The King's Grey Mare (60 page)

For the twentieth time, she said: ‘Madame.
Think you that John of Gloucester is safe?’

She could ask her anything now, and have a good reply, yet a comfortless one.

‘Mistress, how should I know?
Was he in the battle?’

‘Nay.
His father forbade it.’

‘Then he’s safe,’ said Elizabeth.
‘He is of no account, I told you.
Stop weeping, Grace.’

Elizabeth gazed over the gold-flecked lawn.
There had been tears shed here before, by a Queen whose lover was slain; a Queen comforted by a girl whose husband came running, blood-stained, with bad tidings … John.
Ah, John.
Again she put his face, his name away.
It was more difficult here, and with this forced inactivity.
Marguerite’s ghost was lively on the lawn.
Through the walled archway she saw banners blazoned with the white daisy-flower and held by tall young men.
A woman, small and slight, walked between the escort; the banners were grand, a Queen’s banners, and the woman’s dress was of fine French cloth, her headdress snowily starched.
Elizabeth stared.
A verse stole into her head, as if bidden to the moment.

Benedicite
, what dreamed I this night …

Thy lady hath forgotten to be kind …

The ghost came right up to her, and made itself flesh.
For Marguerite at Greenwich had been beautiful.
Marguerite would not have carried a breviary wherever she went; more likely a lute, or a sword.

‘Greetings,’ said Margaret Beaufort, bestowing light kisses.

‘Countess.’
Elizabeth looked bewildered at the sudden panoply.
Marguerites bloomed in profusion on the air.
‘I see you bear the daisy …

‘I thought it pretty.
For Lancaster triumphant, and of course, for my name.’

Elizabeth took Margaret’s arm.
‘Come, be refreshed.’
The Countess picked delicately through the red leaves as she walked with Elizabeth.
Her black eyes missed nothing, the wasted fingers of Elizabeth, the occasional twitch of her head.

‘You don’t look well, my lady,’ she said pleasantly, as, followed by the gaudy entourage, they went into the palace.

‘I am exceedingly well,’ replied Elizabeth.
‘I trust the sickness is over in London.
I am anxious to see and rejoice with your victorious son.
Felicitations, Madame, on your Henry.’

Margaret sipped a little wine brought to her by a page.
She absently opened her breviary, and smiled.
‘It was preordained,’ she said smoothly.
‘Our dynasty shall endure for a thousand years.’

Elizabeth said: ‘He will get fine sons upon my daughter.’

Margaret did not answer; she was saying a
Te Deum
under her breath.

‘Margaret,’ said Elizabeth.
‘Countess.
You have my word and consent to the marriage.
When shall it be?’

‘Soon,’ said Margaret, gabbling away.
Then she closed her breviary with a clap and smiled a sweet, tight smile.
She sniffed at her wine-cup and said: ‘This drink’s too near the lees; is there no Rhenish?’

A steward behind Elizabeth’s chair, answered: ‘None left, your Grace,’ and Margaret raised her brows.
Elizabeth thought: has she forgotten that my grant from Richard died with him?
The last pension brought by John Nesfield was spent weeks ago.
Yet she complains of poor wine in my house.
She felt her cheeks flushing and welcomed the spurt of temper like a lover; it signalled the end of a weird apathy.

‘Madame!’
she said bitingly, ‘when my daughter weds your son …

‘King Henry the Seventh,’ Margaret interrupted.

‘Yes.’
Elizabeth frowned and forgot what she was about to say.

Margaret was glancing about the chamber, at the hangings, the carpets, the servants arrayed mutely at door and wall.
She looked at Grace, who was kneeling beside Elizabeth, and gave her a flash of teeth, humourless as a sword.

‘Mistress.
Do you know where your lady keeps her copy of the Titulus Regius?’

‘She does,’ said Elizabeth, the healthy rage renewed.
‘Grace, take my keys.
Fetch the vile thing.’

In the hearth a few logs burned.
Margaret, greatly in command, ordered a page to make the flames leap high.
Grace returned, carrying the long parchment like a sleeping infant in her arms.
‘Throw it in,’ commanded the Countess.

Grace set the Act gently on the fire’s heart.
It smouldered like feathers, then flamed, and the wax upon it ran like spreading veins of blood, blackening, corroding.

‘Now, my lady,’ said Margaret to Elizabeth.
‘By the grace of King Henry the Seventh you are restored.
You are Elizabeth, rightful widow of Edward Plantagenet.
Parliament has repealed this shameful Act.’

Elizabeth felt tears brimming, burning.
She said very softly: ‘I would see Henry.
I would kiss both his hands.’

‘When the time is full,’ said Margaret, closing her lips tight.

‘Does Bess not please him?’

‘The physicians have made their examination …’

O Jesu!
thought Elizabeth suddenly, wildly aghast.
She loved her uncle; he visited her at Sheriff Hutton.
Richard has deflowered her, and all is lost.
Her head and hand twitched madly, and Margaret looked away.

‘They find her strong and goodly proportioned,’ she continued.
‘She should conceive an heir with no trouble.’

Elizabeth snatched up the despised wine and gulped it down.

The Countess rose.
‘Farewell, your Grace,’ she said.
Elizabeth looked at her with haggard, grateful eyes.
Your Grace!
That sweet, almost forgotten sound.

‘A word,’ said Margaret, at the door.
‘When you meet His Majesty; let me counsel you on his humour.
He is grave and sober, as befits the saviour of England.
He would gladly forget the shames that Edward brought on England.
Therefore the Titulus Regius no longer exists, and it must never be mentioned.
You understand?’

‘I do.’
Ah, let me kiss his feet!

Margaret drew her mantle about her.
‘Also,’ she said, leaving, ‘he dislikes frivolity.
There has been overmuch light-mindedness in past royal households.
Go gracefully in his presence, my dame.
The King does not jest.’

So, good.
I, too, dislike jesters.

Margaret turned outside the door and stepped into the little chariot that had been brought for her.
Blazoned on its flank was the White Rose of York, with half its petals painted red, to signify the merging of the Houses.
She was already seated when Grace broke from her place beside Elizabeth at the door and ran forward.
She clutched at the gold tassels hanging from the side of the litter.
The Countess turned to her a frigid face; it blurred and shivered in her sight.

‘Madame … Madame …’ Grace could scarcely speak.
‘Is there news … of my lord of Gloucester?’

‘Gloucester is dead,’ Margaret said, and laughed.
‘His Majesty bravely slew him in the field.’

She saw Grace’s cheeks turn to clay.
Perhaps the jest was too strong.
‘You meant the traitor Richard, of course?’
she said curtly.

‘No,’ Grace whispered.
‘His son.’

‘Bah!’
cried the Countess.
‘The boy!
Well, to my knowledge he is in London, kindly tended by the King’s mercy …’

She felt Grace’s lips, Grace’s tears upon her hand.
Oddly uneasy, she leaned from the little chariot and called: ‘Drive on!’
Carriage and escort moved forward, in a storm of golden leaves and marguerites, and roses red and white.

The day was a luminous ghost.
Snow blotted the roofs and towers of Westminster and shed broken paleness on courtyard and thoroughfare.
Although the weather was warm for January the snow did not melt.
Swiftly London’s filth vanished beneath the smooth white silence; footprints, carrion, offal, dung, all were masked and absolved by it.
The city’s outline blurred.
A lucent gloom necessitated the early lighting of torches.
The Palace window, behind which Henry dressed for his wedding, flung out a glow mirroring another across the courtyard.

He wished to step to the window and look out curiously at that other light, where Bess underwent the careful ceremonies of preparation.
He could hear the jingle of harness as the wedding guests rode into the yard below.
He longed to throw open the window and suck in snowflakes, for the chamber was uncomfortably warm.
However, this would necessitate treading on a dozen or so henchmen who crowded him, washing him, oiling and dressing him with deliberate formality.
He therefore stationed Morton, already in full ecclesiastic regalia, at the window, and fired pleasant questions at him.

‘What do you see, my lord?’

The Bishop looked down at the splashed colours, the pennons and banners and quarterings dappled with snow.
The yard glowed with the liveries of a hundred visiting knights.
A menagerie of blazons filled the air; stags, bulls, wolves, bright birds; azure and gold and gules.
Esquires were running to assist dismounting lords; grooms led sleek horses to shelter.

‘The Spanish Ambassador, Ayala,’ he said.
‘And the sub-Prior of Santa Cruz.
About thirty in his suite.’

‘Spain,’ said Henry softly.
‘Good.
Who goes to meet them?’

‘Bourchier,’ said Morton, peering.
Directly below, the Cardinal Archbishop, looking like a scarlet mushroom, moved to receive the guests.
Cardinal Archbishop!
A pang of envy, swiftly quelled, shot through him.
All will come to pass, he thought.

‘Here comes the French contingent,’ he said.

I trust we can feed them all, thought Henry.
Were four thousand barrels of herring enough?
They would surely suffice throughout Lent.
The guests were bound to stay until Easter … The provision accounts were graven on his mind, He had checked them himself.
He raised his arms so that two knights could clothe him in a shirt of Rennes cloth of the pale washed-leaf colour called applebloom.
And ten thousand barrels of oysters?

‘My lord, we must talk again about taxes,’ he called, his voice muffled by the shirt over his head.

‘Gladly, Sire.
But not on your wedding-day!’
laughed the Bishop.

Four esquires knelt to adjust the King’s hose, lacing the points delicately.
Next came the velvet doublet, the colour of claret, and a long mantle one shade paler, faced with whey-coloured ermine soft as down.
Henry lifted each foot in turn and was shod in supple red leather.
The velvet was heavy; he began to sweat lightly and a page anointed his head with rose-water cologne.
There were too many people in the chamber; for instance, de Gigli, the prebendary of St.
Paul’s, one who fancied himself a poet, stood clutching the endless Latin epithalamium composed for the nuptials.
Henry guessed correctly that it would be a flowery piece.
It could wait.
The servants brought a jewel-coffer; his hands hovered over collars and rings.
They winked up at him like knowing eyes.

‘Majesty,’ said a small voice.
Yet another poet, Bernard Andreas, had wormed his way to the edge of the circle of henchmen.

‘Will you not hear my anthem?
’Tis only short.’

Henry sighed and nodded.

The poet recited squeakily:

‘God save King Henry wheresoe’er he be,

And for Queen Elizabeth now pray we,

And for all her noble progeny;

God save the church of Christ from any folly,

And for Queen Elizabeth now pray we.’

A look of jealous fury passed from de Gigli to Andreas, who bowed, smirking.
The King took a ruby from the box and placed it on his forefinger.
Of course, the meaning in Andreas’s creation was quite plain; a subtle reminder that England expected Bess to be crowned as soon as possible after her wedding.
Well, that too could wait.
He picked out another ring, a tiny carved skull once belonging to Richard, looked at it and set it down again.
Andreas will expect payment, he thought.
But he shall have it, the anthem is correct enough and he seems loyal … savagely he bit his lip at this imbecility.
A slip of the mind, in truth.
Had he forgotten that none is loyal?
Every smile cloaks a traitor; there’s no man in this room, this city, this realm, who would not betray me.
And my own advantage is this certain truth.
He bowed his bony shoulders and received the weight of a gold collar studded with emeralds.
Behind him, vassals, like monkeys, plucked invisible fluff off his mantle.