The King's Grey Mare (67 page)

One of the most satisfying recent events had been the arrest of the Stafford brothers.
A minor skirmish was quelled by troops waged by the Yeomen.
The elder Stafford had trodden air at Tower Hill.
His brother had been pardoned at the last moment; again, an example.
He, for sure, would walk warily henceforward.

And Morton was working on a new appraisal of the tax system.

‘This came to me, your Majesty; as Chancellor, I shall say: if you spend liberally, you must have money to spare for the King.
If you live frugally, you must have saved – money to spare likewise.
I will have them in a fork, Sire.’

Henry had weighed the idea.
‘It will make us unpopular, my lord.’

Squinting impatiently, Morton answered: ‘Maybe.
It will also make the Treasury strong again.
Is that not your desire?’

Morton was to be Cardinal Archbishop.

Of the other factions that had plagued the King, a few were still in flux; Francis Lovell had escaped the purge levied on the Staffords’ adherents and was in hiding, possibly near Oxford.
He could wait.
John, Earl of Lincoln and Richard’s named heir, had accompanied the progress as a member of Henry’s Council; not one sneeze had escaped Lincoln without being noted down.
Already Henry had seen the restlessness there, but Lincoln was more subtle than most.
The King decided to withhold all but the most trivial honours from Lincoln, and see where unrest led.
As for Sir William Stanley – he was a born traitor.
The way he had betrayed Richard still haunted Henry, and he watched Sir William closely.
Had not his astrologer bade the King beware the Buck’s Head?
So they were all surveyed, measured, hung-over by an invisible Damoclean edge.
‘Time, my lord,’ the King had remarked to Morton, as they rode down the Fosse Way.
‘Time, not death, is the leveller.
And I have time aplenty.’

Cadwallader smiled.
The seed of Wales stood upright in its mother’s womb.

The pattern dovetailed; without Morton there would have been many loose ends.
Everything moved with an uncanny progression of rightness.
Lesser men than Henry would have been tempted to rest their spirit, to reap enjoyment from sovereignty.
Not he.
Eternally watchful, mirthless and shrewd, he moved in an aura of calculation, vigilant for the cloaked whisper, the ambiguous word, the lightest warning.
Sir James Tyrrel had done his work and gone to a commission in Guisnes.
Everything was in place.

The sight of Elizabeth, confronting him as he burst into the Queen’s chamber, dislocated these steady thoughts.
The Queen-Dowager was on her knees, instantly, her wimpled head bowed with one or two stray locks of silver-gilt, or white, showing beneath the brow-band.
Henry strode first to his Queen and set his lips to her forehead, while behind them, Morton raised pale fingers in a general benediction.
Then Henry turned and raised the Queen-Dowager.
Her eyes were misted with an emotion unknown to him.

‘Welcome, welcome, Sire.’
He accepted this gravely.
He bowed, in the sweated cloth-of-gold habit.
One of his finger-rings caught in the Queen-Dowager’s trailing dark-blue sleeve as she bent to his hand.
She laughed, caught the laugh in a half-sob, and disentangled cloth from jewel.

‘An audience with you, Sire; my one request,’ she whispered.

In that moment, unknown to both of them, Melusine sparred with Cadwallader.
The Dragon coiled about the serpent.
She was strong, sinuous, but he had claws and a tongue of flame.
A wider ocean engulfed Melusine’s little lake.
Her twining grip loosed; she fell.

He spent five minutes with Bess and an hour with her physicians.
Then, having taken neither food nor drink, he went to confer with Morton.
Together they pored over the progress’s accounts; the revenues levied and the gifts received and bestowed.
Henry was alarmed to see how little profit showed.
The waging of troops to crush the Staffords had marred what might otherwise have been a worthwhile expedition.
The royal entourage seemed to have eaten and drunk as if each meal were its last.

He sat on a low gilt throne, cracking his knuckles and listening dismally to Morton reading from his rolls, of vast quantities of beef, eggs, salt and beer.
Stationed about the chamber were the Yeomen, and outside the door another gold and scarlet dozen stood, death-still.
Henry began to cough.
Spring, not crisp autumn, was the season for his tertian fever; yet on a side table lay a covered flagon containing elderflower water to soothe his chest.
Morton stopped reading.

‘Your cough is worse,’ he said.
‘Should you not take your ease, now?’

Henry sniffed his own armpit.
The cloth-of-gold was rankly soaked.
One of the Yeomen went silently to a coffer and began to take out fresh linen.
Morton gathered up the parchments that lay like folded lilies about the foot of the dais.
It was not easy being Chancellor; every farthing must be accounted for, and if a bill were carelessly written, it must be done again.
All over the palace clerks went rubbing finger-joints and red eyes.

‘What more of urgency?’
asked Henry.

‘Only these to see, Sire.’

Henry raked the account with a glance, and scrawled his initials in the Household Book.
Then he rose and went to where fresh clothes lay ready for his approval.

‘The Queen-Dowager, Sire,’ said Morton carefully.
‘She has waited rather long.’

Two of the Yeomen peeled away Henry’s sweated robe.
One whispered: what colour today, dread Sire?
and he pointed to a velvet doublet, darkly sheen as a crow’s wing.
Pages of the bath entered and went through into the next room to prepare a herbal tub.
Henry said to the Yeomen standing round the walls: ‘Dismiss!’
and they filed out.

‘I will see her,’ he said.
‘Bid her to me, in an hour.’
He coughed again, and Morton’s eyes grew troubled.

‘It’s nothing,’ said the King.
‘I shall live for ever.’

She was admitted at the appointed time.
When she entered Henry had his back to her, his shoulders a little hunched, and coughing softly.
Her first thought was: he has changed his suit, why does he wear black?
He should wear more gold, scarlet, to deify and dignify him for the person he is.
She knelt.
A spasm of twitching seized her head and hand, maddeningly inappropriate at this moment of consummation.
She controlled herself with difficulty, while he turned and came to her so that she could take his hands, to which she bent first her lips and then her brow.
And she found herself dumb.
She had waited too long.
Henry was her saviour; anything she might say would be superfluous.
Stiffly she rose and swayed a little before him.
She said softly: ‘Sire, I rejoice in your return, and in the fruitfulness of my daughter’s womb.
She will, I know, fulfil our destiny.’

This was a mistake; his eyes narrowed.
‘
Our
destiny, Madame?’
She felt a blush warming her neck, as if she were a naughty child caught out in some misdemeanour.
Ridiculous, for the King, her son-in-law, was young enough to be her son!

‘Destiny, Sire.
It was a happy day for me when you won the field.’
She smiled.
‘You have restored me, and my family.
I can never forget it.’

She sought his hands again.
They were perfumed from his bath; they were bony and unresponsive.
Neither did he speak, but weighed her with his long eyes, the eyes of unknown significance.

‘Sire …’ She let her hands slide away.
He bowed almost imperceptibly.

‘Very well,’ he said in his high, measured voice, in which the accents of France and Wales blended.
‘So you are pleased, Madame.
Was there more you wished to say?’

‘No … only, I await my revenues from the estates you have bought from me.’

‘My Chancellor has this in hand.’
There was another pause, and he foresaw her departure within a moment.
Then she said, casting down her blue-veined lids:

‘Sire – I would have my sons with me again.
I have not seen Richard for a year and a half; Edward I have not seen for years.
I would have them with me, for their nurture and my comfort.’

Henry began to cough, a tight rasping bark, and turned from her, walking to the side table where his medicine stood The cup’s cover bore an unbroken seal, testament that the draught had been sampled and found safe.
He fingered the cup, contemplated it for three or four minutes.
It was as if he had not heard her.

‘My sons, highness,’ said Elizabeth.

The black velvet shoulders rose closer to his ears as he coughed; he moved his head so that one long sombre eye studied her.
Did he not understand her request?
Perhaps he had the same fears of her that Richard had had – as if he could ever mistrust her?
Words tripped and tumbled from her lips.

‘Sire, you must not misconstrue my intent; my allegiance is totally yours and the Queen’s, and the new blessed heir when he comes.
Do not think that any rebellion will break over the persons of my sons.
I myself will keep them in submission.
They cannot aspire to the Crown.
The Act of Titulus Regius …’

He turned swiftly.
The lean face was tinged with a barbarous outrage, yet he smiled, a smile to be seen on the face of a corpse.
Sudden apprehension filled her.
The Act of Titulus Regius did not exist
.
Treason to mention it, or even to remember that it had ever existed.
Through its repeal Bess was Queen and she herself Queen-Dowager.
Yet men had been hanged for whispering of it.
Henry picked up the cup of balsam, broke the seal and drank silently.
Paralysed with guilt, confused by witless paradox, she watched him; the bony throat moving, the little domestic movements of his hands.
Disproportionate fear was born and crouched in her like a beast.
At last he set down the cup.

‘What do you want, Madame?’
he said softly.

A little of her old spirit flared.
She would not kneel to him again.
Not she, who had had a King weeping and prostrate before her … Centuries ago.
She lifted her sharp chin.

‘My sons, Sire.
Edward and Richard, my sons.’

There was that chilling smile again.
Even more softly, he said:

‘But your sons are dead, Madame.
The traitor Plantagenet had them murdered, so that he might usurp my throne.
Did you not cry of it yourself?
Day and night?
that Gloucester had them smothered in the Tower?’

For a second she felt her heart stop and begin again with a sickening bound.
This a nightmare, from which I soon must wake!
Or the King jests with me, giving credence to Monton’s lie, which I helped spread in honour of our cause …

The King does not jest.

She heard her own shrill voice.

‘Your Grace!’

Sudden anger lit the yellowish eyes.
He said contemptuously:

‘Madame, you forget yourself.
We are ‘your Majesty’!’

Then he quit the room, thin and silent in his black; shoulders lifted like a raven.
She was alone, staring blindly, tasting blood where she had bitten her lip.

Throughout the spring and summer, Chepeside seethed about John and Grace, and they were a part of it.
During the day they walked the City, preferring this to their small room to which slaughterhouse roars and the sound of Gould bullying his prentices ascended.
Gould grew sourer than ever; would not even bid good-day, but there was no spoken criticism of the menage, and none suggested they should leave the lodging.
The street itself was quick to gossip, and had cause; John spent like a sailor.
Hand in hand with Grace, he walked the murmurous ways, down Poultry, the Vintry, and Jewry with its dark shops and darker proprietors.
Along Bread Street and Milk Street the lovers took their way; they entered the best taverns.
John dressed like a prince in a long tawny mantle, its sleeves fringed with gold, and wore a black cap with a feather.
There was something in his face that made folk step aside and the prentices whistle only at a safe distance.
Upon Grace he lavished the King’s pension.
In Candlewick Street he bought lengths of murrey and wool soft as a cat’s back, and he ordered a Flemish seamstress to make them up into the latest fashion.
He dressed Grace in green, Kendal green, and sapling green; wearing the hoods and gowns of his choosing, her eyes were like burning jade.
Nightly, when the butcher had gone home to his Bishopsgate mansion, and the small upper room was quiet, John peeled the willow strands from their white core.
She lay tranquilly lapped in green, flickering, candlelit green, the colour of love and hope.
So fair were the nights that she grudged the day beginning.
Sometimes she awoke before the night was done and, still gathered close in his sleeping arms, would think: if we could sleep, and never wake!
A thought, brought by the dark hours, which struck her as unnatural and morbid.
Then her peace and her unrest would battle, and the silver shadow of Elizabeth would intrude, wafting down to light upon the bed.