The King's Grey Mare (9 page)

Still Warwick’s pressing menace cast a cloud on beauty, even as the breeze blew a cloud across the lake to hide the sun.
Melusine, she said wordlessly, where is my protector?
For I need one now, if ever.
I have made an enemy of Warwick.
Where he is concerned, even the Queen must look to her protection.
A feeling of doom made her shudder, and the mirrored Elizabeth shuddered, her body long and wavering in the water.
Melusine, Melusine, have you forgotten me?

Then brightness came again, but in the lake beside her image, a shadow remained.
A young straight shadow that moved forward and became defined.
A face that took gold from a sunbeam and mirrored itself brightly; a curving mouth that spoke of sweet temper and good sense.
Straight features; one eyebrow set in a quirkish lift.
Eyes that grew large in the lake.
A face to cherish and to trust.
A face to look upon for ever.

She gathered her skirts and rose slowly to face him.
He wore a tunic of sky-blue satin and knelt instantly at her feet.
When he raised his face, with its innocent mouth, all ready to do her homage, she thought, without surprise:
So this is he.
He is here at last.
Love, I have waited, and now the waiting ends
.
She heard his quiet voice murmuring an apology for startling her.
His lips were warm on her cold hand.
He knew her name, he said, he had watched her progress from the lists.
She knew him not, he said: John Grey, son of Lord Ferrers of Goby.
And then the courtly conversation ceased, and they looked at one another, as if they had thirsted for the looking since time began.

‘
She met with Raymond by her home, the fountain in the forest, and took his wits away.’

The
coup de foudre
.
The power and glory of the heart.
These were mere words, inadequate tools to describe the joy that was almost pain, the feeling of bodily dissolution, spiritual ecstasy.
Words to skim only the surface of the deep water, the sure and sweet experience of mutual worship, the certainty that now the nucleus of the world breathed and lived.

There had been no need for coquetry or wooing.
Within five minutes of that first meeting, all was equal.
Reality made nonsense of her one-time cherished tales of romance.
Those chroniclers knew naught of love, love’s real implications.
Only Chaucer, perhaps, had come a little close.

The lyf so short, the craft so long to lerne,

Th’assay so hard, so sharp the conquering,

The dreadful joy, that alwey slit so yerne,

Al this mean I by love ..

The dreadful joy.
The essence of pain, instinctive, unfathomable.
A host of new, half-understood fears.
Fear of the knowledge that this person, now so dear, was only mortal and would, one day, cease to breathe, to kiss, to laugh and sorrow with her.
The dreadful joy of realizing that she was split in two, that half of her went with him through the world, into danger, or sadness, so that all his pleasures were hers and all his griefs, her misery.
For the first time in her life, Elizabeth longed for self-abnegation.
Pride slipped away; she wished to be fluid, invisible, to crawl inside his heart and be one with him for ever.
If he were sad, she wept.
If he rejoiced, she knew childlike gaiety.
To her eyes, the sky seemed hard, a bright sapphire, and every flower, tall icy lily and blood-red rose, met her with an almost physical shock.
Wherever she looked she saw his face, in searing beauty and fondness.
His voice called her in the wind and the birds’ song, his very existence sharpened her senses.
His name was a talisman, a comforter.
The
coup de foudre
.
So had Jacquetta named it, the passion few had known.
Now Elizabeth held it in her heart, and was daily amazed, for she had not thought herself capable of such love.

She became careless, forgetful, smiling gently whenever the other women spoke to her; she fell in with their plans where once she would have been obstructive and tantalizing.
She kissed Ismania on the cheek and offered to tire her hair in the new Italian fashion.
She loaned Lady Dacre the pearl-and-ruby ring.
Only when rumour of her attachment crept through the Palace, coming to roost in the women’s chamber, was this new madness explained, and they laughed.
Only a little, for John Grey was truly noble, favoured by powerful lords.
Bradgate Hall in Leicestershire, the inheritance of Petronilla de Grandmesnil, whose father Baron Hinckley was tenant
in capite
there to the Conqueror himself, had been handed down to Lord Ferrers of Groby; Bradgate, therefore, was a fine drop of honey to lick from the thorns of marriage!
The reason for their jealous laughter was chiefly Elizabeth’s mien; she epitomized the love-lorn maiden of song and ballad.
She heard their mockery through an amethyst haze; she looked upon the world with gentle uncaring joy.
When without warning the bubble burst, and Beaufort ordered John to accompany him to Calais, it seemed an evil trick of fate.

On a day when autumn had cursed the trees leafless, John sailed, and Elizabeth went sadly about her duties.
Going to the Queen’s bower, she passed the guard; one of the elderly knights chaffed her gently, saying that she looked like a maid preparing for death; her inborn swift anger, fettered for weeks by happiness, rose, an ugly beast.
She tongued a cruel retort that brought the blood to the old man’s face.

The Queen was alone save for a viol-player scraping a lonely French air, and, beside him, two seamstresses repairing a gown.
The window was half-open and banged restlessly under the assault of the wind.
Margaret looked once at Elizabeth; it was enough.

‘What troubles you, Isabella?’

‘Your Grace cannot wish to learn of my small affairs.’

A little impatiently Margaret beckoned her nearer.
The Queen looked unwell; her face was puffy, her eyes bright with unease.

‘Tell all, Isabella,’ she said.
‘I pray you, attend my hair.
Take off this cursed headgear.
My brow has an iron band around it.’

Elizabeth lifted off the little coif which was like a crescent moon, webbed with tawdry veiling.
The pale hair fell free; she set the comb to the Queen’s small head.
The two faces wavered together in the mirror.
The comb moved down like a fish through sunlit water.
Margaret’s expression was distant, troubled.
Elizabeth thought suddenly: Can the Queen ever have loved as I do?
All her world encompassed in that saintly, wandering King.
She has been wed to him for seven years.
Would to God that I were wed.
John, ah, John.

‘Tell me,’ the Queen repeated.
She took a strand of hair over one shoulder and began to braid it deftly.
Sighing, Elizabeth said: ‘As you will, Madame.
It is an old tale ever repeated.
I have met the man I would marry and he has gone away.’

‘His name?’
said the Queen lightly, and Elizabeth told her.

It is a good choice,’ said Margaret.
‘Grey will be wealthy, and he is strong for Lancaster.’
She went on braiding, with delicate, unerring twists, talking almost to herself, like a man who names captains, deploys armies.

‘So, he is of the Norman blood.
C’est vrai!
I believe the title comes through an heiress of Blanchemains to the line of Ferrers Groby.
And Bradgate is a prize … their demesne stretches far …

Elizabeth said, proud of her own extravagance: ‘Madame, I’d take him were he a beggar.’
And then her voice began to tremble.
‘For I love him.
I loved him before I was born and I shall love him when we are both dust.
With every vein of my heart and every hair of my head, I love him, sore.’

There was no showmanship in this last speech which astounded even herself.
It left her weeping, trying to nudge away tears with the bell of her sleeve.
She looked into the mirror and found the Queen’s blurred face.
Its expression was indistinguishable.

‘And does he, too, love you with this so hot passion?’
enquired Queen Margaret in a strange voice.
Her hands had ceased braiding and lay twisted in her lap.

‘Ah yes, Madame!’
cried Elizabeth with joy.
‘Yes, and yes, and more!’

‘Then you have everything!’
said the Queen.
She sprang up, and took two or three frantic running steps towards the window, as if to cast herself out, and down.
She turned as swiftly to show a haggard face, one unfinished braid coming apart, and the eyes of a trapped wolf.
She’s ill, Elizabeth thought, appalled.
She made a movement of dismissal to the sewing-women and they left hurriedly; the viol-player tucked his instrument under his arm and crept out after them.
She searched for words to calm Margaret.

‘Sweet your Grace, I am sure …’

‘Naught is sure!’
cried the Queen wildly.
There was anger directed at Elizabeth in her eyes and voice.
O Jesu, thought Elizabeth: how have I offended?

‘Madame,’ she stammered, ‘you yourself advised me to choose my own husband.
This I have done, and I ask your royal assent to my marriage with John Grey of Groby.
Madame, as you have ever been kind to me, I ask you this.’

The dreadful thought occurred to her that Margaret, for some reason, might withhold her consent.
Very well; she would approach the King, as her own mother had done (a sigh, a tear, a loving look.
I bent the young reed of a king to my will!) She would go in ashes and mourning rather than give up John.
Then Margaret said shrilly:

‘You shall have my royal assent.
You shall marry John Grey.
I shall watch your children growing strong about you.
I shall see you loving and loved.
And I shall curse you for it.
’

Then she wept, and caught blindly at Elizabeth’s hand like a woman sinking in quagmire.
After a long time, she was calm and said, looking through tear-washed eyes:
‘Doucette
, some demon led my tongue.
Envy is the deadliest sin of all It eats the heart.
Isabella: is to love and be unloved crueller than love returned yet forbidden?’

‘Your Grace should not speak thus to me,’ Elizabeth said uneasily.
In her mind she saw Henry, lack-lustre as a winter bird, and fleeing the flesh; and Beaufort, whispering of his bitter passion to a dumb beast.

‘Why not?’
said Margaret sharply.
‘You who will have everything, can you not help me bear my pain?
You will have love, like few women.
You will have sons, like all women … She bit her lips and the wolfish, haunted look returned to her eyes.
‘Richard of York’s wife
… la maudite …
mark you how they taunted me with the news that she’s with child again?
Sancta Maria!
My life, my throne, is threatened through love … lovelack!’
She caught Elizabeth’s hand again and dragged her to a prie-dieu in the corner of the room, where a small bright flame burned fitfully against the wind.

‘Pray with me,’ she commanded.
‘Maria, Maria, Sancta Maria
, thou who wast Mother to Our Lord, hear me.
Jube, Domine, benedicere
 … Lord, grant a blessing: a son!’
Inarticulately her prayers lashed upward about the flame, while Elizabeth added her own.
To Saint Bernard, patron of childbirth; and in secret, to Saint Valentine, patron of lovers.
Praying, amid Margaret’s tumult, for herself.
That she and John should marry … that Beaufort should bring him back home, soon.
The room was suddenly quiet.
Margaret stared dazedly at the wall.
Elizabeth whispered: ‘Madame, my lord of Somerset …’

The Queen flinched and trembled perceptibly.
‘What of him?
He is in Calais.’

‘Where he commands my own dear lord,’ said Elizabeth softly.
‘Summon them home, my liege.’

Queen Margaret looked at her.
‘Yes,’ she whispered.
‘Yes.
And may God answer all our prayers.’

Little and lovely for all her ravaged expression, she knelt before the prie-dieu and looked steadily at Elizabeth, who saw, unknowingly, the revelation of things to come.
The Queen’s eyes were soft with love but the sacred flame, reflected obliquely, gave them the aspect of two fair cities, burning.