The King's Grey Mare (62 page)

‘Bess?’
he said again.

‘Sire, I will obey to my best endeavour.’

Secretly she thought there must be more to getting children than talking about it.
Henry approached and sat on the bed.
Blue hollows lay beneath his eyes.
There was something he was trying to say, but neither of them knew what it was.

‘Did the revel please you?’
he said.
She nodded.

‘I liked the woman who sang with the fiddle,’ he continued.
(A Welshwoman, with a voice like an icicle to make the blood race like a mountain beck.
Two shillings, and cheap at the price.)

‘Sire …’

‘For God’s love – I am Henry in this chamber.’

She smiled, looked down and began to plait the tassels on the sheet.

‘What is it?’
he said gently.
He began to think she was a simpleton; that was not to her detriment, as long as she bore him strong, clever sons.

‘My mother said …’

The mother; that thin bright desperate face, seen only in a brief moment of greeting before the dais.
Well, she had played her part.
He would use her kindly, if she gave him no cause to do otherwise.
Trust none.
The talisman burned his brain.
Trust no man, or woman.
The face, a dying spark, wavered before him and was still.

‘She craved an audience with you,’ said Bess’s little, dutiful voice.
‘She has endeavoured to see you for weeks.
Tonight … Henry, she was disappointed.’

It was the last thing Elizabeth had said to her, before they were parted by a score of priests for the bedding ceremony.
It would be wrong not to deliver the message.

‘Henry?’

He was not listening.
There had been a man who ate live coals, and cost six shillings and eight pence.
And a little maid who danced – twelve shillings for her.
Rather costly; but the Spaniards, full-fed, well-wined, with bulging eyes, had applauded.
They would carry back tales of Henry’s court, to make a mark with their Isabella.
Tomorrow, he thought, I must draw in my horns.
The progress north must not be too expensive.
I must consult with Morton about taxes.

‘… only wishes to thank you.
Will you see her?’

‘Your mother?’
he repeated slowly, returning from his mental account-book.
He drew back the covers and hoisted himself into bed.
He picked up a shining strand of Bess’s hair.
It was as healthy and pristine as an ear of wheat, and clung to his fingers.

‘What manner of woman is she?’
he asked.
He had his own thoughts on this, but was none the less open to instruction.

‘I don’t know.
She is …’

‘Proud?’
A nod.
Of course.
Had he not assessed her pride at their very first meeting?
‘Strong?’
Bess did not answer.

‘Not so strong, these days,’ he spoke almost to himself.
He had guessed she was ill.
With characteristic, uncanny intuition, he gave her five years more at best.

‘Strong in spirit,’ said Bess.

‘Ah!’
He lifted the tress of hair and set his lips to it.
It smelled of gillyflowers, distilled in fatigue and fear.

‘She snared that old ram, your father!’
he said brutally, and was instantly shocked at himself.
One should not speak so … or was anything permissible these days?
In Edward’s court, free speech, free doings, had been legion.
Curiously he said: ‘How was it done?’
then, ‘Blessed Christ!
How should you know?’
He laughed and slid an arm about Bess’s shoulders.

‘She was most beautiful.’
It was only a whisper.

‘There must have been more than that!
Beautiful women were conquered and left by Edward yearly.
What more, Bess?’

‘He desired her,’ said Bess, blushing, and dived under the clothes like a seal.

‘What more?’
persisted Henry.
‘Ah, does it matter?’
sliding down under the mounded damask.
‘Come, Bess.
Let us see if you have inherited your father’s lust!’

Shortly enraptured, the cool part of his mind remained to say: There is no witchery here, and so the witch can wait…

The bonfire outside Westminster Hall had melted the snow.
The ground was ruddy, fluidly shadowed as the reflected flames leaped and ran between the tossing crowd of dancers.
A hundred people capered with linked hands; men and women lifted snow-damp feet and skirts to the squeal of the fiddles and the rabid beating of the drum.
Over a lesser fire the hacked remains of two oxen swung on a spit.
A gang of prentices were playing football with an empty canikin.
Although some folk were already drifting back to their homes, the noise was still ferocious.
It was a wild gaiety; something of blood-sacrifice lay in its note.
The joy was desperate, like the last dance before a judgment.
The din drifted up the palace walls, drowned the office of the Sanctuary monks, and leaped across the icy river in which, reflected from the further bank, answering fires were seen.

A bevy of ancient men occupied a bench and ruminated over the cups.
Wool-muffled lovers played tag and fiercer, hotter games in and out of the shadows.
Pickpurses made their own festival among the careless crowd.
A whippet, flying in pursuit of a rat, upset a friar into a drift of ale-sodden snow; the prentices left their game to gape at the Church struggling in sodden habit.
Above this scene, lights were going out all over the Palace.

The Yeomen of the Guard were allowed no drink, so austere was their destiny, the avid protection of the King’s person.
However, the gate-ward had had their smuggled fill.
If they were careless, it was most ardently concealed.
Their backs were as straight as ever; their iron grasp unwavering on their pikes.
Yet some joined, under their breath, with the crowd’s song, and swayed a very little to the singings.

Rutterkin is come unto our town,

In a cloak without coat or gown,

Save ragged hood to cover his crown,

Like a rutterkin, hoyda, hoyda!

It was an innocent-sounding lay, but it made them wink at one another.
Mostly they were young men; when Grace, heavily swathed in a wool houpeland, and hand in hand with Renée, sought to pass through into the street, they knew nothing but pleasure.
They chaffed the two women, throwing gaudy compliments.
One of the guard put his arm about Grace, mock-sternly demanding her business.
She looked up and recognized him: Master Walter, who had rescued her from the urchins outside Westminster Hall, who had taken her to Baynard’s Castle, to the warm alien caress of Anne Neville.
She noticed he still wore a white rose; it was pinned half-under the facings of his tunic.
He remembered her too, after a moment, and with rough tenderness, asked her how she was.

‘And you’re not going out?
Into this?’
He gestured towards the revelry.

‘
Parbleu!
Why not?’
exploded Renée, who had dined well and was in a fierce good-humour.
‘We have leave …’

‘The King’s leave?
The Queen’s?’
he said.
Then, more softly.
‘God bless her.
Sweet Bess!’

‘The Queen-Dowager’s leave,’ said Renée stiffly.
‘I heard that my cousins are come from France.
I would find them, and you shall not stop me.
Master White Rose!’

‘
Red
and White, mistress!’
He showed her the other lapel, on which stiff scarlet petals bloomed.
He bowed, and let the women pass through.
Grace glanced back once; there was something bleak about him, as if part of him had died.

They descended the steps and crossed the square into the leaping firelight.
The people surged like insects, all buzzing song, curses and laughter.
As the throng enfolded her she felt stifled.
She smelled choking woodsmoke, sour ale, vomit, the void of bladders.
She thought of the sweating sicknes and was afraid.
A prentice still chasing his canikin dived against her, separating her from Renée.
Grace’s hood was snatched back by the jostle; her loose bright hair took gold light, red shadows from the fire.
The flames sought out the pale pointed face and the green eyes wide with alarm.
She felt the buffetings of the people; despite this they seemed like mirages, as if her oustretched hand could pass clean through them.
Across her vision passed the figure of the tall Moor, the man with the monkey whom she had seen the day when Walter aided her.
He seemed ominous; a figure of fate.
Out loud she said the old
raison
of reassurance.

‘I am the daughter of a King!’

‘Why, here’s sport!’

There were four of them, they crowded her, their hot bodies pressing.
They were young, their doublets smeared with fat from the wedding roast, their faces flushed with ale.
Well met, sweetheart, they said, admiring her, a flower on a dunghill.
She shook off a clasp on her arm, twisted from an embrace, felt fingers tickling her neck.
There was a red haired girl with them, a pretty girl with a dirty face and a torn bodice half-revealing pearly breasts.
She laughed scornfully as one of the youths succeeded in kissing Grace.
His wet mouth, burning with ale, engulfed her mouth, nose, cheeks.
She dragged her face away, and cried out.
Renée turned and blundered back through the mob.
With a savage hipswing she knocked the red haired girl aside, and tore Grace from the circle of arms.
Her hands boxed, leaving red ears, and she let out a long string of complicated French oaths.
A few were directed at Grace herself.

‘Could you not keep beside me?’
she grumbled as they fled.
Damn you, Renée, Grace thought; it was only a favour that brought me with you on this social errand.
I would rather have stayed with my lady, sleeping peacefully when last seen, with Catherine at the bed-foot.
Sleeping like a child, Christ be praised.

The cousins were discovered drinking wine outside a tavern on the farther side of the square.
Renée launched herself at them with tears and kisses and endless questions.
They had come from Harfleur with the Tudor guests.
Grace found them intimidating, especially Alicia de Serrencourt, who viewed the spectacle of London at play with derision.

‘
Alors!
Regardez les anglais en fête!
’ Her fishy eyes spoke of barbarians.
Her husband, who never had the chance to speak, brought Grace a cup of wine, and leaned gloomily against the door-frame of the bustling tavern.
The women gabbled – French endearments, congratulation, speculation.
Did the King like his bride?
What a day for France, and England … Spain too was coming around.
Although the reconciliation was begun in Richard’s day… ah,
vraiment.
The
traitor Plantagenet, gone to his master, Lucifer.
Grace clasped her brimming goblet, looked disinterestedly around.
The fire was burning down, and even the prentices were wearying of their play.
One or two young men, heads throbbing with excess, stood apart, dazedly wondering what had passed during the last few hours.
One in particular stood rigidly, his hand resting upon a buttressed wall, as if he sought security in its age and firmness.
The dying flames lit up his face.

She dropped the wine-cup and its contents splashed her with a deep red spray.
She stared as if her eyes would burst, eyes already filling with tears of joy.
She took a step forward and nearly fell.
Was he real, or only another fleshly mirage, like the gay, strangely deathly crowd?
Two people passed between her and the shadowed sight of him; a vagabond dragging spoils in a sack.
Someone threw a broken cartwheel on the fire, and it blazed up anew.
She saw him then, truly.
He was John, unmistakable, alive, adored.

It took a minute to cross the square; it took an hour, an aeon.
A spark from the fire caught her gown as she passed, and someone slapped at it, while she walked on, unheeding.
The cobbles were warm under her feet.
She walked to him through Hell, she came to him through an inferno of delight.
Her whole body grew molten with love; her eyes were washed with joy.
‘Mistress, take care, you’re on fire!’
Minutes later the words came back.
Yes.
I burn.
John, I burn.
I never knew until this night, how I do burn.
Welldoers pressed about her, dousing her smouldering clothes with the dregs of ale, and unthinkingly she struck off their aid.
Hair streaming loose, eyes a green mist of love, she reached his side at last.
He turned, and she saw in him a devil.