The King's Grey Mare (3 page)

She would never see the Queen.
Soon she would be cooped, brooding, on Hugh’s manor, bearing the customary child a year, Hugh himself doubtless flaunting off to Jerusalem again in the service of his lordly master Warwick.
Perchance Warwick would visit her during her husband’s absence.
Odious thought!
her fancy saw Warwick inspecting her household, appointing her servants; her imagination all but endowed the unknown Warwick with horns and a cleft beard.
Tiny drops of sweat broke out on her face; she clenched her hands and wept.

Anthony came down the steps into the courtyard, an esquire following him, and grasped the waiting horse’s bridle.
The sun touched gold from his uncovered head.
Elizabeth dared not call, even with the nurse snoring behind her.
Instead she threw a rosebud down; it dropped on the horse’s saddle.
Anthony looked up at her white face and small, imploring hands.

‘Ah, sweet sister,’ he said very softly.
‘God send you good fortune.’

He rode up to the window; by stretching up he could almost touch her hand.
She glanced across the courtyard.
Most of the guard had dispersed, but three were dicing on the cobbles outside the mew.
Anthony’s esquire wandered over to join them.

‘Take me with you,’ she whispered.
‘Take me away!’
Before he could answer, she had nipped up her gown and was sitting on the sun-warmed window ledge.
Her feet hung down a yard from the horse’s ears.
Anthony’s face looked up, pale and troubled.
The cobbles seemed a long way down.
She had visions of her skull crushed, every bone in her body smashed to pieces.
Yet in that instant she jumped, slid, fell into her brother’s arms.
The horse reared in fright at the sudden burden and bolted, hooves ringing on the stones.
Anthony struggled to hold her across his saddle-bow, while she began to laugh like a madwoman.
They careered through the gate, swerved under the arch and raced across the meadow.
Anthony was swearing, calling on the saints.
Eventually he brought the horse to a bouncing halt.

‘Sweet Jesu!’
he said, rubbing a strained wrist.
‘You could have been killed!
What a fool’s game!’

They were near the water, and her secret place.
The shimmering willows seemed to listen as they argued, he shaking his head despairingly, she crying, pleading.

‘Take me away,’ she begged.
‘Grant me this one favour, and I will repay you, if it’s the last thing I do in life.’

‘Come, sweeting,’ he said, looking suddenly like a frightened child (he was little more).
‘It’s not your death.
Sir Hugh is kindly, biddable.
I doubt not you’ll have your way with him in the end.
Come,’ disentangling himself from her arms, ‘make the best of it.’

Still she sobbed and besought him.

‘Where would I hide you?’
he said uneasily.
‘I … I should get into trouble.’

She recognized from his last sentence that he was as young, as powerless as she.
She dismounted slowly into the reedy grass, her hair awry, her face drawn and miserable.

‘Go, then,’ she said dully.
‘I know you would help me if you could.’

‘Aye!’
he answered, eager to be off.
‘Saint Catherine keep you; we’ll meet again soon.’

‘Farewell,’ she said, turning away.

He gathered up his reins.
‘Bess, use our father kindly,’ he said.
‘You shamed him sorely last evening.’

She walked away, hearing the scudding hooves of his departure and his shout of farewell.
In utter resignation she descended the moist green slope to where the bank of kingcups made a pillow and the same two trout lay basking under sun-kissed water.
She sank down, curving her body beside the shady willows, and let sadness engulf her.
Then came the unmistakable feeling that she was not alone.
Someone was watching her.
A chill enveloped her as she thought of ghosts of the reedland, bogies that changed themselves to water-birds; the Lord of Evil himself, inhabiting, for sport, this lonely, sunlit place.
Then the uncomfortable feeling was broken by a calm, a beautiful voice.

‘Weep no more, daughter,’ said Jacquetta of Bedford.

Astonished, Elizabeth saw her mother sitting unattended on the other side of the willow tree.
Green-latticed sunlight lapped at her steady profile.
For all this rustic departure, she was attired with customary fineness.
Her headdress was of silver cloth, stretched over a little pointed horn of starched damask.
Small jewels winked in her ears and upon her white bosom.
She wore dove-coloured satin and a high embroidered girdle.
Her little shoes of clary velvet were stained with mud and rushes.
Otherwise she was immaculate.
A hand wearing a pearl-and-ruby rose, beckoned through the hanging frond of leaves.

‘Tis like the confessional!’
said Jacquetta, with a tinge of laughter.
Elizabeth crept closer.

‘And truly I would beg forgiveness, Madame.’

‘Be still, Elizabeth.’
The strong white hand took hers, and mother and daughter sat silent for some minutes.
In that clasp a force was born, communicating itself from the older woman to the younger.
It was like the moments before a storm strikes, and there was in it also warmth, power, something so all-consuming that Elizabeth tried vainly to withdraw her hand.

‘Do you think,’ said the Duchess, ‘that I would have you wasted on any paltry Yorkist cur?’

Light rippled on the water.
The leaves shook themselves at the incredible words.

‘You did not come to me,’ said Jacquetta, ‘being content instead to rave in unseemly fashion at my lord, which put him in a passion I have taken all night to still.
Yet stilled he is,’ with a tiny smile of triumph.
‘You have much to learn of the ways of men.
Obstruct them with rough speech, rantings, and, like a hog’s bladder kicked by boys, they grow more resilient.
Yet, apply a sweet pinprick, a loving word, a sigh, a tear, and you cause them to think, and think again, and grow womanly, and do your will.’

She released Elizabeth’s hand, and uprooted a reed.

‘Or this, a better allegory-’ twisting and bending the stem brutally.
‘Force will not master this pliant reed.
Yet – ’ splitting the green tip with sharp fingernails – ‘apply cunning, art – ’ the reed began to peel in layers – ‘some deviousness so slight ’tis scarcely there at all–’ the stem flaked, showed hollow – ‘and your adversary is undone.
So it is with men, and policy, and love.’

The hypnotic voice ceased.
From the further shore of the lake there came the whirring of wings as a brace of wild duck rose and made for the freedom of the forest.

‘So they fly,’ murmured the Duchess, watching.
‘And so they escape the
ennui
of Grafton Regis.
How fair the female is, with the sun on her wings!’

She knows my every thought!
marvelled Elizabeth.
And, mother of mine though she is, I know her not at all.
The past years had done little to bring them close.
To Elizabeth, Jacquetta had been a distant, awesome figure, spending much time in Calais, London, Rouen, and almost yearly
enceinte
with another Woodville child.
Jacquetta had seen the London court many times.
Yet it was not she who had whetted Elizabeth’s fancy with tales of its glory; these had been gleaned from grooms, maidservants, and were often inaccurate.
In all her fifteen years, Elizabeth had had only formal speech with her mother.
The Duchess was talking again of Sir Hugh Johns.

‘The knight is pleasant enough,’ she admitted.
‘But his policies sour my stomach.
No Yorkist shall have
my
daughter.’
Her pearly face was suddenly savage, then she laughed.
‘This day I will send word to the great lord Warwick declining his liegeman.
Not even a King could gainsay me in matters of the heart!
No upstart scion of York shall bid my blood!’

Intrigued, Elizabeth slipped through the screen of willow to kneel at her mother’s feet.
The Duchess studied the upturned face.
So perfect was its symmetry that she looked, spellbound, for longer than it took for a white frill of cloud to drift across the sun, and for the light to return, blindingly gold.
It shone upon Elizabeth’s broad brow, small full mouth and pointed chin.
Her eyes reflected back the sky; her hair was silver and gold, utterly unreal in its beauty.
By the saints, Jacquetta thought: she is fairer even than I was, and men would maim one another for a smile from me!

She said: ‘It is time you knew my history.
My life with Bedford was happy, almost to the time of his death, some sixteen years ago.
I say almost; for, when Suffolk was my husband’s captain – (aye, Suffolk, butchered by
Yorkists
on Portsmouth strand two springs ago!) – I was with the army in France.
Our captains were there, of course.
There was one … ah, Jesu!
it comes once in a lifetime.’

The handsomest man in England,’ said Elizabeth.

Jacquetta smiled.
‘Aye Sir Richard Woodville and none other.
The first sight of him was like a strong blow to my heart.
Thereafter came pain, the pain of partings.
The pain,’ she said softly, ‘of loving, and of being bound to another man.’

She lowered her voice even more.

‘I believe, Elizabeth, that strong desire can cut through destiny; that even the planets can be turned in their courses by thought; worlds shaken by it, consummation achieved.
For … my lord of Bedford died.’

She took Elizabeth’s hand again.
Again the feeling of shattering power was born, and mounted.

‘There was no need thereafter to quell our longings, our hungers.
There was no need for me to avoid Sir Richard’s eyes or run from his voice.
He had been knighted by the child king Henry at Leicester, yet his lineage was not so high as my own.
All the same, his was the face I had been born to look upon.
It was the
coup de foudre
, the power and glory of the heart.

‘We were married full secretly, for my dower had been granted upon Bedford’s death by a patent of the King.
I was pledged to do fealty to my uncle, the Bishop of Thérouanne, the King’s Chancellor in France.
I was forbidden to marry without the King’s edict, given under the Great Seal of England.
Yet soon I had no choice but to throw myself upon Henry’s mercy.
I was great with you then, Bess.
My uncle fumed and my brother, Louis of St.
Pol, declared himself outraged by my disobedience.
So I wooed the King.
I besought him to extort whatever fine he wished, while my kinfolk railed at me.
They threatened your father and me with all manner of punishment.

‘We were fined one thousand pounds.
I smiled at the young reed of a King, I put him to my will.
I knelt to Cardinal Beaufort, offered him my manor of Charleton Canville, and looked into his soul.
He paid my fine; yea, gladly.
Then your father was appointed to the royal commission of Chief Rider of the Forest of Saucy.’
She pointed.
‘Over there, Elizabeth, where your desires lately flew, in the guise of a wild duck!’

Her gaze wandered across the lake.
A fish jumped, suddenly silver.

‘You love the water, Elizabeth,’ said the Duchess, her voice changed.
Closed within her hand, Elizabeth’s fingers felt a throb, a vibration that encompassed flesh and veins, striking at that which was hidden, and deep.

‘In all water,’ said the Duchess, ‘there are spirits.
In all fountains, meres, rivers, the sea.
One spirit above all.
Omnipotent.
We are part of her and she of us.
You knew it,’ looking at Elizabeth with a fierce tenderness, ‘My blood runs in you, my wit and will are yours.
My shameful secret, Elizabeth, you were once, carried within me through anger, and born triumphant.
Now, my fairest, my eldest.
My Melusine …’

She was the Jacquetta of youth, burning-bright, all-powerful.
Eyes closed, Elizabeth listened to slow, mystic words.

‘I am of the royal House of Luxembourg.
I am of the blood of a water-fay, who ensnared Raymond of Poitou.
Melusine met with Raymond by her home, the fountain in the forest; and took his wits away.
She asked Raymond for as much of the land around the fountain as could be covered by a stag’s hide; she cut the hide into ten thousand strips so that her land extended far beyond the forest.
There she built Lusignan.
She bore Raymond children: Urian, with his one red and his one green eye; Gedes, of the scarlet countenance (for him she built the castle of Favent and the convent at Malliers); Gyot, of the uneven eyes (for him she built La Rochelle); Anthony, of the claws and long hair; a one-eyed son; and lastly, Geoffrey of the Tooth.
He had a boar’s tusk.