The Maiden and the Unicorn (50 page)

"We rejoice that you wear our badge about your neck, Marguerite Neville."

Was it the coincidence of the name "Margaret" or had Huddleston even calculated this? Margery wanted to rip the golden daisy from her throat. The Countess, to the left of the Queen, signalled a sympathetic caution. The Bitch d'Anjou smirked. "Fidelity is obviously not one of your husband's attributes in politics or the bedchamber, Lady Warwick." It was not queenly.

"Pardon, madame, I am my father's
eldest
daughter." Margery could not resist answering. With some calculation, it was possible to argue that her father and the Countess must have been wed as children, and she had never heard of her father straying since Isabella had been born.

Richard, watching in dismay, noted how the Queen's eyes whipped across Margery's face. Unfortunately she caught the Countess smiling. "Indeed?"

"That is quite true, your highness." The Countess nodded serenely. "My lord has always been
sane
enough to know where his best interests lie. Perhaps his highness the Prince would like to walk with us in the gardens?"
 

The faux sweetness might have given the Countess the winning point but the Queen rallied: "By St Denis, you may have time for such vanities, Lady Warwick, but my son and I cannot be dallying when there is a campaign to be planned. Come, Edouard, John." As she took Lord Oxford's arm, he bent his head to her ear. "Ah yes." She dashed a swift glance at Margery before she turned her face away. Her French carried clearly: "Carnal knowledge with the usurper as a child, you say?"
 

To have corrected the foul lie would have been useless. Richard saw the fury lash across Margery's face and within seconds she was shaking within the harness of his restraining hands.

"Be silent, foolish girl!" admonished the Countess tersely, as the last of the Angevin entourage drifted off after the Queen. "Your father's honour needed no defence from you."

"Enough, Mother!" Anne intervened. "That woman had no right to speak like that even if she is a Queen, which she is not since Father took her crown from her."

The Countess gave her child an exasperated glance, flung her hands angrily in the air and swept away.

Gripping Margery's arm, Richard walked his wife swiftly to the side of the hall. "I thought I warned you to be circumspect. If your father's plans succeed, Margaret d'Anjou will be Queen of England again and you have just corrected her. What is more, you put Lady Warwick in an embarrassing situation."

"My lady does not like her any more than I do.
She
chose to be discourteous."

"That was her decision. But for the love of Heaven, Margery, see sense from now on. There is no point in offending the Queen."

"There is little point in mollifying her either. She looked at me with loathing. Did you not see? She's been told I was the
usurper's
mistress." Her tone was scathing enough to make him wince.

"There is more on her mind than bothering with you. If these negotiations succeed, she will be Queen of England again and you will have to please her."

She flinched but retaliated angrily. "I am sorry if I am thwarting your ambitions, Master Huddleston. Are you planning to give the Queen's worn shoes a daily rub?"

His face froze. "By Heaven, if we were private I would be tempted to throw you over my knee."

"And, here, have your collar back!" She struggled to open the catch but Richard gave her a contemptuous look and strode away.

* * *

The golden marguerite burned her flesh. It was needful to wait until the hurt and anger abated, necessary to find a refuge in the nearest beckoning sidechamber. Tears flowing, her arms criss-crossed defensively, fingers clutching at her bare shoulders, Margery waited miserably for the mistiness and the sniffles to clear, only to find her gaze drawn by a tapestry which hung above the doorway. The latent carnality in it penetrated her senses, astonishing her, momentarily driving away her sorrow. Men with the faces of satyrs hovered behind the fully clad noble ladies. When she looked hard, she could see the empty buttonholes, the nipples rising like suns from horizons of untidy bodices.

"You like it?" asked a voice in careful English. She realised with astonishment that King René stood behind her.

"Or is it too secular for you, Margery Neville? Did you observe the Apocalypse tapestry in St Maurice's?" Louis of France materialised like a black wraith from a carved chair by the window.

She curtsied in panic at disturbing their intimacy.
"
B-beau sire,
yes, I saw it, but it was almost too rich, too... powerful for me. I-I felt very small beside such a masterpiece." She could feel the betraying salt upon her cheeks; the swollen tell-tale rims that spoke of weeping.

It was her host who answered. "It is good that you feel this. I am jealous, young woman. To see such workmanship, such beauty for the first time, ahh," he nodded. "I wish it was like that for me again. When I go there to mass, sometimes I do not look anymore. I think I know every thread of it and then I loathe myself for such complacency." He looked hard at her. Perhaps he was myopic. "You like it in Angers, madame?"

"
Oui, beau sire, c'est
..." she searched for a word that sounded French. "
C'est impressif.
"

The King of France came across to them. "Did you know that for over seven hundred years the Holy Church denied that women had souls? Now they can be damned and redeemed like the rest of us.' His hand came down upon her shoulder. Jesu, this man terrified her. "She reads, uncle. She might enjoy the use of your library except…except it is almost time for you to leave, I think, Margaret Neville," he concluded softly, his smile ambiguous.

"Yes,
beau sire"
she asserted, lifting her chin with a tight smile.

King René, misunderstanding, gestured her through the doorway.

* * *

The ceremony in the cathedral was an outward manifestation of the results of the peacemaking, but it was velvet and silk stretched taut across the cracks in the pasted alliance. It was only during the service that the Neville womenfolk became aware that Warwick had agreed to swear his loyalty to Margaret d'Anjou on the bones of St Laud. And it was common belief that anyone who perjured themselves on those bones would be dead within the twelve month. The Bitch was taking no chances with her old enemy, even to ensuring him a bed in Hell if he betrayed her. Her only concession was to permit the announcement that her son and Anne Neville were to be betrothed.

The tension between the Neville supporters and the exiled lords of Lancaster as they walked down the nave together was still sufficient to embarrass. Margery, too, was forced into proximity with her traitor husband. "If a papal blessing is received for the betrothal, as I am sure it will be, you will be more or less brother-in-law to the future Queen of England," she observed witheringly as they moved down the nave at a discreet distance behind Anne and the Prince. Richard's smile was sardonic, she observed under her lashes.

He ignored the thrust. "But at last the web is fully cast and your father and the Queen can cease the obligatory twitches of distaste. What, of course, has not been mentioned among all the holy oaths is that if this campaign is successful, your father will be committed to war with Burgundy. This is not about England's good but the expansion of France."

"Yes." Her tone was bitter.

"You might be interested to know that Sir John Fortescue and my lord of Oxford have been trying to talk the Queen into this betrothal for some time." Richard noted the flicker of interest. "Apparently they broached the matter with your father a few years ago at secret talks outside Calais but then, of course, he was not ready for rebellion. Perhaps he was waiting for the Duke of Clarence to come of age. Or Lady Anne."

Margery groaned with disgust. Her disillusionment with her father was growing daily. "Ha, it is easy to interpret with hindsight."

"I would wager your father has been considering a Neville dynasty ever since he crowned your wonderful Ned. Either Isabella or Anne has to become a queen. Had Isabella been older and had your looks, your father might have contrived that she encountered the King in the midst of the forest. I believe that is now the known procedure for would-be queens these days. Unfortunately being a saddlepack babe, you were disqualified from the start. A pity old Ned ignored little Isabella, he will be quaking in his Spanish leather boots quite soon."

"I doubt it." They had reached the portal. She gracefully lifted her fingers from his gloved wrist as Matthew Long approached with Comet. Displeased, she looked about her for the chariot which had brought the ladies-in-waiting. Huddleston's eyes held dangerous green flames. She nearly squealed as he put two adroit hands unexpectedly around her waist and tossed her into the saddle. She landed with a thud that bruised. "Was the trundle bed comfortable?" he asked.

Forced to hang onto his belt, she gritted her teeth as he settled before her and heeled Comet into place in the procession. At another time, she would have enfolded his waist right willingly. "I have observed, Richard Huddleston, that when you cannot browbeat me with words, you fall back on your physical superiority which is extremely lily-livered of you."

His next words knocked the breath from her. "You will be able to claim your house in Chelsea as a concubine's pay quite soon. The King of France has suggested I make arrangements for you to leave."

He felt her stiffen behind him, seeming to weigh her words before she offered them for purchase. "Welcome news," she answered finally. "We may dispense with each other at last but I should like to return to Amboise and collect my other belongings."

Richard smiled grimly. So she was still waiting for the promise from the Duke, and King Edward had insisted it must be written in the Duke's own hand. Time was running out. If the Lancastrian lord with whom he had sat and caroused last evening was correct, there was another extremely good reason for Margery to leave France with the greatest urgency.

Chapter 23

It was a subdued party that rode west along the road which was navigable only in dry weather. Even the River Loire seemed withdrawn and thoughtful, having shrunk across its gravelly bed. At Tours, like a cannon ready to be lit, the Duke of Clarence awaited official conveyance of the ill tidings. Margery was not there to see if he took consolation from the wine, for her father and King Louis had sent the Neville women on ahead to Amboise.

To be truthful, Isabella was relieved to see them again but the news that it was Anne who was more likely to wear the crown rendered her sullen and resentful. And poor Anne, hurt at her sister's selfish lack of sympathy, rolled herself, woodlouse-like, into a little armoured ball of incommunicativeness and was looking for a stone to hide under. Margery, anxious for the Duke's return and bereft of her husband's dangerous company, was restless to be quit of France.

The Duke returned to Amboise next day ahead of the Earl, and Margery, catching his glance, knew that he was poisonous with fury. Now was the time to force a promise out of him for Ned's sake, but there was no privacy. What concerned her too was that even if George gave her the written promise, she could hardly leave without her father's permission even if she did have the blessing of the King of France and it was unlikely that Warwick would agree.

Her father rode in with King Louis a day later. Lancastrians were now swelling his retinue: Sir John Fortescue, who was writing a political treatise on kingship for Prince Edouard, and Jasper the handsome Welsh earl. Of Huddleston there was no sign.

* * *

Given time, without the wagons and chariots, the journey between Tours and Amboise could be pleasant. A traveller might linger to fill his leather wine bottle at one of the vineyards east of the city. Then, approaching the village of Langeais, there was a plethora of taverns to replenish the sweat of the carters, labourers and masons who were building a fortress for my Lord Treasurer. And there was a certain corner as the river road looped north towards the cliffs where there were three willing cherrylips, although the discerning rarely lingered. God knows how free of the pox the sisters were.

Richard made an excuse to leave Tours later than his father-in-law, having business of his own that concerned pigeons. With good horses, Matthew and two of his Cumbrian men-at-arms, he judged himself safe enough and the track was well-trodden by the frequent passage of traffic between the favourite residences of the King and Queen.