But the white rose lived on in Henry’s wife, the present Queen. That was the irony of it. Lancaster and York reigning side by side—but it was only token power for York. It was Lancaster through Henry Tudor who wielded the real power.
The pain in her chest was growing worse.
“I should like to see my daughters,” she said.
Cecilia was the first to come. She knelt by the bed, alarmed to see the beautiful face so pale and sunken.
“Dear mother,” she said, “you must get well.”
“I feel I never shall again, my child,” said Elizabeth. “This is the end. Do not look so sad. We all have to go sometime and I have had a good life. Where is the Queen?”
“She has taken to her lying-in chamber. Her time is very near.”
“She does her duty by the Tudor. I hear young Henry flourishes.”
“Indeed, yes. He and Margaret are fine healthy children. I wish I could say the same for Arthur.”
“I never believed in that closed-in room, but the Countess insisted.”
“Margaret and Henry were born in the same conditions,” Cecilia gently reminded her. “Dear lady, should you not rest?”
“There is a long rest ahead of me. Cecilia, I am glad you are provided for. Is Lord Wells a good husband?”
“The best of husbands.”
“Then you are fortunate. And you lack for nothing, I believe. He is very rich.”
“We are very comfortable and happy, my lady.”
“I wish the others had been a little older so that I could see them settled.”
“Elizabeth will provide for them.”
“She must when I can no longer do so. I have very little to leave, Cecilia. You find me in dire poverty. I have been growing poorer and poorer.”
“But our father left you well provided for, did he not?”
“When York lost to Lancaster . . . I lost much of what he left to me. Your father’s personal property is in the hands of your grandmother. Cecily of York is one of the most avaricious old women I ever heard of.”
“Think not of money now, dear mother. Rest your voice.”
The Queen Dowager smiled and nodded. “Sit by my bed, dear child,” she said. “Hold my hand. I loved you all dearly . . . far more than I ever showed you.”
“We were so happy when we were children, dear mother. You and our father were like a god and goddess to us. We thought you perfect.”
“Neither of us was that, dear child, but whatever else we were we were loving parents.”
Seventeen-year-old Anne arrived next with her sisters Catherine and Bridget the youngest who had come from her convent at Dart-ford to be at her mother’s bedside. Anne was a source of anxiety to the Queen Dowager because she was seventeen years old, ripe for marriage. Who would look after her now? Elizabeth the Queen must do that. Catherine was eleven; there was time yet for her. Bridget was the only one whose future was assured for she was preparing herself to take the veil.
Elizabeth looked at them through misty eyes. Her beloved children. Was it only eleven years ago that Edward had been alive and they had rejoiced at the birth of this daughter?
She held out her hands to them. The younger girls looked at her with alarmed dismay. They had never seen her like this before, poor children, thought Cecilia. She looks so ill. I really believe this is the end.
“Bless you, dear daughters,” said the Queen Dowager. “I think I shall be gone before Whitsuntide.”
“Where shall you go?” asked Catherine.
“To Heaven, I hope, sweet child.”
Then the little girls began to weep and Bridget knelt down by the bed and prayed as she had seen the nuns do.
“Good-bye, my dear ones. Remember this. No parents ever loved their children more than the King and I loved you. Sad events have fallen upon us but we must make the best of them. . . .Your sister, the Queen, will care for you.”
Catherine said: “Dear mother, I think I should send for the priest.”
On the following day Elizabeth Woodville died.
It was Whit Sunday when the Queen Dowager’s body was taken along the river to Windsor.
There was a very simple funeral. Only the priest of the college received the coffin, and some Yorkists who had come out to see the end of great Edward’s Queen murmured together that such a hearse was like those used for the common people.
Was this the way in which King Henry honored the House of York? What was all this talk of the roses entwining—the uniting of white and red—when a Yorkist queen was buried with no more ceremony than the humblest merchant?
On the following Tuesday the daughters of Elizabeth Woodville—Catherine, Anne and Bridget—came to
