The King's Grey Mare (64 page)

‘Margaret, Margaret.’
Stanley groaned, and hid his head.
He was seated at a table, while his wife worked her tapestry, driving the needle viciously.
She looked up and saw Grace.

‘Why, welcome, child!’
Grace took a step into the room, thinking instantly: why do they call me child?
I am a woman, tormented, wise.
What passes now between John and me is no children’s game.
I must not weep before the Countess.

‘You come from the Queen-Dowager?’
said Margaret.

‘I come from myself.’

The steady black eyes held Grace’s own.
‘Are you well?’
said the Countess.
‘Do you pray daily?
Remember the King in your prayers, for my sake.’

‘I pray.
Daily.’

‘Ask for his safety,’ said Margaret.
‘He is gone to York, where the people are savages.
Pray for his long life and constant welfare.’

‘I do.’
In secret, she touched the hard cold ruby on her hand.
Margaret rose and, smiling, ushered her further into the room.
The walls were hung with fresh gold banners.
One of them depicted a fat hawthorn bush crowned, a reminder of Bosworth Field.
‘Cleave to the Crown though it hang on a bush’ ran the
raison
, stitched in claret thread.

Stanley smiled at Grace.
He looked pale; there was the same vague
distrait
air about him that Dorset wore.
His brow creased as he fumbled to place her, and eventually succeeded.
Again, Grace was struck by her own unimportance.
If I died, she thought, few would notice.
They might say: where is that litle maid – Edward’s girl?
What girl?
How did she look, whom did she serve?
They would shrug or feign remembrance for politeness’ sake.
Again, Grace thought, curtseying before Lord Stanley: How shall any of us be remembered?

By our looks, our actions, our allegiances, our prayers?
By none of these.
If poets, perhaps by the dusty writings that remain.
By power?
Certainly, and by the mark that power made upon us and those who follow us.
So that I, who have no power, shall be one of the lost legions.
One who struggled and wept and laughed briefly, who loved flowers and beauty, and one man, and one woman.
Of less event than a dusky moth, born to dance and die in a night.

The mystic flame touched her mind, clarifying past, present, and future, so that Stanley and his Countess were no longer grown and solid and invincible, but mere children, ghosts, their life-span already done together with that of all others in the world who deluded themselves with thoughts of immortality.
This left the taste of urgency; best to speak now.

She stepped up to Stanley’s table and said firmly:

‘You, my lord, have the control of the Household.
I beg knowledge in which apartment John of Gloucester lies.
I know he is supported by the King …’

To conceal his sudden interest, Stanley busied himself with some documents.
Anything
, Thomas, the King had said.
Any clue to Plantagenet uprising, any hint that might lead to those Stafford rebels, out of Sanctuary now and likely to raise a force.
And Stanley had acquiesced like lightning, driven by an unnamed anxiety to serve.
Now here was a Woodville partisan seeking one of the last sprigs of the yellow broom.
A strange brewing.
Was it worth watching ferment?

‘His most gracious Majesty treats the young man kindly,’ he said.
‘Why would you find him?’

‘He has something of mine.
It is of value, and I would know it is in safekeeping.’

And not a lie in the whole speech.
What else, but my heart?
It would be unwise to declare this, however, with holy Margaret only waiting to denounce the flesh.

‘So.’
Stanley smoothed the curling parchments under his hand.
‘Yes.
I may tell you.
Gloucester is not at court.
The King has found him lodgings in the City.’
He lifted his hand, and the rolls shot into a cylinder again.

‘Where, my lord?’
Oh, Jesu!
let him not leave it there, so vaguely, in London’s teeming maw.
Stanley looked once at his wife.
She gave a quick moorhen’s nod and started again on her sewing.

‘Do you know Chepeside?
Of course you do,’ he said.
‘The young man lives with a master butcher, William Gould.
Not
with
him, at least, but over his shop.
You could send a letter.
If you go in person, take one of my men; it is more fitting.’

‘I will go alone,’ said Grace.
The thought of Stanley’s henchman witnessing her fresh shames was appalling.

He shrugged.
‘As you will.
I trust,’ with a pallid smile, ‘that you recover your property.’

Grace went and kissed his spotted ageing claw.
She curtseyed and withdrew under a last smile from Margaret.

‘Pay my respects to the Queen-Dowager,’ said the Countess.

The door closed behind Grace.
Instantly Stanley got up.
From an ante-chamber entered Reynold Bray.

‘You heard?’
said Stanley.
‘It may be naught, but all the same …’

There was one more errand, before she could leave.
The need to look upon Elizabeth.
This sent her the length of the Palace, crossing broad ways where new arras hung, and dipping her skirts down twisted staircases.
Treading cold stones, fresh rushes, she passed scurrying servants and twice saw the Yeomen of the Guard.
They spoke Breton or Welsh, an almost identical tongue, and looked as if they never smiled.
The Tudor court grew and flourished all about, with an austere and alien richness.
Although the court was depleted and Henry absent, his presence lingered, cool and meditative and strong.

Catherine Woodville opened the door of the familiar apartment.
She was flushed, and held a letter.

‘I’m to marry again,’ she announced before Grace could speak.
‘I am to marry the King’s uncle, the Earl of Pembroke.’

‘Jasper Tudor,’ said Grace softly.
‘He’s an old man.’

Catherine’s fair face reddened.
‘Better old than none!’
Scornfully she looked Grace over.

Elizabeth was seated by the window, still, save for the occasional restless flutter of her ruined left hand.
Her head was lifted as she gazed through the high panes, and the light fell on the perfect line of her throat.
Grace knelt beside her.
Absently, as on every day, the hand reached out, and Grace began to rub, to knead and massage the dead-cold flesh, curving her own hands round the flaccid fingers.
During this ritual the Queen-Dowager continued to stare up and outwards.

‘The King has ridden north.’

‘I know, highness.’

‘He did not call me to say farewell.
I was sorry.
May the saints preserve him from all enemies.’

After a long silence she went on, as if musing.
‘Yesterday he took back my estates – those I have left – for the Crown.’
Grace looked up sharply.
Elizabeth was smiling.
‘He is to pay me in lieu; I would have it so.
I am not so enamoured of travelling, these days.’
She looked down, her blue eyes pale, far-off.
‘He is to pay me in full.’

Grace went on manipulating the slack fingers.

‘We can still go to Greenwich, although it is no longer in my name.
We can have clothes, make merry.
The King, my saviour, will make me rich.’

It was odd to hear calmness in place of raving; this extremity of peace, as if striving were over and done.

‘I shall see him when he returns from his progress,’ said Elizabeth.
‘He will give me privy audience; I have waited a long time.’

‘Madame,’ said Grace, during another silence.
‘I would beg your indulgence.’

The frail shining cheek inclined towards her.
‘You ask leave to go out?’
Grace bowed, still stroking and moulding the dead hand.
Was there a little warmth, returning?
‘You guessed, Madame.’

‘You’re easy to read; said Elizabeth.
‘Take your
congé
, then.
But …’

‘My lady?’

‘Return to me,’ said Elizabeth.
‘Be sure that you come back.’
Grace’s burning brow touched the Queen-Dowager’s slender wrists.

‘I pledge it.’
Then she rose and quit the chamber without a backward look.
Yet she felt the eyes upon her, in an unknown, unspeakable plea.

The riverboat journey was easy.
Wrapped and hooded in wool she sat in the stern, near to three merchants and their wives and an ancient clerk, whose tonsured skull, thin and veined as a baby’s, grew pimples in the stiff breeze.
She disembarked with the others near Baynard’s, and because the merchants seemed bound for the City she followed unobtrusively a little way behind until the streets narrowed and she was sucked into London’s dense, overhung heart.
The merchants quickened their pace and turned eastwards up Knightrider Street, and she lost them.
She stood looking at the roads and alleys going away from the square, and ahead to where Paul’s spire pointed at the sun.
The day was cold, with an early spring coldness.
The last remnants of snow framed the house-gables delicately and shone on a tavernbush.
The deep doorways and courts on either side were dark and kept their secrets.
Above, gildsmen’s signs swung gently, their shadows gibbet-like across Grace’s path.
The press of people thickened; two mule-carts trundled by, followed by a line of washerwomen with bundles on their heads.

Still she stood there, and people skirted her without word or look, as if she were invisible.
For the first time she wondered on her own impulse.
She had been turned away and with crazed persistence came courting fresh abuse.
None could rightly forgive such words as had been launched her way; yet she realized that they had been forgiven as soon as they were uttered.
Whether more could be borne was a different matter.
She was here, in chaos, seeking him, and knew herself upon the fringe of madness.

A tall figure came to stand by her, becoming part of her own unreality.
She looked up into the rolling white-rimmed eyes of the Moor.
He was dressed in gay motley, and his monkey, a gold chain about its narrow hips, sat on its master’s nape, holding on to his ears.
The ebony face shone down like a black sun.
This was the third time she had seen him, and again he seemed ominous.
She stepped away a pace and he laughed, a deep rolling drum.

‘Which way, little maid?’
His voice was courtly, heavily accented, yet she was surprised he knew the English tongue.
She noticed how passing people crossed themselves at sight of him.
He saw it too, and chuckled more heartily.

‘Do not fear,’ he told her.
‘See how they bless me!
Never was man more blessed!’
He reached behind his head and unhitched the monkey.
It sprang on to Grace’s flinching shoulder and pulled back a corner of her hood with its tiny hand.

‘She likes you,’ said the gleaming face.
‘Let us promenade.
Thou, and Beauty, and I, Salazar.
Whither now, the three of us?’

‘Chepeside.’
The monkey pressed its cold little face against hers, and nibbled a strand of her hair.

‘Chepeside, Beauty!’
cried the Moor.
A marketing woman glanced at him, flipped out the cross from her bodice and kissed it.
‘Chepeside,
doña
!’
Nimbly he twirled on the spot in a fluid, leaping dance-step, sketched a bow, and with his long gay arm indicated the way, as if he made her a present of it.

They walked together yet apart, and the monkey played with Grace’s hair, and tugged gently at a pearl in her ear, while the Moor sang in Spanish about two sweethearts who had quarrelled, so he said.
When Grace asked if the quarrel was mended, he only laughed.
They passed through six streets with a church on every corner, amid brightness and shadow and gilded gables.
Soon the smell of garlic and offal mingled with that of hot roast venison and the red-blood tang of the butchers’ shops nudging the cookhouses.
Chepeside roared, with haggling voices raised across the scream of slaughtered beasts.
Whole deer and quartered oxen hung heavily beside slender rabbits with dark, dead-jewel eyes.
Blood dripped from the beaks of bright birds.
Stiffly the banners of gilds and patrons hung in profusion.
All the shops looked the same.
Grace stopped, and the monkey gibbered and leaped like a sparrow from her shoulder to the neck of the Moor.