Figures in Silk (35 page)

He smiled and bowed. “Of course,” he answered. “I drew up your apprenticeship agreement.” And at the cheerful glitter in his hazel eyes all the memories of her girlhood came flooding back: Elizabeth Marchpane giggling and calling the color of those eyes topaz; Anne Hagour calling them manticore. Later, Alice Claver snarling at him to hurry up and cross out part of the agreement he’d drawn up; his even- tempered acquiescence. He was one of the Lynom boys—grown up now, more solidly muscled, with the angelic blond hair that the girls had all sighed over now darker and less fine, but with the same amused look she remembered from before. It was reassuring to think Jane’s fate would be in the hands of Robert Lynom.

He didn’t waste time on small talk. He expressed regret for Jane’s imprisonment. “You must be very worried. But,” he added straightforwardly, “I think there’s a reasonable chance we can make a deal with the new administration—and get her out of jail altogether. After the coronation. I’ve spoken to the mayor about it. He’s quite clear that this is what we should work for. And we don’t think it will be impossible to get all the charges dropped.

We already have an informal agreement that the witchcraft allegation won’t be pursued. This case has become an embarrassment to the authorities. Even”—he paused delicately; no one knew these days quite how to refer to Dickon—“to His Majesty.”

“You’ve talked to the mayor?” she asked, impressed by his clear, direct way of talking. Listening to him felt like seeing sunlight break through clouds. “Already?”

He grinned. “No point in wasting time,” he answered, “when we know what we want.”

The change of power was inevitable now. Everyone did what they had to do.

On Monday, the Duke of Buckingham denounced old King Edward’s morals to the Guildhall, saying that he had ruled England for years by oppression and self- will.

Members of a parliament that would not meet for another year also gathered to write a petition. The petition echoed the Duke of Buckingham’s speech. The parliamentarians denounced the dead king as a satyr whose depravity had made every good woman and maiden dread being ravished and de-fouled. They said Edward IV’s marriage to Elizabeth Woodville had been secret and illegal—and sorcerous to boot. They said any children born from that marriage were bastards. Like the duke, they begged Richard of Gloucester to take the throne.

On Tuesday, the Duke of Buckingham, Lord Howard, the mayor, and the aldermen formed a delegation and visited the Duke of Gloucester to ask him to become king.

On Wednesday, Richard of Gloucester was proclaimed King of England. Isabel wasn’t at Paul’s Cross when the proclamation was read out, but Anne Pratte relayed every detail. The coronation was set for July 6.

A boy came into the seld stall where Anne was telling her story. He muttered at Isabel, touched his hat, and left.

“What was that?” Anne Pratte asked.

“Oh, nothing,” Isabel said; she knew she must look sullen;“just a firewood delivery at the silk house. I can’t go.”

“Well, you’ll have to start going to Westminster again soon, you know. I can’t imagine Queen Elizabeth Woodville not finding a way through this and getting herself back to court; she’s too ambitious not to try, at least; and you don’t want to lose the princess,” Anne Pratte urged.

“Elizabeth Bastard,” Isabel said emptily. She shook her head.

Then, seeing the silkwoman’s reproving look: “All right. Tomorrow.”

“ You lied to me,” she grated, shuddering backward against the bolted door. She pushed Dickon away. But she was uncomfortably aware that she’d let him bundle her up the rough stairs and start to kiss her as soon as they were inside the door. She’d wanted to feel the touch of his body against hers, just for a moment.

He laughed. Took a few paces back and sat down on the bed.

Patted the place beside him; delaying tactics. Then, when she didn’t come to him, he raised his arms in a parody of innocence. “I did not lie,” he said, very definitely. But she could see he was uneasy.

She wouldn’t get caught up in Jesuitry. Her eyes bored into his. “You should have said.”

“Said what?” he hedged. There was a half- smile on his lips.

She couldn’t tell whether it signified anxiety or indifference, or even triumph, but whichever it was, it was enough to make her lose her temper. She had her father’s blood in her, all right.

Her hands were on her hips, and suddenly she was hissing, as if cursing him: “That you were getting up from this bed to arrest my sister and kill her lover and hunt down Lord Dorset and steal Prince Richard from his mother to God knows where. What do you think?”

To her horror, Isabel felt her voice thicken and break. “She’s my sister, Dickon,” she muttered, looking hastily down to hide the hot tears coming to her eyes.

There was a silence.

When she finally dared peep up through hot, wet, angry eyes, she saw, with dread, that he was angry too.

“Pull yourself together,” he said coldly. “This isn’t about your sister, for God’s sake.”

He took a breath. Stood up.

“This is an affair of state,” he began, in a more emollient tone.

“We all have to submit . . .”

But she couldn’t listen. She broke in, with furious passion: “It
is
about my sister! How can you say it’s not? You’ve shut her up in Ludgate jail! I’ve been there; I’ve seen her!”

“What do you care?” he snapped back. “You’ve always hated her. Suddenly you’re her protector?”

She fell silent, twisted her fingers. She didn’t know what to say.

Then, ignoring his last words, she summoned up her last flickers of righteous anger. “You’re calling her a whore and your brother a womanizer—but you’re here, meeting me. Aren’t I a whore, too, then? And aren’t you a womanizer, too—and a hypocrite?”

“Look,” he said quietly, “Isabel. Let’s start again.”

Unwillingly, she looked up. “I’m not a hypocrite,” he said with rough calm, holding her eyes with his. “If you’re talking about my being in this room with you, it’s you who always said that what happened in this room was separate from ordinary life. You can’t change the rules now, just because you feel like it.”

It stung her. He was right, about that at least. “And if you’re talking about”—he gave her a look that was aggressive and wary in equal measures as he thought of the right word—“outside, what’s been happening outside, then for God’s sake stop being a fool. It doesn’t suit you.”

He stood up, with the vague threat that was part of his every movement. “This is just reality, Isabel,” he said. “You have to do everything you can for your blood. It’s what I’ve always said, what I’ve always done. You’ve known me for long enough to know that.”

“But you . . .” She stuttered, so wrong- footed now she couldn’t get her words out.

He swept on. “You’ve been doing it too, protecting your blood. Hiding traitors for Jane Shore’s sake.” She went still. “Don’t think I don’t hear talk from the City, too,” he said, an aside, nodding at her shock with a chilly smile. Then he went on: “So you should understand. I’m just doing what I have to do to secure my dynasty.”

She stammered something, but even she couldn’t say what.

He ignored it, kept his eyes boring into hers. He was talking more persuasively now, carry ing her along with his argument.

“You must see how important this is. Those children are illegitimate. There’s no doubt about that. The Bishop of Bath and Wells says so; and he was the priest before whom Edward promised to marry Eleanor Butler. He’s kept his peace for years—maybe because of the allowance Edward paid him, who can say?—but now both Edward and the hush money are gone, and his conscience has finally made him speak out. There’s nothing for me to do but to deal with the consequences. God knows I didn’t ask for this.”

She took a step into the room. Still mistrustful, but at least willing to hear him out.

“You can’t have a child bastard on the throne of England. It would be a blasphemy in the eyes of God and a crime in the eyes of man,” he went on, drawing her closer, visibly growing in confidence as she went on listening. “It’s bad enough having a child king, with every great lord in the land eyeing him and wondering whether his own blood isn’t bluer and his own army bigger and if it mightn’t be worth trying to seize power. But once the child’s known to be a bastard, it would be anarchy. You’d have civil war again before you could blink. You’d have Lancastrians creeping back from overseas; enemies crawling in from everywhere. And hasn’t enough English blood been shed already, in enough wars no one wanted? For the sake of my country . . . for the sake of my family honor . . . I had no choice.”

Isabel wanted to be convinced. But this wasn’t enough.

Flatly, she said: “But you called your brother a bastard too. You shamed
his
memory. There was no need for that.”

Flatly, he replied: “There was. It’s true.”

She looked as skeptical as she dared.

But he went on, in the same flat, everyday voice: “We’ve always known it in the family. My father was away fighting in France for a year before Edward was born.”

She was still taunting him with her hard eyes, but he didn’t seem to care.

“Work it out,” he added harshly. “It only takes nine months.”

In the uneasy silence that followed, Isabel thought: He seems so sure.

She didn’t even ask him why he’d never accused Edward of being a bastard while he was still alive. Why would he, back then, when Edward was king, and the best, safest king in living memory into the bargain; and when Edward was happy to make over to his brother the entire North of England for himself? If he was telling the truth now, the lie would have been in the past; but she could see why he’d have been tempted to keep quiet until now.

“Once I’d started truth- telling, there was no reason not to tell all the truths,” Dickon went on, as if agreeing with her unspoken judgment. “It makes things clearer.”

Then he sighed, and bleakness shivered over his face like the north wind.

“But I knew Hastings would never accept the truth about Edward,” he added. “He’d spent his life serving him. I knew he’d fight me to get Edward’s boy the crown.” He looked sadder still.

“So I did what I had to . . . He was my friend, but I had no choice.”

The distance between them had diminished; had she gone on creeping toward him? He took a last step forward to stand before her, head bowed, eyes on hers. She could feel his breath on her cheek. She meant to ask about Rivers, or Grey; people were saying he’d had the princesses’ Woodville uncles executed this week too. But somehow she didn’t.

“I want you to understand,” he said, very softly. “I don’t harm the innocent. You know me. You know that. The boys are safe; my nephews. So is your sister, if it comes to that.” She caught her breath. “I’d never hurt a woman. She’ll come to no harm, I promise.”

“But you accused her of witchcraft,” she muttered faintly, trying to fight the longing to fall into his arms. “Jane. She could burn for that. And you can’t possibly think it’s true.”

He shook his head. “It’s just what the crowd needed to hear, to know it’s serious. She won’t be tried as a witch,” he whispered. “Trust me.” But his eyes shifted away. As if aware that he’d shown weakness by admitting to a lie, he added irritably: “Look, it’s the same thing you did when you stole your father’s apprentices—you were showing you meant business. You know exactly why I did it.”

Isabel didn’t want to be distracted into defending herself over that. It was true, she’d felt triumphant at gaining the ascendancy, as well as guilty, after hiring away John Lambert’s staff and seeing her father leave London, bewildered and beaten. Perhaps Dickon had been striving for the same effect when he’d had Jane denounced as a sorceress. Perhaps he felt guilty too.

All she said, looking imploringly at him, was: “But why Jane? Why mix her up in this at all? You said it yourself. She’s got nothing to do with it. It’s not about her.”

He shrugged. She thought he might be surprised she kept coming back to Jane.

His voice got lighter. It made her cheeks burn again to see he couldn’t take Jane Shore’s plight seriously; she didn’t want to think about why. He said: “Because people need a clear idea of who’s ruling them. They know Edward was a lady’s man; now they can see that wasn’t such a good thing. Jane Shore behind bars has been an illustration everyone can understand. It shows them: from now on, we live by the rules.”

His voice was still quiet; but determined. “My rules,” he said.

She blinked.

“People like to complicate things, but I’m a very simple man,”

he said, and he looked at her as straightforwardly as he ever had.

“These are just the things you have to do to make sure the things you need to happen do happen. Not always nice, but necessary.

You can’t be a king and a parfit gentil knight at the same time.”

His face was inches away, looming over hers. His hand brushed her shoulder. She felt her body strain toward him. Held it in check. He murmured: “No one wants more war. I had to stop the factions . . . the plots. I want to be king of a land at peace.”

There was a terrible sincerity on his face. He was looking intently into her eyes. She could see how important it was to him that she should believe him; and a part of her was, unwillingly, grateful that he so wanted her approval. But by then she was so full of contradictory desires—with the urges to shout and slap giving way again to the longing to fall into his arms and do without words altogether—that the only phrase he’d spoken that she remembered was, “I want to be king.”

“Trust me,” he breathed.

She didn’t. However familiar his face, and her feelings, she knew she was looking into the eyes of someone who’d become a stranger. Yet that didn’t stop her wanting him.

They stood very close, arms by their sides, not touching.

When she went on not moving, he muttered, and she thought she detected a note of pleading: “You know I’m the only safety this land can hope for; and I’ve been doing the best I can to keep the peace. You must know that, from your own perspective if nothing else. Think about it. Your Goffredo’s coming back; you know your weaving venture will be safe if I’m on the throne. Every other entrepreneur in London will be making the same calculation.” He gave her a bright stare, a challenge. “Without me, who knows?”