The Stolen Crown: The Secret Marriage That Forever Changed the Fate of England (10 page)

Their sister Margaret, Harry’s mother, had remarried after Harry’s father died and had a little girl, another Margaret. She did not live with her husband, Richard Darell, however, but in a convent, which I thought was a most peculiar place for a countess who was not a widow. Cecilia had once told me that there was something not quite right about her that made her live there instead of with her husband and child, but she had not elaborated.

Harry seldom spoke of her, and when he did, he was so guarded that I knew instinctively not to bring the subject up on my own.

By the time the countess arrived at Greenwich, a few weeks after we had returned from Margate, Humphrey was beyond the reach of any physician.

There was nothing for his mother and Grandmother Buckingham and Harry to do but sit in his chamber and wait. I joined them there on occasion, for Humphrey was my brother-in-law as well as my playmate, but I felt as if I were an intruder on the family’s grief. So for the most part, I went around my daily business of learning to be a great lady, occasionally coming to Humphrey’s outer chamber to wait for news.

The third or fourth day of this, I had no need to ask for news; I could hear Humphrey fighting for each breath even behind the heavy wooden door of his chamber, could see the priest and the physician rush in and know that it was the former and not the latter who was needed most. At

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last, the room was silent. Humphrey had given up the struggle. Then I heard another sound: Harry’s sobs.

I rushed into the chamber and straight to Harry, who was kneeling by the bed, his face hidden in the coverlet. I barely noticed Humphrey, lying on the bed and holding a cross in his lifeless hands. “Harry! I’m so sorry.”

He did not turn his head. “Go away.”

“But Harry—” I touched him on the arm.

He did turn his head now, and shoved me away so hard that I nearly reeled onto the bed and into poor Humphrey. “Why couldn’t it have been one of your brothers and sisters? There are so many of them, and just one of Humphrey! Or you? What do I need with a wife? It should have been one of you. Not my only brother!”

“Harry!” Grandmother Buckingham put down her handkerchief to stare at him in horror. “Kate—”

But I was already gone.

I was sitting in my chamber embroidering—or rather, in my present mood, stabbing a needle through a poor defenseless square of cloth—and making a mental list of all of the things I hated about Henry Stafford, Duke of Buckingham, when someone knocked. “Come in,” I said sullenly, regretting this interruption of my list. It was shaping up to be a long one.

Harry’s mother entered, without the nuns who usually were by her side, and I realized as she did that I had never been alone with her during her visit. I had been looking for whatever was not quite right about her and had not yet seen it, for she was a pleasant-looking woman, dressed very plainly for a countess, though, and not much given to conversation. She was still a Lancastrian, though, and so good a Yorkist had I become, I wondered if I should check her for horns. “Katherine?”

She didn’t even know I preferred “Kate.” “Yes, my lady?”

“Harry did not mean what he said a while ago.”

“It sounded to me as if he did,” I said sulkily.

5 6 s u s a n h i g g i n b o t h a m “When people are grieving they say foolish things sometimes. Harry loved Humphrey very much, you know.” She brushed at her eyes and added, “Probably more than he loves me.”

I wondered if she had meant me to hear that.

In a stronger voice, she said, “He was speaking out of shock, you see.”

“But poor Humphrey was always sick. No one expected him to live long.” Too late, I remembered that I was speaking to Humphrey’s mother, who might not appreciate this sound common sense. “I beg your pardon, my lady.”

“There is truth in what you say. I knew this day would come. But all of us hoped in a way too that it never would, and I think Harry hoped that more than any. So you see? He did not intend to hurt you just now. I know he will repent of what he said later. He was so fond of his broth—”

Her eyes began to fill with tears. I remembered that she had lost one brother to the headsman and had two others far away, whom she might never see again. Impulsively, I put my arms around her, Lancastrian or no.

“I am so sorry about Humphrey, my lady. I liked him.”

She cried a little, then touched my hair. “You are a good girl. Now I want you to do something for me. Will you go find Harry now, and keep him company? I think that will do him good.”

“But he won’t want me there. And I will probably say the wrong thing.”

“I think just your being there will make him feel a little better. You needn’t say much at all.”

“Well, where is he?”

“I don’t know. I thought you might.”

“Oh, he is in his secret place, I suppose. I know where that is, though I’m not supposed to. Humphrey told me.” I looked at his mother apologetically. “Humphrey never was any good at keeping secrets. Oh! I’m sorry, my lady. But he really wasn’t. ”

The countess almost smiled. “No, he wasn’t, indeed.” She pinched my cheek. “I think they did right to pick you as Harry’s bride.”

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By the banks of the Thames a large tree had fallen years ago, providing a natural if not a particularly comfortable seat. Shrubbery grew unchecked around it, making the spot a secluded one. Harry and Humphrey, who both liked to fish, had dragged a wooden chest there in which they stored their tackle. It was a boys-only spot, Humphrey had told me even as he parted with his secret, and I had dutifully stayed away except to wander there sometimes when I knew the brothers were elsewhere. I had even sat there myself from time to time, but I failed to see the attraction of the place, and quickly had left to sit in my own favorite spot at Greenwich, underneath a large oak tree where a person who was obviously fond of the creature comforts of life had erected a bench that afforded an excellent view of the Thames. Perhaps Margaret of Anjou herself had put it up.

Having arrived at the boys’ lair, I pressed through the shrubbery. Sure enough, Harry was sitting on the fallen tree, a rod in his hand and a line dangling in the water. His thin face had a puffy look, and I suspected that he had been crying hard not long before my arrival.

“Go away.”

I decided against telling Harry that his mother had sent me. “Greenwich is my sister’s property. I can go where I please here as much as you can.”

To my surprise, Harry conceded the point with a shrug. “Don’t fall in, then,” he offered as I gingerly made my way along the slippery bank.

“I won’t.”

I sat down on the tree, careful not to sit too close to Harry, and watched the Thames flow and the occasional boat pass as Harry sat in silence. No fish showed any interest in his line.

After a while, the sun and the silence soon made me drowsy. I closed my eyes, only to hear Harry’s voice. “Kate? I’m leaving now. You’d best come with me. You shouldn’t sit here all by yourself.”

The remark struck me as absurd, but I did not argue. Dutifully standing up to leave, I watched as Harry stowed his fishing gear in the box, then carefully locked it. “Someday I could fish with you?” I suggested cautiously.

5 8 s u s a n h i g g i n b o t h a m “You don’t know how.”

“Yes, I do. John taught—I mean, I do know how.” I cursed myself for my gaffe in mentioning my superbly healthy brother. “I can bait a hook and cast a line, and I was very quiet just now, and did nothing to scare the fish. You saw that.”

“Yes. Well, maybe someday. They weren’t biting today, I guess you noticed.”

“Yes, I did notice.” I had also noticed when Harry pulled his line from the water that Harry had not even baited the hook, but I kept my counsel.

He walked up the slope and pushed through the brush, then turned and gave me his hand to help me. “Be careful.” Then he said to the ground, “You’re not bad company, for a girl.”

It was, I knew, the equivalent to a heartfelt apology.

Humphrey’s body was taken to Pleshey to be buried next to that of his father. I had come to like Harry’s mother, and when it came time for her to return to her convent, I felt sorry for her. As she and her nun companions made ready to leave, accompanied by only two manservants, I ventured to ask, “Will you come back soon to court, my lady? I am sure the king would be glad to have you.”

She smiled at my naïveté. “Hardly, I fear. My brothers still work to overthrow your king, child.”

“But surely you do not—”

“My allegiance is to the House of Lancaster, and always will be.” My mouth dropped open, and the countess chucked me on the chin. “It shocks you, good little Yorkist that you are, and I am sorry for it. Never fear, I do not spy or plot; I am not even in communication with my brothers.

It would endanger Harry and all whom I love. But I can pray, and I pray daily for the restoration of King Henry to the throne.” I shuddered at such heresy, and Harry’s mother smiled again. “Anyway, even if Edward wanted

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me at his court, it is an odious place to me. My Harry must stay there because he is a ward of the crown, and I would do nothing to interfere with his Stafford inheritance. But it is not a place I wish to be. Not while York sits on the throne.”

She looked at Harry, who I think had been hoping that she would agree to extend her stay. Quietly, she said, “And there is another reason why I keep to myself. Has Harry told you?”

I shook my head.

“Mother—”

“Hush, Harry. The child is your wife, and should know.” She turned toward me. “Several years ago, Kate, after the birth of my daughter, the demons came upon me, and I tried to do violence to myself—and to her.

We were both saved, thank the Lord, but my husband decided that I should not live with him and her after that, and he was right. I lived with his mother for a time, and when she died, I moved to where I am now. The nuns take good care of me, and when my fits of melancholy come upon me, they tend me and bring me out of them with prayer. I fear Humphrey’s death will bring another on.”

She shuddered, and one nun gently touched her shoulder. “They have never been as bad since that first time, my lady.”

“Yes. God has been merciful.” She kissed me and then tightly hugged Harry, who had been staring at the ground. “You are growing into a man, Harry. I hear you will be moving to Westminster soon?”

“Yes. It is time I learned more of the arts of war, the king—Edward—says.”

Margaret smiled. “Learn them well, and perhaps you can put them to use for Lancaster one day!” She shook her head. “No, I should not say that.

Your loyalties are torn enough as it is. Be a true man and an honest one, York or Lancaster, and I shall be well satisfied.”

She kissed Harry and let a man assist her onto a horse. After we had stopped waving goodbye and she was well out of sight, I said, “Harry—”

“Don’t you ever tell anyone of what she said just now. Never.”

“All right, Harry.”

6 0 s u s a n h i g g i n b o t h a m He stared after her a little while longer. “Let’s go fishing,” he said at last, and we turned away.

vi

Harry: January 1469 to March 1469

Soon after my grandfather was killed at Northampton in 1460, Cecily of York and her children left us for London, where they waited for the Duke of York to join them from abroad. Warwick, though he had captured King Henry just as that creature George had said, made a great show of being his obedient subject, but no one was fooled, even less so after the Duke of York returned to Westminster and placed his hand upon the throne. His obvious intentions did not meet with the reception he wished, and war broke out anew. Within a matter of months, the Duke of York and his second son, Edmund, died in battle outside Wakefield, King Henry was a fugitive, Margaret of Anjou was traveling about desperately trying to raise troops, and the Duke of York’s eldest son, Edward, the Earl of March, was on the throne as Edward IV. It was a confusing time to be an Englishman.

During all of this tumult, I had been left undisturbed in my grandmother’s household, and my position did not change when the throne came to York.

I was lucky, I realize now. The new king could have found some pretext to seize my grandfather’s estates, depriving me of them, but he did not, nor did he prevent my dukedom from descending to me. No doubt it helped that my grandmother was aunt to both the king and the Kingmaker and sister to the king’s mother. If Grandmother was not happy with the latest turn of events—and I am heartily sure that she was not—she wisely kept her opinions to herself.

I was lonely after the York children left us, and my grandmother,

6 2 s u s a n h i g g i n b o t h a m recognizing this, sent for my younger brother Humphrey to join me.

Being so young, he was not ideal company at first, but once he reached an age where we could play together more readily, we became inseparable.

Together we went to live with the king’s sister in 1464, when the king purchased my wardship from my grandmother, and together we went to the queen’s household the following year. I enjoyed the chance to be the older brother to Humphrey, and tried my best to shield him from any harm. When he died despite my best efforts, I was grief-stricken.

Fortunately, this sad time in my life was soon followed by a happier occasion: my turning thirteen. I continued to learn my lessons with my tutor Master Giles and the rest, but it was necessary that I spend more time learning the manly arts as well. Because this knowledge was quite beyond the queen’s ken, I was moved to Westminster in the early part of 1469.