The Tudor Rose (46 page)

“My poor dears, what dull company I must have been!” Elizabeth reproached herself. “But I promise you I will mend my ways. I have been resolutely locking away the past, and now I must turn my thoughts to the future. So now you may hope to hear me laugh again—though not quite so boisterously as that young roisterer Harry, I hope!”

But the laughter seemed to be struck from her lips almost as soon as the promise was said. For before the morning was out the King's secretary waited upon her with a formidable-looking list of instructions. “It is his Grace's arrangements, Madam, for the coming happy event,” he explained.

“Is the King so busy that he cannot come himself to talk them over?” enquired Elizabeth.

The secretary bowed so obsequiously that he missed the spirited reproach in her eyes. “The King is always busy,” he said.

“Yes, amassing money and making notes until his pale eyes go blind!” said some new demon of unforgiving hatred in his wife's mind. But she knew that this was not true, and that Henry also worked conscientiously for the order and improvement of his realm.

“Then he will probably have need of you, Master Secretary,” she said aloud. And, being dismissed, the man seemed uncommonly glad to go.

Elizabeth carried her husband's letter to the window and the more favoured of her ladies waited, grouped about her. “Well, Bess, where is it to be this time?” asked Ann, her sister, whose turn it was to be in attendance.

It was several moments before Elizabeth answered, and she had already read and refolded the letter. Her eyes looked out hungrily upon her beloved gardens, now all aglow with flowers. “The Tower,” she said at last, quite tonelessly.

“The Tower!” they all gasped.

“Yes. The Tower, of all places! For a Welshman Henry has singularly little imagination. He might have spared me that!” It was the first time that she had ever criticised the King aloud before her gentlewomen, but the words were torn out of her.

“But why?” asked Jane, aghast.

“I do not know,” said Elizabeth wearily, sitting down upon the window-seat.

Ann came and sat beside her, putting a comforting arm about her waist. “It may not be so bad, dear Bess,” she said. “The royal apartments are right away from the—dungeons. And the King is sure to have them done up.”

“If he can spare the money!” muttered Ditton daringly.

“And there is a little garden,” said Jane, making her small contribution to their meagre sum of consolation. It was the dear, intuitive sort of thing a Stafford
would
say.

“But the rooms are so damp and her Grace suffers so with ague. And it will be winter again then,” Ditton reminded them.

“Yes, it will be winter again then, Ditton,” agreed Elizabeth. “But let us not think about it now.”

It was easy enough to say. But how could one
not
think? They hung about for a few minutes in unhappy silence. Of course the Tower was a royal residence like any other and children had been born there before, yet they all felt as if the morning's brave sunshine had passed behind a cloud. And presently they drifted away, leaving the two Plantagenet sisters together.

“Would it be any good asking Henry—” began Ann, as soon as they were alone.

But they both knew that it would not be. Elizabeth did not trouble to reply. She just sat there with her back to the window and the crumpled letter in her hand. When the Tudor ordered something one obeyed. “He must have some very particular purpose, Ann,” she said slowly after a time. “Henry never does anything without a purpose.”

“No, I daresay not,” agreed Ann anxiously. “But the damp and the depression will kill you!”

“Perhaps,” said Elizabeth, looking straight before her, “that
is
the reason.”

“Bess, you must be mad!”

They were quite alone in the quiet room. Only to one of her sisters could Elizabeth have said such a thing and hope to be understood. And this new thought that had come to her was so utterly terrible that—even though she might be wrong—she must voice it just once.

Ann, the quick-witted, was down on her knees in a moment with protective arms about her. “You mean—because of this Aragon girl?”

“Because of her dowry. And the alliance. Henry, God help him, has not enough heat in his blood to put his worst enemy away for the getting of a girl. But this love of money grows on him. And this obsession about Spain.”

They were close together and they spoke in frightened, jerky whispers. “And if you were to die—naturally, in childbirth—he would be free,” said Ann, reading the thoughts from her sister's eyes and repeating them as if she were learning some incredible lesson.

“And he could probably get a dispensation from the Pope, because Kate says the marriage with Arthur was never consummated. Then he could marry her himself. And keep the alliance—and all that money…”

“Twenty thousand scudos!” remembered Ann.

But suddenly Elizabeth pulled herself together, getting briskly to her feet. “But of course it is impossible!” she decided. “He could not be so wicked. It is I who am wicked ever to have harboured such a thought. It is just because I have been unwell and depressed.” She bent down and took her sister's anxious face between her own two cold hands. “Dear Ann,” she implored, “forget that I ever said it!”

At the sound of approaching voices Ann rose from the cushion upon which she had been kneeling and began hurriedly rearranging the pansies. “You are not the kind of person to have harboured it without some cause,” she said judiciously. “But you must try to put the suspicion from your mind, dear Bess. You know that I have always disliked Henry; but whatever his shortcomings as a husband, he is no murderer.”

“N-no,” agreed Elizabeth, with so much uncertainty that Ann gave her a swift, surprised glance. Elizabeth had been thinking of the undrawn bolts in the Tower; but because there were people about she said no more. Everything was stir and movement again. Curly-haired Mary had escaped from her nurse and was running to Elizabeth with an eager request to hear the pet parrot talk, and Margaret was wanting to tell her about the pet parrot talk, and Margaret was wanting to tell her about the finished splendour of her wedding-dress. Margaret would wait now until the Court was out of mourning and until her mother's baby was born, and then she would go to Scotland and really be married to handsome James.

There were so many things to see to and Elizabeth was naturally so cheerful that life began to interest her again. The wide, spacious life of the Tudors. She felt better and she began to laugh again. And to be ashamed of her feelings towards her husband. And one day the King came to her with an important-looking letter in his hand impressed with the great seal of Spain. He looked, she thought, immensely pleased. A great and confident King, whose policies were in all ways to be relied on. “Read this, Elizabeth. It concerns you,” he said almost genially. “It is from our good friends Ferdinand and Isabella. They are agreeable to their daughter staying on in England. Staying in our care and learning our language and our ways—until Harry shall be old enough for marriage. I sent for him last evening and talked to him about it and tried to instill a little of Arthur's seriousness into him.” Elizabeth held the letter in her hands but scarcely took in the sense of it. Her husband's words had been enough. Enormous relief uplifted her, swiftly followed by self-reproaching shame.

“And you really think that his Holiness—”

“Mercifully the marriage was never consummated. It is more a matter of the difference in their ages.”

“Then you have been trying to persuade her parents?”

“I had thought of it, but made sure they would object because Katherine is so much older than he. But now Queen Isabella herself makes this suggestion about Harry. It seems they have heard such fine reports of his growth and prowess.”

Henry was rubbing his hands together with satisfaction, and Elizabeth looked up at him searchingly, leaving the letter lying unread in her lap. She would much rather have read his mind. Quite obviously he was enormously relieved. But had their most Christian majesties raised the objections which he had expected would he not have found some other means of keeping Katherine? He, who never allowed anything less compelling than death to stand in the way of his plans? Her suspicion of his motives might have been but sickly imagination. Yet why had he arranged for her baby to be born in the Tower? She would never know. Never understand the enigma that was her husband.

“I could ask him now whether, after all, I need go there now,” she thought, “and if he says I need not I can be certain of his original reason.” But perhaps, since she must live with him amicably, it would be easier to bear the courtesy of half-truth. “And heaven knows,” she thought, “I should be accustomed to the nagging cruelty of half-truths by now!” And in any case he would be sure to say in his precise way, “Why change now when our plans are already made?” And she would be none the wiser. For Henry Tudor was not the man to spoil his policy for want of an alternative scheme or to alter arrangements of state to suit a woman's whim.

So all that Elizabeth said was, “I have always wanted Katherine of Aragon for our Harry. She will make him a good wife.”

“I was sure you would be pleased,” said Henry pleasantly, taking back his letter. And Elizabeth did him the justice to be sure that he was too. He would keep the alliance and the money without having to exchange an intelligent and fruitful wife who was used to his ways for an imperious young chit who might expect him to be romantic. It would all suit him so much better. “And to the end,” thought Elizabeth, “he will have the sanctimonious satisfaction of showing himself to the world—and to history—as the pattern of a faithful husband.”

She would make the best of her confinement and keep about as long as possible doing all the pleasant and interesting things which, thanks to her marriage, made up her life. Whatever Henry had cheated her of, he had more than kept his promise of material security. This lovely summer morning the sun was shining, and the Tower was a long way off. She could hear young people's carefree voices out in the garden and Patch was coming to persuade her to join them.

“The new heir of England has just stopped a tennis ball on his nose,” the fool reported jubilantly.

“Oh, Patch!” she exclaimed, jumping up immediately. “Does it hurt him?”

“If it does he will not stop his sport to have it attended to, Madam. Not satisfied with an hour's bashing on the tennis court, he is now determined to get his revenge for the beating young Charles Brandon gave him yesterday at the butts.”

It was Patch's way of getting her out into the sunshine. “Then let us go down and watch,” she agreed. And followed by a few of her ladies and preceded by the capering fool she went down the Queen's staircase into the sundrenched garden. It was high noon and midsummer, with the sparkling Thames at full tide. And as she made her way towards the archery butts her velvet skirt, swaying over the close-clipped lawn, was no greener than the grass. Surely nowhere in the world could there be such refreshing loveliness as these riverside lawns, nowhere such profusion of roses! To live in the present was all one asked for on a June morning.

She found her son with his boon companion young Brandon, whose father had been Henry Tudor's standard-bearer at Bosworth, standing among a group of young friends, sports enthusiasts and pages. Even some of the servants, taking time off from their duties, must needs stop to watch the contest. As usual he had thrown off his coat, and even at a distance it was easy to pick him out as the tall red-head in shirt and doublet. Harry might speak fluent French with his tutor or love music with the passion of a Welshman, but out here at sport he was sturdily English. Coming quietly closer, Elizabeth considered him objectively, less as her son than as a future King. He lacked the fine-drawn features of some of his ancestors and much of their Norman culture, but he had an air of command, and there was a directness about him, a forthright manner of speech, which made easy contact with those about him. Even with the watching servants and the unimportant pages who raced to retrieve his arrows he had the right jest, the common touch. That thing which his father, for all his wisdom, lacked. Yet standing there with legs braced and a man's-size bow drawn between his hands he seemed to dominate them all. And suddenly Elizabeth felt very proud.

“Humble and Reverent” she had taken as her motto, and, although born of a fiery race, she had striven to live up to it. She, a Yorkist, had submitted herself to a Lancastrian. In years to come people might not remember much about her. But here was the gift she had made to her country. The fusion of the red and white roses into one strong Tudor rose. And looking at Harry she felt assured that all she had been through of uncertainty and suffering was worth the outcome; for surely it was no small thing to mother a dynasty which was close to the heart of England?

She watched her son play out the contest. Red-headed Harry— strong, gifted, handsome—the future Henry the Eighth of England, with all his father's hoarded wealth to spend and all the security of his mother's unquestioned blood, a splendid marriage and all his shining path of youth stretching before him. “What will he make of it?” she wondered, wishing with all her heart that she could see into the future.

He had seen her now and aimed his best. Whether it were tennis, wrestling or archery, he always liked to have her there, watching his sport. That he played up to an admiring audience there was no denying, but his backers knew that whether he won or lost he would accept the issue just as cheerfully. “Right on the inside rim of the red! That brings the score even, Charles. Heaven send I get a gold!” he shouted, applauding his opponent's marksmanship. “Never mind all this solemn talk of marriage, this is what I call a fine morning's sport!”