The King's Grey Mare (29 page)

The tiny pimple worried her, and the feeling of unease returned.
Lady Berners brought the swaddled infant for her to bless good night.
Then the women dispersed, leaving her within a silken frame of candles that gleamed upon the massed white roses round her couch.

Westminster Clock struck seven, followed fractionally later by other, distant sounds, for Westminster, fittingly, was always first.
Sweet chimes, deep voices all over London, tongued the hour.
The Council meeting would be ended; in truth, it would have been over for some time.
She rose and walked about to calm a ridiculous apprehension.
Edward would be here soon; possibly one of his more garrulous ministers, Hastings perhaps, had kept him.
Then she heard voices, coming faintly from outside the thick oak door.

‘For the love of God, let me pass!’

She clenched her hands.
That was Anthony, sounding full of frenzy.
She heard the guard telling her brother, with firm reverence, that the Queen had retired.
A halberd, struck aside, clanged against the door.
She went, opened, and confronted the two pikemen and her brother.
All three knelt.

‘Let Lord Scales enter,’ she said.

He came in swiftly, white-faced.
‘Your Grace,’ he gasped.

‘Anthony.
What’s amiss?’

His hands were trembling as he caught her sleeve.
A little hound, sharing his fear, slunk at his side.

‘Your Grace … Bess.
I had to warn you.
The King is angry.’

Her mouth suddenly dry, she said: ‘What have you done?’
thinking: how can he have offended Edward?
Only last month he was made Governor of the Isle of Wight, and Knight of the Garter … Edward loves him.

His eyes darted about.
‘Nay, madam.
’Tis none of my doing – but yours.’

‘Mine!’

Then she heard the King’s steps in the corridor, felt them too, for they shook the oak.
Also another noise, a queer buzzing drone of fury.
Outside, the halberds slithered apart, and the King, muttering in his throat like a madman, burst into the room.
His face was crimson and stained with tears.
He took two paces towards Elizabeth, saw Anthony, and flung out a pointing arm towards the door.

‘Leave us, my lord,’ he said.
But Anthony hesitated, his face more ashen than before.

‘Leave us!’
cried Edward, choking.
The hound crept near his boots and he kicked it viciously.
Anthony gave a low obeisance, caught up the dog and backed out of the chamber.
Elizabeth felt her heart pounding, the milk pulsing in her breasts.
There will be a sick baby tomorrow, I must appoint a wetnurse, she thought with wild irrelevance.

Edward was looking at her with a terrible expression, of contempt and even hatred.
Above all, with the look of a small boy whose favourite toy has been wantonly smashed.

‘My lord, Edward, my lord,’ she whispered.

He made a harsh muffled sound, half oath, half sob.
He picked up the first object to hand, a crystal vase containing a single rose, and threw it violently so that it smashed into a million slivers.
Then he walked blindly away and buried his face in the bedcurtains.
Timidly she approached him and he wheeled to face her, eyes blinded by more tears.
To him she was a blur of blue and green and silver.
A red thread coursed down her cheek where a flying splinter had struck it.
He raised his hand to destroy the blue, the green, the silver and the red, and heard her faint voice.

‘Your Grace I am but lately up from child.’

The hand dropped.
She thought it prudent to kneel, laying her hand upon his embroidered shoe.

‘My lord,’ she said softly and quickly.
‘I do not know my fault; tell me, so that I may amend it.’

He was like the Edward of Grafton, babbling witlessly, laughing and crying low.
He swore on the saints, on God’s Body, God’s Mother.
The storm gave way to his dreadful accusing voice.

‘Why, lady, why?
Was it not crime enough to steal the Seal for your own purpose?
But to take Desmond’s life away!
Desmond, who never did a knavish thing, or an act that was not knightly … Desmond, my truest creature in all the world, whom I loved like a brother!
Blessed Christ, lady!
You chose the right weapon with which to wound me!
But why?
Why?’

She must answer; silence in this moment was folly.
Her mind rippled like a silvery fish through excuse after excuse, flicking them aside as likely to feed wrath.
All the while she thought: I repent naught.
I did not know the King loved Desmond so much as this.
Yet it is right he died.
He mocked me.

‘Men said Desmond was a traitor to your Grace,’ she whispered.
It was the best, the only answer.

Edward’s lips curled.

‘Men
said
’ he repeated with contempt.
‘Tell me then, lady, were his infant sons traitors too?
What evil were they brewing in their schoolroom, that they should also die?
Do you know, madam, what your hirelings did?
They took them from bed, those two little knaves, and stabbed them!
Pray Jesu, madam, you never know the grief that is their mother’s now!’
He groaned aloud.
‘The Butcher did his work – I cannot punish Tiptoft, for he acted under your command in Ireland.’
He turned from her.
‘Go!
I’ll not look upon you.’

Suddenly, coldly self-justifying, she said: ‘Desmond was hot of tongue, my lord.
He spoke words unfitting for a prince’s ear.
He called me …’

She said the unforgivable nickname, hating it even in her own mouth.
Then she saw the fresh contempt in Edward’s eyes.

‘Madame,’ he said, heavily sarcastic, ‘if I were not insulted, neither should you be.
’Twas a jest …’ His face crumpled again.
‘Tom loved a jest.’

He wept bitterly.
Elizabeth, cold with dread, poured upon him a spate of pleading, promises.
She swore it was for his sake that she had acted, that she could not bear to hear their love defiled, not even on the lips of a friend.
All these pleas dropped like stones into the torrent of his grief, and left no trace.
Finally he faced her again, eyes shadowed with bitterness.

‘I fear, Madame,’ he said slowly, ‘I very much fear, Bessy, that you have become unkind.’

In these almost charitable words there was terror.
She would rather he raged again, broke more furnishings, or struck her.
The candles were still wavering gently, the white roses banked to perfume their love-pleasure.
Was it too late?
Yet the weapon of her body seemed blunted.
He looked only at her eyes.

‘I’ll leave you now, lady,’ he said, after a while.
‘And I advise you to spend your gold on Masses for the soul of Desmond and his boys.
Expect me when I choose; it will not be soon.’

Wild, imploring, she said: ‘My lord, you have not eaten.
You must not ride again without at least a void of wine …’ She picked up a little silver bell.

‘I’ll not eat or drink with you, lady’, said Edward soberly.
‘Get to the chapel and pray for Desmond.
As for my other pleasures, I’ll take them elsewhere.’

Never had he been unfaithful, so closely had she bound him.
Now the chain was breaking, and this brought more fear.
Was this the moment?
The moment when Raymond, hearing that his heirs, the sons of Melusine, had butchered one another, cried: ‘
Begone, odious serpent!
Contaminator of my noble race!’
?

She held out her hands, but he was already at the door.
As if he cursed her, he turned and said,

‘I go, to spend my time with a lady who is kinder than you.
And should I sire a child on her, this is my will: that the child shall be brought into your household, to attend you.
If it is a boy, it shall be named Thomas, in Desmond’s memory.
If it is a girl, it shall be named Grace, to compensate for your own gracelessness.
Whatever it is, it shall be a constant reminder of your evil work this day.’

As he closed the door, he saw her, wraithlike, hands clasped, head still high, and he thought of Elizabeth Lucey.
Silly, clinging she might be, but incapable of such acts as the queen had wrought.
Then he thought of the woman, lately admired on his progress.
There had been promise in those green eyes, compassion on that mouth.
Anything, to take his pain away.
The sun was not quite down.
He would ride from the City.

‘Our most good and gracious Queen Elizabeth, Sister unto this our Fraternity of our blessed Lady and Mother of Mercy, Saint Mary Virgin, Mother of God.’

This was her title, bestowed by the Skinners’ Guild, who had loaded her shoulders with the pelts of a thousand small beasts.
Bright stippled ermine, marten and miniver, she wore them over an azure gown, edged and latched with gold.
Here at Fotheringhay she was glad of the furs’ warmth.
Even in high summer, the ancient castle seemed exposed to the north winds, while the dank breath of the marshes pervaded every room.
She stood on the river bank beside the sluggish Nene, and a breeze rippled and flattened the reeds, and her furs, with a silent, wandering hand.
She watched the barges carrying the King and his entourage towards the landing stage.
They were gold and silver, and all along the prow and sides the Sun in Splendour merged with the White Rose.
Standing in the foremost craft Edward towered like a pagan sea-prince behind the curved figurehead shaped like the falcon of York.
As the barge drew near, she could see that he was happy.
His humours were as fair as on the day he left London to gather an army for his latest campaign.

It was a year since the quarrel, and slightly less since he had returned, strangely sombre, from his unknown leman.
That very night he had taken Elizabeth again with a hating passion, resulting in yet another daughter, Cicely.
He had not been wroth at this, and had jested, surveying his baby daughters: ‘It takes a man to get a girl!
And by God’s Lady, I am three times a man!’
He had gone down in person to Chepe to buy her a necklace and girdle in gem-starred gold; had heaped new honours upon Anthony and Thomas, her eldest son.
Staring at the barges, she saw caskets, fardels containing silver and jewels sitting cheek by jowl with the royal library and a cage of singing birds.
So he was bringing more gifts, priceless relics from the shrines of Norwich.
She caressed one hand with the other, feeling her diamonds ice and the shape of a pigeon’s blood ruby.
The costly fur blew about her face.
Yes, Edward was hers again.

Close by a stern voice spoke, turning her jubilation to impatience.

‘He has dallied too long, that son of mine.’

Proud Cis!
Be still, arrogant old dame, thought Elizabeth.
Yet she turned modestly to acknowledge the presence of the King’s mother, that unbending matriarch in whose honour the latest infant had been named.
Still wearing her widow’s weed, unjewelled, ageless and potent, she stood gazing at the King.
Fotheringhay was her demesne; at her waist a vast bundle of keys made music in recognition of the fact.
Unease was bred of the old Duchess’s presence.
Every time the bowed eyes met hers, Elizabeth imagined their accusation:
Unlawful Queen.
Remember Eleanor Butler!
No question that the Duchess would ever speak of Eleanor – the succession of York was too precious.
Yet always in her mind there was that discomfiting hint of a secret sorely kept.

Together they knelt as Edward leaped on to the little quay.
He raised and kissed them, then his approving eye raked the lines of battle-tents set up in the meadow, and the milling hundreds of waged men who had come to his service, in preparation for the affray.
With his wife and his mother, he moved across the sward where blown dandelions and buttercups formed a shimmer of misted gold, like froth on metheglin.
He talked excitedly of the latest rumours reaching from his northern territories, and seemed amused by the audacity of a nameless rebel.

‘Rising against
me
!’
he cried.
‘Some poxy peasant too cowardly to show his colours.
Believe me, madam my mother, and mark well, Bessy.
He shall be fried in his own fat.’