A great lady and her retinue stopped by the church. The parade of horses and men at arms, of knights and banners, put me in mind of my childhood. Like my mother, however, I had better things to do than gawk and I kept to them.
We were out in the backyard, feeding our fine spots sow and her piglets, newly moved into their own pen, when I heard the geese hiss and bang their wings. To my amazement, armed men had come running down the lane. Behind trotted a priest and close beside him, seated upon a beautifully tricked out mare sat a tiny wizened woman, wearing the habit of a rich abbess. When I recognized her heraldry, my heart almost stopped.
"Blessed Mary Mother save us!"
Dickon and Rosemary had gone into the pen to feed the piglets scraps. It was all I could do not to scream.
"Rose Fletcher?"
Sick to my stomach, I waved to the children. "Stay where you are!" The more distance I could put between the boys and those men … I curtsied, low in the dust.
"Come here." The priest gestured with a black-gloved hand.
Rising, I obeyed, passing the rowed up men at arms, toward the woman on the mare. She had always seemed old, and so she hadn't changed much. The richness of her somber clothing was suitable for a widowed queen. I didn't dare look behind me, only prayed that the boys were, for once, doing what they had been told.
"Is that you, Rose Fletcher?" The old woman asked. There she was, the wicked usurper's wicked mother, in her tiny cruel person, like nothing so much as the shriveled husk of a locust.
I dropped another dusty curtsy to collect myself. "To what do I owe the high honor of Your Ladyship's presence?"
"Get up and come here." She was so eager to behold my ruin, she kicked the mare forward.
I kept my eyes down, stared at the small booted foot in the stirrup, but she spoke again, "Look at me, Rose. Where are your manners?"
I obeyed and hoped my eyes did not flash what I was thinking.
Viper in the bosom of York! You, evil flicking tongue of poisoned rumor! You who carried my sweet queen's coronation train with your hands, even then, plotting to murder her husband….
A thin smile cracked thin lips, a corpse face. I wondered if the usurper was as hideous as this dried she-monster, with her ferret's eyes and sharp nose.
"Times have changed, have they not, Mistress Fletcher?" She seemed to relish the sight of me in a grease and dirt-splattered apron.
"Even and ever for the better, My Lady." I played the part of a blank peasant.
I am better here than at court, watching those traitors preen, watching that wretched simulacrum pass for a king, watching him sneak like a felon into the bed of a golden Plantagenet princess whose boot he is not good enough to lick!
Margaret's eyes narrowed. Perhaps she heard my thoughts.
"It is said you have a son."
"I have two sons, most noble lady." My hand slipped inside in my skirt to grasp the handle of the ever-present knife.
"I mean a son born to you during the rule of King Henry VII, you stupid creature." The face within the linen of her headdress was sharp as a hatchet.
I was ready to die, to take that evil-bitch-of-one-whelp with me, when a scuffle began at my back, along with cries I recognized only too well—those of Rosemary and Dickon. As I turned, I saw several of her foot guards in our pig pen, chasing our piglets.
Rosemary, tall and fair now, had ducked through the fence and hidden behind Master Tennant. Dickon, now a fine upstanding eleven, stood and protested. The men laughed, and one of them caught him by the scruff. My heart froze, as did my hand.
"This one, Your Highness?" The soldier called out. My wiry Yorkshire lad kicked, struggled, and called the soldier “Rogue and thief!”
"Yes, that one. Bring him here."
It was all I could do not to fall on the ground, to beg and plead for mercy—but this would have been to fall into her trap.
I played at confusion. "That is my Dickon. What do you want, Most Noble Lady Margaret?"
"To look at him." She said it with a foxy sideways slew of her colorless eyes.
"Dickon!" I said. "Come straight to me."
Dickon, though wondering, once set upon his feet, obeyed. He was so brave, my dark angel, his hazel eyes fearless. When he came to my side, he bowed his head, hands at his side, as he had been taught. I gripped my knife and judged the distance between me and Lady Margaret Beaufort.
In his struggle with the soldier, Dickon had been pushed into the muck of the sty. He arrived at my side malodorously splattered.
"Richard? Whereof comes this lordly name?"
"Tell this great and most noble lady, my son. Speak loud, so all can hear."
Dickon swallowed hard. "I was taken to the font upon Saint Richard of Wyche’s day, My Lady." He recited this oft-told tale with innocent pride. Still, the fear he was catching from me sent him deep into our thick northern dialect.
He had lifted his head to be heard, gazing up as he spoke. I could tell he sensed the menace that floated, just perceptibly, around. I tried not to shudder, imagining her talons gripping the throat of my child and offered prayers to the universe.
Holy Mary, Mother of God, preserve my beloved son!
Saint Alkelda of the holy well, protect us!
Black Mary of Barcelona, turn the knife of my enemy into her own heart!
Blobs of mud added to Dickon's copious, red-brown freckles. In evening light, they looked like moles, the ugly velvet kind that stand up. It was, of course, only sty mud, but Lady Margaret no longer saw well.
She leaned to stare at him, and he, poor child, suddenly affrighted by the yawning abyss that had opened, paled. I encircled his meager shoulders with my free hand.
I shall kill you if you touch my son. I shall die as did my King, blade red….
All at once, Margaret made a creaking, hissing noise. It was a mirthless laugh.
"This is what you have brought me so far to see?” She rounded on the priest. “A dirty, birthmarked peasant tending his mother's filthy pigs?"
Without another word, she kicked the mare forward, knocking us aside. The priest, discomfited, followed her. The guards scrambled to fall in, though the men in the pen made certain of two piglets.
They hurried away fast as they had come, straight out of the village. I did not yet dare to embrace Dickon and cover him with kisses. Not yet—one of them might have looked back—even the Great Bitch herself!
Rosemary, peeping out from behind Master Tennant, watched them go. Other neighbors began to creep out into the street. I said, as off-handedly as I could, "Come, children. Let us take care of what they have left us."
We moved to secure our fence. The remaining piglets, having seen murder done, were much afraid. They ran from us, hunching together in a corner and trembling. One of Tennant’s grown sons silently moved to help, shaking his head.
Rosemary kept exclaiming, quite amazed, "They killed two of our pigs! They stole them!"
"Wouldn't have happened in the Duke of Gloucester's time," Young Tennant spoke under his breath. I nodded and blinked back a few tears. I was grateful for the unintentional perfection of his condolence.
It wasn't until the next day that anger at the Beaufort woman’s insults, capped by her men’s wanton theft, struck me. Relief, however, was the main thing.
We had survived an inquisition by the Mother of Treachery!
There is a rush of joy in survival, after which our poor world has the look of heaven. The moon, for the next few evenings, arose in silver robes. Twilight birds sang Gloria finer than I'd heard in any chapel. I rejoiced, knowing the boar had hidden the last child of his body.
That night, though aching tired, I left Rosemary in our shared bed by the fire and went to the loft to watch my Dickon asleep. Once there had been a pile of snuffling, dreaming tow-heads, but now there was but one little boy left—His—my dark treasure.