been proven against my cousin? Nothing. The court is so rife with gossip. I remember it well from my youth when the Princess Margaret knew
everything said and the truth of it all. One cannot help but listen, but it is not necessary having listened, to believe.”

“You are the most practical Englishwoman I have ever met,” Inez told her.

“That is because I am a country woman, and not a great lady,” Rosamund reminded her.

Inez presented Rosamund to the queen’s other ladies. Most barely looked at her. One young woman said, “Oh, yes, the shepherdess from the north.” Some of the younger girls laughed meanly, but then Lady Percy said, “Only someone very ignorant would insult the lady of Friarsgate, who is the queen’s friend, Mistress Blount. Sir Owein Meredith’s widow, and heiress in her own right, holds some of the finest and most beautiful lands in all of Cumbria. And if her wealth comes from sheep, why would you lay scorn on her for it? Much of this country’s wealth comes from sheep, as any educated person could tell you. I also happen to know from my relation, Lady Neville, that Friarsgate raises some particularly fine warhorses.” She turned to Rosamund. “You will forgive Mistress Blount, my lady?”

“Ignorance is best corrected, not forgiven,” Rosamund replied.

Some of the ladies gasped, but Lady Percy laughed. “Well said, Rosamund Bolton!”

“You have made a good beginning,” Inez whispered, “but I think you may have made an enemy of Gertrude Blount. Still, she is not that important in the scheme of things, and it is obvious that Lady Percy approves of you.”

So Rosamund joined the queen’s ladies, and two days later the court decamped Westminster, to everyone’s relief, and moved back upriver from London to Richmond. As the ladies jostled against one another to find space in the various transports, Rosamund offered Inez de Salinas and her maid passage in her own little barge. Inez was delighted not to have to travel upriver in cramped quarters.

“You have your own barge?” She was surprised.

“A gift from my cousin Tom. He feels I should have my own transport while I am at court,” Rosamund told her as the four women settled themselves in the little cabin.

It was a chilly day, and the skies were gray and threatening. The cabin
of the barge, however, was warm, for beneath the bench seats were small flat braziers of hot coals. The two bargemen bent their backs as they rowed with the incoming tide, keeping pace with the rest of the royal travelers. When they reached Richmond, Rosamund saw the king for the first time in over seven years. She was very surprised, for Henry Tudor was probably the handsomest man she had ever seen in all of her life.

He stood six feet four inches in height. His hair was a brilliant red-gold. She did not remember his hair being so bright before, but of course it must have been. She had not been interested in him because in those days he was but a lad. She was his senior by three years. Now, however, he was a man. And what a marvelous man he was! she thought, blushing at the boldness of her own thoughts. He swung about to look at the barges landing, and she would have sworn that for the briefest of moments his blue eyes met her amber ones. But then he turned away, laughing with his companions at something that had been said.

“We shall not be able to partake in the Twelve Days of Christmas festivities,” Inez said sadly, “but once our mistress the queen has been delivered of her child there will be great celebrations.”

“My husband is dead but a few months,” Rosamund told her. “I am not of a mind to celebrate, though they will at Friarsgate for the sake of my daughters. Still it will be a sad celebration with their father dead and in his grave, and their mother away at court.”

“I will go home to London on Christmas Day to be with my husband,” Inez said. “He is a minor functionary for King Ferdinand. I know he misses Spain, but like me he feels we must remain loyal to Queen Katherine.”

“Are you older than your sister?” Rosamund asked.

“By two years. My parents were able to dower one daughter, and they dowered me. Maria, it was believed, would be taken care of by her princess, and one day she will. Lord Willoughby would court her, or so the rumor goes. He has never spoken to the queen—or to Maria.”

December was passing quickly. Christmas came, the queen and her ladies celebrating the first mass of the holiday in the queen’s private chapel with the queen’s confessor, Frey Diego. Rosamund had heard that
the priest was a very carnal man, and more than one of the ladies was en-amoured of him. It was also said that he used any woman who offered, and many did. Rosamund kept to the rear of the chapel, bowing her head low. She had no wish to attract the notorious priest’s attention. St. Steven’s and Holy Innocents’ passed. And then on the thirty-first of December the queen went into labor.

With the first realization of the event the queen’s chambers erupted with excitement, women running to and fro chattering. The queen’s physician and the midwives were sent for, and they came with all haste. The king was notified. He remained in the Great Hall of Richmond drinking with his companions as he awaited the birth of what would surely be his first son. He had prayed. He had made a pilgrimage to Our Lady of Walsingham, and would again. Everyone said that the way Katherine carried meant she was carrying a son. Despite that small distress she suffered because of the Duke of Buckingham’s sisters, she had not lost the child. A girl, delicate and fine, she might have miscarried of, but she had not. Everyone assured Henry Tudor that it certainly meant that the queen would birth a son.

The requirements for a royal birth had been set down years prior by the Venerable Margaret herself. Rosamund was amazed by the complexity of it all. The chamber in which the queen would give birth was hung all over, walls, ceilings, and windows but for one, with the most beautiful tapestries depicting only the happiest scenes from the bible, so that neither mother nor child would be distressed. The floors were covered with thick Turkey carpets. Only one window was left unfettered in the event the laboring woman might desire fresh air. When all of this had been accomplished prior to the birth, the great carved oak bed in which the queen would afterward receive her husband and guests was brought into the room and set up.

“I have never seen such a bed!” Rosamund whispered to Inez.

“Because, I suspect, there has never been such a bed,” Inez whispered back. “The mattress is stuffed with wool, and atop it is the featherbed. The sheets are of the finest lawn, their hems embroidered by the nuns on the island of Madeira. The bolsters and the pillows are all stuffed with down. The coverlet is scarlet trimmed with ermine, embroidered with
gold crowns and the queen’s own coat of arms. It matches the tester and the curtains about the bed, although they are of scarlet satin, and not velvet. They are trimmed with blue, gold, and russet silk fringe. And see the scarlet tapestry on the sideboard and the baptismal font, in case the child is weak and needs immediate baptism?”

“God forbid!” Rosamund said, crossing herself, remembering her own little son.

Inez nodded and crossed herself as well. “And, of course,” she said, “there is a small altar set up for the queen to pray.”

“Where is the birthing chair?” Rosamund asked her friend.

Inez smiled. “Here at court we call it the groaning chair. There is one, of course, but I suspect the queen will not use it. It lacks dignity, and the queen is, above all things, dignified.”

“There is nothing dignified about giving birth,” Rosamund said, and she thought of her own birthing chair in the hall at Friarsgate. She thought of Maybel and of how Owein preferred to remain with her until Maybel would chase him out if she could. The dogs remained with her, and the cats would wander by, rubbing her bare legs with their bodies as if in sympathy. It was a far cry from this overstuffed crimson chamber where the Queen of England now labored to bring forth her own child.

She did not, as Inez had predicted, use the birthing chair. Instead, modestly garbed in a fine Holland linen smock and double petticoats, she lay upon a pallet bed next to her great bed, where surrounded by her ladies she might have a modicum of privacy. All night long she labored. There was no pain medication they could give her, and so the Girdle of Our Lady, a holy relic, was brought to her from Westminster Abbey. It was said to ease the pain of childbirth, and indeed Katherine said it did, and gave thanks even as she pushed the infant from her body.

At last, as the new day was about to begin, the child was born. It was the desperately sought after son and heir! The queen collapsed with relief, and the king was notified. The canons ranged along the wharf at the Tower of London were shot off in salute, and all the church bells in London began to peal in tribute to the new prince. The king was jubilant, and the court with him. Bonfires were lit in the streets. The lord mayor of the
city ordered that free wine be served to all of London’s citizens so they might drink a health to the new prince. The king rewarded the midwife generously, and accepted the congratulations of his friends for siring a male heir.

The new prince was to be named Henry after his father. Wrapped in tight swaddling bands, he lay beneath a crimson velvet coverlet that was trimmed in ermine, and fringed in gold. His painted wooden cradle was two feet wide by five feet long. It was decorated in silver gilt and had silver buckles to secure his swaddling bands so that he would not roll about the great cradle.

“The cradle in which he will be displayed to important visitors is even bigger,” Inez confided.

Rosamund just shook her head and considered her babies when they had been first born, placed in a simple hooded oak cradle with its little featherbed and lambskin. She wondered if the poor little prince could even breathe properly he was so tightly swaddled.

The queen was now moved into her great bed, clothed in a circular mantle of crimson velvet. She had been freshly bathed to remove all traces of her travail. Her beautiful hair was plaited and dressed with pearls. Frey Diego, the first man allowed into the queen’s suite since the confinement, said a mass at the queen’s private altar while she sat in her splendid bed.

“All over London, my queen, Te Deums are being sung in thanksgiving to God and his Blessed Mother in honor of you and the new prince,” Frey Diego told her.

The king came now and congratulated his wife, beaming proudly over the son he had sired. “I will go again to Walsingham as I promised the lady,” he told Katherine. “I will return in time for our son’s christening on January fifth. I have chosen Archbishop Warham, the Earl of Surrey, and my aunt and uncle, the Earl and Countess of Devon, to be our son’s godparents. His august sponsors will be King Louis of France and the Duchess of Savoy, Margaret of Austria, the emperor’s daughter. This is as we have previously discussed, wife.”

“It shall be as you wish, my dear lord,” Katherine said obediently.

The king smiled, well-pleased. “You are such a dutiful wife, Kate. No king could have a better wife, or queen.” He bent and kissed her on her forehead. “Keep well while I am gone.” And then he departed his wife’s chamber, barely nodding to her women with whom he was still very displeased. But he had noted the pretty lady of Friarsgate among the women. How long would she be with them? he wondered.

Rosamund was called to the queen’s side, and Katherine dictated several letters of thanks to people she wanted to remember with her personal announcement of her son’s birth.

“You may give your script to my secretary, along with the list of people to whom it will be sent. He will see the correspondence rewritten upon my own paper with its seal,” the queen instructed Rosamund.

The queen would not nurse her own son, nor would she have a great deal to do with raising him, especially in his early years. He would be raised in his own household, under a set of rules laid down by the Venerable Margaret. The nursery staff was managed by Mistress Poyntz, who was styled the prince’s lady mistress. There was a wet nurse and a dry nurse, there were maids and rockers and a physician for the prince’s household. The nursery at Richmond was furnished richly, and it was here the little prince would reside, away from the dangers and bad air of the city.

After a month the queen was
churched,
and the court removed back to Westminster where the celebrations began in honor of the birth. There were magnificent tournaments. Rosamund had never seen a tournament. The king was titled as Sir Coeur Loyal, or Loyalheart. The armor was polished. The trappings of cloth-of-gold, cloth-of-silver, green satin, and crimson velvet were beautiful. The pageantry surrounding the tournaments was like nothing seen before. A huge cart made up to look like a forest with trees, hills, and dales was displayed with knights and ladies upon it. The men wore costumes and performed masques before and after the jousting. And in the evenings there were more pageants, and dancing, and music.