Figures in Silk (29 page)

He knew Edmund Shaa well. The sleek goldsmith had worked with him on the new coinage. Hastings trusted him. He just wasn’t sure he could trust his own judgment of the words dancing in front of him, or the danger he felt all around.

The letter was from Dickon to the City of London’s leaders. It said Dickon and the king were on their way to London.

“They’re on their way to London,” Hastings said, more calmly than he felt, putting the paper down. He’d noticed the inconsistency in it; perhaps Shaa hadn’t. Perhaps he could keep it to himself, while he thought out what it meant, and what best to do.

Shaa’s jowl quivered. “But the letter comes from Northampton, while the arrests yesterday were made closer to hand, at Stony Stratford,” he said, bowing with unctuous merchant politeness, but refusing to be fobbed off . “Which raises the question, is he really coming to London? He’s moving the king backward, not forward.”

There was a long pause.

Shaa persisted: “Do you think the duke might be trying to seize the throne?”

No, Hastings thought.

It was impossible to tell. He didn’t want to agree. Yet everything pointed to that.

If Dickon were mounting a coup, Hastings would have to choose between his old friend and master’s son, now the rightful king, and his old friend and master’s brother. Fighting for a child king amounted to suicide. He didn’t want to die. He had Jane. But it was nevertheless his duty to choose the child over Dickon.

Reluctantly, he lifted his eyes so Shaa could see his fear. He said: “I don’t know.”

Isabel could almost smell the children’s terror. All six royal off spring from the palace—Elizabeth, her four younger sisters, the nurse sitting on a stool holding three- year- old Brigid, and dark- haired, wide- eyed Richard, the ten- year- old Duke of York—had been crammed into a small parlor looking on to a dark kitchen courtyard since before dawn. They’d had nothing to do but think and stare down at scullions and rubbish for hours. There were cups and scraps of food left uncleared on the table, as if no one had remembered to send a servant to them in the upheaval.

Some tight little fingers must have shredded that fringe on the edge of one of the luxurious cushions on the floor.

Their eyes all turned toward Isabel when she was ushered in, and followed her wordlessly across the room. Two small girls came out from behind a hanging. They stood, limp- armed and expressionless, and stared with big O eyes as she shifted herself around them to reach their older sister. Princess Elizabeth, sitting at the bench by the window, was gawping at her too.

Very slowly, as if she didn’t know what to do, the eldest princess got up. Isabel put down her sewing basket and dropped into a deep bow, murmuring, “Your Highness,” trying to keep the pity out of her voice. They were all so helpless.

“I know you won’t want me to work today,” Isabel went on, since no one else seemed to be saying anything, “but I couldn’t just go home without seeing you . . .”

Princess Elizabeth said, almost apologetically, “There was no time to bring the gown.” She was twisting her hands. She looked miserably afraid. But she was trying to be correct. “We’ll send for it tomorrow. Once we’ve been settled in here.”

“Well, never mind about that for now,” Isabel said, as reassuringly as she could. “Shall we do something else today?”

Her sewing basket was full of odds and ends of stuff : silk, linen, threads, scraps. She opened it. The smaller girls crept closer. Prince Richard went on sitting on the floor, playing bones by himself, or half playing them, rattling and rattling them in his hand without actually throwing them, and staring at her with a blank face.

“We could make some dolls with what I’ve got in here,” Isabel said, and the circle closed in a little tighter. “I could leave them with you . . . it’s a bit empty in here, isn’t it?”

By the time she left, an hour later, she’d got the children to make three rough stuff ed bodies and sewn faces and skirts on for them. They looked relieved to have something to do with themselves at last, but they still hardly said a word.

It was only when the younger girls had taken two of the finished dolls and were quietly making them dance with each other, and even smiling a little, that the boy finally got up and walked over to Isabel. She was still sitting cross- legged on the floor by her basket, tidying it up before taking her leave, not sure whether she’d helped.

Little Richard put a shy hand on her arm. “We don’t know where my brother is,” he piped. “Please . . . have you heard anything new?”

She quailed before the intensity of their stares.

Princess Elizabeth said, with that same distant, stunned, apologetic note, as if she were explaining an impertinence: “We don’t hear anything in here. We’re so cut off .”

One of the smaller girls gabbled, looking appalled at herself,“They just woke us up and told us we were in danger, and rushed us over here. In the dark. In our nightshirts.”

Now they were all rushing to speak.

“They said it was our uncle . . .”

“The Duke of Gloucester . . .”

“And that he’d arrested our other uncles . . .”

“Earl Rivers . . .”

“And marched our brother Edward off . . .”

“No one knew where . . .”

“But what are they saying now?”

They had puppy eyes, melting and pleading.

But there was nothing new she could honestly tell them that would comfort them, except what she’d heard at the gate house: that their brother Edward was on his way to London, escorted by the king.

They nodded in silence. They didn’t ask again about their Woodville uncles.

“Have faith,” Isabel said, almost pleading with the little boy whose hand was still on her arm and whose eyes were so hungrily on her. “Your uncle Gloucester is a good man. Everyone in London believes that. And no one doubts he’ll do the right thing. He’ll bring your brother safely back to you . . . for his coronation . . . so try not to worry.”

The boy nodded again, still more solemnly. Isabel didn’t know whether he believed her, or whether she believed herself.

She couldn’t bear their eyes anymore. She scrambled to her feet. She felt the child’s hand slide off her arm. She picked up the third doll, still lying on the table, and gave it to him to hold instead. Perhaps that would comfort him.

“Thank you,” he said. But when she turned around for a last glance back at them from the doorway, she saw he’d put the doll down and gone back to his patch of floor. He was rattling his set of knucklebones in his hand, as he must have been doing all day, and staring into space.

But the next news was good. She and Will Caxton were on their anxious way to Vespers at the abbey just an hour or two later when they heard the crier.

“The king and the duke are at St. Albans!” the man was yelling, clanging his bell. St. Albans: just thirty miles from London.

“The king will enter London tomorrow!”

There was a tightening of attention from the thin crowd stopping to listen. A first ragged cheer. A ripple of applause. The whisper spread, like fire over a field of stubble.

“There,” Will Caxton muttered in her ear. “It looks like you were right.”

“O ye of little faith,” Isabel breathed back. There’d been nothing to fear, after all. The princesses would go back to the palace.

There’d be a coronation. Angels were singing in her head.

They went to the Red Pale to eat. She was too relieved to be hungry, even before the innkeeper’s son, who served their beef stew, gave her the message. “A man just gave me a penny to tell you the blacksmith will be passing through at first light,” he sang out.

Isabel felt Will Caxton’s speculative eyes on her. “Well, the house needs new fire irons!” she protested, staring at her boots and not admitting anything. But she knew he’d guessed this to be word from Dickon. She couldn’t stop herself blushing, or beaming.

She loved this empty room with its pale walls bathed in dawn light: the color of happiness.

“What’s been happening?” she whispered between kisses.

“I’ve been so worried.”

Dickon was pulling off her kirtle. “Later,” he muttered. “It’s been too long.”

Even afterward, when he’d sat up and wrapped the sheet around himself and started to talk, he was glitter- eyed and full of restless energy, grinning as though he’d managed to work some unexpected miracle.

“I knew everything would be all right once you got here,” she muttered, gratefully kissing his hands; then, noticing the en-grained black tracery of lines on them, laughing and pushing them away. “Though it’s true I’ve never seen you so dirty.”

He barked out a hard laugh. “Well, it’s been tough. No time for lavender baths. I’m exhausted.” He grinned, as if knowing his manner contradicted his words. “And the boy’s half dead with fatigue too. We’ve done a lot of riding.”

He softened. “He’s a good boy, though. He soldiers on.”

He was up already. Dancing about, looking for the clothes he’d thrown off . Picking crumpled things up. Tossing hers back down. She’d never seen him in mid- campaign, with his fighting self at the fore, with his blood up. His excitement made him almost a stranger.

“They said Earl Rivers and his brother were planning to kill you,” Isabel said, fixing him with her eyes, trying to make him stop and concentrate on her for a moment. She took a deep breath.

She wouldn’t be able to put that conversation with Will Caxton out of her head unless she knew for sure. “Was it true?”

She got a bright stare back as he picked up the right garment.

“Bloody Woodville vermin,” he agreed cheerfully, diving into his undershirt. His voice came out of it, muffled. “They were after me, all right. Going to cut me down at the meeting at Stony Stratford, apparently.” His head popped out. “But Rivers’s man came over to us. Told us everything. So we moved first.”

Dickon nodded his head firmly. He reached for his doublet and stuck his arms in. “Hastings says they were out for his blood too. Even tried to commandeer the fleet. They should’ve known that would never work. Of course he got word. He’s popular.”

She breathed out in relief. She believed him. “But Hastings was worried for a while,” she said, stretching happily back on the cushions. “I could see it in his eyes.”

He didn’t seem to have noticed her doubt, or its passing. He hardly seemed to be listening. His mind was on what lay ahead; he was nodding at her to get up. Rushing. “Come,” he said briskly.

“I can’t stay. Nor can you. So up with you.”

He sat down to pull up his hose. She’d put her linen on and was standing fastening her kirtle when, suddenly, he looked up at her. His gaze was piercing. He was nodding, with amusement in his eyes. “Aha . . . You’ve been seeing Hastings, have you?” he asked merrily. “I wondered who Jane Shore would have picked as her next protector.”

She laughed. After all this: a moment of normality. It was wonderful to have him back.

He stood up, tugging at the fabric of his garments. “And what’s become of Dorset?” he asked, in the same bantering tone. “Disappointed, is he?”

But he must know the answer to that, she thought, with another little stab of anxiety. She said: “He’s with the queen. They’ve taken sanctuary at the abbey. Didn’t you know?”

He nodded, vaguely, but she could see his attention was more on tying his sleeves than on her. “I’ll do those,” she said, and began fastening the ribbons. She needed his attention. There was so much she needed to ask him, and he was going to go away.

“Dickon,” she said urgently as she tied. “You have to do something about those children in sanctuary. They’re so scared. Tell them Edward’s safe. Get them to come out.”

He nodded. “I’m going to see her now,” he said, looking at her hands on his shoulders. “The queen. Calm her down. She panicked. Stupid. But we all know what she’s like.”

Isabel reached for the other sleeve and slipped it on his arm, trying to smile with him. But the thought that Queen Elizabeth Woodville had had good reason to be alarmed when both her brothers were arrested crept into her resistant mind all the same.

She tried to put it out of her head.

There was still the most important question to ask.

Balancing on the mattress, she nuzzled his neck, ran her tongue along his jawline.

“Dickon,” she said, a little ashamed of the wheedling note creeping into her voice, “the thing I’ve been next most worried about, after you, was my contract. The silk house. The weavers. I know you have too much to think about now. But once every-2 thing is settled . . . when you have time . . . will you ask Edward to honor it, on the same terms?”

He nodded, and put his arms around her shoulders. For a moment he stood very still with her, and the look in his eyes was the gentle one she knew. “You don’t need to worry,” he murmured, so low she could hardly hear: a velvet whisper. “You’ll never need to worry.”

She didn’t want this moment to end. It was the first real peace she’d known for weeks. But, quietly but firmly, he moved her back. Turned away. Reached for his buckler, with muscles taut as wire again. He was speaking, but over his shoulder as he picked up his last possessions, with his eyes darting over the floor and bed to make sure he hadn’t forgotten anything. “I’ll be staying at Crosby’s Place for a couple of nights once we’re in London . . .

With Edward . . . It’s going to take a few days for them to get the state apartments ready for him at the Tower. But after that . . .”

He turned back to her from the doorway. Met her eyes. Raised one eyebrow. Grinned. Blew a lighthearted kiss. “I’ll see you here.”

He was about to go, when a last thought seemed to come to him. A slight wrinkle appeared on his brow, a tone of mild surprise crept into his voice.

“What did Hastings have to be worried about, anyway?” he said. Then he was gone.

Isabel went back to the Woodville sanctuary a little later that morning, too, before taking the boat home. She had a story prepared for the guards about having left behind some of her work. She wanted to be sure that the children were either calmer or already leaving to go back to the palace, now their mother had talked to Dickon.