The Assassin's Wife (67 page)

He smiled, touching his other hand to my cheek. “I dreamed of you.” The tenderness in that look struck me deeper than a sword.

“You have my heart,” I answered, stooping to kiss him.

A look of surprise entered his eyes, so that for the briefest of moments they flared with their old blue brilliance—then they grew wider and emptier than I’d ever seen and a new, strange quiet filled the chamber.

Distantly, as if from some long corridor, a gentle, lilting voice began the ancient liturgy for departing souls. The vast, cold solitude of the place embraced me, and I found myself alone holding a dead man’s hand, carrying a dead man’s secret.
 

Chapter Eighty-Four

Where could we go but back to Bread Street? Harry promised to have us out of the city before autumn, but once again fate conspired against me.

In the black, early hours while Dickon still slept, I woke from a vivid dream of Mara. She sat in a cart drawn by a dun cob, a cluster of Roma children at her feet. Smiling, she pointed out the passing features of the countryside. At first the trees stood bare and skeletal, but when they began sprouting green shoots the dream changed. Suddenly, Mara turned her head to stare at me. She put her finger to her lips. Then, like a magician, she produced a bundle of painted cards from a crimson sleeve, just like the ones she’d given me. She spread them upon her lap, but just as she held up the Tower struck by lightning, I woke. Mara taught me this card predicted disaster. What new trouble threatened?

A messenger from the queen found me ready.

Anne Neville lay gravely ill. She much desired my company. To go to court was to risk danger, but how could I refuse such a plea?

“Dickon’ll be safer here. Nancy can take care of him. He can help Will and me in the bake-house. The queen wouldn’t send for you unless it was urgent. You must go.” Harry’s candid eyes offered sympathy.

So I found myself back at Westminster, but this time in very different circumstances. As the boat bore me up the river to the magnificent palace, I thought of Eleanor. I prayed I’d not encounter wily Bishop Stillington this time.

“Your Grace.” I dropped to my knees before the day-bed where the queen lay surrounded by her flock of elegant ladies. A musician plucked the plaintive notes of a lute.

“Come close so I may see you better, Nan.” Her voice croaked. The pointed little face wore a waxy sheen. She’d grown so thin her bones jutted visibly under her green robes. A skeletal hand reached for mine.

“It does me good to look on old friends again.” Her cat-eyes gleamed fever-bright but she clasped me as firm as ever. “How fares your husband? We heard he’d been sick.”

“Better now, Your Grace,” I said, swallowing a lump of raw grief. The easy lie seemed to satisfy, but her penetrating gaze unnerved me. I turned away, pretending admiration in her luxurious apartments. I couldn’t speak of Miles’ last days at St Martin’s. I wouldn’t permit myself the luxury of thinking of him yet. Instead, the numbness of bereavement bound me and I clung to it like a mantle against frost-bite. If I once let go—

“And your son?”

Did I imagine the tremble in her voice?
 

“With my cousins, Your Grace.”
 

“Sit by me, Nan. Let this gaggle of geese allow me some breathing space. They smother me with their vigilance.”

The gorgeous, silken ladies scattered like flower petals. They flocked together in the corner of the chamber.

“Play something merry, Jacques.” She turned to the swarthy lute-player. “These melancholy tunes are tedious.”

The change of rhythm wrought its magic. The ladies began to tap their feet. The volume of their shrill bird-chatter increased.

“Did you know the Wydeville witch has sent her daughters from the Sanctuary?” Anne Neville’s keen eyes searched my face with a scrutiny which alarmed. Had she sent for me to cast fortunes?

“We heard something, Your Grace,” I said carefully. Recalling the garrulous landlord who’d told Rob and me, I wondered at the old queen’s motives.

“But did you know my niece, Elizabeth, is enamoured of the king?” The green eyes sparked with hatred. Her nails raked the flesh of my arm.

Speechless, I stared at her, the idea too appalling to contemplate.

“Oh yes.” She thrust out her chin in the old, arrogant manner I remembered well. “He lusts after her just as hotly with all the passion of a young lecher. He can’t wait for me to die.” She began to shake with silent laughter. “She’s her mother’s daughter, you see, and will stop at nothing to have him.” I couldn’t tell now if she laughed or wept. “You should have seen them dance together at Christmas,” she said, the bitterness in her voice caustic as acid. “They hung together like lovers who can never have done with touching each other.” She began to cough. The coughing turned to violent retching. Someone fetched a basin and a cloth. I held the queen while she vomited. The lute died into silence and the room grew still with horror.

“The doctor,” someone said. A flutter of silk and velvet whisked through the door.

“My little boy—” The queen looked up at me, her eyes grown huge in the pallid face. Blood spattered her chin. “Did he suffer?”

“It was very peaceful.” I thought of Ned’s brilliant smile.

“Stay with me,” she whispered, when the physician came.

“Till death.”

* * * * *

Of course I saw her—the Wydeville princess. It was impossible to ignore such golden beauty. Her lovely face and hands owed much to her mother, but the voluptuous figure, the harvest-coloured hair and the sensuous nature were her father’s legacy. Among the court ladies she stood out like a lily among a field of tares. Men flocked to her, drawn against their will as the moth to the flame. She turned toward them with such a powerful combination of innocence and ardour, they grew weak with desire.
 

She and the king danced around each other in that dangerous game lovers play to assert their power. Their mutual attraction both shocked and repelled, yet the court couldn’t refrain from watching. We held our breath in anticipation of the next move.
 

In February, when the rumours crackled like lightning, the queen grew melancholy. One bleak morning as I helped her to dress, young Katherine Underwood rushed into the chamber, her face the colour of bleached linen.

“Your Grace,” she panted for breath. “Forgive me.” She sank into a curtsey. “I just heard a rumour you were dead!”

The queen swayed before me, a pale flower on a fragile stem. I held out my arms to catch her, but instead of swooning, she ran barefoot from the chamber, her honey-coloured hair unbound about her shoulders. She ran straight to the king’s apartments. We rushed after, but the king caught her in his arms.
 

“Is it true, my lord,” she said, clinging to the sable velvet of his doublet, “you desire my death so eagerly rumours of my demise are already circulating?”

“What heresy is this?” He smoothed her wild hair, but where was the tender regard he’d once lavished upon her? I saw only fear and guilt in him now. “You’re overwrought,” he said, patting her hands. “No need for such distress—”

Around him his gentlemen twitched with embarrassment. He made some jest to ease the tension, but the queen clutched at him with all the desperation of one condemned. I noticed how he struggled to hold her at arm’s length as if afraid to breathe in infection.
 

“Your ladies are waiting.” He fobbed her off with this feeblest of excuses, turning her gently towards us. I took her hand. A glimmer of recognition sparked in his eyes.

“Mistress Forrest, the healer.” The thin-lipped smile appalled me. “You warned me once of many enemies. Do you remember?” Including his gentlemen, he added sardonically, “I think we have but one enemy to consider now, haven’t we?”
 

Distracted by a crimson clad figure gliding towards the king’s elbow I ignored the strained laughter. The figure laid a daring hand on the royal sleeve and the yellow hawk-eyes of Bishop Stillington locked on mine.
 

“Look after my wife.” The king shared a conspiratorial smile with the prelate while I clenched my fists against the overpowering essence of evil. How could Gloucester have become such a monster? “She believes in your skills.”

I urged the queen away but he called after us. “If you’ve some charm to rid me of this Tudor, Mistress Forrest, I wish you’d let me know of it.”
 

The bishop’s diabolical chuckle echoed down the corridor.
 

Like a sleepwalker the queen returned to her chamber. I left her there with Katherine and went to find her physician. On the steps outside I encountered Jack Green and reeled under the alarming sensation he’d been waiting for me. He stood, clad in the royal livery now, and seemed very much at ease.
 

“Good morrow, Mistress Forrest—” He awarded me a smile of such brilliance he might have been greeting an old friend. “Amy promised I’d see you again, but I didn’t think to find you at court.”

“The queen sent for me.” I stared boldly into his impudent face.
 

“Of course. The queen still wields some influence, I believe.” His gloating tone abraded me. “Poor lady, she clings too fast to lost causes. I doubt your skills can offer her much hope now.”

“I’m bound to her by gratitude,” I said. “She raised me up to be her waiting maid, and I won’t forget such favours.”

“Loyalty is admirable but sometimes it’s necessary to forge new alliances to protect one’s interests.” His lips curved in the old weasel smile and his eyes gleamed menace. “Commend me to your husband.”

I winced at this deliberate blow. But I held my nerve, thrusting out my chin and straightening my shoulders. “You’ve climbed high, Master Green.” I steeled myself to smile. “But a fall from such great height might prove fatal.” I hoped he thought of Brother Brian. “My husband learned that well.”

Though the doctors plied the queen with their drugs, the sickness gnawed too deep. But it wasn’t just sickness destroyed her but the king’s absence which broke her heart. From then on he shunned her company and her bed, pleading the advice of the physicians and urgent matters of state. The truth was far more sinister.

Chapter Eighty-Five

“How dark it grows!” Katherine chewed her lips nervously.

We clustered by the casement watching the March skies with bated breath. The astronomers predicted a great eclipse of the sun. Below in the noisy street, people gathered in horrified clusters. They pointed upward.

“A wise-woman foretold disaster would begin with a blotting out of the sun.” Grace craned her neck for a better view. “And Master Penman says an eclipse is a mighty omen for he’s made a study of the stars. What do you think, Nan?”

“It’s not even noon but it’s almost as black as night.” Tremors shook Katherine’s slender body. “I don’t like Master Penman’s eclipse, however important he thinks it.”

She flitted away from the window, but her words awoke a memory. Hadn’t Mara spoken of the noontime of the year? And hadn’t I foretold the queen of this eclipse the last time I’d read the cards for her?

“The queen’s awake,” Katherine called.

I joined her by the great carved bed, wondering how long its occupant could endure such sickness. I’d made a promise but knew it was almost fulfilled.
 

The queen’s wasted body prevented her from rising but the Neville spirit burned as strong as ever. She held my hand with a tenacity I wouldn’t have believed possible.
 

“What month is it?”

“March, Your Grace.”

“August,” she said. Her voice had grown so weak, I leaned close to catch the words. “Take your boy back to the north, Nan, away from this cruel city.”

I squeezed her hand but she made no more effort to speak.

Shadows plunged the room into awful darkness. The grip on my fingers loosened.

Katherine, already on her knees, shuddered at the strange heavenly phenomenon that hid the sun. Softly, I called the attention of the ladies by the casement and there began a rustling fall of bent knees and murmured orisons. I didn’t pray. I thought of the little cook-maid whom I’d told would one day wear a crown, and Miles crouching by the hearth eaten away piecemeal by fear, just as surely as the queen had been eaten away by grief.

Chapter Eighty-Six

Under the Mercer’s tutelage Dickon flourished. Looking at him, a mixture of aching love and dismay wrenched at my heart. Already he showed the promise of Miles’ height and build. Full of new-found confidence, he greeted me, affectionately eager to relate his adventures. I ruffled the tousled black hair that so favoured his father, and the brilliant light in his eyes brought a lump into my throat. I was glad he hadn’t inherited the Sight. His mind danced too feverishly for contemplation. Like his father, he joyed in the sheer animal pleasure of life, too firmly rooted in the things of this world to be a seer. Yet a wayward streak disturbed me. He talked of nothing but being a soldier in the Low Countries.