Karen Harper Read online

  “Good morning,” Mistress Sutton said with a nod. Soon I was to learn her name was really Sibil Wynn. I must admit I had surmised they were not wed, and I was somehow glad of that. “We shall ride to the water stairs near the Steelyard and take the river,” she told me.

  We turned south, riding single file in the increasingly crowded street, as cart vendors and shoppers flowed into the parishes that sold London its goods and flaunted its merchant guildhalls: mercers, grocers, drapers, skinners, tailors, and ironmongers, haberdashers, broiderers, and more. As we neared the river, brewers’ and fishmongers’ smells permeated the air.

  I had taken hired barges on the river before, but never a private one, and of a certain not one so fine as that which awaited us and our mounts. The six oarsmen were not loud and raucous, as the hired ones were, and they were attired alike in forest green livery. A green-tasseled canopy protected three stationary padded benches from sun and rain. I had a hint then that the lady who had sent for me was very dear to the queen.

  “Against wind and high tide,” Nicholas Sutton remarked as he sat me between him and Sibil, and our horses were stowed in the rear onboard pen.

  Against wind and high tide, I thought. When Nicholas Sutton said such, did he think of that in deeper terms, that we must all suffer loss and trials and yet carry on? Or was that just my melancholy nature now, and he meant naught by it?

  “My name really is Nicholas Sutton,” he was saying as he turned slightly my way, “and you may call me Nick.”

  Wondering whether such familiarity meant he was not a courtier after all, I nodded. As we pushed out from the Steelyard water stairs, I held on to my hat. Already my wayward curls were blowing along my temples. Mistress Wynn’s coif seemed perfectly in place, mayhap, I mused, a requirement of serving with the queen’s ladies at court.

  Queen Elizabeth of York was known as Elizabeth the Good for her generosity and charities. I had glimpsed her twice on London streets as she passed in procession, beautifully arrayed, each hair in place when my strands kept blowing in my eyes and mouth. It was her union with King Henry VII that had helped to heal the wounds of the long civil war between the Lancastrians and the Yorkists, for she was the eldest daughter and then heir of King Edward IV, and sister to the poor boy, briefly king, Edward V. Her Majesty boasted more royal blood than did the king, for he had a slim claim to the throne through his forebears, and those considered by some to be illegitimate. At Bosworth Field, Henry Tudor had won the kingdom by might as well as right when the previous king, Richard III, was slain.

  I saw people along the river pointing at us and shading their eyes to catch a glimpse. Was this recognized as a royal barge, even without its pennants and crest? I tried to enjoy the journey, telling myself that the entire city of London was laid out before me on this day. The Tower loomed to the east, and London Bridge, of course, bustled with life, for shops and houses lined it. St. Paul’s was visible to the north, where soon Arthur, Prince of Wales, would wed his Spanish princess, Catherine of Aragon, who had not yet arrived in England.

  As we were rowed farther past the city itself, I fancied I could see the square stone tower of St. Mary Abchurch on the gentle rise of the hill, my parish church where Will and Edmund were buried, and which I had endowed with monies for their masses. More than once, despite the pleasantries of what light conversation my hosts provided, I craned my neck to look ahead toward Westminster, but we had not yet traversed the broad bend in the river.

  Still, despite gawking at the panorama of passing London, I was very aware of the big man next to me. Even had he not worn a flat velvet, feathered cap, he was at least a head over me. His booted feet were one and a half of mine, which I drew back under my skirt hems. His thigh pressed into my skirts, and though I could not feel his finely muscled leg, I almost wished I could. Each time he shifted or turned my way—or when pointing something out and he took my elbow, making it tingle—I had to force myself to look at aught else.

  Then there it was, over my left shoulder: tall, stone Westminster Abbey, with the vast Palace of Westminster huddled at its stony skirts. It looked not heavy and cumbersome, but as if it were floating between the river and the morning mists from the fields. I’d walked around its walls and scattered-timbered two-story buildings before. Who in London had not, perhaps dreaming of the glorious, golden folk within? I was almost as entranced by the mere sight of it as I was by my hosts. For the first time in months, I felt my spirits lift.

  We disembarked at one of the two water gates, the one nearer the palace proper, and walked along a wooden pier guarded by fantastical carved and painted creatures: a unicorn, a dragon, a—

  “That’s a griffin, half eagle, half lion, one of His Majesty’s symbols of his Welsh heritage,” Nick said, as if he could read my thoughts, which did not set a good precedent. Again he took my elbow lightly to steer me along, and something akin to the feel of hot, melted wax there made me break out in a sweat. I knew I must get hold of myself. I must remain calm and careful. I must look and speak my best.

  The tall, halberd-wielding yeomen at the gate wore beautiful tunics that snagged my artist’s eye; embroidered with the red rose of Lancaster encircled by gold vines, they almost glittered. Within these walls, I knew, also lay the law courts of Chancery, King’s Bench, and Common Pleas, as well as Parliament, but my belief that I’d be able to glimpse any of that soon changed as a long wooden corridor blurred by. It was a maze in here. Turn, another turn, then the traversing of a large room empty but for messengers or servants scurrying through it. I realized I was biting my lower lip, and made myself stop that and unclench my fists.

  “This way, Mistress Westcott,” Nick said, and we turned again. More servants rushing by, some with trays or other burdens. Plain torches in sconces along the walls, no longer polished pewter or bronze ones. We climbed a narrow, curving stone staircase. It was only then that I realized they were bringing me in a back way. Because I was not to be seen by important people? Because I was merely a merchant here on an errand? Again, it seemed Nick Sutton read my mind.

  “Don’t fret,” he said, his voice calm. “We are taking the servants’ staircase only because, as we mentioned, the lady wants your visit and services to be kept private.”

  In a dim corridor we stopped, and Nick rapped his knuckles on a door once—then gave three more knocks. A lady dressed finely, much like Sibil, opened it and peeked out. “The wax woman?” she asked.

  “Yes. Mistress Varina Westcott, née Waxman,” Nick told her.

  They knew my maiden name! So perhaps my being here had something to do with the reputation of my parents’ chandlery, my father’s talents. Yet they had said the lady had admired the angel candle I had carved.

  As for my carving ability, years before, while my father made the faces and hands of life-size waxen funeral effigies for London nobility, he had taught me to sculpt faces in wax, the perfect color of a corpse, though he employed herbal dyes to create fleshy hues. Since then I had carved only faces in candles. But how I recalled that Father’s effigies looked as if they could breathe and move. Sometimes as I’d watched him work in flickering candlelight, I was sure that they did. Those figures coming to life like ghosts or phantoms was my childhood bad dream before I knew what nightmares really were—death, the deaths of those dearly loved and tragically lost.

  As the woman stepped back, Nick gestured that I should enter. I prayed he and Sibil did not desert me. I clutched his arm that held me yet by the elbow as if I would bolt.

  “This way, if you please,” the woman said, and I reluctantly loosed him. My new guide was pleasant-looking and wore a gabled headdress with a veil over her hair. “Your companions will wait for you here and escort you home later,” she explained. “I am Lady Middleton, at your service, Mistress Westcott.”

  Was that what I should say when I met the lady who had summoned me, I wondered—that I was at her service, just as in my shop?

  But then, for the first time, an inkling of who might be behind al
l this stunned me. I nearly tripped over my own skirt hems when I saw the fine tapestries in this elegant room we were passing through—real woven tapestries, not painted canvas. No plain rushes on the floor, but here and there a Turkey carpet. Chairs with the cushions fitted directly into the wood, a polished table with a carved onyx chess set and painted playing cards strewn on little parquet tables. It was well-known that the queen’s painted face on cards was that of King Henry VII’s lovely Elizabeth of York. A golden goblet tipped on its side beside ivory dice gleamed in the morning sun streaming through the window. We roused several little lapdogs with silken ears from their pretty, embroidered pillows and—

  Lady Middleton knocked and put her ear to the next highly polished oaken door we came to. “Enter then,” came a woman’s clear voice, barely muted by the door. It opened, and I was in the presence of the queen.

  Queen Elizabeth of York

  I vow by the holy Virgin, but I did not expect the wax chandler I had sent for to be so young or well favored. But then, in truth, it had been eighteen years since her waxworker father had sculpted the lifelike effigy of my royal sire, King Edward IV, for his tomb. In my soul’s eye, I can yet see that fine waxen figure in the abbey, with us frightened children gathered ’round it and Mother in tears, surrounded by bishops, abbots, and priests with their long, black, flaming candles. As if Father were yet alive, his wax image was propped up to seem standing, painted and bewigged, robed and crowned, holding in one hand the scepter and in the other the orb of silver and gilt. Yet we knew that our dear father truly lay nearby in his leaden coffin, quite dead.

  Varina Westcott dipped me a steady curtsy, more power to her, for I saw her hands were trembling, and what must she know of meeting royalty? I stepped forward and touched her shoulders to raise her. “I thank you for coming. The death candle my information says you carved is exquisite.”

  “I thank you in return, Your Majesty. I am at your service.”

  “Lady Middleton, that will be all for now,” I said to dismiss my last attendant. I was seldom alone and meant to be for this endeavor. As Lady Middleton curtsied and backed from my presence, I indicated that Varina should accompany me to the window. The view was lovely from it, for the courtyard beneath had been spared the early frosts. Leggy roses still sported random blooms—entwined Yorkist and Lancastrian roses, I always told myself—and water splashed in the two-tiered fountain. Despite the crisp air, I had set the casement ajar. Of course, this skittish young woman could have no way of knowing that I was as on edge as she.

  I wanted what I said to her to be unheard by someone who might tarry at the door. Or His Majesty’s all-seeing mother, Margaret Beaufort, Lady Stanley, could sweep in unannounced, as she was wont to do, though she was overseeing Prince Henry’s tutor this morn. Unlike our always obedient eldest son, Arthur, Henry had a mind of his own.

  “As I said, I greatly admired your candle,” I told her, “and wondered, especially since your father had the skill of not only producing fine faces in wax but also of making their likenesses so uncannily resemble a particular portrait, whether you had that God-given gift also.”

  I could tell Mistress Westcott was uncertain whether her eyes should meet mine or remain lowered, so I said, “This is of great importance to me, so I pray we can converse face-to-face.”

  Canny young woman, she took my hint and raised her gaze to meet mine. She had fine, arched brows and eyes as green and restless as the countryside Thames at Richmond where the tide turned.

  “Yes, Your Majesty. I have carved people’s faces, ones I knew from life, if not from a particular portrait.”

  “Your father carved my father’s waxen image from a plaster death mask someone else had made, but I have naught of that for what I need,” I told her in a rush. Oh, my hopes soared then, to think I might possess more than the tiny portraits of my own angels I had lost, my little Elizabeth and my Edmund, just a babe.

  “Let me show you what I mean,” I told her, and, from the top of my writing table, I produced the joined oval portraits of my dead children. I held them out to her. “My daughter was but three years old and my dear son Edmund only four months, and this is not enough for me to hold to, and…”

  I saw Varina Westcott waver on her feet and put her hand to the wall to steady herself. Tears sprang from her eyes and speckled her cheeks. But I’d heard she dealt with funerals, with death’s decorations. What had I said? She looked both distraught and appalled. My hopes fell.

  “What is it?” I demanded. “Can you not carve wax faces?”

  “I— Forgive me, Your Majesty,” she whispered, swiping at her cheeks with her fingertips, “but I lost a son Edmund too—not four months of age, only four months ago. My son Arthur is quite well, and yet I have carved my Edmund’s face over and over, and still his loss haunts me.”

  “I…I understand,” was all I could manage. I had wanted to keen and tear my hair when my children died, just the way my mother had when she learned her two young sons were missing in the Tower. Yet now I, daughter, sister, and wife of a king, almost pulled this stranger into my arms to comfort her when I was desperate for that very thing. My lord was strong and stoic in his mourning, and so I pretended to be also. But I was truly tormented by the deaths of my two children. Even worse, I vowed by the holy Virgin, I was smitten to the depths of my soul by something else. I feared the Lord High God was punishing me for the loss of two other royal children I mayhap could have saved, my beloved brothers, surely murdered, and by whom? I had secretly spent the last ten years trying to find out, and I would yet do anything I must to discover who had killed them.

  Mistress Varina Westcott

  As I gaped at the queen—she too fought back tears—I realized what she wanted from me. Surely I had been summoned not to carve just cherubs or angels in candles for her, but candles with the faces of her two deceased little children. Bless our queen, for she had lost two, not one, as I had. Perhaps in doing this service for her, I could find solace for my own loss. Indeed, Edmund was a common name, but it had taken me by surprise to realize that I’d had sons Arthur and Edmund too, named, of course, as was the practice, for members of the royal family. Feeling the fool for exploding in tears, I carefully examined the two oval, gold-framed miniature paintings she had handed me, neither longer than the span of my hand.

  “Of course, you have not the profiles here,” the queen said as she bent her head close to them too. “But I could describe those, or perhaps a glimpse of my other children would help, for my Mary’s nose is much like Elizabeth’s, and Henry’s is similar to Edmund’s, the chin too.”

  A floral scent wafted from the veil that hung from her gabled headdress beset with jewels winking in the spill of early-morning light. I could see the desperation, the wretchedness she sought to hide, in her pale blue eyes and the tiny crow’s-feet that perched at their corners. She was a blond, roses-and-cream beauty, but this close I could see that her mouth, lush as a Cupid’s bow, was drawn together like tight purse strings. I believe she was in the midpoint of her fourth decade, but she looked worn and older. Could not the approaching nuptials of her firstborn son and the health of her three living children help to allay her grief?

  “Yes,” I told her, “I believe I could carve such candles for you, with your help. Of course, I could not presume to take those portraits away with me to work at my sh—”

  “No. No—I was hoping you could work here at least part of each day. We can arrange for you to be escorted to and from the palace, of course. Nicholas Sutton is entirely trustworthy, discreet, and loyal. I have a quiet work chamber for you nearby, even much fine, expensive beeswax laid aside. The thing is,” she said, her voice such a whisper now I almost had to read her lips, “what I wish to have—to reward you well for—is not candles but life-size effigies of the children. Not for their tombs in the abbey, but for myself alone. There is more, but I would show you. Not here, but in the room I have prepared for your work, if you will come to see.”

  If I would
come? I thought, when this woman could merely command me. “I am at your service,” I said again.

  To my surprise, Her Majesty led me not out the door through which I had entered her suite of rooms, but through one hidden by a large, woven arras, one with a scene of the Virgin cradling the crucified Christ beneath the cross. We traversed a short corridor glowing from a torch toward a small, open doorway beyond.

  My pulse began to pound. The walls here were blocks of heavy, thick stone. Two torches burned low athwart a doorway at the end of the hall. I could see that within the well-lit chamber beyond, the ceiling was low, the walls close. She entered, but I hung back. At least the room, perhaps twelve feet by ten, had a second, small wooden door in one corner, and I yearned to flee through it. Stiff armed, I braced myself in the doorway. Sweat beads leaped out on my forehead. I could hear my heart hammering. I feared the entire palace would crash down around me, shutting me in forever.

  “I—I am bothered by small, enclosed places,” I gasped out, hoping I did not sound like a coward, not to this queen who had spent years of her young life enclosed in sanctuary or held against her will during the civil war.

  “Then we can keep this far door open, the one you stand in too,” she said, and grasped my hand as if she were an intimate friend, a sister. “You see,” she said, pointing with her free hand, “four blocks of fine wax for faces and hands, and I shall take care of the clothing, stuffed bodies, the hair—I shall cut my own hair for a perfect match.”

  “F-four?” I stammered, honored but horrified by what she expected. Did she want two effigies of her lost children, or extra ones made lest she lose more? There was something terribly amiss here that I could not quite fathom.

  “Two for my lost children—and two for my murdered royal brothers. I must have them all with me, sacred, safe at least this way, since I could not save their lives. I shall guide you on the likenesses of my poor lost brothers: Edward, who was our rightful king, and little Richard, Duke of York, who should have reigned if aught befell his older brother. And all this must be a secret between us; swear it!”