The King's Grey Mare (22 page)

She sent Renée away.
‘I will attend my lady.’
Whispering up and down, like a guttering candle, she ministered to Elizabeth.
That face must know no blemish.
She took two small vials, the contents of which she applied to her daughter’s skin.

‘
Lac Virginis
.’
It was an incantation.
‘Since time unremembered it has been used.’
The potion tightened on Elizabeth’s face.
Litharge of lead, ground on marble into white vinegar with sandiver and settled for a day and a night, filtered into two waters for the application.
‘To make ladies beautiful,’ said the Duchess with a devilish laugh.
‘And used by Queens.’
The strong hands massaged, hurting cheekbones too near the skin.

He came at noon, full of golden humour.
Among the sweet airs of spring they walked, in Grafton’s little pleasaunce.
They came to an arbour hung with the green promise of summer.
There, he loosened her wimple; he was clumsy as a colt.
The silver-gilt hair fell over his hands like a wild river.
He began to caress her, his fingers straying to the bounds of propriety.
He was so young and clean; she could imagine how others had succumbed.
She stared him out with her look of lucent virtue; she rose to pluck a flower.
She laughed gently, sighed and withdrew, melted the next moment, only a second later to become adamantine.
All afternoon she played a dangerous game, watching his face pale and the muscles of his arms and thighs quiver like those of a man with palsy.
This great, royal fish!
She played him on her line.
Yet he was stronger this day, more stubborn.
It had been folly to bring him to the arbour.
Away from the house, his fire kindled and blazed.
Each long embrace grew more uncontrollable.
Her diversions failed; he would not let her rise.
His eyes, seen closely, were like an animal’s, sick and pleading.

‘Bessy, why do you torment me?’
he gasped.
‘God’s Blood, that I should be in this fire.
Do you not know-’ he shook her fiercely – ‘that I am the King of England!’

‘And I your loyal subject, Sire.’

He choked on wrath.
‘Plague on your loyalty!
I would have your love.’

Pinioned, she answered: ‘I love you as my King,’ the words cut off by a savage kiss that brought blood into her mouth.
To quench the pain, she imagined it to be Warwick’s blood.
Edward’s face was against her hair.
‘Love me as a man, not a King … eight months!’
He gave a crazed laugh.
‘Eight months, in which I have had time to fight against your erstwhile mistress,
la maudite
Margaret – all the while thinking, dreaming of you.
Bessy, I would never desert you.
You would be cherished unto death.
Only give me your body and your heart!’

She heard her gown tear.
He would ravish her now, and all lost.
She raised one desperate hand and struck him in the face.
The next instant he had drawn his knife.
Its jewelled hilt flirted with the sun, prisms of blue and gold and green.
He set the blade against her throat.

‘Yield to me,’ he said softly.

A witless laugh trembled within her.
She looked into his eyes, riding out their blue storm.
The Yorkists killed John – now a Yorkist king kills me.
The blade’s edge was beginning to burn.
She was unready for death; there was so much to gain, Bradgate, jewels, vengeance.
And yet she found herself smiling, as if the smile had been painted on by an imp.

He flung down the knife and sprang up.
His towering shadow blotted the sun.
He cursed her, calling her wanton, bloodless, jade, a whore that should be a nun, though there was no cloister devious enough to hold her.
A cheating favour-seller, master and mistress of cruelty and child of Hell.
So he railed, while Mars romped in the ascendant.
He turned to leave, looking back once, turkey-red, his eyes bloodshot, saying:

‘Keep your cursed chastity, Madame.
You will not see Edward Plantagenet again.’

She watched him go, riding with savage spurs and oaths for his escort.
A qualm of fright gripped her.
She stood for a little while, chewing her bruised lips, then walked slowly towards the manor.
The Duchess was at her window, watching with a little smile the fading smudge of dust on the horizon.

‘The King has left his cloak,’ she said.
She moved back into the dimness of the solar, and lifted the heavy rich velvet into her arms.
All round the collar hairs clung, gleaming like gold-dust.
With infinite care Jacquetta plucked them until she had a fistful of shining booty.
Over a little flame, a dish of tallow heaved.
She watched it and her smile stretched into a snarl.
Plenty there, to shape into a gold-headed King.

And she was a craftswoman, she would make this time a better image than the crude Warwick, who lay in his secret coffer, the iron band eating at his vitals.
She stole a swift glance at the Earl’s spellcast image, before bending to her more special work.

Within five days, the King returned to Grafton.

From the kitchen where lately there had been shouts and snatches of song, came only silence.
A cask of spiced mead had been broached for the royal escort, the anonymous men employed for the King’s secret forays to Grafton.
They had drunk and now lay, oblivious, while their sovereign, supine upon Elizabeth’s bed, covered his eyes and groaned softly.

He had touched no wine, but his brain was on fire.
He could see the flames; they lapped the pillows, and his upthrown hands had gloves of fire.
Desire was stilled for a space, burned by these phantom flames.
Faces flowered about him, lambent and terrifying: Warwick, arrogantly ordering his marriage with the Savoy princess; his own mother, the Rose of Raby, beautiful, widowed, spiritual, shaking her head sadly through a mist of fire.
Another face, saintly, defiled.
A tearstreaked, forgiving face.
Eleanor, my love
.
He tried to say it; flames licked his tongue, and the name emerged bewitched.

‘Elizabeth!’

‘I am here, sweet lord.’

She knelt by the bed, crushing down terror at the sight of his dementia.
An hour earlier she had found courage enough to rail at her mother, saying that they would all be hanged in chains.
For the King was ill after the strange meal Jacquetta had prepared, the herbal drink stirred in a special way.

‘Christ’s Blood, madam, he is dying!’

The Duchess took up the bowl that had contained the
amanita muscaria
, its dark fungoid taste masked by basil and cinnamon.
‘Go up,’ she said calmly.
‘Ask him what you would.
He will gainsay you nothing.’

So Elizabeth knelt, and took his hand.
Down the whole of his body desire rekindled unbearably at her touch.
Eleanor faded, his mother faded, and Warwick turned inside out with a sharp ‘phut!’
vanishing into blackness like a spent firecracker.
He had enjoyed the mushroom.
An Eastern speciality, she had called it, that old woman of his dream.

She had ministered tenderly to him, topping his hanap with a thick liquid.
‘Jupiter’s brew,’ she said.
It was so sweet that he, used to the indulgence of all sweetness, had found it irresistible.
It was mixed with the scents of Elizabeth’s body, that aroma …

‘Vervain, my lord.’
Her voice washed around him, each word a cascade of glittering flame.
‘To strengthen the intellect and nervous humours.’
(And to restore lust, even in the grave.) ‘Ruled by Venus, for merrymaking.’

He tried to laugh.
‘I’m far from merry today.
So weary …’

‘You are Edward,’ she said gently.
‘Edward Plantagenet.’
Of the third son of the third Edward, and destined to be mine
.
She watched his speedwell eyes, tiny and defenceless as a sparrow’s.
She suffered his limp hand upon her breast.
‘I would have your love,’ he said, like a child about to cry.
He moved weakly so that there was room beside him on the bed.
‘If this is sin, I’ll take and eat the sin for your soul’s good.
There!
I offer you not only my love, but absolution.
Lie with me.’
She drew back only a little, keeping her hand in his.
The next words were Jacquetta’s, learned by rote.

‘My lord,’ she said steadily, ‘if I am not good enough to be your Queen, I am too good to be your leman.
The choice is yours.’
She bowed her head.

‘So,’ he said after a moment.
‘You would wed me, Bessy, and be Queen of England.’

She could tell nothing from his faint voice, whether he were angry, amused, or incredulous.
She stole a look; his eyes were half closed so that a thread of white showed under the lids.
Suddenly ice-cold and commanding, she answered:

‘My lord, I am not worthy to be your Queen, but my body is pure.
I will be no man’s harlot.
But to be your loving wife is a dream I have cherished, a dream far beyond me, your Grace.
Sweet Ned!’

Out of nowhere came John’s face, tenderly, wearily smiling.
O Jesu!
Let me hurt my lord of Warwick sore!
She swallowed real tears and continued, dicing on each word.

‘Everywhere your Grace goes, my spirit follows.
I think of the sweets of love, with the Rose of Rouen …’

‘You think of them!’
he said drunkenly.
‘Oh God!
that you could only be my Queen!’

Very timidly she said, watching the young reed bend: ‘I know, your Grace.
There are nobles who would cry shame at our union, being as I am so low.’
She leaned closer so that the vervain at her breast and armpits drifted to his nostrils.
‘I am not ignorant.
Your Grace needs the royal blood of Europe to preserve his ancient line, and …’

‘Christ!’
he said despairingly.
‘Would that it were as simple!
I would say hang my nobles and advisers!
Bessy, I would wed you tomorrow, save that …’

In the breath-holding silence, she stroked his hand.
‘Save that I am married already,’ he said dully.

Time ceased, gathered its wits, and moved on.
Her first thought was: so all is lost.
Even my mother could not foresee this blight upon our aim.
All the months’ gruesome wrestling, the outrageous play for naught; the banishment of Jocelyne, to whom I could have grown close; the nightmares and tears … She looked upon the King who lay now as if in sleep, and her dismay yielded to rage.
Willingly she could have killed him.
A heavy pillow over the stupefied face … they would say that he had suffered a seizure and rolled among the bedcovers.
Her fingers stole out and wound themselves in a bolster’s lace edge, gripping it until the blood thrust from beneath her nails.
All for nothing!

He said, with closed eyes.
‘I was crazy to marry her.
She was chaste, like you, Bessy, and would have me no other way.
It has been a secret for three years.
She has no royal blood, but – her name is Eleanor Butler, daughter of Talbot …’

‘I knew Lord Talbot,’ she said with difficulty … ‘He was killed at Guienne.
One of Marguerite’s chief officers.’

He smiled.
‘Yes!
Lancastrian, the whole family.
Nell was so saintly, so good.
Sudely, curse him, was trying to cheat her of her estates.
She was widowed, she came suing to me for restoration.
And we were wed.’

‘You say it’s secret?’

‘Only my lady mother knows.
Well – she and a very few more.
Bishop Stillington, he bound us together.
And the nuns of Norwich.
Eleanor is in a convent there.
It was better so.’

Yes, when you wearied of her, she thought bitterly.
And this knowledge challenged her to wish the campaign begun anew.
He would not tire of me!
Did Raymond weary of Melusine?
She took Edward’s hand and kissed it.

‘I shall guard your Grace’s confidence with my blood, and pray for you daily.
Even though we never meet again.’