The King's Grey Mare (44 page)

‘It’s too big, your Grace!’
one man cried.

As if she were commanding a battle, Elizabeth pointed eastward to where the abbey wall was fragmented by arched windows.

‘There!’
she cried.
‘Where it is weakest.
Get hammers.
Breach the wall!’

Abbot Milling, who had been drawn out into the courtyard by the commotion, looked as if he were about to swoon.
‘Madame,’ he said diffidently, ‘is there no other way?’

‘My lord Abbot,’ said the Queen, without looking at him, ‘I trust you have not forgotten my bequests to your house.’
He bowed, and was silent, looking unhappy.

She watched as the last of the movables was rushed from the palace.
The Siege of Jerusalem, under whose fabulous weight staggered fifty men.
Grace saw the Queen’s face – fear and satisfaction and determination all mingling there, and heard the quiet voice say:

‘Yes, yes!
Break down the wall.
They shall not rob me a second time!’

She turned and smiled at Grace, and the dawn rose clear and bright.

‘Scream,’ Morton ordered.
‘When they come, scream and cry.’

Haggardly she looked at him.
This ageing prelate, so calm and bland, had in him something of the dead Jacquetta and it gave her confidence.
Morton was solid, unlike the vacillating Rotherham, Archbishop of York.
How glad she had been to receive, in Sanctuary, the Great Seal from Rotherham’s hands.
How furious when, panicking, he had demanded it back not twenty hours later.
When she had asked his reasons he had said, with a fatuous smile: ‘The Lord Protector wishes it.’

Only dignity had held her hand from striking him.
Dignity and the knowledge that his behaviour was only to be expected.
The Bishops, those fearfilled, conscientious old men, lusted for favour, no matter from what source.
Gloucester was supreme in Westminster; therefore it was politic for them to work his will.
Not so Morton; he remained her close ally, rich with the wisdom of his years and his skill at being where the grass grew greenest.
Although she disliked his appearance; those hard agate eyes among folds of flesh, the forked beard above the dewlapped jowl.

‘Madame, hear me,’ he repeated.
‘When they come to take your youngest son, weep loudly.
And let down your hair.’

‘My hair?’

‘It adds a certain pathos.’
he said seriously.
‘The brothers in this place go about … it would be favourable if you were seen to be – persecuted.’

There was no need to question him.
Only one question.

‘How does my son, the Prince Edward?’

‘Fit as a cock,’ he answered.
‘They plan to crown him on the Nativity of St.
John.
He is in the royal apartments at the Tower, playing at sovereignty.
I wish, though, that we could have kept the little one with us.
However …’ he sighed.
‘Gloucester vows it is a stain upon his Parliament …’

‘
His
Parliament!’
Rage erupted through her.

‘Indeed, highness.
Unfortunately his claim to the Protectorship is good.
As I say, he avers it debases his Council that the king-elect’s brother should be absent from the coronation.
Like yourself, my lady.
He would dearly have you present.’

‘I shall not leave Sanctuary,’ she said, through her teeth.

Morton looked about, at the stones where damp trickled, at the cracked panes through which a breeze cavorted, and pursed his lips.

‘As you will.
You are wise.
Never fear.
The day will come when you dance again in Westminster Great Hall.
For now, let them have young Dick.
But scream, claw him to your bosom.
Let them tear him bodily away.’

‘Is Gloucester’s wife with him?’
she said suddenly.

‘She is to join him soon.
At present she is ailing, at home in the north.
Like their son, Edward, she is frail and sickly …’

She found herself averse to hearing more about the Fiend’s daughter, and shut off her mind to Morton’s talk.
When next she gave him her attention he was saying:

‘Your son the Prince has a will of his own.
It is his doing as well as the Parliament’s that the other boy joins him.’

‘Yet he is not strong enough to defy the Protector,’ she said bitterly.

‘Or Buckingham; for Buckingham is the spokesman always in this affair,’ said Morton.
At that unfortunate moment Catherine chose to appear, and the Queen turned on her.

‘You hear that?
Have you naught to say?
Your husband, ranged against our blood!’

Placatingly Catherine held out a sealed roll.

‘A letter, Madame.’

Elizabeth broke the seal quickly, cried: ‘From Anthony!’
She read avidly, laughed, raised feverish eyes.
‘Clever,’ she murmured.
‘He bribed the guard at Pontefract to let this bill through.
He says he is safe and well.
Our adherents are everywhere.
Thomas has already bidden him good cheer by letter.
Hastings is the key.
The weak link in the chain.
Hastings blows where he lists and has not yet chosen his allegiance.’
She looked up, scornfully.
‘Yes!
for years I watched him, wantoning with the King in evil company.
Now, for all his love of the Protector, he finds old ties, of lust, of drinking, to be slender things … he would join us, if he dared.’

Avidly she looked at Morton.
‘Is there salvation, my lord?’

He bowed.
‘I have examined the situation, highness.
With your brother and Sir Richard Grey still in captivity, I admit the cause has its limitations.
But as your brother Sir Anthony reveals, your friends are legion, waiting to support you.
Let us consider.
Gloucester comes to uphold the Crown, the focus of his battle-cry and
credo
.
He burns with his late brother’s ordinance.
You and your kin, Madame, are disliked by the old nobility.
Forgive me, but it is so.
Factions are bound to arise over the ruling of a child king.
Gloucester feels therefore compelled to form a strong Council to uphold what he deems the right.
The old nobility are with him.
But you, Madame, have a subtler strength.
All the families of Lancaster who strive, quietly, in the shadow of your power.
Your power, soon to be restored.’

He went on: ‘Let us count your allies: Rotherham; he grew frightened, but he is still yours.
Salisbury, yours by blood.
Lord Stanley …’

She frowned.
Stanley was another gall-bitter disappointment.
Lately she had learned that he, Margaret Beaufort’s husband, cherished the Protector, and sat on his Council.
But Morton murmured: ‘do not fear.
Stanley can feign love for the most suspicious heart.
He pays lip service to the new order, but he dreams of your inevitable majesty.’

As he spoke, the Bishop moved towards the window, seeing white seabirds wheeling beyond the high cracked panes.
Where?
Across the North Sea perchance, to France, to Brittany?
Where the true saviour waited.
The one who, without doubt, would value Morton as he deserved.
The one in whose service he could rise to magnificence and terrible power.
The only one; the master chosen long ago.
He kept his back daringly turned on the Queen, while excitement boiled within him.
I am an old man, he thought, but I must not die until our hopes are fruited.
Until Henry Tudor reigns in England.
Meanwhile I must cherish this foolish woman.
By my own hand must I move these pawns of state.
He turned back slowly, saying:.

‘It is better that I do not visit you again here, my liege.
All our plans are
en train
.
Dorset will suborn Hastings.
You know, Madame, where Mistress Shore is now?’

Startled, she said: ‘Shore?
What has a cackling harlot to do with our plight?’

‘She is with your son, Dorset, hidden deep in London.
He is teaching her – how to render an ageing lecher witless.
Surely, Madame, you have not forgotten Adam’s Fall?’

There was knocking, faintly heard, upon the postern door of the Sanctuary.
The voice of Abbot Milling echoed in the passage outside.

‘I fancy this is Cardinal Bourchier,’ said Morton.
‘Make ready your son, Madame.’

He was poised to leave, unseen, through the intricacies of cloister and watergate.
She said quickly: ‘You have given me comfort, my lord.
But what of Gloucester?’

‘Gloucester will be murdered, as planned previously,’ said the Bishop, half-way through the door.
‘They come, Madame.
Let down your hair.’

The night sounds of Southwark rose and filtered through the upper window of the inn room.
From the street where hanging gables and a hot white moon made patterns on the ground, came a snatch of a drunken song.
A dog howled gruesomely for minutes on end until quenched by a blow or a caress.
Running feet and the jangle of steel told of the night watch pursuing a miscreant.
Someone threw a metal canikin from a window and a woman yelled shrewishly.
Further down the street someone else was noisily sick.

In the inn’s best bed, Jane Shore lay watching the cockroaches.
Two were parallel, neck-and-neck, and Jane curled her toes under the coarse sheet, willing the one she had christened Dorset to win.
It was through Dorset she was here at all.
For him she had temporarily abandoned luxury and lay in this miserable abode of illicit love with the late King’s Lord Chamberlain.
She turned her head on the pillow and looked at him.
Hastings was fast asleep, breath bubbling gently.
He looked younger in the moonlight; the greyish stubble on his chin looked almost fair.
Jane sighed gently, and glanced back at the roaches.
The smaller one had spurted ahead and Dorset was at least an inch behind.
This was dull sport.
She thought tenderly of her last meeting with Tom Dorset when he had promised her the world.
She decided, when this tiresome half-understood affair was over, that she would ask him to take her to the horseraces at Smithfield.
Hastings would not take her anywhere – he would not even lie with her in the Palace.
‘Too dangerous, my heart.’
Too old, too dull.
The satisfaction of raising him to a pitch of undreamed-of ecstasy had soon palled for Jane, but this she kept to her practised professional self.
Dorset had bidden her, and she would obey to the letter.
Dorset was her sky and stars, her daily bread, her master.
And her work was nearly at an end.

Day after day, robed in a nun’s habit, she had gone meekly through the cloister of Westminster Sanctuary, past the grim grey arch with its vine-leaf capitals, walking like a penitent yet wanting to scream with laughter.
In her sleeve she usually carried a packet, writings of instruction, warning, information.
Once inside with the Queen, she could throw off the seemly hood, smile brightly into the tense white face, and take wine.
Often there would be a present for her, a small gold nouche for her bosom, trinkets insignificant enough to be worn unnoticed.
When it was time to return and wait for Hastings at the inn, she had to commit to memory a message.
The Queen would never touch pen to paper in this enterprise.
So Jane would take her measured murmuring way from the sanctuary like the holiest nun treading out a psalm.
Half the messages meant nothing to her; that was why she needed to repeat them over and over.
Some were mere fragments.

Tell him – Stanley is with us now in spirit
.

The Bishop approves
.

Sometimes the Queen’s face was terrible.
Jane had always been afraid of her, and muttered the messages more fervently in consequence.

We shall be victorious.
This latest blight is doomed
.

There was mention of the Queen’s relatives; sweet Tom’s uncle and brother.

Anthony is full-fettled.
He awaits your men to help his escape
.