The King's Grey Mare (57 page)

‘Sir William Brandon.’

‘Sir Edward Woodville.’

Wet sand stained their hose as they came to kneel like penitents before a shrine.
Hot lips, cold lips, touched Henry’s hand.
He raised his eyes to where dunes soared above the beach.
On the ridge a little company of horsemen wheeled about.
Their standards blew wildly, wrapping themselves about the staves.
Two of the riders broke away from the party and rode jerkily down the slope, their horses’ haunches low, fighting the loose sand.
Henry stared at the banners.
The second was his own; he had dreamed of it.
The Red Dragon of Cadwallader, torn and tugged by wind so that it streamed like a flame, like the ancient myth that he had been told surrounded his ancestry.
He knew himself the offspring of gods and princes, and his heart shivered in him.

The first standard he did not recognize.
To Jasper Tudor he said: ‘Who comes?’

‘Rhys ap Thomas, Sire.
They bring your personal standard.
Praised be God, the Welsh chieftains have mustered to our call.
And see–’ he pointed to the cliff top where more horses were sliding down, urged by their riders – ‘Sir John Savage’s men.’

‘They will all come.’
Henry’s voice was steady.
He sought with his eyes among the whipping cloud of standards, saw, descending, the bucks’ heads, the azure and gold of Sir William Stanley’s arms, borne by a lieutenant.

‘Where is Maredudd?’
he said sharply.
‘My cousin should be here to greet us.
And where is my stepfather?’

Jasper Tudor conferred with the mounted envoys, then turned again to his nephew.

‘Stanley awaits us in Denbighshire.
He has gathered a great force.
He plans to join us on the day of battle; likewise Northumberland.
Until then, Richard believes he has their loyalty.’

Henry did not join in the ensuing laughter.
The battle
.
Two words to chill his heart, words to be left unfaced until the last necessity.
The Dragon fluttered and thrummed above him, and now there was no comfort in it.
It was only a strip of coloured silk.
God, he thought.
Let it be over quickly, and let none see my fear.

‘Where is my clerk?’
he said abruptly.
‘I must write to John ap Marredud at once, and to Gilbert Talbot.
Set up camp, my lords.’

Within an hour he was seated in a tent, away from the rush of the waves.
The wind had dropped and given way to an oppressive warmth.
Out to sea thunder growled, coming nearer.
Henry chafed his hands, and began to dictate rapidly, in a clear quiet voice.

‘We will ride on Shrewsbury for London, and cross the river at Tewkesbury,’ he said.
‘Attend me at Shrewsbury.’
He raised his eyes and glanced at the attentive faces lining his tent: at Morton, the Welsh chiefs, the Woodville knight.
And looking at Sir Edward Woodville he was reminded of Tom Dorset, his thoughts wandering back to Harfleur.
Dorset!
What would he not give to be back on his home soil!
And how fortunate that he had been apprehended in time.
Creeping home to his mother, to follow God knew what whim, what allegiance.
Well, Dorset was now a pawn and a pledge to Charles of France; a surety against those thousands of men given to the battle-day.
So that Lancaster and France and England could be all one again, and the Yorkist plague forever ended.

‘Sire?’
said the clerk, waiting.

‘Yes.’
Henry’s face altered, becoming bland and hard as a tombstone effigy.
The yellowing light blazed in his eyes.
‘Say: ‘Attend
us
there.”
He rose.

‘And head the letter:
“From the King” ’

A vast thunderhead, livid at the edge, rolled westward over England, but the rain held off long enough for Henry’s forces to spread, to close up, and to deploy themselves near Redmore Plain, the appointed place of trial.
September was nudging August.
It was night.

Most of the royal army was asleep, stretched beside their fires, their weapons close at hand.
King Richard was wakeful.
He stood by his pavilion and watched the sky, the movement of the clouds, the occasional dull flicker of a star.
As if it were written in large letters on the sky, the ground, the sleeping tents, he knew this to be his last night on earth.
Very strongly he felt the presence of those he had loved; Anne’s gentle face, the small laughing Edward, and the larger, the adored golden brother.
And Warwick, hands clasped about his knee before the fire at Middleham.
The great knight, and himself, the untaught boy.
All Plantagenet.
All York.
All dust.

And he?
With the uncanny certainty that comes in lonely, pre-dawn hours, he knew himself a sacrifice, the last offering to a force so strong that no philosophy could reckon it, no priest exorcize it.
Gazing at the dark bowl of the sky, he shuddered at the mystique of this knowledge.
The clarity of his thought would be gone in the morning, driven off by the primaeval urges of survival and conquest.
Yet now he knew himself bought and sold; knew, as surely as Noah anticipated the Flood, that the Stanleys would endeavour to bring about his downfall.
He was not afraid, only awed by certainty.
He felt destiny rapping at his soul.

A moment’s guilt, a moment’s pity for the brave men slumbering beside their little fires, brought the sting of tears to his eyes.

‘But we will fight, by God!’
he said aloud.

He would give this destiny a run for its money.
Tudor was the target; if Tudor were slain, this hungry, urgent fate might be appeased.

Yet thinking thus, he knew it vain.
As surely as he was born, so would he die, and his dynasty with him.

If only Edward had contained his lust.
Had he but married, as Warwick wished, a foreign princess.
Or had he but thrown the woman down at Grafton Regis and ravished her, leaving her conquered and himself sated and bored.
To Edward all women had been foreign citadels, to be invaded …

Too late, too late to change the pattern of the years.
By that marriage, so secret, so cunningly devised, the houses of York and Plantagenet fell like Sodom, burnt up to ashes.
Richard thought: the salt of their wounds is the smile of Elizabeth.

The white-edged thunderhead was dispersing, moving swiftly away.
Dawn was coming, hailed by a brave trumpet.

She stirred in her bed, awakened by dream or noise or movement, but unaware of which.
The heavy curtains at the window made it impossible to tell whether it was night or day.
Grace was still sleeping at the foot of the bed, her breathing so peaceful that Elizabeth was envious.
It must surely be dawn.
And what would this dawn bring?
How many nights lately had she lain in this London bed, fretting the hours until another day of disappointment?
Could this one be different at last?
Margaret had seemed so sure, so proud and confident.
Pressing her hand, whispering as the royal army left a week ago, not to fear because of their great number.
Stanley would not fail, even if he came to Henry’s aid at the last moment …

Elizabeth turned her face, seeking coolth from the pillow.
A swarm of worries bombarded her.
Would Henry conquer?
Was he weak?
She conjured his face for the thousandth time; so strange, so significant to her.
He had never fought a battle in his life.
Would Stanley and his brother and Northumberland, and the Welshmen, be strong enough to uphold him?
She wound her hands together beneath the covers, imagined disasters spearing her like toothache.
There would be no further forgiveness from Richard.
Could she pray?
Our cause is God’s, Margaret had said.
Often Elizabeth had prayed to God, and gone away empty.
It was not God to whom she had prayed, before the battle of Barnet …

‘Oh, Melusine,’ she said very quietly.
‘Send me a saviour, Melusine!’

She waited, while faintly a growl of thunder passed over, miles away.
Neither omen nor answer; only the ever-present tempest talking to itself.

‘My soul in payment!’
she said.
‘My soul and those of all I love.
Aye, and their bodies too!’
reckless with anxiety.
Then, like a lover: ‘Melusine, ah, Melusine …’

With incredible swiftness sleep took her again.
As if drugged she lay fathoms deep, entranced, exhausted.
A pleasant dream coiled about her.
She walked in a forest; her mother held her hand.
Jacquetta, young again, and sumptuously dressed, towered above her, bright eyed.
Elizabeth skipped beside her, laughed, listened.
Lyrical words accompanied their walk, and the wood thickened, and the treetops closed about their heads.
Bright fungi clustered at their feet.

‘… 
and there, she built Lusignan.
She bore Raymond children: Urian
,
with his one red and one green eye; Gedes, of the scarlet countenance; Gyot
,
of the uneven eyes, Anthony, of the claws and long hair; a one-eyed son; and Geoffrey of the Tooth; he had a boar’s tusk.’

The forest grew black, and all about the foliage was on fire.
The soft voice repeated the names, over and over; then, without warning, there appeared an abbey, an abbey with wounded firefilled windows, an abbey running red with blood; she knew it to be the monastery of Malliers, where Geoffrey of the Tooth had attacked his brother.
There was the abbot, and a hundred monks, bleeding, burning.
Shrieking, half weeping, half laughter, filled the air.
She looked up at her mother for reassurance and saw a scarlet countenance, one leaking, suppurating eye, a mouth that was no mouth but a hole from which jutted a bloody tusk.
The hole spoke:

‘See, child!
See what you have borne!
Monsters all!’

The screams grew louder, lifting her scalp; a cry pitched in ecstasy yet keening like a mourner.
High above her bed, above the towers, it tossed and wailed.
Her blood heard it, the springing sweat on her face acknowledged it.
She plunged in the bed; she cried: ‘O Jesu, Jesu …’

She was dragged from certain disaster by Grace’s arms, felt Grace’s cheek against her own, and clung desperately.

‘Lady, my sweet lady Elizabeth.’

‘Is it morning?’

‘Yes.
Yes.
It’s morning.’

‘Draw back the curtains … Nay, don’t leave me!’

They stayed together, Grace on her knees, Elizabeth almost falling from the bed, her hair shrouding them both.
Grace stroked the heavy silken mass and kissed it, murmuring little loving words, while Elizabeth leaned shivering on Grace’s neck.
They stayed thus for some time.
Then Elizabeth detached herself with a great sigh.

‘Let in the light now, Grace.’

Grace arose and went to the window.
She tugged at the drapes and sunlight streamed in.
Then she glanced down at the courtyard and was suddenly still.

They were raising the drawbridge.
A party of horsemen galloped in, their mounts black with sweat, their gear and their harness visible under their habits mired with blood and mud.
Even from the height of the tower she could see their wild faces, and heard indistinctly their shouting.

‘What is it?’
Elizabeth asked from the bed.

‘Part of the army returning.’

‘Open the window.
Let me look.’
She came to stand beside Grace.
Across the cobbled yard a figure was running; comically foreshortened, the black-clad tonsured form of Reynold Bray.
Joined by half a dozen other men, he rushed towards the knights now swinging down from their punished horses.
The cheering rose like smoke.
The men were embracing, dancing in the courtyard.
Stewards rushed out with flagons as more horsemen surged over the drawbridge; standards flying, men wearing stained liveries, the horned bull of Cheney, the buck of Stanley, the silver crescent of Northumberland; and a score more, Welsh arms, red roses, red dragons, harness red with blood.

Bray turned in the midst of his capering to wave like a boy up at the tower window.
He cupped his hands and shouted, then flung out his arms in a wild exultant gesture.
Elizabeth murmured in annoyance: