Figures in Silk (31 page)

Obediently, Hastings asked: “Who?”

Dickon hissed back: “The secret forces behind Queen Elizabeth Woodville and Jane Shore, that’s who.”

There was a tighter hush all around. That made no sense. Everyone knew the queen hated Jane Shore. Out of the corner of his eye, Hastings saw Rotherham cross himself.

Eyeball to eyeball, Dickon went on, in the same uncanny hiss:“You.”

“What, me?” Hastings said. “What?”

And suddenly the hush was over. Dickon thumped his fist on the table. Men at arms ran in. They must have been waiting outside. The room filled with sound and sweat: thumps and grunts and punches and the scrape of overturning furniture. Stanley dived under the table, but they knocked it aside and grabbed his feet and pulled him up. They got him in an armlock that made him moan and sweat. They dragged him away, and the two gray- faced, unresisting priests behind him.

Around Hastings there was a blur of flailing limbs, then nothing. He opened his eyes to find himself on the floor with the solid legs of a bill man on either side of his chest. They must have hit him on the head. He hadn’t seen what they’d done to Buckingham and young Howard, but both had gone. When he looked up he could see the underside of Dickon’s chin at the window, and a bristle of lances. He couldn’t see Dickon’s eyes.

He didn’t need to. The voice was enough. “Make your peace with God, traitor,” Dickon was taunting, the wild high cry of a man on the battlefield, kindling the frenzy in the blood of the men around him with words, the kind of words best forgotten once the red haze receded: “because I won’t eat until I’ve seen your head off .”

There was no time now to think of Jane or the appalled knowledge in Stanley’s eyes when the soldiers had come in; the mute accusation: we should have run. He had to ask God’s forgiveness for all those battles; for the times his own eyes had been full of death. But when he felt the rough hands start hauling him over the flags to the green outside, and realized what they were going to do, he stopped thinking he had time to pray either. His soldier’s instinct took over. He fought. Punched and kicked and jostled and bashed at them with his knees and elbows and head, with every ounce of strength in him, with grass and earth in his mouth and terror rising in his gorge, as they dragged him on to the tree stump that would do quite well as an executioner’s block and yanked his head down. His chin bristled on wood. They kicked him to stop him struggling. But he was still flailing and thrashing his head from side to side as the blade flashed high above.

Jane was sewing in the rose bower. The sun was hot. Every now and then she shivered with remembered plea sure as flashes of last night came back into her mind. She was wondering whether to have the boring boiled chicken for dinner or just pick a few of the strawberries she’d seen peeking out red and delicious from the tub by the stables.

A male voice interrupted her reverie.

“Mistress Shoo- ore,” it called flirtatiously from over the wall.

She recognized it as the same playful voice that had woken her that morning, the man who’d taken Will away.

Perhaps Will had finished early at Council? The idea came to her that they could go and dine at the Tumbling Bear, where they did fast- day food so deliciously. She could ask the gentleman messenger too; why not? If only she knew his name.

She put down her work.

“Do come in,” she called back, politely.

But no one did. Perhaps they hadn’t heard. She didn’t like to shout. So she went to the courtyard door herself and opened it with her dewy sideways smile.

The man in the street was young. He had fresh cheeks, bright eyes, and a haystack of yellow hair. He’d taken his hat off . She liked the aristocratic respect of that gesture.

“Mistress Shore,” he began.

At the same moment she said, very sweetly: “Of course I know who you are—you came for Lord Hastings today—but I’m afraid I don’t know your name.”

There was a muffled snort from somewhere behind. The young man lost his composure, looked sideways for a second. Jane looked the same way he was looking, over his shoulder. It took her a couple of seconds to make sense of what she was seeing.

There were half a dozen soldiers with him, in sallets and jacks.

“I’m Sir Thomas Howard,” he replied. Automatically, he bowed; but he looked embarrassed. He went on, in a quite different voice: “Mistress Jane Shore, I am here with an order from the Lord Protector of England to arrest you.”

She stared. She almost laughed. It must be a joke, surely?

“What ever for?” she breathed, not really scared yet. The calm of her garden was behind her. Will would be here any minute.

Sir Thomas blushed over the absurd words “witchcraft” and“treason,” but he rushed them out as fiercely as if he were daring her to contradict him. There was another suppressed snort.

“I see,” she said in bewilderment. She stepped forward to look at the men: yes, they really were there. They stared insolently back. One of them grinned right into her face. Others were twitching lips; wiggling eyebrows; putting hands on hips. She saw with a sinking heart that they were the kind to enjoy a victim. It would be wiser to ignore them.

Turning back to the mortified youth who was, at least nominally, in charge of these thugs, she said, very politely and correctly: “Sir Thomas, perhaps you could wait and explain to Lord Hastings what’s going on? He will be here shortly.”

There was a silence long enough for her to realize she’d said the wrong thing. Sir Thomas looked at his feet. His face was beetroot. His men were quivering, about to explode with their joke. It was the man with the hands on his hips who answered in the end.

“Oh, no, he won’t,” he jeered. The others tittered and whistled.

Jane knew not to ask more. Not to think more. She could almost smell the danger now. They were looking at her, as Will liked to say, with the eyes of enemies. They wanted to hurt her.

She needed to keep her wits about her, think only from moment to moment. Her body went still. Keeping her breathing shallow, she fixed her eyes on Sir Thomas. He looked up. “Very well,” she said, more calmly than she felt, and with a straight back and not even a glance at the garden behind, she stepped out into the street. But before she could even add, “I’m ready,” she became aware of another commotion from behind. Scuffling. “Geddorf,”

she heard one of the men say. “Here. Stop it,” said another, and:“Oi.”

Sir Thomas turned round. Jane turned with him. They both stared. The men- at- arms were no longer alone. They were being surrounded by women. Tough women with set, suspicious faces and hands on their hips. Women who’d been led out of the house opposite—the Prattes’ house—by a solid figure with iron- gray hair and a stick. With a shock of joy she never expected to feel at this sight, Jane recognized Alice Claver.

“What in the name of God do you think you’re doing, young man?” Alice Claver boomed, pushing past the suddenly quiet soldiers to Sir Thomas Howard and dealing his arm a smart thwack.

“Let go of her at once. The impertinence.”

He jumped back, letting go of Jane as he clutched his arm; giving Alice the shocked, sick look of a child caught misbehaving by its nurse. “And don’t you look at me like that either,” the silkwoman continued forbiddingly, raising her voice further and putting her own arm protectively through Jane’s. Her women—there must have been twelve or more of them by now, and there were more coming, both from Anne Pratte’s house and the nearby Royal Wardrobe—were directing withering looks at the men- at-arms they’d surrounded. The soldiers were scuffing their feet and looking down. Alice Claver rapped out: “We were watching you from over the road. We could see exactly what you were up to, so don’t bother denying it. I don’t know what made you take it into your head that it would be all right to parade round the City of London with this gang of hoodlums, terrorizing whoever takes your fancy, but let me tell you it’s not. You’re breaking the law.”

Jane felt almost sorry for him. “No,” he whimpered, feeling for his purse. “You don’t understand . . . I’ve got an order from the Lord Protector . . . here . . .”

Alice Claver folded her arms across her chest. “I don’t want to see your piece of paper,” she said sternly. “You know as well as I do that we don’t allow bandit behavior in the City of London. If you want to make an arrest here, you have to do it by the book.

Go to the Guildhall. Ask them to send out a troop of the watch.

They’ll make your arrest for you if your papers are right. You can’t just start walking our streets, picking people up and taking them off to God knows where. This good lady”—she gestured splendidly at Jane—“is a Freewoman of the City of London. Like us. She has her rights. We all do.” She stuck her nose pugnaciously out. She was nearly as tall as him, and twice as broad. “And don’t you forget it.”

Weakly, Sir Thomas nodded his head.

“Now,” Alice Claver finished up, scarcely drawing breath, keeping the initiative: “I think we’d better make sure you don’t make any more mistakes. Come on,” she jerked her finger toward the Guildhall. “We’ll take you there. It’s just round the corner.”

The women worried the men- at- arms forward, like dogs snapping at the heels of sheep, until it seemed to everyone that it was Sir Thomas Howard’s troop that was under arrest rather than Jane. Jane, so stunned by now that all she could do was stare and watch events and feet move forward, found herself flanked by Alice Claver and small, white- haired Anne Pratte. Alice Claver kept waving her stick longingly in the direction of Thomas Howard, just in front of them, as if keen to whack him again on the arm or leg.

Anne Pratte, meanwhile, was whispering advice to Jane.

“They’ll have to shut you up if he’s really got an order,” she muttered. “But only in a proper city prison. And don’t forget, as a Freewoman you get to choose which one.” Jane nodded blankly.

“Are you taking this in, dear?” Anne Pratte said, more sharply, then took both Jane’s hands in hers, squeezed them until Jane’s eyes focused, and hissed: “Ask for Ludgate Prison!”

Which was how Jane came to be locked, not in a festering dungeon somewhere underground, but in a light, bare room over Ludgate, with the traffic that clattered in and out of the City through the western gate passing directly under her floor. Her cell was built into the stone city wall on one side, but it had wooden walls on the other sides. It had a big window through which she could look down over the people coming in and walking up Ludgate Hill. She could see all the way to St. Paul’s. There was a thin rope attached to a hook by the window, which she could let down, so visitors who came and stood below and shouted to get her attention could reach for the swinging end and tie a bag of food onto it for her to haul up and eat, and she could let down her laundry for her friends to wash.

“Don’t you worry,” Anne Pratte said encouragingly, a small figure below, after she’d made Jane winch up a bottle of beer and some bread in a bag. “We’ll be back.”

Jane watched that purposeful little back disappear up the hill and into the crowd. She didn’t open the bag. She didn’t do anything. It was as if she’d forgotten how. She just went on sitting, stiller than she’d ever have thought possible, looking out but not noticing the sunlight on the cathedral tower turn a richer gold, then deep red.

Isabel clip-clopped along the road to Westminster alone, in a dream so sweet that she was only vaguely aware of the dozens of soldiers out this morning, pacing one arm span apart through the fields of tall young corn as far as the eye could see, leaving trampled trails of bleeding green behind; of the dogs sniff -ing and barking on their leashes. All she really saw was her interior vision of the room where she’d spent yesterday afternoon, cool and empty of everything except Dickon and the rumpled bed. She could still smell him on her. Anything being done out here, in the reality of this hot summer’s morning, might as well not be happening. But she had to go to the princess. They’d have delivered the coronation robe to her in sanctuary now. The princess had asked for a fitting.

It was only when she got to the abbot’s house that the trails of glory began to dissipate.

There were twice as many soldiers as usual at the door: cold, unfamiliar faces. The whispers she heard, from behind her back, were in the harsh language of the North. She thought she could hear weeping through the open windows. She strained her ears when she got inside, but there was none of the usual bustle of a big house hold; just whispers and an uncanny silence. When Lady Elizabeth Darcey was called to see Isabel in, she saw the noblewoman’s long and usually controlled face was twitching and patchy with red, her eyes swollen. “You!” she said in uncontrollable surprise at the sight of Isabel, which was odd because Isabel had been supposed to come at this time. Lady Darcey stammered: “I didn’t think . . . well, I suppose there’s no harm . . . ,” but before leading Isabel into the sewing parlor she drew her aside and added, “but you should know: their Highnesses are . . . His Highness Prince Richard has gone . . . ,” and, to Isabel’s astonishment, the other woman’s face twisted into the beginning of a sob.

Daringly, Isabel put a hand on Lady Elizabeth’s arm and was rewarded with a sudden, grateful look as Lady Elizabeth swallowed and recomposed her face. They stood like that for a minute, as if the noblewoman was furtively drawing comfort from her warm hand. Then Lady Elizabeth moved just out of her reach.

“Her Highness will be pleased to see you,” she said, almost back to her brittle usual self, “Come,” and darted off down the corridor so fast that Isabel almost had to run to keep up.

The princesses had all been crying.

The eyes Elizabeth turned on Isabel were so red and puff y she could hardly see out. There wasn’t even a trace of coldness in her today. She and her sisters pulled Isabel to the table and sat her down as if she were one of them. Elizabeth whispered the story.

The Duke of Buckingham had just been, with Lord Howard, Archbishop Bourchier of Canterbury, and the Lord Chancellor, Bishop Russell. They’d scared Queen Elizabeth Woodville into giving up her younger son. They said little Richard, the Duke of York, should be with his brother Edward, who was moving into the state apartments in the Tower ahead of the coronation. Edward would be bored on his own. They gave Queen Elizabeth Woodville a moment to say her good- byes. Then they took him away.