The King's Grey Mare (31 page)

She said: ‘Oh, Jesu, mercy.’
From the crowding, unquiet throng of her household came whispered amen, like sea on shingle.
Emboldened, the courier continued.
‘Not only your Grace’s father and brother were beheaded, but also Lords Pembroke and Devon.
Because Earl Warwick …’

‘Call him not by his name.’
The words were like swallowed ice.
‘Refer to him, henceforth, as the Fiend.’

‘Yes, Madame.
All four were beheaded because … the Fiend vows they were evildoers and succubi, draining the strength from the King and wealth from his coffers.
Your Grace,’ he said anxiously, ‘Lord Hastings sent word that you should take your daughters – and your two sons by Sir John Grey – from the Tower to a place of greater safety.
Already Clarence rides on London with Archbishop Neville, Earl … the Fiend’s brother.’

The icy feeling spread and hardened in her breast.

‘We shall not leave London,’ she said.
‘We shall adjourn to our Palace of Westminster.’

As the still tableau of her household began to dissolve, hurrying all ways, she trembled and said softly:

‘So!
He ranks us with succubi, demons!
We, who are descended from the house of Luxembourg, from the blood of a …’

Margaret Beaufort’s narrow face swam into her vision.
A small slender hand gripped Elizabeth’s sleeve.
In the Countess’ black eyes was knowledge, warning.
Say naught that can harm you, the eyes pleaded.
Then the Countess was whispering, new alarums mixed with advice; There were things undisclosed by the courier, fresh assaults from the foul one.
Reynold Bray had been busy with ear and wit.
Concerning Jacquetta of Bedford; they must go to her at once.

‘My mother?’
said Elizabeth, low and harsh.

‘She is in danger,’ replied the Countess.
‘The Fiend seeks to lay her low.’

‘Ah, God’s blood, he is a canker,’ said the Queen.
Her feet and hands were icy, as if she had lain for days in snow.

‘And we will cut him out!’
said Margaret Beaufort, strongly.
‘Come, my liege.
We must find her before the Archbishop reaches Westminster.’

Jacquetta had been told of her husband’s death.
The news had robbed her of her wits.
In a grim mask of sorrow, her once-clear eyes were opaque and wandering.
It was also suddenly apparent that she was no longer young.
The Duchess had taken to painting of late, and now the spots of cochineal paste stood out like round wounds on each bloodless cheek.
Alarmed, Elizabeth saw her thus and realized that those knowing eyes, that mighty spirit, were for the first time in retreat, and thought: Jesu!
what shall I do, without her guidance?
and more wildly: How have we offended Melusine … I have followed her dictates, I have captured and enslaved a prince.
I have endowed palaces and colleges with my wealth, and I have spread my stag’s hide over the whole of England.
I have borne children … Here the pattern fell to pieces.
She bore sons, and what have I?
Three frail and pretty wenches.
She shook her head involuntarily.
This is madness, and no fault of mine.
Melusine never had an enemy like the Fiend!

In the chamber corner a stench was rising.
It tickled Eizabeth’s throat and brought on a genteel fit of coughing from Lady Margaret Beaufort.
The latter glanced swiftly about and determined the odour’s source – a black candle was alight.
She extinguished it and threw it under a deep chest.

‘Her Grace becomes indiscreet,’ she said softly.
Elizabeth turned to her.

‘Margaret.
How much is known?’

‘Too much,’ said the Countess.
She leaned to where Jacquetta sat glassily and said: ‘Your Grace, the images.
The waxen images .
‘Elizabeth looked at her, startled.
‘Did you disclose them to anyone?’

In a voice like a sad little wind, the Duchess answered: ‘Aye, once.
To the nuns of Sewardsley … they wished for knowledge.
There was one whom they would bring down – their Abbess, who used them ill; they sought my secret and I showed them.’

Margaret Beaufort hissed with impatience.
Blankly the Duchess looked at her.

‘My lord is dead,’ she whispered.
‘My knight.
The handsomest in England …’ Her eyes blurred, went away somewhere far off.

‘Madame!’
cried Margaret.
‘Warwick is upon us … you are to be tried for sorcery unless we act at once.
Your Sewardsley nuns have tongues like clappers, for they even told my clerk!
Where are the images now?’

The Duchess sighed, and began talking in a sleepwalker’s monotone of her dead knight’s grace, treading the ash of lost passions, muttering as if at that moment they bedded together.
The frank demented speech of love.
For an hour Elizabeth and the Countess rummaged fretfully in chest and coffer, eventually breaking the lock of a tiny box.
There, lying unquietly upon a piece of silk was the tiny Edward, streaked with his own blood, and the misshapen facsimile of Warwick, still cinctured with the iron band.

‘Make up the fire,’ said Elizabeth.
From outside came the faint sound of horsemen riding; the sounds of steel and iron and commands.
When the flames leaped she took the two figures firmly in her hands.
She was more than loath to destroy the King’s image, so in precaution she murmured: ‘May this heat add only power to the Sun in Splendour,’ casting the image into the fire’s heart.
At the sight of Warwick’s little figure her lip curled back like a rabid hound’s; she called down a curse upon him for the twentieth time.
As she watched him melt and coagulate among the burning logs, a desperate question formed: Will he never die?
She turned from the fire to Lady Margaret, whose black eyes net hers calmly, without surprise or censure.

‘So, ’tis done.
Your Grace, be comforted.
Now–’ practical again – ‘are there witnesses?’

Jacquetta’s voice startled them.
‘Witnesses …’ she quavered … ‘but no proof.
Ah, my sweet lord …’

She was a shell, bereft.
But Margaret Beaufort was doubly strong, immensely comforting, and to her Elizabeth now turned again.

‘Margaret.
Will the Fiend slay the King?’

‘Rumour says yes,’ replied the Countess.
‘But I think otherwise.
Bray says he is at Pontefract, royally housed.’
She took Elizabeth’s hand.
‘Come, my liege.
Let us confront Archbishop Neville.
Surely,’ she mocked; ‘the Church will not be a party to the murder of an anointed King!’

With a small entourage the Queen rode to Westminster, mantling her face against curious stares.
The streets were black with people.
Volatile and distraught, vague news lately in their ears, they ran alongside the train, grabbing at the outriders’ stirrups.
Was it true that Ned had been beheaded up north?
Where was he?
Jesu preserve him, wherever he was!
Towards Westminster Hall, a knot of people chanted Edward’s coronation song.
Elizabeth, while motioning to her escort to whip the runners back, was greatly comforted.
She alighted outside the Exchequer, and, lifting her velvet robe to plant each small slipper firmly down, mounted the steps to her own Council Chamber.
Behind her the mob growled encouragement, and Margaret Beaufort whispered: ‘They are loyal to a man, and Burgundy has already sent word promising support.’

There was an armed guard flanking the Chamber door.
They wore Clarence’s Black Bull upon their livery.
The Queen’s men marched forward; she heard argument, saw the shaking heads.
She threw off the loose velvet hood and stepped forward, small and vital among the tall armoured men.
The ranks parted at once, for the guard, unsure, dare not lay hands upon the Queen’s person.
She entered: the Chamber was bright with new hangings, those of the See of York.
Elizabeth’s chin went up in cool anger.
There upon her dais, sat George Neville, the Archbishop, and this sight fed her wrath.
She resolved, glaring at him, to have him down from that perch more speedily than he had ascended to it.
Next to the dais stood Clarence.
He had put on flesh; uneasy triumph clothed his fair Plantagenet face.
As she walked towards him the red vision crossed her mind.
The heads of father and brother, weeping blood.
Clarence’s hands were folded on his sword-hilt; his new wedding-ring was jewelled and prominent.
The Fiend’s son-in-law!
So she marked him down.

Archbishop Neville rose, extending his hand and suddenly full of doubt, as Elizabeth, Queen of England, advanced and outside the, walls, loyal London clamoured for their King’s return.

For Elizabeth, it was a nightmare test, to be endured not once but many times.

They were felling a tree, with great lusty strokes.
She could hear the whine of the falling axe, the crash of the steel on timber.
The great bole bled white slivers.
They were bringing down the Queen’s Oak, while she stood in Whittlebury Forest, watching, powerless.
The thunderous blows gained pace and vigour.
She flung out her hands and wrenched from the tossing dream.
Still sleep-bemused, she lay blinded by a tress of her own hair.
The noise went on, and she identified it.
She was not in Whittlebury, she was in the Tower state apartments, and someone beat on the outer chamber door.
The bolts were drawn; she heard voices – a man’s urgent, summoning, and Renée’s, as high and hysterical as that day, nearly a year earlier, when they came to tell the Queen that her father and brother were slain.

She slipped from the bed.
Fear, odorous and stomach-churning, was all about her once more.
She thought, suddenly: Edward is dead!
Realizing that which she had always harboured and never dared examine:
Edward’s death is my own downfall.
Without him
 … She dared think no further.
She stood shivering in the curtains’ dark velvet cave, her mind racing over the past year, recognizing the mistakes made by the King, and her panic gave way to fury as she remembered how he had ignored her counsel.
The resentment shown by the Londoners at their King’s imprisonment by Warwick had been shared by the greater part of England.
Love Warwick they might – for his ostentatious lordliness and his bonhomie, for his roast oxen and free gifts – yet where the King’s person was concerned that love stopped short.
Within a month of Warwick’s coup, Edward had come riding back unharmed from Yorkshire to a tumultuous welcome from all the prominent Londoners.
He had been like a schoolboy, tickled by the jest of outwitting Warwick in popularity.
Even then she had had the notion that he took it all too lightly.
And he could not resist playing the magnanimous ruler.

She had gone on her knees to him.

‘For God’s love, Edward, have Warwick beheaded!
He has proved himself a traitor, like your brother of Clarence.
Kill them.’
Her imagination fattened on hatred.
‘Let Tiptoft impale them on the highest point of London Bridge!’

Freshly shaven, clad in new white velvet, Edward had listened to her at a banquet ordered in honour of his safe deliverance.
He had looked at her with a strangely cynical knowledge.

‘Bessy, Bessy,’ he said quite gently, ‘how you do hate my lord of Warwick!’

She gasped.
‘But, Ned!
He rose against you!
He invaded our Council with his minions.
He laid hands upon your sacred person and–’ sadly – ‘he murdered my father and my brother, both your true men!’

He nodded, briefly commiserating.
‘My heart bled for them, in truth.
But–’ He shook his head decisively, ‘I shall not play the tyrant.
I have offered Warwick the general pardon, and he will soon come here to accept it.’

Sickly, she said: ‘And what of Clarence?’

‘Foolish,’ said the King.
‘Ambitious, disloyal.
Yet still my brother.’

And his glance slid upwards to where, left of the dais, Richard of Gloucester stood; she knew then that Gloucester had been Clarence’s advocate, as always prating of brotherly love and forgiveness.
She looked at the young Duke with a savage steel-blue flicker that carried all her jealous resentment: Edward had spoken for half an hour to the company, praising Gloucester for his courage during the affray and the nobility of his endeavours in obtaining the King’s release.
Hastings came in for a share of this glory too, and smirked under it.