The King's Grey Mare (10 page)

And she was happy again.
The millrace of her joy moved fast through the remnants of autumn, laughed in the grip of winter, and bubbled over at the holy season of Christmas, when the court assumed a modest gaiety.
Though the King spent more and more time in prayer and meditation, the Palace pleasured itself as extravagantly as Margaret could afford.
Throughout the twelve days there were plays and disguisings, mostly of a sacred nature for the King’s approval.
On the final evening, when the Lord of Misrule had capered an introduction, Richard Bulstrode, the revelsmaster, presented a pageant of his own contriving: the Passing of the Hours.
Elizabeth played the Queen of Night.
In a gown of clinging black tissue, with her unbound hair crowned with stars, she was borne into the Hall on a painted litter, dramatically lit by cressets.
Lithe and rounded, she was carried high, the proud coin of her perfect profile luminous against the flames, the arrogant blue eyes meekly downcast, the silken, star-twined hair blowing gently in her wake.

She felt the heat of the torches warm upon her cheek, and close; she feared nothing, not even fire.
She was immune, this night, and glorious.
The procession approached the dais where Margaret sat with Beaufort kneeling at her side and where the King observed the secular scene with a gloomy primness.
Beaufort’s brown hand rested near the Queen’s small foot.
Little details sprang forth; the faces of servers and henchmen, the glint of a peacock feather stuck like a sword in the picked carcass; the ragged hem of a tablecloth There were glances too; the rapt looks of unknown men avid for beauty and caught in unconscious lust; the women’s faces tight with jealousy.
She saw John, he stood a little apart from the dais.
He was stamped with an almost sacred emotion: the look bestowed by a father on a cherished child, or a good priest on the Eucharist.

There was nothing priestly about him later.
Intoxicated by the thunderous applause after she had said her few trite rhyming words and been borne again from the Hall, she sought him out, where he waited for her on the gallery.
She cut short his courtliness, his murmured words of adoration, and flung her arms about his neck.
Unwittingly she lit dangerous fires, whispering, teasing, turning her smooth cheek to meet his.
Was I not fair, my lord?
Did you hear their cries?
He kissed the bubbling speech to silence, holding her tightly enough to hurt.
He gathered handfuls of her shimmering hair to kiss, and she felt his power, the bruising inevitable harbinger of possession.
Although she loved him and melted to him for an instant, a little cool corner of her mind whispered: Hold back.
So she withdrew, seeing the candle of his eyes grown large with longing, leaned tiptoeing again to kiss each longing, lightly, and slipped away to stand apart from him against a pillar.

He groaned.
‘O Jesu, Isabella.
Can one love so and still keep sanity?’

He followed her, kissing her hand, her sleeve, the hollow of her throat.
Again she retreated, to stand in half-light.
Above the black gown her face was pale, a disembodied candle-flame.

‘I love you, my lord, and trust have kept my wits.’
She tried to speak lightly.
He was not to be put off, however.
In his arms again, part of her succumbed to the sweetness of his mouth.
The other part, away somewhere, watched and measured and warned.
Hold back.
Even the flame of his hand upon her breast was tempered by that coolness.
He whispered of love, and incautious, impetuous suggestions: she lay with the other ladies of a night, did she not?
And he, God’s curse on it, was bound to serve Beaufort of Somerset, should he be needful or wakeful; but there were ways, friends who would do duty for him, be it for gold or other favours.
By the Mercy of Christ, Isabella!
‘I must have you this night, or die!’
And the heat of her leaped in gladness towards this consummation, while the wary, sea-cool essence of her, of Melusine, who lay apart from her husband every Saturday, writhed and gave tongue.
A sweet rebuke, damning and promising in a breath.

‘Are we not then to be wed, my lord?’

Instantly he was contrite.
It was a churlish, unforgivable thought, yet her beauty was wholly culpable.
‘Can you blame me?
A king, an emperor, would want you.
Do you think I don’t crave our wedding-day as much, more than you?
I would wait for ever.
The waiting would make of me an old man.
An old, old man, for ever and ever in love …’.

There were tears in his voice.
He rose from the knee so swiftly bowed before her.
He stood tall and slender; she reached up to touch his cheek with her soft white hand.

‘I give you my life,’ he said.
‘My little lovesome wayward Isabella.’

‘Am I, John?’
she said, intrigued.
‘Am I all those things?’

He took her hand and kissed the palm.
‘Lovesome,’ he said, each word a kiss.
‘Little, yes.
Wayward?
Nay, love, I wronged you.
Yet …’

‘Go on, my lord.’

Deeply he looked into the large eyes with their innocent, hidden power.
When he spoke it was hesitantly, doubtful words strung out like beads.

‘I know little or naught of women.
I would be a fool to say I understand them.
Yet you, Isabella, are beyond all understanding.
I feel … I feel that when I hold you in my arms I am on the boundary of a foreign country … You are strange, my love.
You are a wonder.’
Inflamed by thought, he clasped her to him.
‘I would gladly enter that strange land.
My Isabella, you rob me of my soul!’

She swayed to him, sinuous, enchanted and enchanting.
The sound of distant music, a sweet high pagan wail, filled her ears from the Hall.
Eyes closed, she saw visions.
Rippling water, shapes sporting in a fountain.
Almost she saw the face, the glittering hair like waterweed, the monstrous shining tail.
I am strange.
I am a wonder, and he feels it
.
She held him gladly.
When he asked the measure of her love, she answered, in reverence and perfect truth: ‘My heart, you are my other self, and I am yours.’

‘Speak to the Queen,’ he said, trembling.
‘Desire her Grace to appoint our wedding-day.’

Within a few days, she did as he asked, and found Margaret strangely distrait, with a desperate air of indecision about her.
She was surrounded by rolls and registers all awaiting the signet of the King, who had not been seen for days.
Eventually she gave Elizabeth her attention.

‘I have your marriage settlement drawn, Isabella,’ she said.
‘I will give you all that I can afford.
Two hundred pounds from my privy Purse.
Would Jesu it were more.
You have served me tenderly.’

‘Your Grace is more than generous.’

‘Then repay me,’ said Margaret.

‘How, your Grace?’

‘By staying at court until the spring.
I need you, for there are few worthy of my trust.
They are all about me with their greedy spying eyes, ready to do me duty until a better bargain shows itself.
I would have you close to me these next few weeks.
For the love I bore your mother and now bear you – will you stay?
Will you share my chamber o’ nights, share my griefs, my passions?’

Elizabeth looked steadily into the Queen’s eyes.
There was no mistaking her intent.
Beaufort of Somerset’s image shone fatally from those hungry, longing eyes.
Neither was there any mistaking the implications, the dangers.

‘The King, Madame …’

Margaret gave a short laugh.
‘He has a new pastime, my poor Henry.
As he has spent so much on Masses, he must have the alchemists work night and day at the Philosopher’s stone.
Only by conjuring gold from dust can he afford the prayers against his constant maladies, his vapourings.
O Jesu!
I came from France laden with joy – to a royal prince – to empty barrenness!’

Wildness rode her face.
Elizabeth said swiftly: ‘Do not trouble further, sweet Madame.
I will stay as long as you need me.
But I would marry in the spring!’

‘You shall.
When you have served me, and not only me.
The Crown, and royal Lancaster!
Did you know,’ she said with soft anguish, ‘that York’s wife did bear another son!
On the second day of October last; a puling sickly wretch they call Richard.
Another son!
Edmund, Edward, George, Richard.
The Yorkists multiply … so stay by me, Isabella.
Be loyal, discreet, and loving, and I’ll not forget you when my dynasty is strong.’

Eyes lowered, she felt the Queen’s kiss on her brow, and nodded fervently.
She would defer her own raging longing for John.
Only for the Queen, whose words were half-comprehended, and at the same time, terribly clear.
For Lancaster, and England – and for love?
A web was growing, drawing her to Margaret, and woven of audacious fancies best sealed in silence.

The day following, Queen Margaret gave orders that she desired only the company of Dame Isabella Woodville in her chamber at night, and dismissed the guard from her door.
The King, she said, had taken it upon him to seek her counsel late of nights, and she would not have him hindered.
I am full of trust, she said, and will not be harmed by isolation.
The court fluttered a little, shortly forgot, and was still.

It did not happen nightly.
More often than not, the Queen slept tranquilly with Elizabeth close by.
She in turn learned to anticipate the Queen’s whim; to read to her should she be restless, to serve her with wine or play the harp in the soft dark hours.
And to withdraw gently, eyes blinded by duty, into the adjoining chamber when the tall figure, with his soldier’s step muted, entered like a ghost and passed through to the Queen.

The echoes of their love enhanced her own.
Nightly she dreamed of John, and ached for the spring.

I love.
He is mine.
I love more than my own life, more than all pleasures, persons, dreams that I have known.
This love is my whole world.
She shivered suddenly, frightened by the dreadful joy, the fear of tempting demons with such utter bliss.
Then his eyes smiled into hers, and she dismissed the fear.
She studied his face, the face to look upon for ever; the crooked brow, the curving mouth, the firm, clean-shaven chin; the bright, new-coin hair so properly dressed upon his straight shoulders.
John, I love.
He for his part thought: She is mine.
The fairest woman in the realm.
Mine to cherish while life lasts, to have and love through long years.
Until we are both white-haired ancients to whom that hot young love is but an unremembered mystery.
Then, I lie.
I shall remember, should I be ninety years.
Oh God!
he thought, let me have all those years with Isabella.

It was a day when every tree unfurled tiny green banners.
It was the day when Dame Elizabeth Grey and her husband rode at last from the court.
After the long ceremony in the Royal chapel, when the singing boys lifted their voices to heaven and candles painted the vaultings with softest light; after the nuptial Mass, the vows taken under the Queen’s smiling gaze, they did not delay in London even for a night.
Standing with the holy water crystalline upon her flesh and with her hand in John’s, she whispered: ‘Let us to Bradgate, my lord, at once!’
He, bemused by love and joy, had nodded, murmuring: ‘Sweet, we must share a void with the Queen before parting!’
So they pledged Margaret in sweet hypocras, oblivious of the other courtiers standing about them, almost unconscious of the Queen’s presence.
‘To our years,’ John whispered.
‘To our happy years!’
Drinking from the cup which Elizabeth’s lips had touched, he felt the weight of those unlived years hang on his fancy like a sweet ripe fruit.
Drunk with the future, he embraced it to the end, smiling again at the thought of himself an ancient man, spent and satisfied with love.
It was an impossible thought.
Then fleetingly, he thought of another old man, fallen just lately.

There had been mourning in the Palace.
The Queen had wept openly and King Henry had ordered Masses for the soul of the Great Talbot, Earl of Shrewsbury.
He had been killed in Guienne, fighting with all the miraculous strength of his eighty years, for England against France.
Yet he was pledged to a French-born Queen!
John’s bridal heart carelessly saw wry humour in it.
England had lost the better part of France; yet they had a daughter of France reigning.
Lovely, generous … his warm eyes surveyed Margaret as he prepared his farewell.
God preserve her.
The slender body was now rounded, and John, in innocent male awe, fancied he could hear that second heart beating within …