The King's Grey Mare (38 page)

One name, that of Eleanor Butler, could rip the cover off a bare and bleeding wound.
Yet I dare not approach the King again, nor drop poison Clarence’s way.
She longed to turn to Lady Margaret and say: What think you, my lady?
You know of my feigned royalty, and that my queenship hangs by a thread.
You know I must be ruthless, perjured, bent on exterminating all who threaten my estate.
She looked into the berry-black eyes of the Countess; unknowingly she revealed her own desperation.

‘The King loves you well, my liege’, said Margaret softly.
‘As for his harlots–’ she made a disdainful moue – ‘men are men.
Clarence has several lemen, and even Richard of Gloucester, before he married Warwick’s Anne, sired at least two children; a maid, on some country wench, and John of Gloucester, whom he keeps in great estate.’

Elizabeth wasted no thoughts on Richard of Gloucester, who had taken himself off, together with Warwick’s daughter, to the north country, and there remained.
No, it was Clarence who ate at her peace like the red ant … the Fiend was dead, but Clarence lived.
Moth-light, the Countess touched her sleeve, murmuring a distraction.

‘Look!’
she pointed below.
‘There rides your son, Dorset; how elegant he is, my liege.’

Thomas swaggered in the gallop.
He rode a tall chestnut across the bailey.
His brother Richard Grey lagged a little, on a slower bay.
Thomas was laughing.
Dorset, the cuckolder of kings.

‘She loves me!’
he had crowed, strutting, his rich threads catching the candlelight.
‘Jane loves me, Ned loves me, and we all love one another!
What better fate?’
He was born to sail close to the wind; Elizabeth warned him to keep his triumph more discreetly; he had laughed at her, kissed her.
Margaret was talking again, half-heard words.

‘I believe your Grace has never seen my son,’ she said.
‘My Henry Tudor.
Descended,’ she said proudly, ‘from the royal house of France.’

Descended by bastardy, thought Elizabeth, but was suddenly too weary to argue the point.
Let Margaret have her pride; she had little else.
She folded cold hands inside her sleeves and said: ‘You must bring your Henry to court.’
Margaret’s sallow face leaped into life.

‘Your Grace is kind; I’ll write to him this day.’

And she told herself excitedly: the tide turns.
The Queen, depressed, grows pliant and a little careless.
It will augur well for Henry to set foot within the court.
Both the Stanleys and Morton agree with me here.
And if the Eleanor Butler secret were to be disclosed … Light surged across the battlements of Ludlow, touched off, in the Countess’s mind, by her wild dreams – dreams whispered to her in the passing breeze and fading as the Queen, suddenly brisk, said: ‘Come.
Let us go down and see the heir of England at his lessons.’

They descended the spiral together.
Elizabeth hugged the wall close as it dipped down and down, icy, solid, like the round limb of some long-dead monster.
The Queen’s little slippers were soundless upon the narrow dizzying stair.
The high-fashioned gown she wore concealed her latest pregnancy, being cut with a projecting stomacher and falling fold.
As they passed by the King’s private chamber there came the chuckling shriek of Mistress Shore.

In the schoolroom, the five-year-old Prince Edward, the heir to England, sat yawning over a vast Book of Hours.
Beside him, his tutor, Bishop Alcock, followed, as he read, the arrow-straight margin with the jewel-bright capitals.
All the children were there; the living testament of Elizabeth’s past decade.
Bess was nine, and sat quietly at her broidery frame; she raised her blonde head as her mother entered; she rose, curtseyed formally and sat down again.
Mary and Cicely were dressing a baby doll.
There should have been another sister, but Margaret had only lived eight months and was already a memory.

The Prince Edward got up at Elizabeth’s approach.
He was very pale, with bluish marks under his eyes.
He smiled sweetly and made a little bow.

‘Does he learn well?’
Elizabeth asked the tutor.
Dr.
Alcock inclined his black-capped head.

‘He’s diligent, madam.
Kiss the Queen’s hand, your Grace.’
She felt moist warm lips on her fingers, and she laid her hand for a moment on the silky head.
Her fingers passed downwards, absently, to his face.
Like a puppy, he ducked his head to rub against her hand.
She felt a sharp regret that she saw so little of him; but he was Anthony’s charge.
He was the heir to England, and should not leave Ludlow until Anthony, as Governor, saw fit.

‘His Grace’s brow feels chill,’ she remarked, and withdrew her hand.
Instantly there was a scramble to close the windows.
The ferny scents diminished, to be replaced by dust and ink.
Elizabeth felt a tugging at her skirt and looked down.
Grinning like a bad angel, her second son, two-year old Richard, Duke of York, confronted her.
He brandished a toy dagger.
He screwed up his face, plunged his head into the folds of her dress.
He whispered an unintelligible secret, then proceeded to run, like a whirligig, round and round the Queen’s spread skirts.
It made her glad to watch him; he was as robust as his brother Edward was frail.
An understudy King!
Then, a child’s voice, oddly adult, chided the small Duke’s rudeness, a hand coaxed the dagger from his grip and straightened his doublet.
Elizabeth looked into the green eyes of Mistress Grace; those eyes that stared so, full of the disquieting unknown.

‘I’ll see you anon, my lord,’ she told Dr.
Alcock.
Without looking back she went alone, to see the Governor of Ludlow Castle.

He did not rise instantly at her entrance, he was so immersed in his work.
A Latin copy of the Dictes and Sayings of the Philosophers lay on the table before him.
Sheets of translation were scattered on the floor.
She looked fondly at his bent head; he was heedless of her so she placed her hand over the page on which he was writing.
Frowning, he looked up, then sprang instantly to his feet, full of loving apology.
He kissed both her hands, then embraced her heavy body.

‘Anthony!
Sweet Anthony!’
It was months since they had met.

‘My liege, Bess.
Too long!’

‘How does Ludlow suit you?’

He drew her down beside him on a settle, soothing her tense mood with his soft voice, jesting, pleasing her eye with his gold good looks.

‘I have just come from the prince,’ she said.

‘Your prince, my scholar,’ he laughed.
‘Alcock and I are schooling him in all ways of urbanity and nurture.’
A little frown of contempt puckered his brow.
‘York could do well with some renewal of elegance.
Lately it would seem that York breeds lechers, vulgarians.
Bess–’ more urgently – ‘you must not let the King grow careless.
How goes it with France?’

‘The Treaty will be signed, although he cleaves to Burgundy still … ah God!’
she said suddenly.
‘I am so afraid.’

He looked carefully at her.
‘The King loves you,’ he said slowly.
‘Pay no heed to his diversions … you have his heart and always will.’

‘It is Clarence,’ she said, her lips trembling.
Anthony smiled.

‘Naught to fear, sweet sister,’ he said.
This was not the Anthony who had been afraid to take her from Grafton Regis when she pleaded with him.
This was a man who was erudite, calm, skilled.
He said casually: ‘I know all Clarence’s mind.
His murmurings against you and the King grow louder.
He is fickle, treacherous and foolish.
He will overstep himself, and my agents will see to it that he does, and is condemned for it.’

‘You’re sure?’
she breathed.

‘Be patient,’ he told her.
‘Clarence will be the architect of his own ruin.’

She could have told none the reason why she went to the Tower apartments of Margaret of Anjou.
Only the itch of a long memory, or a ripple of forgotten duty unconsciously felt, led her through the cavernous vaults and up the twisted stairs.
Margaret’s door was properly guarded by pikemen wearing the.
rose en soleil
.
Waiting while they went inside to prepare the Frenchwoman, Elizabeth conjured memories.
That frail, vital face; the eyes that could flash fury or soften with love.
That gem-starred blondeness, and the voice douce as a dreaming bird’s yet capable of harsh command.
She waited, and remembered; then one of the men returned to kneel before her.

‘My liege, she will not see you.’

‘What?’
cried Elizabeth.
‘I command …’ A little perplexed, she said: ‘Tell her that
Elizabeth
stands without the door!’

‘I did, highness.
She fancies herself mocked.
She is intemperate with grief.’
He folded his hands on the haft of his pike.
On his wrist the marks of five sharp nails dripped blood.

‘She may harm your Grace.’

Elizabeth felt in the pouch at her waist, found the dull coldness of a ring seldom worn.
The pearl-and-ruby.
The token of past friendship.
The talisman of the beloved.

‘Show her this.
Say I come in kindness.’

The man went in again, and she waited, tapping her foot.
Impatience mingled with anxiety.
Edward knew nothing of this excursion of hers.
It could displease him.
And who was Margaret, to gainsay her entry?
Sounds crept through the studded oak; a voice raised in a scream, then silence, then sobbing.
After a moment the pikemen held open the door.
Elizabeth caught up her gown to ascend the worn stone step, curved like a bow from a thousand treadings.
The guard said uneasily: ‘I must accompany your grace, and lock the door.’

She turned, said crisply, ‘Lock it, but wait outside,’ then entered, turning the iron ring-latch behind her.
In the room there was a foul stench of sweat, and something else, the acrid smell of grief.
Disorder reigned: strewn on the carpet, which itself was tracked threadless in one straight line, were torn parchments, letters half-begun.
The silk hangings had been wrenched from one wall and lay in shreds.
There was an overturned jug of flowers, their petals stamped and bruised to pulp.
In one corner was a deep Dutch bed, its covers torn and tousled and bearing the traces of old blood.
And, standing by the windowslit, looking towards the light, was Margaret – was Marguerite.
The shadow and spectre of Marguerite.

She turned, and her face was visible.
A cry of horror leapt in Elizabeth’s throat.
Margaret walked steadily towards her on the worn path of carpet made by years of pacing.
From the ruined face came an unrecognizable voice, cracked and harsh.

‘They said it was the Spanish disease, and they called me whore.
But now they see it is naught but a deep canker that began in my breast and encompassed me.
The legacy of my sorrow.
God has seen fit to eat me up.’

One side of the face was clustered and corroded with small tumours, the other emaciated so that even the shape of the teeth was visible.
Margaret’s skin was yellow as fresh gold.
The hair once bound with pearls grew in sparse grey tufts, but half the head was bald.
The hellish apparition moved closer to Elizabeth, extending the twisted tragedies of its hands.

‘You brought the ring,’ she said.
‘The ring I gave
la sage Jacquette
, your mother.
How does your mother?’

‘She is dead,’ Elizabeth said faintly.

Margaret said with a ghastly smile: ‘She is fortunate then!
I should kneel to you, Isabella, but I do not.
Will you punish me?’
She touched the Queen’s rich sleeve.
‘So fair, so fine, my Isabella.
Queen of Heaven!’

She laughed, she stroked her own dreadful mask with writhing fingers.
Elizabeth thought wildly: I was mad to come here.
She tried to speak steadily.

‘Madame, have you no women, no physicians?
You should be nursed.’