Figures in Silk (32 page)

“They had such frightening eyes,” one of the little girls said numbly. It set the others off .

“My mother says they hate us.”

“My brother was crying. He tried not to but we heard him all the way down the corridor.”

“He didn’t even take his game.”

Helplessly, Isabel patted small hands and shoulders and looked at the polished knucklebones they were showing her, the game Richard had left behind. The lords who had come were all Dickon’s men, and she knew them to be as loyal to him as Lord Hastings. They would mean the little boy no harm, any more than Dickon did. But she could so easily imagine how their intent faces and hurried demeanor would have terrified the children.

She murmured: “You poor things,” and, “I can see you were scared.” They nodded earnestly, fixed eyes as round as red platters on her. Gently, she added, “But, you know, they’re right. Edward would be lonely if he didn’t have anyone to play with.”

They looked uncertain.

“Why can’t we see Edward here?” one of the little redheads asked. “Why won’t they let him come to us?”

“My mother says our uncle Gloucester has taken him prisoner.”

“And now Richard too.”

“She says we’ll never see either of them again.”

“And our uncle Dorset has gone away too.”

“He’s our half brother really; but we call him uncle.”

“And Brigid’s nurse says she’s heard they’re going to execute our other Woodville uncles today.”

“In Pontefract.”

“And then they’ll come to get us.”

“And murder us in our beds.”

Little Brigid, who’d been doing her best to follow the conversation, understood that perfectly. She burst into loud wails. The others just stared at her. They weren’t used to looking after themselves or each other. Where was the nurse? Isabel wondered. Finally, reluctantly—what could she be expected to know about babies?—she picked the weeping child up herself and sat her on her knee. Brigid burrowed at her ribs, still sobbing.

“Hush now,” Isabel said, trying to sound soothing, but suddenly rattled herself. “Hush.”

She thought: It’s all their mother’s fault. Of course Queen Elizabeth Woodville would feel frightened and alone. But, she thought, it was still wrong for the self- made queen to make assumptions that everyone else was motivated by the same greedy thoughts she would probably have had herself if she’d been in Dickon’s position. And it was wrong to terrify her children with these nightmarish expectations.

Blaming the queen calmed Isabel down. Once the little girl’s sobs had faded to sniffles, Isabel told her, kindly but firmly, “It’s only because you’re here that you can’t see your brother. He’s got to stay in London in the king’s apartments now he’s king. Your mother’s been just as scared as you, and while we didn’t know where he was she thought coming here was the best way to keep you safe. That was a wise thing for her to think. But it’s all over now. We know Edward’s safe. There’s no reason for you to be scared anymore. Your mother will see that soon enough. And then you’ll be out too, and at the palace again, and going with Richard to see Edward crowned king.”

She was talking to Brigid, but all the princesses were hanging on her words. She thought their panic was ebbing. She noticed Elizabeth look down for a second when she spoke of Edward’s coronation. There was a flash of what Isabel thought might be envy in her eyes—but that was positive, too, she thought; a sign of normal feelings returning.

There was someone hiding in the silk house.

Isabel knew as soon as she let herself in, to check briefly on its state, brushing through the waist- high cow parsley at her door. It was shut up and cobwebby. Will Caxton’s maid couldn’t have been here since the unrest started. But there was a table inside already; two benches; buckets and brooms and bowls in the kitchen, ready for the new inhabitants; and, in the workroom, the half- assembled pieces of loom propped up all along the inner wall, covered in sacking. She knew there were piles of mattresses and blankets upstairs—the basics, ready for Goffredo’s teams. All she could hear was the two flies buzzing peaceably backward and forward near the dark window. But she could feel the breathing.

“Who’s there?” she called, with her heart thumping and flesh creeping. The quality of the silence changed. If there was someone there, they must be listening.

For a moment she wondered whether to run to Will’s house and get backup. Then she steeled herself. She wasn’t going to let them know she was scared of shadows. She might be imagining it. Leaving the front door open, she walked very quickly into the kitchen.

The back door to the yard was open too. There was a man in the shadow behind it. He was tall but very quiet, sweating in a dark cloak; ready for flight if her voice meant enemies. He was so still.

It was Dorset.

She stopped dead.

He’d shoved his hands inside her gown once. Sneering and forcing his mouth on hers. She didn’t want to be alone with him.

She wouldn’t easily forget the insult in his eyes.

But there was only fear in his eyes now.

“Are you alone?” he whispered, from the safety of his doorway. She nodded, from hers.

“What are you doing here?” she muttered. “In my house?”

He must have realized at last that she thought he might be going to try again to tumble her. He shut his eyes, snorted: “Ach. Not
that.
” Then, cunningly, as if realizing an attempt at charm would be politic in these circumstances, “I didn’t mean to scare you.”

She waited, watching him carefully. Keeping her distance.

But she remembered now. One of the little princesses had said her uncle Dorset had gone. She should have paid more attention.

If he’d run away from sanctuary, he’d be fair game for anyone trying to arrest him. And Dickon’s lords had been with the queen today, taking the boy. They must have realized he’d gone. There’d been soldiers with northern voices and dogs trampling through the cornfields round Westminster by mid- morning. She understood now. They were hunting the Woodville marquess down.

They wanted to kill him.

“I’m in danger,” he said. “You’ve got to help me.”

“How did you find me?” she countered suspiciously. “Here?”

No one knew about this house. Did they?

“Jane said . . . ,” Dorset replied, rumpling boyish hair, giving her his most appealing look.

Her eyes narrowed. Jane. How dare she?

“. . . that if I ever needed to get a message to her urgently to give it to Will Caxton, for you to take back to London. She said you had a house nearby. I asked. And some German artisan said it was this one.”

She breathed out.

“But why are you still here?” she asked, still coldly but with calm returning. “Why didn’t you just give Caxton your message and go?”

His handsome mouth curled briefly in a how- can- you- be- so-stupid sneer. Then, remembering where he was and why he was here, he blanked his face again.

“Because I heard the crier,” he said in a very patient voice.

And he added, staring into her eyes as if trying to suck knowledge out of her: “Is Jane safe?”

“Jane?” she said stupidly.

“You didn’t hear the herald, did you,” he said—not a question.

He shook his head. She shook hers. There was a pause. She could see he didn’t know how to frame what ever it was he needed to tell her.

There was a bugle blast from the Red Pale out in front of the house. He looked terrified again for a second, then his face cleared.

“There,” he said quietly. “He’s come here. Listen for yourself.”

He took her by the arm—she hardly even shuddered at his touch anymore; she recognized that something altogether different from her memory of this man was happening today—and led her toward the noise. They stood just inside the closed shutters, hidden from the listeners coming out of their houses all around.

The proclamation had begun, but it took Isabel a while to make sense of it. The man’s voice seemed to be saying that Lord Hastings had plotted to kill the dukes of Gloucester and Buckingham and seize the king. It seemed to be saying that Lord Hastings had led the late King Edward IV into debauchery.

And it was saying, very clearly now, that Mistress Shore, with whom Lord Hastings lay by night, was of his secret counsel in heinous treason. The iron band was tightening on Isabel’s gut.

She could hardly breathe.

“Ungracious living brought him to an unhappy end,” the voice shouted. The horn blew another flamboyant fanfare. Hooves moved off . They could hear the uncertain ripple of conversation from the listeners.

Dorset whispered: “You see. They must have killed him. So what have they done to her?”

She bowed her head. She couldn’t think. She couldn’t believe this. “I don’t understand,” she whispered. But when he said, impatiently, “Gloucester is seizing power,” she only nodded. She knew that too, really. Dickon had raised his game. Nothing else made sense.

There was nothing for it but to help Dorset get to London.

She couldn’t leave him.

Her mind was racing now, uselessly, since she knew she had to stifle all thoughts but a list of her most immediate needs. She borrowed a stained work smock and half a dozen copies of Earl Rivers’s curial from Will Caxton’s workshop—the foreign foreman didn’t seem to mind, just nodded when she smiled and waved and said, slowly enough for him to understand, that she’d return everything tomorrow. She dirtied the Woodville marquess’s handsome face and made him grime up his clean fingernails.

Luckily he too had the wordless urgency of a man who will do what ever is needed, at once, to save himself. She put his expensive cloak and his sword in a big rough sack on her saddle; put herself up on her horse and tried not to heed her pounding heartbeat as they set out. She got Dorset to bow his head and put the books under one arm. “You’re a German printer; you don’t speak English,” was all she said to him, and he nodded obediently. She got him to lead her, on foot, out of the gate, past the sweating soldiers in the fields, past the dogs, along the riverside strand, past the bishops’ fortresses, along the caked mud of Fleet Street, to London. She tried to think of nothing more alarming than the birds 2 fluttering up from the battered fields, the white fleece scudding along overhead. A part of her felt safe enough; after all, she’d spent a year walking the familiar streets of the Mercery unrecognized by all the grand mercers she’d grown up among, just because she’d started wearing the humble drab of the district’s poor throwsters and shepsters. Dorset’s disguise was working just as well now. No one looked at them, even Davey at the Westminster gate, who’d averted his eyes as studiously as if she’d become the vilest of lepers. No one was interested in the dirty, broken silhouette that Dorset had become. Still, she’d never been so happy to see the Fleet Bridge and Ludgate looming up ahead. Every jolt of horse flesh under her, every breath she’d taken, had reminded her of how tight her jaw was clenched, how tense her arms and back.

There was a knot of silkwomen standing around inside the safety of the London wall. Familiar faces: Joan Woulbarowe and Agnes Brundyssch and Isabel Fremely. Isabel was momentarily startled to see even Joan Woulbarowe’s former mistress, the throwster Katherine Dore—who hated her ex- apprentice and had spent years trying to get the courts of London to punish Joan for leaving her service—standing lean and tall and intimidating in the whispering group.

“Look,” Joan Woulbarowe said, seeing Isabel, running up, taking her arm. Not, for once, displaying her black teeth in her doggy smile; instead looking purposeful and urgent. She didn’t even waste a glance on the shabby man leading Isabel’s horse, but the moment of contact set Isabel’s heart racing with terror.

“Not now,” she said coldly, hardening her face, and rode on.

Joan stood aside. “But Mistress Claver said,” Isabel heard her wail, with defeat in her voice. Well, Alice Claver could wait. Joan would give up; she had no more fight in her than a whipped dog.

But the voice behind went on calling. Instead of trailing forlornly away it rose in volume. “Jane’s up there!” it cried.

Isabel turned in the saddle. Dorset, head down, was still urging the horse forward.

It wasn’t just Joan. All the silkwomen were staring at her with anxious eyes, and pointing up at the wall, to where the cells of Ludgate Prison were built in, above the gate. And they were all calling, contorting their faces in their need for her to understand, as loudly as they dared, hissing in what they must think were whispers: “Jane!”

Isabel squinted up at the wall. She couldn’t see anyone at a cell window. The fingers on her reins were slippery. She could feel her breath and heart. She nodded back at them. “An hour,” she called, as the horse and Dorset carried on walking.

They turned without speaking into the courtyard at Catte Street. He shut the gate and looked up at her. There was a glitter of satisfaction in his eyes. She felt it too. It was good to be behind a wall and off the street. But they both knew it was only the first step.

Isabel already had the first glimmer of an idea of what to do with him next. But she needed Alice Claver’s approval.

“Come on,” she said. “Behind me.” And she strode through the house with her follower, looking into the great hall, the parlors, the storeroom, the herb garden, and even upstairs into the bedchambers, looking for Alice; suddenly wanting to see those broad shoulders and that down- to- earth face, with its ready scowl and its rare bursts of jollity, more than she’d ever thought she could.

The relief of seeing Alice’s and Anne Pratte’s heads bent over a bag in one of the larders was almost more than she could bear.

She let out a breath, feeling the emotion she’d been keeping at bay wash through her, wondering if she was going to cry.

“Alice,” she said, and her voice was strangely small and un-steady. “Anne.”

They looked up; and she saw in their hungry eyes that they felt the same tumult, even before they both dropped what they were doing and rushed to her with their arms open. It only lasted a second, the wobbly embrace that followed. Alice Claver caught herself swaying in it and pulled away, leaving Anne Pratte holding Isabel’s hand as if she’d never let go and staring up at her in soft delight. But Alice Claver couldn’t quite stop; she went on awkwardly patting Isabel’s back as she growled, “We were worried.”