The King's Grace (42 page)

NOVEMBER
1491

G
race had forgotten how noisy and dirty London was. All summer long, in the peaceful pastoral setting of Hellowe, she had thought she missed the sights and sounds of London. When Viscount Welles had recited a poem that Henry had been particularly taken with,

she remembered thinking,
Aye, a fair city, but perhaps the poet has not seen Bruges.
Even at the abbey there had been a hustle and bustle about the place, and not a mile away one of the busiest thoroughfares in the kingdom led to London Bridge through the hubbub of Southwark, with its stews and taverns, marketplace, bull-baiting ring and breweries. The laymen workers brought the latest news from the city, and visitors from all over Europe would seek hospitality within its walls. In Lincolnshire, news was slow to catch up to them, and so when Grace was told that a man calling himself Richard, duke of York, had landed in Cork in October and been acclaimed as the son of King Edward by the Irish lords and people alike, she trembled for John.

To give him his due, Lord Welles had kept Cecily abreast of John’s situation through the autumn, knowing hers and Grace’s concern for their cousin. When Grace learned he had been first lodged at Westminster, where the king was in residence—in a guarded room, she had no doubt—she was hopeful that Henry would soon release him as being no particular threat. But with the appearance of a pretender now very real, Henry had good cause to distrust anyone who bore the name of York, despite Bess having given him a second son to solidify his position.

Grace eased her right leg on the stiff sidesaddle, envying the men’s ability to straddle the backs of their horses. Her rump was numb and her back aching by the time the Welles party trotted through the Newgate and into Chepeside. It was a mild day for mid-November, and Grace was glad of the sunshine that greeted them after leaving Hellowe in a drizzle that had accompanied them as far as Barnet the evening before. Despite her tightly woven woolen cloak, all of her clothes were damp and uncomfortable. She hoped Pasmer’s Place, where the Welleses lodged in the city, would be warm and inviting. Jack Welles had galloped off to Westminster with his squires and secretary to join the king, leaving Cecily and her attendants with the small armed guard who turned under the portcullis of Newgate.

Along the Chepe and down Soper Lane to St. Pancras Lane, the weary riders coaxed their mounts through mounds of refuse in the muddy street, avoiding sudden showers from the contents of pisspots heaved out of second-story windows and shooing away urchins in bare feet and rags begging for coins. A mangy dog lifted its head from a discarded carcass outside a butcher’s shop, and Cecily remarked that the merchant was sure to be fined for breaking the law.

Pasmer’s Place was a new house in St. Sithe’s Lane, a stone’s throw from the Barge Inn on Bucklesbury Street, and Grace could hear raucous laughter coming from its taproom.

“Our apartments are facing the other way,” Cecily assured Grace. “You will not hear the noise, I promise. How do you like my house?” she asked, gesticulating grandly with her arm. “Jack brought the slate for the roof from Collyweston. ’Tis the best in England,” she said proudly.

The new stone gleamed in the sunlight and stood out among the wattle and daub buildings adjacent. Inside, Grace was impressed with the brightly colored ceilings and polished furniture of the paneled rooms, where the sun streamed in through the west-wing windows that looked out onto a secluded garden.

“You and I will share my bed while Jack and Tom are at Westminster,” Cecily enthused, showing Grace around the townhouse. “I am so happy you could come with me this time, Grace. We have to thank my husband for this—he is in a bind with us praying every night for John’s release and he praying for Henry’s safety—but I think I was persuasive enough,” she said, winking at her sister.

“I am grateful to you, Cis. Tom was not pleased that I came this time, because he knows it is only for John’s sake that I come. But let us not talk of Tom, dear as he is. Let us see how the children weathered the journey. They are probably already asleep.”

Cecily shrugged. She did not understand Grace’s fascination with her daughters, whom the younger woman loved as if she were their mother, while she was quite complacent about leaving them in the care of nursemaids all day. Once a day she would go and see them in the nursery, and it never failed to amuse her to find Grace down on her knees, playing a game with the oldest Welles daughter, Anne. But she knew Grace longed for her own child and was curious as to why her sister had failed to conceive.

Grace knew the answer. After the passionate lovemaking they had enjoyed in the wood at Collyweston, Grace had felt guilty and returned to her preoccupation with John. Tom had not touched her since.

V
ISCOUNT
W
ELLES STRETCHED
his long legs out in front of him towards the fire and gave a satisfied groan. “Cecily, bring me some of that wine,” he addressed his wife, who was tending to a pipkin hanging on a swing hook over the flames. “It smells so good. I swear the London air is damper than
in Lincoln,” he grumbled. “Every bone in my body aches after sitting on that hard bench in the Star Chamber all day. It may be colorful, but the damn room is draughty.”

“And what was your business today, my lord?” Cecily asked, ladling some of the spicy wine into a cup. “It sounds tedious. But then, doing needlework, teaching our daughter to walk and overseeing the household is also tedious. There, there, my lord—taste this and forget your dull day,” she clucked.

“I said the bench was hard, my dear, not that my day was dull,” Welles responded with an edge to his voice. Grace could see he did not appreciate being treated like a child. “Certes, you and Grace would have found it most interesting.” He took the cup and sipped it carefully. “Several decisions were made, including one that will end the life of your cousin John.”

Cecily dropped the ladle on the hearth, splashing wine on her yellow damask gown, and Grace slipped off her stool onto her knees, moaning as if in pain. Welles gave a short laugh. “You see, I told you it wasn’t dull. There were others who were also condemned for their part in this damnable pretender debacle. So he will not die alone.”

“My lord, my dear husband, how can this be? I pray you were not one who called for John’s death. Say you were not, I beg of you!” Cecily knelt before him, clasping his free hand to her cheek. “Is there nothing we…you can do?”

Grace rocked back and forth, weeping, her hair escaping from her cap and clinging to her wet cheeks. “John! Ah, John, my dearest,” she whispered. Cecily persisted with her supplications to her husband, if only to prevent the viscount from hearing Grace’s words. She knew Welles would not understand why Tom Gower’s wife whispered another man’s name with such passion.

“He may be your cousin, Cecily, but he is also a traitor. Certes, there is nothing I can do. Now do pull yourself together and see to your gown. And take Grace with you—I cannot tolerate women weeping,” he dismissed them both and pulled his hands away from Cecily. “John will be hanged, drawn and quartered, like any traitor at Smithfield, two days from now.” He took another drink. “I wish to hear no more about it.”

“H-hanged, drawn and quar-quartered,” Grace repeated, horrified. “But he is of royal blood. He should be…” but she could not even bring herself to utter the word
beheaded
.

“Blood of a usurper, you mean!” Jack Welles roared. “And attainted. He deserves nothing more than any other common traitor. We were all agreed.” He pointed to the door and said, more temperately, “Now go, before I lose my patience.”

Cecily rose and gently helped the trembling Grace to her feet. “Come, dearest, let us go and pray for John’s salvation,” she said and, propelling Grace through the door first, turned back and snapped, “and leave my husband to his warm wine.”

Before he had time for a reprimand, she had slammed the door behind her.

Taking Grace’s hand, Cecily pulled her towards a room farther down the corridor, begging her to stop crying and start thinking. “We have two days,” she whispered. “If we put our heads together, I have no doubt we can plot a way out of this. How I wish Mother were here—she’d have thought of one already.”

J
ACK
W
ELLES HAD
mellowed after a cup or two of the hot, rich wine and told Cecily he would arrange for the two women to visit John in Newgate prison. “I pray you, my dear, do not allow your sister to dishonor our name. Her behavior earlier was disgraceful,” he said, chuckling at his pun.

Cecily kept her head for once and let him have his little joke, although how he could mock Grace at such a time, she could not understand. “I promise, my lord,” she answered respectfully, wincing as her attendant tugged at a knot in her long fair hair. Then she steeled herself as she did every time she knew he was hungry for her and, looking over at him where he sat on the bed awaiting her in his murrey silk bed robe, gave him a seductive smile. “Your generosity will be repaid, of that you may be certain.”

I
T WAS ANOTHER
miserable day in the city, and the facades of the whitewashed houses along the wide Chepeside thoroughfare were made gray from the rain. It was the only paved road in the city, and thus the servants carrying Cecily’s litter moved faster than they had been able through the muddy lanes from Pasmer’s Place. Citizens hurried from place to place enveloped in felted cloaks, the women trailing the hems of their homespun woolen gowns in the puddles. Grace warmed her toes on the hot stone tucked under the fur blanket and closed her eyes in the gloom of the heavily curtained litter. She had visited and revisited what she would say to John
as soon as Cecily had given her the news that they were permitted to visit him. Even Cecily’s optimism had diminished after a night of lovemaking had failed to sway her husband’s resolve not to plead for John’s life.

“But I thought you had a plan,” Grace said as they broke their fast on bread, cheese and ale. Welles had long since ridden back to Westminster, after giving instructions to his steward to ready a litter for Lady Welles. “You told me you had a plan.”

She had not slept a wink in the bed she shared with Cecily’s chief attendant on those nights when Jack wanted Cecily, her own maid on a pallet under the window. She was afraid that if she fell asleep she would have the fearful dream of old about John with a noose about his neck and the sword ripping open his belly. It frightened her that she might have foretold his fate in those nightmares.

Cecily had shaken her head, her full mouth drooping at the corners. “My plan did not work,” she admitted. “I am sorry, Grace.”

Her crying done the night before, Grace smiled wanly at her sister and accepted the apology in silence. A servant knocked and entered to take away the remains of a jug of ale and a lump of cheese. If he noticed that the ladies had eaten more heartily that morning, he showed no surprise that half a loaf of crusty bread and a second hunk of cheese were gone. Grace had carefully hidden them in a bag at her waist. “In case John is not given enough food,” she told Cecily as she wrapped them. Then she had returned to her room to get ready for their visit to Newgate and sat sad and silent as Matty dressed her hair and arranged the black velvet headdress over it. Edgar did not even receive the customary smile and greeting from his mistress that morning, and her swollen red eyes told him she had heard the news of the execution. A handheld litter was the quietest mode of transport, but this morning Grace would have preferred the clopping of horses’ hoofs or the rumbling of carriage wheels to jar the morbid thoughts that were swimming around her head.

“Sweet Jesu!” Cecily’s awed voice came from the other side of the vehicle now, startling Grace out of her reverie. “Do you remember the old hag in the market at Winchester, Grace? When Bess gave birth to Arthur?”

Grace’s hand flew to her mouth. “Certes, I do. What made you think of her?”

“I cannot say. Perhaps the thought of an execution,” Cecily replied.
“What did she say? Something about two men you would help. Ah, yes.” Changing her voice to mimic the old woman, she quoted: “‘Executions! They be executions. It be dangerous for you to know them, but you will help them. Better not make friends of young men, my lady.’ By all that is holy, it seems she was right.”

Both women crossed themselves, and Grace reached for her rosary. She had helped John with his flights north to Stoke and east to Burgundy. “God have mercy,” she whispered, “for if she is, it would seem no plan we can devise can save John at this late hour.” Her throat constricting, she said, “Oh, Cis, it all seems like a bad dream. I wish we could wake and find we were once again in the safety of Sheriff Hutton, awaiting Uncle Richard’s summons back to London. Why, oh, why did John have to go and get himself captured? There is no one to help him here.”

Cecily shook her head. “Aye, no one. Jack was my only hope.” The escort coming to a stop told them they were at Newgate, and they pushed aside the coverlet, arranged their skirts and blinked at the light when the curtains were pulled back. Edgar helped Grace out after Cecily’s captain lifted her onto the steps of the prison so she would not soil her shoes.

Newgate’s solid stone rose above them, its tiny barred openings in the wall proclaiming it escape-proof. It was said hundreds were kept in its dank, grimy cells, and many had known the pain of gruesome tortures like the rack within its bowels. Grace shivered and shrank close to Edgar’s protective hulk. The captain announced the Welles party and the spike-studded wooden door creaked open to admit them. The stench inside made Grace retch.