Page 30 of The Rose at Twilight

She hurried away from him then, nearly running down the corridor toward the ladies’ chamber, but at the turning, she stopped and looked back.

When she saw him standing by the door to the anteroom, still watching her, satisfaction surged within her at the thought that, despite his callous final statement, he still concerned himself with her safety.

Then, perversely, in the instant before the yeoman guard opened the doors to the princess’s antechamber, she remembered that despite that intriguing look Sir Nicholas had given her no indication that he objected in the slightest to her impending betrothal.

Her disordered senses were recalled instantly when the yeoman opened the doors.

At the same time, on the other side of the antechamber, the door into the princess’s bedchamber opened, and Lady Emlyn appeared on the threshold, saying crisply, “There you are, Alys. Come in at once. Her highness will be here directly and all preparations must be completed before she arrives. You must go in and help the others make her bed.”

Alys stared at her. “Surely there are proper servants to attend to that chore, Lady Emlyn.”

Lady Emlyn’s thin eyebrows lifted. “My dear Alys, surely you must have realized by now that her royal highness does not associate in any way with lowly servants. It is the honor and pleasure of her ladies to serve her in all such capacities. Now, do you go at once, for the royal bedmaking has already begun.”

Alys hurried into the bedchamber and discovered that making Elizabeth’s bed was no small duty, for her ladies and gentlewomen observed a precise routine.

The lavender bed curtains had been pulled wide and tucked out of the way.

Next the covers were all removed and the mattress itself stripped from the bed and given a good shaking.

And finally each cover, separate from the others, was replaced, great care being taken to ensure that no wrinkles remained anywhere.

The pillows, a vast number of them, were plumped and replaced on the bed, and finally the counterpane, an elegant spread of lavender silk to match the bed curtains, was spread over the whole, and the curtains drawn again, but only enough to ensure that they hung properly and showed no creases.

“Mercy,” Alys murmured to Madeline later in the anteroom when the ritual was done and they had been sent to procure hot water for the royal washstand reservoir, and cold for the royal ewer, “if this is only a part of the ritual that accompanies the princess to bed under ordinary circumstances, what she will expect when she is in childbed?”

They had reached the door to the corridor. “Hush,” Madeline warned, but her eyes were twinkling. “Someone will hear you.”

They had only to have the vessels filled by the yeomen servants already waiting outside the door, and return to the bedchamber, but before they entered the latter again, Alys said, “My bed is made in the morning, Madeline. Is not yours?”

“Aye,” Madeline said, chuckling, “and so, too, is that of her royal highness, but feathers do not stay fluffed, you know, and it is not meet that the feathers surrounding a royal princess should be allowed to clump, Alys. Surely you must see that.”

Alys shook her head but said no more, for Madeline had opened the door.

One of Alys’s daily tasks at Middleham had been to oversee the cleaning of several chambers, including, at times, the bedchamber of the Duke and Duchess of Gloucester.

She had been there, after all, to learn about the proper running of a large household.

But she could not recall that Anne or Anne’s Dickon had ever expected a half-dozen or more people to attend their bedmaking or, indeed, the preparations for their retiring.

She wondered if those customs had changed much when the Duke and Duchess of Gloucester had become King and Queen of England and removed to London, and decided that most likely they had not.

It was much more likely that Elizabeth’s notions of the ceremony due to her high estate had evolved from her mother’s example.

Alys and Madeline were dismissed from the bedchamber as soon as Elizabeth entered, accompanied by both her mother and Lady Margaret. As Alys backed from the room, she thought the princess looked harassed. She was not at all sorry to leave.

In the corridor, Madeline said, sotto voce, “I should not care to be caught between those two. I doubt even Elizabeth, gentle as she tries to be, can manage to please them both.”

Alys had no sympathy to waste on Elizabeth. “Madeline,” she said, “I must tell you my news. I am to be betrothed and then married, I think, as soon as the formal annulment of my betrothal to Sir Lionel Everingham arrives from Rome.”

Madeline stopped still in the corridor and stared at her. “You are just now telling me this! How long have you known?”

“Hush.” Alys looked hastily around, then added in a low voice, “When the king commanded my presence tonight, ’twas to tell me of his decision to wed me to Lord Briarly.”

“Who is Lord Briarly? I do not know him.”

“He is one of the Stanleys. Come, do not stand like a post. We will be remarked.” Alys feared that if they did not move, she would shriek. Just thinking of the possessive way Briarly had looked at her stirred waves of fresh desperation within her.

Madeline stood where she was. “You are to wed a Stanley!”

“Aye, but keep your voice down. You do not need to hear what I think about such a marriage, do you?”

“No, but my goodness, Alys, what will you do?”

“I do not know, but come,” she said vehemently. “We cannot talk here. We must go to my room.”

Madeline agreed, and they hurried along without talking, but when they turned into the corridor where Alys’s bedchamber was located, Ian MacDougal stepped out of the shadows to meet them.

“Ian,” Alys cried, “I have an important commission for you!”

“Aye, mistress, and so Sir Nicholas ha’ said when he told me tae await your return. I am tae find the Laird Wolveston, but what am I tae tell him? Master said it wouldna be richt for the mon tae set foot in your bedchamber, brother or no.”

“Just tell him I must speak with him privately,” Alys said, exerting herself to keep the impatience she felt from sounding in her voice.

“Find him quickly, Ian, and then come back to me here and tell me where I am to meet him. Oh, and Ian,” she added when another thought occurred to her as he turned away, “in case I should need you later, where do I send to find you?”

He grinned. “Best I coom here, mistress. There’s a comely wee lassock dancin’ her shoon off wi’ the evening’s players, and her troop leaves wi’ the dawnin’ for Oxford and Derby, then goes all the way north t’ Doncaster and York till Easter.

If the wee folk dinna interfere, I mean tae mak’ m’self weel known tae the lass this verra night. I dinna ken where we might be.”

Alys shook her head at him. “You are incorrigible, Ian, and you deserve to come to grief. Just see that you come back here if you cannot find Lord Wolveston, so that I do not spend the entire night wondering what to expect. And come to me first thing in the morning. I may have new orders for you—that is, unless Sir Nicholas has commanded you to attend to him.”

“Nay, mistress. I be yours tae command, now as ever.”

“But I cannot even pay you, Ian. I have no money.”

“You need not, mistress. Sir Nicholas pays me.”

“But that is not right,” Alys protested.

Ian shrugged. “’Tis wi’ me,” he said. “If that be all, mistress, I’ll gae the noo and find his lairdship.”

She let him go, not knowing what more to say and soothing her feelings by assuring herself that Roger would certainly pay for her servants once she pointed out the need to him.

And later perhaps, arrangements could be made with Lord Briarly so that her own servants could attend her after the wedding.

That last thought depressed her again, however, and she turned with a sigh to follow Madeline into the bedchamber.

Molly was waiting to put Alys to bed, but she dismissed her, telling her to come back in an hour.

Then, with the door shut, she turned to Madeline.

“I am only now beginning to take it all in,” she said with a sigh, “for besides being one of the enemy, Madeline, Briarly is an old man. Though I told Sir Nicholas that would not weigh with me, I do own that I should prefer a young husband to an old one.”

“Anyone would,” Madeline agreed fervently. “But how is this then? Does Sir Nicholas know the whole?”

“Aye, I told him. He was vexed with me for speaking as I did about Elizabeth—”

“I still do not see any sign of wickedness in her,” Madeline interjected. “She smiles and nods, and scarcely ever speaks, but when she does, ’tis always in a quiet, gentle manner.”

“She has learned well to conceal her true feelings,” Alys said, but Madeline’s opinion of Elizabeth no longer seemed quite so important, so her tone was calm.

“To understand her, you must recall the world in which she lived. Everyone around her was conspiring at one time or another, always with an eye to his own benefit. In just such a way has Elizabeth learned to look after Elizabeth. But I do not wish to discuss her, Madeline.” She sat down upon the narrow bed and folded her hands around her knees, looking up bleakly.

“My future appears to be set, does it not?”

Madeline agreed, but the two of them discussed it at length nonetheless.

Since neither knew Briarly and could only speculate about his character, they were unable to agree on exactly what Alys’s future might hold.

They were still discussing it forty minutes later when, hearing a light scratching at the door, Alys opened it to find Ian on the other side.

Silently, he handed her a sheet of paper that had been folded in half but not sealed.

“Ah, good, you found him!”

“Aye, mistress, but it be as ye see there.”

“You read this?” She eyed him disapprovingly, but Ian denied having done any such thing.

“He said flat out there be naught tae be done and he didna mean tae let hisself be plagued by your … appeals tae him.”

“He did not say ‘appeals.’ What did he say?” She was scanning her brother’s brief note as she asked the question, so Ian’s hesitation was overlooked for a moment until she finished. Then, looking up at him, she said, “Well? Tell me.”

“Sniveling’s what he did say, mistress, but like as not, the laird didna mean—”

“The laird meant precisely what he said,” Alys said grimly. “What a brother I have, Madeline! Only see what he has written.”

She handed the note to Madeline, who read the brief scrawl in an instant, then looked up again with a grimace. “‘Obey, the matter has naught to do with me.’ That is all?”

“As you see.”

“Well, but in fairness, Alys, if the king commands it—”

“Aye, the king commands.” She sighed again. “Go to your dancer, Ian. And you go to bed, Madeline. I shall see you both in the morning. Right now, I want to be alone.”

When they had gone, she slumped down against the wall, ignoring the chill of the stones through her gown, trying to think of a way to avoid marriage to Briarly.

To have one’s husband selected by the king ought to have been an honor, even when the king was the Tudor, but the more she thought about Briarly, the more hateful the notion became.

But if Roger was against her, there was no one else to whom she might turn. No one else cared what happened to her.

She wondered what settlement Roger would make, if he still had the power to provide her with a dowry.

She had not thought about that before now.

A dowry was of vast importance, for she was nothing without one, but who would provide it?

Perhaps that was why Roger wanted no part of her.

Perhaps he hoped to benefit from remaining silent.

Before her father died, before Bosworth Field, she had had a respectable dowry, and her connection to the family of Anne of Gloucester had made her an excellent prospect for marriage.

That connection was a defect now, and her dowry no doubt depended upon the king’s whim.

And no one cared. Not Sir Lionel Everingham or Roger.

Not Nicholas Merion. Though why it should matter what Sir Nicholas thought, she could not imagine.

When Molly returned, Alys allowed herself to be prepared for bed, but many more hours passed before she slept.

She told herself it did no good to bemoan her fate, since the only one who might possibly care was Jonet, and Jonet was dead.

The tears came then, but she brushed them furiously away.

Sir Nicholas had said that women frequently survived the sweating sickness—she had herself—so, if God had willed it so, Jonet was fully recovered and living happily with her sister Mary in Doncaster.

In any case she, Alys, was on her own. She began to wonder if there was any way to make the king change his mind.

Nothing she could think of seemed likely to work, and she found herself thinking that it was a pity he was not as susceptible to feminine charms as Ian was.

Then she remembered Ian’s dancer, and an idea began to form.

At last, gathering her courage and putting all thought of the king’s wrath—and anyone else’s—firmly from her mind, she decided what she would do.