The King's Grey Mare (16 page)

She dreamed the jewelled dream again and turned to him in sleep, smiling like a happy child.

The following Christmas, snow fell.
Snow the like of which defeated men’s memory, so thick and violent were the storms.
The snow came like a silent white army from the shapeless sky.
For an hour or so it would cease, when the close-packed whiteness seemed watchful, aggressive.
Crisply it covered the frozen ground, the sleeping plants beneath.
The lake was patched over by stiff ice, the lilies visible only as sad pale shapes.
Then a fresh fall would descend, until the drifts climbed knee-high against the walls of Bradgate and each gargoyle on the buttresses wore a high white helm.
In the surrounding meadows, the hirelings dug out frozen sheep.
Men cursed and battled against the whirling white flakes, and struggled in sodden jerkins through days which seemed to last only a lead-grey hour until nightfall.

Elizabeth felt unbearably cold.
She ordered great pine-log fires to be lit in every room; she wrapped herself in fine wool and fur.
At night, rather than be prey to the draught which savaged the bed-curtains, she took Renée and the baby to sleep with her.
They lay close-hugged under every available bed-cover, and still she was cold.
Part of the chill was born of John’s absence.
He had ridden north on the King’s service and this was the longest separation she had had to endure.
She pictured him encamped somewhere on an icy wind-ravaged field, and his distress enhanced her own.
No word came from him; the roads were almost impassable.
The only person to get through to the manor was an old beggar, solid in death on the doorsill one morning, his beard pointing upward almost comically, like a jagged ice-sword.

The cold shortened her temper.
It irked her that she could not wander the estate.
A quicksand of white surrounded her, its great drifts hiding dead cattle.
The servants went quietly about, their voices like the hush and drip of soft snow from the eaves.
Although she knew her ill humour would pass with the sunshine, she crouched sadly by the roaring fire in the hall, with the cradle close at hand and Thomas snivelling from the inglenook, with a heavy cold.
He was becoming more wayward, openly disobeying his nurse and tormenting the servants.
Once, he even disobeyed his mother, staring insolently.
She smacked his face; he did not weep, only went with a dangerous look to do her bidding.

Christmas came too soon.
Elizabeth paced the house, bitterly disappointed that there was none to share the merriment engineered by Jakes, her long-faced fool, and that of the pages he had trained to bring diversion over the holy season.
On Christmas Day she knelt before the altar in the little chapel, her face flowerlike in the light of a score of festive candles.
She whispered:
Blessed Christ, let John come home before the Twelve Days are out.
Let him be here to make my season bright, bringing his own sun that melts snow …
The candles flickered, coldly dispassionate.
Her chaplain turned and watched her curiously.
He thought her fair but unpredictable.
He could not know her mind, her sudden discovery: that no feasts, no comfort or gaiety could satisfy in John’s absence.
All was empty as air.
Only Bradgate remained, her fortress and her rock, and even that like a hearth without a flame.

She thought of Christmas at Grafton Regis.
The little sisters would be grown.
Did Catherine miss her?
Was Anthony home, full of wit, fashioning new games for them to play in the Great Hall?
Lionel, let out from his clerkly studies?
Edward, with his sea-coloured yarns?
Was Sir Richard seated at the laden table, his colour deepening in firelight and wine?
She did not even know if her father rode on campaign this Christmas.
No messages; not a word, and only the hush of the deepening snow.

The steward and his wife were hungry.
Far away down the hall, the pinched faces of her henchmen looked cheered as the roast peacock was borne in, its tail feathers spread in an iridescent fan over the meat.
The venison frumenty was glazed with savour.
Elizabeth set Thomas in the chair beside her, and warned him to behave well.
She motioned to Jakes to dance, tell a story.
In the gallery minstrels set up a sweet cold wailing.
‘A toast, Madame,’ said the steward gallantly ‘To our beloved mistress, this holy season.’
The wine in his cup was a jewel; an old memory sprang from nowhere.
Queen Margaret, spilling her wine, a bloody stain upon her gown.
Her screams.
Elizabeth wrapped a fur tippet closer about her throat, and forced a smile.

‘To Bradgate,’ she responded, and the small company raised their goblets.
She was suddenly renewed.
This was her demesne.
Never would she lust for anything more.
Grafton Regis might be filled with a gay family; but she would dine with servants in Bradgate and count herself fortunate.
Yet still she felt cheated, and angry with the Presence behind the cold white candles in the chapel.
The Twelve Days were passing like a fugitive, and John was not there to share them.

There came a thaw.
Water dripped from the gargoyles and cascaded down the towers.
The stiff reeds on the lake became pliant like the swords of a vanquished army.
The lake itself swelled, black and dangerous.
The thaw was followed by freezing, virulent gales carrying more ice from the north, scattering the hard powdery snow-pellets everywhere.
The steward slipped on fresh black ice and broke his arm.
He lay agonized for days, and Elizabeth brewed the dried root of mandragora for his easement.
Thomas grew naughtier and the babe more handsome.
The treacherous roads yielded and John came home, as if at the whim of some spiteful force, now that the revels were over, the wine drunk, and the rich food a memory.

He came by night.
Through a dream she heard the stamp and jingle of horses, the swish of hooves crossing melted snow.
She awoke instantly.
Her first thought was of Queen Margaret’s mercenaries, earlier so gaily dismissed, and with it came the chilling realization that Margaret’s love for her might indeed have waned.
For was not she, Elizabeth, the sole witness to that which Margaret must most ardently conceal?
The knowledge that the prince, the Flower, was neither conceived of the Holy Ghost nor of King Henry, but of Beaufort of Somerset?
She began, in a heartbeat, to count the servants reliable enough to wield cudgel and axe for her protection.
She slipped from the bed and ran to the window, snatching the baby Richard from his cradle.
Outside it was broad moonlight, and passing through the courtyard were dark horsed shapes.
More riders were silhouetted on the edge of the lawn, their mounts’ hooves churning the snow-filmed grass.
Someone swung a lantern high.
She heard the great door below reverberating to a mailed fist, then the steward’s shuffling feet.
There were voices, strong and wide awake, the rasp and groan of keys.
The hounds were snarling and raving.
Suddenly their threatening note changed to bays of joy.
Only for John did they make that keening, loving sound.
She laid Richard down again and flung a robe about her.
The moonlight whitened her hair; it hung to her knees.
She ran along the gallery and stood at the stairhead, looking down upon a hall swarming with men.
They were a weary, unshaven company, and most of them were harnessed.
Pages were hurling logs on the half-dead fire, and plying bellows.
Someone was calling for wine, and the steward was shouting at servants who ran with candles, flagons.

Drawing the robe close, she descended the stairs, her hair blowing in an icy draught.
John came to the stairfoot holding out both hands.
The rest of the company turned to look upwards.
As one man they went upon their knee, a startling, pleasing gesture.
She made a little, queenly motion bidding them rise.
Then she was in John’s arms.

‘Sweet Jesu!
You’re wet through!’
she cried, feeling damp soaking her thin robe.
‘William!
Gervase!
Bring fresh garments, and see to that fire!’

‘Once, my lady, I felt you likewise,’ he said, with a little smile.
‘Oh, the lake!
How I love the lake!’
He mocked her lovingly, but his voice was blank with weariness.
His face was drawn and hag-ridden under a stubbly beard.

‘These are my friends.’
He indicated the men behind them.
‘They have fought and ridden hard with me …’ He wavered and clutched the banister.
Elizabeth led him to the fire; he dropped into the inglenook.
She turned to offer hospitality to his followers, seeing bloody bands around a head, a wrist.
While the servants scurried with meat and bread and mulled possets, she sat close beside John, while the hounds fawned on him.
He had lost flesh; he closed his eyes and there were blue bruises under them.
As he took a steaming cup, his hand shook like an ancient man’s.
She said, whispering: ‘My love, my lord, you are sick.’
He replied.
‘Nay, only weary unto death.’
To her distress he began to weep silently, tears issuing from beneath his closed lids.
’Tis a strong fatigue that I can mend, she told herself.
The herbal my mother gave me; Valerian, Our Lady’s balm, the juice of the cherry to bring tranquillity … She rose from his side murmuring: ‘Forgive me, love, I’ll not be long.’
He held her hand, fast.

‘Give thanks that you are a woman!’
His hard voice surprised her.
‘Lord God, the sights that I have seen these months, and this last week!
Well, Isabella!
Your Queen has her heart’s desire.’

He opened his eyes.
‘York’s head upon a pike.
And Salisbury’s.
And Edmund of Rutland.
Seventeen years old, that one.
In York, on Micklegate, those three proud foolish heads stare out, still bloody.
The Queen’s men placed paper crowns about their brows.
So York, the king that never was, now overlooks the town of York.’

Gladness welled in her.
Now the wars would be over, and John with her always.
She said, excited: ‘And Warwick?
Where is his head?’

The man with the bandaged head spoke.
He was a great sergeantat-arms, with bull-shoulders.

‘Warwick’s head still adjoins his body.
He remained in London, to oversee the government.’
He spat into the fire, and Elizabeth’s brief satisfaction faded.
It would have been such a sweet, private triumph.
Still, with York dead, Warwick must surely abandon his cause.
John, cold hand warming in hers, began to tell her all that had happened during the past months.

Soon after John left Bradgate in July, Warwick, Salisbury and Edward of March advanced on London.
Spurred on by the chroniclers and balladeers, the City welcomed them like paladins.
The magistrates of London loaned them a thouand pounds to equip their force, the merchants extolled them.
Weary of the Queen’s dementia, the King’s fogged image, the citizens upheld their new salvation, who rode to Northampton, gathering men as they went.
There, they joined battle wth the royal army and in less than an hour were victorious.
Again Margaret’s lieutenants suffered sorely; the Duke of Buckingham, not long since released from prison, the new Earl of Shrewsbury, Lords Egremont and Beaumont were slain.
Again the King was taken in courtesy to London, where York claimed the throne by hereditary right.
This denouement fanned the flame of Margaret.
From the sanctuary of Harlech Castle she set about recruiting fresh troops; the wild northerners, the rampant Scots, the fanatical Welsh.
And in the blinding snow that fell over England, that had struck cold in even Elizabeth’s young bones, the crisis was reached, at Sandal in Yorkshire.

As Christmas approached, the Lancastrian party and the Duke of York’s men agreed to hold a truce for the holy season.
Cold and weary, the Duke retired to his castle at Sandal, while a few leagues away the royal army encamped at Pontefract.
A quiet descended, John said; an eerie, snowfilled quiet that no great fires or forced mirth could dispel.
Victuals were scarce, and tempers like bowstrings.
The royalists, minds filled with their Queen’s frenzy, sat tensely staring through the greyness towards Sandal.
And on the thirtieth of December, something broke in the hearts of those men.
The captains ordered an immediate advance.
Violation of truce it may have been, but there was no gainsaying that brutal decision.