The King's Grey Mare (41 page)

Warwick was a name almost out of Grace’s time.
Only his castle of Middleham remained, a place steadfast yet wild, and painted with vivid glamour by John.
He would talk for hours about the moors of Middleham, a tapestry of hawks and horses and sweeping winds.
A place of pagan holiness, he called it.
A castle warned by great fires and mirth.
And as he talked he himself became imbued with the cold and the crying birds, the bubbling, water-white garths, the warm heathery scents and the haunted mists, making them also a part of Grace.
She heard the name ‘Gloucester’ spoken again, and as Dorset pushed the door open, she twinned a prayer: May the Duke bring John with him to London; and may John not have changed.

The Queen was sitting surrounded by her family.
She was in mourning, its doleful black lit by a white barbette beneath her chin.
She was pale, with a high flush on each cheek.
Her hands were clasped hard together and trembled slightly.
Behind her chair stood her brothers, Lionel Bishop of Salisbury and Sir Edward Woodville the sea-captain.
Her sister Catherine, also in mourning, knelt at her feet.
Bishop Morton stood sombrely by; a great parchment, brightly sealed, drooped from his hand.
Without being told, Grace knew instantly that this was the King’s last will and testament.
Again her vision blurred so that the group of tense faces – Margaret Beaufort, Lord Stanley, Reynold Bray (who stood at a lectern, quill poised) shimmered and gleamed in her sight.
She blinked, and a tear fell on the snowy linen covering the cup.
Dorset moved swiftly forward from her side and knelt, pressing his forehead to the Queen’s fingers.
She said: ‘Where have you been?
I summoned you hours ago.’
He murmured excuses which she dismissed turning her face with an odd little gesture sharply to one side, closing her eyes.
Grace thought: she seems nervous, changed.
She pictured the Queen of, two weeks ago, as lamented by Renée; at the pageant of the Magi.
There had been something mystic in that scene; the robes green and gold, the incense rising and the rich gifts.
Paradoxical, too.
Though everyone knew that in the land of the Magi the river of Paradise rose, there were other opinions: that all evil as well as good came from the East – the devils of the sand, the herbs to drive men mad.
It was difficult to decide, but the Queen had seemed well pleased.

Also present were Lord Berners, the Queen’s Chamberlain, and his wife, nurse to the Princess.
With a stab of sympathy Grace wondered how Bess did.
She had not wept at the news of her father’s death as had Mary and Cicely.
Her wide, rather childish blue eyes had looked puzzled and a little afraid.
The babes, Katherine and Bridget, were too young to feel much grief.
Nine-year-old Richard Duke of York had stifled sorrow bravely, only to break down in Grace’s arms when she dressed him in the black velvet doublet.
Mourning put a degree of manhood upon him and stopped his noisy battle-games for a day; the powerful atmosphere of disquiet, acutely felt all over the Palace, made his pert face thoughtful.
He said to Grace: ‘Now my brother Ned will be King.’

‘Yes, yes, my lord.’

He blew his nose, sighed as if released from travail.

‘Then I shall see him soon.
He seems to have been years at Ludlow.’
From that moment he was himself again.

Grace shifted her feet.
A small figure among the crowd of nobles, she held the rapidly cooling cup of ale.
The Queen was speaking, hard and high, pausing only while Reynold Bray, his nose almost touching the parchment, scratched out a letter with his quill.

‘To Sir Anthony Woodville, Earl Rivers, Governor of Ludlow.
Right worshipful and well beloved brother, we greet you well.
And it is our doleful duty to acquaint you of the passing of our sovereign lord, Edward King of England …’

A dozen hands made the sign of the cross.

‘We as Queen-Regent–’ the delicate eyelids fluttered; the voice laid down the words, hard and definite, like coins on a table – ‘we, as Queen-Regent, make it known that the said Edward in his last will and testament named as Protector of the Realm his brother Richard Duke of Gloucester, to have sole charge and ruling over our sovereign-elect, our son the Prince Edward of Wales, now in your lordship’s care.
Having regard for … for our own standing and fortunes in the realm, we charge you thus.’

She stopped, swallowed.
Grace looked uneasily down at the draught she held.
The Queen was far from finished; it would have to wait.
Hard and cool the words flowed on.

‘As Queen-Regent we charge you to be diligent in thwarting this decree, and to bring our son Edward Prince of Wales with all speed to London where he shall be crowned King of England in the presence of his rightful supporters.
I pray you spare no cost or effort in hindering the Duke of Gloucester …’

She turned suddenly to Margaret Beaufort.
‘Can I make it plainer?’
The Countess, coming closer, answered: ‘Madame, Sir Anthony is the cleverest knight in Christendom.
The missive is clear enough.’

Reynold Bray finished writing and brought quill and parchment over for the royal signature.
The Queen said quickly: ‘Master, an addition.
Write: Gloucester knows not of the King’s death.
Delay all messengers.
I pray you, fail me not.’

Bray wrote.
The Queen dipped the pen and in perfect silence, added ‘Elizabeth’ – fine and hard, the small round ‘e’ and wild long-tailed ‘z’ – the whole underlined by a ripple like a seawave.
She looked then at the assembly and, as if daring them to disagree, said: ‘You are in accord’?’
There was an instant mumble of assent.
With a rustle of mourning gowns they knelt and bowed and quit the Chamber.
Grace, save for Dorset, was alone with the Queen who continued to ignore her, beckoning her son nearer with a small, frenetic gesture.

‘Tom, why did you delay?’
she demanded.
‘You are vital to this enterprise.
You must ride at once to Ludlow with the message.
Where is Hastings now?
Jesu!
I know that he will send the news to Gloucester with all speed.
Hastings was one we could not suborn.
That stupid, arrogant knight,’ she said vexedly.

‘Madame,’ said Tom Dorset.
‘I cannot go to Ludlow.
There is much to do here.’

She clenched her hands in irritation.
‘Did I make you Constable of the Tower for nothing?
Are all your honours in vain?’

He smiled, a little seductive smile.
‘Madam my mother, it is
because
I am Constable of the Tower that I must remain.
Already my men are preparing the armaments – five thousand handguns, ten thousand longbows, a thousand cannon … for our endeavour.’

‘I pray,’ she said uneasily, ‘that we need not array ourselves in arms.
The Londoners will not love us for it.
And Gloucester is a warrior, a strategist …’

‘Madame, be courageous,’ said Thomas Dorset, smiling again.
‘My swiftest men shall ride to my uncle at Ludlow.
Leave the rest to him.
It will be but a short battle for this … this ill-chosen Protector, Gloucester.
Short, secret, final.’

‘And Hastings?’
said the Queen uneasily.

‘That,’ answered Dorset, ‘you may leave to me.
There are subtler ways than force.
Give me the letter, Madame.
Couriers, sworn men, are waiting.’

He took the roll, now sealed, and turned.
He saw Grace, and still mocking, yet unquiet, asked her: ‘Is that soothing potion cold, mistress?
And tell me, do you love our Queen?’

Grace answered instantly: ‘Till death.’
She knew the Marquis’s reasons for asking her allegiance; she was privy to a plan.
A plan to kill.
Bluntly and unequivocally, a plan to kill the Protector assigned by Edward.
It all meant little.
She thought: let them kill Gloucester if they must, for although he is my uncle, I scarcely know him.
But let them leave his son, my friend, alone.

Dorset left, bound for the chamber of Jane Shore.
He had decided to seduce her afresh; for a long time he had resented sharing her with the King.
At last Grace could approach the Queen, who was still pale although the fiery spots upon her cheeks had diminished.
Grace knelt, and proffered the cup.
The honey had congealed on the ale’s amber surface.

‘Your highness complained of evil of the throat.
Dame Renée sent this,’ she whispered.

‘My throat is better.
It was weeping that made it sore.’

Again she had spoken and looked directly.
It was happiness of the highest order.
Grace raised her eyes to the Queen, who was sipping the fluid delicately.
Then Elizabeth said a strange thing.

‘There is none to taste this posset for me!
I have no Beaufort of Somerset!
Are you poisoning me, mistress?’

It was cruel, like a knife.
Yet Grace thought: I answered Dorset truly.
I love you.
Although you have never been kind, I adore you as a dog loves the only master he has ever known, one who rewards his duty with a kick, his loyalty with blows.
Is it because, within you, there are those deep fears, those lost feelings, that I myself own?
God save me, silver lady.
I love you, and know not why.

With a small entourage Elizabeth moved to Windsor to wait out the days.
It was mild enough for her to spend the afternoons in the ripening parkland.
Wrapped in fine fur over her black gown, she sat on cushions, her spine supported by an ancient oak.
All around was a rising cadence of birdsong; thrush and blackbird and robin shrilled in their small-leafed gallery above her head, and from the forest came the guttural rapping of a woodpecker.
On the small mere by which she sat, two moorhens bobbed beneath the flashing splendour of a pair of kingfishers.
It was April, cruel green April.

Only by sitting very still could she contain herself.
Grief, rage and anxiety warred within her.
Over all was a black fear that made her finger constantly the diamonds at her breast, the pearls in her ears, seeking comfort in their cool stability.
Now and then the sorrow pried through like an irrelevant toothache.
It was April; acutely, when she closed her eyes, she saw Bradgate opening to her round a luscious flower-strewn bend.
Sir John Grey, knight, is dead.
As is Edward, King of England
.
Strange that I, twice-widowed, should have attended neither of them at the end.
I would have staunched John’s wounds with my hair.
But Edward never even sent for me!
She bit her lips.
Rage gained sovereignty until ousted by unrest.
Why did he not call me?
While I waited, sending messages every hour, he preferred the company of my son Dorset, my brother Lionel, and cursed, vacillating Hastings.
Were all these nineteen years for naught?
I gave him sweet daughters, strong sons.
The last, little George, died through no fault of mine.
I gave him a Prince of Wales, Ned, made in our image, royal and fair and pale.
A stout, rumbustious, merry Duke of York, little Dick.
And I closed my eyes to lechery and drunkenness.
(A picture of Edward rose, Edward reeling to the vomitorium behind the dais, to spew up a thirty-course dinner so he might dine again.) Then Melusine cried on the battlements and he was gone, without asking for my presence at his side.
He rejected me to spare his own immortal soul.
He died in sin, in bigamy.
Tom whispered that he called for Eleanor at the last.
Pray Jesu none heard him.
Let not my glory pass away.

The only tribute to his consort, a poem penned by a stumbling amateur and written as if from the tomb, was nauseating to her in its irony.

… Where is now my conquest and royal array?

Where be my coursers and horses high?

Where is my mirth, my solace and my play?

As vanity is naught, all is wandered away!

O Lady Bessy!
long for me ye may call,

For I am departed until the doomsday,

But love ye that Lord who is sovereign of all.

She thought: I am again alone.
More than when John died.
For then I was four-and-twenty, fruitful, resourceful, with a strength that was doubled by the skill and purpose of my mother.
Now I am forty-six, and old.
A soft wind blew across the tiny lake, and unexpectedly, incredibly, her spirit lifted.
I am Queen-Regent.
Behind me lies the power of Cleopatra, or the Queen of Sheba.
Even now my son Thomas lays hands upon the treasures of the Tower, the vast fortune amassed by Edward, and the weapons of war to crush any who dare question my might.
How can I be alone?
She lifted her eyes to the greenness above and smiled faintly.
All my enemies are dead; the Fiend rots in earth and writhes in Hell.
Clarence will ferret no more for secrets to undo me.
Even Desmond’s laughter is stilled.
His two little knaves also, cut off in play … The smile fled.
That was unlucky.
Too late now, to mend that.
But Tiptoft should have spared them.
Unlucky.
She began again, for comfort’s sake, to account her benefits.
I have Anthony, strong, clever Anthony …