The King's Grace (63 page)

The queen’s chamberlain hurried forward upon hearing Bess’s question. Bowing low, he told her: “’Tis a retinue from Exeter, your grace. It appears the king has sent the pretender’s wife to you, so the herald tells me. She requests an audience.”

“Does she have a name?” Bess asked, taken aback, and the chamberlain turned and beckoned to the herald. As he moved forward, the stranger took two steps into the room and her hood fell back to reveal a young woman of about Grace’s age with porcelain skin, large gray eyes and fair, almost woolly hair visible under her black velvet bonnet. She unhooked her mantle and immediately a young page stepped forward to take it from her. Her black satin gown, decorated with ribbons and accented in an amber fabric, was obviously new—a gift from the king, Grace later discovered.

Keeping her eyes respectfully on the floor, the young woman advanced towards the dais, the two guards flanking her, and sank into a deep reverence, remaining humbly on her knees.

“Lady Katherine Gordon, daughter of the earl of Huntly and kinswoman of James, king of Scotland, your grace,” Windsor Herald intoned. “She was lately called wife of the pretender, Perkin Warbeck. I am commanded to bring her here by our merciful sovereign King Henry and place her in your protection.”

Grace had slipped back into her seat, not wanting to miss a moment of this fascinating scene. Cecily glanced over at her and raised her eyebrows, her mouth open in surprise. A buzz began among the courtiers, who had closed ranks behind Katherine and were all trying to get a look at an intimate of the pretender.

“I am his lawful wife still, herald,” Katherine Gordon said in her strong Scottish burr and, daring to look up at Bess, added, “if it please, your grace.”

Bess avised the young woman for at least a minute as the court stood silently waiting. And then, to Grace’s immense awe, the queen left her throne, glided down the steps of the dais and held out her hand to raise Katherine herself. Kissing the queen’s fingers first and her tears flowing, the lovely Scottish noblewoman slowly got to her feet, using the proffered hand to guide her.

“You must be travel weary, Lady Katherine.” Bess turned and looked straight at Grace. “My sister will be glad to relinquish her seat to you, will you not, Lady Grace?”

Grace could not stop her blush. She knew that Bess was trying to send her a message that spoke of her compassion for Grace’s mistaken belief in Perkin but that also said, I am the queen and I accept this woman because she is a noblewoman and has been unjustly wedded to a deceiver. Grace left her seat, fully aware the whole room was watching her and, descending the steps, curtsied to Bess and stood aside. Katherine looked at her curiously and nodded her thanks.

But before Bess allowed Katherine to sit, she first presented Cecily, then Margaret and, finally, in a voice that could be heard throughout the hall, said, “And this is my second son, Prince Henry, the duke of York.”

Cecily told Grace later that Katherine had gone white, well understanding the queen’s implication. There is only one rightful duke of York in this land, she was saying, and he sits before you, my lady.

T
HE SOUND OF
muffled sobs came to Grace as she passed the queen’s wardrobe one dreary afternoon soon after Lady Katherine’s arrival. Thinking it was one of the servants who ought not be in the storage room at that hour, she went in. In the jumble of chests, gowns, cloaks, curtains and other bric-a-brac and with only a tiny window to illuminate the space, it took her a few seconds to distinguish the figure slumped on top of a folded arras on the floor.

“Do you have permission to be in here, mistress?” Grace asked, not unkindly, thinking she was speaking to a maid. She was taken aback when Katherine Gordon’s blotched face appeared. She sniffed loudly. Grace was surprised, the young woman was supposed to be supervised at all times, Bess had instructed. “We do not want her running off to bring us more trouble,” the queen had told them. “She has powerful friends in Scotland, remember.”

Grace knelt down beside Katherine, taking the women’s frail body in her arms and rocking her like a baby. “There, there. Weeping has never harmed anyone, and ’tis time you had a good cry,” she said as Katherine buried her head on Grace’s shoulder and let her tears fall.

Gradually the sobs gave way to sniffles, and finally Grace felt the young
woman pull away, searching for her kerchief in her voluminous sleeve. She was still wearing the same black and brown dress she had arrived in, but it was now rumpled and tear-stained. When she recognized Grace, she stiffened, fear in her eyes. “I pray you, Lady Grace, do not tell the queen I was here.”

Grace had no intention of tattling on Katherine. She was much too curious to hear from Richard’s wife how Henry had treated her—and her husband—when they had been captured. She patted Katherine’s knee and put her finger to her lips. Before closing the door she peered up and down the passage to make sure no one else was wandering in that area of the palace. She pulled up an old footstool and told Katherine that she alone in the queen’s train believed Richard to be the duke of York. Katherine was too distraught to be wary, and relief spread over her face.

Breathing a little more easily, Katherine told of her capture at St. Buryan’s priory, where she had moved to with her son from the Mount not long after Richard left. “I thought ’twould be safer there, and the wee island is nay braw enough for a bairn of Dickon’s age. Poor wee mite was crabbity all the time.” Grace had a little trouble understanding Katherine’s heavy brogue, but she listened intently.

“But there was a more important reason for my leaving Saint Michael’s,” Katherine confided, her chin trembling. “I was carrying our second child, but the uncomfortable sea voyages and all the distress of what would become of us made me ill. I lost the child at Saint Buryan’s—a little girl, it was.”

Grace’s eyes filled with tears as she pictured the anguish this poor woman had suffered. Certes, no wonder she was all in black. “God rest her soul,” she whispered, crossing herself. “I am heartily sorry for you, Lady Katherine.”

Katherine smiled and continued with her tale. She said she had been taken from sanctuary by three important men sent by the king, one of whom was master of the household, and Grace grimaced upon hearing that once again Henry had violated sanctuary laws. “When they knew I was in mourning for the bairn, they allowed me to stay cloistered in a house nearby for a respectful few days before they took me to the king.”

“Did you see your husband then?” Grace whispered. “Did Henry at least allow you to see him?”

Katherine hung her head, nodding. She could not look at Grace. “I am ashamed, my lady. I was so relieved to see Richard alive that I fell to my knees weeping and blessed the king for his mercy. He told me my husband had deceived me, and that he was naught but a lying scoundrel. I was shocked to hear this from the king’s own mouth, even though it had been whispered in Scotland. But my kinsman James, and all my noble family believed Richard was the duke of York. Why should I not have? In all our time together, he treated me with all honor and love, and I cannot believe he is not a prince.” She broke down again, and Grace waited patiently. She could imagine Henry standing, watching like a bird of prey, his cold face smug and his bony hands rubbing together in satisfaction. “Then the king raised me in all gentleness and made me face Richard—who had said nothing all this time,” Katherine continued in a monotone. “We were alone with the king, and I wanted him with all my heart to deny the king’s charge and to say that he
was
the duke of York, younger son of Edward, but he did not.”

She turned away and stared at the wall. “Dear God, instead he told me he was not who he had said he was, and that others had led him to believe he was the duke when he knew he was not. And he then begged my forgiveness and asked the king to return me to my family. He did not want me to stay.” She plucked at her gown, as if working up the courage to admit something terrible. Then she blurted out, “I called him accursed, wicked and a seducer. And I told him I loathed him. It was the last thing I said to him before they took him away. But I don’t loathe him—I love him. Ah, by the sweet Virgin, I love him truly.” She flung herself back down on the rolled-up arras, crying to her own St. Catherine that she wished she were dead.

“My dear Lady Katherine, certes you loathed him in that moment, and you had every right to tell him so,” Grace reasoned, patting Katherine’s heaving shoulders gently. Grace did not know how she could console Katherine until she understood what was in her own heart. Could it be that he has deceived me, too? she wondered miserably. If he had denied he was Richard to the person he loved most in all the world, then surely it must be true. Ever eager to solve a problem, she quickly came to a solution. “Have you not considered that perhaps he confessed to being a pretender in order to protect you and your son? Aye, Richard saw the way of things,
once his military cause was lost and Henry had cornered him, and his only thoughts were of you and his son. If he persisted saying he was the duke of York, he would only make Henry angrier and more vengeful. Nay, ’tis clear as spring water Henry threatened that harm would come to you and the boy if Richard did not make the confession the king wanted to hear,” she finished triumphantly, hoping to stay Katherine’s noisy weeping. “’Tis simple when you think about it,” she reiterated. But she was missing something—something important. What was it? Then it dawned on her. “Your son? Where
is
your son?”

Katherine’s muffled voice came from the folds of the tapestry. “They took him from me at Saint Buryan’s. I have not seen him since.” She sat up slowly, a glint of anger in her eyes. “The king promised the child would be sent to me here anon. I hope he keeps his promises.”

Grace looked away, not wanting her doubt to add to the mother’s distress. “You may be sure he is well cared for,” she reassured her. “Now, wash your face and straighten your headdress. Your absence will have been noted by now. You can say you were lost in the labyrinth of corridors. Certes, I still do not know my way around them. But, I beg of you, do not tell anyone of our talk—I have brought enough trouble on myself and my family already.”

She helped Katherine to her feet and propelled her to the door. “Go now, quickly, but know that you have a friend at court.”

T
HE KING’S CAVALCADE
rode slowly across the drawbridge, under the portcullis and gate behind and into the main courtyard late in the day on the eighteenth day of November—a day marked by heavy downpours that turned the road to the palace into a quagmire. They had been expecting Henry for two days, and Bess waited in her long audience chamber for her husband, her attendants fussing with her train and the blue velvet veil hanging down her back from her jeweled gabled headband. But Henry kept his wife waiting for another hour while he changed out of his wet traveling clothes and warmed his feet in front of the fire in his own chamber.

Grace was determined that no sign of any friendship with Katherine would be visible to the court, but while Henry took his time escorting his prisoner to London, she managed to reassure Katherine a few times that she had meant what she said. Now she had placed herself on the other
side of Bess from where Katherine stood and was half hidden by the taller Anne and Cecily in the hope she would not be noticed. Why she needed to worry, she could not say, because she was sure the king would have eyes only for his wife.

She was mistaken, however, for when Henry was announced and stalked in on his long, strong legs—which Grace had once acknowledged to Cecily were his only good feature—his eyes scanned the group of ladies and briefly rested on Katherine Gordon’s face before he focused his full attention on Bess. Grace was no judge, she admitted to herself, but was there a hint of lust in Henry’s lashless eyes when he saw the Scottish woman? Nay, I must have been mistaken, she thought, watching him kiss each of Bess’s hands, and then her lips, with ardor.

“Where is Perkin Warbeck, my lord?” Bess asked, smiling. “Is he locked up safely somewhere?”

“Nay, your grace. It pleases me to treat him as I would any guest who has had the friendship of kings and an emperor,” Henry said, amused that his nonchalance was catching his wife and the assembled company off guard.

Bess was nonplussed and her smile faded. “But is he not an enemy? A traitor?”

“Certes, he is an invader whom we have vanquished, but as a foreigner he cannot be a traitor, can he? I have not decided what we shall do with him, but I shall, never fear. At this moment, however, he is travel weary—as am I, my dear. We shall rest and meet at supper, if that pleases you?” He lifted her hand to his lips again and waited for her response. He knew what it would be; his accommodating wife had never gainsaid him yet in their marriage, and he doubted she would begin now.

“Whatever pleases you pleases me, my lord,” she said, smiling again. “’Til supper, then.”

Henry bowed, turned on his heel and hurried away before any other awkward questions about his odd treatment of the pretender could be raised.

“Extraordinary,” Cecily murmured to Grace while they were still in their curtsy.

“Nay, ’tis not,” Grace replied, a little glimmer of hope in her heart. “It means he is still not convinced one way or the other.”

G
RACE AND
T
OM
strolled arm in arm around the queen’s audience chamber, talking and admiring the view of the river from the long windows. Others also took the opportunity to stretch their legs in the long hall, its walls boasting murals of long-ago legends, as the rain continued outside. Her sisters Anne and Catherine along with their husbands led the way, and behind Grace and Tom several attendants, including Lady Katherine Gordon, lollygagged in their wake.

Without warning the king appeared on the threshold and waited for the courtiers to move aside and provide passage to the low dais at the far end of the room. Following behind him, clothed in his own princely finery and walking freely, was Perkin Warbeck. A gasp of surprise echoed around the room when the man’s identity was whispered. Grace caught sight of Katherine Gordon’s stricken face in the group opposite her as Perkin’s eyes scanned the many courtiers, searching for her. A look of relief came over his handsome features when he found her, and he quickly turned his gaze back to the king in front of him, Henry’s pet monkey scampering along on his golden chain beside him. The implication was not lost on the court, whose eyes were now glued to Henry’s other pet—the pretender. After the initial murmuring, the room went quiet.