Karen Harper Read online

  I was astounded he had confessed even to that, but he was desperate too. “And poor old Fey?” I blurted.

  “Poor old Fey? I’ll have no one else, besides me, working magic in Wales, changing appearances, telling me what I should do.”

  The man was mad. I was dealing with not only a demon but a crazed one. I could have plunged my knife into his chest if I were not desperate to protect my Arthur.

  “Why did you not kill me in the bog?” I dared.

  He gave a derisive snort. “If I had wanted to put an arrow through your pretty neck, I would have done so. The arrows I shot at you were a warning to stop, but you did not heed them. I wanted to have this talk then as well as in the crypt, but you eluded me and disappeared. Bright girl that you are, perhaps you have learned that imitation is a form of flattery, for everyone knows I can vanish on a whim. Now, we have tarried here long enough,” he added with a scowl and a glance at the gate.

  “Will you speak your name?” I asked, just to make him think I did not know his identity.

  He swept me a mock bow. “A worker of justice and right, and Henry Tudor’s worst and most recurrent nightmare.”

  He started away, then spun back with a swirl of cape. “Find a way to make it all happen soon,” he said, pointing at me, “or I swear there will be another lost lad named Arthur, also buried in a very special tomb.”

  I agonized each step I took toward the palace, going directly from the graveyard and hiring a common river barge. Ah, I recalled the happier times when Nick and I—and Sibil, who might be a spy and traitor—had taken the royal barge to Westminster.

  Staring into the murky Thames, I agonized over what to tell the queen. The truth? Should I beg her for help in seizing the man who must be Lord Lovell? But then how would I be sure my son was safe? I was no doubt expendable too, yet I had no choice but to abet his plans—did I? Or perhaps they could put the madman on the rack as they had Tyrell and let Silas torture him until he told where to find my boy so he could be rescued. Maybe Arthur was at Minster Lovell, and Nick would find him. If only I could send for Nick to come back, let him know the man he sought was here in London and would contact me again.

  And above all, did Lovell really mean to merely talk to the queen or did he mean to kill her? I felt torn asunder. Hot tears coursed down my face, blinding me. I gripped my hands so tightly together that my fingers went stark white. Leaning over the side of the boat, I feared I would be sick to my stomach—to my very soul. It would be easier to cast myself into the swirling Thames than to betray the queen or lose my dear son. If Lovell harmed her, it would be my fault. If I lost my dear boy, I could never bear it. I now faced the greatest dilemma of my life: risk the queen or risk my Arthur and myself?

  I was admitted by the guards. How easy it would be to get Lovell access to her. I waited briefly in a withdrawing room for Her Majesty. My hands shook as I heard her familiar quick footsteps, the swish of her gown.

  My stomach in knots, tears in my eyes, I turned, expecting to see her stoic, sad face. But Her Majesty Elizabeth of York looked radiant, smiling as I had not seen for days—ever. I blinked back my tears and curtsied.

  “My joyous news may have preceded me if you spoke to anyone in the palace today,” the queen told me, pulling me quickly up. She clapped her hands, then pressed them between her breasts as if she were praying. “I am with child!” she announced. “The Virgin of miracles has blessed His Majesty and me with a great gift for the Tudor dynasty! Of course, that joy cannot heal my heart from other losses, but here I am, with the hope of a new child, one to be born next February, almost on my thirty-eighth birthday!”

  “Your Majesty, I am so happy for you, for His Majesty too.”

  She grasped my hands. I said naught of all I had rehearsed. To risk the queen’s life was terrible enough, but now that she carried a child in her womb—two lives and so much in the balance, perhaps an heir to back up Prince Henry—I could not risk their futures, the very future of the realm. So then I must indeed risk my own life, and Arthur’s too. Silently, I begged the Virgin of miracles to help me find another way to save my Arthur and to outsmart Lord Lovell.

  “But why are you here, Varina?” she asked, sitting on a padded bench by the window and patting a place beside her. My knees were quaking. I dared to sit down as if we were equals. “Are you not to ride to Minster Lovell early on the morrow?”

  “I—I came to warn you to keep a good eye on Sibil Wynn, Your Majesty. I believe she might be in league with Yorkists who do not wish you well. And that she might have told some of them about our effigies—for I swear it was not me!”

  She seized my hands. “I believe it was not you, and I have had suspicions of that girl. But if the king’s enemies know of your carvings, they may try to sow discord between the king and me. I must tell him before someone else does, perhaps someone close to me.”

  “Close to you? Do you mean Sibil might dare?”

  “Prince Henry has discovered our secret and admired your work, my dear, bright lad that he is.”

  Our eyes met and held. Now was the time I should follow Lovell’s commands to somehow gain him access to the queen, but I had made up my mind. Before daylight on the morrow, Jamie and I would be out the back door of our stables and heading for Minster Lovell, even without the king’s guard, for Lovell, if he was watching my house, would notice that. At least Nick would be at Minster Lovell to help me, and he must be informed of Lovell’s latest ploy to harm the Tudors.

  I had wild hopes that not only Nick but also my Arthur might be there. Snatching at straws I might be, but I had naught else but this: Lovell had let slip that my son was being held somewhere distant, someplace Lovell considered safe and knew well. And if I disobeyed—as I intended—my Arthur, like the poisoned prince, would be buried in a very special tomb.

  Swearing Gil and Maud to secrecy about where I was headed, and warning them to be wary of strangers, I dressed as a lad and set out with Jamie before dawn for Minster Lovell. I had told Gil that when the king’s men arrived to escort us, he was to say I was indisposed and would go at a later time. Hopefully that would throw Lovell off. Yet I shuddered to think that he was a man of surprises. More than once, it seemed as if he had read my mind.

  At least I had finally filled Jamie in, and he claimed he knew the way. We went by the Great North Road toward a part of England where I had never been. I prayed every mile of the way that Nick would still be there, and if Arthur were there, Nick could help me find him. Women’s intuition? A great gamble. When Lovell realized I had crossed him, what if he headed back to his family’s estate? Once a ravenous beast realized it had been deceived by its prey, where else would it run but to its lair?

  Despite my harried state, I thought the area called the Cotswolds was as gentle and peaceful as Wales had been rough and wild. Surely nothing dire could happen in such a calm, pretty place. But late afternoon on the second day we took a wrong turn and got lost. So Jamie hired a local lad named Hal to guide us through the thatch-roofed village of Witney and the last three miles toward the smaller village of Minster Lovell. The lad reminded me of Rhys, talkative and proud of his home area.

  Beyond the cottages and marketplace, I could make out the sprawling, bone-white stone estate, Minster Lovell Hall, on the River Windrush. How could such an evil soul as Francis Lovell have been bred amidst this beauty of gentle hills and spring fields dotted with sheep? How he must have cherished the home of his ancestors and become even more bitter when the new king gave it to his uncle Jasper Tudor, who had helped him win the crown from King Richard.

  I asked Hal to tell us about the manor, so we would know its basic layout. He said he had two uncles who had once worked in the kitchens of Minster Lovell Hall. According to the lad, the Lovells had built the manor house at least two centuries ago and had passed it down from lord to lord, this viscount, Lord Lovell, being the ninth.

  “A family home,” I had murmured, thinking how dear my home and shop were to me, and I’d not even live
d there two decades. Yes, I could believe even a vile wretch like Lovell could cherish his home.

  “Aye, Minster Lovell’s big and grand, right on the river where me and my friends swim,” Hal said. I wondered if they hid underwater, breathing through hollow reeds to snatch at ducks, but I needed to get more information.

  “But you feel no loyalty to the Lovells for all that, no soft feelings?” I asked, for well I recalled loyalists to the Yorkist cause in Wales.

  The big-shouldered lad drew himself up even straighter in the saddle behind Jamie. “I be loyal to my master, King Henry!” he declared. “The Lovells done wrong and went wrong. My uncles worked in the kitchen when Jasper Tudor held the estate too, see, and a good master he was too.”

  And yet, despite the tranquillity of the place, I swear I felt the wind shift and a chill set in as we approached the open fields surrounding the estate. I reined in, and Jamie pulled up beside me, with Hal sitting behind him.

  “What then, mistress?” Jamie asked.

  “Despite that Nick Sutton and other men loyal to the king should be here, we cannot be seen riding directly in. If our quarry left London, it’s possible he has beaten us here and could notice us, at least as strangers. See that man herding sheep?” I asked, pointing. “I think we should make him an offer to let two of us on foot help herd them close to the entrance so we can slip in, while Hal holds the horses here and comes in through the main entry with them after nightfall. There’s a pretty penny in it for you, lad.”

  “All right,” Hal said, “but ’tis said that it’s not Lord Lovell here’bouts, if that’s who you be seeking. It’s only his ghost comes and goes.”

  With a shudder, feeling I was caught in a whirlpool of time back in Wales, I dismounted. It was no ghost who had accosted me more than once or who had killed the queen’s Arthur and taken mine.

  CHAPTER THE TWENTY-FOURTH

  I had never herded sheep before and was surprised how they smelled when woolen cloth did not. They didn’t seem very smart or to know their way, but then, they were not usually brought this close to the gatehouse of the large manor house. Lem, the sheepherder, said it made them nervous, especially the sharp shadows thrown by the walls and buildings when they were used to sun and open fields. I felt like one of the animals, not quite sure what I was doing, not very bright, shoved this way and that in my dark quest to find Arthur and Nick.

  Tears filled my eyes in gratitude when, as we approached the manor entrance I had my eye on, a priest suddenly appeared, on his way out. I prayed that was a good sign.

  “May we go in this way, Father?” I asked, before realizing I should trust no one except Nick and Jamie here. But this man could not be Lovell in disguise, for he was short and squat, quite young too, so he could not have been here when Lovell was growing up. Unfortunately, I was so on edge I had also forgotten I was garbed as a boy and should have sounded like one.

  “Do I detect a woman in lad’s clothes?” he replied, tipping his head to peer under my cap. “Most unseemly. Friends of yours, Lem?”

  “No, Father. Visitors.”

  “Not friends of Lem’s,” I put in quickly, “but of Nicholas Sutton, king’s man. Is he here?”

  “Oh, aye, everywhere about the area and grounds for two days now. I was just blessing the manor hall—God’s mysterious ways are far better than man’s. I believe his guard Finn is just inside, and you can’t miss him. If you can get by Finn, you are welcome to enter. But to be so in disguise, when they are looking for a man in disguise, is most foolhardy and wayward, mistress.”

  “They have not found Lord Lovell?”

  He frowned at me, and I could almost hear his thoughts behind those watery gray eyes: How dared this woman dress like a male and assert herself like one too?

  “Best you ask Finn and Master Sutton of that and not include Lem in your schemes. Lem, my lad, I warrant you have not been inside the estate since we closed up the narrow way, eh?”

  “Aye, Father Mark.”

  “You see, mistress, and…and your man here,” the priest said, frowning at Jamie too, “there used to be a narrow back escape gate from the early days, lest the hall came under siege, but it’s been bricked up. I gathered nigh the entire village here last year to preach on the ‘narrow gate, for broad is the way that leads to destruction and there are many who go in by it.’ Take heed then,” he concluded with the sign of the cross made directly at me as if I were accursed.

  I had no time to argue or explain but hurried through this wide gate without another word. And I saw there, as the priest had said, a guard, hopefully Nick’s companion, for he was the tallest, strongest-looking man I had ever beheld. He had been about to close this door when I pulled my hat off, shook my hair loose, and told him, “We are sent by the king and are looking for Nick Sutton. And, just like you, for Lord Lovell too.”

  I barely had those words out than two other men appeared and then, from across the cobbled courtyard, Nick!

  Queen Elizabeth of York

  As I was being prepared for bed, I was surprised to see the king enter my chambers unannounced. He nodded to us, then asked me to send my ladies away, so of course I did. I had already dismissed Sibil Wynn from my service and was having her questioned by the king’s men, though I had made them promise they would not physically harm her. Whatever the poor girl, besotted of a former Yorkist loyalist, had done for him, I still had a tender heart for everyone—except for Lord Lovell, whom I saw as Satan incarnate.

  “Do you have word of Lovell’s capture?” I asked Henry.

  “No word yet. I need to ask you about something Sibil Wynn said during questioning.”

  “You vowed you would not have her tortured!”

  “Only threatened with ruination and imprisonment—and torture for her lover, Nigel Wentworth. But she said the strangest thing, so I’m told, in her hysteria. She claims that Varina Westcott was carving for you not only what she called angel candles but also life-size death effigies of our lost children—and your brothers. And that they are secreted here, near these very chambers.”

  My heart careened to my feet. I was caught! But then, I should have known he would find out, and I had been trying to muster the courage to tell him myself. At least Prince Henry had not betrayed me, perhaps because I had asked the king to invest him as Prince of Wales sooner than he had planned. But now—this.

  “I was going to tell you, show you,” I said, floundering, “but you had so many things on your schedule and in your heart.”

  “It’s true then? My dearest, why?” he demanded, and his voice had an edge to it now.

  I stared at him, not seeing him for a moment as I rested my hands on my flat belly, so flat it seemed a dream that I carried a child there. Could my monthly flow have stopped for other reasons? No, I knew the other signs. Though I was stunned by this turn of events, my thoughts circled back to what he had just asked.

  “I needed to have them near me,” I said in a voice calm and quiet, not my own, not the tone I thought would be mine. “To tell them I’m sorry I failed them.”

  I saw Henry was keeping a tight rein on his temper, that he wanted to rail at me. “But you never failed them,” he insisted. “These cruel, unfair things happen in a world of woe.” He took my warm hands in his cold ones. “You must let the past, all that pain, go or it might harm the babe you carry—harm us.”

  “You won’t order the effigies destroyed? They are beautiful, peaceful.”

  “But to hang on to death that way—especially your brothers. With Tyrell’s death, I thought we settled all that, put it to rest.”

  “To rest? If my own uncle Richard ordered their deaths, I hope he is rotting in hell, but I will never rest!”

  “I want to see the figures now. Will you show me or shall I go alone?”

  I nodded jerkily and pulled my hands away. With him behind me, I walked the narrow corridor toward the closed door.

  “We’ll need a torch,” I told him, taking one from its sconce on the wall. “It’s
dark in there.”

  I had almost told him, I keep it dark so they can sleep. I actually thought of it that way sometimes, that they were still alive. If he tried to take them from me, I would lose control, and our next—our last—child would be born to a guilt-ridden madwoman.

  “Amazing,” I heard him whisper as I held the torch aloft and we gazed at the waxen images. “So real. When the shadows shift, I can almost imagine—”

  “Yes. Yes!”

  “But if you wanted funeral effigies near their tombs, we could have done that.”

  “Hardly of my brothers’ tombs, for they have none. Only God knows where their bones lie.” I shook so hard the torch wavered, and he took it from me and placed it in a sconce. “I wanted them near me—with me,” I whispered. “And I want one of Arthur too—see that block of wax there and—”

  “No, I forbid it, forbid this! It isn’t healthful for you or the babe you carry. I don’t want you reminded of all this! Your brothers’ losses especially, long ago and over now.”

  “Over?” I said. “Never over for me, never past!”

  I could tell he was furious at my defiance. Oh, yes, I could read him and knew he would try to distract me from this big bone of contention. “She’s a genius, isn’t she, your wax woman?” he asked. “Elizabeth, if you keep these of our children here, I can accept it, but those of your brothers so long lost, what good is that?”

  “It helps me atone for my sin, my guilt about them. I should have told my mother, ‘Don’t let them go. Beg that they be guarded better in the Tower!’ You don’t understand how hard all that sits yet upon my heart, for I was born and bred a Yorkist, though I am true Tudor now!”