The King's Grey Mare (40 page)

Behind the great doors, Henry Tudor was waiting.
He had been waiting like this for almost all his twenty subservient, repressed years: in the house of Lord Herbert at Pembroke, or under the harsh rule of his Uncle Jasper, or, in exile after Tewkesbury, as a despised nonentity in the court of Francis of Brittany.
Even now he had waited a week at Westminster for the royal summons, hearing the whispered instructions of Morton and the Stanleys, seeing the fretful excitement of his mother.
And only he was calm.
A generation of Welsh and Frankish blood moved softly in him, bidding him gather himself for new beginnings.
A native ruthlessness told him that behind those doors he would find a court of fools.
He gave a slight shrug to his patched doublet, smoothed his dry, rust-coloured hair.
His face was long and lean, his mouth almost lipless.
It was the face of a man older than twenty, and in it the eyes were as cold as a preying bird’s.

Then he smiled, and was changed.
The smile lent wistfulness to his demeanour, so that he looked like a starved infant offering macabre love, and the predatory eyes grew lambent and wise.
The mouth slid upwards in a bow and quivered.
Before him a light-chink between the doors widened into vast radiance.
An usher called his name.
Across a mile of lozenged tiles he went, between the candle-flames and diamonds and quizzical stares.
Once, the faintest ripple of laughter blew across his path and was unheeded by him.
His thin shanks carrying him steadily, he advanced upon the coveted court of the Plantagenets.

He saw a sorry, drunken monarch, great belly straining at velvet, the ruined beauty of his face lapped in red jowls, pigeon’s blood rubies on his fat hands and breast.
A blonde harlot at his feet.
A fairhaired, lovely child (the eldest, Bess of York; his mother had primed him well); a nervous ageing minister; that would be Hastings.
Next to him the Woodvilles, handsome Anthony, the sons of Sir John Grey; and Lionel, Bishop of Salisbury, who had the royal favour.
Henry reached the dais and heard the King mumbling an uninterested welcome.
Now for the obeisance, as he had been schooled.
The right knee crooked – no trembling – and down, down to the floor, where the eyes must go.
Obeisance.
Abasement.
The left toe stretched out behind, sliding on the red-black crosswork of the tiles.
Now, the plump hand with its engorged veins beneath his lips.
Dry lips; treason to leave spittle.
Good.
Good.
Another moment of waiting.
‘Courtly manners, my young friend,’ said the deep, slurred voice.
‘Rise.
You may greet our Queen.’

He raised his eyes.
They slipped quickly across the intimidating semi-circle of faces, imprinting on his consciousness the friends, the foes, the ones unknown.
Unerringly he registered their strengths and their failings.
The Woodvilles, for example, were imperious as gerfalcons, and as fine-feathered.
If such a bird were stripped, feather by feather, what remained?
A bleeding, earthbound ruin, unable to prey.
His eyes ceased travelling momentarily to greet the black omnipotence of Morton.
The Bishop’s white hand lifted slightly; the Bishop’s hooded eye blinked in tacit approval.

Lastly, slowly, Henry looked at the Queen.
He appraised her silks and furs.
He noted that she was jewelled like a pagan princess.
He guessed her age, saw that she carried those years well.
Yet his unflickering eye marked also her inner disquiet, the torment of her lifelong insecurity.
Whispering a humble greeting, he assessed her body and soul.
It was as his mother had hinted.
Elizabeth, the pawn of Richmond.
For all her hauteur, ready to cling and listen and be led.

She, looking for the first time upon Margaret Beaufort’s son, experienced a strange recognition.
It was like the sensation of meeting John Grey at Eltham.
This is he, at last.
Love, you are come
.

But this was not love.
It was the unknown, the recognizable unknown.
Like the reprise of a song unheard, or the shadow of an unconscious dream.
She withdrew her hand from that of the youth.
With customary coolness she said: ‘We greet you well.’

The feeling remained, astounding in its certainty.
As Henry Tudor scraped and bowed and backed from the dais, she knew that here was one of utter significance, for evil or for good.

O God!
What security shall our Kings

have henceforth that in the day of battle

they may not be deserted by their subjects!

The Croyland Chronicle: 1485

Grace Plantagenet stood at the latticed window of the stillroom and watched the sky, where oyster-coloured clouds were palely lit by sun.
Between delicate spires and stout turrets she could see distantly the brown, boiling river, flushed with spring tides.
Once a bird – blackbird or thrush, too swift to tell – dived straight at the window, then veered off, wheeling up and away over the palace of Westminster.
She thought: my father’s spirit!
But this was foolishness; if Edward had departed as a bird it would be no common warbler but a golden kestrel, or a snowy falcon.
The Falcon of York.
The ethereal towers blurred suddenly and she dabbed at her eyes with a sleeve.
She had sworn to weep no more; rather mourn in silence.
The ostentatious wailing and hair-tearing of the women and some of the men repelled her.
Many had only courted Edward for his easy favour.
She, Grace, came from his royal loins; she had more right to cry than they.
Even now in some corridor outside the stillroom she could hear Jane Shore, voluble in grief as in laughter.

Jane.
Her thoughts ran back like a silken coil to that night eight days ago.
The night before the King had been taken so grievously and suddenly sick.
She remembered it well; that night she had attended the Queen in the great chamber where Edward so seldom came of late.
To cosset the Queen was Grace’s joy.
She received no thanks, hardly a look or a word, yet, all the while she basked in inexplicable content.
Merely to be in that presence was to bathe in the cool unearthly tranquillity of moonlight.
Yes, if Edward was the glowing Sun in Splendour, his consort was the moon.

That particular night had been different, troubling, however.
As always, Grace had waited, lying taut and vigilant on her trestle until the breathing in the bed should soften almost to inaudibility.
She heard midnight chime; then one, two, three, four hours, and still from above came rustlings, little coughs, sighs.
Once she thought she heard a murmured prayer, or the drift of a poem; and fancied that she had fallen asleep and dreamed, and snatched at wakefulness to find the silence more pronounced.
Not even a dog barked; the palace seemed fixed in enchantment.
A finger of dull starlight shone through a gap in the curtains.
Grace, sick with weariness, lay willing the Queen to sleep.
Then, a few seconds after the quarter’s chime, there was a great commotion as the Queen flung herself out of bed, calling for light.
Grace lit candles; their wavering flames showed the Queen’s pale face, pale hair streaming, hands that clutched and pleated her damask bedgown.
She was angry.

‘Holy Jesu!’
she ‘cried.
‘Will she never stop that noise?
Hour after hour … I could tear out her tongue!’

She paced the room, and the silence grew more profound than ever.
Grace, shocked and afraid, stared at the Queen, who then, for the first time in months, addressed her directly.

‘Is she not possessed?’
she demanded.
‘Some devil must enter her, bidding her mar my sleep!
Have you slept, mistress?
Nay, how could you?
Listen!
she grows louder … laughing.
The King calls her merry.
I call her mad!’

The candlelight fluttered; in the corners shadows crept.
The Queen ran to the window and threw back the curtains.

‘Almost dawn, I swear!
There again!
You hear her?’

Grace, her teeth chattering, whispered: ‘Who, highness?’The silence was caught up in the shadows and licked around them both.

‘Why, the creature Shore, of course!’
The Queen leaned against the window, peering through.
‘It sounds – Jesu!
It sounds as if she were making merry on the roof!’

Grace, paralysed with uncertainty, waited close to the Queen’s silhouetted shape, watching the perfect profile outlined against candlefire and dawnlight, telling herself: I am deaf, and I am witless.
This day I will go to the physician and have him probe my ears, however much it hurts.
For before God, I hear nothing.

‘Is she laughing?’
said the Queen.
‘Or is she weeping?’Through the gloom her eyes sought Grace’s small upturned face.
There had to be an answer.
The Queen abhorred laughter; that was well known.
In the desperate, clinging silence, Grace said: ‘I think …’

‘Well?’

‘Weeping, your Grace.’

The Queen was looking away.
Slowly the tension left her body, her hands unclenched.
‘Ah!’
She sighed and shuddered.
‘It is finished.
Praise God.’

After a while she returned and climbed into the deepsided bed.
Grace snugged the coverlet down over the Queen, and extinguished the candles.
Although it was mild for April, she felt deeply chill, and lay for a long time, wondering.
Finally the Queen’s voice reached her, strangely quiet.

‘Mistress Grace, will you pray?’

‘Yes, highness.’

‘Pray for protection.’

Grace slid from the trestle once more, and knelt.
‘
Libera nos, Domine, ab omnibus malis …’

The Queen cut her off short, saying: ‘Nay, leave it.
I am foolish.
I will see the Comptroller this day.
My household becomes a beargarden.
And I will speak to Mistress Shore.’

Grace was there when Jane was summoned.
She came dishevelled, mud upon her gown.
The Queen spoke to her kindly, while Jane looked up with artless eyes.

‘Can you not temper your merrymaking of a night?’

‘Madame?’

‘Shrieking – aloft … where were you last night, Mistress Shore?’

Jane, looking mystified, said primly: ‘Madame, I have only just returned from the City.
My husband is sick, and sent for me two days ago.’

Both she and Grace saw the Queen’s face slacken for an instant, but only Grace heard the word that leaped from the Queen’s lips, soft as a breath, a blasphemy.
Then Elizabeth made a gesture of dismissal, her smooth features once more expressionless.
Following the Queen back to her apartment, Grace saw how slowly she walked.
Once she leaned on a pillar, and said clearly:

‘When sorrow strikes a royal house … ah, Jesu!’

It was not the Holy Name she had whispered in that one startled gasp at Mistress Shore.
It was a name that Grace had never heard; a liquid, silvery name.
Half an hour later, Master Hobbes, the King’s physician, came almost demented to say that Edward was ill.

Now he was dead.
Rain, an April squall like sudden grief, smacked against the window.
Grace turned away at last.
She watched Renée preparing a draught of honeyed ale for the Queen.
Renée’s eyes were red; she looked suddenly very old.
To Grace’s fourteen years, forty were legion.
Yet the Queen, who was even older than Renée, seemed ageless.

‘She will find that posset too sweet,’ Grace said.
Renée answered angrily: ‘I need no schoolroom cook to teach me my work!’
and Grace’s sadness gave way to unease.
Now that her father was dead, would people change?
They already mocked her for having no husband.
Fourteen years old, and the bastard of a King.
No beauty – she had decided that for herself long ago.
The mirror in the Queen’s bower – that mirror girdled with sea-shapes, sirens, fishes – showed her a face too thin, a mouth too full.
Under the pointed hennin the blonde curls were scraped back and hidden.
She missed the striking loveliness of the brilliant green eyes slanted like a cat’s, the lissom waist, the kindly lips.
She saw only the defects which made her murmur, for comfort: I am Grace
Plantagenet.’

Renée was keening to herself, uttering little scraps of thought.
Perhaps she did have the right to weep – if only for the twice-widowed Queen; but somehow her sorrow was mechanical.

‘She was so happy, so glorious.
Only two weeks ago.
At that pageant the King arranged, showing that her Grace was descended from the Magi.
All three kings came to kneel to her … and now … ’ She omitted to weep for Edward, who had died in a bloated agony so that some whispered of poison.

‘I still say the draught is too sweet,’ said Grace.
‘She will send it away.’

None the less she took the silver cup covered with fair linen to the Queen’s chamber.
As she walked, each step was measured by the passing bell.
The deep sound had beaten on her brain for so many hours that she thought she would never lose it; like a heartbeat, it would remain until death.
All around her was unreality.
The stones she trod, the carved columns by which she passed, wavered and were fluid.
The men and women whom she met swam silently by like blackclad ghosts.
Only at the Queen’s door did things solidify, among them the figure of Thomas Dorset, Elizabeth’s firstborn.
He was standing, hand raised to knock, and upon hearing Grace approach he turned with a smile.
Although puffed with weeping, his eyes stripped her naked.
He bowed elegantly.
He mocked her, through envy of her as a King’s bastard, but the courtesy and the wandering eyes were tribute to the challenge of her virginity.
After the King, Tom Grey had the monopoly of all the remaining maidenheads at court.

‘Beauty.
Enter, I pray.’

She answered formally: ‘My lord takes precedence,’ disliking him.
It came to her forcibly that she disliked almost everyone at court.
With her father’s death, this thought crystallized.
Half-way up the spiral stair behind her, she heard Jane Shore wailing for the dead King.
Jane could have been kind, but she was too shallow and undependable.
Grace stood hesitantly while Dorset bowed and sneered.
Through the closed door came voices, among them the sibilant note of Reynold Bray, who, whenever he saw her, exhorted Grace to prayer, while resembling a rat in search of a hen-house.
Then she heard the Queen’s voice, precise and plaintive; a male answer, indistinct, and the name: ‘Gloucester.’

Grace’s mood suddenly lifted.
Naturally, Richard Duke of Gloucester would be coming south for Edward’s burial, and there was the thread of a chance that he would bring with him the one person she most wished to see.
Someone near enough her own age to be intelligible; someone whose presence in the past had lightened days which were frustrating, bewildering and often hopeless.
John.
John of Gloucester.
A smile trembled on her lips so that Dorset, encouraged, bent closer.
The last time she and John had met was at Eltham by the lake.
She had wanted a lily, a lily like a fat, pink-tipped candle.
He had waded into the water to pluck it, and had spoiled his forest-green hose; new that day.
Then they had walked together the periphery of the lake, their hands lightly clasped.
She had been two fingers taller than he.
Glancing behind at the grass patterned by his soaked feet, she had teased him.

‘Will your father have you beaten?’

‘I wish he were more often at home to beat me,’ John answered.
‘He’s always away; fighting.’

She had said, inconsequentially: ‘I never knew my mother.’

‘Nor I mine.’
His clear pale face was thoughtful.
‘Richard Plantagenet is father and mother to me; and of course, I have the Lady Anne, his wife.’

It was, she decided, because they were of like station that their affinity grew and blossomed into a mood of ease and comfort.
Both royal bastards; both Plantagenet, yet touched by unknown, possibly simple blood.
Conceived in a moment of lust, or, boredom, or even revenge.
Lately Grace had wondered about her own mother; there must be tacit reason for the Queen’s manner – the coldness that should have hurt and sometimes did, the unease which filled the Queen’s eyes when they looked at Grace.
Although it was of no consequence; so long as she was not sent from that hypnotic, spellbinding presence.
Only once had she discussed the Queen with John, and he had said, surprisingly: ‘Her Grace dislikes my father.
Because Edward loves him so.
And because he is married to Anne of Warwick.’