The King's Grey Mare (34 page)

‘Why, the devil damn me!’
he cried.
‘They’ve got Daft Harry from his prayers!’

King Henry sat limply upon a spavined horse.
A worn velvet robe had been flung about him and the Lancastrian collar of ‘S’s, green with verdigris, clanked upon his concave chest.
He wore his black skull-cap crowned with a tarnished diadem, and in his hand he bore a staff from which three foxtails drooped: the emblem of Agincourt!
Gould spat in disbelief.
With one flaccid hand King Henry clutched the pommel of his saddle, and now and then looked at his homemade sceptre wonderingly as if it were a mysterious extension of his own arm.
His pale face was expressionless, but his lips moved in a ceaseless babble of prayer.

Warwick’s henchmen nudged the horses into a trot, and Henry bounced in his saddle like a wooden doll.
Trumpeters sounded an untidy fanfare.
The leading knight raised his hand to the assembled mob.

‘Way for Henry of Lancaster!’
he shouted.
‘Lancaster for ever!’

He cast a savage look around, and one or two people grudgingly echoed the challenge.
They were instantly set upon by the partisans of York.
The fighting raised clouds of dirt; a fishmonger, with a crude White Rose sewn on his apron, smacked his neighbour in the face with a great silvery mackerel.
Gould hoisted his wife up to watch the fun.

‘Lancaster!’
bawled the herald again.
A storm of jeering arose.
Soapy Jack, a great lummox who swept out taverns and sometimes lay day-long crooning in the gutter, bored his way head-first through the crowd.
His wide toothless mouth drooled spittle.

‘Where’s Ned?’
he roared, bursting through the ranks of horses and men.
‘Where’s our Ned, then?
You ain’t our King!’
Heedless of the blows raining down on him from the escort’s staves, he forced his way to Henry.
Doubling his fist he punched the frail dark-clad figure hard in the thigh.

Henry’s sleepwalker eyes swivelled.
He looked down in a sad daze at Soapy Jack.

‘Forsooth and forsooth,’ he observed.
‘Ye do wrong to strike the Lord’s anointed.’

Gould’s wife giggled all the way upriver to Westminster, but the butcher was pensive.
He stretched his legs in their fine woollen hose in the bottom of the boat, and mused on prosperity.
His own affluence had been brought about by King Edward and none other.
Trade was better than he and his fraternity ever remembered it.
But if Edward’s day were done … gloomily he recalled the old times, when Henry and his hated French consort sat at Westminster.
Then, foreigners would trade rather with the Devil than with England.
He looked at the great cranes dipping on either side of the Thames, the galleys and carvels and trawlers, from Flanders and Italy and Iceland.
Bringing their treasures in trade for English cloth.
Cloth meant beef, and beef meant gold for merchants such as himself, good marriages for his daughters, fine garments.
He chewed his thumbnail savagely, and promised he would light a candle to Edward’s safe return.

At Westminster Sanctuary they were admitted by a one-legged monk.
He hopped nimbly on crutches to where the Queen had her apartments.
Inside the gloomy building, Gould shivered.
The walls were washed by river-mist, insidious and foul, and several high windows were cracked, inviting a killing draught.
As if to darken an already heavy mood, a bell tolled and from the near-by Abbey came the ghostly plainsong of the brothers.
Like a thin black rabbit, the lame guide skipped ahead; at the entrance to the Queen’s buttery four pages relieved the prentices of their burden.

‘Wait here,’ Gould instructed his boys.
‘Brother!
is there a chance that we might see her Grace?’

‘She asks to see you,’ replied the monk, and led them down a short, fog-filmed cloister.
Finally they reached a vast, lead-bound door behind which lay the Queen.
They entered; they felt change, smelled perfume instead of incense, trod rushes instead of cold flags.
There was a fair degree of warmth, and candles.
Women, deployed meekly round the walls, were sewing, and four fair-haired small girls played at their nurse’s knee.
Prone, Gould heard the Queen’s voice.

‘Come closer, butcher.
I wish to thank you.
We should, I vow, have starved without your aid.’

He rose, crimson with pride, and went forward to kiss the cool hand.
Mistress Gould curtseyed and hung her head, then as the Queen spoke – words which to her disappointment she did not afterwards recall – looked up, and was bemused.
She did not know whether to weep or worship.
Mistress Gould had on her best gown and knew she looked well; Queen Elizabeth was not even gaily dressed, she wore plain black wool and no jewels.
Her head was loosely bound in a netted coif.
None the less, Mistress Gould, looking at that half-turned cheek like a crescent moon, felt herself plump and ruddy and gauche.
The Queen was all silver; even her voice, each word high and exact like a lute’s song.
Gould noticed something else: on his last visit, the Queen had been heavy with child, now she was as slender as a young maid.
As if she read his thought, she said:

‘Master Gould, we have a most glorious advent to our royal house.’
She rose and crossed to the door of an antechamber; moving with a soft hushing of her long black gown.
A sudden almost tangible air of joy filled the chamber.
The monks’ distant devout song rose and fell.
The Queen threw open the ante-chamber door.

‘Renée, bring in – our prince!’

Tears sprang to Gould’s eyes.
He brushed them away as a week-old child was carried in.
Swaddled like a chrysalis, it bawled loudly, drowning the distant anthem.

‘Oh, God,’ said the butcher, when he could speak.

‘A fair omen, Master Gould,’ said Elizabeth softly.
You may salute the prince.
Without your sides of beef I should not have had the strength to carry him.’

Gould, trembling, kissed the tiny hand unwrapped for this purpose.
This he would tell his grandchildren …

‘His name is Edward, for his sire,’ said the Queen.

‘Whom Christ preserve,’ said Gould, choking.
He had not realized how much York meant to him, and the merchants and goldsmiths and gildsmen all over Engand who loved Ned so much.
Mistress Gould stole another peep at the Queen’s tranquil silvery face, as Elizabeth repeated: ‘A fair omen.’
Then the clear voice rose.
‘I have a message for all loyal subjects, Master Gould!’

They nodded, waited, scarcely breathing, while she spoke.
Master Gould would have given half his estate to turn a somersault on the rushes; Ned was coming home!
The Queen had had secret messages … Ned was safe, in Bruges, and already equipping a fleet to sail home and regain his kingdom.

‘Tell only your most trusted friends,’ said the Queen.
‘It will give them heart to resist – Warwick – to the last ditch.’

When they returned to the City, there was another crowd on Tower Hill.
A hot-headed gathering, angry yet pleased to see the execution of one whom they had feared for his cruelty yet revered as Edward’s Constable.
Butcher Tiptoft.
The same herald who had bawled acknowledgment of Lancaster read the indictment.
He stood at the foot of the scaffold; its planks were crusted with ancient blood.

‘In the name of Richard Neville, Earl of Warwick, representing all the greatness of Lancaster and the Crown, here is condemned to execution by beheading Sir John Tiptoft, Earl of Worcester … as per the law of this land.
For his treason and tyranny …’

He gave the signal quickly, hearing the uncertain growl of the crowd.
Any execution these days was a hazardous affair.
But Tiptoft, mounting steps that had run with the blood of many of his own victims, seemed in a leisurely humour.
His bulging eyes surveyed the throng hungrily as if regretting the unsevered heads, the unripped bowels … it was almost, they whispered, as if he took some pleasure in his own execution, and this was too much to contemplate.

He knelt, saying loudly to the headsman: ‘I pray you, sever my head in three strokes.
In honour of the Blessed Trinity.’

The watchers gasped, terrified by this holy heresy.
Was the Butcher immune to pain?
Seemingly he was, for he made no murmur as the obedient axe sliced a groove in his spine, then clove half-way so that the neck drooped from a yellow-sinewed stump.
The final swing sent Tiptoft’s head gushing redly on to the straw.
Sorcery, the crowd muttered.

Master Gould gave only cursory attention to this show.
He was slipping from friend to friend, seeing smiles, hearing joyful incredulous oaths.
Ned was coming home.

He stood before her, a weary Atlas, and her heart leaped upward to greet him.
Leaped, as it had done years earlier, through love, for John’s return.
Edward was greater or lesser than love; he was her salvation.
He strode into Sanctuary where for five months she had waited with her needle and bright hessian saints.
Ringed by little bursting cries from her women she rose slowly.
In the instant before he took her in his arms she noted that his clothes were clean and fresh, and knew that he had been in London for some hours.
He lived, and he was safe.
Against his strong breast she exhaled her shuddering relief.

Shadows entered through the lead-bound door; courtiers, Abbot Milling and his monks, drawn like moths to the scene.
Discreet, still pawns, they stood while Queen met King.
She thought: we are all chessmen.
And which way will the Hand move us next?
And whose is the Hand?
The choristers, heard through inches of stone, began their office.
That sombre drone which had accompanied her labour.
Plainsong and childbirth, combined in memory, oddly unpeaceful to her ears.

They were bringing in the prince.
She felt Edward stiffen with excitement; his arm gripped her tightly.
The prince.
Edward’s great golden hand moved waveringly down to the mewling bundle.
His fingers signed the tiny bald dome with the Cross.
Then he wept.
He moved to where the little princesses clung wide-eyed, around Lady Berners.
The tiny Elizabeth raised her arms, was caught up and kissed.
She was a beautiful blonde rosy child, sweet-temperedly smiling.
Edward set her down, then in turn lifted Mary and Cicely.
All the time he wept and smiled like a rainbow.

‘My lord,’ said Elizabeth, wanting his arm about her again, for the strength which had supported her over the past months seemed to have ebbed completely.

‘Soft, Bessy, I must greet
all
my little maids!’
He bent to the fourth child.
To Elizabeth it seemed that his tenderness drew on another dimension, something mystically patterned, hateful.

‘Mistress Grace!’
He settled the child against his shoulder.
She was also blonde, but her eyes were not blue like the others, but a clear vibrant green.
Sad, adult eyes, that could have looked upon a time gone by.
The time of Desmond’s death.
The living token of past sin.

‘Are you a good maid, my Grace?
Are you loyal to me?’

Delighted, the child buried her face in Edward’s fur collar.
One eye peeped out at the assembly.
She was loved.
Loved, as she longed to be (the eye rolled, rested on the Queen) by the silver lady.

The women were sobbing with joy, watching the King’s demonstrations of tenderness, kneeling while he went among them with embraces; Lady Scrope, Lady Berners, Anne Haute.
He kissed their mouths.
Jacquetta of Bedford went to him blankly, unable to share joy or sorrow, immersed in senile memory.
Lastly Edward returned to the baby prince, and stood, magnificent, his hand upon the cradle, ready to address the company.
The shadows took on life, came softly forward; the gaunt Abbot Milling, the white-haired Prior John Esteney, their servants, offering round wine and ale.
Anthony Woodville, a little worn from the vicissitudes of exile.
At the sight of her brother warmth poured through Elizabeth.
Then she saw Richard of Gloucester standing beside Anthony, and her smile died like sun under cloud.
She had no reason to dislike him.
He spoke seldom and now looked so weary that he might collapse.
But Edward was speaking of him this moment, of Richard’s courage and integrity, extolling him above the skies.
What now had he done to gain such reverence?
She felt a scowl set like a mask upon her face.
The child Grace was staring at her – this rankled too.
Her hand moved in a quick impatient gesture of dismissal.
The small face lost its happy light.