The Lady of the Rivers (55 page)

Richard, Duke of York, acts quickly, as I thought he would. He suggests to the palace officials that the queen should meet her husband at Hertford Castle, a day’s ride north of London. When her steward tells her, she rounds on him. ‘He’s going to arrest me.’

The man steps back from her fury. ‘No, Your Grace. Just to give you and the king somewhere to rest until parliament opens in London.’

‘Why can’t we stay here?&rsqo;

The man shoots a despairing look at me. I raise my eyebrows, I’m not disposed to help him, for I don’t know why they want to send us to Henry’s childhood home either, and the castle is completely walled, moated, and gated, like a prison. If the Duke of York wants to lock away the king, queen and the young prince he could hardly choose a better place.

‘The king is not well, Your Grace,’ the steward finally admits. ‘They think he should not be seen by the people of London.’

This is the news we have been dreading. She takes it calmly. ‘Not well?’ she asks. ‘What do you mean by “not well”? Is he sleeping?’

‘He certainly seems very weary. He is not asleep as he was before; but he took a wound to his neck, and was very frightened. The duke believes he should not be exposed to the noise and bustle of London. The duke believes he should be quiet at the castle, it was his nursery, he will be comforted there.’

She looks at me, as if for advice. I know she is wondering what Edmund Beaufort would have told her to do. ‘You may tell His Grace, the duke, that we will journey to Hertford tomorrow,’ I say to the messenger, and as he turns away I whisper to the queen, ‘What else can we do? If the king is sick we had better get him out of London. If the duke commands us to go to Hertford we cannot refuse. When we have the king in our keeping we can decide what to do. We have to get him away from the duke and his men. If we hold the king in our keeping at least we know he is safe. We have to have possession of the king.’

HERTFORD CASTLE, SUMMER 1455

He does not look like the king who rode out to reprimand the great lord with his two friends at his side, dressed for a day of pleasure. He looks as if he has collapsed in on himself, a pillow king with the stuffing gone, a bubble king deflated. His head is down, an ill-tied bandage round his throat shows where the Warwick archers nearly ended the reign altogether, his robe is trailing from his shoulders because he has not tightened his belt, and he stumbles over it, like an idiot, as he walks into the poky presence chamber of Hertford Castle.

The queen is waiting for him, surrounded by a few of her household and his, but the great lords of the land and their men have stayed in London, preparing for the parliament which is going to do the bidding of the Duke of York. She rises up when she sees him and goes forwards to greet him, stately and dignified, but I can see her hands shaking until she tucks them inside the shelter of her long sleeves. She can see, as I can see, that we have lost him again. At this crucial moment, when we so badly need a king to command us: he has slipped away.

He smiles at her. ‘Ah,’ he says, and again there is that betraying pause as he searches for her name. ‘Ah, Margaret.’

She curtseys and rises up and kisses him. He puckers his lips like a child.

‘Your Grace,’ she says. ‘I thank God that you are safe.’

His eyes widen. ‘It was a terrible thing,’ he says, his voice thin and slight. ‘It was a terrible thing, Margaret. You have never seen such errible thing in your life. I was lucky that the Duke of York was there to take me safely away. The way that men behave! It was a terrible thing, Margaret. I was glad the duke was there. He was the only one who was kind to me, he is the only one who understands how I feel . . . ’

Moving as one, Margaret and I go towards him. She takes his arm and leads him into the private rooms, and I stand blocking the way after them, so that no-one can follow them. The door closes behind them, and her chief maid looks at me. ‘And what happens now?’ she asks wryly. ‘Do we all fall asleep again?’

‘We serve the queen,’ I say with more certainty than I feel. ‘And you in particular, mind your tongue.’

I have no letter from Richard, but a stonemason who went over to supervise some building work takes the trouble to ride out to Hertford Castle with news for me. ‘He is alive,’ is the first thing he says. ‘God bless him, alive and well and drilling the men and maintaining the guard and doing all that he can to keep Calais for England . . . ’ He drops his voice. ‘And for Lancaster.’

‘You have seen him?’

‘Before I came away. I couldn’t speak to him, I had to take ship, but I knew you would want news of him and if you have a letter for him, Your Grace, I will carry it back for you. I go back next month unless there are new orders.’

‘I will write at once, I will write before you leave,’ I promise. ‘And the garrison?’

‘Loyal to Edmund Beaufort,’ he says. ‘They had your husband locked up while they broke into the warehouses and sold the wool, but once they had taken their wages they let him out again and released the ships from port. That’s how I left on the day of his release. Of course, nobody knew then that the duke was dead. They will know now.’

‘What d’you think they will do?’

He shrugs. ‘Your husband will wait for his orders from the king. He is the king’s man through and through. Will the king command him to hold Calais against the new captain – the Earl of Warwick?’

I shake my head.

‘Drifted off again?’ the merchant asks with cruel accuracy.

‘I am afraid so.’

The king sleeps during the day, he eats lightly and without appetite, he prays at every service, sometimes he rises in the night and wanders in his nightgown around the castle and the guards have to call the groom of his bedchamber to take him back to his bed. He is not melancholy, for when there is music he will tap his hand to the beat and sometimes nod his head; once he lifts up his chin and sings a song in a wavering piping voice, a pretty song about nymphs and shepherds, and I see a pageboy cram his knuckles in his mouth to stop the laughter. But most of the time, he is once again a lost king, a watery king, a moon king. He has lost his print upon the earth, he has lost any fire, his words are written on the water, and I think of the little crown charm which I lost in the river and which told me so clearly that there was no season when the king would come back to us: the gleam of his gold would be drowned in the deep water.

GROBY HALL, LEICESTERSHIRE,
AUTUMN 1455

I take permission from the queen to leave court and go to my daughter’s home at Groby Hall. The queen laughingly remarks that she could stop a cavalry charge more easily than she could deny me permission to go. My Elizabeth is with child, her first baby, and it is due in November. I too am expecting a baby, a child made from our day and night of lovemaking when Richard came home and went again. I expect to see Elizabeth safely out of childbed and then I will go to my own home and confinement.

Richard will not be here to see this, his first grandchild, of course. He won’t be at my side at Groby Hall, while I wait for Elizabeth’s firstborn, nor at our home at Grafton when I go into my birthing chamber, nor when I return to Hertford Castle, nor in London. His lord the Duke of Somerset is dead and his command, that Richard should return to me, will not be obeyed. Richard cannot keep his promise to come home to me while the future of Calais is so uncertain. The Earl of Warwick is the new Constable of Calais and Richard will have to decide whether or not to admit the new commander, or defy him. Once again Richard is far from me, having to decide which side to join, his loyalty on one side, his greater safety on another, and we cannot even write to each other, as Calais has barricaded itself in again.

Elizabeth’s mother-in-law, Lady Grey, greets me at the door, resplendent in a gown of deep blue velvet, her hair arranged in two great plaits on either side of her head, which makes her round face look like a baker’s stall with three great buns. She sweeps me a dignified curtsey. ‘I am so glad you have come to keep your daughter company during her confinement,’ she says. ‘The birth of my grandchild is a most important event for me.’

‘And mine for me,’ I say, staking my claim with relish, there being no doubt in my mind that this will be my daughter’s son, my grandson, and Melusina’s descendant. All that he will have of the Grey family will be the name, and I have paid for that already with Elizabeth’s dowry.

‘I will show you to her room,’ she says. ‘I have given her the best bedroom for her confinement. I have spared neither trouble nor expense for the birth of my first grandchild.’

The house is large and beautiful, I grant them that. Elizabeth’s three rooms look east towards Tower Hill, and south to the old chapel. The shutters are all closed but there is a gleam of autumn sunshine through the slats. The room is warm with a good fire of thick logs, and furnished well with a big bed for sleeping, a smaller day bed, a stool for visitors and a bench along the wall for her companions. As I enter, my daughter rises up from the day bed, and I see in her the little girl that I loved first of all my children, and the beautiful woman she has become.

She is broad as a beam, laughing at my expression as I take in her size. ‘I know! I know!’ she says and comes into my arms. I hold her gently, her big belly between us. ‘Tell me it’s not twins.’

‘I tell her it’s a girl if she carries her so low and broad,’ Lady Grey says, coming in behind me.

I don’t correher; we will have time enough to see what this baby is, and what it will do. I hold Elizabeth’s broad body in my arms, and then I cup her beautiful face in my hands. ‘You are more lovely than ever.’

It is true. Her face is rounded and her golden hair has darkened a little, after a summer spent indoors, but the exquisite beauty of her features, the fine-drawn nose and eyebrows, the perfect curve of her mouth, are as lovely as when she was a girl.

She makes a little pout. ‘Only you would think so, Lady Mother. I cannot get through doorways, and John left my bed three months ago because the baby kicks me so much when I lie down that I move about all night and he cannot sleep.’