Karen Harper Read online

  “They admitted they got some embalming herbs from the village apothecary. But so what if the boy was the one who brought the herbs to the castle? All that was after the prince died. I warrant our illustrious doctors would not have used the lowly apothecary—a rural one at that—for their own prescriptions after His Grace took ill.

  “I’ll call for you about an hour after mass tomorrow,” he went on. “Come garbed as a lad again. I’ll bring a horse for you, and let’s hope that a rustic-looking man and two lads won’t attract any undue attention from someone watching.”

  “Like that caped man on the battlements? We could have rushed up there to try to see who it was.”

  “Not worth the effort. If it was Surrey, he’d be annoyed. If it was someone who doesn’t want to be discovered, someone who knows his way around the castle, despite all the guards, he would not be there when we arrived. If he’s someone dangerous, we don’t need to tip him off that we’re looking for him, or for information about the prince’s death.”

  “And if it was the ghost of Glendower up there,” I put in, swinging his hand a bit in the sheer joy of being near Nick anywhere, “he will just have to meet us in the forest.”

  “Don’t jest like that.” He frowned and gave my hand a little squeeze. “I’ve lived for years with ghosts—ones who were betrayed and slaughtered—and I cannot rest until justice is done for them.”

  Queen Elizabeth of York

  It was not often the king came to my quarters, but here he was, unannounced and alone. I turned away from gazing out the window at the blank gray sky over London, for we had returned to our capital. How I wished I could be one of the seagulls screeching and wheeling over the rushing Thames and fly to Ludlow. But I would have to let my emissaries, Nick and Varina, be my eyes and ears—and heart—there.

  “My dear lord,” I blurted as he closed the door behind himself and strode into my presence chamber, “not more bad news?”

  “In a way,” he said, glancing around the room, evidently to see whether I was alone. I was solitary often lately, for loneliness and melancholy suited me, despite how my ladies fussed when I dismissed them. By the Virgin’s veil, at least Henry had not come looking for me when I was with the sleeping images of my other lost children but two chambers away, for then he would have thought me demented indeed.

  “Our son Henry is all right?” I asked.

  “Yes, hale and hearty as ever and quite aware of his elevated circumstance. But I have come to give you news of your ‘great matter’ before you hear it from someone else,” he said, and drew me by the hand over to the table, where he seated me, then pulled another chair close. Elbows on his knees, he leaned forward and took my hands in his again.

  “Hear it from someone else? You have told someone else that I want answers about my brothers’ murders?”

  “Of course not. I meant you would hear of the fact that I have had to besiege our own castle in Calais against Tyrell. You were evidently right to suspect him,” he said, shaking his head, “at least of duplicity in his loyalty to us. And after all I’ve done for that man! I had ordered him home for questioning, but he refused, claiming he could not leave his command at the fortress Guisnes in Calais right now—and saying he had been to London so recently for the royal wedding.”

  “He must have guessed he is suspect in the loss of my brothers. And if he has a guilty conscience…”

  “I fear the base-hearted churl has no conscience. He has hoodwinked and defied me. I’ve received word on the best authority—my spies in France—that, though claiming and pretending to be loyal to our reign, over the years, even recently, he has housed and abetted various Yorkist rebels and sympathizers there—there, where I have entrusted him with that command!”

  “I knew he did not deserve to be at Arthur’s wedding or the joust thereafter. He was even at my coronation years ago. When the throne was first yours, why did you not confiscate his lands or attaint him, as you did other Yorkists? Why did you pardon him!”

  “Keep your voice down, Elizabeth; he had been in France during the Battle of Bosworth, so had not helped King Richard there. Besides, I needed someone like him—just as I used the Earl of Surrey—who was willing to change his allegiance to us. Both men were Yorkists who saw the righteousness of my claim to the throne, or so I thought. I believed I needed Tyrell as a shining example of that. But what I came to tell you is that a fortnight ago, when I heard of his defiance, I ordered English troops to take the castle and deliver him to me. There was a siege and still he defied me. He was promised safe passage, but when he came out, he was arrested and is being sent back here under guard to be thoroughly questioned.”

  Wide-eyed, my heart pounding, I nodded through all that. Tyrell’s true colors had come out at last. The rumors that he had known something about the murder of my brothers could now be examined. Declared a traitor, he would be questioned, no doubt under duress in the Tower, the very place where my brothers had met their fate. I might finally have answers, have some balm for my guilty soul.

  But, I reasoned, as my husband took his leave and I was alone again, was making Tyrell a shining example truly why the king had seemed to favor, even to coddle the man over the years? And until I begged of him to find Richard and Edward’s killer, had he never doubted his liege man?

  At least, I thought, with my head on my arms, facedown upon the table, if Tyrell was the one behind the vilest of crimes and had been holed up in France, he could not have sneaked off to Wales to harm Arthur. If there was foul play in Wales, someone else was to blame—perhaps someone Tyrell had sent or encouraged, even sheltered. But the biggest puzzle of all was this: Since it appeared Sir James Tyrell had ever been a Yorkist at heart, why would he have harmed the two young Yorkist heirs, unless someone else had bribed or forced him to do so? Yes, my uncle Richard could have urged Tyrell to be that killer, to clear his way to the throne. The dreadful thing was that their deaths had also cleared the way for Henry Tudor, my beloved husband.

  CHAPTER THE FIFTEENTH

  Mistress Varina Westcott

  I suppose my feelings that day Nick and I ventured outside Ludlow were much like Princess Catherine’s when she and her husband went out on their last day together. I could not wait to escape the confines of the castle, and it was a partly sunny day with a fresh breeze after the smell of dank, centuries-old stones and dusty tapestries and draperies—and the heaviness of death and grieving. With a sense of adventure and freedom, despite our terrible task, I too would be with the man I loved.

  Since Nick evidently knew the area surrounding the castle fairly well, I wanted to be somewhat familiar with it before we rode out. I rose and ate early and attended an early mass, for it was the Sabbath, though it would be no day of rest for me. With my Welsh maid, Morgan, I went up on the battlements where we had seen the princess and the man with the cape looking down on us yesterday. It was windy but deserted up there. Though I studied the area where we had seen the man, I had come to survey the countryside. Ah, how Signor Firenze would have appreciated this view, however much his great skill had been portrait painting.

  Below the rocky escarpment on which Ludlow Castle had been built, the very view from my chamber window, rushed the wide River Terne, leaping with white water over boulders in its way. From another side, I gazed down on the village of Ludlow, mostly gray stone buildings that looked like toy houses from here. Our guide, the apothecary’s boy, Rhys Garnock, would have a steep walk up to the castle to meet us today, for Nick had said he had no horse of his own and we must provide one.

  Around the village lay fertile fields, separated from one another not by English hedgerows but by two plowed furrows and a grassy path, though in areas where sheep or cattle grazed I saw some stone fences. A dense forest edged the fields, and the vista beyond was misty moors, mountains, or marshes, the latter referred to as bogs here, mostly of peat and grasses. I saw nothing that could be called a cave, though Nick had said we would visit the ancient cave tomb called a cromlech where the gh
ost of the Welsh freedom fighter Owen Glendower was said to be seen. I almost asked Morgan its location and whether she knew of an old herb woman who lived in the forest, but it was best to trust almost no one.

  When we returned to my chamber, I sent Morgan away and changed into my boy’s attire, including my riding boots. Nick knocked shortly thereafter and rocked my poise again by whispering on the stairs, “Prettiest boy I’ve ever seen.”

  Actually, I thought that young, thin Rhys Garnock was almost as well-favored, with his light brown hair, fine complexion, and rosy cheeks. I guessed his age at about twelve or thirteen. He seemed eager to please, and it did please me that his English was so good. I silently scolded myself for thinking that, just because these people lived in the wild borderlands, they would speak only Welsh.

  “If’n you wish to catch the old herb woman at her hut afore she wanders out foraging, we should go there first,” Rhys said to Nick.

  “Perhaps she will stay at home on the Sabbath.”

  “Doubt it. Too far to come to the village church and needs each day to forage, so she’s said. But best go ’stead of Glendower’s cave. ’Tis not actually a cave—just seems like one.”

  “But on the day the prince and princess rode out, they went to the Glendower site first, then visited the herb woman?” Nick questioned.

  “Oh, aye, but a storm came up that day, so the old woman returned early, that she did, and ’tis a lovely day today, so she’ll be out and about all hours.”

  I rode between them, making us three abreast on the road. Rhys knew I was a woman in disguise, but he had not so much as blinked at that. It made me wonder whether he sometimes worked sub rosa for others. “You seem to know the old woman’s habits well, Rhys,” I said.

  “Been sent to buy herbs for my da oft enough, ones he couldna find or grow,” he told me. “Besides, Da says she was a friend of my great-grandmother’s, all the way down to us.”

  “So she is old, indeed,” Nick said.

  The boy rolled his blue eyes. “Claims to be near old as Glendower, that she knew him once, but canna be.” He lowered his voice. “No one lives that old, so it’s Glendower’s ghost seen in these parts, not the man himself, but Da’s not sure ’bout Mistress Fey. That’s one reason the princess Catherine wanted to meet old Fey, ’cause she didn’t believe the prince ’bout the woman’s age, and they were laughing that day and made a bet of it. As for the prince”—the boy lowered his voice again—“I hear tell he been talking of buying wild garlic from her, spice up his winter fare at table, but ’specially said it be an aphro…aphro something—like a love potion. Da says it be good for breathing problems too, so he prob’ly knew that and just boasted ’bout the love potion.”

  Nick and I exchanged glances again. If the prince sought an aphrodisiac, did that mean he and Catherine still had not bedded?

  “How did it happen that they knew to take you for a guide?” I asked him. “Had they bought herbs from your father?”

  “Don’t Da wish! Some Ludlow village folk loved the prince, bringing hope and power back to the Welsh people, eh, what they not had since Glendower’s rising. No, one of the chieftains here’bouts musta told Prince Arthur I knew old Fey and how to find the cave. Don’t mean to brag, but I even know the bogs like the back of my hand. Know how to hide in the water, breathing through a hollow reed to get close to the ducks, where I can grab one or two if my bow and arrows get too wet, then just wring their necks.”

  “As for the other folk in the village,” Nick said, obviously trying to keep Rhys on track, “did they not love the Tudor Prince of Wales? I’ve heard tell that some are still loyal to King Richard and the Yorkist cause in these parts.”

  “Well”—the boy drawled out the word as if hesitant to go on—“when Richard was Duke of York, he was oft here, his loyalists too.”

  “But not hereabouts anymore? Those loyalists who don’t live nearby, I mean. Any coming in from other parts, maybe even from eastern or northern England?”

  “Don’t know of that, milord, for I’d sure like to go t’other way—from here to the east. See, I been out and about oft in the woods for my da, even though I not be wantin’ to be an herbalist like him, but a knight’s squire or page in London Town or duck hunter for the royal table, if’n I must. The prince, milord—I swear on my life ’tis true—if he would have lived”—the boy gave a huge sniff and wiped his nose with his sleeve—“said he’d take me back to London with him, and find me a place with a real knight of the realm too. That’s what he said, with a real knight of the realm.”

  I’d heard the Welsh had excellent singing voices and endless verses to their songs, but this lad had a fine, singsong one for talking endlessly, once he got going. Nick told him, “You help us now, and we’ll see about all that, if your da is willing.”

  “I reckon if I didna have two younger brothers coming on, he’d never let me go, but if’n I vow to send back coin now and then, I’m hoping for it.”

  Vows and hope, I thought as we rode into the fringe of the forest. Vows to the queen and her hope we could mourn for her here and discover something of foul play—if it was to be found.

  Suddenly both sun and sky disappeared, and shadows gathered as we rode, single file, Rhys first and Nick behind me, under the huge branches of age-old trees. Birds flew silently, but squirrels screeched loud enough to make me jump. The sudden shift in temperature chilled me more than it should as I looked all around, despite the shrinking vista. I had heard wolves still roamed these woods.

  Even within the forest, our mounts waded through a bog. It wasn’t deep, and there was an obvious path through it, but last year’s hollow brown reeds stood as tall as the horses’ withers and clacked against our boots and stirrups. “Those reeds,” Rhys said, snapping one off and looking through it, “see—the very ones I use to breathe through when I’m edging closer to the ducks, ’specially like now, in the spring, when the water could completely cover me. Bet old Fey knows tricks like that too, but I never asked her.”

  I didn’t believe those rumors of an ageless herb woman, I told myself. It sounded like one more fantastical topic for a Welsh bard’s song. And if she lived anywhere beneath these dark, shifting trees, how would she know whether the sky was to bring sun or rain anyway?

  When Rhys led us back onto solid ground, I saw, rising above the thick grass, a thin finger of fragrant wood smoke as if pointing out our way. We rode into a clearing where sat a squat stone cot encircled by rows of plants. Most stood like corpses of themselves, blighted by winter frosts and not pulled up or replanted yet. They leaned against stakes or cords, as if strung up by their spindly arms, slumped with their heads down. As we rode a bit closer, I noted that some had sprouted anew with the spring weather.

  Despite our silence and the thick-leafed carpet under our horses’ hooves, perhaps the herb woman heard us, for out she came—no, that could not be the old woman. Unfortunately, she must have another visitor, though I saw no horse. The woman who emerged stepped into an errant splash of sun. She was as blond as I and wore a muted blue gown that clung to her ripe body. She was beautiful too, standing erect and graceful as she lifted a hand to cover her eyes and gaze our way.

  But as we came closer, I saw her gown was gray and hung loose on a bony frame, her hair snow-white and her arm wizened, her face cobwebbed with wrinkles. Had the sun and shadows played a trick on me? I dared not ask Nick or Rhys now or she would hear me.

  She nodded in greeting as Rhys gave our names, and we dismounted. Rhys spoke to her in Welsh, but with a scratchy voice she said to us in English, “Are all the lovers from Ludlow come to visit me then? An’ I hear the last two didna fare so well.”

  My insides lurched as Nick and I exchanged a lightning glance. “It is for that reason that we are calling upon you,” he told her. “By visiting you and the Glendower cromlech, we are honoring the last day the prince and princess had together before his death.”

  “Ah—make no mistake,” she said, shaking a crooked finger nea
rly in his face, “Glendower is not buried there. Oh, no, his lordship visits only when it takes his fancy. I’ve seen him up on the castle ramparts too, sword flashing, cape flapping.”

  My legs went weak as water, but Nick barely flinched. “When Their Graces were here, did they buy any of your fine cooking herbs?” he asked.

  “Not a bit, though I gave her sprigs of dried lavender for her hair. The boy—the prince—was seeking fresh wild garlic, a particular favorite, but it’s too early. Will you step inside then, and I’ll give your lady”—she glanced at me, obviously ignoring my costuming as a boy—“a bit of lavender too, since you are wanting to imitate the others, eh?”

  Everything she said unnerved me. Despite my inherent curiosity and my desire to learn all I could for the queen, I did not want to go inside this woman’s cot. But we three shuffled in and, as she snatched a sprig of dried lavender from her low ceiling, which was an upside-down garden of dried, hanging flowers and plants, I darted a look around. And stared at what Nick and Rhys were gaping at too.

  “You have a fine banner with the red dragon of Wales,” Nick said, stating the obvious. Spread against the wall, it stood out like a gold-and-crimson beacon amidst the pale stone and baskets of herbs, the simple low bed and table and two stools.

  I noted well that she had what the London chandlers called peasant candles, field rushes dipped in fat, which smelled and smoked. How disdainful Christopher had been of those. It was dim in here, because her two small windows were covered with linen soaked in resin and tallow to keep out drafts, so she could not have seen us coming. The entire cot seemed dank and dusty. I could not help myself; I sneezed.

  “God bless you,” she said. Much relieved she had invoked the Lord’s name instead of some pagan deity’s, I nodded and forced a small smile. “The boy prince gave it to me,” she said, somewhat proudly, “in exchange for his lady’s lavender. Since it’s the Welsh dragon, I took it. Glendower will like it too.”