The King's Grey Mare (17 page)

York was almost alone in his fortress.
Half his men were out foraging; the rest slept exhaustedly.

‘We killed the guard and the troops stationed outside the castle, and we burst into the Hall.
Young Rutland got away after York was slain, but he was pursued to Wakefield and struck down.
Salisbury was killed almost at once.’

The Yorkists had made a pitiful attempt at jollity, hanging holly and mistletoe, and soon those green boughs floated in a sea of blood.
Dead and dying littered the courtyard.
And the following day the Queen’s men followed her command to the letter: crowned with paper and straw, they were impaled, the stricken heads of Rutland, Salisbury, and York.

Elizabeth said softly: ‘Then this ends our sorrow.
The Queen may rest easy.
Oh, my lord …’

He turned on her violently.
‘Jesu!
Madame, you talk like a child!
Think you that York’s kin will suffer this loss mildly?
Have you forgotten that Warwick goes unscathed, and that in the West, gathering more armies, rages Edward of March?
Like a phoenix, he said!
And like a phoenix, he will rise against the Queen!
The citizens pray for his victory.
Don’t you know that even now Margaret’s men march southward, raping and burning!
They sack churches, murder nuns and priests … Do you think that Edward of March will forgive his father’s and brother’s death?’

In all their time together he had not rebuked her thus.
My lord is sick …’ she whispered.
‘Weary …!

‘Weary of war.’
He closed his eyes again.
‘This old, damned weariness.
What a fashion in which to spend one’s life!
When there is beauty and truth and learning to enjoy, I must ride, by day and night, chafed by my harness, rain upon my head, blood on my hands …’

He lifted his lids to show tenderness.
‘All I ever asked was you.
To sit in peace with you, on my own manor, to lie in peace o’ nights with you in my arms.
Even a knighthood matters little now, my love, my Isabella.’

He rose from the fireside stiffly.
In every corner of the shadowy Hall men were asleep, heads pillowed on saddles or garments, faces blank with exhaustion.

‘To bed,’ he said, staggering.
‘We must be up betimes; tomorrow we have many leagues to cover.’

‘Tomorrow!’
she cried, awakening one of the sleepers.
‘Yes, we must ride southerly and join the royal army to help guard against Edward of March’s advance, and Warwick’s.
Their troops are coming from all parts of the realm.
They seek to gain London.’

Silently she escorted him to the bedchamber.
There he stood for a little while looking down at the baby in his cradle.
In the next room Thomas cried out sharply in a nightmare.
John’s tired face relaxed; he sank upon the bed.
With difficulty she removed his boots that were stiff and crusted with mud and snow.
Almost instantly he was asleep, and she covered him with the quilt.
As he succumbed his hand sought hers, and clasped it.
So, throughout the remainder of the night, she sat, half-frozen, her fingers bonded in his, her long soft hair falling protectively about his face.
She would not lie down.
She would watch him until dawn; and how soon that dawn came up!
She awakened him with hot wine, fresh clothes, and helped him with his harness.
She said little, for there was an air of hushed ceremonial about the proceedings, as well as a heart-tearing regret.
He kissed the boys, who were still asleep, and Elizabeth he held for a long moment in which she felt the forbidding chill of his steel breast; and he said, once more: ‘Isabella, my heart’s joy!’
and then, ‘Now, we ride.’

Ride then, said her mind.
Ride and return, my love.
And with the inexorable beat, the dull, living beat of her heart and the diminishing hooves, came the old wedding rhyme.

The fairest man,

That best love can,

Dandirly, dandirly, dandirly, dan!

There was more black ice, more snow.
Snow, that had killed the timorous February buds, that swelled the lake to a murky flood.
It swirled dark and dangerous, like her own unrest.
Where were they now?
Two months, two long months.
She tried to envisage him, hoping his face had lost that look of bitter trouble; that he rested somewhere during a break in fighting; that the fighting was over.
She delved deep, remembering times of gladness, feeding on words and images to soothe the irksome, waiting winter.
If she closed her eyes she could recreate his strength, his lips, his hand playing with her hair.
And his words: ‘My sweet Isabella, my dear Isabella, my douce one, my fair one, my joy!’
If she could have a penny for every word that had caressed her, she would buy another tapestry to grace the wall opposite Goliath and David.
Sweet fancy … the tapestry shone the length of the hall.
It was the fairest of all her possessions.
The might of the giant, the subtle half-naked grace of the young David, the gay colours.
Thomas was tugging at her sleeve.
He chattered ceaselessly, laughs and cries of temper mingled.
All morning he had whined to ride his pony.
Elizabeth, or rather the weather, had forbidden it.
He was tugging, tugging, trying to pull her across the room.

‘Mother!
There’s a man coming!’

He let go her sleeve and ran to the window, mad with excitement, as well he might be.
Since John’s departure, not even a dead beggar had visited the manor.
Next moment the steward stood in the doorway.
His broken arm had healed badly, it was misshapen and ugly; she averted her eyes from it.
The man stood looking at the floor, passing his tongue over his lips.
Jesu, she thought, this long winter has addled him.
I share his vagaries, being fogged by lordlack and ignorance of the realm’s affairs.
She said, her voice made sharp by this realization: ‘Well?
What is it, Hal?’

‘An emissary from the Queen’s Grace, Madame.’

He bowed into the shadows and let another figure through, one as snow-stained and unkempt as any of John’s fighting men had been.
One whose familiar face brought a urge of inexplicable affection.
The graceless face of a court page.

She moved forward swiftly.
‘Why, Master Barnaby!’

She waited for him to greet her, Ho, Dame Grey!
winking and saucy enough to be whipped, but his insouciance was gone.
He must have learned manners, she thought, for he went on his knee on the stone flags and kissed her hand; and he kept his head bent during what even she thought a long homage.
She noticed that the insides of his boots were rubbed almost through, as if he had ridden hard to be with her.
He had caught his neck on a thorn, too, dried blood was patterned on the skin.
He was pressing his brow upon her wrist, she felt a wetness on her hand.
So, to jostle him from whatever pangs assailed (did the knave dare to love her?) – she said: ‘Up, Barnaby!
What news from court?
Who holds sway there, these perilous days?’

He made a muffled noise.
‘Tears, Master Barnaby?’
she said mockingly.

Then he rose, thinner, damp-suited, dolorous.
Not a vestige of mirth in him, only embarrassment.
‘Dame Grey,’ he whispered.
‘They sent me, for I can ride swiftly.
All the way I came, from St.
Albans.’

The Queen’s image arose, shockingly clear.
‘Cursed be the name of St.
Albans!’
Thomas was ramping round Barnaby, feinting at him with a wooden sword.

‘Tell me,’ she said.

He stood very straight, as if for execution.
‘Sir John Grey is slain, my lady.’

She thought: Barnaby is talking to me of some slain knight.
So I must in courtesy ask him details, how this one died, and why.
This she did, very calmly.

‘He was grievously wounded at the fighting at St.
Albans.
The Earl of Warwick met Queen Margaret’s force in a second battle there, and the Queen was victorious.
She called it her vengeance for the first battle when Beaufort was slain.
Warwick fled.
But Sir John Grey led the last cavalry charge that routed the Yorkists.
And he was wounded, and died.’

‘Where?’

‘In his tent.
At St.
Albans.
Wounded head to foot and bloody.
At cursed St.
Albans, Sir John Grey, knight, did die.’

But John is not a knight
!
A frail gladness rose.
It is some other, for he is but plain John Grey.
Poor John, who ever craves knighthood.
Sweet John.
He is not dead.

‘My husband lives,’ she said, greatly relieved.
‘There is, to my knowledge, no Sir John Grey.’

Barnaby was weeping copiously.

‘They did knight him ’ere he died.
For his services in war.
They vowed none fought so bravely or with such chivalry, sparing the defenceless, crushing the strong.
They gave him a knighthood.’

Outside the snow began again, softly covering the ground.
Life struggled beneath, small buds kissed by cold to an infant death.
Elizabeth snatched up a cloak.
He was wounded; she would bring him to life.
She would staunch his blood with her own body.
There were elixirs known only to her mother and herself, secrets to heal a man of the most dreadful wound.
Thomas was shouting around the room, war-cries, wielding his little sword.

‘Saddle me horses.
My lord needs me,’ she said urgently.

‘Madame, your lord is dead!’
said Barnaby sadly.
He took the cloak from her; it fell to the floor.

She would not scream as Queen Margaret did at the news of cursed St.
Albans, or the taste of those screams would be forever in her mouth.
With great care she sank to sit upon the floor, while the drain of grief within grew and grew until she felt bloodless from head to foot.

Sir John Grey, knight, is dead.
There is no John.

As if the winter had slaked its venom in her anguish, the fierce weather yielded.
On the trees’ stark limbs tiny tight buds showed themselves again.
The lake receded, leaving a vista of cool busy water.
And the manor was filled with the presence, the essence of John.
It ringed her round with a desperate comfort, retrieving the past to veil her agony.
In this unseen nimbus she wandered, lonely and sad as a ghost, speaking rarely, seeing the faces of all who dwelt with her as unreal shadows.
Images from a time gone by and never to come again.
So tormented, indrawn, she knew a half-life, and was sustained only by Bradgate’s stout walls and vivid furnishings.
The meadows, like creatures recovering from long sickness, gained fresh slow colour from the wary assault of spring.
She told herself: I shall make Bradgate a shrine to John.

Prostrate before the chapel altar, she heard the thin reedy note of the singing-boys rising, sweet and sour and tender, in the Requiem Mass.
She flooded the stones beneath her face with hot tears; the first, last and only tears.
It was only a short relief; she wondered: when shall I be done with this witless watching for his return, this night-waking, hungry for his presence?
Under the high cold psalm that soared and soared she wept for the waste of a young life, a strong ardent body, a courageous, tender soul.
Leaving the chapel, she caressed a stout pillar.
Thank you, my lord, my love.
Thank you for Bradgate.
Always, I shall cherish it for your sake.

Slow as an old woman’s steps, March came and went with lengthening days.
What to do with those days?
those months and years ahead?
Only wait for night to come, and then another day, and another.
Nothing else; no hooves striking unexpected joy from stones; no moonlit ecstasy, no mellow future.
She took needle and thread and a length of stuff and fashioned the widow’s barbe and wimple, coiling; her hair so that none of it showed beneath the stark headgear.
Now she was a nunly thing of the spirit, pale, the blue eyes darkened with sorrow, her heart often raging and rebellious.
And at this time, unknown to her, half England quailed under a fresh battle, and the tide of war turned yet again.