"Oh, but, my dear! After you had been so kind to him?"

"In all probability he had been very kind to that Banister creature," shrugged Richard, trying to elude her questioning.

"But Henry Stafford must have had some reason for wanting to kill you," persisted Anne, with the obstinacy of a woman who is not very perceptive. "Particularly as all the blame was on his side."

Her husband took her by the shoulders and looked with exasperated tenderness upon the childlike face he had loved so long. He had cared too much for Buckingham to be unfair to his memory. "In this chancy world, my dear Anne, the blame is seldom all on one side," he said. "Henry did have a very good reason."

Which was as near as Richard Plantagenet ever came to showing anyone his tormented soul.

IT SEEMED STRANGE TO Elizabeth to be back in Westminster Palace again. To live in her own home as a guest-to put out her hand for a familiar piece of furniture or a book and remember that it belonged to someone else. She had been given the small room where Mattie used to sleep, and her younger sisters climbed a winding staircase every night to share a dormitory with some of the Queen's younger ladies. It seemed strangest of all, perhaps, to be called just "the lady Elizabeth."

"But the Duke of Buckingham has no bed at all save his coffin-and he took the risk for our sakes!" she would tell herself, whenever her pride rebelled. Besides, the King had been generous, people said. After the rebellion he had been so determined to keep his nieces safely in his own hands that he had tempted "the Woodville woman" with advantageous terms. He would risk no more dangerous marriages being planned to deprive him of his throne. He himself would choose the girls' husbands, he said; and they would be gentlemen by birth, but no higher in station than was suitable for the late King's b.a.s.t.a.r.ds. But he promised to provide them with dowries and to treat them honourably. Before treating with him the Queen Dowager had still had spirit enough to make him swear to it publicly. And then, sinking into despondency after the failure of her plot, she had at last agreed to come out of sanctuary-for her daughters' sake, she let it be known, so that they might have some new dresses and enough to eat.

The children were overjoyed. The Abbot of Westminster, spreading his possessions about his own parlour again, must have been as much relieved as they were, Elizabeth supposed. But her mother, poor lady, had only exchanged self-imposed isolation for durance of a less dignified kind. The King kept his bare word. She had rooms in the Palace, but in some distant wing where the children seldom saw her; and with the hated Nesfield still on guard.

To the Plantagenet Countess of Richmond the King had been kinder. She, too, had been found guilty of treason; but so careful had she been not to incriminate her husband that he retained office as Steward of the King's Household. Indeed, bland Stanley benefited by her misdemeanours by being given charge both of herself and of her fortune, providing only that he kept her in one of his manors well away from London.

For Elizabeth, sharing their punishment would have seemed less humiliating than conspiracy contemptuously ignored. Having to live under her uncle's roof and eat his food was abhorrent to her. Had it not been for the new Queen's kindness her homecoming would have been even worse than being mewed up in sanctuary. But now at least she had a friend to talk to, a good horse to ride, with plenty of music and dancing, dresses and books, all of which she and her sisters enjoyed.

"Why are you so unbelievably good to me?" she asked her royal hostess with shy constraint, when they were alone in the garden gallery.

"Perhaps because I, too, have known what it is to be humiliated and unhappy," smiled Anne Neville, arranging some spring flowers which Ann and little Katherine had been gathering for her. "Besides, since my only sister died it is pleasant to have someone like yourself for company. And has it never occurred to you that you are a person whom it is easy to love, Bess?" Anne tilted her honey-coloured head admiringly as she tweaked first one blossom and then another to better advantage. "Richard likes you too, I believe," she added. "And Richard does not like everybody."

When Anne said guileless things like that, seemingly unaware of any tragic situation, Elizabeth was dumbfounded. How could Richard like her when she had tried to best him, and when her mere presence must be an embarra.s.sment and a reproach? "Perhaps it is because I look like my father," was all she could find to say.

"Your father was his whole world-the man's part of it, as apart from me, I mean," said Anne, beckoning to one of her women to set the bowl of flowers where she could see them. "That is where I am so fortunate, Bess. The sort of marriages we have to make usually have so little to do with love. I imagine most royal husbands hate, or merely tolerate, their wives. But mine loves me!" She said the naive words exultantly and began singing softly in a sweet, husky little voice. Clearly, Richard made her very happy.

Elizabeth stood and stared at her. It was all so irreconcilable. This ideal family life, Richard's dutiful affection for that grim mother of his in Baynard's Castle-and the things men said of him!

By tacit consent the two young women, who had both been through so much, never spoke of poor Buckingham's rebellion, although it might have provided one of them with a husband she did not desire and deprived the other of one she loved. And in return for the Queen's generosity in this matter Elizabeth tried not to plague her with questions about her brothers. Instead they talked of relatives they had in common and of matters of mutual feminine interest. But the questions burned all the time in Elizabeth's mind. "It is kind of the King to let you keep young Warwick in your household," she said, looking out upon the hopefully budding trees and skirting the subject ever nearest to her heart.

"Poor Warwick is so simple and harmless, and nephew to both of us," Anne reminded her.

"So were Ned and d.i.c.kon his nephews, but where are they?" burst forth Elizabeth, in spite of all her resolutions. Even if Ned had to be disposed, she thought, how wonderful to be able to see them both sitting at the King's table, instead of the witless Warwick boy who could not answer the simplest questions.

Anne sighed and laid down her scissors. Life had taught her patience. "My dear Bess, I have already told you that I do not know! I am sure they are being well cared for in the Tower, but even to me Richard never mentions them. And once when I questioned him for your sake he shut himself up in that terrible reserve of his and it spoiled everything between us for days. He is not usually ill-tempered," she offered an apology. "But he has been sleeping badly of late. It is having so many unaccustomed affairs of state."

"Or his conscience!" thought Elizabeth. But being a kindly treated guest she could not say so and hastened to change the subject. "Tell me about the time when you were hiding in London," she begged politely.

"I was hired as a kitchenmaid in a merchant's big house," began the Queen obligingly; and although everyone knew it to be true it always sounded fantastic as some old troubadour's tale.

"How you must have hated it!" sympathized Elizabeth, looking at Anne Neville's dainty little hands.

"I was horribly homesick for Warwick Castle. And the rough ways of the menservants frightened me. But most of all," explained Anne, in her inconsequent way, "I hated seeing nothing more beautiful than meat!"

It was difficult to imagine that this could have happened to a girl whose father had been so powerful that throughout the wars of the red and white roses his support could make or unmake Kings. But perhaps it had not been so bad for one who was not overburdened with imagination and who took such delight in simple things. Even now, as she came and sat by the fire, Anne folded back her skirts so as to enjoy the warm glow on her kirtle in just the homely way that Elizabeth had often seen her own women of the bed chamber do when preparing for a good gossip. "Did you sleep on the kitchen floor with the other servants?" she asked, thankful in the midst of her misfortune that at least she had never had to do that.

"Only at first," said the new Queen of England. "After wards I slept in a little truckle bed outside my mistress's door and was allowed to arrange her hair and clothes. She was quite kind and I suppose she saw that I was-different. But that, of course, was what I was most afraid of."

"Because of my Uncle Clarence finding you?"

"Yes. Having married my sister, he wanted to make sure of all my father's money, which had been left to us equally. So he kept me in his house-under his protection, he called it-so that no one should marry me. I was not even allowed to go out in case I might manage to appeal to King Edward or to Richard.

"Although he was their brother, Clarence was never so attractive as either of them.

"And when he was drunk I was terrified of him. And so was my sister. She warned me one night that he had said in his cups that he meant to get rid of me so that all the inheritance would be hers. So I ran away and hid myself in London."

"And no one recognized you?"

"Only Jane Sh.o.r.e. Her father being a City merchant, she used to visit sometimes at the house where I worked. But she never gave me away. It was she who pleaded for me to King Edward. But perhaps I ought not to say that to you?"

"In spite of her scandalous love affairs everyone knows Jane Sh.o.r.e is kind. It is only my mother who hates her."

"And then Richard came storming down from Scotland or somewhere," concluded Anne, with the warm trill of laughter which so belied her cold colouring.

"I remember about that because he appealed to my father," said Elizabeth-remembering with amazement, too, how hotly she had once sided with him. "And my father said Uncle Richard was to have you and that the money should be equally divided. Cicely and I were so glad, because we, too, disliked Uncle Clarence. But, of course, after the Scottish campaign Richard was every body's hero, and ridiculously young to be our uncle."

"And almost directly afterwards, you remember, Clarence sided with my father against yours and was put in the Tower. He was a double-dyed traitor if ever there was one, yet when he disappeared some spiteful people put it about that Richard had murdered him because of the way he had tried to keep my money. I suppose it is because Richard is so successful that some people will believe almost any tale against him."

Elizabeth flushed with embarra.s.sment, although it was quite likely that the thrust was not meant for her. "But you do not believe any of the tales against him, do you?" she asked, watching her kinswoman closely.

"Of course not," said Anne, settling her skirts more decorously at the sound of footsteps in the garden. "If one has known a person intimately for years one is more sure of the way he would act in any given circ.u.mstances than of the truth of what strangers say."

"So that even if you never saw my beloved brothers again you wouldn't believe-"

The Queen clapped a hand to the carved arm of her chair in exasperation. "Oh, Bess, why must you hark back to that?" she exclaimed. "I suppose that, loving Richard as I do, if G.o.d sent His archangel Gabriel to tell me he had harmed them I would not believe it."

The curtains at the end of the gallery were parted and, to Elizabeth's horror, Richard himself stood there. His riding gloves were still in his hand, and he had evidently come in unattended across the garden. "What wouldn't you believe, my sweet?" he asked, catching the end of their conversation.

"That you were bad," answered Anne, in that childlike way of hers.

"And has our charming guest been trying to persuade you that I am?" he asked suavely.

"No. We were discussing how well or ill one can know a person," said Anne, whose own hazards had taught her to be quick in loyalty.

"Because if she has we must try to be more expeditious about finding her a husband," went on Richard, just as if his wife had not spoken.

Anne turned to catch at his arm. "Oh, please, Richard, do not send her away from me just yet!" she entreated. "I find it rather- lonely-being a Queen. And you are always so busy yourself."

"You could have our boy with you more," he suggested, having been persuaded by her anxiety and her physicians to an unwilling parting.

"In the summer, of course. But these London fogs from this newfangled coal try his chest as much as they do mine," said Anne. "I am sure he is better in the country at Warwick."

"He certainly tires easily," admitted the ever-active King, anxiously.

"Perhaps it was all that ceremonial excitement up in York. You know, Bess, we walked all through the streets in our heavy ermine robes and with our crowns on to please the people, and although he is only ten that dear boy walked all the way, holding my hand. You should have heard the crowds cheer him..." Although she had turned purposely to include her discomfited guest, poor Anne stopped short at sight of the angry desolation of Elizabeth's face. "I always seem to be saying something tactless," she apologized.

Richard, coming behind her, lifted his wife's chin rea.s.suringly. Although he was seldom demonstrative in public, there was something infinitely tender in the touch of his long, expressive fingers against the whiteness of her throat. Anne looked up and smiled happily, forgetting her betise; and Elizabeth, suddenly consumed by inexplicable envy, tried to slip away unnoticed.

But even while he was looking down into a woman's adoring eyes part of Richard was aware as a cat. "I would like you to come to my workroom after dinner, Elizabeth," he said, without moving. "My secretary has been preparing some doc.u.ments which concern you."

If it was strange to be back in the Palace it seemed to Elizabeth the strangest and hardest thing of all to be standing once again in her father's room. And the new King kept her standing. In order to show her that he did not consider her the rightful owner of it, she supposed; or just to teach her meekness as the recipient of his hospitality. Of course he might really have been too busy to notice her, but in any case the way he went on writing made her furious, since meekness-as her father confessor frequently told her-was not one of her outstanding virtues.

Yet waiting gave her the precious opportunity to refresh her memory of familiar surroundings and to recall the happy security she had been wont to experience in them. She was grateful that nothing in the room had been changed. There were the same richly embroidered figures on the arras and the same hunting trophies, and the reflection of firelight from the great hearth still leapt warmly across the back of leather-bound books. It was all just as it had been the last time she saw it, that day when her father had comforted her about her broken French marriage and her young brother had stood beside her by the table afterwards, building castles with pieces of Master Caxton's type.

To-day only the man in the great carved chair was different. But because he was different, so was Elizabeth's whole world.

While his brown head was bent so diligently over the doc.u.ments spread before him on that same table she brought herself to study him closely, un.o.bserved. He did not seem to fill the chair as her father had done, being slighter and quicker of movement, but he was just as gorgeously clad. Richard was meticulous about such things. And she had to admit that although his sensitive face was sometimes lined with weariness it was never slackened by indulgence or sloth. Even now, where his elder brother would have handed over such tedious clerical affairs to Will Hastings, Richard-no matter how long he might have been in the saddle- attended to them himself. In consequence there were no easy jests among the alert-looking men who waited behind his chair, nor grins or t.i.ttering among the pages. The Court was kept with more splendour than it had been since the days of extravagant, beauty-loving Richard of Bordeaux, so the foreign amba.s.sadors said; but an almost military precision informed it.

"The deeds we drew up concerning allowances agreed upon for Lady Grey's daughters," Richard ordered crisply; and Kendal, his secretary, laid them instantly before him. At a snap of the King's nervous fingers, a page dropped to one knee, ready to hold the parchments from rolling back upon themselves. "Hand me a fresh quill, John," Richard bade his body squire. "And set a chair for the lady Elizabeth."

As John Green drew the chair forward for her Elizabeth took special note of him. "That bland-looking young man knows what happened to my brothers. He took his master's message to Sir Robert Brackenbury in the Tower," she thought. "If only I could find means to make him speak!"

"Recardus Rex," wrote the usurper King. Fascinated yet repelled, Elizabeth watched the signature flow in an exquisite, ornate hand which might have belonged to an artist-watched him hand to his secretary the grant which would decide the ease or penury of her future life, and then settle himself back in his chair. "Read the contents aloud, Kendal," he said, "so that the eldest of these ladies may hear."

The deed conferred upon each of her sister's estates to the annual value of two hundred marks to be paid out of the privy purse, and for herself five hundred. Ample for any ordinary gentlewoman, Elizabeth supposed, although she knew little of such domestic computations. There followed clauses promising husbands and dowries; but the long legal phrases swept over her uncomprehended, and almost unheard. It was a relief to know oneself provided for, of course, when one had known what it was to be hungry and ill-clad-but what did all these material details matter? It was not money but the sureness of someone's love she wanted. The protecting kind of love her father had given her, the adoring love of Tom Stafford or the demanding affection of young brothers. Even while she murmured formal words of thanks the tears welled slowly to her eyes, so that she was scarcely conscious of the dismissal of the King's attendants or aware of the moment when they were first alone.

The fact that he had left his work-table and was standing while she still sat recalled her wandering thoughts. "I purposely did not ask you here before," he was saying gently, so that she knew his watchful eyes must have seen her tears.

"This room-has memories," she apologized defensively, rising hastily as etiquette demanded.

"For me, too, it has memories," he said. And in that moment of common bereavement there was something which invited her affection in his beautifully modulated voice.

Elizabeth lifted her eyes and looked directly into his; and in spite of everything that lay between them the natural urge to go to him for comfort almost mastered her. He was young-a bare ten years older than herself-and a part of that familiar felicitous life which had been swept so suddenly away. He was so closely of her blood, and in the old days whenever something had gone wrong, either at home or abroad, it had always been the King's younger brother who had been sent to put it right. "I know that you, too, loved him," she faltered. "That is why it is all-so amazing!"

Richard laughed shortly. "I can a.s.sure you that all the amazement is not on one side!" he said, taking up his stance before the fire. "Do you not suppose that it amazed me when, hastening to carry out my dear brother's commands as swiftly as ever I did when he was living, I found myself insultingly forestalled-with Rivers and Grey stealing a march on me to grab possession of his son? And when I had proclaimed him King in York and brought him royally to London, to find your mother making me out traitor by hustling you all into the Abbey for safety? As though I meant to eat you!"

"You mean that if we had trusted you and rallied round you to carry out my father's wishes things might have gone differently?" Elizabeth found herself saying with almost adolescent gaucherie.

"I am glad you have the sense to see it. And I hope you can comprehend how in a completely different set of circ.u.mstances I was forced to act differently. Even your father could not have foreseen that his wife's people would turn and bite me, trying to divide this poor ravaged country again."

"Whatever my Woodville relatives did, I deplored their distrust, Uncle Richard. At first I tried to persuade my mother-"

He was standing with his back to her, idly tracing the outline of a white rose painted on the great chimney-breast. "You were always the most intelligent of the bunch, Bess," he said negligently. "That is why I trouble to speak to you of these things."

A flash of discerning anger made her recognize the first flaw of deceit in his sincerity. "Say rather it is because you know that I matter and you want me to believe in you," she accused.

"It is too late to consider whether you matter or not!" he said, flinging round on her with a fine swinging of fur-lined crimson sleeves. "There was a time when I would have been content to hold the power as Protector. But not now. They were all here in the Palace at my brother's deathbed-as I would to G.o.d I had been! Hastings, Stanley, Morton, Dorset-all of them-while I was fighting for him up in Scotland. They, too, swore to carry out his wishes. And yet that day I held a Council-meeting, when everything was prepared for his son's coronation, I discovered that even those of them whom I had left unpunished were plotting against me. Even your mother-so frightened of me that she had to take refuge in sanctuary-had a finger in a plot upon my life. So I sent for your younger brother. It was to me-not to Anthony Rivers or any other accursed Woodville-that Edward left the care of his sons."

Elizabeth faced up to him like a young fury. "Yes, they were left in your keeping. No sane man denies it. But what have you done with them?" And when he did not answer she forgot all fear and threw herself upon him, beating at his breast with maddened fists. "What have you done with my happy, laughter-loving brothers?" she repeated, her voice rising like any crazed market-woman's deprived of her young.

But he was King, and it was treason to strike him. He might have called his men and had her sent to the Tower too. Instead he held her wrists and shook her from him with quiet strength. "I did what was best for England," he said, with something of the snarl of one of his own heraldic leopards in his voice.

For a few moments the fierce antagonism of their glances held. His face had whitened as hers had been flushed by leaping blood. Then realization of her helplessness came to her. Although her limbs shook, Elizabeth managed to sweep him a deep obeisance. It was her signal of surrender, but it also gave her time to master her emotion-time to add up the score of their encounter. Certainly he had betrayed the fact that she was a person of more importance than he would have deemed her had her brothers been alive. Whether he hated her or respected her the more for her outburst she could not be sure. All she knew was that there was that in his face which would intimidate her from ever asking him about them again. It was not until after wards, in the seclusion of her small room, that it occurred to her that she was probably the only person who had ever dared to ask him at all.

If Richard were shaken he did not show it. With that light tread of his he walked back to the table and began turning over some papers. "I admire your courage," he said lightly. "Like that spirited younger brother of yours, you appear to have inherited more Plantagenet blood than Woodville."

Elizabeth took an eager step or two towards him. "Then you- like him?" she stammered, realizing that he was speaking as if the boy were still alive.

But the King took no notice of her interruption. "Since you are so solicitous for your family, you may be interested to know that I have offered your sister Cicely to Lord Welles, and that my good friend the Duke of Norfolk is agreeable for one of his younger sons to marry Ann. The others," he added, laying down the parchment, "are as yet too young."

Poor Cicely and Ann, who would naturally have made brilliant foreign marriages! So she was soon to be parted from them. But an even more intimate question arose. Curiosity consumed her. "And for myself?" she asked, in a small voice.

"I have not as yet arranged anything."

"Then for the present-I may remain free?"

In spite of the fact that it meant continuing to live as his guest, the relief in Elizabeth's voice was so patent that he looked across at her quizzically and smiled. "So your plotting was only half-hearted, although it cost Bucking ham his life? You did not really relish the prospect of lying with a Lancastrian?"

His words struck so near the truth, and her remorse for Buckingham was so great, that she made no answer.

"How old are you, Elizabeth?" the King was asking.

"Nearly nineteen, Sir."

"Then it is high time you were married," he agreed, grinning at some devilish new idea. "All the more so as you always seem to fail to get the husbands of your expectation. Why, I remember in this very room offering to avenge you in France. Your poor father was so choleric about the way the Dauphin jilted you that it may well have hastened his death. And now Henry of Lancaster has failed you!"

"Oh, how I hate you!" murmured Elizabeth. And al though she pressed both hands to her lips his sharp ears must have heard her.

"That is unfortunate, since our destinies have agreed that you must live in my house," he laughed. "But do not despair, Elizabeth Plantagenet. There is always Master Stillington."

"Master Stillington?" The name conveyed nothing to her.

"The son of our good Bishop Stillington."

"The Bishop of Bath who preached sermons proclaiming us b.a.s.t.a.r.ds to please you!"

"But with no prejudicial feeling, I do a.s.sure you-since, being a churchman, this son of his must be a b.a.s.t.a.r.d too. All the same, he is a very able young man, and so useful to me that he merits some reward."

Elizabeth regarded her uncle with horror. "You mean that loathsome, greasy-haired clerk who leers at me from the lower tables in hall?"

"So you have noticed that he is already not without-desire?" jibed Richard.

"I do not notice the antics of menials," said Elizabeth, at her haughtiest.

Richard went to the door and opened it for her courteously. "But nevertheless I should bear the possibility in mind, Bess," he advised cheerfully. "Particularly when your singularly persistent mind is tempted to ask other people inconvenient questions."

ELIZABETH HOPED NEVER TO see her father's room again, for all its sense of security was gone. If Richard had not punished her with public penance as he had the wantonness of Jane Sh.o.r.e, he had humiliated her for her persistency with the threat of this horrible marriage. "There is only Lord Stanley left to whom I can turn for help," she thought in panic, wis.h.i.+ng that his kindly Countess were with him.

Being Steward of the King's Household, Stanley was always about the Court, and he had been her father's friend. Surely he would not stand by and see her married to some ugly byblow of a bishop. But although he was affable to everybody and always jovial to her sisters, she felt sure that he tried to avoid her. He did not want her to appeal or to be drawn in to taking sides even in so personal a matter. He was rich, generous and all the more popular, perhaps, because of his genius for avoiding controversy. Elizabeth had once heard the Duke of Buckingham say that Stanley's power lay less in the fact that he had twenty thousand armed retainers than in the fact that n.o.body could be sure upon which side they would fight.

Once, after finding the King's cross-eyed scrivener hanging about the pa.s.sage to her room, she had insisted upon waylaying the Lord Steward. "Uncle Stanley," she had asked straight out, using the old affectionate t.i.tle by which they had all called him as children, "do you suppose the King really intends to marry me to that awful Stillington creature?"

"I should think it highly improbable, Lady Bess," Stanley had told her imperturbably. "Gloucester may shed Plantagenet blood, but, with the fierce family pride he has, he is unlikely to demean it to that extent. And listen, child," he had added, seeing how alarmed she really was, "my squire, Humphrey Brereton, has always been crazy about you. I will set him as watchdog upon this menial and you will be no more troubled with his prying."

"But surely, milord, that will make two of them to fear," objected Mattie, who had gone along with her mistress.

"My dear lady, Humphrey Brereton knows his place," he had a.s.sured her, hurrying away upon some pressing or pretended business. He had spoken blandly enough, but the way he used Richard's old t.i.tle and obviously attached no importance to the declaration of her illegitimacy set Elizabeth thinking.