The King's Grey Mare (5 page)

‘Since your are so beloved, Isabella,’ whispered Ismania.
You must take my place at the board.
I’ll sit lower down.’

She urged her forward, saying, still smiling: ‘Sit nearest the dais; thus you will see the King’s Grace better.’

They proceeded the length of the crammed Hall, between the trestles set to seat two hundred knights and ladies as well as the esquires, bishops, priests and clerks who by various means had contrived an invitation to the King’s homecoming banquet.
To right and left jewels and velvet shimmered, threadbare tapestries billowed under the gale of courtiers bowing in reverence to the Queen’s passing.
To the left of the throne, servers scampered in and out of the buttery with loaded dishes.
Queen Margaret seated herself in one of the two chairs of estate.
The other was still vacant.
Close behind her seat stood three of her chief ministers: Piers de Brezé, the great French general; Lord Clifford, arrogant and black-browed, and the old white-haired Earl of Shrewsbury, the Great Talbot.
Beneath the cloth of estate and further down was another empty chair.

‘Tis the Queen’s wish.’
Margaret Ross leaned forward to whisper.
In memory of Suffolk.’

Yes.
Suffolk, butchered by Yorkists on Portsmouth’s strand.
Jacquetta’s voice had held vehemence.
For the first time Elizabeth wondered about war.
If the Queen’s heart were sore enough to honour thus one dead captain, might she not seek revenge on York?
Was Richard of York as quiescent as his recent oath of fealty would have men believe?
The clarions brayed again, as if for a call to arms.

‘Way for the King’s Grace!
Here enters his Grace King Henry the Sixth, lord of England and Ireland …’

Down the Hall came a small procession of men.
Elizabeth craned to look.
Here was the King; none was crowned, but she picked him out.
His hair was quite grey; he was tall, broad, slim in the waist.
A white scar on his cheek, and eyes so dark a grey that they were almost black.
Bronzed skin, and an ironic, humorous mouth.
So handsome; a fit mate for Margaret.
He wore sapphire velvet, and the Lancastrian collar of ‘S’s gleamed goldly on his chest.
The King – or was he the King after all?
– knelt before Margaret and remained in obeisance, as did two younger men, whose faces were hidden.
Another, whom Elizabeth had not even noticed, ascended unsteadily to the Queen’s side.
He might, she thought, staring, have been some humble clerk drawn by mistake into the royal party.
He was thin, bowed, solemn, and clad entirely in dusty black.
His narrow head and ears were covered by a cap of the same black stuff, his only jewels a great tarnished reliquary swinging at his breast.
In a milk-white melancholy face, grey, lustreless eyes surveyed the company disinterestedly.
From her close proximity, Elizabeth watched him with disbelief.
Could this be the heir of Agincourt?
She watched the Queen take one of his limp pale hands and kiss it.

With difficulty she dragged her gaze away as food was set before her; steaming breast of partridge with a sweet pepper sauce, eels stewed in almond milk.
Thomas Barnaby filled her hanap with the wine of Anjou.
Across the Hall, Jocelyne de Hardwycke lifted his cup and blew a soundless kiss towards her.
Ismania Lady Scales leaned back in her chair and called, over the tumult of resumed conversation: ‘Do you see the King, Isabella?
Does he see you?’
Then she laughed, a knowing, dangerous laugh.
Elizabeth felt a surge of annoyance.
The King, she observed, had given no sign of seeing her yet, and she resolved to make him look at her.
He would acknowledge her finery, and devil damn Ismania!

The King was talking in a loud voice that contrasted with his frail appearance.
The handsome scar-faced man knelt smiling at his side.

‘By St.
John!’
said the King.
‘What a throng are here this day!
I am weary from the pilgrimage.
At Walsingham they have phials of Our Lady’s blessed milk–’ he crossed himself ‘–but I had no money.
All last night I lay before the shrine.
By St.
John!
I had me much ghostly comfort from it.
Nay, nay,’ waving a steward away.
‘No wine.
Wine makes madmen and fools.’

The knight with the scar poured the Queen’s wine; she smiled at him, while the King maundered on, glancing over the Hall as if in a dream.
Elizabeth sat up straight.
She dipped a bunch of grapes in wine and ate them sensuously, her eyes fixed on the dais, and at last caught Henry’s attention.
He looked long at her, then, his face whiter still, beckoned her nearer.
With one triumphant backward glance at Ismania she moved gracefully forward, and sank deeply before the King in homage.

‘Who is this?’
he said in a high, querulous tone.
The Queen answered softly: “My kinswoman, Isabella Woodville, does you solemn duty here, your Grace.’

Elizabeth raised her eyes and smiled at the King.
She could see the large smudge of ash on his forehead.
So he did penance – for what?
She realized suddenly that he had no smile in answer to hers.
He rose slowly, eyes bulging.
With a shaking finger, he pointed at the silken square of Elizabeth’s bosom, exposed in the candlelight.

‘Forsooth!’
he cried.
‘Look!
Look!’
he commanded the whole company.
‘My court becomes a nest of harlots!’
Eyes still riveted to Elizabeth’s bosom: ‘Forsooth, have you no shame?
By St.
John!’
He shook his finger at Elizabeth, who drew back, gasped, and burst into tears.

Henry turned upon the Queen.
Tears stood in his eyes, his voice became a shriek.
‘And ye, madam!
Ye be much to blame!’
To Elizabeth, who was weeping copiously: ‘Whore of Babylon!
Blasphemer!’

Elizabeth turned and ran down the Hall, and the King sprang from his dais and, crying aloud, rushed in the opposite direction, disappearing through the buttery.
She did not linger to see where he went.
Tears streaming, she fled, past Ismania’s smile of utter triumph, away from Jocelyne’s sympathetic face, and out from the Hall, through the ranked heralds and guard.
She ran upstairs and along cool stone galleries until she reached her chamber.

Behind in the Hall, the scar-faced man bent to Queen Margaret and whispered.
When she nodded, her face troubled and angry, he turned to one of the young esquires who had, throughout, been hovering near the steps of the dais.

‘By St.
John!’
he mocked.
‘John, is she not fair?
Think you that you can comfort her?’

There was no mockery in the young man’s answer.

‘For the rest of my life,’ he said softly.
‘Now, I’ll not trouble her, she is too distressed.
Yes, she is fair.’
He glanced at Margaret with a lifted eyebrow, a peculiarly sweet smile.
‘Fair as a Queen.’

Long after it had grown dark, Elizabeth sat on the floor of her chamber.
The tear-stained scarlet dress lay beside her and she wore an old grey gown, high at the throat and pinned with a brooch which stabbed her neck whenever she moved.
All was deathly quiet.
For the past hour there had been faint sounds ascending from the Hall; the sweet wail of the viële, the rasping reed of the cromorne, and occasional halfhearted laughter.
Now the revel was over, but the other women had not returned.
She felt cold; the river mist was rising around the Palace and there was the first touch of autumn about.
It seemed to penetrate the chamber, deepening her humiliation with its dank breath.

At first she had imagined wildly the whole court discussing her.
She endowed the blaze of gaping faces with cynical smiles, she saw them asking one another her name and dismissing her with the deathly sign once used above the arenas of Rome.
Then, as time passed and her panic gave way to sorrow, fury at Ismania, and finally numb despair, she realized that her fears were possibly groundless.
The whole disaster had been over swiftly; she had knelt before the King only for as long as it had taken Queen Margaret to consume a handful of sugared rose-leaves.
She had not even taken a full reconnaisance of the other faces around the dais; their reaction was unknown.
A fleeting image of the scar-faced man nudged her mind; from him she had caught a flash of real appreciation, from a man who loved pretty women in gay dresses.
Mary have mercy!
Realization struck at her.
A normal man.
Again and again she saw the chalkfaced King, a film of spittle on his lip, eyes protruding as if he were being strangled.
In God’s name, what kind of a King was he?
That crust of ashes on his forehead marked him as a saint, yet he had accused her vilely, unjustly.
He had railed likewise at his Queen.
‘Madam!
ye be much to blame!’
Margaret’s face had darkened swiftly; she had dashed one glance towards the scar-faced man.
Though he had come from pilgrimage with the King he had seemed apart from Henry, he had served only the Queen with wine.
She wondered vaguely at his name and lineage.
Now she would never know, for the King would surely dismiss her from court.
Ismania’s laughter rang silently in her mind.
For the first time she longed for her mother; the austere comfort, the powerful presence, Jacquetta’s strange philosophies.

‘Melusine.’
She spoke the name aloud.

The room became quieter still, as if it waited for an answer.
Then, far below, the river’s lapping voice grew louder, surging about the thick walls, drifting on mist.
She rubbed her wrists, her flesh stared in points of chill.
Somewhere a night-bird cried mournfully, and it seemed as if the dark chamber were full of swirling fog.
She thought ardently upon Jacquetta’s rune-like wisdom.
She lives in us.
She fortifies us.
Receive her power
.

‘Melusine,’ Elizabeth whispered.
‘I am your child.’

A shudder assailed her.
From the time when she had been old enough to lisp the responses in the Mass, she had been familiar with the punishments awaiting heretics.
The fiery eternity of torture, justly applied by a fierce God.
Heat stronger than ten thousand candle-flames.
Even on earth, they burned you if you forsook the old saints, the law-givers.
Folk said that that pain was over quickly, if the faggots were green and the smoke thick.
Not so with the fires of Hell.
There, you burned for ever.

And then the strength and horror of these matchless doctrines ebbed utterly into the silence, a darker deeper silence through which she said softly:

‘I need one to protect me.’
Because she spoke to an empty room she laughed, to chase fear.
She thought of Jocelyne de Hardwycke more seriously than ever before.
He was the son of a powerful lord, and none would insult her with Jocelyne as husband.
He was well-favoured and courtly, and he was for Lancaster.
Truly, she had dreamed of love, the
coup de foudre
, the unmistakable face of love; but love was only a small part of life.
She might well wed Jocelyne.
The Queen would raise her brows at this
volte-face
, but she would doubtless be pleased after all.

‘So, send me a husband, Melusine,’ she said more boldly.
The night-bird cried again.
In her mind, she added: And let him be kind, and let me be loved more than any woman.

The feeling of cold had left her.
Almost banteringly she continued, her voice thrown back from the stone walls: ‘And bring Ismania a punishment for mocking me; only a light one!’
she added hastily.
Although this was but a game, played for comfort’s sake, even games could go awry.
A sudden banging on the door sent her to her feet.
In the doorway, ringed by light from the fiery cresset he carried stood the page, Barnaby.
He called: ‘Anyone there?
Ho!
Dame Woodville?’

He entered, warily looking about him, and saw her.

‘All alone, my dame?’
He looked her over, smiled foolishly.
‘You’ve changed your gown.
I liked t’other better.’

‘Spare me your likes and dislikes, Master Tom,’ said Elizabeth stiffly.
‘Where are the ladies?’