The Stolen Crown: The Secret Marriage That Forever Changed the Fate of England (6 page)

2 6 s u s a n h i g g i n b o t h a m “Oh, dear,” said Margaret. “You mustn’t mention that duke, you know.”

“Why? Is he dead?”

“Worse. A Lancastrian.” Margaret looked around to see if she could speak in safety, and finding that she could, continued, “Her husband is Henry Holland. My late father arranged their marriage when they were quite young, but they never suited, although they have a girl—another Anne, who is to marry Warwick’s nephew.”

“The Kingmaker? That Warwick?”

Margaret smiled. “Yes, that Warwick. Anyway, the Duke of Exeter was never loyal to my father, even though he was his son-in-law. He fought against him time after time, and Anne had no influence over him. He could have made his peace after Towton, as did all others with sense”— she glanced in my father’s direction—“but he refused, and now he is in France with that virago Margaret of Anjou. Where we all hope they stay and rot.”

“Of course. It must be hard for her. The Duchess of Exeter,” I hastened to add, as Margaret’s eyebrows shot up and she stiffened. I wondered if she had been named for the virago in more congenial times.

Margaret, evidently assured that I did not have latent Lancastrian tendencies, relaxed again. “Well, my brother has treated her well. She was granted her husband’s forfeited estates, so she lives quite comfortably. And she has custody of the little Duke of Buckingham, who is very wealthy. I wonder that he is not here with her, in fact. Hush, now, here she comes.”

I hardly needed the warning, as the Duchess of Exeter was a large lady, though of the sort who carried her avoirdupois grandly, and her entry into a room could not be readily missed. I moved to let the sisters sit side by side, but Margaret kindly steered me to a nearby stool. “We are all sisters now. Stay.” As I settled down, respectfully silent but quite alert, she asked Anne, “So where are your charges?”

“They stayed behind. Humphrey is ailing.”

“Poor Humphrey is always ailing. I am surprised, though, you chose not to bring Harry by himself. There has been talk, you know—”

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“I know. But Humphrey never does well without Harry, and I shall not have it on my conscience that I caused the boy to sicken worse. And Harry wouldn’t have gone with Humphrey ill, anyway. He’s very protective of him. It’s sweet to see, but quite sad too. That boy hasn’t long for the world, even though I have the best physicians attending him. There’s plenty of time for this other business, after all; Harry’s but nine.”

“So has a girl been chosen, by the by? There seem to be several likely choices.”

“I cannot say. But I think the answer is close at hand.”

“Ah.”

“So, sister, how goes it with your marriage negotiations?”

But my favorite new relation was the Duchess of Norfolk, who was the king’s aunt, being his mother’s older sister. She was four-and-sixty and immensely rich, and Margaret told me in private after she came to know me a little better that her heirs had a running wager over whether she would ever die. More as an accessory than out of need, she used a cane, finely carved and richly bejeweled, and in speaking, she often used it to emphasize her points, sometimes even poking the listener when she wanted to be particularly emphatic. By this I do not mean that she was a harridan; her pokes were usually of the friendliest sort. I should know, as she took somewhat of a fancy to me—“my fellow Katherine” and “a bright-eyed creature,” she called me—and I was often called upon to help her thread her needle or some similar task suited for the young and sharp-eyed.

John, my third oldest brother, though quite useless for such ladies’ tasks, also got quite a few pokes with the cane that Christmas, being, like the duchess, quite fond of chess. Just after a few days at Eltham Palace, it had become generally accepted that a small table in the corner was reserved for them alone, and I often heard the duchess thumping her cane in satisfaction when she had made a good move or in warning when John was being too dilatory in making his.

It was nearly Twelfth Night when the king came in and waved for silence, rather to my disappointment, for I had been practicing some dance

2 8 s u s a n h i g g i n b o t h a m steps with my brother Richard, who, despite being the quietest male in the family, was the best dancer. Thanks to his skill, I was practically floating. As we came to a halt, Edward said, “I am pleased to say that there will be another wedding in the family. Within a couple of weeks, as a matter of fact.”

We unmarried Woodville girls looked back and forth at each other. We shared the same suite of chambers at Eltham. Had one of us been keeping a secret from the others? It was something we frowned upon.

“Not I, brother, I hope?” asked Margaret. There was always some scheme afoot to marry her to someone, I knew. I suspected that she was in no hurry to leave England.

“No, my dear, don’t you think I’d have the courtesy to tell you first?

No. Our happy couple is my dear aunt, the Duchess of Norfolk, and young John here.” He gestured over toward the chess table where my brother and the duchess had duly lifted their attention from the game. “Will you join me in congratulating them?”

“Have you lost your senses?” said George.

“No. Have you lost yours, speaking to your king like that?”

“Brother, it is diabolical! A man of how old—twenty?—and a lady in her sixties?”

“George—”

“It is obscene!” He looked around for the youngest female in the room, who much to my dismay turned out to be me, and pointed. “Why not put this girl in bed with a man of seventy, while you’re at it?”

“How dare you speak of my young sister in bed with anyone, you blackguard?” demanded John.

“How dare you address me so when you are not even a knight?”

“That will soon be remedied, I hear,” said John. “In the meantime, how are my marital affairs any of your concern? I am not in your wardship.”

“No, because a ward must have an income, and you’ve none—a fine sort to marry a duchess, and my own aunt! Ned, don’t you see the canker you’ve set loose? It’s not bad enough that you marry a nobody just because she wouldn’t spread her leg—”

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The king lunged at George, and I truly think he might have murdered him then and there were it not for what happened next. The Duchess of Norfolk stepped between the brothers and rapped her cane against the floor with a mighty thud. Then she prodded George with it. “Silence, you fool!”

George stepped back. Breathing hard, so did the king.

“As my heirs know to their chagrin, I am in full possession of my faculties. I am marrying this young man under duress from no one and at no one’s instigation except for his and mine,” said the duchess. “Our motives are simple: I wish for congenial companionship in my old age and he wishes for a larger income. We have become friends over these past days, and we understand each other perfectly. Our marriage will provide us both with what we desire, which in neither case has anything to do with the bedchamber. So, Nephew George, you may rest your mind easy on that account. In fact, I suggest you retire and rest your body as well before you say something else you will come to regret.”

George muttered something that sounded vaguely apologetic and left the chamber. My sister’s lip was trembling. I had seen it do so from anger as well as from hurt, and I wondered which emotion was uppermost. The king put a hand on her shoulder. “George can be a fool sometimes, as you’ve seen,”

he said quietly. “I will speak to him further about his folly tomorrow. I suggest we retire for the evening, my dear.” He waved breezily to the rest of us. “But the rest of you are free to stay and make merry.”

None of us, however, felt like doing so.

“Why, John? Why would you put us to shame?”

“Shame in marrying a rich widow, sister? I’m not exactly the first man to conceive such an idea, my dear.”

The king was transacting some business, leaving the queen with her ladies, Mama, and some of her sisters to do needlework together. Along with the rest of the ladies, save for Mama, I moved off at a distance and

3 0 s u s a n h i g g i n b o t h a m made a great show of playing with my sister’s dog by the hearth, hoping that my presence would not be remembered, as it too often was when conversations turned interesting.

“A rich widow forty years older than you!”

“Not to be ungallant, but it’s five and forty, actually.”

“What will people say? It would not be so bad if there were a possibility of children, but—”

“You heard the lady last night. It suits us both. And by ‘people,’ I suppose you mean the Earl of Warwick, not just the king’s fool brother George?”

“John, do bear in mind that the earl is a powerful man, and that George is next in line to the throne. He cannot be dismissed so easily, not until I bear a son.”

“Something you have had no difficulty doing in the past, and something the king has effected with others in the past too, if rumor informs me correctly. Ah, sister, don’t look so distressed! You cannot believe that the king came to your bed a virgin.”

I concentrated hard on making myself invisible, and evidently succeeded.

“John, I am in no mood for your jests today. I have found out but recently—” My sister bit her lip and fixed her eyes on her embroidery.

“Found out what, Bessie?”

Mama said, “The king has a mistress, it appears.”

“The king has several, of varying degrees and complexion,” John said bluntly. “Always has. Always will. Bessie, your husband is not the sort of man who can be faithful to a single woman. Some men simply aren’t, you know. Face that, and treat it as a failing about which you can do nothing, and you will be far happier. They’re not his queen. You are.”

“That is what Mama tells me. But—”

“But what, sweetheart?”

“I am not with child, yet again. I have had evidence of it just this morning.”

“Pshaw! You and the king have been together constantly only since late September. There’s plenty of time. Now, let me tell you the conditions that the duchess has set upon my marriage with her, and that will make you

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smile. I am not to incur huge gaming debts. A gentlemanly amount is fine, but not
huge
ones. I am to spend time at my wife’s household regularly, except in time of war, when I can be excused. My dogs are to stay out of her chamber. My harlots—the duchess flatters me by assuming I have harlots, though I don’t—are to stay far away from any property that she owns. And I am not to wear my doublets too short, for it is a fashion of which she mightily disapproves and that she informs me makes any man appear to have a large arse.”

“Did she really say
arse
?”

The queen and my mother looked stricken. “Katherine, do go work on your music. Immediately.”

“Yes, your grace.”

“Kate?”

“Yes, John?”

“She did say
arse
. Now run along.”

The Duchess of Norfolk and John were married not long after that, in the king’s chapel at Westminster Palace. The duchess’s heirs stayed far away from the ceremony, as did her nephews the Kingmaker and George, but those of us who attended enjoyed ourselves thoroughly—and John’s doublet was not at all too short.

With this excitement over, the court was busy planning for my sister’s coronation in May, while we unmarried Woodvilles settled into our living quarters at Greenwich, which the king had granted to my sister along with Sheen. Overlooking the Thames and a short barge ride to Westminster or Sheen, it well deserved its nickname of Placentia—House of Pleasure.

I had been resident at Greenwich Palace (which is precisely how I liked to say it in those days) for some time when, around Easter, the Duchess of Exeter was announced. She swept into the queen’s chamber, followed by two boys who almost seemed lost behind her rustling, trailing skirts.

The boys knelt to the queen, who quickly bade them to rise, after which

3 2 s u s a n h i g g i n b o t h a m I had the leisure to study them. I guessed the older to be about nine, the younger about seven. With their curling, dark, shoulder-length hair, large brown eyes, and finely etched facial features, it was obvious that they were brothers, but though neither boy could be called robust looking, it was painfully apparent that the younger boy was of delicate, if not outright sickly, health. His gentle face was too pale and had a pinched expression, and he seemed to need the help of the older boy to rise.

“Your grace, may I present the Duke of Buckingham, Henry Stafford,”

the Duchess of Exeter said. “And Lord Humphrey Stafford, his brother.”

My sister smiled. “Welcome, boys, to your new home. I believe you shall like it well here.”

New home? The boys, however, did not look surprised.

“Someone shall show you your chambers,” the queen continued. Her eyes traveled to me. “And then my sister, Lady Katherine, will show you around the grounds if you like.”

“Not Humphrey, your grace, if you please,” said the Duke of Buckingham quickly. “He’s tired from the barge and needs to rest.”

Tired from the
barge
? I wondered in the arrogance of good health.

“Harry, speak only when you are bidden,” warned the Duchess of Exeter.

“But Humphrey’s tired,” said the small duke in a firm voice. There was something fierce in his face, which changed abruptly when he looked down at his brother. “Aren’t you, Humphrey?”

“A bit,” admitted Humphrey.

“Then he must be allowed to rest.”

The Duchess of Exeter opened her mouth, probably to give the Duke of Buckingham another talking-to, but my sister said, “I quite understand, my dear. Go to your chamber and rest as long as you need, both of you. There will be plenty of time to get used to your new surroundings.”