The King's Grey Mare

by Jarman, Rosemary Hawley

  ‘Why, lady, why? Was it not crime enough to steal the Seal for your own purpose? But to take Desmond’s life away! Desmond, who never did a knavish thing, or an act that was not knightly … Desmond, my truest creature in all the world, whom I loved like a brother! Blessed Christ, lady! You chose the right weapon with which to wound me! But why? Why?’

  She must answer; silence in this moment was folly. Her mind rippled like a silvery fish through excuse after excuse, flicking them aside as likely to feed wrath. All the while she thought: I repent naught. I did not know the King loved Desmond so much as this. Yet it is right he died. He mocked me.

  ‘Men said Desmond was a traitor to your Grace,’ she whispered. It was the best, the only answer.

  Edward’s lips curled.

  ‘Men said’ he repeated with contempt. ‘Tell me then, lady, were his infant sons traitors too? What evil were they brewing in their schoolroom, that they should also die? Do you know, madam, what your hirelings did? They took them from bed, those two little knaves, and stabbed them! Pray Jesu, madam, you never know the grief that is their mother’s now!’ He groaned aloud. ‘The Butcher did his work – I cannot punish Tiptoft, for he acted under your command in Ireland.’ He turned from her. ‘Go! I’ll not look upon you.’

  Suddenly, coldly self-justifying, she said: ‘Desmond was hot of tongue, my lord. He spoke words unfitting for a prince’s ear. He called me …’

  She said the unforgivable nickname, hating it even in her own mouth. Then she saw the fresh contempt in Edward’s eyes.

  ‘Madame,’ he said, heavily sarcastic, ‘if I were not insulted, neither should you be. ’Twas a jest …’ His face crumpled again. ‘Tom loved a jest.’

  He wept bitterly. Elizabeth, cold with dread, poured upon him a spate of pleading, promises. She swore it was for his sake that she had acted, that she could not bear to hear their love defiled, not even on the lips of a friend. All these pleas dropped like stones into the torrent of his grief, and left no trace. Finally he faced her again, eyes shadowed with bitterness.

  ‘I fear, Madame,’ he said slowly, ‘I very much fear, Bessy, that you have become unkind.’

  In these almost charitable words there was terror. She would rather he raged again, broke more furnishings, or struck her. The candles were still wavering gently, the white roses banked to perfume their love-pleasure. Was it too late? Yet the weapon of her body seemed blunted. He looked only at her eyes.

  ‘I’ll leave you now, lady,’ he said, after a while. ‘And I advise you to spend your gold on Masses for the soul of Desmond and his boys. Expect me when I choose; it will not be soon.’

  Wild, imploring, she said: ‘My lord, you have not eaten. You must not ride again without at least a void of wine …’ She picked up a little silver bell.

  ‘I’ll not eat or drink with you, lady’, said Edward soberly. ‘Get to the chapel and pray for Desmond. As for my other pleasures, I’ll take them elsewhere.’

  Never had he been unfaithful, so closely had she bound him. Now the chain was breaking, and this brought more fear. Was this the moment? The moment when Raymond, hearing that his heirs, the sons of Melusine, had butchered one another, cried: ‘Begone, odious serpent! Contaminator of my noble race!’ ?

  She held out her hands, but he was already at the door. As if he cursed her, he turned and said,

  ‘I go, to spend my time with a lady who is kinder than you. And should I sire a child on her, this is my will: that the child shall be brought into your household, to attend you. If it is a boy, it shall be named Thomas, in Desmond’s memory. If it is a girl, it shall be named Grace, to compensate for your own gracelessness. Whatever it is, it shall be a constant reminder of your evil work this day.’

  As he closed the door, he saw her, wraithlike, hands clasped, head still high, and he thought of Elizabeth Lucey. Silly, clinging she might be, but incapable of such acts as the queen had wrought. Then he thought of the woman, lately admired on his progress. There had been promise in those green eyes, compassion on that mouth. Anything, to take his pain away. The sun was not quite down. He would ride from the City.

  ‘Our most good and gracious Queen Elizabeth, Sister unto this our Fraternity of our blessed Lady and Mother of Mercy, Saint Mary Virgin, Mother of God.’

  This was her title, bestowed by the Skinners’ Guild, who had loaded her shoulders with the pelts of a thousand small beasts. Bright stippled ermine, marten and miniver, she wore them over an azure gown, edged and latched with gold. Here at Fotheringhay she was glad of the furs’ warmth. Even in high summer, the ancient castle seemed exposed to the north winds, while the dank breath of the marshes pervaded every room. She stood on the river bank beside the sluggish Nene, and a breeze rippled and flattened the reeds, and her furs, with a silent, wandering hand. She watched the barges carrying the King and his entourage towards the landing stage. They were gold and silver, and all along the prow and sides the Sun in Splendour merged with the White Rose. Standing in the foremost craft Edward towered like a pagan sea-prince behind the curved figurehead shaped like the falcon of York. As the barge drew near, she could see that he was happy. His humours were as fair as on the day he left London to gather an army for his latest campaign.

  It was a year since the quarrel, and slightly less since he had returned, strangely sombre, from his unknown leman. That very night he had taken Elizabeth again with a hating passion, resulting in yet another daughter, Cicely. He had not been wroth at this, and had jested, surveying his baby daughters: ‘It takes a man to get a girl! And by God’s Lady, I am three times a man!’ He had gone down in person to Chepe to buy her a necklace and girdle in gem-starred gold; had heaped new honours upon Anthony and Thomas, her eldest son. Staring at the barges, she saw caskets, fardels containing silver and jewels sitting cheek by jowl with the royal library and a cage of singing birds. So he was bringing more gifts, priceless relics from the shrines of Norwich. She caressed one hand with the other, feeling her diamonds ice and the shape of a pigeon’s blood ruby. The costly fur blew about her face. Yes, Edward was hers again.

  Close by a stern voice spoke, turning her jubilation to impatience.

  ‘He has dallied too long, that son of mine.’

  Proud Cis! Be still, arrogant old dame, thought Elizabeth. Yet she turned modestly to acknowledge the presence of the King’s mother, that unbending matriarch in whose honour the latest infant had been named. Still wearing her widow’s weed, unjewelled, ageless and potent, she stood gazing at the King. Fotheringhay was her demesne; at her waist a vast bundle of keys made music in recognition of the fact. Unease was bred of the old Duchess’s presence. Every time the bowed eyes met hers, Elizabeth imagined their accusation: Unlawful Queen. Remember Eleanor Butler! No question that the Duchess would ever speak of Eleanor – the succession of York was too precious. Yet always in her mind there was that discomfiting hint of a secret sorely kept.

  Together they knelt as Edward leaped on to the little quay. He raised and kissed them, then his approving eye raked the lines of battle-tents set up in the meadow, and the milling hundreds of waged men who had come to his service, in preparation for the affray. With his wife and his mother, he moved across the sward where blown dandelions and buttercups formed a shimmer of misted gold, like froth on metheglin. He talked excitedly of the latest rumours reaching from his northern territories, and seemed amused by the audacity of a nameless rebel.

  ‘Rising against me!’ he cried. ‘Some poxy peasant too cowardly to show his colours. Believe me, madam my mother, and mark well, Bessy. He shall be fried in his own fat.’

  ‘He has wrought much damage, by all accounts,’ said the Duchess of York soberly.

  ‘Ah, a few dwellings burned only – more complainings for my oyer and terminer.’

  Elizabeth smiled up into his eyes, wondering how long he could be persuaded to tarry at Fotheringhay. She was unmoved by the rebellion; Jacquetta of Bedford had dismissed it, saying that Mars rode high in the King’s favour. Cicely of York sai
d suddenly:

  ‘The Frenchwoman – have her agents to do with this rising?’

  ‘The witch is in France,’ replied Edward bluntly. ‘Where, like her predecessor in sorcery, she should be put to the fire – for my father’s and my brother’s deaths.’

  ‘Yes!’ said the Duchess sadly. She fingered the great reliquary at her breast. But her eyes were on Elizabeth, a glance like a chill wind.

  They ascended the castle steps, ahead of the nobles disembarking from the other barges. Elizabeth felt great satisfaction at entering, with her royal husband, Cicely of York’s demesne. Accompanied thus, she lifted her head high and prepared to pass under the portcullis which bore the falcon in the fetterlock, the grim insignia of York. Then someone trod upon her train. She was almost dragged off balance; the gold clasp about her throat bit into the flesh like a ghostly restraint. You have no place here. Somewhere far behind in the ranks she heard a young man’s laughter and recognized it as belonging to Sir Francis Lovell; but his was not the offending foot. She swung quickly round, even as the pressure on her garment lifted, and confronted Richard of Gloucester, already on his knee. His head was bowed, his thin restless hands spread behind him in the accepted attitude of supplication.

  ‘God’s pardon, your Grace,’ he said levelly.

  A tart reply sprang to her lips but Edward forestalled it.

  He smote the seventeen-year-old Duke on the shoulder and genially bade him rise.

  ‘Guard yourself, Dickon,’ he said gaily. ‘No brother of mine shall vex a lady!’

  The smile that passed between them angered her, for it was token of the things she could not share, and it lay upon the mouths of those who had loved the unspeakable. Yes, Warwick; Gloucester in particular had loved him at Middleham, like a dog. Now, with his gloomy asceticism, he came to haunt her court. She pressed her lips together and moved into the Hall. There was her father, already clad in half-armour, willing to join forces against the tawdry rebellion. And there was young John, similarly arrayed, blond like Anthony, and with the same fine-boned arrogant face. Warmly she pressed his hand. Poor John, who shared a bed with Warwick’s aged aunt! Rich John – who had lemen by the score and wealth immeasurable. She smiled at him conspiratorially. He grinned back, cocksure, lithe; her youngest brother. She loved him, with a greedy proprietary love. The clothes he wore, and the new burnished harness were bought and paid for by her body and her wit. He was mischievous, too, a studied breaker of hearts. We are a great family, she thought; we shall endure.

  Later at the banquet there was entertainment. The pageantmen appeared in the story of St. Elizabeth. A blond boy knelt in prayer while angels supported by wire and pulley descended with divine tidings. This disguising, by a happy accident, was the same as that performed on her coronation progress; she felt doubly Queen, almost secure. Once or twice she let her eyes wander to her adherents; Sir John Fogge, Lord Stanley and his brother. Dr. Morton, Margaret Beaufort. Tiptoft was there also. Again she marvelled that a year, and the good humour engendered by the prospect of battle, should have so shortened the King’s memory. For he had made Tiptoft, Desmond’s executioner, Constable of England for life; free to behead, to impale obscenely, the King’s erring and innocent subjects alike.

  Close to her chair stood Anthony, in a peacock doublet. She beckoned him, whispered: ‘Dear brother! Do you remember the time when you would not take me from Grafton on your charger?’ He flushed, answering quickly: ‘It was fate, my liege. Fate that you stayed at Grafton, fate that took you to court, returned you home, and gave us these famous days!’

  ‘Oui, vraiment,’ she answered, for an instant transformed to Marguerite’s Isabella, then rushing like a snowball on a slope through the time of widowed, bereft Elizabeth to this high moment. The thoughts made her dizzy. Minstrels were playing a rondeau and Edward had given the signal for dancing.

  ‘I will partner our liege sister,’ said John, brushing past Anthony’s extended hand. She smiled at both brothers, stepped from the dais and began to glide and swoop, curtsey and kiss lightly.

  ‘So, my lord, you are to play the soldier,’ she mocked him tenderly, as the viols shrieked and the tabor throbbed like the wings of a captured bird. ‘You shall bring me the rebels’ heads on a platter.’

  ‘It will be time wasted,’ he scoffed. ‘All this money and these accoutrements to ride north after a handful of disgruntled serfs. I would liefer hunt bigger game.’

  ‘It’s enough, for your first campaign,’ she said.

  He bowed in the dance, flourishing his long pointed shoe. ‘Some there are who prate as if we were to ride against the Turk!’ He wagged his chin vaguely in the direction of the royal dais, where one or two of Edward’s captains stood awkwardly among the ranks of Woodvilles.

  ‘Richard of Gloucester,’ he added disdainfully. ‘The King’s pet and popinjay. He sickens me with his talk of loyalty, his fussing with weapons, his book-learnt strategy. And Edward listens to him.’

  ‘He loves him,’ said Elizabeth, halting suddenly so that the following dancers tripped on their gowns. She looked covertly at Gloucester, then dismissed him from her mind. ‘What of Clarence, though? I do not see him here.’

  ‘He has more sense,’ said John dourly. ‘Doubtless he is hunting on his own manor. There is better sport in stags.’

  She danced next with her father. He was as light on his feet as John and, she thought, more handsome than ever. Her feeling of contentment grew. She was flanked by her family, her noble brothers, her pretty sisters like a cluster of bright blossom near the dais. Sir Richard Woodville led her back to Edward’s side; the King was dicing with Lord Hastings; Hastings, looking unhappy. He had a weak mouth; somehow this added to her confidence. Edward talked while the dice rattled. He spoke of the proposed affray.

  ‘We shall split into three sections, northerly, ringing the rebels … thus.’ He drew patterns in spilled wine. Richard of Gloucester stood behind him, watching. Once he bent to murmur, and directed the King’s carefree finger to an easterly point in the map. Edward looked up, impressed. Irritation was born in Elizabeth.

  ‘You seem skilled in warlike policy, my lord,’ she said. ‘You are experienced?’

  She watched his pallor turn to unhealthy rose. He said softly: ‘It’s true I’ve never ridden on campaign, your Grace. But, be it my first or my last, I ride for my King.’

  Edward cried: ‘Bravo!’ spinning the dice, in such a good mood that, thought Elizabeth, had the Devil appeared to mouth platitudes he would have applauded. Quietly she said to Gloucester: ‘And your brother Clarence? Why is he not here, putting on harness?’

  The blush grew. From her eye’s tail Elizabeth saw her father, smiling; behind him, the radiant figure of Anthony, his arm about their sister Catherine, and young John, grinning broadly at Gloucester’s discomfiture.

  ‘Is he a traitor?’ she pursued.

  ‘He is our brother.’

  She raised her plucked brows. ‘In the Book, brother shall rise against brother; this, my lord Gloucester, is no warranty of good faith.’

  Edward threw down his dice for the last time. ‘Soft, Bessy,’ he said. ‘Clarence is lazy; there’s no harm in him.’

  ‘He is loyal, God willing,’ said Gloucester. Then he turned and left the dais, thrusting through the skein of dancers and out beneath the stone archway leading from the Hall.

  ‘Such uncourtliness,’ said a soft voice. Lady Margaret Beaufort stood beside Elizabeth. Emboldened by the Countess’s murmur, the Queen said tightly: ‘He had no right to quit my court so …’ Then she saw that Edward watched her. He said casually: ‘Gloucester is weary. He is young to wear the duties of a captain.’ The eyes warned: Look not with anger upon those I love!

  Later, when the fire in their bedchamber was burning down, she stood against the window-slit through which were visible the dusky lines of tents with their tiny glimmering lanterns. The night wind, with its salt marsh tang, blew about her face. Edward’s arms came round her from behind, and she
turned from the sight of tomorrow’s array. Within the resentful walls of the Yorkist stronghold she went to him, glad and lissom as a serpent.

  Northbound to Newark, the army left in splendour. The banners flounced above it, screaming colour at the sun. Like a lengendary figure of farewell she stood, while the royal party mounted. The King’s stallion was black as Lucifer; against it all the other horses looked pale. Roan and bay, whirling dappled grey, coats like smoke. She kissed her handsome father ardently, and gave a special smile to young John, cool as a pearl on this his first foray. Lord Hastings’s mount was wild and kicked up dirt. Richard of Gloucester went by, too preoccupied to give her more than cursory obeisance. Anthony rode behind him, the sun flirting with his silver plumes.

  Soon they were only a thin erratic thread on the skyline. With her sisters, Elizabeth moved back into the castle, where she gave orders that her household should remain another week at Fotheringhay. She sent women to prepare her most priceless gowns; she would wear them in hopes of enraging Proud Cis.

  One stray thought remained, like a riderless horse. Clarence loved to appear in armour more costly than his brothers’ and with weapons polished to an unbelievable glass. Why, why was Clarence absent?

  One of the women was screaming, frightened keening yelps like a houseless puppy, and the noise filtered to Elizabeth, sitting very still in Garden Tower apartments. Before her, a courtier was still on his knees, his cloak and boots chalked with riding. His doublet breast was torn where, for safety’s sake, he had ripped off the device of Lord Hastings; this, a black belled sleeve on silver, he held in his hand. He had needed to ride thus anonymously through two days and nights, or the rebels would have killed him. She heard him relate this in the same way as she heard the shrieking outside – the shrieking that drifted high about the merlons of the Tower and shivered into silence; she heard and did not hear. Down the corridors of her mind the messenger’s first words rolled, like a long echo going away.