The Tudor Rose Part 11

"He should be happy, too, with anyone so lovely," Margaret had said. "Poor Henry, who has never known a father or had a home since he was a child!"

Elizabeth remembered how her pity had been stirred, contrasting such misfortune with her own happy girlhood.

"My first husband, the Earl of Richmond, died three months before Henry was born, and I was only fifteen," Margaret had explained. "Without my brother-in-law Jasper Tudor I don't know what we should have done."

"Only fifteen, Madam!" Elizabeth had exclaimed.

"The Tudors were ambitious and we Beauforts are descended from John of Gaunt, so Owen Tudor and Katherine of Valois got me for their elder son Edmund as soon as they could. But of course you know all that. Perhaps I loved Henry all the more because I was so young and he was all I had left," Margaret had added, as if apologizing for all she had since done for him.

Elizabeth remembered how she had sat entranced, listening to the romantic story of all that had happened to them. Margaret, the child-widow, had brought him up in Pembroke Castle until he was four, when the fortune of civil war had driven Lancastrian Jasper Tudor out, and then her own father, King Edward, had given the castle and the custody of both of them to Lord Herbert.

"Were they unkind to you?" Elizabeth had asked anxiously.

"Oh no, they were always kind," Margaret had a.s.sured her. "I loved Lady Herbert, and after Jasper was exiled and I was forced to marry again and leave Henry she was like a mother to him. The Herberts had a family of lively girls, so he was not too lonely. But when he was barely sixteen your father tried to get hold of him, and Jasper managed to get a s.h.i.+p and take him to Brittany."

Elizabeth's memory of all his hazardous adventures which followed was slightly muddled because she had been thinking about the lively girls who had been his companions. "Were they beautiful?" she had asked.

"Who?" Margaret had asked, breaking off in the middle of her thrilling story.

"Those Herbert girls."

"Really, I do not remember. There was one of them, Maude, whom he specially liked, I remember. But of course he was only a lad," she had added hastily, as if suddenly understanding the reason for Elizabeth's curiosity.

"Not much younger than you were when you fell in love with Edmund Tudor," she remembered saying, and blushed at the memory of such gaucherie.

But Margaret had only smiled and explained that Henry was not headstrong like herself, and that if, being half Celtic, his head had been stuffed with romantic dreams, that was probably as far as any of his amours had got.

Elizabeth was sensible enough to appreciate how much it would mean to the Countess to get her son home after so long a separation, and how she and people like Bishop Morton looked upon it as a Christian duty to try to put an end to these interminable wars of the red and white roses. But even while realising that she, Elizabeth, was but a necessary part of their plans, she could not restrain her thoughts from dwelling more and more upon Henry, the chivalrous knight, who was coming to rescue her from a marriage which must be dreaded in the sight of G.o.d and man.

She got up and leaned upon the battlements, trying to imagine how they would meet, her present anxiety almost forgotten. But it was difficult to picture him. He was only someone who had been described to her by other people, and since he had always been abroad she had never even seen a painting of him. Whereas Richard Plantagenet's face and figure and movements had been familiar to her all her life. They were sharp and clear-cut in her mind, insistently before her. In moments of irresolution she always made herself think of him as he had looked that night in the Long Gallery, hideously condemned by guilty fear; but since then she had seen him several times riding out to review his troops or talking to Sir Robert Brackenbury about the Tower defences, and almost always he had been wearing his blazoned surcoat and the burnished armour he had worn at the battle of Tewkesbury. A man who, like her father, became more vital at the threat of physical danger and went capably about his plans for meeting it.

During those last few days before she left the Palace he had seemed to stand out all the more spectacularly because he stood so much alone. He had issued a cleverly worded proclamation calling upon his people to defend their country, and consequently the Duke of Norfolk, Lord Lovell and many other faithful friends were away raising troops for him in their own counties; and just before the news of Henry's landing had reached him Lord Stanley had purposely asked leave to visit his estates. Because he had pleaded ill health the King could not very well deny him, particularly as he dared not offend a family who between them owned most of Lancas.h.i.+re and Ches.h.i.+re. But he would need someone else of high standing about the Palace to take his Lord Steward's place, he said. And unfortunately for Stanley his eldest son was present at the time. It was all being done as suavely as possible, but everybody knew that young Lord Strange was really kept at Court as a hostage for his father's fidelity.

"It is almost impossible to trick that man!" the Countess had said, commiserating with her husband's anxiety while superintending preparations for their journey into Lancas.h.i.+re.

But Henry Tudor, it seemed, had managed to do so a few days later. Hearing that his enemy intended to land at Milford, Richard thought only of the small port of that name near Southampton, and ordered his fleet to patrol all that part of the coast facing France; but the Tudor took a wide sweep round Land's End and landed at Milford Haven in Wales, disembarking only a few miles from Pembroke. Not only had he upset all Richard's military calculations but his move gave him all the advantage of a homecoming rather than an invasion. Jasper Tudor, Earl of Pembroke, was with him, of course; and the castle threw wide its gates in welcome. Seeing that popular warrior back again, all Wales rose in support of his nephew, marching beneath the fiery-red dragon banner of Cadwallader, the old British King from whom the Tudors claimed descent. Even now they were probably gathering more and more support as they swarmed across the border into England.

So much Elizabeth had heard; and she knew, too, that Richard was at Nottingham, his "castle of care," with twelve thousand men. Since then the Constable of Sheriff Hutton had heard nothing; but anyone looking out across the dried-up country could be sure that this time there would be no floods to help the Yorkist, and that the supporters of the Lancastrian heir were scarcely likely to be caught napping a second time with unprotected bridges over the Severn.

So somewhere between Pembroke and Nottingham Lancastrians and Yorkists must have met. Even now the fighting might be over. Thousands of people up and down the country might know the result of some stupendous battle and be discussing it in home and street and tavern whilst she-to whom it mattered so supremely- must wait in captive ignorance upon these accursed battlements.

Mercifully, Warwick had ceased his irritating singing. He had climbed upon the low stonework beside her and was engaged in flicking tiny bits of masonry down into the moat. "Look, horses!" he said suddenly, clutching at her elbow. If his intellect were a bit weak, there was certainly nothing amiss with his eyesight.

Elizabeth could see nothing but a cloud of dust. "Where?" she asked eagerly.

"Beyond the tree they always let me ride to. Look, Cousin Bess, there are a lot of them and they are level with it. Now they have pa.s.sed it. Surely you can see them, Cousin Bess?"

Yes, she could see them now. A party of hors.e.m.e.n making straight for the castle. And the sentries must have seen them too, for the Captain of the Guard was shouting orders; and soon the portly Constable, badly winded from hurrying up the turret stairs, was beside her. "Whoever comes here for your Grace is sure to be from the winning side," he panted.

All her life Elizabeth would remember those moments of suspense. The party was halfway across the tiltyard now and in a matter of seconds the whole direction of her life would be known to her, one way or the other. She scarcely dared to look. "Is there anyone among them whom we know, Mattie?" she asked, as her excited women came fluttering to the wall beside her.

But Mattie's eyes were old and dim and the hors.e.m.e.n, bunched together, were but foreshortened figures who seemed to have helmets but no faces. It was younger eyes and a simpler mind that settled the matter. "No white boars!" lamented Warwick, for whom the blanc sanglier stood for Westminster and the entourage of Aunt Anne, the only person who had ever really made a home for him since his parents died.

"It is true, what the young Duke says," corroborated the Constable, to whom it meant the break-up of a lifetime's service.

"That looks like Sir Robert Willoughby riding in the middle of them," ventured one of Elizabeth's women.

"And it certainly is Sir Humphrey Brereton raising his hand in greeting," said Elizabeth, closing her eyes in wordless grat.i.tude. "How hot they must be, riding so fast beneath this fierce sun! Let us go down and welcome them."

Since whichever way the fighting had gone Elizabeth would be Queen of England, the Constable could do no less than obey. He barked an unwilling order, and as she led the way down the winding stairs they could hear the rattle of the drawbridge chains and the hollow thud of hooves above the moat; and by the time they all emerged into the sunlight at the bottom the courtyard was full of men of the garrison staring and dusty Lancastrians dismounting.

Sir Robert Willoughby was no sooner out of the saddle than he was kneeling to kiss Elizabeth's hand. "Lord Stanley sent me to give your Grace the glad news," he said. "At a place called Bosworth, outside Leicester, Henry Tudor was victorious."

So all her misfortunes and anxieties were over. Because she could find no adequate words, Elizabeth smiled at him through tears of relief. "The new King has sent me to escort you home to Westminster," he was saying.

"The new King?" she repeated.

"King Henry, may G.o.d preserve him!"

"You mean-they have already crowned him?"

"Milord Stanley crowned him upon the battlefield, and all men shouted 'Long live King Henry the Seventh,'" added Humphrey Brereton, coming, too, to kiss her hand.

But of course they could not have crowned him without her. Elizabeth stood upon the bottom stair looking at their exultant, upturned faces, and trying not to see the sullen faces of Yorks.h.i.+remen who stood in silent groups behind them. Most of them had fought at Tewkesbury, and for them she knew it was as if their G.o.d had gone. "But what could they crown him with?" she asked in bewilderment, her voice sounding singularly young and fresh as it echoed back between the ancient walls.

"A soldier found the crown of England in a thorn bush," Humphrey answered her eagerly.

For a moment Elizabeth did not see them at all, only a vivid picture of Richard Plantagenet on White Surrey with the golden circlet gleaming around his vizored helmet. While there was breath in his body, she knew, he would defend it. "Then Richard-?" she faltered.

"He is dead."

The crisp triumphant words came from Sir Robert, but Elizabeth heard a hard-bitten old archer sob. Even in the moment of their success the Lancastrian party must have been aware of the hatred and sorrow that surrounded them. At a word from their officers the garrisons would have murdered them. They looked towards the Constable, and the Constable, doughty warrior as he was, looked down at the ground. When there is nothing left to fight for, why give orders?

"The Plantagenet fought like a lion. Three separate charges he led, although bleeding from his wounds," stated Humphrey out of his young generosity. "But just as he had fought his way within grappling distance of the Tudor, we killed him."

The groan that came from a score of Yorkist throats was made more expressive than any words. "How many were with him when he fell?" their Captain asked tersely.

"Only Lord Lovell-and possibly his standard bearer," answered Sir Robert, and somehow, to his annoyance, for all the fine news he had brought, felt ashamed before them.

"He seems to have been fighting an army single-handed," said Elizabeth. Then, feeling that something quite different was expected of her, she added, with an effort at vindictiveness, "I wonder how he liked the feel of death?" and watched the hurt expressions of the men who had avenged her brothers change to appreciative grins.

"Let us go in and dine," suggested the Constable tactfully. "You must have ridden furiously, Sirs."

Washed and hospitably set at table their high spirits returned.

"Where will King Henry meet me?" asked Elizabeth, picking at her pigeon pie and stumbling a little over the startlingly new t.i.tle.

"He did not say, your Grace. Only that you were to take whatever time you needed for your comfort and that we are to escort you safely to your lady mother at Westminster."

Elizabeth pushed the pie aside with her new-fangled French fork. "And he sent no letter-nor any ring?" she asked in a low voice, hoping that no one else at table would note her personal disappointment.

"Madam, he was but newly cleaned up from battle, in which he, too, had played an honourable part, and on his way to Leicester to give thanks."

"Of course," said Elizabeth, trying to stifle a feeling of flatness. It was scarcely the moment when a girl wants to go back to her mother. She was gay and beautiful and a promised bride. She wanted to share in all the excitement and ride in triumph through London with her future husband at her side. But of course what he had so arranged was considerate and proper. G.o.d must come first-G.o.d and the proprieties!

She had caught herself so often of late holding cynical conversations with herself like that. She must mention it as a fault to her confessor-she, who this very day had so much to be thankful for! In the meantime as soon as dinner was over she would give orders to her women about the packing of her gear. She must not keep Henry waiting.

"And my cousin of Warwick?" she asked, hoping the boy had not been forgotten.

"He is to come too," Sir Robert told her. So she leaned across the table to tell the boy. "We are going back to Westminster where there will be the acrobats and mummers that you like, and Katherine and Bridget to play with," she told him, vowing in her heart that she would try to be as kind to him as Anne had been.

"I will have my people pack everything to-night so that we may all set out in the cool of the morning," she promised Sir Robert and Humphrey. "And I shall forget about Richard," she added to herself, "when I get away from here and no longer see the faces of his men around me."

The next morning Elizabeth was happier than she had been for months. A light breeze had sprung up in the night, cooling the countryside. Puffy white clouds scudded across a blue August sky, the scent of honeysuckle was sweet in the hedgerows, and in the long fields red-gold barley ripened early to harvest. As they left Yorks.h.i.+re behind people came out in all the villages to call down blessings upon her, and she knew the loving welcome which awaited her in London. "All my griefs and anxieties I am leaving behind," she thought, "and a new life lies ahead. New apartments are being prepared for my mother, who must be delighted at the outcome of it all. She will be one of the most important personages in the land again, and Margaret of Richmond, who cares less for these things, will have her son. Dorset and Tom Stafford and other attainted friends will be home again. There will be all the excitement of preparing for a wedding and a coronation and I must try to forget the past. And I shall have a good husband-and, blessed Mother of G.o.d, let me have children!" prayed Elizabeth. "And because G.o.d has delivered me from so much, though I be Queen of England," she vowed, "I will take the words 'Humble and Reverent' for my motto."

HALF THE n.o.bILITY IN the country seemed to flock in Elizabeth's wake to Westminster, and the Londoners' welcome was rapturous. The reinstated Queen Dowager met her with every show of tenderness, the return of her son Dorset seeming to have alleviated much of her bitterness; but although Elizabeth was officially in her mother's care she wisely insisted upon keeping some of their apartments to herself. They were the pleasantest in all Westminster Palace and Henry's courteous instructions for their comfort had been irreproachable; but although everybody had expected that he would want to strengthen his position by an immediate union with the Yorkist heiress, so far there had been no talk of marriage.

Elizabeth's first meeting with Henry Tudor had not been at all as she had pictured it in her romantic imaginings at Sheriff Hutton. After spending a long time consolidating his success in the various counties as he came southward, he had come to wait formally upon them. There had been nothing of Elizabeth's own impulsive gladness in his manner. She had found him a grave, reserved young man who looked considerably older than his age; and not quite so good-looking as his mother and the Stanleys had suggested. It was not that he was plain or lacked dignity, but his face was pale and a thought too long and narrow. But one could scarcely expect him to be gay or amusing after the hards.h.i.+ps of his life, she supposed; and even if he spoke with a slight French accent, at least he appeared to have acquired no foreign mannerisms.

"Why does he so seldom come to see us?" she asked of Stanley, after the new King had finally taken up residence in the opposite wing of the Palace.

"Because there is so much for him to do," Stanley had said, excusing him either because he admired his stepson's industry or because he himself had just been rewarded with the earldom of Derby. "His Grace has already made himself popular with the London merchants, not by inviting them to lavish banquets as the late King did, but by knowledgeably suggesting fresh markets for them abroad. He is giving important offices to men of ability like Morton, too, with a view to curbing the barons' power and so preserving peace in the realm. And now he is calling his first Council so that preparations may go forward for a coronation."

"Perhaps he has said nothing about a wedding because he feels ill at ease taking precedence in my home," thought Elizabeth, very well aware of her superior rights. And on the occasion of one of Henry's rare visits, when for a moment or two they had been tactfully left alone, she had turned to him with all her habitual generosity. "I hope that you like living here," she had said shyly, thinking pitifully of his fatherless years. "You must know that everything I have and am is yours, Henry, in return for the risk you took to avenge my brothers. Lord Derby tells me how well the people have received you, and once my lineage is linked to yours..."

But to her hurt amazement he had seemed to want nothing from her, ignoring even his own slender Plantagenet claim through John of Gaunt. "My father's forebears were Kings of Wales, so I need no modern t.i.tle," he had said cooly. "And apart from that I do a.s.sure you that there is no need for you to worry about me, Cousin Elizabeth, since I am King by right of conquest."

Feeling that her richest gift had been flung back in her face, Elizabeth's rare temper blazed out. "Even your conquest might not have been accomplished without my help," she told him, remembering her hazardous and secret visit to the tavern. "It was my promise to marry you, and Lord Stanley's strategy, that made it possible."

"And my Uncle Jasper's popularity in Wales," Henry had added, with maddening exact.i.tude.

And so the weeks had run on into autumn and still no marriage had been arranged. But there had been a coronation. A coronation at which she and her mother and sisters had been honoured guests, but no more. For Henry the Seventh, having by his own quiet efficiency established himself strongly enough on the throne, seemed to resent the thought of taking his t.i.tle through her.

"I do not see how you can be crowned until you are his wife," Margaret of Richmond had pointed out kindly, noting her outraged fury.

"It is not for him to give me the crown," Elizabeth had retorted haughtily, "since I already am the Queen."

"In reality-and in the people's hearts," Margaret had agreed gently. "Only give my son a little time to work for the reordering of this poor torn kingdom, my child, and your wedding will come later. And we shall see that it is very splendid. Apart from anything else, you must remember that, although you are only distant cousins, Henry has to wait for a dispensation from the Pope."

There was no gainsaying that. Henry was always so gallingly right. And so Elizabeth had waited in proud resentment, pa.s.sing the time mostly in her own rooms, shamed once more because the man who was to marry her did not appear to want to. And whenever Tom Stafford and other young men who had been her friends came to pay their respects to her she was more delighted to see them than an affianced bride should have been.

There were three of them gathered together in her candlelit room one evening towards the end of October. Outside rain lashed at the window-panes, making their fireside companions.h.i.+p the more cosy. Humphrey Brereton read aloud the poem he had been writing about her, Tom Stafford thrummed his lute and sang her the latest love-songs, and George Strange, the only one of the trio who was not in love with her, regaled her with the latest gossip while her ladies handed round wine and sweetmeats. Elizabeth knew that she was looking radiantly beautiful in the soft candlelight, and altogether it had been one of those happy evenings which one stores in memory. "Now tell me about Bosworth," she invited suddenly, seating herself informally on a fireside stool. Remembering those tense moments on the battlements at Sheriff Hutton and the joy of her subsequent journey to London, she had the feeling that life had somehow stopped for her since then. "But surely you must have heard it all a dozen times, Madam!" the young men protested, joining her around the hearth.

"From my new Lancastrian entourage, yes," she admitted dryly. "But you must remember that I have been a Yorkist all my life. Could you not tell me everything just as it really happened-from both points of view? How Henry Tudor won and how Richard Plantagenet-was betrayed?"

"Although it is a long story, the actual battle lasted only two hours," began Brereton, suddenly sobered by the recollection.

"Yet it practically changed the face of England," said Stafford thoughtfully, laying aside his lute.

"And if ever a man were betrayed, it was Richard Plantagenet," corroborated George Strange, who should have known, being Stanley's son.

Their faces were grave now, yet eager, as they tried to relive it for their beloved Princess, and to be impartial. At an impatient wave of Elizabeth's hand the women had withdrawn to the other end of the room, and the only sounds about her were the homely crackling of the freshly thrown logs and the alternating depths and lightness of three manly voices.

"It was the sixteenth of August when Richard marched out of Nottingham with twelve thousand men, and he was in Leicester by sunset," began Stafford. "I remember the dates because I had managed to escape his restraint by then and join in this second attempt for the same cause for which my father lost his life. On the eighteenth Richard was about a mile from this place called Bosworth and our spies brought us word that he had had his men throw up breastworks and pitch tents."

"I marched eastward from South Wales with Henry Tudor," joined in Brereton eagerly. "He had only seven thousand men, so you can imagine we had been anxious all the way to know on which side Lord Stanley would fight! It was not until we reached Athelstone that your father and uncle met him secretly, George. So secretly that Henry stole out to them quite alone, and almost lost himself getting back; and the rest of us hadn't an idea until the battle was almost over what your precious family meant to do."

"When the Lancastrians came up the two armies were in sight of each other, each upon a hill," George Strange explained. "But I noticed that my father placed his men slightly nearer to King Richard's so as to allay his suspicion until the last moment. You see, Lady Bess, I was a hostage with the Duke of Norfolk's forces and he had instructions to kill me at the first indication of my father's defection. Richard was never fool enough to trust any of us, once he'd gone back on his word about keeping your brothers safe."

"You must have spent some mightly uncomfortable hours, George!" said Stafford.

"I only wished they would get started. But Richard would not fight on the Sunday."

"He was such an odd mixture of ruthlessness and superst.i.tion!" murmured Elizabeth, sitting over the fire with chin cupped in hand.

"At least his suspense that Sunday must have been worse than mine!" grinned Strange. "For I think he had an inkling that my father and Henry Tudor had met. They say he scarcely slept till dawn and then waked in a sweat complaining that he had seen avenging ghosts."

"I hope my father's was one of them!" said Stafford, un.o.btrusively crossing himself.

"When he couldn't stand it any longer he called out for Lord Lovell and Catesby and went the rounds of the camp, leaving his tent so early that there was neither priest to shrive him before battle nor any breakfast," continued Strange. "Lovell told me afterwards that they caught a sentry sleeping and Richard stabbed him to the heart with that jewelled dagger he was always fingering. 'I found him asleep and have left him so,' he said."

"One can almost hear him saying it," laughed Brereton, half admiringly. "He was a fiend for discipline, and must have known there were traitors all around him."

"How would he have known?" asked Elizabeth, listening spellbound.

"It appears that Norfolk had already found some doggerel pinned to his tent flap," explained Strange. "A friend trying to warn him, probably. 'Jock of Norfolk be not too bold, for d.i.c.kon thy master is bought and sold,' it said."

"You may owe your life to that sc.r.a.p of paper, George," observed Tom Stafford. "For John Howard of Norfolk must have known that if your father were on the winning side it would go ill with anyone who had harmed you!"

"Richard must have had good reason to kill that sleeping sentry too," added Brereton. "For we'd sent Sir Simon Digby to get through the Yorkist lines, and it was such laggards who made it possible. If spies could come and go like that the King must have realized that, splendid as his army looked, it was half full of traitors."

"It was then, wasn't it, that he sent an order for Lord Stanley to bring his forces close up against his own?" asked Stafford.

"'By Christ's pa.s.sion, if they are not here by supper-time I will cut off his son's head!' he raved," confirmed Strange. He kicked at a fallen log as he spoke and the sudden blaze illuminated the reminiscent smile on his face. "And let all who dub my father a time-server remember that-dearly as he loves me-he dared to send back word that it was not yet convenient, and added a reminder that he had other sons. He did that for his civilized belief in a union which would end these everlasting wars."

"Poor Lord Stanley's heart must have been torn in two," said Elizabeth, "with his stepson the leader of one camp and his heir a hostage in the other!"

"Well, I imagine I should not have lived an hour after that had not good old Norfolk sent me with a small guard to wait until the fight was over," Strange told her. "I could not fight, but at least the Almighty allowed me to stand upon a hill from whence I could watch those who did. I would not have missed that battle at Bosworth for all the world!"

"However worried Richard may have been, it in no wise affected his military efficiency," commented Brereton. "He put his famous archers in front, under Norfolk and that brilliant young son of his, Surrey. Then he made a solid square of pikemen, bombards and arquebuses which he himself commanded. From the other side of this red-earthed field we could see him-conspicuous on his white horse-riding here, there and everywhere attending to each detail himself, quite regardless of our hopeful archers' aim."

"And what was Henry Tudor doing all this time?" asked the woman who was to marry him.

"He was doing all that befitted a man whose blood is half Plantagenet, Madam," said Stafford generously, knowing that the Tudor would take her from him. "First he made a stirring speech to his Welsh troops. You know the sort of thing, Bess-'Having come so far and put all to the hazard, this day must bring us either victory or death.' He understands the sort of thing to rouse them. Then he, too, put archers in the forefront and, with the help of Jasper of Pembroke's experience, commanded them himself."

It was Brereton, with his gift for narrative, who took up the tale of the actual battle. "At first the archers on either side bore the brunt," he said. "I am sure there cannot have been such a deadly flight of arrows since Agincourt. Then the trumpets sounded the charge and the whole field was a melee of single combat. Horse thundering against horse, and pikemen thrusting at each other. Hundreds of them were trampled underfoot, and even the archers, their quivers empty, s.n.a.t.c.hed weapons from the dead. Knights who at home were neighbours and whose families were united by marriage, recognizing the familiar devices on each others' banners, yet fought each other to the death. In the middle of a charge I saw old Norfolk, his helmet riven in two, chivalrously spared by milord Oxford, only to be shot between the eyes with the arrow of some war-drunk Welshman. When young Surrey spurred forward furiously to avenge his father Clarendon and Sir William Conyers tried to rescue him, but were themselves cut down.

"Three separate charges Richard led, and would have won, he and young Surrey fought so brilliantly. But just as the battle was swinging in his favour the Percies of Northumberland withdrew their support; and-as you all know-at the crucial moment, Stanley ordered his troops to join his stepson's, not the King's.