The King's Grey Mare (50 page)

Her temper broke absolutely.

‘As you see fit to address me thus,’ she said, trembling, ‘bear this message.
Let your master come to me himself.
Let him bow the knee.
Let him deliver his comfort in person.’

Reynold Bray smoothed the air with his hand.
‘Madame, you know that the Lord Bishop is closely immured.
It was only by great good fortune that my friend was able to come here this day.’

‘I care naught,’ she said violently.
‘My edict remains unchanged.
Let Morton come and tell me this glorious news, the smell of which I distrust already.
Can he tell me how my sons are, my Richard, my Edward, in the Tower?
Or the whereabouts of my son and lieutenant, Tom Dorset?’

‘Your sons are all well,’ said Bray quietly.
‘Dorset is part of the plan, if you would only listen to it.’

She turned away.
‘I’ll listen only to Morton.’
The Welshman was laughing at her, she knew it; her blood sang with murder.

‘Morton is in Buckingham’s prison.’
As to a child, Bray repeated.
‘Buckingham, the King’s chief minister …’

‘King!’
she cried.
‘Usurper!’

She advanced on them like a crazed beast, her face ravaged.
‘Leave me!’
Her voice cracked, then softened.
‘Leave me alone.’

Murmuring together, they left, and she sat still, her body drawn and shuddering.
In her mind she turned over half-doubts and suspicions, while her ladies fearfully returned to her side.
Out of her tumult, one piece of vital information remained clear.
Morton was a prisoner of Buckingham.
She beckoned to Catherine, who knelt, ingratiating, cowed.

‘Sister–’ the drained eyes looked down – ‘I have a task for you.’

‘Anything.
Everything, Bess.’

‘Does your husband love you?’

Catherine’s face crumpled almost in tears.
About her person she carried letters, from Buckingham the adored, Buckingham, whom she sadly missed.
Night after night she had toyed with the impossibilities of breaking Sanctuary and rejoining him.

‘Tell me.
Has he a grudge, even the faintest, against the King?’

Buckingham had, and had only hinted at it in one secret letter, daring her to speak of it.
But under the look from Elizabeth’s eyes she was powerless, and stammered: ‘Yes, Bess.
He wished to marry our daughter to Gloucester’s son – so that she could be Queen-Consort one day.
Gloucester would have none of it.
Harry was angry.’

‘It is enough.’
She plucked vellum and quill from a table.
‘Write.
Fan your husband’s resentment.
Sound him out.’
She smiled a twisted smile.
‘Tell him I shall repay him, one day.’

Catherine busied herself.
Once she raised her head and asked anxiously: ‘Sister, how shall this bill be carried?’

Elizabeth turned from her pacing.
Butchers could go anywhere, welcomed with their priceless cargo.
Meat for captor and captive alike.
Letters could be carried in a wrapped joint, and no questions asked.
She said softly: ‘Is Master Gould still within Sanctuary?’

In Bloomsbury, he dismounted to fill her arms with flowers.
She sat upon a grey palfrey, skirts neatly falling in rich green folds over the sidesaddle.
Lady Anne had given Grace the dress.
Green, love’s colour.
She had smiled as she said it, knowing that their love was child’s love and not the love she herself knew.
Not the suffering love that devours, that nourishes more pain than pleasure; not the love that feeds on anxiety.
Now, in the green of Bloomsbury Grace sat lapped in love, while the bright face turned to hers was full of innocence and faith, and the day long.
He plucked for her tall white daisies, and the gold and cream of cowslip; the delicate-hearted dog-rose with its shades of saffron and pink, and the anemone, with its swift-dying purple.
He gathered them in a great sheaf, damp and heavily odorous, and offered them high, a fragile pledge, the essence of summer’s love.

She buried her lips in their mixed fragrance and wanted to weep.
Tomorrow, John would ride north on the first great progress of King Richard after his coronation, and thereafter to Sheriff Hutton in Yorkshire to resume his knightly training.
Through the web of green stems she looked at his slender, fiery face, so full of the joy of life, and at the eyes that held no guilt or guile.
She saw there his delight in her presence, and his anticipation for Richard the king, to be followed tomorrow through cheering cities.
During their weeks together at Baynard’s Castle he had talked ceaselessly of the coronation, the great banquet, the roars of acclaim for his father.
The people, free of the turbulent Woodvilles, had welcomed Richard like a god.
When John spoke of this, she was forced to turn away to hide her face, for the thought of Elizabeth nagged like the toothache.
She saw her ill, raging, smiling, sleeping like a weary child.
She imagined her waking frightened in the night; no Grace to mouth a bitten-off prayer for her.
Only Renée, slow, and growing deaf, or the sisters, too anxious to be of much use.
She called me her ill-luck, thought Grace; yet I was really her talisman against despair.

Across the meadow, the little group of knights and ladies, lately abandoned by John and Grace, were hawking.
Lady Lovell had a fierce young merlin, Against a blue sky faintly silvered with cloud, it brought down two clumsy panicking partridge, one after the other.
Higher still a tiny sparrowhawk chased a lark almost to infinity.
They hung for an instant, remote as stars, then plummeted, a Lucifer-fall charged with tragic beauty.
John said softly: ‘Love.
Love, are you listening?’

She lowered the tender green bouquet and tried to smile.
She had not heard a word he said.
Yesterday they had looked together at the Titulus Regius, a copy of which had been delivered to every courtier.
The stark terrible words of it had given her pain, and John had felt it.
Gaily he had tossed the roll into the air, making some jest about dull lawyers’ talk; and so dismissing the most important document of the century, had drawn her close, a target for his impetuous, unskilled kisses.
Now he mounted his horse so that he could move nearer and take her hand, clasping it over the mountain of flowers.

‘You are sad,’ he murmured.
‘Sweetheart, we have so few moments alone together.
Be happy.’

What he said was true.
In Lady Anne’s household – the new Queen’s household – privacy was impossible and chaperonage constant save for snatched moments such as these.
To Grace the reason for such surveillance was still not clear.
No gossip tarnished her or John.
She looked at his worried face and said: ‘You are sad, too.’

‘Tomorrow is almost with us.’
He frowned, chewing a green stalk.
‘I could arrange for you to accompany us on the progress.
You could stay at Sheriff Hutton, and we need not be parted.’

Violently she shook her head; his face darkened.

‘You said that you loved me.’
His voice was dangerously quiet.
He was a Plantagenet, jealous, volatile, like all the male members of the dynasty.
He stared into the green eyes made amber by sunlight, at the sweet brows like birds in flight.
Lastly he looked at the small pale mouth, the mouth like honey.
He felt a great and hungry tenderness.

‘I love you,’ he said.
‘Most heartily.
Come to Sheriff Hutton.’

The fronds were cool against her face, balm to her tears.
Thoughts, hidden from John, repeated: I cannot leave her.
Not while she might need me, call for me.
One day she may forgive me the sin of loving her, and while she lies in Sanctuary I cannot leave London.
I am a dog, a bitch, turning to lick the striking hand, grovelling to the beloved’s frown.

‘Do you love me?’
he said.
‘If you do not, there are others who will.’

She looked at his anguished, bewildered boy’s face, heard his tongue aping cruel adult words.

‘I love you, John of Gloucester,’ she answered.
‘And I shall love none other.’

So he was ashamed, and touched her cheek with shaking fingers.
‘I am mad,’ he admitted.
‘Churlish, too.
I’ve no experience in these matters.’
He grinned at her and she felt safe again.
Today,’ he said inconsequentially, ‘my father sent me two tuns of malmsey wine.
It was a token that he considers me a man.
Soon I shall be old enough to serve him.
If I do well, he will ordain me Captain of Calais, old Warwick’s commission.
Ah, love!’
Joyful now, all rancour forgotten.
‘Love, lovely life!’

The melancholy drew near to Grace again.
She imagined the forthcoming progress, the panoply surging northward through England.
John in the train with his new livery, his gay shield with the bend sinister across royal quarterings.
While she wore out the aimless days in London.
Did Elizabeth know of her new allegiance?
If so, she would brand her traitor, like Margaret Beaufort.
As for John – he would easily forget her.
His future beckoned, a time to show his valour; soon her own light image would be buried beneath new faces, new triumphs.
Perhaps in a year, he would not even remember her name.

All the time he watched her, astutely guessing her thoughts, and secretly a little angry that she should demean his vows.
Yet when he saw the smooth honey of her face tremble in sorrow his annoyance died.
He took the flowers from her and threw them down.
He lifted her easily from her horse on to his.
There, he held her silently, while in the distance the hawks winged like legends, rising in majesty, dropping as if stunned.

‘We will meet again soon.’
His voice was muffled by her hair.
‘All will be well, sweet heart.’

Now the hunting party was preparing to leave, the falconers calling in the birds to the lure, the grooms whistling the dogs and running to fetch horses tethered in a grove of oaks.
Lady Lovell was casting anxiously about for Grace and pages were looking for John.
A group of riders detached itself from the main party and came at a lilting gallop through the grass, raising crickets and bumblebees, scattering flowerheads.
Pages ran leggily at the side of a dozen mounted knights, who came as if blown on a holiday wind, their horses’ legs shimmering strongly.
The foremost horse was blindingly white.
Someone shouted, jesting, indistinct, and the horse’s rider laughed.

‘O Jesu!’
said John, his face crimson.
‘It is the King, my father.
He must have joined the party lately.
Mistress, we must dismount.’

It was not so easy.
The palfrey, excited by the oncoming horses, backed into John’s mount.
Grace struggled to extricate herself from one of John’s spurs, caught in the trailing hem of her mantle.
The more she tugged the more they were entwined.
The horse humped its back and kicked out, and John half-fell to the ground, leaving a long rent in the green skirt.
Grace was left trying to curb both horses, while the King’s mount, raising a bright pollen-cloud, drew up before them.

‘Sire,’ said John, on his knees.

King Richard sat and laughed at his son’s scarlet cheeks and Grace’s pale embarrassment.
He surveyed the two smooth faces and his laughter died as a pang of almost unrecognized envy jolted him.
He himself had forgotten what it was like to be so young, to play at love.
Once, before Edward died, while Warwick lived, there had been days like this for him, at Middleham, with Anne.
He had a sudden insane urge to gather blooms for Grace, to wrestle with John.
As he would have done twenty years ago, before battle wearied him, and kingship laid its yoke on him.
He snapped his long, ringed fingers; a page ran to quieten the horses and lift Grace down.
She curtseyed in the bruised grass and said: ‘Excuse me, highness.’
The King was relaxed, holding the great white destrier with one easy hand on the reins.
He had the same dark eyes, fine bones, as John.
But John was robust of countenance, whereas the King could often look sick and haggard, his pallor turning to ash, his eyes indrawn.
She studied him shyly; Richard in turn, saw a true daughter of Edward Plantagenet, with the gold of Edward before indolence and excess coarsened him.