Page 19 of The Rose at Twilight

G RITTING HER TEETH, ALYS made a deep curtsy. Elizabeth’s voice had been gentle, filled with concern and goodness. Alys glanced at the other two women in the room, wondering if they knew Elizabeth as she did. She did not know either of them.

The elder, a plump woman with several chins quivering above the neck of her gray-fur-trimmed green dress, had risen to her feet when Alys’s name was announced and stepped forward now to greet her.

The younger woman, slimmer and garbed in lynx-trimmed rose velvet, also got up but remained standing beside Elizabeth.

All three wore simple cap-and-band veils over their hair, instead of the butterfly headdress that had been the fashion for years.

“Lady Alys,” the older woman said, “I am Lady Emlyn Lacey, and my companion is Lady Beatrix Ffoulkes. We are pleased to greet you. Her highness has spoken of you frequently and has been looking forward to enjoying your company, however briefly.”

“Briefly?” Rising from her curtsy despite the fact that Elizabeth had made no sign that she might do so, Alys looked at her, certain that she detected a glint of malice in Elizabeth’s pale blue eyes.

Repressing the anger she felt to see her so elegantly garbed in sable-trimmed blue damask, and showing no sign of mourning the uncle she had professed to love, Alys said carefully, “I had been given to understand that I was to be taken into the king’s ward. Is that not the case after all?”

“Certainly it is,” Elizabeth said more gently than ever, “but surely you do not think that that means our lord king will keep you always in his company, Alys dear. You are to be housed in the Tower, I believe, just as dearest Neddie is, until his sovereign highness has decided how best to dispose of you.”

“Dispose of me?” Alys raised her eyebrows, hoping Elizabeth could not see how the words frightened her. “If he does not want me, why did he not leave me in peace in north Nottinghamshire?”

“Do not be tiresome, Alys.” Some of the gentleness had gone from Elizabeth’s voice, but with a glance at the other two women, she added in her normal tone, “You must know you will be safer in London than at Wolveston, though I trust you were not so foolish as to linger in the city today but passed straight through it.”

“We did, but why should that concern you?”

“There is talk of a new plague there. ’Tis why I am housed here at Greenwich instead of at Westminster Palace with my mother. And after taking such care to remove ourselves from harm’s way, we would not wish you to infect us.”

“I know something of this plague,” Alys said, repressing a shiver at memory of her illness, and of her grief for Jonet. “Indeed, I have suffered it myself and have—”

“Do not talk nonsense,” Elizabeth said almost tartly. “It is said that strong men fall dead in the streets—men who but moments before were in a state of perfect health. Even the Lord Mayor has died. You cannot have had it and survived to boast of it. You say so only to make yourself interesting.”

“If you like,” Alys said with a shrug. “In any event, I cannot infect anyone. We rode straight through the city.”

“Where are your women?”

“I have none.” She hid her sorrow. She would give Elizabeth no new weapons to use against her.

The corners of Elizabeth’s mouth tilted up. “Poor Alys. How very dreadful for you to have traveled so far without proper maidservants to attend you. I had assumed you would be provided with a suitable litter and a host of your own servants.”

“There was no litter to be had, and most of my father’s servants had died of the sweat. Those who did not were gone from Wolveston, but I was served well enough. My escort was led by a Welsh knight who serves the king. I was quite safe with him.”

“Who is this knight?”

“He is called Sir Nicholas Merion.”

Elizabeth dismissed him with a gesture. “I do not know him, so he is of no importance. You will want to change to a more proper dress, I’ll warrant, before the Lady Margaret sees you.”

“The Lady Margaret?”

“The king’s mother, of course.” There was a flicker of annoyance in Elizabeth’s expression, but Alys could not determine whether it was aimed at her for not realizing of whom she spoke, or at Margaret Beaufort, Countess of Richmond and wife of the traitor Sir Thomas Stanley.

“She is here?”

“Of course. Where else would she be? In truth, it was she who decided that I should remove from Westminster to Greenwich, where I should be safer from the sweating sickness.”

Alys was surprised, not because Elizabeth had left her mother, or had been allowed to leave, but because she had somehow supposed Margaret Beaufort would be in the north with Stanley.

But, of course, the woman would prefer to be with her son.

She had fought as hard as anyone to see him on the throne, so it was not odd that she would want to enjoy the benefits of his hard-won position.

What was odd was that Margaret Beaufort should express such concern for a daughter of the House of York, unless the rumors of an impending marriage were accurate.

“It is true, then,” she said, speaking her thoughts aloud. “You are to wed the king.”

“I told you so, months ago,” Elizabeth said, not attempting to conceal her satisfaction. “He made a vow, after all, on the high altar of the cathedral at Rennes. Surely you do not think Henry Tudor the sort of man to disregard a sacred vow.”

Since under the present circumstances Alys could scarcely express her true opinion of the Tudor, she said carefully, “I cannot say what manner of man he is. I have never met him.”

“Well, you may certainly believe one thing,” Elizabeth said complacently. “I shall soon be queen of all England.”

“It is settled then? When are you to be married?”

“As to that, the date has not been determined, for Henry is not yet crowned king. ’Twas thought best to delay his coronation until the sickness has passed, for he wishes to be crowned with all due pomp and circumstance at Westminster Abbey.”

“Perhaps God wills it otherwise,” Alys said daringly, “and that is why He has visited such dreadful sickness upon the land.”

There was a long silence. The two waiting women glanced at each other, but neither spoke.

At last, quietly, Elizabeth said, “You’d do well to guard that unruly tongue of yours, Alys, for the sort of impudence in which you delight will not be tolerated here.

Henry is king by God’s will, through right of combat.

His coronation is a ceremony to please the people, nothing more. ”

“How can you say he is king by God’s will?” Alys demanded, her good intentions overwhelmed by Elizabeth’s self-righteous attitude. “He killed the rightful king! And he cannot marry you, in any event, for you are no proper princess. Your father was not properly wed to your mother!”

“That is a lie,” Elizabeth said, rigid with fury, her eyes flashing. “My uncle merely used that lie as an excuse to steal the crown from my brother Edward.”

“Then what of Edward?” Alys snapped. “We hear naught of him or of Richard of York. What of them? If ’twas a lie and your family all legitimate, then one of them is rightful king, not your precious Tudor!”

“They are dead,” Elizabeth said. There was no grief in her voice, only certainty. “No one speaks of them, and when it was suggested that my uncle might have killed them, he failed to produce them, to prove they lived.”

“You know perfectly well that the accusation, made as it was in the French parliament, was naught but French spite against France’s greatest enemy; and even so, ’twas merely an observation on the frequent fate of those who aspire to the throne.

No one in England paid it any heed, for even Richard’s worst enemies knew him to be too honorable ever to do such a thing. ”

Elizabeth shrugged. “No one hears from them now, so they must be dead. My mother says they are not, but that is because she does not want Henry Tudor to feel too secure upon his throne, for fear he will change his mind about marrying me if he believes my brothers are safely dead, that he will then marry some foreign princess instead of fulfilling his vow to unite the houses of York and Lancaster. But I know he wants me in any case, just,” she added with a challenging look, “as my Uncle Richard did.”

White-hot anger washed over Alys, blinding her to the dangers of her position, and she had taken two steps toward Elizabeth with no other intention than to murder her, swiftly and painfully, when she was halted in her tracks by the sight of Elizabeth rising swiftly to her feet and sinking into a deep curtsy, her attention riveted not on Alys but on a point some distance behind her.

Ladies Emlyn and Beatrix were also bowing low, and Alys required no great astuteness to know that someone of importance had entered the ladies’ chamber.

She turned slowly, half-expecting to find herself face to face with the Tudor himself.

Instead, she beheld a slender, fragile-looking woman in her mid-forties, dressed in dully red, sable-trimmed velvet, with a white coif and a banded, black-velvet hood.

The woman held a jeweled rosary in her right hand, a satin-covered prayer book in her left.

Her hazel eyes were hard-looking, like agates, and shrewd.

Her voice was like ice when she said, “I shall do you the courtesy to forget what mine eyes have just beheld. You are Lady Alys Wolveston, I warrant. Do you not know how to behave in the royal presence?”

Sinking swiftly to a curtsy as deep as any of the others, Alys told herself firmly that it was no business of hers to suggest that the only person with any cause whatever to claim a royal presence just then was male.

It likewise did not strain her intellect to deduce the identity of the newcomer.

“Forgive me, Lady Margaret,” she said calmly.

“I did not hear you enter, or hear your name announced.”