At the Bishop of Chester’s portal, the cockatrice laid a large egg and skipped happily past a row of tenements to snuffle at the backside of the embarrassed guard at Bishop Alcock’s residence. The apprentices cheered the monster on to more impertinence and the housewives shrieked with laughter. Its cavorting, and the accompanying explosives, sucked out Alcock’s household like poison from a wound.
‘Clear off or we shall summon the watch,’ bawled the bishop’s officers, struggling to be heard above the pandemonium, helpless as the cockatrice scratched its head perturbed and danced up the steps, followed closely by its masked friends, who draped their arms round the necks of the protesting guard. Only the extremely observant in the crowd would have seen a gryphon jab an elbow into the guard’s gut as it flapped its eagle wing and force him inside with a hand grasping his collar.
The onlookers waited, breath hushed, for the watch to arrive for fisticuffs. The cart, dull entertainment now it was bereft of firecrackers, slunk into a laneway forgotten, but two yales rushed out of Alcock’s door with firkins of ale to woo the crowd, who in consideration blocked the main street in each direction.
Inside, it took Miles precious time to find the locked door which hid Bishop Stillington. He set a mask upon the bishop’s unconscious head and his attendant gryphons wrapped the sick man in curtaining, ripped from Bishop Alcock’s bed, and carried him tenderly like a battered comrade out to the waggon.
Breaking the city limit for empty carts, the vehicle hurtled down Fleet Street then south to Knightrider Street to avoid the watch. Along Eastcheap, a zealous sergeant of the sheriff pursued it, forcing it recklessly to a halt, but inside there was only a wretched woman writhing with the early pangs of childbirth, on her way to her mother’s house and the waiting hands of a diligent midwife.
By the time the western sun was silhouetting the central turrets of the Tower of London, Bishop Stillington was tenderly bestowed at Baynards Castle, and Heloise, no longer in labour, was shaking down the cushion from beneath her skirts. She was ready to keep vigil by Stillington’s bedside. Rushden was right; it looked as if the bishop was being slowly poisoned.
Miles and his companions arrived home soberly clad to find Harry yawning in the great hall and his guests still sitting at the table: Bishop Alcock was happily discussing the Dominican Heinrich Kramer’s draft treatise on witchcraft with Archbishop Bourchier and Dr Dokett.
‘You mean to say there is nothing more we can do for Stillington but pray?’ Buckingham exclaimed to Miles an hour later, after the ecclesiastical guests had gone home well tippled.
‘My lord, I would stake my life that he was being poisoned. I have left it to her grace of York and her physicians to do all they can. We could have tried purging him with bryony, but since he has lost consciousness, we might have ended up choking him. And if it is deadly nightshade, we cannot risk belladonna or mandrake as an antidote. Believe me, we are like blind men in this. It could be anything – poppy, foxglove, toadstools, even hemlock. If the sleep leaves him, we may purge him then. This business is in God’s hands now.’
*
While her grace’s physician snored in the antechamber and Father William, the Baynards’ priest, intoned prayers on one side of the bed, Heloise sat resolutely upon the other, stroking her fingers along veins that ran across the mottled back of Stillington’s frail right hand like hedge roots, willing him to live. She questioningly touched the soft skin where he had once held a quill. The swelling that usually betrayed a scholarly man had almost gone and no inkstain discoloured his fingers. Through the night, she sat silently urging him to fight, and slowly, as the sky grew pearly grey beyond the wooden shutters, she felt the light in him begin to grow. The faint pulse was still there. Her thoughts whispered to the old man that he was not alone, that she understood the struggle within him – the temptation to be rid of the world and its troubles – to surrender and eke out Purgatory until his soul’s Doomsday.
Father William withdrew, and Heloise sang softly with such sweet sadness that tears made rivulets upon her skin and seeped beneath her gown. As blades of gold pierced the shutters, gentle arms assisted her away. Rushden was in the bishop’s bedchamber with the duchess and the physician when she returned to find that blessed colour at last suffused the sick man’s countenance.
‘Well, your grace,’ her husband was saying, ‘it is Sunday the first of June, and here we have a rusty bishop.’ He offered Heloise a smile that warmed her heart. ‘With your permission, my lady, may I open the casement and let the bells in to stir him?’ At the Duchess of York’s nod, he set back the shutters. ‘Listen, my lord bishop!’ he exclaimed, as the sunshine’s benedictory light fell upon Stillington’s tired face. ‘There is St Paul’s peal of bells, and the chimes close by are from St Laurence’s on Poultney, and that distant cascade must be Allhallows.’
‘No.’ Fragile as breath to stir a crinkled fallen leaf, the faint Yorkshire voice was edged with pride. ‘No … St Martin … le Grand.’
Chapter 18
Bishop Stillington was weak as a rabbit kitten from whatever foul dose had been given him but his heartbeat slowly strengthened. By Monday, he was returning to the brawnier Yorkshire dialect of his childhood, babbling of stealing birds’ eggs at Nether Acaster, but slowly as he whetted his mind on reminiscences, his intellect sharpened. Why would anyone wish to poison him?
‘Were you the shepherdess that sang me back into the earthly fold?’ he asked Heloise. ‘Methinks I was carried by gryphons from my prison, but I suppose it was a dream.’
‘Actually …’ began Heloise. Out tumbled the events of Stony Stratford and the cockatrice. Then, emboldened by the bishop’s dry chortle, she confessed the swordpoint marriage within his diocese and that the chief gryphon was her reluctant bridegroom. Stillington soaked in her tale without a comment, but when Rushden came to visit, the old man studied him with new-grown suspicion as though he might sprout feathers again.
*
‘Well, my lord bishop,’ drawled Harry, joining Miles next day at the bishop’s bedside. They were alone – Heloise was keeping well clear of Buckingham. ‘I daresay you are feeling more secure about your future now, seeing that the Woodvilles are finished.’
Stillington, propped upon the pillow and bolster, hands limp upon the coverlet, stared at him as though he were an insubstantial mirage over a summer ocean.
‘Who rules this realm is of little consequence to me.’ He did not move his coiffed head, but spoke it like a litany.
“Your pardon, bishop, but that is not the answer I want.’ Harry met Miles’s ironic glance. ‘Dear me, Cysgod, I thought you told me he was sane.’ They watched the bishop’s watery blue gaze rise to evaluate the last lawful heir of the House of Lancaster. Perhaps he did not respect the murrey satin doublet with silver thread acorns and the beading of pearls, for he looked away as though Harry bored him.
‘Did you know our bishop was once Lord Chancellor?’ whispered the duke in mock confidence across the coverlet. ‘I never thought he would become so mouse-like.’
Stillington folded his lips tighter, staring stubbornly at the coverlet. ‘Have I unwittingly committed some offence against you, Buckingham? You have my thanks for dragging me back from my body’s doomsday. Is that not enough?’
‘We have helped you, my lord bishop,’ Miles threw in his pennyworth. ‘We should now like you to help us.’
Harry leaned forward. ‘We have the queen muzzled but, of course, there is not the slightest doubt that if she regains her authority she will have you killed, bishop – thoroughly this time. Why? What is it you know?’
The old man glowered. ‘I was friend to Clarence. Will that suffice? You headed the peers that sat in judgment on him. You heard the testimonies.’
‘But they proved so insufficient that King Edward ordered us to condemn him? Why, Stillington?’ Within the generosity of the night robe’s sleeves, the bishop’s hands were agitated. Harry leaned forward. ‘What was the secret that Clarence died for?’
The grey head drooped. Keep at him, Miles gestured. The arguments were his, but the performance had to be Harry’s.
The duke’s tone softened: ‘Gloucester is a good man, righteous, compassionate. You helped him when he was a youth. He needs your help more than ever now. Will you advise him if I bring him here? Tell him what he needs to know?’
It was whistling in the wind. Miles held his breath as Stillington ran a tongue nervously over cracked lips like a waiting reptile. Harry fidgeted.
The wrinkled Adam’s apple moved finally. ‘A pretty speech, your grace. Some day you may grow famous for your silver tongue. Tell me, is this altruism in you, my lord of Buckingham, or is it the Bohun inheritance that you covet? The Lord Protector cannot give you manors for your friends when he has insufficient to reward his own.’ God’s truth, the old man was shrewd. He guessed that Harry wanted to play the kingmaker. The ancient gaze crawled over Miles’s face like a foul spider, but his question was for Buckingham. ‘Or is this merely revenge?’
‘Why deny it?’ Harry stormed to the foot of the bed. ‘The Woodvilles are parasites, bishop, crawling to riches through the bedclothes.’ Miles frowned at Harry. Perhaps they should come back later – let the arguments mature – but the duke strode back to the bedside. ‘I think about the future, Stillington, the Woodville future. Our new king will be even more a pawn than his father was. Elizabeth Woodville will rule England and when her poison is once more congealing in your belly, it will be my turn to kneel down at the block, and Gloucester’s, and our sons’ after us, not to mention Clarence’s boy.’ The bedchamber was silent. ‘Well, Stillington?’ Harry rasped. ‘I need an answer.’
‘I shall pray for guidance, my lord duke,’ the ecclesiastic replied perversely. ‘It is God’s matter.’
‘It is England’s matter, I believe,’ said Miles to them both, making an end of the conversation as he unlatched the door and bowed.
‘So do I get an accolade for “silver tongue”, my friend?’ Harry flung his arm about Miles’s shoulder as they landed ebulliently on the bottom stair.
‘You deserve the Holy Roman Empire.’ Miles grinned as their horses were brought to them across the courtyard. ‘I doubted whether there was actually any secret at all, but there is, there plaguey well is.’
‘You were right. He was worth the expense.’
‘I think, my lord, you should stir Gloucester into the Stillington brew. Shall you go to Crosby Place straightway before the council meeting starts and apprise his grace?’
‘Yes, but do you not intend to accompany me?’
‘Not yet, my lord, I crave leave to transact some business of my own.’ A caravel named Heloise and it was high tide.
*
Heloise had not meant to drowse, and the dream must have lasted but a few moments – a dream of a lord, clad in black, dragged struggling from a mighty keep by soldiers. They threw him to the ground and his sleeves crawled like spider’s legs as he fell forwards, and then a bell struck thirteen times.
St Mary Magdalene’s in Old Fish Street was tolling a funeral bell as Heloise awoke, shivering. For an instant, she was uncertain where she was, for the anguish of the prisoner in her dream was still with her. The scavenging kites flying westward over Baynards drew her gaze; their cries had been in her dream too.
‘Heloise, are you ill?’ Rushden stepped out from beneath the mulberry tree.
With a swift denial, she rose, disliking the edge of misgiving in his expression. How long had he stood there? She shook her head, warming beneath the male discerning eyes that were observing her black gown and the stiff reversed front of her cap – silver taffeta that helped disguise her hairline.
He smiled slowly in the maddening way he sometimes had. ‘I wondered if you might like to come and see Crosby Place.’
Gloucester’s London hive? Heloise brightened. ‘As a reward for stuffing cushions up my girdle, sir?’
‘Something like that.’ The hand held out to her assumed her obedience; she did not mind.
‘You realise,’ she pointed out, ‘that all this associating with me is verging on the scandalous.’
‘Yes,’ he agreed, ushering her towards the stable. ‘Suffice it to say that tail pulling of the noble-and-flattered has some appeal.’
‘I suppose you will not bother to explain that.’
‘Absolutely not,’ and his brigand’s smile tightened the band already round her heart.
*
The bells for ten o’clock at Crosby Place in Bishopsgate had not yet struck, and Miles had plentiful time to escort Heloise up to the minstrel gallery to watch the royal council assemble below. A chair of estate dominated the long trestle that had been set up down the length of the hall with benches either side.
‘Oh, this is wonderful,’ exclaimed Heloise, tapping her fingers on the rail, her doelike eyes wide with admiration.
‘A gracious dwelling, is it not?’ He was heartened that she beamed at him like an excited child, sharing his pleasure in the lovely symmetry. Unlike other lords, Gloucester kept no house of his own in London. He always rented Crosby Place.
The house, built in the 1460s on wool money, lay on three sides of a courtyard – a great hall and private apartments facing the chapel, kitchen and buttery. At the back was a large garden, protected by a high, crenellated wall. For Miles, the beauty of the dwelling was stolen by the magnificent, five-sided oriel window, set in a framework of wondrous stone tracery, built into the great hall’s southern wall. He watched with pleasure the sunlight surging in through the lozenged glass to play warmly on the black and white Purbeck tiles and the matching clustered councillors. Above the window’s soaring bay, a boss embellished with a crest and helm embroiled the stone ribs that fanned across the arches of the windows into a soft-edged stone sun. Opposite the oriel window was a large wall fireplace. There was a central stone hearth, too, for standing braziers in wintertime. Beams rose with perfect grace to meet each other lovingly beneath gold-leafed bosses. Nor was the hall bereft of hangings fit for a great lord’s pleasure: a French hunting tapestry, its colours glowing against the whitewashed masonry, brightened the parlour wall behind the chair of estate. The sheer perfection of it all started him thinking what changes could be made at Bramley.
‘A pity Bramley is so lofty,’ remarked Heloise disconcertingly. ‘This hall is spacious and yet intimate.’
‘Different purpose and newer, too,’ he answered, disturbed that she might actually have read his mind. ‘Word is that Crosby never actually lived here. Mayhap he overstretched himself. A Lucchese banker, Antonio Bonvice, owns it now.’
‘It is perfect.’ Heloise sparkled, bringing her palms together in sheer exuberance.
Why did she have to be so lovely? It took all Miles’s strength of will to wrench his gaze from her moist parted lips. He should not be standing with her in the common gaze. She was arousing too much attention and she was arousing him. He cursed, wanting to steal his seductive madonna-in-mourning away to a bedchamber and peel the black damascened silk away, inch by inch. He forced himself to stare instead at the lords, spiritual and temporal, amassing below, gratified that there were plenty of lesser nobility like himself diluting the assembly.
‘Others like yourself, sir?’ Hell take her! She must be reading his mind. He frowned at Heloise’s profile and then let out his breath with a self-conscious grin. If the lady was actually tapping into his head, then she should have been blushing, but there were only healthy smudges of rose along her cheekbones.
‘Yes, ability riding on the back of lordly mediocrity for the most part, though I admit some of them were born with brains as well as titles.’
‘Just as well they are talking too loudly to hear you,’ she laughed. ‘Are there any Woodvilles?’ He shook his head. With two in sanctuary, three in prison, one at sea and Dorset, who had been tracked by dogs out on Moorfields, now in hiding, the queen had no glib defenders on the council. He did a swift calculation of how many councillors might still support
her.
‘Counting heads for the dukes?’ Heloise’s soft chiding broke through his reverie.
‘Mistress, will you stop—’ He broke off. Lord Hastings had entered the hall and glancing up at the gallery, recognised Miles.
‘Dear God, who is he?’ Heloise’s sunshine pleasure vanished. ‘That man nodding to you?’
‘Ogling you, morelike, madam. The famous Lord Hastings. You might say he was to King Edward what I am to Buckingham.’ Another cysgod.
Heloise stared wide-eyed at the great lord who had summoned the two dukes into alliance against the queen. ‘D-does he always wear sleeves like that?’ The lower ends of the lord chamberlain’s mourning sleeves had been slashed, from heel to mid-calf level, into equal strips, each edged with gold embroidery.
Miles tried to make light of her change of humour. ‘Italian, I should not wonder. Stand here for much longer and you will see him goose a passing maidservant. Keep a league from him, changeling, or he will charm your underlinen off you.’
Heloise gripped the rail to steady herself. Lord Hastings had been the beleaguered victim in her dream! Mercy Jesu! Was she meant to warn or prevent … She watched the late king’s friend move affably through the hall bestowing greetings until he drew level with Buckingham, who had just come in to take his seat to the right of the chair. The air vibrated with mutual jealousy.
The Silver Bride Page 29
