The Stolen Crown: The Secret Marriage That Forever Changed the Fate of England (4 page)

bedchamber on occasion, with the exception of a few feminine giggles.

I wondered what the king was doing to provoke this reaction from my rather serious sister.

By noon, the king and his companion—William, Lord Hastings, I later learned—had ridden off, the king having first kissed Bessie very tenderly in the privacy of my mother’s chamber, where he took his leave of us. My sister went back to her bedchamber to do whatever a commoner who had just secretly married a king did to pass the time, and I went outside, where I proposed to my nephews, who were nearer my own age than most of my brothers and sisters, that we play a game of getting married. They found the idea exceedingly dull and girl-like, and said so in no uncertain terms, so we played buck-hide instead, with I the hunter and they the bucks. It took me a while to find them, but I always succeeded.

One of the advantages of having so many older brothers and sisters was that there was always someone I could find to give me whatever help I needed. If I was puzzled over my lesson, I went to Anthony if he was at Grafton or, most often, Lionel. If I needed to get through some difficult embroidery, I went to Mary. If I needed someone to get me out of trouble with Mama, I went to John. If I wanted a frog to put down someone’s back (usually Joan’s), I went to Edward.

If I wanted information, though, I went to Anne, who more than the rest of us had the confidence of my sister. So that night, after everyone had

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retired, I climbed out of the bed I shared with Joan and climbed into the bed that Anne had all to herself. “Kate! It’s late.”

“Please? When else can I ask you?” I didn’t even need to tell her what I sought. She knew.

“Oh, all right.” Anne sighed, purely for show. She loved being a fount of information. Meanwhile, several other heads poked out from behind bed curtains, for just as I relied upon Anne for information, my sisters had come to rely on me to ask the questions that they were too discreet to ask. “I suppose all of you know by now that Bessie got married today.”

Everyone nodded, to my disapproval, for this meant that someone had told the secret. I certainly had not. “But do you know who the groom is?” Joan and Margaret shook their heads. “Well, you’ll think that this is madness when I say it, but it’s not. Bessie has married the
king
.”

Joan and Margaret stared. “Are you joking?” Joan asked.

“She is not.” I tossed my head. “I was at the wedding.”

“What was a chit like you doing there?” That was Margaret.

“Keeping my eyes and ears open,” I said grandly. Then I realized that I was upstaging poor Anne, whose pretty face had turned almost sour. “But I don’t know how they met, or anything like that. I just know that they married today and it is a great secret until the king says it can be told. So how did it come about?”

Anne relaxed, relieved that I was not attempting to usurp her. “Well.

You know that poor Bessie had had problems with the Greys about her lands.” I nodded, for even I knew about this; it was a topic on which my sister (naturally enough) expounded a great deal. “Papa, of course, would have done what he could to aid her, being on the king’s council, but the Greys are so very well connected, what with their ties to the king’s family, and we are—not so very well connected. So she decided to go to Lord Hastings, the king’s great friend, for help. He has land not far from here, you know.”

“I met him this morning,” I broke in grandly. “A charming man. Oh.

Pardon me.”

1 4 s u s a n h i g g i n b o t h a m “Not far from here at all,” Anne continued, a note of warning in her voice. “Anyway, he and Bessie agreed that one of her boys would marry one of Lord Hastings’s daughters—although he doesn’t have any yet. They were to share in the rents and profits of what could be recovered for the boys. That way, Bessie knew Hastings would help her to get what was due to her and to her sons. Wasn’t that clever of Bessie?”

We nodded approvingly.

“So it might have ended there, but”—she looked at me and hesitated— “Lord Hastings is, er, a man with an eye for a pretty woman, they say, and so is the king. He, ah, sometimes introduces the king to women he thinks he might—like. And Hastings thought that the king might like Bessie. So when the king and Hastings went to Stony Stratford on business, he told Bessie that the king wanted to see her about the arrangement. And she came to him.”

“And the king liked her,” I surmised.

“Very much. But you see, the king likes a great many women. Anyway, he spoke with Bessie a very long time, and then he found an excuse to call her back to him the next day, and then he asked Bessie to be his mistress.”

The raptness of her audience overcame Anne’s discretion, fortunately for me, for I could not have borne it had she fallen silent. “You know, to lie with him but not to be his wife. He told her that if she did, she could have anything she wanted for herself and for her family, and that she would be kept in the best of comfort.”

I nodded sagely, though in truth I was shocked. I had seen some wicked women once at a fair, with tight, bright gowns and brighter cheeks and hair, and had been hustled past them by my brother John. Surely that was not what the king had had in mind for Bessie.

“But Bessie refused. She said that she had her boys’ good names to protect and her own honor, along with that of Papa and Mama, and that she would be no man’s mistress, not even if the man was her king. So the king shrugged and dismissed her rather coldly.”

“This was way back in April. Then, just a few weeks ago, Hastings asked

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the king for our nephew Tom’s wardship and marriage, as part of the agree-ment he’d made with Bessie. The king agreed and signed the document.

Then, just three days ago, Bessie got a note from the king, asking to see her alone.”

“After he tried to seduce her?” asked Mary. I made a mental note to find out what “seduce” meant. Maybe Lionel could tell me.

“Well, she felt she had to. It might affect Tom’s lands, after all, and he wasn’t asking for a meeting by night, so she felt safe. So she went and waited by that old oak tree that people meet at around here, and then he came galloping up and told her that he had been thinking about her all summer and that he couldn’t bear it any longer. And then he told her that a queen should be virtuous, and a queen should be beautiful, and that she was both, so why should she not be his queen? His advisers wouldn’t like it, but they would have to accept the idea or they could go hang. I believe they must have kissed and so forth quite a long time”—Anne blushed— “and then he gave her his ring as a token of his fidelity and told her to have Mama find a priest and that they would marry the next morning—that is, today. And so they did.”

“That is the most splendid, romantic thing I have ever heard in my life,”

I murmured. I could hardly wait until the next morning to reenact the scene with my dolls, though I was still somewhat unclear about the mistress and seducing part. Still, I could improvise quite well, and I certainly understood the kissing part.

“I wonder when the king will announce it,” said Mary.

Anne shrugged. “It will probably be a while. The Kingmaker won’t like it.”

“The Kingmaker?” I asked. “I thought God made kings, just like the rest of us.”

Margaret rolled her eyes. The next frog Edward procured would be for her.

Anne laughed. “The Kingmaker is Richard Neville, the Earl of Warwick.

He is immensely rich, and very popular among the people, and it was with

1 6 s u s a n h i g g i n b o t h a m his support that King Edward gained the throne after his father, the Duke of York, was killed at Wakefield. Were it not for the Kingmaker, Henry might still be on the throne.”

“So why would he not like the king marrying Bessie?”

“Because he would prefer him to marry another king’s daughter, or at least a member of another king’s family. Such marriages can be useful at times of war. Bessie can be of no good that way, being English. And there is the matter of a dowry as well. Kings like rich brides, and sometimes need them quite badly.”

“But she is virtuous and beautiful,” I said, deciding that no Kingmaker would be welcome among my dolls tomorrow. Edward and Bessie could do quite nicely all by themselves.

“That will have to be enough, because she certainly won’t bring a dowry with her. Not fit for a king, anyway!” Anne laughed.

“I wonder what that will mean for us, once it is announced,” said Margaret. “We will be the queen’s sisters, after all. Shall we go to court?”

“Why not?” said Mary.

“Court,” I murmured. “How wonderful that would be!” Then I yawned immensely, and Anne shook her head.

“Before you think of going to court, missy, you’d best think of going to bed.”

As the days passed, the Queen of England continued her usual life at Grafton with the rest of us: tending her two sons, embroidering, even helping with the work of the household when necessary. When no servants were present, for not all had been let in on the secret, I rather enjoyed calling my sister “your grace” when possible. “Will your grace come to dinner now?” “Has your grace seen that shirt I was mending for Father?”

But the charm of that began to wear thin, especially for Bessie, who more than once told me to stop my your-gracing and make myself scarce. She said it, though, in a suitably regal tone.

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I might have wondered if the wedding had been a dream, but it was not that the king had forgotten about his bride. Every couple of days, a nondescript messenger on a nondescript horse would appear at Grafton with a royal letter for Bessie and usually a small gift—some trimmings, a purse, a top for the boys. Sometimes there were pretty presents for the rest of us as well; I still have a little brooch from that period.

Papa, meanwhile, had been visiting one of our other manors on business, unaware that he had acquired the king as a son-in-law. When he arrived home, Mama and Bessie quickly pulled him aside for a conference, from which he emerged looking like a man who had been struck by lightning.

For the rest of his stay, he looked pleased and proud but also a little dazed.

That first evening home, he asked, “Did I ever tell you younger children what happened at Sandwich?”

We were all sitting in the solar, one of the improvements my parents had made to Grafton while they stil had the income from their French lands and when there were not quite so many of us children. Most of us shook our heads. “Wel , Anthony and I were fighting for Lancaster at the time, back in 1460.” My father looked vaguely apologetic before continuing. “We were planning to set sail for Guines, which the Duke of Somerset had taken, to help him take Calais. Instead the Yorkists took your mother and Anthony and me by surprise, in our beds, no less. So we were captured and hauled off to Calais.

We had good weather, but it was about the longest trip I’ve ever made in my life, let me tell you, for I was a prisoner of York. When we arrived there, the Earl of Warwick and the Earl of March—that is, our present king—rated us mercilessly. They said that I was a lowborn knave’s son who had been made by marriage and that Anthony as my son was no better.”

“I could have scratched their eyes out!” Mama interrupted. “Such impudence. And I in my oldest nightshift!”

“I believe you would have scratched their eyes out, my dear, if they hadn’t taken the precaution of shackling you. Anyway, they carried on like that for hours, or at least it felt like it, and as we were at sword point and badly outnumbered, there was nothing we could do but bear it with

1 8 s u s a n h i g g i n b o t h a m dignity. When the king appointed me to his council, he said nothing of the incident, and neither did I; better just let some things be, I’ve always said.” He smiled wryly. “And now the man is my son-in-law? I am sorely tempted when I attend his council at Reading to remind him of our conversation.”

“Do you think he’ll announce it at Reading?” Anne asked.

“He left a letter assuring me that Bessie would receive all honors due her, but did not give specifics. Who knows? Do you, Bessie?”

Bessie held out her palms and shrugged. “He tells me he will announce it when the time is right.”

“Whenever that is,” muttered Margaret.

“It is an awkward situation for the king, my dears. When has such a thing happened before in England, a king marrying in secret and making his bride his queen?”

“Well,” said my brother John cheerfully. “Someone had to be the first.”

My sisters and I, including the queen, were sewing one morning in late September when we heard the sound of approaching horses.
Many
horses, I realized just as Bessie with a sharp intake of breath walked to the window.

“It is true!” she breathed. She grabbed Anne, her usual confidante. “The king has told his council! The secret’s out.”

We all crowded to the window, where I saw that the days of our nondescript, single messenger had ended. A score of men were riding up on the finest horses to be seen in England, and no one who saw them could be in any doubt as to from whom they came, for the man in front bore what even I recognized as the king’s standard: the lion of England and the lily of France. A gaggle of villagers had attached themselves to the contingent and trailed at a respectful distance behind them, doubtlessly hoping to pick up some gossip.

“Follow me.”

We lined up behind Bessie obediently and filed into the hall, where the

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royal entourage had just arrived. My sister had barely cleared the doorway when the king’s men went down upon their knees. “Rise?” she ventured after a moment or two. With growing confidence, she added, “What news do you bring?”