Rosamund (13 page)

Her heart was beating wildly. This boy had deliberately set her senses reeling, Rosamund thought. While she would never show it, she was not just a little afraid. She had not enough experience in such matters, but she sensed this bold prince was planning her seduction. How did one refuse England’s future king? She must find Sir Owein and obtain his advice. He would know how to advise her in such a delicate matter.

S
he did not see the prince after the Twelfth Night festivities over which they had reigned as king and queen. He had, as promised, kissed her once again, but it had been a chaste kiss. They had danced that evening, and she had, according to Meg, acquitted herself well. They left Richmond, and the queen’s household settled itself into the royal apartments at the Tower to await the birth of the hoped-for prince. The Tower apartments were a warm and comfortable place, almost like her own home, Rosamund thought as she gazed out on the river Thames. Their life settled into a familiar monotony of lessons in French and etiquette. They kept regular hours, eating twice daily. The queen enjoyed music, and when it was discovered that Rosamund could sing well she found herself called upon often in the following weeks. The queen found her simple country melodies soothing.

The queen went into labor in the early morning of February second. The king was sent for, and there was much to-ing and fro-ing back and forth of serving women and physicians. The royal midwife arrived, as did the Venerable Margaret, who began to argue with her son over a name for the expected prince.

“We have had an Arthur and an Edmund, and we have a Henry,” the Countess of Richmond said.

“He shall be named after my uncle of Pembroke,” the king replied.

“Nonsense!” came the quick retort. “We cannot have a prince named
Jasper. It is not English enough. Will you remind England that your blood is more Welsh? What about John?”

“ ’Tis a bad-luck name, mother,” the king said.

“Edward! You and Bess both descend from Edward III, and John is not bad fortune. My father was John. Now, Richard is another matter,” the Countess of Richmond said, frowning.

“No,” the king agreed. “Richard would not be appropriate, particularly in light of the slant our family took with regard to the former king. We made him the villain for the disappearance of Bess’s two young brothers, although I never really thought he was responsible. ’Twas probably some damned sycophant who thought to make Richard’s position more secure and gain his favor. He could not have known Richard of York well to have done what he did. Of course, when Richard learned what had happened he could hardly admit to it, now, could he? Poor man. I can almost feel sorry for him, for I know from Bess that he loved his nephews.”

“It didn’t stop him from attempting to prevent you from your rightful place as England’s king,” the Countess of Richmond snapped.

Henry Tudor smiled one of his rare wintry smiles. “No,” he agreed, “it did not, mother. I was born to be England’s king. Did you not always tell me that?”

She laughed. “I did,” she said.

“Your highness!” A serving woman hurried from the queen’s chamber. “My mistress has been delivered of her child!”

Both the king and the Countess of Richmond hurried to the queen’s side. She lay pale and fragile, a small swaddled bundle in the crook of one arm. She gave them a wan smile.

“Edward?”
the Countess of Richmond said hopefully.

“Katherine,”
the queen replied softly.

The king nodded. “We have a strong and healthy heir, praise God! Another daughter will bind us to another royal house, Bess, my dear. Henry will have Spain, Margaret, Scotland, Mary, well, I have yet to decide upon Mary. Perhaps France. Perhaps the Holy Roman Empire, and whoever she does not have, this fair new princess will have, eh?” The king bent and kissed his wife’s brow.

The Countess of Richmond said nothing. She did not like the look of her daughter-in-law. Bess was not young, and this had obviously been a hard birth for her. There would be no more children from this queen, Margaret Beaufort thought to herself.

Prince Henry and his two sisters were brought to see their new sibling.

“What does she look like?” Rosamund asked Meg.

“Like all of mama’s babies. Pale with reddish blond hair and light eyes,” the young Queen of the Scots replied. “She is very quiet, too. I think she will not survive long. What a pity that mama should go through all of that for a puny girl child.”

“I shall have only sons,” Prince Henry boasted.

“You shall have what God deigns, Hal,” Meg said.

Princess Mary was returned to Eltham to her nursery with her new sister. The prince remained with his father, but Meg and Rosamund stayed at the Tower with the queen and her women. The Venerable Margaret had gone to her London house of Cold Harbour. The queen was not recovering from her childbirth. The Tower was very quiet. Then, on the morning of February eleventh, the queen’s thirty-seventh birthday, Elizabeth of York died suddenly, with barely time for the priest to come and hear her final confession.

The king was devastated. He wept openly for the second time in the last year. The first time being when he had been told his heir, Prince Arthur, had died. The court was in shock. It had not been a difficult confinement, and the birth had been relatively swift. The queen had always been healthy and so confidently strong. But now she was dead of a childbed fever as if she had been any ordinary woman. It was difficult to believe. Elizabeth of York had been well loved. The court would miss her.

The king’s mother took over immediately, bringing Meg and Rosamund into her household. While a funeral needed to be planned, it was decided then and there that the princess’ formal wedding to the King of the Scots would take place in August as had been scheduled. As for Rosamund, while the king remained her guardian, the Venerable Margaret took charge of her, “for sweet Bess’ sake.” Then, having said it, she
began to decide the funeral preparations, for the king was too broken with his grief and barely left his chambers.

A funeral effigy had to be carved. It would show the queen garbed in her finest robes and furs, smiling. The court and the country would mourn on the exact replica of Elizabeth of York at her best. It would always remain a good memory for them. The effigy would sit atop the queen’s coffin. She would be buried in Westminster Abbey in a tomb that would one day contain the mortal remains of her husband. The famed sculptor, Torrigiano, was summoned to take a death mask of the queen so that he might do a bronze monument to go atop her tomb. Henry Tudor had been his patron for several years, and the sculptor lived in London.

The day of the state funeral dawned gray and cold. The city was practically shrouded in a thick, wet fog. The state funeral procession departed the Tower of London where Elizabeth of York had breathed her last and wound through the streets of the dim city so that the populace might have a last glimpse of their good queen. Over fifty drummers, their instruments muffled to give the appropriate solemnity to the tragic occasion, led the mourners. They were followed by a vast number of Yeomen of the Guard, behind which came the black silk and velvet draped hearse, the carved effigy in its bright-colored robes atop it an almost startling sight. The hearse was drawn by eight coal-black horses bedecked with black silk robes and black plumes.

There were thirty-seven young virgins following the funeral cart, one for each year of the queen’s life, all garbed in the whitest of white velvet robes and carrying tall white beeswax tapers. The tall candles flickered eerily in the chill air. Rosamund was among them, having been given this honor by the king’s mother. The virgins, however, wore no cloaks, and Rosamund shivered with the cold, as did all of her companions. The white kid slippers upon their feet did little to keep out the damp and the wet chill. It would be a wonder, Rosamund thought to herself, if we don’t all join the queen, dead of a winter ague.

They entered the great abbey where a requiem mass was then celebrated by the archbishop, followed by a eulogy, which Rosamund learned later had been written and delivered by a young lawyer of the city, one
Thomas More. His deep yet smooth voice rang out with his words of tribute, filling the great church:

A
dieu! Mine own dear spouse, my worthy lord!
The faithful love, that did us both continue
In marriage and peaceable concord,
Into your hands here I do resign,
To be bestowed on your children and mine;
Erst were ye father, now must ye supply
The mother’s part also, for lo! here I lie.

As Thomas More’s voice died, the soft sounds of weeping could be heard throughout Westminster Abbey. Looking toward the king, Rosamund saw him wipe his eyes. His shoulders sagged. Henry Tudor had suddenly grown very old, but beside him his mother stood straight and his children were bravely comforting each other in their sorrow. Now the queen’s coffin was taken down from its place on the hearse at the end of the nave and set into its tomb. Elizabeth of York was blessed a final time by the clerics in attendance, and the funeral was over at long last.

Meg came and took Rosamund by the hand. Her eyes were red with her weeping as she and her mother had been very close, particularly in this last year. “Grandmother says you are to come home now with me. She says you played your part well, and my mother would have been pleased.”

They climbed into a covered cart that the Venerable Margaret had provided for her granddaughters and the other women of her household. The gray winter’s day was already growing dark as the vehicle made its way back through the misty London streets to the Countess of Richmond’s London residence.

The following morning the Princess Mary, who was not quite seven, was returned to her nursery at Eltham.

“Sometimes I think I have spent my entire life wearing black mourning,” Meg complained to Rosamund.

“You will be free to shed it again in a few months’ time,” Rosamund
comforted the young Queen of the Scots. “You are fortunate, Meg, that you remember the mother you mourn. I do not recall mine at all.”

“Are there no portraits of her?” Meg asked.

“Country people usually don’t have portraits painted,” Rosamund replied with a smile. “Maybel knew her. She says I resemble her, but I resemble my father more. It’s not like really knowing though, is it? Your mother was so kind to me. I shall never forget her, and I shall name a daughter after her one day, Meg. I promise you that!”

The winter drew to a close, and at Easter the king asked that his family gather at Richmond again. They hardly saw him though, for the rumor had it that Henry Tudor’s heart was broken by his loss. His counselors advised him to remarry, and small overtures were made in that direction, but in the end it came to naught. The king had married Elizabeth of York to unite their houses, to end a long and bloody war, and because her claim to the throne was actually stronger than his. But he had loved her once he had come to know her, and he had been faithful to her in life. Now that she was gone it appeared his fidelity would not waver.

“He is like me,” the Venerable Margaret noted.

“But you have wed three times, grandmama,” Meg said.

“Listen to me, my child,” Margaret Beaufort said. “A woman may have wealth and dignity and prestige, but it matters not if she does not have a husband. That is the way of our world. We cannot escape it. However, your father’s father, my first husband, Jasper Tudor, was the love of my life, and I am not ashamed to admit it. For women of our class it is our first marriages that are arranged. Perhaps even a second. After that I believe a woman has a right to choose her own husband. Whether she will love all of them, or none of them, that is up to fate. But marry a woman must, and that is the end of it.”

“Will I love James Stuart, grandmama?” Meg wondered aloud.

“ ’Tis said he is a most loving man,” the countess noted dryly, “and of course he will want to please you because by making you happy he makes England happy. He is said to be handsome, child. Handsome and kind. Aye, I believe you will love him.”

“Will he love me?” the girl queried.

The Venerable Margaret laughed. “James Stuart will certainly love you, my child.” For there is scarcely a woman he cannot love, she thought to herself.

“You must find a husband for Rosamund now, grandmother,” Meg said mischievously. “I know she wants to return home to her beloved Friarsgate when I go north in late summer.”

“We will find your companion a mate in time,” the Countess of Richmond said. “There is time, and he must be chosen carefully.”

“You see,” Meg said later when they were abed. “You are a prize to be awarded even as I am. But, Rosamund, when the time comes, make them allow you the choice. Remember what my grandmother said. That after first marriages, and even second ones, a woman has the right to choose her next husband. Remind them of that when your time comes.”

They remained at Richmond for a month, but then the countess and her granddaughters decamped for Greenwich. It was the first time Rosamund had been to this palace. Like Richmond it was on the river Thames, but here she could spy the masts of the tall ships that sailed about the world as they moved downriver to the sea. Prince Henry joined them for a short while, for his grandmother had requested that he come. The king was keeping his surviving heir close. It was almost as if he believed by retaining personal custody of the boy he could protect him from anything. The prince even slept in a small chamber that could only be entered through his father’s bedchamber. His friends found young Henry’s predicament quite amusing, but the prince did not. Hence a respite with his formidable grandmother and his sisters was most welcome.

Princess Mary, brought from Eltham, admired her brother’s older companion, Charles Brandon. “I shall marry him one day,” the seven-year-old announced boldly. Her remark was met with much humor among her family.