The Other Elizabeth *OLD VERSION*

XLI. September 1460

AN: Before you read this chapter, I just want to address some minor changes. As I write the book, the number of people with the same name is increasing, so I've decided to start going back and giving everyone nicknames to make the story easier. William Bourchier's wife Elizabeth de Vere is now Elizabel, and I'll notify you all when I give some more characters nicknames. I hope this isn't too confusing! Are there any other characters you think I should give nicknames for. For example, is Lady Isabel and the baby Isabel too confusing?

XLI

September 1460

Stoke Poges, Buckinghamshire, England

Eleanor and I kneel in the church here at Stoke Poges. The walls are emblazoned with the Moleyns and Hungerford arms: "a sable chief argent with three lozengers gules therein, the latter with a sable two bars argent and three roundels argent," Eleanor tells me, and I nod politely, having no faint clue what she means. All is still, fresh, and crisp, with a ray of daylight streaming through the stained glass depicting Our Lord Jesus, illuminating our strands of tawny, tangled flaxen hair, and the creases upon our countenances. As I kneel here in the silence, I feel a great sense of eminence do rest upon me. I am now Elizabeth, Baroness Scales. I am a woman now.

"I was baptized at this very church," Eleanor says softly, turning to me, her hands still clasped in prayer. She has a portable altar at her manor, having been granted licence for one, but we both found it fitting to escape the house, shrouded in darkness, as my Lady Mother lies in her bedchamber. She is dying. My Mother is dying.

"The lord your father would have stood on these very flagstones." She clears her throat. We smile weakly at one another. "When I received my own letters patent conferring my right to the Barony of Moleyns many years ago, and was summoned to Parliament, I had to give proof of my age; so of course, I had to call some witnesses. They told of my birth and baptism on the feast of Saint Barnaby the Apostle- a day when a wind so strong did blow they thought even my old little manor would blow down as well as the whole village!" I smile again, nodding for her to continue, knowing there must be some relevance of this story. I feel the floor beneath me; my Father was here. I shall carry his title with pride, and make him proud of me from Heaven as I carry it.

"My godmothers were Elizabeth, Lady Say-"

"Surely not the same Lady Say who's late husband was Sir Frederick Tylney?" I frown, thinking of my dearest Elizabeth Tylney-Bourchier. A pang resounds in me to think of the little girl I seemingly so abandoned two years gone- will she have forgotten me?

Eleanor shakes her head. "Nay, not that lady. The account says that she was dressed in blue damask, and my other godmother, the Countess of Salisbury attired in cloth of gold, no less!" Eleanor smiles and I squint, trying to fathom who the Countess was in 1426, for the Countess now is of course the wife of York's ally Salisbury. Oh, of course- Alice Chaucer, my Mother and Eleanor's cousin.