I go into my confinement thinking how hard the times are, and wondering why this should be. Our York court was notoriously rich and wasteful, with an unending annual round of entertainments and parties, hunts, jousts, and celebrations. I had ten royal cousins and they were all magnificently dressed and equipped, and married well. How can it be that the same country that poured gold into the lap of Edward IV and dispersed it to an enormous family cannot find enough money to pay the fines and taxes of one man: Henry Tudor? How can it be that a royal family of only five people can need so much money when all the Plantagenets and the Rivers affinity made merry on so much less?
My husband says he will stay at Stourton Castle during my confinement to greet me when I come out. I cannot see him when I am confined, of course, but he sends me cheering messages telling me that we have sold some of the hay crop, and that he has had a pig killed and salted down for the christening party for our baby.
One evening he sends me a short handwritten note.
I have taken a fever and am resting in my bed. I have ordered the children not to see me. Be of good cheer, wife.
I feel nothing but irritation. There will be no one to watch the steward check the Michaelmas rents, nor to take the apprenticeship fees from the young people who start work this quarter. The horses will start eating the stored hay, and there will be no one to make sure they are not overfed. We cannot afford to buy in hay, we have to parcel it out throughout the winter. There is nothing I can do about this but curse our bad luck that has me confined and my husband sick at such a time. I know our steward, John Little, is an honest man, but the feast of Michaelmas is one of the key times for the profitable running of our lands, and if neither Sir Richard nor I am leaning over his shoulder and watching every number he writes, he is bound to be more careless or, worse, more generous to the tenants, forgiving them bad debts or letting unpaid rents run on.
Two nights later I get another note from Sir Richard.
Much worse, and sending for the doctor. But the children are in good health, God willing.
It is unusual for Sir Richard to be ill. He has been on one campaign after another for the Tudors, ridden out for them in all weather over three kingdoms and a principality. I write back:
Are you very ill? What does the doctor say?
I get no reply from him, and the next morning I send my lady-in-waiting Jane Mallett to my husband’s groom of the bed-chamber to ask if he is well.
As soon as she comes into my confinement chamber I can tell from her shocked face that it is bad news. I put my hand over the swell of my belly where my baby is packed as tight as herring in a barrel. I can feel its every move inside my straining belly and suddenly it goes still too, as if it is listening, like me, for bad news.
“What’s the matter?” I ask, my voice hard with worry. “What’s the matter that you look so pale? Speak up, Jane, you are frightening me.”
“It’s the master,” she says simply. “Sir Richard.”
“I know that, fool! I guessed that! Is he very ill?”
She drops a curtsey, as if deference can soften the blow. “He’s dead, my lady. He died in the night. I am so sorry to be the one to tell you . . . he’s gone. The master’s gone.”
It makes it so much worse being in confinement. The priest comes to the door and whispers words of consolation through the crack, as if his vows of celibacy will be all overthrown if he sees my tearstained face. The physician tells me it was a fever that overcame Sir Richard’s great strength. He was a man of forty-six, a good age, but he was powerful and active. It was not the Sweat and not the pox and not the measles and not the ague and not St. Anthony’s fire. The doctor gives me such a long list of things that the disease was not that I lose patience and tell him he can go and send me the steward; and I command him, in a whisper through the door, to make sure everything is done that should be done, that Sir Richard is laid in his coffin on the chancel steps of Stourton church and proper watch is kept. The bell must be tolled and all the tenants given a grant of money, mourners must have black cloth, and Sir Richard must be buried with all the dignity that he should have—but as cheaply as possible.
Then I write to the king and to his mother, My Lady, and tell them that their honorable servant, my husband, has died in their service. I do not point out to them that he leaves me all but penniless with four children of royal blood to raise on nothing, and an unborn child on the way. My Lady the King’s Mother will understand that well enough. She will know that they have to help me with an immediate grant of money, and then the gift of some more land for me to keep myself, and my children, now that we do not have the fees from his work in Wales or from his other posts. I am their kinswoman, I am of the old royal house, they have no choice but to make sure I can live with dignity and feed and clothe my children and my household.
I send for my two oldest children, my boys, the boys whom I will have to raise alone. I will let the Lady Governess tell Ursula and Reginald that their father has gone to heaven. But Henry is twelve and Arthur ten, and they should know from their mother that their father is dead and from now on there is no one but ourselves; we will have to help one another.
They come in very quiet and anxious, looking around at the shadowy confinement chamber with the superstitious anxiety of growing boys. It is only my bedroom where they have been a hundred times, but now there are tapestries over the windows to shut out the light and the damp, there are small fires in the grates at either end of the room, and there is the haunting smell from the herbs that are said to be helpful in childbirth. Against the wall a candle burns before a silver-framed icon of the Virgin Mary and the communion wafer is on display in a monstrance. There is a small bed for birthing set at the foot of my big canopied bed, and the ominous ropes tied to the two bottom posts for me to haul against when my time comes, a lathe of wood for me to bite, a holy girdle to tie around my waist. They take all this in with round, frightened eyes.
“I have some bad news for you both,” I say steadily. There is no point trying to break such a thing to them gently. We are all born to suffer, we are all born to loss. My boys are the sons of a house that has always dealt liberally in death, both in giving and receiving.
Henry looks at me anxiously. “Are you ill?” he asks. “Is the baby all right?”
“Yes. It’s not bad news about me.”
Arthur knows at once. He is always quick to understand, and quick to speak. “Then it’s Father,” he says simply. “Lady Mother, is my father dead?”
“Yes. I am very sorry to tell you,” I say. I take Henry’s cold hand in my own. “You are now the head of this family. Make sure that you guide your brothers and sister well, protect our fortune, serve the king, and avoid malice.”
His dark eyes well up with tears. “I can’t,” he says, his voice quavering. “I don’t know how to.”
“I can do it,” Arthur volunteers. “I can do it.”
I shake my head. “You can’t. You’re the second son,” I remind him. “It’s Henry who’s the heir. Your task is to help and support him, defend him if you have to. And you can do everything, Henry. I will advise and guide you, and we will find a way to advance this family in wealth and greatness—but not too far.”
“Not too far?” Arthur repeats.
“Great under the great king,” Henry says, showing, just as I thought, that he is old enough to do his duty and wise enough already to know that we want to prosper—but not enviably so.
Only then, after my boys have wept a little and gone, do I have time to kneel before my prie-dieu and grieve for the loss of my husband and pray for his immortal soul. I cannot doubt that he will go to heaven, though we will have to find the money from somewhere to have Masses said. He was a good man, loyal as a dog to the Tudors, faithful as a dog to me. Kind, as a strong man of few words is often kind to his children and servants and tenants. I never could have fallen in love with him; but I was always grateful to him and glad of his name. Now that he is dead and I will never see him again, I know that I will miss him. He was a comfort and a shield and a kind husband—and these qualities are rare.