The King's Grey Mare (18 page)

Green April came to mock her with the time when she first rode to Bradgate.
That was the same cuckoo, surely, chuckling and invisible in the leafing trees; the same clustered primroses, rising like tiny gold roses where the snowdrops had hung their heads.
Yet the air seemed chill; did that fickle sky still herald storm?
One day she could bear the sounds of spring no longer.
She went to the chapel murmuring within the ghostly halo of candlelight:
‘Ipsis, Domine … et omnibus in Christo quiescentibus
 …’ Grant to them, we entreat Thee, a place of cool repose, of light and peace.
His face was a star against her closed lids, his face, its image still sharp enough to turn a knife in her heart.
She felt the coolness of the carved prayerstall.
Old wood, his heritage, hers, and that of their children.
In the quiet that followed the requiem, she heard, very faintly, sounds outside.
Horsemen again.
A shiver ran through her body.
Then, there was a mighty knocking on the outer door.
It was like the sound of a judgement.
She adjusted the seemly wimple and went to meet whoever it might be; she was pale, unknowing, ready.

There was the steward with his twisted arm, gesticulating, vainly barring the way to a score of armed knights.
Their grouped presence made the doorway dark, their plumes wavered in the April breeze.
The foremost brushed aside the gibbering steward and entered.
He was tall.
The light behind him hid his face but she knew him.
Ah, she knew him.
Tethered near the staircase where she stood were John’s two wolfhounds.
They were old, but more savage than ever.
Her hand went to their collars.
She bent, whispered into the pricked ears, smelled the meaty tang of their breath, and struck off their chains.
They leaped, roaring, straight for the tall figure who advanced so steadily.

Quickly he stripped his gauntlet and extended his fingers to the hounds and spoke.
What he said she never knew, but the hounds became gentle, submissive and dropped their muzzles.
To see her weapons thus blunted filled her with fury, new, necessary, warming.
He came towards her, doffing his helm.
Yes, she knew him.
She spoke first, trembling with loathing;

‘My lord of Warwick.’

Unhurriedly he bowed and straightened so that he towered above her.
He looked older, grimmer, but was otherwise the same as at Eltham.

‘Dame Grey,’ he said.
The large brilliant eyes encompassed her, rage-less, calmer than she.
She looked over his shoulder and saw the knot of armed men who accompanied him walking the Hall, obviously appraising its trappings.
One of them fingered the Goliath tapestry.
She said in a cold incredulous voice: ‘What means this intrusion?’

‘Your dogs are fierce, Dame Grey,’ said Warwick calmly.
‘And your manners are no better than I remember them.
Is it not customary to offer refreshment to guests?’

‘Uninvited guests?’
she said violently.
She saw then that the steward, obviously intimidated, had given orders already; Renée came, white-faced, bearing a flagon of wine and cups.
The last of the Rhenish, thought Elizabeth furiously.
May it choke this Yorkist swine.
Warwick poured wine into two hanaps.

‘Will you not drink, Dame?’
he said.
She took the cup he held, saw his eyes on her shaking hand.
Rage, my lord, not fear, she wanted to say, and bit her lip against it.

‘Pleasure yourself, sir,’ she said shortly.
‘Then do me the goodness …’

Her eyes went again to the soldiers who milled about the Hall.
They were examining the furniture.
The hounds were growling softly, and Warwick’s voice was mixed up in the growl.

‘I come to acquaint you with the fortunes of England.
You should know, Dame Grey, that York’s cause is utterly triumphant.
We have crushed the madwoman.
That French canker in England’s heart is excised at last.
I have set Edward of March on England’s throne.
At the battles of Mortimers Cross and Towton, that proud prince was victorious.
Dame Elizabeth–’ here, the coldness of his voice was replaced by exaltation – ‘we have a new King.
King Edward the Fourth, may God preserve him for ever!’

Renée was serving the soldiers with wine; they laughed, they tickled her chin, but at Warwick’s words all their mirth vanished.
They raised their cups devoutly and drank deep.
Elizabeth heard her own voice, asking after Queen Margaret, King Henry.

‘The Frenchwoman has fled to Scotland, with her bastard whelp,’ said Warwick brutally.
‘His Grace King Henry is in London, little better than a drooling idiot.
Edward of March is King.
And you, my lady, are to forfeit this manor to the Crown.’

He went on, saying that she had profited herself well in her marriage to the dead Lancastrian knight.
He told her that her father and brother had tasted his tongue at Calais, being but mean squires and knaves, unfit to have language of princes, such as he, Warwick, and Salisbury and York, God assoil their murdered souls … And all this might well have been left unsaid, for she heard none of it.
His previous sentence had drawn all the breath from her body.
Her face, reflected in the polished wine-cup, was yellowish-grey as she stared at it.
Even Warwick saw the change in her; he said, more kindly:

‘I have an escort outside to take you to Grafton Regis.
You may have your maidservant, but the others must stay to help my bailiffs with the inventory.’

Still she could not speak.
They were taking down the Goliath tapestry.
Four men staggered under its jewelled weight.
They rolled it like a corpse; Warwick watched them.
‘Forfeit to the Crown,’ he said, as if in explanation.
Then, holding up his wine-cup.
‘Come, Dame Grey!
Drink a toast to better days!
Will you salute King Edward the Fourth?’

Deeply in his eyes she looked, and the brilliant pupils flickered for a moment as if she had struck him.
Then she turned her hanap upside down so that the wine streamed out and splashed his boots.

‘Dame, dame,’ said Warwick, his voice thickly outraged.
‘Did you think it wise to make an enemy of me?’

He had said it before, at Eltham.
Had she married Sir Hugh, none of this would have happened.
She would have known no love, no happiness, no despair.
Bereft, she said the one thing that could wound his chivalry.
Out of her humiliation it came, and found its mark.

‘I will go then, and make ready.
All my black gowns.
Do you, my lord, think it brave to persecute widows?’

While the dark flush still bloomed on his neck, she curtseyed, insultingly low.
Then, small and upright, she ascended the stairs.
Behind her came the sound of Bradgate being stripped to the bones.

She seated herself before her mirror.
Her hatred uncoiled like one of the serpents that lie sleeping for centuries to arise at their appointed time.
She breathed like a runner over many leagues, like a woman in the throes of love, or labour, or madness.
Her lips were stiff.
She watched the mirrored ghostly face; it stared her out.

‘Grief, misfortune and tragedy attend them for ever,’ she said softly.

And the mirrored face was that of Melusine, the serpent.
Melusine the beautiful.
Melusine the accursed, who, with all her ancient force, now rose to damn the House of York.

They reached Grafton in two days.
Renée and the baby went in a litter; Elizabeth, spurning comfort and setting a wild pace, rode her old sorrel, and Thomas jounced at her saddle bow.
Warwick’s escort were completely silent, like wraiths in harness, eyeless and anonymous behind closed visors.

Jacquetta of Bedford was waiting.
She wasted no words; she chivvied Elizabeth’s weeping sisters to their lessons and sent the little boys to the nursery.
She went then with Elizabeth to the private solar, where she took her daughter in her arms, hiding Elizabeth’s face against her heart.

The still-beautiful eyes grew large in powerful thought.
The lips moved comfortingly.
Now
, the eyes said.
As I forecast.
This knight of hers, who was naught, has played his part and is gone.
She is despoiled of possessions, also naught, compared with what will be.
The time is now, the way is open for our heritage, our destiny among the stars.

She is fairer even than I was, and Edward of March is a lecherous young fool.

Now
I can begin.

The Rose came to London, full royally riding.

Two archbishops of England they crowned

the Rose King.

Almighty Lord!
save the Rose, and give him

thy blessing.

Edward IV’s Coronation Song: Anon
.

King Edward the Fourth awoke early on a fine summer’s morning.
He was tickled out of a pleasant dream by the sun’s rays probing a chink in the bedcurtains.
For some moments he lay stretching his long limbs and trying to recapture the dream’s fleeting savour, but it was already gone, where all dreams go, back into a world of false joy.
None the less, its essence was sweet enough to bring a smile to the King’s face, a radiance that passed over the strong chin and sensual mouth until it reached the blue eyes and lineless forehead.
He stretched himself to the full until his six feet four inches were taut and glowing; he flung out one hand to caress the damask sheet beside him.
Now, in warm and sensuous morning, was the time to welcome a woman’s body with searching fingers.
The bed’s other half was barren, however, so he abandoned these thoughts.
He moved his golden brow into the narrow path of sunlight and lay still.
Youth and strength bubbled up in an almost unbearable flood.
He was King of England and Ireland, and, more significantly, he was twenty-one years old.

Beyond his curtained feet he could hear his esquires snoring.
They whistled and groaned; his lips twitched in amusement.
Sluggards all!
He would have them out hunting, straight after Mass.
The sombre courtiers too; he would see them horsed and running through briars and bogs, after fox or boar or stag, consummating his own life-lust in their discomfort.
He bore them no ill-will, though; he loved them.
They had earned his love, through their loyalty to York.
They were in the main older than he.
He thought on them briefly; Chancellor George Neville, Bishop of Exeter, a powerful, strong-spoken man; John Tiptoft, Constable of England, with his bloody-humoured dedication to duty; Lord Hastings; the Chancellor’s brothers, John Neville, Marquis of Montagu, faithful and fierce, and Richard, Earl of Warwick.
Warwick, the King’s protector and mentor.
He who had cloven stoutest during the last few perilous years, and who, by his own acknowledgment had set the crown upon the sovereign’s head.

Yes.
He loved Warwick, no question of that.
By force of arms, by strategy and determination, and by a modicum of luck, Warwick had achieved for York’s son what York himself had failed to do.
Edward was grateful.
Yet his sleepy smile faded a trifle when he remembered that he had promised Warwick an audience in the State Chamber that morning.
This would undoubtedly delay the hunting expedition.
Concourse with Warwick was inevitably a lengthy affair; matters of state and policy were all meat for his painstaking discussion and advice sprang readily to his lips, as if he still considered Edward his pupil.
God’s Blessed Lady!
thought Edward suddenly.
I am the King!
Now pupil can bid master come and go!

Although there were facets in Warwick which brought out all Edward’s obstinacy, which could be considerable, they were joined by blood.
Family ties (the King’s mother, Cicely Neville, was sister to Warwick’s father, the dead Salisbury) and the sword had brought them closer than brothers.
In hard weather and pitiless conditions they had achieved the impossible.
Warwick had embraced the future king, a fierce, fatherly embrace, after the battles of Towton Field in Yorkshire and Mortimers Cross in Herefordshire.
Mortimers Cross: Edward’s face sobered as he recalled his vision there.
He had scarcely believed it, then; even now he found it incredible.
But others had seen it too.
In thought, he was back in the battle tent, rising on the morning which, had he but known it, would give him victory.
Victory over the French whore, her bastard son and Henry, that barren twig of Lancaster.
He had staggered, sick with cold and sleep, through the tent-flaps, his harness, as he put it on, like pieces of burning ice.
His heart was low, not through fear but at the prospect of another day’s march, snatched meals, hurried decisions, frustration.
Then, more from habit than grace, he looked towards heaven, and saw – three suns.
Not one, but three!
The men-at-arms, at whom he clutched, crying of his discovery, had seen them too.
They swore it.
Shattered, inspired, he looked so long upon the fiery triumvirate that it remained imprinted on his eyeballs for hours afterwards.
Throughout that day, when nothing could go awry, the day that became truly and irrevocably his.

Blessed be God who sent that sign.
He muttered it, lying naked and warm in the great bed, whose hangings bore witness to the miracle, being embroidered with his new device, the
rose en soleil
.
A rose within a sun in splendour, for was he not acclaimed the Rose of Rouen, place of his birth?
At his coronation (a hurried affair, with less magnificence than he would have wished) they presented him with an anthem versed accordingly by which he had been deeply moved.
He was the White Rose incarnate, the only Rose.
So warming were these thoughts that his fleeting twinge of impatience at Warwick’s ceaseless counselling vanished.

Just then, something unknown touched off an echo of his lost dream.
There had been a woman’s face, not young, but fair.
The lips had moved constantly, and he had struggled vainly to catch at some vital intelligence.
Watching those red lips with the lines like parentheses around them, he had felt a queer lift of excitement.
He had seen the woman before, actually in waking hours, and her speech then had been equally compelling.
Always drawn to older women, he could look on this one strangely without lust, but with a deeper fascination, as if her unheard words held the mystery of life.
Who the devil was she?
He scratched the night’s gold growth on his chin.
Recollection came flooding.
He spoke aloud and laughed, and his esquires awakened hastily.

‘My lady of Bedford!
Certes, the lady Jacquetta!’

Pleased, he equated the dream and its reason.
Only yesterday he had been re-reading the letter from that same lady, one dated the spring of two years earlier, in which she begged a royal pardon for her husband, herself, and the whole Woodville family.
He had sent for this Lancastrian lady straightaway, thinking to rebuke her for her years of treachery.
To follow the example of Warwick at Calais, when he had railed at Sir Richard Woodville and the young Anthony, calling them knaves unfit to speak with those of the blood.
And Jacquetta had come, very cool, modestly dressed, to confound him at his palace of Westminster.

It was not only her eloquence but something in her eyes that lingered on her mouth.
An air worn by soothsayers; a mystical immunity.
A warning to cherish her.
Whatever it was, before the audience was half done he found himself granting a pardon to all Woodvilles everywhere, and moreover, bestowing upon Jacquetta of Bedford an annual stipend of 300 marks, with 100 livres in advance.
The fathomless eyes had warmed like the red embers of a gypsy-fire.
Gracefully she vowed her duty.
Before leaving she had said, turning to gaze at his antlered trophies on the wall:

‘There is good hunting at Grafton, your Grace.
In Whittlebury Forest the boar excels.
We would deem it honour…’

Bowing those eyes, that mouth, in a deep obeisance, she had left the words trailing mid-air, together with her perfume, musk and jasmine.

He had not spoken of this to Warwick, who would rage at the hated name of Woodville.
Yet he had fully intended, one day, to disclose his reason for distributing this bounty.
He had not disclosed it; because there
was
no reason.
The Duchess’s eyes had guided his hand, his seal, had left him ruefully baffled.
But what had she told him in the dream?
More and more he longed to know.

As the esquires drew back the curtains and bowed, sleep still cracking their joints, he recalled that he had never taken up the Duchess’s invitation.
Very soon after it had been extended, Margaret of Anjou had set about keeping him busy again.
What a dance that vixen had led them, with her capture of Alnwick and Bamburgh, with her Scottish rebels piping for the King of England’s head.
Daft Harry had been with her again, doubtless singing and talking to himself, as he had been discovered after the last battle of St.
Albans, with its frightening rout.
The tide had turned though, no doubt of it, although Margaret still hissed from the shallows.
This was probably what Warwick wished to discuss.
More arrays, more deploying of force.
England must be kept secure from the swords of France and Lancaster.

The henchmen knelt, and Edward muttered a benediction, while swift visions crossed his inner sight.
His father’s head on Micklegate.
His own pledge, under the starry banners of Christ in Majesty at Fotheringhay, to avenge that pitiful straw-crowned face, the staring eyes of young Edmund, the blood-stained cheeks of Salisbury.
He had honoured them all in a Month’s Mind ceremony of remembrance; his brothers, Richard and George had been present.
Tall, arrogant George and poor sickly Dickon, who was another reason to cherish Warwick.
Dickon was Warwick’s sole charge, and now learned the ways of urbanity and nurture at the Earl’s bleak castle of Middleham.

He sprang from bed, and the gentlemen rushed upon him with rosewater and herbals.
A lutanist appeared as if from the air, singing a sacred summer lay.
From a side table pages removed the Night Livery, the bread and wine placed in case the king should hunger.
And still the dream’s essence remained with Edward, giving him good temper and brilliance.
He smacked the esquires on the back, tossed the morning cup of ale down his throat.
They dressed him and held the mirror for his approval: satin and velvet in loyalty’s blue, with the collar of York, suns and roses alternating in beaten gold.
He shone, spare and robust as a god.
He liked the image.

Singing and praying, they preceded him to the chapel.
Warwick was already in his stall with others of the blood and the principal councillors.
Edward strode the nave, inclining his head to some visiting Burgundian knights.
They in their turn were admiring the new-painted walls and roof of blue and gold, the repaired rood-screen in holy arbutus wood.
Edward, appalled by the dinginess of Daft Harry’s court, had made many changes.
He strode on and the Burgundians saluted him.
To Burgundy he owed his brothers’ lives.
He had said so to Warwick, and strangely, the Earl’s response had been lukewarm.
For Warwick had lorded it in Calais and, Edward was privily informed, had corresponded with Louis of France.
And Louis would strip and burn Burgundy without a second thought.
Yes, Warwick was loyal, but also powerfully ambitious.
Kneeling on a gold-cloth prayer stool, Edward mused on loyalty.
The Sanctus bell rang, he crossed his breast and thought: Warwick would never betray me.
He has a stake in England, and he has charge of my youngest brother.
He is Plantagenet.
Yet he dubs himself a maker of kings and this new-made king must rule, with or without his approval.
The choir’s voice, like glittering rain, trembled among the gold and blue.
And from somewhere lost and far came the old mysterious echo: ‘There is good hunting at Grafton, your Grace.’

The King shivered, blown by an alien wind.
He lifted his face from the kiss bestowed on the Book, and looked about him.
Nobles surrounded him, their lips moving gently in holiness.
Women, too.
One, though missing not a word of the breviary, kept her beseeching eyes fixed upon him, and under that look all his fair humour fled.
Dame Elizabeth Lucey.
Ah yes, my dame.
Once you were all I ever desired.
He glowered at her over his missal, as if to send the words winging across the aisle.
Dame, your husband may have died in battle for my cause, but the arms you offer bring weariness, where once there was joy.
Can you never let me go?
Somewhere, nurtured by his bounty, were two children.
Dame Lucey was lovely, but so wanton, so easy.
Once her body had pleased him; now it was a familiar manor, its turrets blasted, its standards fallen.
And still her eyes reproached him daily, as surely as the incense, wafting, threatened him with a royal sneeze.