The Maiden and the Unicorn (24 page)

Margery's face was adamant. "There will be no
second
night!"

Chapter 12

The women curtsied as the Earl of Warwick drew off his riding gauntlets and thrust them behind him onto the settle before taking the silver cup that his wife was holding out to him. There was a self-satisfied glint in his eyes as he quaffed down the contents and snapped his fingers at a page for more. He had returned from pirating without the Duke, or to Margery's relief, Richard Huddleston.

Margery gazed at the man who might have sired her wondering when and if she would be able to find out the truth from him. One could not exactly force the maker of kings into a corner and extract the intimate facts from him like a barber yanking out an aching tooth with forceps. She had been forced to wait a week already.

"Give your tiring ladies leave, mesdames."

Margery cursed silently as they began to file out of the solar. Gathering up her embroidery, she sank again into a deferential curtsey before the Earl. At least he noticed her for he lowered his cup to study her with a faint smile. Then with a backward flick of his hand he gestured to her to return to her stool by the window.

Margery did not feel like sitting down. It was hard not to crush her needlework between her fingers. How could she remain as outwardly calm and still as a set custard when inside she was boiling over. Was she his daughter? She fiddled with her hands when she was talking just like my lord did when he sat at board, but had she that stubborn jawline?

With no mirror of her own, Margery had never spent hours squeezing and examining her face as Isabella had. Her fingers unwittingly ran over her lips and down to trace her chin.

"Mistress Huddleston! Are you gone deaf?" The Countess sent her a look of chastisement at her tardiness in leaving, but the Earl stilled the next tart comment on his wife's tongue with a curt shake of his head.

"Nay, she may stay. Margery, have you been bitten by some French insect?" His question snapped her out of her reverie.

"More like she is remembering Master Huddleston's kisses," Isabella's finger jabbed her fiercely in the ribs.

"Huddleston, hmm. I hope you are feeling more charitable to him and me, young mistress." Warwick unbuttoned his cote and handed it to his page before he dismissed him. Margery was the only servant left. "You speak brightly, Bella, but you have shadows like saddlebags beneath your eyes. Are the dreams still tormenting you?"
 

Dreams of a tossing ship and a dead baby denied God's Kingdom?

Isabella hung her head. By day she was cheerful now, but nightly she would wake screaming.

"I have told Margery and Ankarette to brew a nightly posset," the Countess was saying, "but Bella will have none of it."

"Pah, no, for it tastes foul and I wake so heavy headed."

The Earl frowned. "You should do as your lady mother bids. We all of us have had horror in our lives. I could tell you of sights in battle that would make you ill to hear it."

Isabella swiftly forestalled any reminiscences. "I fear I keep Ankarette and Margery awake with my nightmares." It was true. They took turns in sharing the Duchess's bedchamber and broken sleep was beginning to take its toll.

Warwick's brow furrowed as he examined Margery. "Aye, so I perceive. Have some consideration for your women, Bella, and overcome your fears."

"What is the news, Father?" Anne obviously had had enough of Isabella's woes. She pushed away her sister's new puppy, tired of it nipping at her pointed slippers.

"Ha! Well, I have had word that there are troops drawn up on either side of the border. Out of pique the Burgundians have arrested all the French merchants visiting the Antwerp Fair and have made more attacks on French ships." He paused with a self-satisfied grin, "But it appears Charles of Burgundy is reluctant to jeopardise the treaty any further so King Louis has decided to risk inviting us openly to his court at Amboise. We leave within the week." He waited as if for applause. There was a stunned silence.

The Countess pulled a wry face. "My lord, it is out of the question. We have not the apparel for court appearances."

"Nan, Nan, do not look so anxious. It is a dowdy court. Queen Charlotte is a little pudding of a woman, homely and kind. You will like her, I promise. Besides, I have a surprise for you. I did not tell you that there was a cargo of silks on one of the Burgundian ships. By noon tomorrow it shall all be at your disposal."

A gasp of excitement came from Anne but Isabella surprisingly showed no such pleasure. "And are my lord husband and I welcome at Amboise too?" Her tone was sharp.

The Earl bestowed his most winning smile upon her. "But of course, my dearest. He and I need to persuade King Louis into providing us with aid and, let us be resolved on this, Isabella, I have no intention of leaving Amboise without Louis's guarantee so you must smile and be gracious and George will have to convince the French court that he will make a more compliant king than Ned."

"George can charm anyone when he sets his mind to it."

Warwick caught the Countess's glance. "Is that so? To be frank, I do not think the Duke impressed our recent guests. Mayhap you will need to exert a more favourable influence on him—more of your time perhaps—but we shall speak of this privily, you and I."

Isabella's mouth squashed into a rosette of sulkiness and she looked to her mother for support before she retaliated. "Considering how you monopolised their time, my lord, he had little chance of proving himself." She shrugged as her father's mouth curled down.

"Isabella!" The Countess swiftly joined her husband in a show of unity before he could make an answer. "You may be a duchess but you are young in these matters. Take what your father says to heart. George cannot afford to make any errors from now on."

Anne raised her head from fending off Tristan snapping at the tassels on the tails of her girdle and shot Margery a meaningful glance. George of Clarence might be promising to be obedient to Warwick but he could be more wilful than Ned. After all, he had been the brat of the family.

"Will
she
be there?" Anne was voicing what her mother and sister had left unasked. What of the woman Warwick and Ned had deposed, the defeated queen of the House of Lancaster?

"The Bitch of Anjou? No, little one, she is back at the court of her brother, the Duke of Calabria. I doubt she will come within leagues of me but it is an interesting dilemma for the King of France having Margaret d'Anjou and myself both supplicants for his aid."

The Countess's hands fluttered. "I am not happy, my lord. I know you are good friends with King Louis but after all is said and done that woman has had his ear these last years and she is his cousin."

Anne scooped up the wriggling tangle of teeth and claws and thrust the puppy into Isabella's arms. "He has done precious little so far."

Warwick had not spoken. He was looking at his youngest daughter with the same expression with which he had studied Margery on the deck of his ship. An ice-cold shudder of foreboding streaked down Margery's spine. In the search for an ally, Warwick had an unmarried daughter to barter, an heiress to his great wealth.

"Margery?
Margery!
At least have the manners to listen to what is being said." The angry voice pierced her thoughts like an arrow.

"I beg your pardon, madam."

"Oh, do not waste your breath on
me."
Sourly, the Countess swept across to the casement and plucked irritably at the tapestry canvas which Ankarette had been labouring over.

The Earl's face as he glanced at his lady's sulky shoulders reminded Margery of an unrepentant dog that knows it is in trouble for running amok among the sheep, but has no regrets. "I was saying, Margery, that I have been conversing with Master Huddleston. I intend to recognise you as my daughter."

Margery sprang to her feet, pure happiness flooding through her. It would have been natural to have flung her arms in the air and whooped with sheer joy, but the angry woman at the window would have snipped her down to size. Instead she beamed at the Kingmaker, proud to the tips of her toes. She might be still a bastard. Nothing could change that, but at least she was the bastard of the most famous Englishman in Christendom.

The Earl stepped forward and clasped her shoulders. His unshaved chin rasped her as he kissed her cheek. "The good tidings shall be proclaimed at supper this even." His blue eyes smiled down at her reassuringly and holding her hand tightly in his, he turned her to confront the Countess's offended frown. "We are none of us children anymore." He looked round gravely at each of his family, particularly singling out Anne. For an instant the smile vanished from the girl's eyes as if she sensed something serious was happening to further to change their lives. "Had I been more open about the past I might have saved this first child of mine her fall from grace." His beringed fingers rose to stroke his love-child's cheek.

Beneath the sweetness of the news, Margery had an inexplicable aftertaste of waste—the image of a distorted upturned hourglass, its sand running fast, dismayed her. Would it be possible for this busy man to give her time to learn to love him as a daughter should? Guilt seeped through her that his caresses came too late for her to forgive him like a good Christian should. To have left her in ignorance all her life had been an unnecessary cruelty.

"So, have you lost your silver tongue, Margaret
Neville?"

She fell to her knees. "My lord, I thank you with all my heart for your kindness." She carried his hand to her lips. "As God is my witness, I never knew this until Master Huddleston told me what he suspected." She caught the Countess's bitter gaze and held it. "I had no reason to be proud, but I am now."

"Do not think to puff yourself up with airs and graces, girl. Remember you are only a Neville bastard..." The Countess drew breath to add something predictably needle-sharp, but the looks of the other members of her family quelled her.

"It is just like the King Arthur legend when Sir Gareth discovers he is a king's son." Anne came across to bend down and put her arms around her half-sister. "I am so very happy, Margery. You have always been like an older sister in my mind."

"Isabella, you accept this?" Warwick's tone was of command rather than petition.

The Duchess set down her dog and swept forward. She stood looking down at Margery, her expression haughtier than her mother's. "What, this upstart serving wench of mine? This wanton lawbreaker, this disrespectful apology for a woman? Of course, I accept her! Have I not always treated Margery as a sister too? Get up, you wretch, so I may hug you!"

The Earl swung round on his wife. "Nan, you must forgive the past. It is high tide with us."

The Countess gave a sigh of annoyance but she came across to Margery, her skirts hissing across the rushes.

It was diplomatic to curtsey again, to look reasonably humble.

"Rise, child." The grown child rose, eyes still politely lowered as the Countess of Warwick bestowed a cold kiss upon her forehead.

"Excellent." Warwick, satisfied, turned away and began to tell his legal daughters what to expect at the court of France.

His wife confronted his bastard. "Look at me, Margaret Neville!"

Margery looked her fully in the face, remembering the older woman's grudging tolerance over the years. Fire to water. At last, she could speak her thoughts. "Madam, I thank you for giving me shelter all these years but I beseech you ever to remember that it was not my fault that I was unlawfully conceived. I am the fruit, not the flower, and therefore do not blame me."

The Countess was unmoved. "Gall, more like. I pray that you will never have to do what I am doing, Mistress Huddleston, acknowledging the living proof of a husband's infidelity. Understand how hard this is for me now that you have a husband of your own, and expect nothing more." With that, Warwick's lawful wife turned away. It should not have hurt Margery but it did, like a lash.

"You may
all
have new gowns," her new father was saying and he swung round on her. "Margery, for the love of Heaven, do not choose scarlet this time. Neville women have never looked well in red."

She tried to find her voice. Tears pricked behind her eyes. Scarlet, the colour of ribaldry, dangerous, carnal. The scarlet of lords-and-ladies berries, of holly, of blood. Now deliberately turned on her, the plump white skin of the Countess's back, bulging above the low neck of the summer gown, was in itself a goading. It was tempting to say brightly that my Lady Warwick had always told her that red was her colour and she should wear no other.