The King's Grey Mare (47 page)

She could not hear how her own wail echoed in the embossed vaultings above, and drifted, lonely, through the open window to where the river lapped and fretted.
There was an overpowering drumming in her ears.
Queens can be brought down
.
How many had said it, and how often?
The Fiend had returned in glory, to mock and cheat her and persecute her.
His weapon was the Act of Titulus Regius, defying her own enchanted blood.

Grace Plantagenet stood outside the gate of the Sanctuary.
A hard summer shower was falling, taking the starch from her spiked hennin and veil, and staining her gown.
One or two monks passed in and out of the postern.
Weary, disapproving of the constant upheaval about their demesne, they ignored her, going swiftly by with sandal-slap and the reek of incense and dirt from their habits.
She tried to catch the attention of one; he looked sourly at her, muttered a benediction or a curse and went in, slamming the wicket behind him.
To Grace’s left was the wall with its great raped hole, sketchily shored up with timber.
The hole was spacious enough to admit slim Grace, but to what?
Only a reprise of a painful scene, perhaps added fury, doubled unkindness.
Even now that sudden assault beat at her brain, the more shocking for its very unexpectedness.

She had been working on a tapestry of St.
Simon and St.
Jude, with her ear and eye alert for any movement or request, her heart beating in time with Elizabeth’s tumultuous heart.
Elizabeth had raised her head, had studied Grace for several minutes.
Then she had spoken, with quiet, savage anger.

‘You!’

Grace had risen, eagerly, pushing the tapestry frame away

‘Go.
Get you from this place, and out of my sight.
Do not return’.

The red eyes, the whiteness, had moved Grace to murmur: ‘Madame, you are ill.
I pray you …’ and to receive the whiplash answer: ‘I am not ill.
I am invincible.
Get out of this house!’

Then Elizabeth had risen, had said loudly to her cowering attendants: ‘I dismiss, this day, a bastard.
I am done with Plantagenet bastards!’
To Grace she said in a low fury: ‘You bring me ill luck!
Jesu!
I should have seen it before.’

Young Bess had spoken up bravely.
‘Madam my mother, do not turn away my father’s child, my sister by blood!’
and Elizabeth had silenced her.
‘Ah, God!
Edward could sire only bastards.
Be still, for you know naught of it!’

Grace had gone, assuming a high dignity she did not feel, out through the grey arch and to the fringe of the frightening outer world.
To the edge of a city thronged by turmoil where speculation roared like a milling sea.
Taverns were thick with secrets; even the carved gables seemed to take on life, murmurously quivering with various allegiance.
Loyalty to Gloucester, to Buckingham; to Tom Dorset, exiled in France; to Sir Edward Woodville, whose spy-ships ran free in the channel; to Lionel Woodville, who had retired to his estates, perhaps to pray; to Morton, silent in the fastness of Buckingham’s Welsh castle.
And to another, whose unknown voice was a distant clarion, whose face was the gleam of a ghostly banner.
In the alehouse certain men clashed tankards and whispered: ‘To the Dragon!’

Grace’s gown was almost soaked with rain.
She moved to stand beneath a projecting buttress.
Everywhere people tramped about their affairs; merchants, clerks, hurried in and out of Westminster Hall, where the court was in session.
Folk in fine wool, in rags, in velvet, were clotted about the entrance to the chambers.
Pedlars and cookboys pranced about, bellowing their wares; beggars whined, fiddlers scraped.
A tall, ebony-faced Moor went by with a monkey on his shoulder.
Westminster clock spoke like Jehovah; the world rocked.
A leering gargoyle spat a mouthful of rain down upon Grace and she shivered.
Occasionally through the crowd came the flash of the Watch’s uniform.
Grace saw herself arrested, declared a vagrant or worse and bundled into the Fleet, where Jane Shore, a branded harlot, lay by order of the Protector.

‘But I’m the daughter of a king!’
she said loudly.
She sat down on a stone from the breached sanctuary wall and began to weep.
Now, in all the ballads, a knight would appear.
She looked up; there was only a band of urchins, with sly rotten-toothed smiles.
One weighed a jagged stone in his hand.
Another postured a bow, minced nearer.
‘Lady’s rich gown is wet’, suggested another.
The oldest, a boy about Grace’s age, said softly: ‘My mother lusts for a gown like that!’
He had coal-black fingernails and the face of a pirate.
They ringed her round, eyes bright, bare toes gripping the cobbles.
She opened her mouth, sucked in air and dry panic.
Behind her she felt the stone buttress, slippery with rain under her palms.
The boys came closer.
None of them saw the man approaching.
His large purposeful feet slapped spray from the puddles, his broad face was crimson with wrath.
He wore a tabard blazoned with a chained white Boar, and he was armed with knife and staff.
The latter he used to good effect, laying about him, direct and sure.
The clique bolted, heads clubbed bloody.
A hand reached out for Grace.

‘Art harmed?’

She shook her head.
Holding her hand in his vast paw, he spoke to her in a dialect barely comprehensible, yet with the essence of kindness.
He chided her for standing unescorted among the rowdy toils of Westminster.
All the time his eyes appraised her dress, her white hands, her obvious gentleness.

‘Tha’ shall be taken to my lady,’ he said finally.

‘Who?’

‘Thou.
To the Lady Anne Neville, wife to my lord of Gloucester,’ he said, looking down with pride at the device on his tabard.
Then she understood.
This was one of the Yorkshire yeomen appointed as personal guard to Gloucester’s lady.
Gloucester’s lady!
She withdrew her hand from his.

‘I can’t go with you.’

He looked closely at her face, murmuring how much she reminded him of someone, a sharp resemblance save for the eyes.
She told him her name, and that of her father.
His face became gravely decisive.
He took her hand again.

‘Tha’ must not stand here one moment longer.’
He said, in his tortuous northern speech, ‘that my lord of Gloucester would be wroth at such things … his brother’s child crying in the road!’
He led her down towards the river.
The rain died as they entered the boat; the current rocked them as they passed the high carved merchantmen anchored at every quay, the hundred petermen drawing in nets heavy with salmon and flounder.
Supple clouds moved across the river, charmed, elemental shadows changing with each ripple.
All the time the Yorkshireman held Grace’s hand, speaking only once, when he pointed out banners billowing damply from turret and fortress.

‘They are preparing for the coronation.
London is ready.
Soon, my lord of Gloucester will be King.’
Radiance flooded his face; Grace sat silent in the little boat.

On the steps of Baynard’s Castle, home of the Plantagenets for centuries, bright-liveried guards stood like granite.
Within the great hall, the walls were stiff with gay quarterings; over the fireplace banners proclaimed the heritage of Warwick together with the Griffin of Montagu, the Beauchamp Swan, and Gloucester’s Boar.
Grace made a muffled sound, and pulled back; the broad hand led her on.

‘Come.
Come to my Lady Anne.’

As they ascended the stairs she felt a mood so powerful it was as if the walls spoke.
An aura of frail, transient joy – a peak of unstable pleasure that swayed the senses.
So tangible was it that she lifted her eyes expecting to see, above the solar door, a motto limned in gold, something that might say: All happiness is here.
Welcome.
Welcome to a joy that does not last!

Outside the rain had ceased completely; the solar which they entered ran with fluid brightness streaming through the diamond panes.
Anne Neville sat playing chess at a centre table.
She raised her face; it was almost the face of a severely ill child; smooth and veined at the temples and completely guileless as if the sins and strategies of the world were without moment; as if the world itself were too fleeting for anything but tranquillities.
As she saw Grace, and as the Yorkshireman began his cumbrous explanation, she smiled very sweetly.
She held an ivory man posed over the board; her partner was oblivious to all, pondering his play.
All that was visible of him was a slender green velvet back, a fall of black hair and one elegantly hosed leg stretched out to the great danger of passers-by.
Anne Neville’s smile grew broader; her small white teeth looked very bright between her pale lips.

‘I greet you well, mistress,’ she said.
To Grace’s escort: ‘Master Walter, you did right to bring her here.’
And, to her absorbed partner, ‘Sir, leave the game, I beg you.
Greet our guest!’
The chair flew back and he rose, smiling an apology, turned fully so that Grace saw him dark against the sun.
The rippling brightness obscured his features; for a moment she was unsure.
Then he took a step towards her.

‘Madame,’ he said hesitantly.
‘Why, Madame … Grace!
Have you forgotten me?’

‘John,’ she said softly.
‘Lord John of Gloucester.’
He came closer, taking her cold damp hand to his warm lips.

‘This is good fortune!’
he said gaily, and looked down at her.
She was confused.
The last time they had met, he seemed such a little boy, a gallant little boy.
As she did not speak he continued: ‘I fear you
had
forgotten me!’

‘You’ve changed.
You are taller, bigger – grander!’

‘It is the archery,’ he answered proudly.
‘It stretches a man,’ and behind them Lady Anne said, laughing: ‘Then, John my love, you should be a giant, by reason of practising night and day!’

‘It is my father’s wish that I excel in arms,’ he said gravely.
‘Not only the longbow, but the axe …’

‘Yes, yes,’ said Anne, with an amused shudder.
‘No more talk of weapons for a while.
Embrace your cousin, like a courtier!’

Gravely he bent his head.
His lips brushed Grace’s mouth.
From a bowl of white roses on the table he plucked a bloom and placed it in her hand.

‘Madame, my honour and duty,’ he said.
Anne Neville clapped her hands.

‘Perfect, John.
Now, mistress, come and greet me.
I have not seen you since …’ Her smile faded at some turbulent memory.
‘You were very young.
You would not remember.’

Grace sank low before the Duchess Anne.
Fingers touched her shoulder and her bent head.
Anne cried: ‘Why, child, you’re wet and cold.
John, send for Lady Lovell.
Fresh clothes, at once!’
She kissed Grace on the brow.
Thoughts in chaos, Grace told herself: today, misery and banishment bring me again to John, my dear friend.
And I am kissed by Warwick’s daughter … The feeling of disloyalty to Elizabeth gave her great unease, and she turned to look again at John.
He was not really changed, only so much taller and broader.
His cheeks, tanned by the northern wind, were leaner.
He was fashionably dressed in the new tunic with slashed sleeves and a short swirling jacket trimmed with marten.
On his fingers he wore several rings, and he was very self-assured.
When he had left the room, Anne said: ‘He is the image of his father, and my constant companion, my dear foster son.
It is a compensation for lacking my own son, Edward, in London.’
Her face grey heavy as she spoke.

‘I don’t like London,’ (as if to herself).
‘I have been ill, and the journey wearied me.
I am often ill, you know.
Edward, my little prince, also.
Richard is the strong one.
He will soon be crowned, and then perhaps we can see Yorkshire again.’

She asked Grace: ‘How is Dame Grey?’

Grace looked deeply into the bowl of flowers.
In their close snowy shape there was pain.
‘She is sick with wrath and despair.
You must know this already.’