The King's Grace (27 page)

Gerards ordered food and ale for them all and counted a few ridders out for the landlord. “I to the work must return,
mevrouw.
You keep yourself here. I return,
ja
?”

“
Ja
…I mean, aye,” Grace replied. “We are in your hands, sir.”

Puzzled, Gerards turned his palms up and inspected them, shrugged and left.

Several hunks of bread and cheese, a rabbit pie and a bowl of mussels later, the trio of travelers felt better. Edgar had downed most of the blackjack of ale by himself, and Grace did not admonish him this time after his suffering on the ship.

“Edgar, who is your overseer at the abbey?” she asked him. “I pray her grace the queen dowager will explain your absence to him. If you lose any wages because of this, know that you will be well rewarded for your service to me. In truth, I could not make this journey without you guarding me. But I warrant taking commands from a lady is not what you are accustomed to, am I right?” She smiled at him, hunched over his horn cup of ale, and his shoulders straightened and he lifted his head proudly.

“Nay, Mistress
Peche
.” He grinned, hoping she would notice he had re
membered her new name, and she nodded an acknowledgment. “Brother Gregory holds the purse strings in the stables. He be not kind, and no one dares cross him. He has threatened us with Hell, and I be not inclined to go there,” he said, shuddering at the thought. “I be an undergroom, but I hope to be head groom one day, and…” he stopped. He had never voiced this ambition to anyone before. He waited for her to berate him for speaking so freely, but she sat patiently waiting for him to continue and so plunged ahead. “In for a penny, in for a pound!” he said under his breath. “If I do your bidding well, mistress, will you speak for me?” he said, gabbling on before he lost his nerve, and her nod of assent encouraged him to continue. “The others mock me and call me a simpkin, but I can talk to the horses, you know,” he told her, leaning forward and almost knocking over his cup in his childlike eagerness. “They listen to me.”

“I have seen you, Edgar,” Grace replied, her head cocked and her eyes guileless. “Perhaps when we return you could tell the horses not to frighten me so. I love animals, but horses…Well, they are so large, you see, and I am so…small,” she explained.

Edgar stared at the lovely young woman in front of him. He was only a lowly groom, and he knew she was really the Lady Grace Plantagenet, daughter of a king, and yet she was speaking to him. His simple mind tried to digest this extraordinary fact, and the only way he could think of expressing his undying devotion was to clamber off his bench, lumber around to her side, kneel and kiss the hem of her worsted gown. Several customers watched this little scene with amusement; Grace looked on with embarrassment.

“I pray you return to your seat, Edgar. We do not need to attract attention,” she said, more sternly than she intended, and his face clouded a little. “Master Gerards should be here anon, and so you should drain your cup.” She gave him a quick smile and he got up off his knees and sat back down next to Judith, who had not said a word since attacking her piece of pie.

Gerards was as good as his word, and an hour later he returned and escorted Grace to a barge that would convey them all to the Waterhall in Bruges, where the English Merchant Adventurers lived and worked. Their boat was pulled by a Flemish great horse, which was led along the three-mile towpath by its owner. As they drew closer to the towers of Bruges, the bells began to ring out the Terce. Soon they were gliding under
the Dampoort gate and along a canal that boasted high, step-gabled brick houses on either side, graceful trees and pairs of swans that reached their long necks around to clean their feathers. Grace thought she had never seen such a beautiful place.

“You will in my house sleep,
Mevrouw
Peche. Tomorrow we to Malines journey,
ja
?” Gerards told the young woman, whose beauty and connection to Brampton were making him believe she would be an excellent choice of bride for his son, although he worried, with her dark skin, whether she might be a Jew.

Grace thanked him, looking forward to a comfortable bed after her time in the ship’s hammock.

Whether it was the unaccustomed beer made with hops or the eel pie that Mevrouw Gerards served for supper, Grace did not know, but that night she tossed and turned and dreamed of the old hag who had told her fortune in Winchester. “You will see both of them go to meet their Maker. It be dangerous for you to know them, but you will help them. Better not make friends of young men, my lady.” Ugly Edith’s face melted into Elizabeth’s fair one. “You will help me, Grace? You will bring me news of my son,” she pleaded, reaching her arms out to Grace, “before I go into my grave?” As she stepped back, Grace could see a freshly dug hole behind the queen and before she could stop her Elizabeth began to float, featherlight, downwards into the earth. Screaming, Grace desperately tried to catch the dying woman’s hand, but there was nothing to hold on to. Elizabeth’s ghostly body drifted down and down…

“Mistress Grace, wake up!” Judith whispered in the dark, shaking Grace’s shoulder. “You were dreaming, ’tis all.”

“I am very afraid, Judith,” Grace said, sitting up and clutching her servant’s arm. “I dreamed of death.”

“Sweet Jesu, ’tis a bad omen,” Judith muttered, crossing herself. She slipped out of bed and felt for the tinderbox. Within a few seconds she had lit a taper and padded across to fetch Grace a cup of ale. “Drink this, mistress. ’Tis said if you tell your dream it will not come true. Come, tell me quickly before you forget.”

“Maybe tomorrow, Judith,” Grace answered pretending to yawn. She could not risk revealing her identity by retelling her dream. “But say an
ave
for me.”

G
RACE WAS CONVINCED
Master Gerards had led them around in a circle when the towers and spires of Malines came into view late in the afternoon. They had passed neat farms and fields that ringed the city before slowing their horses to a walk to cross the moat bridge and ride through the fortified gate in the city wall. Except for the canals, the city was similar to Bruges, and Grace was impressed by its gothic grandeur. The market square matched Bruges for space and splendid buildings. St. Rumbold’s cathedral rose majestically behind it, and as the little group rode past, its double carillon of bells rang out over the city from its monumental tower, stopping conversation for those directly beneath. Grace was astonished at the multitude of people crowding the streets and asked Gerards if there was a special occasion that had brought so many to the town. He turned back to her riding pillion on his sturdy jennet and explained that while Bruges was the heart of commerce in Burgundy, Malines—or
Mechelen
, as the Flemish called the city—was the seat of legislative government.

“Forgive me, sir, but I thought you said Ghent had that honor,” Grace said, wondering why this country did not have one central city like London.

“Ghent seats the judges,
mevrouw.
Here the councilors of the duke sits,” he said in his broken English. “There is the council chamber,” he said, pointing to the newly refurbished cloth hall.

A steady drizzle began as they turned their backs on St. Rumbold’s and made their way towards the Veemarkt, which at this late hour was empty of its livestock, and finally to the ducal residence. Grace was disappointed when they were turned away at the palace gate. Come again on the morrow, they were told. Madame La Grande will see petitioners after Matins. A friendly guard told them where there was suitable lodging for the night, and Edgar, with Judith seated behind his sturdy back, and Gerards urged their horses in the direction of the inn.

That night the travelers slept on mattresses of clean straw in a room that overlooked the Dyle River. Grace hardly slept a wink, unused to the loud snoring that came from Edgar and the noises from the taproom beneath. She made sure William Caxton’s book and Elizabeth’s letter were well hidden underneath her and lay contemplating her meeting with Aunt Margaret. She tried to imagine the scene, but a handsome, familiar face kept intruding on her thoughts.

John, she told him, go away! ’Twould be too good to be true were you indeed here.

F
IRST THING THE
next morning, Grace acted on one of the more practical thoughts that had come to her during the long night. “Judith, you must go with Edgar and find me some rose-petal jam,” she announced. Glad of the chance to explore the city, Judith took the coin Grace gave her and set off, with Edgar following a customary step behind.

Gerards had found a well-lit corner of the taproom, now void of noisy drinkers, where he could sit and enter items into a small accounting book and wait with Grace for Judith to return. His admiring look had told Grace that the blue silk dress she had donned for the audience with Margaret met with his approval. She wished she could have practiced the little speech she had prepared for this meeting, but she was fairly confident Aunt Margaret would do all the talking and that she would assume her usual role of listener. Instead she recited the letter from Elizabeth in her mind again.

An hour later, Grace and Gerards were in a second antechamber in the palace, after Gerards had given their credentials to an usher and they had left Judith to wait in the first hall, full of anxious petitioners. The usher took in Grace’s fashionable gabled headdress, on loan from Cecily, the elegant gown and her aristocratic bearing, and nodded. The retainer knew Madame la Grande’s door was always open to anyone from England, and he had recognized Sir Edward Brampton’s name.

“Passez, Monsieur, Madame,”
he said in the language of the court. Grace smiled her thanks to him as she and Gerards proceeded through the archway and into the duchess’s presence chamber. She gasped in delight at the magnificent room, its painted columns decorated with golden fleurs-de-lys, the two-headed eagle of the Hapsburgs and the white rose of York. Colorful banners hung from the ceiling and, at the end of the room, a canopied dais was set with a carved wooden throne. Standing in front of it and conversing with a kneeling courtier was a tall woman, a little stooped by her advancing years, but still an imposing figure, clothed in black and gold damask with sable at her neck and hem.

Gerards, too, was obviously impressed and whispered to Grace that it was his first time in the dowager duchess’s presence. A space cleared in front of the dais as the courtier kissed Margaret’s hand and bowed
his way backwards out of her purview. Another man came forward, took Gerards’s and Grace’s names and announced them to the duchess and her small retinue. Gerards escorted Grace forward, bowed and immediately fell to his knees, allowing Grace to take center stage. Her knees wobbling, she moved forward and executed a low curtsy, staying on the floor until a surprisingly youthful voice gave her leave to rise.

Grace raised her eyes to Margaret’s gray ones and immediately recognized the likeness to Uncle Richard’s. Otherwise, Grace thought, she resembled Grandmother Cecily, with her fair English skin, blond hair—now turning white—and unusual height.

“Mistress Peche,” Margaret said in English. “We greet you well. How is your uncle? Sir Edward has done this court and England many good services through the years. I trust he is well?” Margaret paused and frowned. “I trust you do not have bad news for me, my child?”

Grace looked around her and, observing she was not attracting much attention, lowered her voice, murmuring, “With the deepest respect, I would talk to you in private, your grace. ’Tis a matter of importance to our family.”

Sweet Jesu, that was not what I should have said, Grace thought miserably. That came out all wrong. She stammered an apology, her eyes pleading. “I beg your pardon, madam. I mean…” she faltered, and Margaret reached out, took her hand and encouraged her to join her on the dais.

“By all that is holy, child, you do not have to be so frightened of me. I am no ogre. You have a family problem that you would like my help with? Is that it, my dear? Are Sir Edward or his wife in trouble?”

Grace looked down at Gerards, still on his knees in front of the steps, and was at a loss as to how to tell Aunt Margaret who she really was and yet keep up the masquerade with the merchant. As if Margaret could read her mind, the duchess suddenly turned to a blond giant of a man close to the dais and said:
“Guillaume, venez nous accompanier jusqu’aux mes apartements.”
Turning to Grace, she said, “Come, mistress. We shall take some refreshment in my chambers. Your escort can wait, can he not?” She then astonished Grace by addressing Gerards in his native Dutch, who nodded his willingness to wait, got up off his knees and gave Grace the tooled leather bag he had carried for her into the palace. He stared after Grace and bowed with the rest of the court as Margaret exited.

Each room Grace passed through seemed more opulent and magnificent than the one before. And she had thought Westminster, Windsor and Shene grand! The poster bed in Margaret’s private chamber was an enormous piece of furniture hung with green velvet curtains, into which were woven her marguerite device. Grace entered behind the duchess and her lady-in-waiting, a pretty woman who was several months with child. “Henriette is my chevalier’s wife,” Margaret explained as Guillaume swept Margaret a bow and left the room after blowing Henriette a kiss. “They are quite sweet on each other. ’Tis a change to see such devotion between a husband and wife.” She sighed, caressing the ears of a wolfhound that whined in pleasure when he saw his owner. “Are you married, mistress? I am, as you must know, widowed these many years. Aye, Lance, I am happy to see you again, too. Now lie down, there’s a good dog. Lancelot is from England, and so he listens only to English commands,” she confided.

Grace could not believe this woman who was talking to her so amicably was the dragon lady of Bess’s and Cecily’s childhood memories. She stood while Margaret settled herself in a high-backed chair and Henriette placed a footstool under her mistress’s feet.