‘Why, Heloise,’ the silver look was roguish. ‘How very compliant you are.’
‘I am only humouring you,’ she teased.
‘By God, what goes on here?’ Harry, glinting with gold thread, too ruddy with wine, came through the doorway and halted, swaying somewhat with drink slopping his soul. Heloise broke away, straightening her skirts.
The duke was not looking at her. ‘Miles?’
Miles’s common sense lurched; within the loyal speechwriter, drinking companion and official sycophant – no, that office had fallen upon Nandik – something rebelled. The resentment in Harry’s face, the duke’s blatant irritation at seeing him with Heloise in his arms, jarred. He might revolve around the Buckingham sun, but he had acquired a moon of his own now.
‘Have you met my wife, Heloise Ballaster?’ It was brittle, cruel, not how he had planned to break the tidings. Beside him, his freshly-bedded wife sank into a curtsey.
Not a ducal muscle twitched in the handsome face. It was not politick to see in the third most powerful man in England a stunned fish out of its element, but for that moment Miles did not care a jot. My wife. It sounded right, righter than ever before.
‘If you say so.’ Harry dumped a leather bottle upon the table and pulling off his cream gloves, dropped them beside the cup. That did not escape him either. Heloise rose from her obeisance but he ignored her. ‘I may be in my right wits come dawn, Rushden, but you, unfortunately, will still be a married man. Here!’ The words were bitter as he pushed the mazer at him. ‘Take it as a wedding gift.’
Miles held his gaze, tears suddenly threatening to unman him. This was not how it should be. Harry had deserved better of him. ‘I do not want to do that.’
‘Nevertheless, it is yours. Take it! Tomorrow you will perhaps explain why you disappeared without leave.’ He stood back curtly so their way to the door was free.
Miles bowed. ‘Come, madam.’
But Heloise lingered. ‘The demoiselle at Crosby Place,’ she began. ‘I think you should know that—’
Buckingham stretched and yawned. ‘Do they all have addled wits where your wife comes from, or is it an effect of making crossbows?’
‘She was not a gardener but—’ Heloise continued stubbornly.
‘We shall cross that bridge if need be, madam,’ cut in Miles. Outside the door he stopped and looked at her sad face, his heart troubled. ‘I am sorry.’ Sincere, yes, but she understood that she was an interloper.
‘He needs you. Make your peace.’
‘Then wait for me in the solar. I shall see you back to Baynards before curfew.’ Closing the door behind him, Miles leaned against it. This was not how it should be.
Harry was sitting at his small table, biting his thumb. ‘Go away and enjoy her!’
‘I can explain if you will listen.’
‘I do not feel like listening.’ With a sneer, he knuckled the goblet and the flagon aside as though both stank of pestilence.
His feelings visored, Miles picked up the leather bottle, broke the seal, and took a swig. ‘Not bad. Your taste has surprisingly improved since you acquired Wales.’ The jest failed, but he shoved the bottle at Harry’s chest. With a defiant sniff, the duke drank, wiping his mouth with his wrist. ‘What ails you, your grace? You have thriving sons and Gloucester has given you a principality to scrape your boots on – more power than you know what to do with, for God’s sake – so what have I done wrong?’
The corners of the ducal mouth were down like a dog’s that had been denied a bone. ‘You hid the truth away from me at Brecknock, God damn you, letting her loose on my son, and now you have done it again, deceived me.’
‘Why should you complain? Ned adores her and he has learned how to say please and thank you at long last.’
Fingernails nakired the table menacingly. ‘Do not goad me, Miles.’
‘Why not? I was wed to her at swordpoint. It simplifies matters if I keep her and I am sure you will find someone else suitable for Myfannwy.’
‘Christ, Miles. You knew that alliance was important.’ Harry violently struck the mazer from the table.
‘Then you wish me to find good lordship elsewhere?’ A violence hung upon each word.
‘All right, I apologise,’ Harry snarled, blinking sullenly at the panelled ceiling. ‘Go and tumble the Ballaster girl. But do not forget she is a filly from Gloucester’s stable and may have deeper loyalties branded into her hide.’
Miles swore, flung the bottle down and stormed towards the door. ‘So be it, my lord.’ God ha’ mercy, why did Harry have to shove him down a staircase of insults? Heloise was Lady Rushden now and deserved some respect.
‘No! Miles!’ The duke recanted and struggled to his feet, his expression maudlin. ‘By our sweet Christ, I was looking forward to chewing today’s cud and enjoying a drink with you, but no matter.’ He slumped back down at the table. ‘You should have left me to die on Pen-y-Fan, Miles.’
So it was not just the drink afflicting him. Miles let go the latch. ‘I thought you had the salacious Nandik to light your candles now.’
‘Pah!’ Harry winced, and glancing sideways, cheered a little, his voice strengthening. ‘Why did you not tell me you had changed your mind about Mistress Ballaster? I deserved that of you at least.’
It was an effort to find the real truth in his own maze of logic. ‘Because she needs my protection against fools like Dokett. And do not tell me I am bewitched!’
Harry swallowed, plucking at his gloves. ‘Are you lunatick with lust then? Or debilitated by love? I do not know how that feels. Tell me!’ Plantagenet fingers manacled Miles’s sleeve and were stonily unpeeled. ‘What, no answer, damn your soul! No better than wine, women are,’ Harry sneered venomously. ‘Bodies bought with baubles. I am envious, can you not see that? I wish to Heaven I had a woman I cared for.’
Miles did not have one jot of patience tonight to lard Harry’s self-esteem. ‘I will bid you goodnight. Tomorrow—’
‘A piss upon tomorrow!’
‘So Stillington has divulged nothing?’
‘No, Devil take it! Gloucester did not even visit him.’
Miles’s smile was tight. ‘And if I attend the prince’s court, smell out the gossip and invite Catesby to dine?’
‘Oh yes, most excellent.’ Harry rallied. ‘That will needle Hastings no end.’
‘And in return … you will apologise to my wife.’
The duke pulled a sour face. ‘Lord, if I must.’ He rose and held out his arms to Miles. ‘Pax vobiscum. But promise me you will not go panting after her like a dog on heat the whole time, not now when we have our shoulders to the wheel.’
‘I know my duty.’
‘I just hope that your witch knows hers.’
*
How did one entertain a bishop? Heloise was trying her best next day. Piers the Plowman was not to her taste – too much laboured wisdom, but one could not read a French romance or a list of herbal remedies to a bishop.
Then there ran a rout of rats, as it were,
And small mice with them, more than a thousand,
And they came to hold council for their common profit;
For a cat of a court came whenever he liked
And pounced on them easily and caught them at will.
God’s Rood, she had put Stillington to sleep. With a sigh, she rose from her footstool at the bishop’s feet, and tucked a fur around the old man, knowing he was prone to aching joints. June had turned fickle, the early sun had left the chamber and a dull day stretched tediously ahead.
Playing nursemaid to a creaky bishop was not her notion of being a married woman. She needed her own demesne to bustle in and a husband who did not spread himself like liver paste, but at least she was fully a de jure wife and in a state of grace. After hearing Heloise’s confession when she arrived back last night, Stillington had agreed that since the marriage was now consummated, Miles’s betrothal with Myfannwy was void. This morning he had kindly consigned his decision to parc
hment – signed, witnessed by her grace of York and Parson William, and endorsed by sealing wax. They also spooned prayers over her head about obedience, fertility and other conjugal virtues. Thinking of which, she wondered whether Miles would find time today to spirit her off to another hired fourposter like a toy to take to bed.
A fanfare sounded down below in the courtyard. Heloise opened the window, then ducked in swiftly for it was Gloucester come with his entourage. God forbid he had come to chastise her. No, he must be calling on his mother or maybe Stillington? With housewifely care, she quickly twitched the bed coverlet straight and turned to the bishop’s chair to gently pat him awake.
And then her mind began to weave a cruel tapestry of Gloucester, prostrate upon a bed weeping into his shirtsleeves like a lost child. Heloise recoiled with a gasp, trying to slam the shutter on the sight, only to look on helplessly as the duke raised his head, his expression the most haunted she had ever glimpsed on any man.
‘My child, are you ill?’ The bishop, awake now, was squeezing her hand.
‘I …’ Her mind still spinning like St Catherine’s wheel, she swallowed. ‘I-I think the Lord Protector is come to visit her grace.’
‘No,’ Stillington was alert now, smiling like a crocodilus with its mind on dinner. ‘I sent for him.’
The sudden display of vanity was repulsive, like glimpsing a filthy shirt beneath a glistening cope. She should have guessed his tired exterior still nested a cunning brain – he had once been Chancellor of England.
‘D-did you, my lord bishop?’
‘Yes, to offer him an apple from the Tree of Knowledge.’ The old man’s smile was leavened unpleasantly by power.
‘I-I want no part of this,’ Heloise protested, her instinct screaming withdrawal. The rapport with this wafer cleric, begun in Northampton, made her an accessory.
‘My clever child, it is too late. His foot is already on the stair.’
Gloucester was laughing as he followed his dark-robed mother into the antechamber to the sickroom. ‘Ah, Heloise, good morning to you, I have been hearing it was a cockatrice that abducted our worthy bishop.’
‘And yales and gryphons,’ exclaimed the Duchess of York, folding her hands upon her pectoral cross. ‘Not to mention Lord Rushden’s son.’
‘Well, I am waiting.’ The duke folded his arms.
Waiting? Heloise, still dazed from the contrast between her imagining and the real Gloucester, rose from her curtsey and threw a puzzled glance at the bishop’s door before realisation dawned.
‘Oh,’ she exclaimed, her cheeks starting to burn. ‘I … regret to say—’
‘Regret already?’ The fur-edged sleeves she was staring at shifted.
‘No, I …’ Why was Rushden not here to share the blame? ‘My most noble lord,’ she exclaimed, sinking to her knees. ‘It seemed the right thing to do.’
‘A politick answer,’ threw in the duchess dryly, ‘and there was tenacious Dr Dokett hoping to make a nun of her.’
‘Mother, hush,’ muttered Gloucester, unknotting his arms to raise his badly behaved ward to her feet, ‘You would have been well advised to ask my permission, Heloise. Let us hope it was not just your fortune that Sir Miles was courting.’
‘It was my decision, my lord.’
‘Was it?’ he exchanged a meaningful glance with his parent. ‘The only thing that acquits you and Rushden is that it is one less problem that needs resolving. Thank your husband for tardily informing me. How did my cousin Buckingham take the tidings, or is he still in the dark?’
‘Like an ill-tasting medicine, my lord.’
‘Indeed. So Harry’s shadow can detach himself at times. Well, show me to the bishop, my Lady Rushden. Mother?’
‘No, I shall be downstairs, my darling. Shall you stay for dinner?’
He shook his head and turned to find Heloise stubbornly blocking his way.
‘Please,’ she whispered, ‘Do not go in, your grace.’
‘Why, is he contagious?’
‘No, but …’ With all her power, Heloise willed Richard of Gloucester to think again. He did, bronze lashes blinking, the cheerfulness sheathed, but curiosity can be as great a vice all the other deadly sins. His gloved hand pressed her arm in reassurance. Whatever this is, I can manage it, his light brown eyes told her, I need to know. And he went in alone.
But he was like a beaten servant when he emerged, his straight shoulders slumped and his face – Dear God! Her vision! What secret had the bishop told him?
*
At Crosby Place that afternoon, Miles was restless, itching like beggar’s scabs to know the outcome of his scheming with Harry. Something had happened; not only had Gloucester forsworn dinner on his return from Baynards, but he had spent an hour in swordplay, slashing at Huddleston, his combat partner, in the hopes of spending some of the pent-up misery that was so obvious in his face. Now, instead of attending his inner council, his grace curtly dismissed everyone and disappeared into his sanctum, slamming the door.
It was left to Huddleston, sweaty from the swordplay, to fend off questions from Gloucester’s other henchmen: ‘By Christ’s blessed mercy, I do not know what gadfly has bitten him,’ he growled, mopping his brow, glancing down in irritation at Lord Lovell, who was making a tabor of the table where the morning’s correspondence lay unanswered. ‘A cursed pity my lady Duchess is not yet arrived to ferret out the cause.’
‘God’s nails, what’s the pother?’ exclaimed Lord Howard, hugging his naval dispatches to his chest as he stood up. ‘He only went to a bishop’s sickbed.’
Huddleston, loosening his swordbelt, turned suspiciously towards Harry, and Miles, flanking the duke, found his face also reconnoitered. ‘Is there something about Stillington we should know, my lord of Buckingham? I hear you, too, have visited.’
Sir William Knyvett cleared his throat. ‘Tell them, your grace, mayhap it is relevant.’
Harry was as good as any holyday mummer. ‘It may be nothing, my lords, a sick man’s ravings,’ His shoulders rose apologetically, ‘but Stillington believes the queen was trying to poison him.’
‘Who? Gloucester?’ barked Lord Howard.
‘No, Stillington. And that is all I can tell you. The bishop beseeched right desperately to speak with Gloucester and I merely played the messenger. They are old friends, the bishop tells me. So,’ he took up his gloves, ‘I shall leave you with that conundrum and be off to Baynards.’
Gloucester’s good men and true were at a loss. They had been heading happily towards the coronation like courtiers on a royal barge; now the morrow seemed as hazardous as shooting London bridge.
Harry ran down the steps to the courtyard. ‘I think the hammer has struck the right anvil at last,’ he exclaimed to Miles and Knyvett, stealthily veeing his two fingers in an Agincourt salute. ‘We may yet have Gloucester as our king. That to the Woodvilles and their prince! Now get you to the Tower of London both of you, talk to our agents there and invite Catesby to supper tonight. I have some unfinished business before I go to Baynards – I saw a rose I thought might do well at Thornbury.’
‘He seems to have developed a sudden enthusiasm for loitering in gardens,’ muttered Miles, as they rode out of earshot.
‘Always had an interest in plants.’ Sir William stroked an earlobe thoughtfully. ‘Used to sit in the gardens at Westminster and draw ’em when he was younger, until Lord Rivers made an ass of him over it. Are you listening to me or not?’
‘Definitely not. I was thinking we might take Heloise to see the lions.’
‘What, add an extra innocence to our visit, eh? I warrant you would prefer an afternoon’s dalliance in bed, young Miles. A hit, eh? You should see your face, lad. Poppy scarlet, you are. Let us go and fetch her, then.’
*
‘In the dumps, are you, Heloise? Will you not confide in me?’ Miles chided lightly, as he waited with her in the courtyard at Baynards while her mare was saddled. Heloise felt as tetchy as Cloud when her girth band was too tightly b
uckled. ‘Are you displeased because there is no place for us at the Red Rose yet?’
She cut to the core. ‘What is amiss with his grace of Gloucester, Miles? What has Stillington told him?’ She watched the swift flicker in her husband’s eyes doused.
‘How should I know?’ There was care in the indifferent answer. ‘Now, be cheerful. I thought you would be joyous to see the lions at the Tower this afternoon. I had more amorous plans for the two of us but …’ He glanced round briefly as Knyvett came down the steps to join them.
‘Poor lions. Why should I want to gloat at their imprisonment?’ she threw back.
‘Lady mine, I have business with the young king’s council. Be content that I would see you entertained.’ Before she could step back, her chin was taken and his kiss – that told her he would enjoy her later – left her breathless. ‘That is better,’ he said, reluctantly releasing her.
*
Watching two bored lions being prodded to growl and swipe each other at the smelly Lion Tower was hardly entertainment, so pleading the need to find the latrine, Heloise blithely slipped her leash and left Martin and Miles’s men-at-arms, to wander up the laneway towards William the Conqueror’s great keep. God’s truth, the Tower of London was a town within a city, antlike with activity, especially with the coming crowning. The yard before the White Tower was dusty and strewn with shavings where workmen were building extra lodging for the youths that were to be dubbed Knights of the Bath on the eve of the ceremony; and sprawling along the shelter of the inner bailey wall was the gabled, half-timbered house where the new king was housed, as was customary before a coronation, with lords and prelates in attendance.
A furrier winked at Heloise as she watched him unload sables and ermine from his cart, and a tailor and his assistants staggered past her from a side door laden with bales of crimson brocade and cloth of gold. Fascinated, she lingered and then she noticed Sir William. He might be bantering with the sentries but his attention was elsewhere – on her husband.
The Silver Bride Page 33
