Figures in Silk (22 page)

The wildcat footsteps stopped. Isabel’s head was bowed, so all she could see was her own torso and knees, but every fiber of her body could feel the eyes burning into her.

Suddenly a hand was thrust in front of her: white, elegant, glittering fingers. Isabel stared. She didn’t know what to do with it. Then, gingerly, hoping she wouldn’t wobble if she moved, she reached for it with her right hand and kissed the fingertips.

She didn’t dare raise her head. She wasn’t invited to, either.

“They say you have nimble fingers, Mistress Claver,” she heard. Isabel squinted up as far as she could without being impertinent enough to raise her head. The queen—with the most perfectly beautiful cat-face over her perfectly beautiful cat-body—knew she was peeping. Isabel realized the other woman was looking straight back into her eyes, with one corner of her lovely mouth lifted. Isabel wouldn’t call it a smile. But she did realize, from that look, that what ever it was that was making the 1 queen almost vibrate with suppressed rage, it wasn’t Isabel. She breathed. Looked up more boldly.

The queen flicked a dismissive hand toward the great armory of clothing that had been designed to awe two kingdoms and celebrate God’s blessing of the princess as His own anointed Queen of France. Said, with a twist of her lips so fastidious that she might have been looking at rotting corpses: “Well, do what you can with
that
,” and, turning away with lithe, liquid movements, stalked off to the door. From there, beside the guards, without turning round, she dropped three final words. “You may stand.”

But both Isabel and the princess stayed frozen where they were for a few more moments, listening to her departing footsteps. Isabel got the impression that everything inside this palace would always be done with the same caution. She wondered if everyone who survived a possible mauling by the queen felt the same surge of warmth for their fellow survivors as she was now feeling for the miserable- looking lump of a girl slouched in front of the arras. Growing up with that tiger of a mother must be every bit as frightening as Isabel’s first dealings with Alice Claver had been.

Finally, she raised her head and dared to look at the princess.

For the first time, Princess Elizabeth deigned to look directly back at her, and Isabel was surprised to see that there was, after all, nothing childish in the girl’s eyes. Elizabeth was no stranger to the curdling effects of humiliation and didn’t expect Isabel to be; for all her trappings of finery, the princess was someone who didn’t expect much from life. The princess nodded dejectedly. “Let’s go on,” she said. “She won’t be back for a while.”

Isabel pinned in silence for a few more minutes. But she couldn’t get those eyes, as watchful as hers had been every moment of her year in the selds, out of her head, or shake off her new awareness of the princess as someone as helpless as Isabel had once been: someone waiting, and soaking up knowledge that might be useful later, biding her time, living through her period of powerlessness, just waiting for her chance to strike out for herself. So the silence grew warmer.

Eventually, Isabel ventured to speak. “This must be very strange for you,” she mumbled through her pins, and she was rewarded with just the kind of careful look she herself might have given one of the silkwomen she’d eventually grown close to, at the first sign of warmth. Elizabeth nodded, cautiously. “It seemed so definite, my wedding,” she said. “For so long. We used to act it out in the nursery, even; my little brother Edward would play being the King of England, giving me away at the altar to become Queen of France.”

Her eyes slid away. “And now . . . nothing,” she added. There was a hint of bitterness in her voice as she added, “I mean, for me. Though Edward will still be king one day.”

There was nothing Isabel could safely say to that. Carefully, she took out the remaining pins from her mouth and put them back in her box; then, thanking God for pins, called the two guards. While Elizabeth stepped out of the gown in one room, she oversaw the men carry ing out the separated sleeves and train that made up the rest of the ensemble, each in a different padded velvet bag, from the outer room. The valuable garments would be taken under escort to Catte Street. It was a good first day’s work.

The men returned to take away the pinned gown. Elizabeth stood in the doorway in her kirtle, listlessly watching. Trying again to comfort her, Isabel said: “I expect there’ll be a new marriage arranged for you before we even have time to take any of these apart.”

The Princess smiled a wintry smile in return, acknowledging 1 Isabel’s efforts at optimism even if she didn’t pretend to be reassured by them.

“If I may,” Isabel said, feeling sorrier than ever for the girl, though still not sure whether that was the same as enjoying her company, “I’ll take my leave now, until next week. I don’t want to tire Your Highness out.” She raised an eyebrow, to signify, May I be dismissed?

To her surprise, that gesture made Elizabeth smile properly for the first time, like the child she’d so recently been. “You can lift one eyebrow by itself!” she said, with unexpected childish joy.

“Like my uncle! We’re always trying, but none of us can.”

“Oh,” Isabel said, touched, suddenly able to imagine all those young princesses with time hanging so heavy on their hands, realizing that their easiest refuge would, naturally, be in the innocence of childish games that kept dangerous adult eyes away from them. “Well, I’ll show you the secret next time, then. We can practice.”

Was that really all it took to break the ice? Maybe they’d begin to have a real working relationship from now on, one that would bring Isabel more jobs in the future.

Isabel was smiling inside at a private joke, too: at how much more truth there was in the princess’s words than she could know.

Dickon
was
always comically lifting one eyebrow. Had Isabel copied the gesture from him? Or he from her? She didn’t know. But just that chance reminder of Dickon’s existence—the memory of the muscles of his lively face working; the texture of his skin; his smell on the sheets—was enough to touch her with grace. It reminded her that, if she got out of the palace within the hour—and she would now—she’d catch him at the inn before he went back north tomorrow.

She kept her dignity right through the process of leaving the palace—one corridor, then a wait with the guards, smoothing down her skirts; another corridor, another escort, another wait until the next keys and spurs began jangling; right to the gates.

But once she got outside, onto the street, she couldn’t stop herself rushing. The air suddenly felt warm and wild with the promise of spring. She picked up her blue satin skirts so she could move faster. By the time she reached the abbey, she was running.

He was waiting in the street. The impatient wind was flapping his cloak around his ankles. It was nearly dark.

“Come on,” he said, rough- voiced over the bluster of air. His eyes were gleaming. “We’re not staying here. It’s late. I’m going to take you back to London. Your Alice Claver will worry about you otherwise.”

She laughed. “What do you mean?” she asked. She had to almost shout; the wind blew away her words. “There’s still an hour; more.” But he just began pulling her along, the way she’d come, grinning. He had an idea. There was nothing for her to do but go along with it. She could never be sure what Dickon would do next.

Last time he’d been south had been for Twelfth Night, a month or more earlier. They’d had a snatched, intent hour’s walk along the river, in the dark of London, on a colder, frostier version of this evening. The streets had been still full of debris from the previous night’s madness. He’d been on his way to the Tower, where Lord Hastings, his friend as well as Jane’s, had been waiting to show him the latest coin he was in charge of minting, the new angelet. In their dark cloaks that night, she and Dickon had looked like any other couple who might have drunk too much in the revels the night before, clinging to each other, feeling each other’s heat: lovers with nowhere to go. It had been too painful, that visit; so short, so unfulfilled. She’d plucked at the quiet cloak 1 at his neck with both hands. “Your cloak of invisibility,” she’d said sadly. “Who’d ever think you were a prince, kicking at old bottles on the wharves?” And he’d looked at her with the same longing she felt. Said nothing; kissed her a last time in front of All Hallows by the Tower, and walked away briskly, whistling, but still looking lonely, with the horse he was leading jingling its harness and blowing great clouds of white behind him.

He must have thought of something better for this evening—though she couldn’t imagine what could be better or easier than the warm quiet of his tavern room, a haven she so seldom managed to visit. At the jetty, with one hand holding his dark cap down on his hair and the other around Isabel’s waist, Dickon pulled out a purse and gave the first boatman he saw a gold coin and a wink. The stubbly old man stared doubtfully at it as the first stars made their pinpoint appearances in the sky. His creaking six- seater rowboat wouldn’t be worth that much if he sold it.

Was the gentleman drunk?

“Pick your boat up from the moorings below the bridge in the morning,” Dickon said blithely. “I’ll take it till then.” The man began to protest. But Dickon cut through his wheezing
my-livelihood- my- dearest- possession- as- God- help- me- I’m-a- father- of- six
talk with another gold coin and a wave of the hand. “Have a drink on me,” Dickon added.

The man’s eyes opened very wide. As if scared Dickon might change his mind, he pocketed both coins and scuttled off , very quickly, up the jetty. Dickon threw his head back and laughed at the greed in those rheumy eyes. “Like a crab,” he spluttered; “he just couldn’t believe it, could he?”

Taking her cue from him, Isabel laughed too. Dickon made everything so easy.

He kissed her forehead. She raised her face to his, but, still smiling at the enjoyable memory, Dickon stepped back unexpectedly, and said, in servile tones, “Your vessel awaits, milady,” and handed her down into the old boat. The water gurgled wildly around her, already nearly black, as the boat rocked and righted itself. The lantern at the back of the boat flickered, as if it was winking too.

She looked breathlessly around. Was this his surprise? “And your boatman,” he added, stepping in after her. He took the oars.

She drew in a deep gulp of wind. It was always like this: despair or euphoria, with nothing in between. The more she knew him, the more she realized it always would be. He enjoyed living by the skin of his teeth. She liked to think that was why she loved him with this desperate simplicity—with a pure need that still sucked the breath out of her body and left her awed by its power.

He didn’t live with the solemnity of other princes, she thought; maybe because he hadn’t always been a prince. He’d been everything in the course of the wars: noble before he became royal, since Edward hadn’t grown up expecting to be king. Poor as well as rich. A winner now, but for years a loser. The uncertainty had left its mark; he still liked danger. She knew now that when she’d first met Dickon he’d just spent a year in hiding overseas with his brother. They’d only managed to escape England by a miracle.

Lord Hastings had fought off the Lancastrians at the front door of the house where they’d been cornered; the king and Dickon escaped out the back. They’d found a ship, but had no money to pay for their passage. “We had no idea where we were going,” Dickon had told her once, stroking her face, but with his mind in the past,“and we had nothing but the clothes we stood up in. Thank God, Edward had a cloak lined with marten fur; the skipper took it instead of money.” He stopped; looked properly down at her; smiled wickedly. “Best argument I know for a good strong dark anonymous cloak, lined with something very expensive.”

The cloak he was wearing now was lined with marten, too.

He took it off and put it across her shoulders, under a big sky, shot 1 with wisps of flame- colored cloud. She sat very still on the passengers’ platform at the front of the boat, lined with mildewed cushions, snuggling into the heaviness of the cloak. It was still warm from the touch of his body. As he rowed them out into the current, she looked first at the sun sinking over the water, then, as he neatly turned the boat—wherever had he learned how to row?—at the muscles she could see working in his back and arms, through his plain shirt. The water gurgled around them. Dreamy and warm, she listened to his rhythmic, heavy breathing and the judder of oars against rowlocks. The light faded.

He stopped rowing. He looked back at her, or perhaps at the end of the sunset behind her, with an expression she couldn’t read. “Beautiful,” he said softly, in a voice that made her shiver.

He laid the oars carefully to rest inside the boat and shifted himself, too, onto the passenger platform where she was sitting.

She leaned against him. There was a light sweat on his forehead, on his chest. There was hardly anyone else on the river this late. He pulled her to him in a suddenly tender embrace and let her mouth find his. “I’m willing to bet,” he whispered, very low, very mischievous, “that you’ve never done this before,” and he pushed her gently backward.

She sank against the cushions. He pulled the cloak over both of them; she muttered, “You can’t; not here, on the river!” But he ignored what ever confused words she was whispering—rightly, as the way she was pulling him down onto her made it clear to both of them she didn’t mean them—and, under the cloak now covering both of them, began touching mouth to skin again.

“Black cloak. No one can see us under it,” she heard him whisper; then, mischievously, “I think.” But by then she was beyond caring.

By the time their rapid breathing had given way to laughter—by the time she’d sat up, pulling her clothes back together, with her hair streaming loose and a shamefaced smile, saying, in a breathless pretense at reproach that was nothing of the kind, “You really are the most sinful man I can imagine,” as he kissed the inside of her arm and answered, “And you the most abandoned woman I know—so, a good match”—they’d drifted half a mile downstream, and darkness had fallen in earnest.