To the Tower Born - Robin Maxwell Read Online Free PDF Page A

She was passing Westminster’s great hall when she heard her name called.
    Music was wafting from within, and when she poked her head inside she found her sisters Mary, sixteen, and Cecily, fourteen, together with her nine-year-old brother, Dickon, having a lesson in the saltarello with their Italian dance master. They looked tiny, the four of them in the enormous chamber, and the music of drum and pipe echoed in the high-vaulted ceiling.
    “Come join us, Bessie,” called Dickon. He was tall for his age—most of his height in his long legs. He was a handsome child and, like his beautiful sisters, shared the yellow locks and blue eyes of their mother and father. She adored the boy for his  sweet disposition and playful spirit. Indeed, she found more pleasure in his company than in that of her sisters, who seemed all but obsessed with their marriage plans and the latest fashions.
    “Another day,” Bessie called back to Dickon. “I’m off to visit Nell.”
    Dickon abandoned his dance partner, Cecily, in midstep and ran to the door. “May I come? Oh please. I hate these lessons.”
    “I could barely get permission from Mother for myself to go out. We’ll go another day.”
    “Can we go to the market? I must be old enough by now.” Bessie tugged at his long curls. “I’ll talk to Mother about it.”
    “Do you promise?”
    “I promise. Now go back to Cecily. She looks very silly leap-ing round without a partner.”
    A few moments later Bessie was outside in the palace courtyard.
    “Princess Bessie! Good morning to you!”
    “Aren’t you looking lovely as this lovely spring day.” Bessie smiled as she called back greetings to the men and women of the base courtyard. There were so many of them, from cooks to scullions and laundresses, to stonemasons and gardeners and coal carriers. It took thousands of these workers to run her father’s London castle. Westminster, a very grand castle it was, befitting a great king—her father, Edward—and Elizabeth, her mother, who was said to be the most beautiful queen England had ever had.
    And the most hated, thought Bessie. I hope I shall never be as hated as my mother. These same people who greeted Bessie with such sincere friendliness could manage nothing more for Queen Elizabeth Woodville than grudging respect. That was fair, thought Bessie, as the woman treated her servants with nothing more than icy hauteur.
    The princess slowed in her tracks at a stone house set squarely in the middle of the base court. ’Twas the bakery, its gorgeous yeasty fragrances trying to draw her within. She could take a beautiful white manchette loaf to Nell and her father. But no, she was too eager to be going to stop at the bakehouse.
    It felt good to be alive, Bessie thought. Soft warmth of a spring day on her cheeks. Rounded cobbles under her slippers.
    Beautiful smells from the bakery. And she hurrying to see her best friend in the world.
    Several old men sunning themselves in the almshouse yard smiled and waved at Bessie. She would not stop to see them today either. She liked these men enormously. The once-hardworking laborers, now supported by the abbey, were Bessie’s friends, though if her mother knew how her daughter fraternized with these poor commoners, she’d have her head.
    As she rounded the almshouse wall, Caxton’s came into view. It was the largest shop on the short, narrow street leading out Westminster’s front gate. The castle, main and base courts, the soaring abbey, and this string of businesses lay within a thick wall. Beyond the gate lay Totehill Street, one of London’s major east–west thoroughfares, lined with every variety of shop and enterprise.
    Caxton’s red-striped wood sign, the red pale, swung in the slight breeze, and beneath it the door opened. A woman carrying a parcel in her arms came out, the parcel the size and shape of several books.
    Bessie smiled. Surely her friend Nell was inside working her trade as a bookseller. She was good at it. And