Six of One by JoAnn Spears Page A

before the night was out if her brothers were to be got out of harm’s way. She begged me to come to Westminster Abbey to help her work out the details.”
    “Did you go to Westminster Abbey?”
    “Of course I didn’t! I could not penetrate sanctuary myself. What if it was just a trap? I would have been taking quite a chance. Once within sanctuary, I might never come out again. I sent my trusted physician, Dr. Lewis, to meet with Elizabeth in my stead. Dr. Lewis would have done anything for me, right down to risking his life. You see, he had been quite enchanted with me when we were both a lot younger; he would have done anything to get under my farthingale, once upon a time.”
    “He had a crush on you!” I said. “That’s sweet.”
    Margaret Beaufort blushed. “Really, Dolly! At any rate, Dr. Lewis had treated Elizabeth and her mother in the past, so he was a man they knew and trusted. Lewis told me how clever he thought young Elizabeth was. He felt sure that she would have the composure, if he were detected within sanctuary, to say that she had summoned him to treat herself or her mother for some concocted ailment.”
    “You know , mother-in-law, how much I appreciated your willingness to take a chance on my plan,” said Elizabeth.
    “You knew, daughter-in-law, the risk I’d be willing to take to secure the throne of England for my son, Henry Tudor. I did my share of dirty work to further that plan, but even I would not have deigned to stain my hands, even indirectly, with the blood of innocent children. When you intimated that you had a tactic, short of outright murder, to get your two brothers out of everyone’s way, I was intrigued. Up until then, I’d had no idea you were every bit as ambitious as I was.”
    I had also had no idea that Elizabeth of York was just as ambitious as Margaret Beaufort. Margaret, of course, was famous for it. Elizabeth, on the other hand, was most famous as the classic queen image on the playing card—strictly a one-dimensional figure. Up until then, Alice’s Wonderland was the only place I had ever seen the Queen of Hearts turn the tables.
    Picking up the threads of the plot once more, I asked if Dr. Lewis had ever made it into sanctuary.

Chapter Eleven
    Of Old Admirers and New Conquests
     
    Margaret Beaufort answered my question with alacrity. “Dr. Lewis did get safely into Westminster Abbey, and he and Elizabeth got right down to business. Elizabeth had already roughed out a six-step plan for the proceedings, so she and Lewis needed only a couple of hours to work out the details. Lewis was out of sanctuary and reporting back to me by midnight. The first step was to get the boys out of custodial care and out of the country. Anywhere, as long as it was out—and the farther out, the better.”
    “How did you manage it?” I asked.
    “My stepson Baron Strange was also imprisoned by Elizabeth’s Uncle Richard, and in the same place as Elizabeth’s brother, the young Prince Edward. In order to get a message in to Baron Strange, I pressed my devoted Dr. Lewis into service a second time. Lewis wormed his way into my stepson’s cell on the pretext of delivering him a medicinal elixir. With the elixir, he delivered the details of the plan to free the boy. Baron Strange was able to get young Prince Edward out of prison the very next day. It was embarrassing for Elizabeth’s Uncle Richard to have this happen, especially with the Battle of Bosworth Field looming large. His administration was already on very shaky ground, so he had the news of the escape kept very, very quiet.”
    “It was brave of Baron Strange to take such a chance,” I said.
    “My stepson also had a… crush …on me,” Margaret said, savoring the newfound word. “It was before I married his father. I was a fascinating older woman in my late twenties, and he was in his teens. He would have done anything to make an impression on me, then.”
    The hitherto unbeknownst history of Margaret Beaufort, career