Figures in Silk (41 page)

He looked dusty from the road and marked by his pain—thinner, somehow shrunken, with dark under the eyes and sadness dragging at his face.

They hadn’t ever spoken on the street. It was too overlooked, too public. Their tacit agreement was that once she saw his horse, she’d slip over the road and up the tavern’s back stairs to find him in the room. If she was careful, no one need ever see her.

But he did speak now, under the windows that might be full of eyes, as if he didn’t care anymore who saw him. He dismounted and walked straight to her, before even tethering the horse, so that human and animal faces came at her together over the gate.

He kissed her in a sour cloud of horse sweat and leather, a strangely nostalgic, uncertain kiss.

When they drew apart, she said, a little frightened by this new simplicity: “I’ve been so sad for you.”

He said, with that unearthly calm that never seemed to desert him, “Can you imagine how much I loved him?” and she nodded.

If her imagination could conjure up no greater love than the bittersweet plea sure she was feeling here, now, at being with Dickon, at being needed in this moment, it would be enough. Eyes on eyes: a long silence. She never wanted to look away. “You can’t know how much I’ve missed you,” he said, and her heart turned over. “I know I can trust you. Come and talk.”

She was still holding the gillyflowers. She opened the gate and walked straight over the road, behind him, to the Red Pale’s back door.

The pale walls and the straw still held a memory of happiness. But now she was fully clothed and holding the hand of a man hunched on a mattress in dusty clothes who’d said he needed her but hardly seemed to know she was there. Who was talking about pain, as if to himself. She was watching a ravaged living face appear to age before her eyes as he described the radiance his dead child had lost. The slight fever; the rash; the lethargic tears. Nothing. A brief bad dream. But Edward had been dead by morning.

She could imagine how Dickon would have held his sorrow in—using his miraculously deep, reassuring voice to calm others; being dignified, prosaic, and practical. But shutting himself away in prayer, or taking himself off for the fierce lonely gallops he loved, trying not to give way to emotion however much he wanted to howl out his grief.

“There was a silkwoman who worked for us once,” she whispered, her eyes swimming with pity, hoping he would not guess how full her heart was with its own muted radiance at being here, chosen, talking with this man about things so close to his heart.

“Her little boy died. She just disappeared. They didn’t find her for a week. She’d gone right out to the woods and dug herself into a foxhole. As if she was trying to bury herself. They dug her up and brought her back, but she didn’t want to come. She kept saying,‘Let me die, let me die.’ They said she’d gone mad; put her in Bethlem for three months. She’s never been right since . . .” She stopped. “But you; you’ve been strong.”

Dickon looked straight at her for the first time since they’d shut the door. He was so tired his face was gray. There was gray in his hair too. He crunched his hands together until his knuckles cracked.

“You know,” he said. “Don’t you? What Anne’s been like.”

His wife; the Queen of England. She flinched, but he didn’t seem to notice. He went on talking. Anne Neville wanted to die.

She couldn’t eat. She couldn’t sleep. Her bones stuck out and her eyes stuck out. She howled and tore down draperies. She fell down stairs; slashed at her wrists; beat her head against walls.

There were no other children.

Hollowly, he said, “It’s as if she’s possessed. I can’t be with her.

I can’t let her go either.” Isabel made herself small and still and said nothing. His face was twitching. He went on urgently, a whisper with a suppressed howl in it: “She wants to die. But I can’t let her. She remembers Edward like I do.”

What comfort could she offer? She squeezed at his dry hand; he squeezed hers back. He sat in silence for a while. He composed himself; fingered the crucifix he’d taken off and laid on the floor as he entered the room; muttered a prayer. It wasn’t his usual crucifix. It was smaller and more delicate, decorated with a single chip of ruby. He caught her looking at it. Uncomfortably, he said:“It’s his. Edward’s.” Then: “Was Edward’s.” He didn’t look at her as he went on, “They’re expecting me. I have to go.”

She sat on by herself after he left. She watched the full moon come up, alone, before letting herself out to cross the road home.

She took the wilted gillyflowers.

Will Caxton looked out of an upstairs window as her gate creaked. He was in his nightshirt, stretching and smiling while he reached for his shutters. “You’re out late,” he said.

She held up the flowers. He was too far away, and even in the moonlight, it was too dark for him to see how faded they’d got.

He’d think she’d been out picking them at night, maybe.

He nodded. “They’re pretty,” he said kindly; then, “Isn’t it beautiful out to night? This magical light. I love the full moon. Don’t you?”

Liking Will Caxton, Isabel said, “I do.” As she padded up the path and lifted the latch to her own door, she added, “Though sometimes it seems sad. So pale and quiet.”

With Will’s murmur still in her ears, Isabel stopped just inside the door. She could hear the usual evening dancing and music and hubbub coming from behind the closed doors opposite. Perhaps, in a while, she’d join the weavers.

There was so much sadness in the world. Dickon was in grief.

But he’d brought his grief to her, no one else. When she thought of that, she could bear anything. She might even dance.

“Did you see the boxes outside? ” Princess Elizabeth said, and her voice seemed to have got faster and sharper. “Have they started taking them away yet?”

Isabel shook her head. “Boxes . . .” She was baffled. Elizabeth had been so quiet, so correct, so hopeless, since the failure of Henry Tudor’s rebellion—as if the life had been snuff ed out of her.

“We’re going,” the princess said impatiently, as if Isabel were being slow. “Home. Back to the palace. To court. Didn’t you know?”

More kindly, she added: “It’s been chaos in our bedchambers for hours, packing and folding and pinning and I don’t know what. Chests everywhere. I thought you’d have seen some outside already.”

Elizabeth was starting to share the cream- and- copper beauty of her mother. Her face had points: cheekbones and a straight, neat nose. Her father’s small mouth had become a pretty Cupid’s bow on her. And there was a glow about her that Isabel hadn’t seen before.

“But . . . why?” Isabel asked, in the end. She couldn’t think how to phrase the question more delicately. Prudently, she added:“If I may ask?”

The princess didn’t mind answering. “Because of the letter,” she said, sitting down on a cushion, invitingly patting the stool next to her. “My mother feels safer now.”

“Letter?” Isabel repeated. She was beginning to feel she really was getting stupid. What letter could possibly persuade Dowager Queen Elizabeth Woodville to leave sanctuary?

“From my brother,” the princess said, in the slow voice of one dealing gently with the simpleminded, and when Isabel continued to stare blankly at her: “Richard. You know him. You saw him, didn’t you? Here, before they took him off ?”

A letter from one of the vanished princes. Isabel’s head swam.

So they really were alive. She sat down rather suddenly, full of a greater tenderness for Dickon than she’d ever known. She hadn’t thought till now that it would be possible for her to love him more than she already did, and this extra tide of happiness, sweeping away the doubts she hadn’t wanted to have, restoring the innocence she’d lost, took her by surprise. He’d told the truth. She should have known. She should have trusted him.

“Oh,” she said.

The princess was laughing at her stunned look. But the princess had had longer to get over the shock. “Yes,” Elizabeth said, as happy and relaxed as an ordinary girl. “He wrote to us. Just like that. All those months of being so scared, and now,” a softness stole across her royal face, “it turns out that there’s been nothing to fear all along.”

Men came. Two chests were dumped on the floor. Isabel packed the altar cloths into sacking covers and sewed them carefully into parcels. She made separate sacking packets for the pearls and red and green silk threads and the Venice gold, and sewed them onto the biggest of the main parcels. And then she packed each rough parcel into the chests, between layers of straw to stop them being crushed. And all the time she worked, she smiled.

And all the time she worked, the princess sat on her cushion and talked.

“They left London last October . . . my uncle said they’d be safer away . . . Suffolk . . . Little Gipping . . . very remote . . . they’re in good health, at least Richard is, but he says Edward’s been ill . . . they’re with a family . . . other boys . . . Tyrrell . . . they ride . . . get about . . . the servants don’t know who they are . . . they call them ‘Lord Edward’ and ‘Lord Richard’ . . . which isn’t bad; better than ‘Edward Bastard’ anyway . . . I suppose I’m going to have to get used to being ‘Elizabeth Bastard’ myself . . . but at least I’ll be back at court again, not cooped up in here . . . It’s funny, isn’t it; we’re only moving over the road, really, a few hundred yards, but everything changes once you cross the road, everything . . . There won’t be dancing for a few months, though; because of the mourning. I didn’t know my cousin Edward . . . though I’m sad, of course . . . We won’t get the same apartments but they’ll be good ones . . . I’ll be able to ride again . . . Do you think it’s time to start work on my wedding gown? Because perhaps I’ll be able to make a good marriage now, after all. Live happily ever after.”

Isabel let it wash over her, enjoying it, enjoying the flash of her needle, lightheaded with her private relief. But when the princess began to talk about marrying, she did look up.

“Not Henry Tudor?” she asked, trying to make a shared joke of him. The princess laughed, a light, brittle, social laugh. But she didn’t offer a name. All she said was, “Ah,” and there was an enigmatic look on her face as she played with the crucifix round her neck; then: “It would be foolish to make the same mistake twice, wouldn’t it?”

It was only on her way out of the abbot’s house that Isabel realized what had troubled her most about that moment. Elizabeth’s crucifix was decorated with a single small ruby. It was the double of the one Dickon had been carry ing the previous night.

Dickon's eyes were as empty as last time. But they made love.

He didn’t speak, just drew in a deep breath of need at the sight of her, closed his eyes, and put his lips to hers. Even when they were tumbled breathlessly on the bed together, sated, he didn’t smile or break his silence. But he went on holding her so close, so hard, that she could feel his heart beat and sense the depth of the loneliness he was trying to escape. It was enough.

“I worry for you,” she whispered. He kissed her, but she thought it might be to stop her talking. She felt he might just want to feel her skin on his today, not words. She’d do what ever he needed. She relaxed against his body; kissed his chest with butterfly kisses; willed him to find his eyes closing. Then she remembered the letter, and couldn’t stop herself voicing her gratitude.

“Elizabeth . . . ,” she whispered—she couldn’t call her either “Princess” or “Bastard” with Dickon—“Elizabeth was so happy with the letter from her brother.”

He might have brought the letter himself. But he only grunted.

He kept his eyes shut.

“I am too,” she breathed. “Thank you.”

She’d kept faith. She’d had doubts, but the darkness was fading.

As she settled herself blissfully against him, she looked at the ground where his crucifix lay. It was the usual big one with sapphires. The dead child’s cross had gone.

She lay with one cheek on Dickon’s chest, staring down at the shadows on the floor.

She didn’t know why, or what had changed. But she was no longer feeling happy.

15

When she asked about the crucifix, Dickon just sighed.

“It’s the same one,” he said wearily, pulling himself up and buckling on his sword belt. “I gave it to Elizabeth to remember him by.”

But Elizabeth had said she’d hardly known her cousin. Why would she want his cross?

Isabel went on looking at Dickon. He frowned. “They were cousins,” he said evasively.

She didn’t look away.

As irritably as if she were interrogating him and forcing a confession, Dickon added: “And I’ve been wondering about her as a possible wife. If Anne were to die.”

She stared.

Defensively, he said: “Well, it would stop Henry Tudor trying to marry her. She’d get a crown, even as a bastard. It would stop her mother wanting revenge on me. It would make sense.”

Then, into the silence, he snapped: “For God’s sake. Stop looking at me like that.”

But she couldn’t. She couldn’t even summon up the strength to pick up the sheet that had fallen away from her nakedness. She just went on sitting in the rumpled bed, with her chin on her knees and pale red hair flaming round her eyes, staring.

She’d accepted everything till now. She’d lived with her fears.

She’d heard the stories about Hastings being dragged kicking and screaming from the Council chamber and spread-eagled across a tree stump to be beheaded, while Dickon watched. She’d shut her mind to them.

But this felt worse. It was betrayal. She couldn’t say yes to this.

She couldn’t let him love another woman; and she couldn’t believe his only motive, if he were thinking of marrying Elizabeth, would be forming a good alliance.

She couldn’t shut her mind to the thought of his fastening that cross round Elizabeth’s long neck.

Mastering himself, he sat down again. Put his hand on hers.

“Look,” he said, but she sensed that his gentleness masked impatience. “My son is dead; my wife is dying. It’s my duty to think about this. I need an heir. This would be an alliance, that’s all.”