The King's Grey Mare (12 page)

His sight had not lied.
Something played and plashed in the shallows, its outline diffused as if it were clothed in light.
It slipped in and out of the water; it floated a white flower on the surface.
Its shape lengthened and it raised two drifting arms, gathering handfuls of water, letting them trickle down like jewels.
He took all his courage and stepped forward, saying firmly:

‘In the Trinity’s Name, be gone!’

The shape gave a soft cry, a laugh, and began to glide towards him.
Disbelievingly he heard it call his name, in the note of the falling fountain, in the high shrillness of the nightingale that sang from the trees.

She rose naked from the water and came to him, her wet hair shrouding her body like a tumult of silver weed.
Anger at her outrageous folly, and pure delight rose and fought within him.
Delight won, swelled by the sight of her flesh, diamond-glittering in water and moon.
This was Isabella, his bride, no longer the image of an untouchable saint, but wanton, mischievous, maddening.
The reprimanding words were stillborn in his mouth.
All he could say was: ‘Sweet heart, you will be chilled to death!’
He snatched up her robe, discarded on the ground, and sought to wrap her in it, while she whispered, excited, irresistible:

‘Forgive me, my sweet lord.
It was the lake!
Oh, the lake!’
And she came closer so that drops from her tender, lithe flesh trembled on his own clothing.
His hands let fall the mantle meant to robe her and reached instead for the slender, damp body leaning eagerly towards him.
He was losing himself in the cold glittering torrent of hair, lifting and carrying the luminous creature into the shade of a willow.
The moss was soft beneath them.
And here was the strange, beloved country, its long-besieged harbours opening for him.

A single cry, like a night-bird, rose, shivering from her lips.

‘John!
My one true love!’

The lake rippled gently and was still.

‘It was an evil day,’ said Jacquetta of Bedford.

Elizabeth glanced about her while her mother talked.
The court had changed little in two years.
Here at Sheen, the once-beloved palace of Richard of Bordeaux, burnt for grief after his wife’s death and later restored, the trappings were familiar.
The hangings were perhaps a little shabbier, the wine they were drinking a trifle sourer.
Otherwise there was no sign of the holocaust that had so nearly demolished the Queen’s party.
Drinking from a dingy hanap, Elizabeth sat by her mother in the window-seat.
Outside birds chirped merrily under the May sun, reminding her of Bradgate.

‘Two Augusts ago …’ said the Duchess.

‘Had his Grace been ailing before?’

Jacquetta shrugged.
‘You saw how he was.
Always half in the next world, but well enough.
Then, with no warning…

The King had dined at four, frugally.
There had been only a few courtiers with him; the Duchess and Sir Richard Woodville had been invited by the Queen.
His Grace had eaten a small portion of roast sturgeon, and had seemed himself, morose and fey, sitting close by the Queen, giving halfvoiced answer to all that Margaret said.
There was nothing about him to show that he was possessed.
All went well until an ambassador from Calais arrived.
The ambassador was slow and soft-voiced and Margaret, seeing that the King appeared to be half-asleep, herself descended from the dais to take the dispatches offered.
In her high-waisted gown and with her proud carriage, the presence of the royal babe was very evident.
Her belly, said Jacquetta, burgeoned like a ship’s prow.
Foolishness even to mention this, for all knew of the joyful condition, none more than the King.
Yet there had been a sudden starting up from his chair, that familiar pointing finger, quivering and stabbing at the Queen.
All had heard the King’s shrill cry, broken off short.

‘Forsooth! …’

Forsooth what, Our Blessed Lord only knew, for the King had sunk in a rapid swoon, falling headlong across the steps of the dais, his black robes hitched about his lean thighs, his dusty head and hands suppliant, down-pointing.
Folk rose in dismay to succour him.

The King came to himself after a few minutes, when it was discovered that he could not speak.
Stricken and mute, he looked uncomprehendingly at whoever addressed him.
He was carried to bed, where he lay, his head turned to one side, gazing at the floor.
The court was frantic.
Master John Faceby had no rest for days and nights on end, desperately brewing simples or studying the planets’ courses for a reason for the King’s malady.
Doctors were summoned privily from all over Europe; even a filthy wise-woman was consulted.
This was August, and by Christmas the King had not uttered one word, nor had he lifted his eyes, even to survey the new Prince, England’s heir.

‘They carried the babe to him over and again, so that he might bless it,’ said the Duchess.
‘But it was useless.
The King only moaned a little, and kept his eyes down.
It was a terrible malady, a madness, carried in the blood.
The King’s grandsire, Charles of France, was likewise stricken.’

The disaster was so close kept that half England remained in ignorance of it.
Yet the agents of York and Warwick were no less vigilant than in times past.
That very Christmas a deputation headed by Warwick arrived at court with the time-honoured, sardonic request to know how the King prospered.
There was no help but to reveal Henry to them, and the secret was no more.
One look at that face as empty as a dry well, those quivering drooping eyelids, coupled with his silence, and they knew then that the King wandered in some private world, alone among shadows.

‘There was naught to be done,’ murmured the Duchess.
‘Cursed York and his claim … he was appointed Protector of the Realm, being the nearest of the blood.
A great triumph for Warwick.
The Queen was nearly demented.’

‘Yet she had her son,’ said Elizabeth softly.

Out in the pleasaunce the birds were singing louder.
Elizabeth dreamed of Bradgate, and folded her hands over the slight mound clothed by her green satin gown.
Soon she would hold her own babe.
She thought of John.
He had ridden north to Groby to oversee some of his deceased father’s estates; he was bound for London soon, to join her.
A little smile curved her mouth.
‘The fairest man, that best love can!’
Fairer than fair.
The memory of all their days and nights together laid a veil over Jacquetta’s alarming narrative.
All this talk of policy meant little, it seemed like the jousting of knights, spectacular but harmless.
Lancaster had worn the crown for sixty years.
What if the line did come only from Edward III’s fourth son, John of Gaunt?
What if York, as he was ever at pains to stress, did descend directly from Lionel of Clarence, the third son?
Lancaster was supreme – Agincourt had proved it.
She sighed, and stroked again the little roundness below her narrow embroidered girdle.
She could see her reflection in a sunlit pane of the oriel.
Fair, I am fair.
She cast a little sly smile at her mother.
Fair enough to grace the ramparts of Lusignan!
Then she said, dutifully:

‘And when did the King recover from this storm?’

‘The following Christmas.
He awoke and was himself again.
They rushed with the babe to his bedchamber and he cried: ‘By St.
John!
I bless this child.
For it is surely one conceived by the Holy Ghost!”

Thus York’s brief power was ended.
He and Warwick were banished from court with threats and unsheathed blades.
Beaufort of Somerset (whom they had used cruelly, said Jacquetta) was reinstated.
People rejoiced.
‘Yet I feel,’ said the Duchess soberly, ‘that the people only love the Queen while Henry lives; were she alone, I fear that my sweet Marguerite …’ She left the sentence and looked through the window as if searching for an enemy.
‘There will be war,’ she said.
‘I feel it.’

Elizabeth sat comfortably in the warm sunlight, trying to share the Duchess’s precognition, and failing.
Again in secret she stroked the slight curve of her belly.
The babe should be born at Bradgate.
She turned to her mother, saying: ‘Madame, how much longer?
When can I leave court?
There is much to see to at my home.’

‘When the Great Council is over,’ said Jacquetta sternly.
‘Marguerite … the King wishes all his loyal friends to hear him.’

Then Thomas Barnaby, graceless as ever yet oddly dear to Elizabeth, knocked and entered the solar.
He grinned, gaptoothed; she smiled at him, remembering the day he had escorted her to the garden at Eltham.
‘Ho, your Grace!
Ho, Dame Grey!’
he said.
The Queen awaited them, he said, and grinned, and mopped, and Elizabeth marked his face down for some reason that meant nothing, as a face she might see again somewhere, and she put the fancies away.
They went in procession to the Queen’s chambers.
Margaret was standing with her face to the window; she was much thinner.
Her waist looked nothing, her shoulders were spare and taut.
Elizabeth knelt, with her mother, and presently felt the Queen’s kiss on her brow.
Bright and young and arrogant, she looked up, and saw that Margaret was changed.
Hard lines were limned about her mouth, her eyes had a fervent glitter and her cheeks were colourless.
Beside her stood Beaufort of Somerset, his hair whiter now, with.
Piers de Brezé, James of Wiltshire, all the Queen’s trusted favourites.

Shyly Elizabeth addressed the Queen.

‘Felicitations, most noble Grace, on the advent of England’s heir.’
Instantly the strained white face sprang to bloom, and Margaret seized her hand.
‘You would see him?
You would see my son?’

An armed guard surrounded them both as they climbed tight spiralling stairs and halted before an oaken door, upon which one of the henchmen beat with his halberd.
Inside, a group of white-coiffed nursemaids doted on the infant prince.
Tall for his age, he wandered forward to lay a tiny hand on Elizabeth’s skirt.
She knelt in homage; the hand dropped to the toy dagger in his belt.
His large dark eyes studied her as she murmured, ‘Most princely Grace,’ and a shower of quick baby-talk which awakened no reaction in the impassive small face.
There was an oldness and wisdom about him.
One conceived by the Holy Ghost?
Rising, she said to Margaret: ‘Madame, he is the proudest, most winsome child,’ and was startled by the Queen’s expression.
Love, conceits, all the aspects of a mother were there, but overshadowed by a kind of ferocity.
She devoured the prince with her eyes; her breath came quickly.
On their knees, the nurses followed the child wherever he wandered, hands outstretched lest he should fall.
Four doctors were present, two tutors, and outside the chamber came the faint slither of the halberds crossing.
The Queen sank to her knees before her son.
She said:

‘Proud!
Yea, Dame Isabella, he is proud!
His name is Edward, after the great founder of Lancaster.
His device is the Silver Swan.
Bright and puissant, the heritage of might.
And mine!
My dynasty’s joy and hope!’
Her voice quivered and dropped almost to silence.
‘Ma fleur d’Anjou!’

The flower’s face creased in a subtle discontent.
‘
Reine … ma reine
 …’ he lisped, pawing Margaret’s trembling hand.

‘We, through
him
,’ continued the Queen, through clenched teeth, ‘shall conquer.
Our succession is secure.
York can threaten, the devil Warwick can sneer, but we are fast on England.
Does he sleep easy?’
she demanded of the nurses.
To the tutors she said: ‘Let him read and write soon.
Give him all knowledge, learning, power.’
To the doctors: ‘Your heads on a platter, messires, if any malady seeks him out.’
She turned again to the little Edward, taking his face between her hands, loosing a torrent of French endearments, the mother vanquishing the dynast for a little space.

They went by river to Westminster Hall, where the Great Council was to be held.
Between her father and mother Elizabeth sat watching the swell of waves about the painted craft, and seeing disinterestedly the cranes dipping all along the river from Blackfriars to the Tower.
Perfume and spices wafted from the ships from Italy and the East.
At the Vintners’ Wharf casks of wine were being unloaded.
Yet trade was sparse, men said.
England was a country to beware.
Denuded of her French possessions, she had an untrusted Queen, a demented King reigning.