The Tudor Rose (12 page)

Elizabeth had never in her life stepped into a swaying boat without the help of obsequious hands, nor had she the least idea how much the hire of a public one might be; but she had been careful to put some gold pieces and a groat or two into the little wallet attached to Edward's leather belt. As she felt with moist, anxious fingers to make sure they were still there someone hurrying in from the backstairs passage jogged her roughly, elbowing her out of the way. “Have you no errands to do, blockhead, that you must cumber the doorways?” demanded a consequential young soldier whom she recognized as a corporal in John Nesfield's guard.

It was a new experience for a Princess of England, but Elizabeth had the sense to keep her mouth shut. She moved obediently into the kitchen and looked about her, accepting a mug of breakfast ale with the rest.

The corporal called loudly for a glass of the best Malvoisie. With reluctant but unruffled courtesy the tall Benedictine sent a servant for it and went on with his accountancy, setting to shame the young lout's self-importance. For, as everyone knew, no one in the new King's guard had any right to penetrate even as far as the kitchen.

“Thinks he owns the Abbey just because the Captain sends him to report to the Tower ev'ry mornin'!” grumbled the old man who grommed the Abbot's mule, sore because the soldier had upset his ale.

“What is there to report about in this celibate backwater?” enquired a discontented scullion.

“Everything the Woodville widow and her clutch of daughters do, I suppose,” laughed a coarse-looking individual sitting on the bench close by Elizabeth's side.

“But what's the good of sending reports about
anything
to London when the new King's gone up north?” asked someone.

“He's left trusty people here to act for him, never fear!” vouchsafed the corporal, overhearing him. “Gloucester never did leave anything to chance. He's the best soldier we ever had.”

As he set down his empty glass and swaggered out into the courtyard the lay brother turned from the fire with a skillet in his hand. “A pity Sir Mars does not bring reports
back
again about what's going on in the Tower,” he said, voicing the uneasiness of all.

But uneasiness and curiosity were drowned in laughter as a shock-headed swineherd drove in an unwilling pig for sale, and the Benedictine monk, after poking its lean ribs, sent him out again. During the scuttling and the merriment Elizabeth edged her way farther along behind the fast emptying bench. It was no good standing still like a frightened hen, or being shocked by the way the servants really spoke. She noticed an honest-looking farmer selling Father Ambrose a fat goose while his two boys waited with a basket of more delicious plums than ever reached her mother's table. “I will go out with
them
,” she decided, settling the unaccustomed belt more snugly about her slender hips and looking for somewhere to set down her mug.

But before she could reach the table to join them the sunlight was momentarily blocked from the open doorway and the swineherd came running back again. He ran so fast and so blindly that he cannoned into the lay brother, who was in the act of tasting the steaming contents of the skillet with a long-handled spoon. “The Devil take you!” yelled the poor man, as drops of boiling liquid slopped over his sandalled feet.

The lad did not even apologize. “Have you heard?” he panted.

“Heard what, you clumsy numbskull?” growled the enraged Benedictine, sinking back on to a stool to hold his scalded toes.

“What they are saying all along the strand.”

“The strand is always buzzing with some silly tale or other.”

“People with nothing to do but hang about for fares have time to invent them,” scoffed a second lay brother, coming in hot from the hard labour of kneading the day's dough.

In spite of so discouraging a reception, the country lad stood his ground in the midst of them all. “'Tis about the two Princes,” he said, still too excited and short of breath to elaborate.

Cooks and scullions turned from their tasks, and the breakfasting servants ceased chewing with bread still bulging their cheeks. Involuntarily every man stopped to listen, for what was happening to the late King's sons was the subject upon which the ears of all London hung.

“Well, what about the Princes?” asked the monk in charge, grudgingly, thereby lending the uncouth newsmonger the prestige of his notice.

“They've been murdered.”

The stark words, roughened by a rural burr, seemed to drop into the expectant stillness as separately as hard stones. Their harsh impact created a horrified hush, followed by a babel of questions.

“Where?”

“Who says so?”

“How do you know?”

In the general hubbub no one noticed a fair-haired lad stagger against the table, or a mug half full of ale clatter to the stone floor.

“Seems some sailors had it from Will Slaughter's doxie. They be all round her on the water-stairs now.”

“And who is this Will Slaughter?”

“He looks after them, she says.”

“'She says'!” scoffed Brother Ambrose, closing his account-book with a bang. “It is always someone else who says. And is this—loose-living person with so sinister a name supposed to be the murderer?”

The tale-bearer, not having thought so far, could only scratch his tousled head.

“It seems scarcely likely, Brother Ambrose,” pointed out the cook with the scalded toes, forgetting his pain. “Or he would have been the last to start the news.”

“Then who is supposed to have done this dastardly thing?” demanded the Surrey farmer, his gaze upon his own two sons and the Abbot's money lying forgotten in his gnarled hand.

For a moment it seemed as if some powerful presence they all feared were holding men's tongues dumb. Some of them glanced apprehensively over their shoulders in the direction of the Palace buildings. “He who has most cause to benefit, surely,” suggested someone at last.

“There's but one man who stands more firmly through the slaughter of King Edward's innocent sons,” persisted the farmer, uninhibited by such townsmen's caution.

“King Richard is miles away making a circuit of the north,” Father Ambrose reminded him sternly.

“But, absent or present, there be those left at the Tower who still do his bidding,” mimicked a falconer from the Abbot's mews, remembering what the upstart young corporal had said.

“And mighty popular he makes himself, remitting fines and prison sentences and such,” added his mate.

The slender lad in black who had stumbled seemed to have recovered himself. To the amazement of all, he suddenly flung himself upon the bearer of the hideous tale. “
How
were they murdered?” he demanded, clutching at the other's coarse jerkin as if he would shake the truth out of him.

The hefty young swineherd goggled in surprise. “In their beds, they do say,” he stammered.

“'They say' again!” raged the clear, accusing voice. “But, in God's name, do you
know
?”

“How should I, fool?” countered the country boy, fending him off.

“Then speak no more out of your ignorance, rending people's hearts!” cried the one in black, fetching him a stinging welt across the face with his open palm.

The placid peasant's anger was roused at last. He swung back a red ham of a fist which would have persuaded an ox from one furrow to the next. In that moment the lads' two faces, coarse and cultured, came very close; and some vague recollection, stirring at the back of his slow mind, must have stayed the blow. His mouth gaped and his arm fell to his side. Not until his whirlwind of an aggressor had vanished through the backstairs door did his wits begin to function. “'Twas like our true King,” he said, awe-struck. “I saw him when they brought him through London. Close I was to him as I am to you, reverend Sir. And all white and pale he looked, just like him.”

“'Twas his very clothes,” confirmed a Smithfield man, who had often watched royalty at the tournaments.

“And the way he spoke—with that clipped Norman accent.”

“Must have been the poor King's ghost,” muttered the credulous old falconer.

And, to be on the safe side, the two lay brothers crossed themselves.

“Ghosts don't talk such common sense. Follow the fellow and bring him back,” ordered Father Ambrose, despairing of ever getting any work done in his kitchen that day. But they all hung back. No one wanted to be the first to climb the dark and winding backstairs for fear of what they might meet there. And by the time the hard-breathing pack of them had pushed each other to the top the gallery leading to the living-rooms was deserted, and colour would be added to any tale that might be told against the usurper because every man among them would believe until his dying day that he had seen the avenging ghost of unfortunate young Edward the Fifth.

U
NAWARE OF WHAT HER reluctant pursuers thought, Elizabeth regained her room. She, too, was thankful to find the gallery deserted; and more thankful still for the privacy of her small, makeshift apartments. She shot the bolt and leaned breathless against the door. “It can't be true! It can't be true! Uncle Richard couldn't have done it!” she kept telling herself. “That fellow was only a village half-wit, and the people will believe anything.” She began fumbling with shaking fingers at the unfamiliar lacings of her brother's suit. “Instead of giving up my project I ought to have slipped out while they were all gaping, and by now I might have seen them—Edward and Richard—moving about in the ordinary sunlight, living…” She had peeled off Edward's hose and now stared down at it, lying coiled and empty as a dead thing about her feet. “But of what use to go if they be dead?” She shuddered, shutting out the significant sight with both hands.

She sank down upon her bed wondering how she could find out for certain. Frightening rumours like this had reached them before, but never so vividly and crudely. Her thoughts flew to Tom Stafford, who would help her if he could. But how to get a message to him with that lynx-eyed Nesfield outside? Lord Stanley would tell her, perhaps. He was Gloucester's acquiescent subject now; but for years he had been her father's friend. And Margaret Beaufort, his wife, had shown herself kind. But perhaps the likeliest means of all to get reliable news would be through the Duchess of Buckingham. She must care profoundly, being the boys' maternal aunt. But that would almost certainly mean telling the Dowager Queen, since they were sisters. And, however badly in need of comfort herself, the habit of years made Elizabeth feel that at all costs her mother should not be distressed unless one were sure.

“I suppose the simplest thing would be to speak to the Abbot,” she decided, unable to bear the suspense any longer. “I will dress now and waylay him as he comes from Mass.” But she had barely pulled on her dress again before the unusual quiet was broken by women's agitated voices and by footsteps hurrying along the passage. She had scarcely supposed that people would be up yet, but someone was banging urgently upon her door. “Madam! Madam! You were not in your room and we have been searching for you everywhere!” they called, as if she had neglected something tremendously important.

Hastily Elizabeth rolled up Edward's suit and crammed it into a corner of her clothes chest. When she opened the door they all came pouring in. Their relief at finding her was so great that they forgot to pursue their enquiries as to where she had been. “It is the Queen!” they tried to tell her, all speaking at once. “She is prostrate… We can do nothing with her. This will kill her… Mercifully the doctor is with her…”

“It is the boys,” said old Mattie simply, coming straight to her and holding her hands for comfort much as she used to do when Elizabeth was small.

“How did you hear?” asked Elizabeth, speaking to her alone.

“That Welsh doctor of the Countess's was sent with the news almost before her Grace was dressed. He and the Abbot broke it to her as best they could.”

So this horrible thing was no tavern rumour. It was really true.

“I will come at once,” said Elizabeth, fastening the last hook and pulling a cap with long pearled lapels over her disordered hair. She pushed past the hysterical women dry-eyed. Almost running along the gallery to the Abbot's parlour, she remembered inconsequently how she used to run singing through the Palace to see her father. She had been happy then—happy and secure. And now girlhood seemed so far behind.