Mistress of Mourning Read Free Page A

them overlong like the village idiot. The lady at the palace?
    “’Tis true,” the woman put in, and I really regarded her for the first time. She had russet hair and a comely face, perhaps enhanced by rice powder and cochineal on her cheeks and pert mouth. She sported a long, classical nose but balanced features and pale blue eyes. “One of the queen’s own ladies,” she said, “wishes to meet you and perhaps have you carve a large death candle for her, per her instructions.”
    “A death candle,” I said. “Yes, I admit that’s what they are, a memorial for someone lost.”
    “The thing is,” she said, standing quite apart from the man, as if they were not a couple as I had surmised, “if youcan slip away on the morrow, we will call for you early morn, soon after sunrise. You may tell others we are taking you to our home, where we have lost a child—just a story so this can remain among the three of us and the lady. She will pay well for your time and talent, and we will be your escorts and your story—our secret.”
    I wondered whether they knew I’d lost a child and were playing on my sympathies. “Why would my telling someone be forbidden or dangerous?” I dared ask, wondering whether some lady dear to the queen had been delivered of a bastard child who had died and her reputation was to be protected at all costs. Perhaps I could also get an order for candles to burn at masses said for the deliverance of that child’s soul, all the sooner to be released from purgatory to heaven.
    “We can only hope you will agree to our regulations,” Nicholas Sutton said. “I promise that your well-placed trust will be profitable to you and your chandlery.” For the first time, my gaze locked with his. Strangely, everything else faded. Even his words bounced off me a bit, and I felt a foolish maid, a green girl, when I had been wedded for five years and borne two children. Though I was tall, I had to look up at him. He made me feel small but safe, so I nodded.
    “I understand,” I said, my voice shakier than I would have liked. “I shall trust you in this and be ready on the morrow. But are we actually going to the palace,
into
the palace?”
    “Not Baynard’s Castle or the palace at the Tower, but Westminster. We are indeed,” he said, and added a few parting words as they purchased four plain, foot-longbeeswax candles. Perhaps those were their excuse for being here today, for they overpaid my price by half and made a quick exit.
    I stood in the middle of my shop, where nothing seemed familiar anymore. I had been invited into huge Westminster Palace, which sprawled along the Thames across the fields between the city and the great gray abbey where kings were crowned and buried. I, Varina Westcott, would walk where jousts, feasting, dancing, and huge, earthshaking events had happened. I was thankful too that I was going to a place where I wouldn’t imagine my lost child toddling about in every room.
    I jumped back to reality when the shop bell jangled again and my five-year-old, Arthur, bounded in from school, with Gil behind him. “Mother, Mother, we’re learning Latin but also sums and subtractions, so I can help in the shop and sell the candles. Wait and see!”
    I hugged him hard and kissed the top of his uncapped head. “I knew you would be a big help to me!”
    He squirmed a bit, but I hugged him all the harder, anxious, as ever, to keep him close, especially as I saw him growing up and sometimes pulling away from me. Like the Tudors’ Prince Arthur, he was my and Will’s heir, and I fretted for his health and safety. I might have lost my Edmund, but by all that was holy, I would die before I would lose Arthur too.
    How I would have loved to tell him—Maud and Gil too—what strange fortune had just befallen me, but, still holding Arthur to me, I said only, “Gil, I’ll need to have Maud tend the shop tomorrow morning, for I promised thatcouple I would visit their home and see about some