Figures in Silk (36 page)

If Goffredo ever does come, Isabel thought hopelessly. There had been no word from the Venetian since all this started. What Dickon was saying now was true enough. But it still sounded like a bargain with the devil.

Still, she could make bargains too, she thought, glimpsing a way to regain her peace of mind. Stepping back, but gently, she said: “All right, but let Jane go.” Every fiber of her being wanted to stay; she was astonished at the iron willpower pulling her away.

“She’s served the purpose you wanted, hasn’t she?”

There was surprise on his face, but reluctant admiration too.

His head began nodding—a tiny movement. That half- smile came back to his lips. She stopped in the doorway. “I’ll come back here next week, at the same time,” she added, more calmly than she felt.

“But only if Jane’s free.”

Isabel didn't want to visit Will Caxton at the Red Pale today; she didn’t dare look in his eyes after telling him that she was Dickon’s lover. He’d be frantic with worry that Dickon had imprisoned Jane. He might even, unbearably, want her to admit her judgment had been as addled by love as she privately knew it to be. So she kept away.

Still, she felt more self- possessed as she walked to the abbot’s house. Making her demand that Jane be set free had given her at least a frail hope to cling to. If there’d been any truth in Dickon’s litany of self- justification and excuses, he’d surely see sense and get Jane released from prison. That would be something.

Her hope wasn't enough to help her face the five pairs of eyes in the princesses’ parlor.

She could see at once they’d learned new facts that frightened them. Perhaps they’d found out that their Woodville uncles, Earl Rivers and Sir Thomas Grey, were dead. Perhaps they’d heard that Lord Hastings’s servants had tried to visit princes Edward and Richard at the Tower, but had been turned away.

It didn’t take long for her to understand how they’d started to find out more, either. It was Elizabeth who was putting the questions this time, not the little girls with their lisping voices and terrified pink- rimmed rabbit eyes. Elizabeth had stopped being reluctant to be seen to beg for information. In her dangerous position, she must have realized she needed to know everything she could—just to survive. She must have started asking every servant and passing priest what was happening. Princess Elizabeth had got thinner in the past week. She was very pale, too, but it suited her; her cheekbones were becoming as elegant as her mother’s. And she was wheedling rumors out of Isabel this morning with all the expert cunning of a market woman.

“They
have
killed my mother’s brothers,” she said quietly, drawing Isabel in and sitting her down on the bench, making a flattering point of paying attention to the silkwoman’s comfort.

There was no sign of the coronation dress. It must have been shut away in a chest somewhere. “My mother’s confessor told us.”

Isabel nodded. She crossed herself. “God rest their souls,” she said carefully; not knowing, in the confusion of these times, what would constitute treason; worried even that banality might. “I’d heard too. I’m sorry for your grief.”

The princess paused; then, very softly, while Isabel was still full of pity, she asked: “Perhaps you know—is there any news in London of our brothers?”

Isabel glanced up to the window ledge, where little Richard’s game of knucklebones was still waiting for his return, gathering dust. Isabel didn’t want to deceive Princess Elizabeth. She and her sisters must be afraid men would come for them too. It was natural for the princesses to try to find out all they could, and plan their defenses accordingly. So, haltingly, Isabel told them that the princes hadn’t been seen playing outside the royal apartments at the Tower in the past few days, and that Lord Hastings’s men had been turned away when they’d tried to pay a visit. There was tavern talk about rescuing them. She told Elizabeth that too. She kept quiet about the other piece of tavern gossip doing the rounds: that the boys had been murdered.

“I’m sorry not to have better news,” she finished, to the girls’ quietly bowed heads. “They’ve probably just been moved to a different apartment.”

They must know that was a false hope. But the younger girls nodded earnestly, as if they really wanted to believe it; and even Elizabeth looked grateful to Isabel for trying.

It wrung Isabel’s heart. There had to be something she could say that would represent genuinely good news for them. Then she realized what. “I’ve heard,” she found herself saying, “that your uncle Dorset is safe.”

She thought, as she spoke: Why am I doing this? I’d do better to keep quiet. Then, defiantly: If Dickon’s heard that Dorset’s got away abroad from listening to City talk, why shouldn’t I know?

“Overseas,” she added. “No one knows how.” Five pairs of eyes, blazing with hope, begged for more. “I don’t know if it’s true, of course,” she continued, “it’s just what they’re saying in the markets. But they’re saying he’s gone to Britanny. To Henry Tudor.”

They sat very quietly, hardly daring to breathe, taking that in.

But Isabel was briefly aware of a gleam of satisfaction in Princess Elizabeth’s eyes—the same satisfaction she’d have felt herself, digging out a nugget of street knowledge that could be of value soon.

She sat on the boat, painfully remembering the quiet room she’d walked out of, repeating to herself: If Dickon lets Jane out, it will prove he’s telling the truth. And if he tells the truth about that, why would I doubt everything else? If Dickon lets Jane out, I’ll be able to go back next week.

Hope was so cruel. It brought wisps of more innocent moments with Dickon back into her mind. Stories she knew half of, through him; whose endings she still longed to hear.

Only a few weeks ago they’d been on a boat like this, together, wondering whether Dickon would have to go to France to fight Edward’s war. That story had been broken off forever, she thought, and relief mixed itself up in her agonizing nostalgia.

There’d be no French war for a while now. Thank God. She let her mind meander on. There’d been the story of the dying nephew, too. What had happened to him? In that other life just a few weeks ago, Dickon had been hiring doctors to go north to treat little George Neville. He’d been so worried about the boy’s health.

If George Neville died, Dickon’s landholdings would be compromised. His son wouldn’t inherit. He’d have to beg the King for help.

What had happened after that? Had the boy died? Perhaps he had. How worried Dickon would have been when King Edward died too, right at the same time, Isabel thought, with sudden compassion—if the king’s death had come just when Dickon most needed his brother’s help to keep his lands together. He must have 2 felt as panicked as she had about her silk- weaving house. He’d been far away in the North; he’d been only the uncle of the new king- to- be, whom he hardly knew; and the boy had seemed so safely in the hands of his other uncles, the Woodvilles, whom he loved; and they hated Dickon . . . Dickon couldn’t have had faith that the boy- king Edward would have helped him.

She reined herself in. Why was she fretting about this?

Sternly, she told herself: It’s just another story that’s stopped mattering. Dickon is king now; what does he care about the Duke of Gloucester’s estates in the North? His son will inherit something better: a crown.

But at the same time, deep down, she knew why she was worrying about the ins and outs of this story, when in some ways it would have been more practical to worry about protecting her own business. She’d done what she could to look after her business, for now. Dickon had promised it his continued protection.

She had to rely completely on that promise, too, since all her other connections—Jane, Lord Hastings, Princess Elizabeth—were now of so little value. Now all that remained was to see if Dickon was a man of his word, if he’d be minded to keep promises.

She sat up straighter in the boat. She was trying not to think about Dickon. Everything was uncertain. He’d have to release Jane before she could even begin to hope.

Isabel couldn't think what the racket was as she walked into the Claver house at Catte Street. The voices sounded too deep for the silkwomen, the footsteps too sturdy.

It was only when she got into the great hall that she saw. A dozen strangers were crammed in, staring round in frank curiosity at Alice and Anne and the hangings, and helping themselves hungrily from the platters the kitchen boy was hurriedly handing round. Men and women both, all with black curls and lustrous eyes; all indescribably filthy. She couldn’t catch a word they were saying.

There were trunks and bags everywhere.

It was only when she saw the bowl of pomegranates that she began to guess. She looked round. He had more gray hair than before, but his dark-brown eyes, liquid and long- lashed as ever, were on her with just the same playful devotion she remembered.

He was unfurling his cloak with a flourish. “What a fool I am to have arrived on a Friday; no meat!” he was saying, in his flamboyant way—the cheerful, carefree way that had been hers, all of theirs, before Friday 13th. It seemed another life. His warmth was infectious. She flung herself into his arms in front of all of them, grinned over his shoulder at Alice with a cheekiness she’d almost forgotten, and cried: “Goffredo!”

If Goffredo's return was a good omen , there was better to come. They let Jane out on the Sunday night, but first they made her publicly repent of her sins. She had to walk barefoot through the City, carry ing a lighted taper. And she was allowed to wear nothing more than a kirtle.

If the crowds that gathered to watch her pass, praying in her circle of light, were supposed to jeer and snicker and jostle and try to pull up her skirt and peer down her shift and hurl rotten fruit and dog turds and cobblestones at the whore in nothing but her linen, to enjoy the sight of her delicate white coverings and skin turning mottled and discolored, to have fun watching her flinch and cry out in pain, they were a disappointment.

Instead, the audience fell silent and stared at her beauty. She was one of them: a Londoner. Some even prayed with her.

Perhaps they’d had their fill of blood at the executions the day before, when four ordinary London citizens—strangers who’d got talking in a tavern, like everyone else was doing, about where the two princes, last seen in the Tower, could have disappeared to, and then, somehow, found themselves plotting a rescue—had been beheaded on Tower Hill.

Jane’s jailers at Ludgate were certainly happy enough when Isabel and Alice Claver and Anne Pratte, flanked by a quietly triumphant crowd of silkwomen, picked up their prisoner. It was just after nightfall. Jane was waiting for them, in a quiet dove- gray gown over the kirtle she’d walked through London in. It was still as snowy white as they’d delivered it the previous day. She was praying when they came for her; she’d prayed more in her days at Ludgate than Isabel remembered her ever having done before.

She was calm as she got up to go. She gave the three men in the gate lodge gifts of all the sweetmeats she’d been brought, divided evenly; she shook each one’s hand and thanked them for their patience with her visitors, in a huskier, more tired voice than usual, but with loving looks.

Isabel gave the head gateman a little bag of coins as they left.

“A thank-you to all of you for all your kindness,” she murmured; and she was touched to see his rheumy eyes fill.

He said gruffly: “Glad to see her out of here. It wasn’t right. But it’ll be lonely without her. We were just getting used to the crowds.” He was still harrumphing sentimentally and blowing his nose as the pro cession of women set off .

Isabel thought John Lambert should have come to London for his daughter’s release. She’d noticed, with scorn, that although her father had written to Jane at Ludgate Prison, he’d cautiously sent the letters to Catte Street rather than to the jail; he wasn’t the type to want to be too closely associated, in public, with an enemy of the king. She’d even suggested Jane ask him to come and show support. But Jane had just laughed forgivingly whenever Isabel complained about their father’s cowardice: “But he’s right, Isabel; he has to be careful. Anyway, what about his gout? He can hardly move these days. It wouldn’t be right to force him up to town. It wouldn’t help.”

Jane wasn’t laughing now. She was looking ahead, not meeting any eyes. “I so want to get home,” she said. “Away from people staring.”

“We’re staying to night at Catte Street,” Isabel reminded her gently. Perhaps Jane hadn’t understood before that her own house had been shut up, ransacked and confiscated?

Jane paused, as if thinking; then nodded. “Catte Street.”

They put her to bed in Isabel’s room. She was pliant, yielding, and remote. She said nothing except a faint “good night” to Alice and Anne. But when Isabel, the last to leave, was about to draw the bed curtains and slip away with her candle, Jane pleaded,“Stay with me a while,” and Isabel, happy to see a flicker of life in her sister’s eyes at last, not wanting to leave her alone in a strange place with her disturbing memories, put down her candle and sat down on the blankets, taking Jane’s hands.

“They haven’t finished with me, have they?” Jane said faintly.

“They told me . . .
there
. . . That there was word I’d have to be interrogated again. By the King’s Solicitor.”

She was clinging to Isabel’s hands, and there was anguish in her eyes.

Isabel didn’t like the way her sister’s eyes made her feel.

She’d been saving her news to tell Jane once she’d slept, but perhaps now would be the right time to reassure her. This was the best thing Robert Lynom had done yet. “Yes, but,” she said cheerfully, “can you guess who the new King’s Solicitor is?”

Jane shook her head. “I don’t know anyone now,” she whispered; and Isabel felt guiltier still for having tried to play guessing games with her.

“ThomasLynom,” Isabel replied gently. “Robert’s twin. A friend.” And she watched the slow answering smile spread across Jane’s face, and sat with her until she fell asleep.