The Tudor Rose Read Online Free PDF Page B

necessary move of all. As long as Richard was in safe keeping there could be no point in harming or dethroning Edward. “It takes a woman to outwit them,” she had said triumphantly, as soon as they were installed.

    Yet even Elizabeth felt that her mother was consumed by an unreasonable obsession about Gloucester. “After the beautiful letter of condolence he wrote you surely you cannot believe that he means harm to either of them?” she said consolingly.

    “No harm!” flared the Queen. “When he throws my own relatives into prison!”

    “Madam, may he not be only detaining them because it seems to him that they interfered—or at any rate acted too hastily?” ventured Elizabeth.

    But the Queen was not to be placated. “Who is he to talk of haste when he swooped south like a vulture to intercept them at Northampton?” she said.

    “I wonder how Uncle Gloucester could march a hundred miles farther than Uncle Rivers and yet catch up with him?” said Richard, closing his book.

    “He could not have had the news so quickly either,” added Elizabeth thoughtfully. “Unless, of course, the Earl of Northumberland or someone warned him.”

    “He can make his men do anything, your father used to say. Make them march without sleep—and go without himself, no doubt. He looks like it with that pinched face of his!” their mother railed shrewishly. “And as to interference, you talk like a fool, Bess. Had not the Council ordered my brother to bring the King? By the authority of the Court Chamberlain.”

    “It is true that milord Hastings was Chamberlain in my father's lifetime, but is he now?” began Elizabeth uncertainly.

    “Had he let me order out those archers this would never have happened,” said the Queen, with truth.

    “Poor Uncle Rivers!” murmured Richard, sitting up and hugging his knees. “He used to show us the loveliest illuminated manuscripts and make all the old legends come alive.”

    “He is the most cultured man in the country; and of what can that misshapen clot of cold arrogance accuse him save of being my brother?” agreed the Queen despondently.

    Elizabeth went and knelt beside her and began braiding back her hair. “I know how terrible it must be for you,” she said, motioning to a hovering lady-of-the-bedchamber to bring a fresh headdress. “But, after all, perhaps the people expect Uncle Gloucester to bring him.” Being a Plantagenet herself she could scarcely remind her mother that Anthony Woodville, Lord Rivers, was not.

    Baby Bridget was asleep in her cradle and the two younger girls had wandered to a window, where they had drawn back a curtain and were whispering together excitedly. “What are you two looking at?” asked the Queen, instantly alert. “What is out there in the street?”

    “Soldiers,” reported Katherine stolidly.

    “Soldiers with lighted torches,” elaborated Ann.

    That was too much for Richard. Feeling himself to be the only man of the party, he evaded his mother at last and ran to join them, clambering on to the window-seat. “Uncle Gloucester certainly can march!” he exclaimed, his nose flattened against a window-pane.

    Elizabeth helped her mother to rise and went to look. “Are you sure they are his men, Dickon?” she asked, peering through the trickling raindrops.

    “See the boar on their badges!” pointed out Richard conclusively. “And, look Bess, there is Uncle's old groom, Bundy, who taught me to ride my first pony. Over there, standing in the light of a torch.”

    So it was true. Gloucester had reached London.

    “Come back, Richard!” called their mother.

    The boy obeyed reluctantly, and Elizabeth could not help feeling that to be singled out for such express anxiety was bad for so imaginative a child.

    “The yard is full of them. Do you suppose they are trying to surround us?” asked Cicely, beginning to be scared.

    “They cannot harm us, foolish one. Not all the soldiers in the land can make us come out from