She made one last attempt. “You’re wrong, Ned, not to take George seriously. If only I could make you see that! You think this stay in the Tower has done any good? I assure you it hasn’t. He only hates you all the more.”
“I expect so,” he said obligingly, but he was nudging her thighs apart, his fingers seeking the triangle of soft golden hair that curled between her legs.
Elizabeth was a realist; she showed it now by recognizing her cause to be a lost one. Now was not the time to push him about George. She’d do better to wait. Perhaps once his body needs were satisfied, perhaps then…. She raised up on one elbow and, leaning over, kissed him full on the mouth.
Edward swallowed a yawn, roused himself to offer a drowsy protest. “Sweetheart, surely we can discuss this tomorrow? It’s not as if George were going anywhere, after all!”
“Laugh if you will, Ned, but I tell you that man is a danger! You don’t know what he’s been saying, the venom he’s been spewing forth. He’s drunk most of the time, spends his days abusing his servants and damning you. He…”
Edward yawned again. “At this hour of the night, I don’t much care what he’s saying about me. Why don’t you tell me about it in the morning?…”
“You might not care, but I rather think your lady mother would!”
Sleep, Edward saw, was going to be in short supply this night. “And exactly how,” he asked in weary resignation, “does Ma Mère come into this?”
Now that she had his attention at last, Elizabeth seemed in no hurry to satisfy his curiosity. “He’s been babbling on, as you might expect, about that woman he murdered, saying she did poison Isabel at Woodville bidding. As he tells it, you then killed Burdett to shut him up. And of course he accuses you of sabotaging his hopes to marry Marie of Burgundy; on that subject, he seems like one truly obsessed!”
He opened his mouth to ask her how it was that she was so well informed about George’s drunken maunderings, when she added, “And whenever he gets drunk enough, he reminds his hearers that you be no rightful King, since all do know you’re not the true-born son of the Duke of York, having been sired by an English archer your mother did dally with in Rouen!”
Edward frowned. “So he’s dredged up that old slander, has he?” he said slowly. He was angered, but more for his mother’s sake than his own. Few, he was sure, had ever given credence to that particular piece of Lancastrian scandalmongering. God’s truth it was, he thought, that if there were but one faithful wife since the birth of the Lord Christ, that one wife would be Ma Mère! She was too proud to take heed to the gossip of alehouse and tavern, but if she were to learn that her own son be the source…. No, he did not want that. George had given her grief enough for fully three lifetimes as it was. He would have to—
“What did you just say, Lisbet?” he asked suddenly, sharply. “Say that again.”
“I said that he has even dared to slander your own children. He claims no son of yours shall ever rule in your stead, that they all be bastard-born just as you are. And if that not be treason, Ned, then I do ask you…what in God’s Name is?”
For an unguarded instant, Edward went cold; shock sent the blood surging through his veins, set his pulse to racing. And then common sense prevailed and his breathing slowed. He saw George’s besotted babblings for what they were, the poisonous ramblings of a deranged mind, no more than that.
“I think Brother George has just tripped over his own tongue,” he said softly. “What is he claiming…that you did bewitch me into wedlock?”
Elizabeth nodded. “What else could it be? Actually, he’s made even less sense than usual. Apart from claiming that our marriage be invalid and our children bastards, the rest seems to trail off into the usual incoherent gibberish you get from a man deep in his cups. Something about the truth being buried in Norwich, except that it’s not, and he made some mention, too, of your former Chancellor, Robert Stillington, but what it all does mean…. Ned! Ned, you’re hurting me!”
Edward stared blankly at her, and then his hold slackened, his fingers unclenched from her arm. Elizabeth rubbed her wrist resentfully, but her complaint was stilled as she looked into his face.
“Ned, what is it? What be wrong?”
He didn’t hear her, had for the moment forgotten her entirely. His head was whirling. Christ! After all these years! He’d been so sure no one would ever find out about Nell, so sure!
“Ned? Ned, you’re frightening me! What is it?”
He shook his head, but the discipline of a lifetime was already reasserting itself; he was once more in control of himself, enough to say with a fair measure of calm, “Nothing, Lisbet. I was but angered that he should dare to speak such arrant nonsense of our sons.”
She didn’t believe him; he saw that. But he gave her no chance to protest, rolled away from her and pulled a pillow close, like one seeking sleep. He could hear Elizabeth beside him in the dark; her breath came unevenly, unnaturally loud. One of his dogs was scratching for fleas, nails clicking rhythmically against the hearthstones. A shutter creaked. Somewhere beyond the window, a bird trilled; another caught up the refrain. His heart continued to beat in queer fits and starts, the way it always did before a battle. Nell. Oh, Jesus. He’d not thought of her in years. And now George knew the truth, he knew about Nell. But how could he? Stillington wouldn’t have told him; he’d never have dared. But who did, then? Christ, after all this time!
He closed his eyes, only to have a woman’s face form against his lids. A gravely beautiful face, lovely and remote. A fair Madonna, he’d once called her, and she’d been shocked, chided him for blaspheming. But it fit her…all too well. Was that why he’d had to have her…because she’d seemed beyond reach, unattainable? He no longer knew the answer, if ever he had. It was too long ago, a long-forgotten lust for a woman no longer living. A secret she’d taken to her grave. Or had she? That George, of all men, should somehow have stumbled onto the truth…. How much did he know?
The hours seemed frozen in time, until he began to feel it would always be night. And then, without warning, the dark was gone and sun was spilling into the chamber, enveloping the bed in a blaze of brightness. He winced, turned his eyes away from the glare; he hadn’t slept at all.
With each day that passed, Elizabeth’s unease grew. Something was very wrong with her husband. Never had she seen him so tense, so preoccupied. As her pleas for information went unanswered, her anxieties multiplied. What was bothering him? Why had he insisted upon returning so suddenly to London when they’d meant to stay at Windsor until Michaelmas? And why had he ordered such drastic changes in George’s confinement?
Once back at Westminster, Edward had dismissed George’s own servants, replaced his guards with men personally chosen by him, close-mouthed veterans of the battles of Barnet and Tewkesbury. George’s world was suddenly reduced to the confines of the Bowyer Tower. At Edward’s command, visitors were forbidden, all communications carefully screened, and no more were kegs of malmsey carted from the Herber cellars to the Tower.
These were measures Elizabeth had been advocating for months, but it gave her little satisfaction now to see them so abruptly put into effect. She found herself remembering Edward’s peculiar reaction to her account of George’s drunken ramblings. And each time she did, her every instinct screamed warnings of a danger she did not yet understand.
And then Edward unexpectedly summoned to London Robert Stillington, Bishop of Bath and Wells.
Elizabeth had never understood why Edward had named Stillington as his Chancellor. A mild-mannered, self-effacing man in his fifties, he had neither the intellect nor the ambition for a position of such power, and Elizabeth hadn’t been the only one to wonder why Edward had chosen to honor Stillington so lavishly. He’d exercised his authority unobtrusively and, when his health began to suffer, seemed almost relieved to resign the Chancellorship and retire to his native Yorkshire. Elizabeth had not seen him in more than two years, and she was shocked now at sight of the haggard, aging man be
ing ushered into Edward’s private chambers. Was he so ill as that? But then he glanced back over his shoulder, and her breath stopped. What she saw on his face was sheer terror, the look of a condemned prisoner about to mount the steps of the gallows.
Elizabeth came to an abrupt halt. Jane Shore was standing at the door of Edward’s bedchamber. The men loitering about fell suddenly silent, some embarrassed, most covertly amused by this awkward meeting of the King’s wife and mistress. It was Jane who acted to dispel the tension.
“Madame,” she said, and dropped down in a deep, submissive curtsy.
Elizabeth nodded coolly, signaled for Jane to rise. Of the two women, Jane was by far the most discomfited. Elizabeth had, of necessity, long ago been forced to come to terms with her husband’s blatant infidelities. Moreover, she found Jane less objectionable than many of Edward’s bedmates. Jane never flaunted Edward’s favor, and equally important to Elizabeth, she seemed quite ignorant of the uses of power. Jane squandered her influence as recklessly as she did her money. She was always willing to listen to hard-luck stories, to make loans that would never be repaid, and when she petitioned Edward to redress grievances, it was on behalf of the victimized, the weak. Her guileless generosity had made her popular with Londoners, but Elizabeth thought her to be a fool.
Now Jane backed away from the door, even though she’d been summoned by Edward and Elizabeth had not, saying in a low voice, “I’ll leave you now, Madame.”
Elizabeth brushed past her, entered the bedchamber. Edward was alone. He glanced up with a quizzical frown as she shut the door behind her, and Elizabeth heard herself saying defiantly, “Your harlot’s not coming. I did send her away.” She at once regretted it; the words had come of their own volition, were born of stress more than jealousy. She braced herself for his anger, was astonished when he merely shrugged.
“I take it you want to see me, Lisbet?”
She might have been irked by his indifference, but it only served to feed her fear. She crossed swiftly to him, knelt, and took his hand between her own.
“Ned, why did you send for Dr Stillington? And what has George to do with all this? Never have I seen your nerves so on the raw. You must tell me what be wrong. I’ve a right to know!”
He was looking at her with a very strange expression, one she couldn’t fathom. “Yes,” he said at last. “Yes, I suppose you do.”
He jerked his head toward the table. “Pour for me from the flagon. And pour for yourself, too. You will,” he said dryly, “be needing it.”
Beneath the familiar mockery, Elizabeth sensed something else, something alien, unexpected. He’s uneasy about telling me this, she thought suddenly, and that frightened her all the more. Rising, she came quickly back to him with a brimming wine cup, watched tensely as he drank.
“Don’t look so expectant, my love. I assure you this be one secret you’d rather not share.”
“Just tell me,” she said tautly, and he nodded.
“I daresay you remember my reluctance to make you my wife?”
Elizabeth stiffened in surprise. “Quite well,” she said icily. “None have ever let me forget that I do come of a more humble lineage than yours. While it’s true, I grant you, that my father was but a knight, no mention is ever made of the fact that my mother was born of Burgundian nobility! Though why you do bring this up now—”
He cut her off with an impatient gesture. “My reluctance had nothing to do with your family. It was because…” She saw him draw a deep breath. “Because I wasn’t free to wed.”
“What?”
“I wasn’t free to wed,” he repeated, very evenly. “Two years before we exchanged vows at Grafton Manor, I did plight troth with another woman.”
Elizabeth stared at him. “You be mad to talk like that,” she gasped. “You mustn’t say such things even in jest. If that were to be true…it would mean our marriage would not be recognized by the Church. That we’d have lived in sin these thirteen years past. That our children…our children would be bastards.” She stopped abruptly; she was having some difficulty in catching her breath.
“I’m not joking, Lisbet,” he said, suddenly sounding very tired.
“No.” She shook her head, backed up until she felt the supporting edge of the table behind her. “No, I don’t believe you.”
He said nothing, and she repeated, more firmly now, “I don’t believe it. I don’t!”
He drank until the cup was empty, and then said quietly, “I’m telling you the truth. You know I am.”
There was a footstool under the table. Elizabeth pulled it toward her, lowered herself onto it. “Who…” She licked her lips, had to begin again. “Who was she?”
“Eleanor Butler. Shrewsbury’s daughter.”
“Jesú!” Elizabeth closed her eyes. The Earl of Shrewsbury’s daughter. Dear God.
Edward was saying something about Eleanor Butler, calling her Nell. She heard the words widow and nunnery, tried to focus on what he was saying, tried to make some sense of it.
“Butler’s not the family name of Shrewsbury,” she said dully. “She was married, then?” And then wondered why she’d asked that, as if it actually mattered.
He nodded. “She was wed at thirteen to Lord Sudley’s son. She’d been a widow for some two years when we first met.”
Elizabeth sucked in her breath. No mercer’s wife like Jane Shore. No light o’ love to be seduced and forgotten. Shrewsbury’s daughter and Lord Sudley’s daughter-in-law. Dear, dear God.
There was a Venetian-glass goblet within reach. Her tongue seemed to be swelling, seemed to have filled her mouth. It was an eerie sensation, frightened her. She tried to swallow, failed, and looked yearningly at the goblet. She didn’t dare pick it up, knew she’d never be able to get it to her mouth unspilled. She tightened her grip on the table, closed her eyes again. She was going to be sick. She knew it.
“Lisbet?” Edward was beside her, bending over her, his face concerned. As he put his hand on her shoulder, her head came up, her body jerked spasmodically and then went rigid.
“Don’t touch me,” she warned.
There was no question but that she meant it. He recoiled a pace, looking down into eyes suddenly slitted, feverish with hate. But he saw, too, how white she was, saw the sweat glistening at her temples, her upper lip.
“Take this,” he said brusquely. “You look like to faint.”
He picked up the goblet, held it out to her. Elizabeth knocked it from his hand, sent it spinning to the floor between them. The glass shattered upon impact, soaked the carpet in amber froth. One of Edward’s dogs came forward to investigate, sniffed at the spreading liquid and took an experimental lap, then another. Elizabeth looked up at Edward, down again at the broken pieces of glass. She wished she’d thought to fling it in his face. Because she hadn’t, she kicked sharply at the dog. It gave a startled yelp, retreated in astonished haste, and Elizabeth was filled with a wild irrational rage when she saw it go to Edward for comfort.
“Why?” she said bitterly. “Name of God, why? You can at least tell me that. You do owe me that much!”
“Why do you think?” He turned away, gave a defensive shrug. “I wanted her and she was virtuous. I could have her no other way.” Reaching for the flagon, he poured himself a second drink, said, “Damnation, Lisbet, I was twenty years old and used to getting my own way. I just didn’t think….”
“And you think that does excuse you?” Elizabeth was incredulous. “Because you wanted her, that did give you the right? To do this to me? To your own children? How could you?”
“It’s rather late for reproaches,” he said coldly. “It’s done, and nothing we do say now can change it.”
Elizabeth came to her feet. Had he been close enough, she would have hit him. Because he wasn’t, she could only use her tongue. Slowly and deliberately, she began to call him every vile name she’d ever heard, using invective she’d never even realized she knew. He didn’t interrupt, let her finish.
When sh
e at last ran out of curses, he said, “Don’t play the aggrieved wife, Lisbet. It’s not a role that does become you. We both know I’ve given you what you did want most, that Queen’s coronet you take such pleasure in wearing. Even had I told you about Nell, you’d still have married me. To be Queen of England, I don’t doubt you’d have willingly bedded with a leper.”
A blinding pain was throbbing over Elizabeth’s left eye. She didn’t dare stay in this chamber with him any longer, could not be accountable for what she might do. Reaching the door, she leaned against it for a moment, and then said, “I will never forgive you. Never. As God is my witness, I won’t.”
“Yes, you will, Lisbet,” he said softly.
Elizabeth started to jerk the door open, but her hand froze on the latch, clenched into an impotent fist. Christ help her but he was right. What choice did she have? She sagged against the door, feeling heat rising in her face, and then her stomach was heaving in earnest and she stumbled for the garderobe, fell to her knees across the threshold, and began to retch.
For several moments she was aware only of her body’s misery. Then she felt his hands under her elbows, lifting her up. She tried to twist away, but hadn’t the strength, let him carry her to the bed. She closed her eyes, trying to blot out his face, blot out this revelation she couldn’t accept, that their life together had been a lie, had been a lie from the very beginning. She could hear him moving about the chamber; once he approached the bed and wiped her face with a wet cloth. She started to turn her head away but somehow it didn’t seem worth the effort. She found she couldn’t even summon up anger anymore. She felt numb, uncaring, and very, very tired.
When she opened her eyes again, she saw that he had pulled a chair up to the bed. Seeing her lashes flicker, he leaned forward, said, “Do you suppose we can talk now? Talk without trading accusations or insults?”
“Give me something to drink,” she said, saw that he had anticipated her need, was holding out a cup. She took it and drank in gulps. After a time, she asked, “Where is she? Why has she kept silent?”