He has my gown pulled up, and he is fumbling with his jerkin, his hose; in a moment it will be too late for complaints. I draw his dagger out of the scabbard. At the hiss of the metal, he rears back to his knees in shock, and I wriggle away from him and spring up, with the dagger unsheathed, the blade bright and wicked in the last rays of the sun.
He is on his feet in a moment, weaving and alert, a fighter. “Do you draw a blade on your king?” he spits. “Do you know treason when you do it, madam?”
“I draw a blade on me, on myself,” I say quickly. I hold the sharp point to my throat and I see his eyes narrow. “I swear, if you come one step closer, if you come one inch closer, I will cut my throat before you and bleed to death here on the ground where you would have dishonored me.”
“Playacting!”
“No. This is not a game to me, Your Grace. I cannot be your mistress. I first came to you for justice, and then I came tonight for love, and I am a fool to do so and I beg your pardon for my folly. But I too can’t sleep, and I too can think of nothing but you, and I too could only wonder and wonder if you would come. But even so . . . even so, you should not—”
“I could have that knife off you in a moment,” he threatens.
“You forget I have five brothers. I have played with swords and daggers since I was a child. I will cut my throat before you reach me.”
“You never would. You are a woman with no more than a woman’s courage.”
“Try me. Try me. You don’t know what my courage is. You may regret what happens.”
He hesitates for a second, his own heart hammering in a dangerous mix of temper and lust, and then he masters himself, raises his hands in the gesture of surrender, and steps back. “You win,” he says. “You win, madam. And you may keep the dagger as a spoil of victory. Here—” He unbuckles the scabbard and throws it down. “Take the damned scabbard too, why don’t you?”
The precious stones and the enameled gold sparkle in the twilight. Never taking my eyes from him, I kneel and pick it up.
“I shall walk with you to your home,” he says. “I shall see you safely to your door.”
I shake my head. “No. I can’t be seen with you. No one must know that we have met in secret. I would be shamed.”
For a moment I think he will argue, but he bows his head. “You walk ahead then,” he says. “And I will follow behind you like a page, like your servant, until I see you safe to your gate. You can revel in your triumph in having me follow you like a dog. Since you treat me like a fool, I shall serve you like a fool; and you can enjoy it.”
There is no speaking against his anger, so I nod and I turn to walk before him, as he said I should. We walk in silence. I can hear the rustle of his cloak behind me. When we get to the end of the wood and we can be seen from the house, I pause and turn to him. “I will be safe from here,” I say. “I must beg you to forgive me for my folly.”
“I must beg you to forgive me for my force,” he says stiffly. “I am, perhaps, too accustomed to getting my own way. But I must say, I have never been refused at the point of a knife before. My own knife at that.”
I turn it round and offer him the hilt. “Will you have it back, Your Grace?”
He shakes his head. “Keep it to remember me by. It will be my only gift to you. A farewell gift.”
“Will I not see you again?”
“Never,” he says simply, and bowing slightly walks away.
“Your Grace!” I call, and he turns and pauses.
“I would not part with you on bad terms,” I say feebly. “I hope that you can forgive me.”
“You have made a fool of me,” he says, his voice icy. “You may congratulate yourself on being the first woman to do that. But you will be the last. And you will never make a fool of me again.”
I sink down into a curtsey, and I hear him turn and the swish of his cape on the bushes on either side of the path. I wait till I cannot hear him at all, and then I rise up to go home.
There is a part of me, young woman that I am, that wants to run inside and fling myself on my bed and cry myself to sleep. But I don’t do that. I am not one of my sisters, who laugh easily and cry easily. They are girls to whom things happen, and they take it hard. But I bear myself as more than a silly girl. I am the daughter of a water goddess. I am a woman with water in her veins and power in her breeding. I am a woman who makes things happen, and I am not defeated yet. I am not defeated by a boy with a newly won crown, and no man will ever walk away from me certain that he won’t walk back.
So I don’t go home just yet. I take the path to the footbridge over the river to where the ash tree is girdled with my mother’s thread, and I take another loop in the thread and tie it tightly, and only then do I walk home, brooding in the thin moonlight.
Then I wait. Every evening for twenty-two evenings I walk down to the river and pull in the thread like a patient fisherwoman. One day I feel it snag, and the line goes tight as the object on the end, whatever it is, is freed from the reeds at the water’s edge. I tug gently, as if I were reeling in a catch, and then I feel the line go slack and there is a little splash as something small but heavy falls deeper, rolls over in the current, and then lies still among the pebbles on the streambed.
I walk home. My mother is waiting for me by the carp lake, gazing down at her own reflection inverted in the water, silver in the grayness of the dusk. Her image looks like a long silver fish rippling in the lake, or a swimming woman. The sky behind her is barred with cloud, like white feathers on pale silk. The moon is rising, a waning moon now. The water is running high tonight, lapping at the little pier. When I stand beside her and look down into the water, you would think we were both rising from the water, like the spirits of the lake.
“You do it every evening?” she asks me. “Pull the line?”
“Yes.”
“Good. That’s good. Has he sent you any token? Any word?”
“I don’t expect anything. He said he would never see me again.”
She sighs. “Oh well.”
We walk back towards the house. “They say he is mustering troops at Northampton,” she says. “King Henry is gathering his forces in Northumberland and will march south on London. The queen will join him with a French army landed at Hull. If King Henry wins, then it will not matter what Edward says or thinks, for he will be dead, and the true king restored.”
My hand flies out to catch her sleeve in instant contradiction. Swift as a striking viper, my mother snatches my fingers. “What’s this? You can’t bear to hear of his defeat?”
“Don’t say it. Don’t say that.”
“Don’t say what?”
“I can’t bear to think of him defeated. I can’t bear to think of him dead. He asked me to lie with him as a soldier facing death.”
She gives a sharp laugh. “Course he did. What man going off to war has ever resisted the opportunity to make the most of it?”
“Well, I refused. And if he doesn’t come back, I shall regret that refusal for the rest of my life. I regret it now. I will regret it forever.”
“Why regret?” she taunts me. “You have your land restored either way. Either you get it back by order of King Edward, or he is dead and King Henry is king and he will restore your land to you. He is our king, of the true House of Lancaster. I would have thought we would wish him victory, and death to the usurper Edward.”
“Don’t say it,” I repeat. “Don’t ill-wish him.”
“Never mind what I say, you stop and think,” she counsels me harshly. “You’re a girl from the House of Lancaster. You cannot fall in love with the heir to the House of York unless he is king victorious, and there is some profit in love for you. These are hard days we are living in. Death is our companion, our familiar. You need not think you can keep Him at arm’s length. You will find He bears you close company. He has taken your husband; hear me: He will take your father and your brothers and your sons.”
I put out both hands to stop her. “Hush, hush. You
sound like Melusina warning her house of the death of the men.”
“I do warn you,” she says grimly. “You make me a Melusina when you walk about smiling as if life is easy, thinking you can dally with a usurper. You were not born in an untroubled time. You will live your life in a country divided. You will have to make your way through blood, and you will know loss.”
“Nothing good for me?” I demand through gritted teeth. “Do you, as a loving mother, foresee nothing good at all for your daughter? There is no point cursing me, for I am ready to weep already.”
She stops, and the hard face of the seer dissolves into the warmth of the mother whom I love. “I think you will have him, if that is what you want,” she says.
“More than life itself.”
She laughs at me but her face is gentle. “Ah, don’t say that, child. Nothing in the world matters more than life. You have a long road to walk and a lot of lessons to learn if you don’t know that.”
I shrug and take her arm and, walking in step, we turn for home.
“When the battle is over, whoever wins, your sisters must go to court,” my mother says. She is always planning. “They can stay with the Bourchiers, or the Vaughns. They should have gone months ago, but I could not bear the thought of them far from home and the country in uproar, and never knowing what might happen next, and never able to get news. But when this battle is over, perhaps life will be as it was, only under York instead of Lancaster, and the girls can go to our cousins for their education.”
“Yes.”
“And your boy Thomas will be old enough to leave home soon. He should live with his kinsmen; he should learn to be a gentleman.”
“No,” I say with such sudden emphasis that she turns and looks at me.
“What’s wrong?”
“I will keep my sons with me,” I say. “My boys are not to be taken from me.”
“They will need a proper education; they will need to serve in the household of a lord. Your father will find someone, their own godfathers might—”
“No,” I say again. “No, Mother, no. I cannot consider it. They are not to leave home.”
“Child?” She turns my face to the moonlight so that she can see me more clearly. “It’s not like you to take a sudden whim over nothing. And every mother in the world has to let her sons leave home and learn to be men.”
“My boys are not to be taken from me.” I can hear my voice tremble. “I am afraid . . . I am afraid for them. I fear . . . I fear for them. I don’t even know what. But I cannot let my boys go among strangers.”
She puts her warm arm around my waist. “Well, it is natural enough,” she says gently. “You lost your husband; you are bound to want to keep your boys safe. But they will have to go someday, you know.”
I do not yield to her gentle pressure. “It is more than a whim,” I say. “It feels more . . .”
“Is it a Seeing?” she asks, her voice very low. “Do you know that something could happen to them? Have you come into the Sight, Elizabeth?”
I shake my head and the tears come. “I don’t know, I don’t know. I can’t tell. But the thought of them going from me, and being cared for by strangers, and me waking in the night and not knowing that they are under my roof, waking in the morning and not hearing their voices, the thought of them being in a strange room, served by strangers, not able to see me—I can’t bear it. I can’t even bear the thought of it.”
She gathers me into her arms. “Hush,” she says. “Hush. You need not think of it. I will speak to your father. They need not go until you are happy about it.” She takes my hand. “Why, you are icy cold,” she says, surprised. She touches my face with sudden certainty. “This is not a whim when you are both hot and cold in moonlight. This is a Seeing. My dear, you are warned of danger to your sons.”
I shake my head. “I don’t know. I can’t be sure. I just know that no one should ever take my boys from me. I should never let them go.”
She nods. “Very well. You have convinced me, at least. You have seen some danger for your boys if they are taken from you. So be it. Don’t cry. You shall keep your boys close at hand and we will keep them safe.”
Then I wait. He told me clearly enough that I would never see him again, so I wait for nothing, knowing full well that I am waiting for nothing. But somehow I cannot help but wait. I dream of him: passionate, longing dreams that wake me in the darkness, twisted up in the sheet, sweaty with desire. My father asks me why I am not eating. Anthony shakes his head at me in mocking sorrow.
My mother snaps one bright-eyed glance at me and says, “She is well. She will eat.”
My sisters whisper to ask me if I am pining for the handsome king, and I say sharply, “There would be little point in that.”
And then I wait.
I wait for another seven nights and another seven days, like a maiden in a tower in a fairy tale, like Melusina bathing in the fountain in the forest, waiting for a chevalier to come riding the untrodden ways and love her. Each evening I draw up the loop of thread a little closer until on the eighth day there is a little chink of metal against stone and I look into the water and see a flash of gold. I bend down to pull it out. It is a ring of gold, simple and pretty. One side is straight, but the other is forged into points, like the points of a crown. I put it on the palm of my hand, where he left his kiss, and it looks like a miniature coronet. I slip it on my finger, on my right hand—I tempt no misfortune by putting it on my wedding finger—and it fits me perfectly and suits me well. I take it off with a shrug, as if it were not the highest-quality Burgundian-forged gold. I tuck it into my pocket, and I walk home with it safe in my keeping.
And there—without warning—there is a horse at the door and a rider sitting tall on it, a banner over his head, the white rose of York uncurling in the breeze. My father stands in the open doorway reading a letter. I hear him say, “Tell His Grace I shall be honored. I will be there the day after tomorrow.”
The man bows in the saddle, throws a casual salute to me, wheels his horse, and rides away.
“What is it?” I ask, coming up the steps.
“A muster,” my father says grimly. “We are all to go to war again.”
“Not you!” I say in fear. “Not you, Father. Not again.”
“No. The king commands me to provide ten men from Grafton and five from Stony Stratford. Fitted and kitted to march under his command against the Lancaster king. We are to change sides. That was an expensive dinner we gave him, as it turned out.”
“Who is to lead them?” I am so afraid that he will say my brothers. “Not Anthony? Not John?”
“They are to serve under Sir William Hastings,” he says. “He will put them in among trained troops.”
I hesitate. “Did he say anything else?”
“This is a muster,” my father says irritably. “Not an invitation to a May Day breakfast. Of course he didn’t say anything except that they would be coming through in the morning, the day after tomorrow, and the men must be ready to fall in then.”
He turns on his heel and goes into the house, and leaves me with the gold ring, shaped like a crown, spiky in my pocket.
My mother suggests at breakfast that my sisters and I, and the two cousins who are staying with us, might like to watch the army go by, and see our men go off to war.
“Can’t think why,” my father says crossly. “I would have thought you would have seen enough of men going to war.”
“It looks well to show our support,” she says quietly. “If he wins, it will be better for us if he thinks we sent the men willingly. If he loses, no one will remember we watched him go by, and we can deny it.”
“I am paying them, aren’t I? I am arming them with what I have? The arms I have left over from the last time I went out, which, as it happens, was against him? I am rounding them up, and sending them out, and buying boots for those who have none. I would think I was showing support!”
“Then we should do it with a good grace,” my mother sa
ys.
He nods. He always gives way to my mother in these matters. She was a duchess, married to the royal Duke of Bedford when my father was nothing but her husband’s squire. She is the daughter of the Count of Saint-Pol, of the royal family of Burgundy, and she is a courtier without equal.
“I would like you to come with us,” she goes on. “And we could perhaps find a purse of gold from the treasure room, for His Grace.”
“A purse of gold! A purse of gold! To wage war on King Henry? Are we Yorkists now?”
She waits till his outrage has subsided. “To show our loyalty,” she says. “If he defeats King Henry and comes back to London victorious, then it will be his court, and his royal favors that are the source of all wealth and all opportunity. It will be he who distributes the land and the patronage and he who allows marriages. And we have a large family, with many girls, Sir Richard.”
For a moment we all freeze with our heads down, expecting one of my father’s thunderous outbursts. Then, unwillingly, he laughs. “God bless you, my spellbinder,” he says. “You are right, as you are always right. I will do as you say, though it goes against the grain, and you can tell the girls to wear white roses, if they can get any this early.”
She leans over to him and kisses him on the cheek. “The dog roses are in bud in the hedgerow,” she says. “It’s not as good as full bloom, but he will know what we mean, and that is all that matters.”
Of course, for the rest of the day, my sisters and cousins are in a frenzy, trying on clothes, washing their hair, exchanging ribbons, and rehearsing their curtseys. Anthony’s wife Elizabeth and two of our quieter companions say that they won’t come, but all my sisters are beside themselves with excitement. The king and most of the lords of his court will go by. What an opportunity to make an impression on the men who will be the new masters of the country! If they win.
“What will you wear?” Margaret asks me, seeing me aloof from the excitement.
“I shall wear my gray gown, and my gray veil.”
The White Princess Page 52
