B004H0M8IQ EBOK Page 6

  “The very one. All this time, he’s been sheltered by his aunt, the Duchess of Burgundy. Now that he’s grown, he’s coming to fight the usurper Henry VII for his throne! Is that not exciting?”

  The anxious look was back on her father’s face. “I said I’d not be back for long, but this is indeed much shorter than I expected. I wonder what James wants from us.”

  “O Father, you are so accustomed to trouble that you expect it even when there is none.” She drew to his side. “It shall be interesting to meet the prince, don’t you think? They say he’s very pleasing to look at—and what a romantic story he has to tell us.”

  “Romantic it may be, but is it true? And if it’s true, what is James going to do about it?”

  “’Tis what we go to learn, Father.”

  “Pray he is a false lad,” my father said, patting her hand. “Pray he doesn’t persuade James to take us to war with England. I canna lose more men.”

  Catherine jolted back to the present and stirred in her seat on the turret. She had learned later that her father knew far more about Richard’s visit than he had allowed her to guess. He had, in fact, been privy to the negotiations with Burgundy but had reluctantly signed the agreement that was reached, for it had touched him personally. If the Scots council found merit in Richard’s claim that he was the true Prince of England, they had pledged to support him with men and arms, and her father had agreed to give him the hand of his favorite daughter, Catherine.

  Footsteps intruded into her thoughts. All at once the prior appeared from behind the curved wall. Alice must have sent him, Catherine thought with annoyance. He tried to entice her inside with plaintive entreaties, but she dismissed him. Then, at compline, as monk-song filled the night air, Alice returned with John O’Water, whom Richard had left in charge of the crew of the Cuckoo in case Catherine should need the ship. He pleaded with Catherine as Alice stood shivering in the night air.

  “My lady, will ye not be comin’ to bed now? The wind is blustery and we fear ye may be catchin’ cold if you stay. My lord duke would not be pleased, and that’s the half of it—I’m fearin’ for my head, my lady, for he’ll be wantin’ that—should harm come to ye.”

  Catherine could never be angry with the dear man who was one of Richard’s staunchest supporters. His old face was etched with concern, and his wispy gray hair, like his black cloak, blew around him. “John O’Water, I appreciate your concern, but sleep eludes me this night and I must stay until I know it can find me again. Fear not for your head. You are too beloved a servant to fret about such a thing.”

  After a hesitation, he gave her a bow and retreated. Alice, however, would not be deterred.

  “I pray ye, my Lady Cate—forgive me for speaking bluntly, but I do it for the duke’s sake—come with me to bed. ’Tis not wise to remain outdoors on such a night. Your condition is delicate. God forfend that ye catch yer death of cold. It would break Prince Richard’s heart should anything happen to ye—”

  “By the rood, let me be!” Alice had never known love, so how could she understand the emptiness Catherine had to endure now that Richard was gone? But her cousin’s hurt expression fanned remorse for her harshness, and she added, more gently, “Alice, I cannot heed your plea. Not tonight—tomorrow, for certain. Now go to bed, and may your dreams be kind. I shall come soon. ’Tis all I can promise.”

  “May I have a chair sent ye?” Alice asked in a small voice. “The turret does not foster confidence in such a wind.”

  Catherine gave her assent and soon a man arrived to set a chair against the curving wall. She took the seat and inhaled deep of the salt air. Why toss and turn in bed when she could be here, with the sea, and the stars? She loved the tolling church bells that marked the hours and the pounding of the surf against the rocks. She loved even the beating wind. Neither its bite nor its fury could pry her loose and blow her inside. All night she listened, praying fervently for Richard, but though she tried to banish fear and focus on the good memories, there was one that kept intruding—Richard’s address to the Scots council that had moved everyone to tears. She closed her eyes. Again the great hall at Stirling rose up before her and she saw the faces of the nobles assembled to hear about Richard’s escape from the Tower.

  King James had lounged on his throne in the newly completed hall, painted pink to dispel the winter gloom, as Richard took up a position on the dais steps. On the wall behind them, dominating the chamber, glittered the jewel-colored tapestry of “The Unicorn Found” that Margaret of Burgundy had sent James in gratitude for his support of her nephew. Richard’s fair hair and princely attire of green cloth of gold shimmered in the light of candles and torches so that he seemed to have stepped out of the forest depicted in his aunt’s tapestry. The thought struck Catherine that he had been, like the unicorn, reborn. He was the lost prince, now miraculously found.

  “Most high and excellent Prince, my gracious and noble cousin, I commend myself to your majesty, and to the honorable barons of the Scots—” Richard fell silent for a moment. Everything depended on this address, for the men in this room were his last hope. In order to secure Scotland’s aid, he had to set his case before them, and that meant stirring up his painful memories of the past.

  He found his voice. “Pray listen, I beg you, to the tragedy of a young man that by right ought to hold in his hand the ball of a kingdom, but by fortune is made himself a ball, tossed from misery to misery and from place to place.

  “I died a manner of death when I was taken from England at the age of nine, for in order to preserve my life, I was made to swear that I would never reveal my name, my lineage, or my family until the time was right to do so. To save myself, I had to forget who I was—Prince Richard was dead, and not till I was grown could I live again. From the moment I left England, my life was one of constant peril and flight. I had the face of my father, King Edward IV, and I lived in fear that someone, somewhere, should recognize me and turn me in to the usurper Henry Tudor for the bounty he had set on my head. I was tossed from misery to misery, and from place to place, without country or kingdom, home or mother or father, family or friends. In this manner I wandered desperately for many years, an empty child, ever a stranger among strangers. I wept and suffered much affliction for my loss, and many times I wished I had died like my brother.”

  Already a tear had risen to Catherine’s eye, listening.

  “As you know, my royal brother, King Edward V, and I were declared bastards and set aside from the throne by my uncle, King Richard III—” An angry murmur arose in the hall. “Nay, King Richard had his faults—as any Scotsman will attest—but unlike the usurper, he was a benign ruler to his people. He had not intended our deaths, but as a consequence of his taking the throne, my royal brother, King Edward V, died in the Tower most pitifully.

  “I remember when I first arrived there to join him. He was a melancholy child while I was merry and liked to sing. To cheer him one day, I put on my Garter of gold and silk, and said, ‘My brother, learn to dance.’ And my brother replied, ‘It would be better if we learned to die.’ ”

  No one moved in the hall; there was no rustle of fabric, no sound of breath. If a pearl had loosened from a brooch, all would have heard it fall.

  “How I survived is little less than a miracle. While my brother still lived, a certain lord came to take us from the Tower. My royal brother could not travel, for he had caught a sickness and suffered from fever, so he stayed behind. I left with the lord on a long journey to a remote castle in the north of England, and there I was concealed. Not long afterwards I was given the sore tidings that my brother was dead.”

  Richard bowed his head, overcome with emotion. His hair shone in the low light, and the jewel in his collar flashed so that even the silk and gold unicorn shimmering in the tapestry above seemed to blink down at him in pity. Catherine’s heart overflowed.

  “I never left the castle,” Richard said, “except once, when I was taken to Westminster Abbey to see my mother, who had thought
me dead. Now she knew I lived. She came out of sanctuary with my sisters and wrote her brother, who was with Tudor in France, that all was well and to come home. Then she gave up plotting King Richard’s downfall. But the Tudor did not abandon his evil designs. The Battle of Bosworth was the result.

  “I didn’t see the lord again who had removed me from the Tower until the night before the battle when I was taken to King Richard’s tent. My royal uncle informed me that if he lost, I had to go into hiding beyond the seas until I was grown and could fight the usurper for my throne. Till then it was death to be a Plantagenet, he said. He commanded me to forget who I was and gave me the name Wezbecque—‘orphan,’ in the Flemish tongue. He said that my aunt, the Duchess of Burgundy, would know me by it, and that the lord who had taken me from the Tower would be there to aid me when the time came. But I never again beheld his face.”

  Richard turned to look at Catherine for encouragement. She managed a smile, though her heart was weighed down with sorrow.

  “And so I lived my life for about eight years with the two men who had been charged as my guardians, until one of them died and the other returned to his own land. We traveled through many countries together, and I spent nearly three years in Portugal. But at last I was reunited with my Aunt Margaret, and for the first time in a long while, I was embraced with love and tears. She prepared me to regain my throne from the evil grasper of the kingdom of England. The rest you know.”

  Richard’s glance moved over the barons, and fixed on James. “If you, my kind benefactors, can do nothing else for me, perhaps you can give me a home so I will not have to wander anymore.”

  That night in the castle garden, Catherine and Richard stole a few minutes of solitude together and she wept in his arms for the sufferings he had endured. He dried her tears with kisses, and said, “The road God gave me was blessed, Catryn, because my misfortunes have led me to you. Had all gone smoothly for me as a prince of England, I might never have met you, and look what I would have missed. Nay, Catryn, love is worth everything we have to pay.”

  Catherine came back to the present and swallowed the lump in her throat. The sea murmured softly around her. She raised her eyes to Orion, but the stars were gone. Gray light filtered over the earth, and church bells were tolling the hour of five. This is lauds the monks are singing, she thought in amazement. She tried to get up, but her back was stiff and her feet unwilling. She looked down at her skirts. Puddles of water stood everywhere; it had rained heavily and she hadn’t felt a drop! She rose on unsteady legs and was immediately seized by a violent fit of sneezing. Making her way around the circular wall, she encountered her ladies emerging from her privy chambers, holding blankets over their heads to shield themselves from the drizzle.

  “Lady Cate—have ye been here all night?” exclaimed Alice, throwing a cloak around her. “Your—” She bit her lip. She was about to say that Catherine’s obstinacy would be the death of her. Instead, she said, “Your unborn child—God forfend, ’tis as I feared—ye have caught an ague!”

  The girls hurried Catherine into her bedchamber. They changed her wet clothes for dry, and brought her a tray of steaming soup and hot mulled wine, but Catherine found herself without appetite. Outside, the wind howled about the windows and rattled the shutters. She thought of Richard, marching to battle, unprotected from the elements.

  “Prayer is what I need,” she mumbled, with frozen lips. Pushing herself to her feet, she let Alice and her ladies help her up the steps to the courtyard and into the church. Catherine found she could move only slowly, for she seemed made of ice. Monk-song flowed from the Virgin’s Chapel nearby, cut into spurts by the blustery wind: Andeamus omnes in Domino . . . May we always go with the Lord. Their chanting filled her heart, but not with peace. Peace was something she would not know again until her beloved was safe again at her side.

  She dropped to her knees at the back of the empty church before the silver-gilt statue of Saint Michael, protector in battles and trampler of dragons, where the most urgent pleas for intercession were made. Clad in cloth of gold, he looked a prince, much like her own Richard. She clasped her hands to her heart and, from the depth of her being, beseeched Heaven to grant victory to the man she loved.

  Catherine could not have guessed with what heaviness of heart and depth of reluctance Richard had taken his leave of her. Nor could he afford to let anyone know. He trotted his white mount, leading his men to Bodmin, thankful for the mist that hid his face and his thoughts.

  He had left behind the two most precious things he possessed in the world—and for what? A throw of the dice for the crown of England. Had he a choice, he would never have gambled such high stakes. Ever since his failed northern invasion, he had wanted to give up his quest and return to Burgundy with his family, for now he knew what it meant to love, and what it meant to war; and war revolted him to the pit of his stomach. Never would he be free of the memory that had become his nightmare—helpless people fleeing for their lives; the world filled with screams, weeping, terror. The invading Scots army had brandished their swords in Northumberland and cut down unarmed men as they ran. With lust in their eyes, they had chased the women who retreated before them, and raped them as their menfolk lay dying, their hovels burned and their animals screamed in their death-throes. He had galloped up to James.

  “James—end this carnage—I beseech you!” he begged with tears in his eyes.

  “They’re not rising up for you!” James shouted over the din of battle.“They must be punished!”

  “They are my people! This is my country! Lordship means nothing to me if it must be obtained by spilling the blood and destroying with flames the land of my fathers!”

  “But they are not your people!” James had retorted. “Far from recognizing you as their king, they don’t even know you as an Englishman!”

  Richard had stared at him in stunned disbelief, unable to comprehend this other face of his good friend and benefactor to whom he owed the shirt on his back. “I cannot abide it! I’ll have no part in it!”

  “Then leave!” James had cried.

  Richard had turned his horse and galloped off.

  When they met again at Stirling Castle, King James no longer regarded Richard’s cause as his own. He was a warrior who gloried in fighting and killing, and had no use for a man of feeling; a man who felt the commoner’s pain as his own. He saw Richard as a coward.

  “’Tis clear I have misjudged you,” he said. “’Tis best if you leave. The English are rebelling in the south. Mayhap you should go there and see if they’ll give you a hand getting back your throne.”

  Richard rubbed his eyes, and the memory faded. Catherine had agreed that they had to leave Scotland—not for Burgundy, but for England. She could be persuasive when she wished, and he had given in against his better judgment. “When I was ten years old,” she had said, “a wise-woman prophesied that I would be queen. This is what she meant, Richard. Don’t you see—this is our destiny. You must fulfill the prophecy—the crown is yours for the taking!”

  Far more than anything in the world, he wanted to win her admiration and respect and bring her the laurels owed her rank. She had married him for love, but if he could not give her the throne of England, what could he offer? Naught but an uncertain future, and the heartbreak of wandering and beggary. There was also James. Richard had been unable to forget his face as he’d shouted at him to leave. Dishonor clung to his name now. The only way to redeem himself was to win back his father’s throne.

  If these reasons were not enough, there was yet one more—in the guise of his Aunt Margaret, Duchess of Burgundy, the poorest widow in the world, as she called herself. Richard owed her everything. She was his rescuer, and his only kin, and she was depending on him to restore to her the properties that were hers in England. More important, she was expecting him to avenge the wrongs done by the usurper to the House of York.

  No, there was no turning back from this road he was on. He had to win back England. For love; for hon
or; for duty’s sake. He had no choice.

  A voice came at his shoulder. It was Nicholas Astley, a scrivener and one of the three members of his council. “My lord, we are approaching Camborne. Shall we read the proclamation?”

  He realized that the fog had lifted. The outcome of his righteous quarrel with the tyrant would not be put off any longer. Now Divine Providence would decide his fate. Twelve years ago she had made a king of a French-Welsh adventurer with naught to his name but bastard blood. If she wished, she could spin her Wheel of Fortune once more and set him in the tyrant’s place. If she did, he would give thanks to her and to God with deeds of royal magnanimity and kindness to the end of his days. He bowed his head and sent a last prayer heavenward. Then he gave a nod to Astley.

  His councilor unfurled the proclamation as a group of tin miners put down their oil lamps to gather around and listen. A few ran into the hovels that housed the winches in order to spread the word into the mining holes. From these enclosures streamed out blackened creatures who seemed scarcely human, some bent double by years of toiling in tiny, cramped spaces. Many were wracked with coughing fits and, being accustomed only to the dark, blinked at the gloomy light of the rainy day. Astley began to read, “Richard, by grace of God King of England—To all who hear this, greeting . . .”

  Richard watched the villagers, deeply moved by their plight. In Bohemia, where he had traveled with the Holy Roman Emperor, laws had already been enacted to improve working conditions and to protect women and children from laboring in mines. When he was king, he would see to it that his people received the same rights. He listened quietly to the proclamation that he knew by heart, hoping it would convince the people of his sincerity.

  “We will end the manifold treasons of the tyrant, his Byzantine tortures, abominable murders, robberies, extortions, and the daily pillaging of the people by taxation and illegal means,” Astley read. “According to law and conscience, we shall right the wrongs committed, and we promise pardon to all those who accepted the reign of our foresaid enemy, unless they have attempted murder against us—”