Thy Name Is Love (The Yorkist Saga) (26 page)

"Well, that is where we are alike, Val, the three of us," Richard
said, neatly setting the document aside and securing it to the
table with a crystal paperweight. "Never afraid to die for a
worthy cause. And would it that I would die for a worthy cause
than to waste away, like Elizabeth Woodville is now fated to do."
"Do you still think Elizabeth is a witch?"
"If she is, her powers are dwindling."
"In inverse proportion to yours, my liege," Valentine replied,
watching Richard entertain that secret grin. "So, shall I take my
almighty King to my favorite dockside tavern, in discreet
disguise, for a hearty but simple repast?"
"Mushy peas to go with that pie and ale?"
"Secure a blond wig, don some tatty raiment and we're off!" They
exited the chamber, two old friends, two hungry— and thirsty—best
friends bound forever in a tangled knot of loyalties Valentine was
still amazed by, but wouldn't change for anything in the world.

 

CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
As Valentine travelled to King Henry VI's resting place of
Chertsey Abbey to meet the priests there, Denys appealed to the
older priests at Westminster Abbey, who would have known King
Henry personally. Several of them recalled fond memories of the
ill-fated King, but none remembered baptizing a child around the
year 1457, none of them recognized the woman in the miniature, and
none of them remembered a John.
"Oh, King Harry was a devout one, indeed," recalled Father Carney,
a kindly old man who strolled with her through the ancient halls
of the cloisters, his eyes focused on a faraway memory. "He was so
pious, he would go mad every time he saw a low-cut neckline, he
would shout ‘Fie! For shame!' and run through the chambers like a
beheaded chicken.
"He was feeble-minded indeed, Harry was, but generous, oh,
generous to a fault, letting all those around him pillage his
lands and treasure until the Crown was hopelessly mired in debt.
He had his very own household officers embezzling right under his
nose.
When they brought Marguerite of Anjou over to be his bride, he was
the one who blushed, all the way to the marriage bed!" Fond
memories of the dull-witted King Henry aside, Father Carney had no
recollection of ever baptizing a child that year.
But one priest, Father Welde, who looked nowhere near his age of
fifty, had a dim recollection of a man giving an infant to King
Henry at a Mass held in his chambers when the King was too ill to
attend chapel.
"Can you remember who else was there, Father?" she implored, her
heart racing, her palms breaking out in that familiar cold
dampness.
"‘Twas a Christmas service, if I remember, aye, I officiated, now
let me see, oh, everyone was present, all the top councillors,
Buckingham, Northumberland, Queen Marguerite, King Henry's
doctor..."
"That is right! I was born in ‘fifty-seven. Can you remember who
the babe's parents were?"
"Oh, I am sorry, child, there were so many bodies in those
chambers that Christmas, and it was so long ago." She shook her
head and placed her hand gently on his sleeve. "Oh, please,
Father, that infant may have been I."
"I shall tell you what, my child," Father Welde said. "I shall
sequester myself in the chapel straightaway and pray God I
remember, and when I do, I shall summon you forthwith!"
"Oh, thank you, Father!" She took his hand, kissed his ring,
curtseyed to him as if he were the King himself, and removed
herself immediately as not to interrupt his train of thought.
Perhaps this is
it!
she thought. Her heart pumped in excited thumps as
she flew over the uneven flagstones out of the Abbey. If God's
servant could not help her, then nobody could.
Leaving her mount with her groom, she walked back home alone.
Oblivious to the merchants' shouts and rumbling carts, she looked
straight ahead, focusing on not the outside world, but inner
thoughts. She was so close to finding her family, she knew they
were just beyond her reach now. Being this close, she couldn't
even go back and relive those moments of helpless despair, the
dead ends, Elizabeth's many evasions and deceptions.
She was someone—her loved ones were walking the streets just as
she was now—they lived, she knew it! Somewhere in this kingdom
were her siblings, or even her parents.
Did they think about her? She was almost afraid to ask herself
that question. Had they spent the last twenty years searching, or
at least, wondering? She reached her garden and strolled through
her orchard, thinking of Cristoforo Colombo. Where was he now? Was
he much closer to his dream than she was to hers? Would she ever
know?
A door slammed and she turned to see Valentine striding up to her,
his forced half-smile of contrition telling her what didn't have
to be said.
"I met and talked with a dozen priests who all had fond and
not-so-fond recall of King Henry, but did not know anyone named
John who would have held an infant in 1457."
He shook his head and stepped forward to take her in his arms, but
she felt the need to comfort him this time.
"I'm so sorry, my darling." He looked like he was about to cry.
"Don't be sorry." She grasped his hands and he sensed her mood at
once.
"You found something out, didn't you, love? What did you find
out?"
"Valentine—Father Welde told me—"
"You want to sit down?" He motioned to her favorite bench facing
the river.
She remained standing. "Valentine, Father Welde was there at
Christmas when they held Mass in King Henry's chambers when he was
too infirm to attend in the chapel. Father Welde saw a babe, and
he remembered baptizing me. Well, it could have been me." she
blurted out all in one rushed breath, having to pause and gulp air
before she could speak again.
"‘Tis all right, Dove, slow down," Valentine spoke in a pacifying
tone, stroking her arms slowly. "You can get it all out much more
easily in a slow steady stream than in a fire of rapid spurts like
that. Now tell me, who else did he say was there?"
"Oh, everyone, the King, the Queen, King Henry's doctor, many
folk, but he is trying to remember who was holding me...er, the
babe...he thinks he should remember correctly if he thinks about
it." At that moment she saw Valentine's eyes light up and catch
the glow of the setting sun behind them. He raised a hand and his
rings glittered as his fingers drummed his chin.
He was looking at her, but his eyes had a faraway look, narrowing
and growing darker as he sank more heavily into thought. She never
dared interrupt him when he was thinking this deeply, whilst
searching for that perfect phrase in a letter to a foreign
diplomat or plotting battle maneuvers. So she stood in stony
silence. Her lips were clamped shut, but her heart was beating
wildly.
"What?" she mouthed, but didn't dare speak out loud.
Finally, he swept off his cloak and dashed inside, calling over
his shoulder, "I am going to check something. I shall be back."
Valentine entered their silent empty chapel. He lit a single
candle, sat in his first-row pew, elbows resting on knees, his
head in his hands, and began to think very hard. It was something
she'd said about who'd been at that service in King Henry's
chamber in 1457. Then it came to him, fragments of memory, piece
by piece and it all began to fit together.
King Henry had never been in his right mind, even from childhood.
Valentine had many recollections of Richard's mother and brothers
discussing ‘King Henry's curse' or ‘King Henry's affliction' or
‘King Henry's incontinence.' The feeble-minded King always had a
doctor at his side, constantly examining him, spewing forth
diagnoses of his illness, one more outlandish than the next. This
doctor had also been a preacher.
When Valentine had gone to live with the Plantagenets, they had
often visited court and he had a distinct memory of King Henry—old
and infirm even then. He leaned on a cane, and had always been on
this preacher's arm; Valentine could see his face as a distant
blur in the foggy recesses of his memory.
Then he could see the man's face more clearly, because he'd seen
him again not long ago. The Franciscan preacher who had proclaimed
King Henry's title to the throne was with George when he'd burst
into King Edward's council chamber at Westminster on the way to
his final destruction.
It was the first Privy Council meeting Valentine had ever been
invited to attend.
He remembered seeing that same preacher with King Henry when
Valentine was a child. He never left the King's side.
He slapped the bench with his open palm. "That's it!" The man's
name was Father Goddard. Father
John
Goddard.

 

CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
King Richard was in his solar at Nottingham enjoying a distracting
game of chess with the Earl of Devonshire's son, when Thomas
Stanley, ignoring protocol, burst through the open doorway and
nearly knocked the protesting, stammering guards off their feet.
"Your...Your Grace!" Richard moved a piece, looked up, and waved
the guards away with a nod of dismissal. Still muttering in
confusion, they bowed out, bumping into each other along the way.
Stanley, Richard's Constable of England, was already down on the
floor in a deep, sweeping bow. Richard motioned with his hand.
"All right, rise, Stanley." He nearly fell over as he stood. He
was red and panting, sweat staining his doublet.
"Christ Almighty, Stanley, what is it?"
"My liege, Henry Tudor and his army have reached Shrewsbury, and
he already has two thousand Welshmen flocking to his colors. Sir
Gilbert Talbot has declared for him with several hundred retainers
at the ready," he blurted out in one breath.
All this reinforcement in the Tudor camp made Richard wonder what
side Stanley was going to be fighting on.
But he only took a leisurely swig from his tankard and wiped the
ring it had left on the table. "Very well then," he said. "At dawn
we take our departure for our final battle with the Lancastrians,
their destriers, and the biggest horse's ass of all, Harry Tudor."
He gave Stanley his leave with a casual wave of his bejewelled
fingers and focused back on the chessboard, to his opponent's
stunned disbelief.
"Are you not going to prepare in haste, Your Highness?" the boy
asked, his voice quivering with the knowledge that his question
was presumptuous at the least, disrespectful at worst. But he was
just too shocked to keep it in.
"Nay, lad, Tudor can wait. He can't fight the battle without me,
now, can he?" Gulping loudly, the youngster nodded and resumed the
game, confusing the pieces and mistakenly putting Richard in check
with his own knight.
Richard responded with a smile: "‘Tis hard enough to win a battle
without my own knights turning against me." He grasped the lad's
hand, calmed the trembling. "Worry not about the Tudor, lad. When
he retreats from this battle, the only way to tell him from those
ugly French slags is that he'll be wearing my broadsword for a
codpiece."
Richard and his generals arrived in Leicester two days before the
battle and took rooms at the
White Boar Inn
. As grooms assembled
the King's bed on the top floor, Valentine and Richard sat at a
nearby table, their tankards holding down the maps spread before
them.
"Remember the preacher who took care of King Henry, Dr. John
Goddard?" Valentine asked the King, who rose and began carefully
hiding away gold coins in a drawer in the frame of his bed.
Richard nodded. "Aye, he was with George that time he burst into
the Privy Council. I could hear Edward's blood boiling clear
across the chamber."
"He's the one. Dove told me this Father Welde was present when a
babe was presented unto King Henry by a physician. I have the
strangest hunch," he rose and paced back and forth, "the physician
may have been John Goddard.
Do you know his whereabouts?"
"Aye, he dwells in Chelsea, not far from my townhome."
"And he liveth yet? I don't want to have her hopes shattered
again."
"Aye, ‘twasn't so long ago I saw him last." Richard sat and began
polishing his war helmet.
"Grand! I shall dispatch a message to Dove and tell her to call on
him. I shall not be a minute in composing it. ‘Twill give her
something to do when we're at battle as well." Richard nodded and
began polishing his helmet. "Well, it should keep her busy, but I
don't reckon it'll take any more effort to push back Tudor than
it'll take her to journey to London. At least it won't be
snowing," he added.
He knew Richard was joking about the simplicity of defeating
Tudor; the King's hands trembled as they buffed the helmet.
Richard continued polishing, but his mind was somewhere else.
Valentine located a sheet of parchment and some ink and began
writing. "I want this as badly as she does, for her to have
family."
"You mean just in case we don't come out of this battle and she
loses a husband." Richard attempted a smile, but it was as shaky
as his hands.
"Nay, Dickon, I know we shall beat Tudor's army." But there was no
use denying it to his closest friend. They both knew the reality
of this situation. They had followers who could turn on them with
a change in the wind, the most volatile of them all being Thomas
Stanley.
"You know how much this has always meant to her." Richard placed
his helmet down and spread the cloth over it. "Whoever they are, I
hope they love her as much as you." Denys entered London's Aldgate
far ahead of her retinue, Valentine's note tucked in her bodice.
The sentries posted at the gate bowed to her and offered her
polite greetings, but all she could think of was that John Goddard
was her last hope.
Upon reaching Chelsea, she inquired at a goldsmith's stall where
to find John Goddard's residence. As she knocked on the door of
the modest townhouse, her grooms caught up to her and remained
mounted in a semi-circle without. She tried to calm her breathing
as the door opened. "Good day, I am here to see Father Goddard,"
she told the kitchen maid.
The maid's widened eyes swept over the regal figure adorned in
finery. Then she glanced over Denys' shoulder at the retinue
outside in their colorful livery. Backing off and bumping into the
door, she bobbed a rapid curtsy, turned, and rushed back inside,
screaming, "Father! Father! Th...the...the Queen is ‘ere...'tis
truly the ghost of ‘er ‘ighness Queen Guinevere come back to the
living and standing ‘ere at our very ‘umble doorstep!" Her shrieks
echoed through the narrow foyer.
"Me Lord! Me Lord! ‘Tis the Queen! Guinevere, she come back to
life and does stand right ‘ere!" Denys hid a smile in her palm
just as John Goddard appeared and, doffing his cap, gave a
respectable bow. He ushered Denys into what he called the great
hall, a simple affair with a trestle table, hard benches and small
hearth.
"Please, please forgive Maisie, milady. She goes off halfcocked
and sees folk long dead she never did see alive—I'm so sorry."
Valentine had mentioned Goddard's coal-black hair, the youthful
athletic stature and clear eyes from way back when he took care of
King Henry. Although he seemed to retain that ruggedness, it was
disappearing beneath a wrinkling and pouchy face.
She smiled and reached out to touch his arm, as further
reassurance that she was indeed real—and not the legendary Queen
Guinevere. "Tis quite all right, Father Goddard.
I am Denys Starbury, Duchess of Norwich. I'm here to ask you a few
questions about the murky past. But more recent than Guinevere, I
daresay."
"Oh, please. If you will, milady. Do ask. I am at your disposal."
"You were engaged in the services of King Henry the Sixth as his
personal physician, were you not, Father?" He reddened, grabbed
the back of a chair, sweat breaking out on his brow and upper lip.
He began stammering, "Ah...aye, but that were...that were mighty
long ago, milady, my allegiance to the House of Lancaster ended
way back even before King Harry died, then when I were with King
Edward's brother the Duke of Clarence—"
"Do be calm, this has naught to do with allegiance," Denys
explained. Her unruffled tone immediately put the doctor at ease,
for Goddard loosened his white-knuckled grip on the chair and
settled back into his round-shouldered posture.
"It concerns a babe who was a ward of King Henry. You were there
at her first Christmas in 1457 during the Mass in the King's
chambers, do you recall?"
"Fifty-seven, Christmas, that was...aye! The lass, the
silver-haired lass."
Silver-haired
. Her heart took a tumble
at those words.
"Where did the King get her? Do you know anything of her
parentage?"
"Are you sure you do not want to sit, milady?" She couldn't think
of sitting. Her body was one rigid column of numbness.
"Nay, pray carry on." She urged with her hands.
"King Harry became her warden, when her young mother handed her to
me. She were of royal bloodline, but I know not how thick. So I
baptized her and gave her to King Harry, saying ‘take good care of
her, sire, she may be of value someday.' Then the King, with the
blankest of looks on his face, knowing not what to do, looked
round, then handed her over to a nursemaid straightaway."
"Was the baptism recorded in the parish records at Westminster?"
"Aye, it should have been. But under what name, I know not."
"Woodville, perhaps? Elizabeth Woodville adopted me after my
mother died. Father, that babe may have been me."
"Oh, God Jesu. I doubt it, lass." He shook his head.
"‘Twould likely be your father's name, as he were still alive
then. But he weren't there; I've no way of even knowing who he
were."
"Do you know my mother's name, Father?" she asked, her voice
breaking, for her heart was racing so, she could hardly breathe.
"I—my memory betrays me." He pressed his hand to his eyes, shut
them tightly. "For the love of God, I can't remember the woman's
name. Oh, Jesu, let that name come to me!"
"Please—" she whispered, her breaths ragged with sobs.
"My memory fails me as my eyes fail me. How my wits do abandon me!
But I shall try, lass. I shan't let another thought enter my silly
head until I remember her name." Oh, let him see this face and
remember! She slipped the miniature out and held it before him.
"Father—could this be she?" He opened his eyes and blinked
rapidly, then took it from her and held it closer, then farther,
trying to focus.
Recognition lit up his face and he nodded. "Aye—aye, ‘tis she! As
if she stands before me and breathes! That necklace—she wore it
that very day in the chapel!" She looked down at the miniature as
if seeing it for the first time. Now she knew for certes. By the
grace of God, those were the eyes of her mother looking up at her.
"
Ma mere
."
She'd never said those words before in her life.
"And you can't remember her name, Father?" She turned away and
stepped into a beam of warm sunlight that shone gently through the
window. She looked up at the sky from whence it came, tried to
gaze straight through to heaven.
"Please let him remember," she whispered. "Father," She turned to
him and held out her hand.
"Come stand here. In this light. Look how peacefully it lies upon
the earth, like a smile from God. Mayhap the answer is there. He's
trying to tell us. Stand here and let God speak to you." He
approached the light. She backed out of his way, studying his
silhouette as he stood, head bowed, brow creased, in the sunlight
pouring from heaven, encircling him in its warmth.
Finally he spoke, without moving. "Let me be left alone, lass, I
promise when you come back, God shall have given me the answer."
She thanked him and left him standing in the sunbeam, waiting. She
now had another way.
Leaving her travelling party at her London townhome to rest, she
had a groom saddle a fresh mount and escort her to Westminster
Hall, her mother's miniature next to her heart.
Its thumping kept her alert. She'd already rehearsed her words to
Bess Woodville a thousand times over: she knew this had to work.
"Tell the dowager Queen that her niece waits without," she told
the page who opened the door to Elizabeth's quarters.
Mass would be over by now; the former Queen was probably reading
her book of hours, atoning for a lifetime.
Elizabeth and her children were sequestered behind locked doors
and armed guards. The page led Denys into a stuffy antechamber,
where Elizabeth's youngest daughters were playing with their dolls
in the corner.
Finally Elizabeth appeared, no longer sweeping through in a rustle
of satins and gauze. The doorway dwarfed her in her simple black
cloak, devoid of jewels. Denys was shocked at her appearance. But
her face brightened upon seeing Denys. She felt an unexpected stab
of pity. No anger. No resentment. Only pity. This poor woman.
I'm grown now;
she can no longer intimidate me.
The former Queen was actually shorter than she, but she'd never
noticed it. Gone was the willful spark in her eye; the stormy gray
had dulled to the tiredness of tarnished pewter.
She was thin, her face drawn and bony, folds of skin hanging
loosely from her chin.
She rushed up to Denys and embraced her like a long-lost daughter.
"Dove! What a lovely surprise! I've been so lonely here. How I
have longed for your company—"
Denys tangled with a fresh rush of emotions. But they all felt so
much better than the constant contempt that had weighed down her
heart all those years, knowing this was a door she would never
walk through again.
She searched Elizabeth's eyes for some hint of the usual
transparency, but there was none to be found. She was wallowing in
the malaise of her own self-defeat. The years of manipulating her
victims had finally taken their toll. Empty and resigned, she was
now a deposed queen whose fate had dealt her a final blow she no
longer had the strength to resist.
"Aunt Bess—" She struggled to keep her voice steady. Years and
years of memories converged on her all at once.
She no longer even knew who this woman was, yet she felt pity
above all. "—I am so sorry about Uncle Ned. I loved him so. I miss
him terribly. A part of me died along with him."
"I know how much you loved your uncle. ‘Tis a pity you and I never
shared such closeness."
You never wanted to
, she ached to say.
Y
ou shoved me
aside and sent me away. You never wanted me. Now, twenty years
later, ‘tis a pity.
"Aye, it was. But look at the way it worked out, Aunt Bess. I have
Valentine, whom I love dearly and I believe I'm finally carrying
his child."
"I'm to have a grandniece or nephew? Ah, Dove, that is marvelous!"
After the briefest glance at Denys' middle, Elizabeth clasped her
hands together, her eyes lightening.
For the first time, Denys actually saw the hint of blue in those
troubled eyes. She fought back the tears with every bit of her
strength.