The King's Grey Mare (23 page)

She saw then that he wept, one tear trickling from each closed eye, balm to her savage sense of loss and failure.
There was a rap on the door; Jacquetta entered, borne on a strong breeze of power, gliding over the polished boards as if on air, smiling, smiling.

‘Is my lord refreshed?’
With difficulty Edward sat up.
‘Your henchmen are without.’
She gestured to the door beyond which the escort, sick with mead, straightened their clothing.
She continued: ‘Will your Grace ride now, while it is light?’

The King wiped tears and sweat from his face and rose from the bed.
He did not answer.

‘Will your Grace bathe, then?
It’s warm for April.
I have prepared a chamber.
And then, supper and entertainment?
Dame Grey has a new song for your delight.
Whatever you desire.’

‘I thank you,’ said Edward, ashy pale.
‘I will rest here the night, lady.’

He went out, walking like an old man, to the waiting henchmen.
The.
Duchess watched him dispassionately.

‘In a short while he will be renewed.
The mushroom sent him visions – horrors mayhap.
It sometimes does.
It has weakened him like a barbed deer.’

She turned to her daughter.
‘Well?’

‘The King is married,’ said Elizabeth.

The Duchess gave a rasping laugh, and set her arm about Elizabeth’s neck.

‘You have no faith,’ she said.
‘Let him lie under our roof this night.
Do you think that any earthly bond could hold him from you?
Or you from destiny?’

A white moon stood tall in the sky to overlook the Duchess’s work.
She moved about the sleeping manor and its grounds, followed mutely by Elizabeth.
A man came to join them briefly; a pale clerk named Thomas Daunger.
Learned in orders holy and unholy, he whispered incantations as he went, for his knowledge began where Jacquetta’s skill left off.

There was blood.
Before retiring Edward had suffered a nosebleed; he had jested about it, saying that the Duchess’s strong wines caused his veins to rejoice and burst their banks.
Elizabeth begged pardon for the liquor’s treason.

‘Give me your kerchief, lord.
I will trust it to no wimplewasher.; I’ll launder it myself!’

So now the tiny gold-haired image was rosy, the tallow steaked with red like some rare precious stone.
Edward Plantagenet lay still within Jacquetta’s hands, under the moon’s white eye.
There was a black candle burning briefly, and more blood, fresh blood, caught before the scream of its small host had died away.

This was the consummation.
A night remembered by Elizabeth only in dreams or delirium.
A night where fact and fancy were so closely meshed as to be indistinguishable.

When she weakened and trembled, the Duchess fed her drops from a small blue vial, making her sight clearer and yet more treacherous.
The hot white night dragged, dry as sand, an eternity of labour and strange sounds, diffused images, voices tirelessly intoning.
Towards dawn, when it seemed that a thousand years were running out, the mother and daughter stood, beside Grafton’s little lake; Thomas Daunger had departed as silently as he had come.
Now there were two moons, one hard and bright and sinking slowly, the other like a soul palely lost beneath the water.
Between these two dead fires a light moving mist shimmered, as if the water were boiling, and with it came sights of beauty and terror: a maelstrom of fighting men, forms that sank to dissolution at the touch of Elizabeth’s eyes and renewed themselves, changed; ten thousand knights, their screaming mouths silent holes in the mist, and the cruel sting of defeat on their faces.
Images that whirled and writhed; the ghostly moon wavered as if it strove to burst the water’s skin.
In the trees an owl cried, the shriek of a murdered child.

She was afraid.
The Duchess stood, her ankles lapped by water and reeds.
The small figure of destiny lay between her hands.

‘Pray to her, daughter!’

Melusine was with them, strong, her unseen fingers tossing the mist, agitating the water.
Within herself Elizabeth felt the change begin, a hardening of thought and will and dispositions, manifesting itself in a marble chill through every vein.
She was afraid, and clung to fear as something natural and stable; she tried to call upon the Holy Name.
She was dumb and powerless, swept by a change as irrevocable as a tidal bore.

‘See!’
said the Duchess.
‘She’ll not fail us!’

Elizabeth lifted her heavy eyes.
From the lake a column of mist was rising.
It formed a shape she dared not look upon.

All over England they were raising the Maypole.
Long before the seashell dawn had cast up the day, there was movement on the roads.
Between hawthorn hedges came pedlars, jugglers, minstrels and dancers, bound for the nearest green, the nucleus of gaiety.
The cares of winter fell behind.
Eagerly the people looked forward to the virile festival, the seal of spring.
In every tree small birds sang of maying, and the travellers caught the tune, broke into gruff or warbling song, thinking of the ale, the sports of war or the flesh, the gossip.
They wore frail garlands of flowers.

Elizabeth donned her bridal gown.
She had fashioned it herself, and nights of lost sleep winked from its lucent damask, the bosom low and fringed with silver thread.
Like the day itself, it was a thing of impossible splendour.
She treated it cautiously.

She had no doubt that he would come.
Carefully, as if each thought were a bubble, she let her mind stray to their last conversation.
She had watched disbelievingly while he knelt at her feet and said the words to make her Queen of England.
She had thought: he knows not what he says.
To be sure, I must remind him…

‘The Lady Eleanor Butler.’

His eyes, raised to hers, were glazed, enthralled.
In his mind, her words were merely some echo of a life lived long ago.
He did not answer.
She said then, diffidently:

‘My lord … Earl Warwick – he mislikes my family.’

The eyes cleared, became ruthless, angry.

‘Earl Warwick is not my keeper.’

Joy sprang at this; but she was still doubtfilled; for Eleanor was a living, breathing creature, wife to this besotted man.
So she spoke her name again, gently.
He rose and took her hands.
Reverent, lust fled for the moment, he was like a shadow of the hot-breathing Edward.

‘Eleanor is with the nuns,’ he said.
‘And she is sickly, like to die… She will never leave the House of Carmelites.
She is dead to me already.
Bessy, don’t you know you are my fate?’

Incredulous joy gave her a smile like a jewel.

‘Yes,’ she whispered.
‘I am, in truth, your fate!’

Therefore he would come.
Even now he was riding, hard and desirous, having left his followers at Stony Stratford.
He would tell them he was going hunting, even though they were in the midst of an array.
A bubbling laugh escaped her, and was answered by a little sigh from Catherine, who knelt to straighten her sister’s gown.

‘You are so fair,’ she said wistfully.
She held the mirror up.
Elizabeth’s face had a delicate flush, the small red lips were full and pouting.
Her eyebrows had been fashionably plucked almost to invisibility; did this account for the change she saw in the eyes?
There was something there previously lacking.
An echo of mist and water, a fluid, sensuous brilliance that lacked all compassion.
A pitiless essence seen in the eyes of an old soul.

She called the other sisters and opened a walnut box.
Presents.
Gifts, from ‘Lord Ned’.

‘Ah, Jesu!
Will you look!’
Like small wild animals they fell upon the coffer.
There was a package addressed to each sister.
Margaret had a ruby bracelet, Anne a gold muskball; Martha and Eleanor received pearl ear-rings, Jacquetta a jewelled missal, Catherine an emerald necklace, and Mary a sapphire ring.
There was a small token packet for Elizabeth too, a harbinger of greater gifts.
She unwrapped it.
A message in his own hand lay within.

For Dame Elizabeth Grey,

Who grows more like Our Lady every day.

It was a pearl-and-enamel rosary, each pearl as large as her little finger-nail, the crucified Christ worked in red gold, the Five Wounds small rubies.
She stared at it; suddenly its beauty repelled her, and she laid it aside.
The sisters gloated, pouring their gems from hand to hand, adorning throat and fingers and ears with handfuls of light She watched them, and thought: these are the jewels of my dream, the old dream in John’s arms.
She thought on him briefly and felt little emotion.
Her mind touched on Warwick; the old rage was there, a comforting, everlasting fire.
So love had gone, and hatred remained.

The sisters knew nothing of the day’s plan.
Soon they would be sent, joyous and bemused, out into the May morning to make merry at the fair.
They would not return until tomorrow.
Ned had insisted on it.
None must know; only the Duchess and whatever clergy she might bring in to perform the ceremony.
It must be a privy matter for weeks.
Until he found the words to inform his Parliament.

‘Must
we stay from home overnight?’
Anne moved to her sister’s side, breathing the scent of her new muskball.
‘
Must
we sleep at the nunnery?
I never have a full night’s rest, thanks to their bell and prayers.
And they are always fasting.’
She rubbed her small belly comically.

‘Mother of God!’
cried Margaret; twirling her bracelet.
‘Fasting is naught fresh to us, Anne!
And to no holy purpose, either!’

Elizabeth longed to say, proudly: Soon, hunger will be a stranger to you all.
She chivvied them from the room, just as the sound of horsemen arriving drained the blood from her face and sent her into a flurry of last-minute preparation.
There was a step on the stairs, hasty, too light for the King.
Neither would the King burst into her bower so, although this one was tall and fair-haired, and swept her up into his arms, as the King might.

‘Sweet sister!’

‘Anthony!’
She kissed him, weeping, for his coming set the seal upon the day.
He twirled her about, whistled at her finery like a knavish groom, went on his knee, sprang up and kissed her again.

‘What widow’s garb is this, my sweet?
A wanton widow, by my faith, all Damascus cloth and shining like the sun.
What mischief’s this?
Whatever it is, may it prosper!’

So kind and charming was he that she broke her pledge, and told him.
His eyes grew large in disbelief, then jubilation.
There was even a kind of envy too.

‘By God!’
he said, very low.
And little more; for the first time ever she saw him speechless.

‘Tell none,’ she begged.

‘Nay, nay,’ he said slowly.
‘I’d meant to tarry a few days, but I’ll go at once, before the bridegroom … Jesu!
my mind rocks! … before the
royal
bridegroom comes.’

All gaiety gone, he knelt to her in earnest, pressing his face against the silver hem of her robe.

‘I do you homage, Madame,’ he said.
‘I salute you as Queen of England.’

‘Christ’s Blood!’
she cried.
‘Get up, fool!
Would you tempt destiny?’

He rose hastily, solemn-faced.
‘Bess,’ he said tentatively, ‘have I always been a good brother to you?’

‘Always, dear lord.’

‘Then–’ sheepishly – ‘I pray you, remember me when you come into your glory.
Despite my wife’s lineage, I have many enemies at court … a word from the Queen would ransom me from spite and hardship …’

Again she flinched from the word ‘Queen’.
Anything could happen, even to the King being killed en route to Grafton by a fall from his horse.
Yet the Duchess had bidden her be merry and confident.
She took her brother’s hand.

‘I promise,’ she said.
‘Now, go at once.’
We’ll meet again.’