The King's Grey Mare (2 page)

After the long obeisance, she looked into eyes blue as her own.
The eyes of Sir Richard Woodville, Earl Rivers; Knight of the Garter, Privy Councillor, Knight Banneret and leader of men; yet first, her own father, and deeply, possessively loved.
He raised her, kissed her, beckoned to a henchman who came forward with a long package wrapped in hessian.
Inside was a thick, shining-swathe of cobwebby lace.

‘From Alençon,’ said her father, smiling.
‘One of the many perquisites of my captaincy there.
For my fairest daughter.’

She looked at him, at the way his russet hair was threaded with silver and curled on his broad shoulders; how the rich blue velvet doublet fitted him like a skin.
The old collar of ‘S’s, worn by all knights in the service of Henry of Lancaster, gleamed on his chest.
He was called by many the handsomest man in England.
She thought, gloriously: they are right!
Then, while she gloated over the lace, he turned again to talk to his wife.

‘Bordeaux has fallen,’ he said.
‘The French conquest of Aquitaine is complete.’

‘Ah, Jesu,’ said Jacquetta of Belford.
Totally noncommittal was that little prayer, yet there was a triumph in it.
England for the English, they said; yet Jacquetta’s heart was bred and nurtured among the French, and Lancaster was her watchword.

Young Anthony winked at Elizabeth.
He had a golden fineness, too, she thought, in his gay scarlet habit and shirt of fair Rennes cloth.
She mused again on Sir Hugh, already running to plumpness; she had been spoilt by father and brother for beauty in other men.
Thinking of Hugh put her in mind of her mother’s yet unheard opinions.
Disquiet crept over her.
Had a decision been reached, while she was dreaming by the lake?
And what did her father think of Sir Hugh?
She listened closely to the conversation; still they spoke of policy.

‘As Seneschal of Aquitaine, I had a great force,’ said Sir Richard.
‘Two thousand bowmen, three hundred spears.
And then I kicked my heels at Plymouth, revictualling a fleet which none seemed minded to use.
The King, Jesu preserve him, sometimes seems …’

He ceased abruptly.
Other conversations buzzed in the Hall; behind a screen one of the minstrels discreetly plucked his lute.
Jacquetta’s face was impassive as she listened, waited for her husband to resume.
Elizabeth studied her; it seemed this day as if she were seeing them all for the first time.

Duchess of Bedford in her own right, daughter of Pierre, Duke of Luxembourg and Marguerite del Balzo of Andria, Jacquetta Woodville still owned much of the legendary beauty of her youth.
Her eyes were lustrous, her features clear and proud.
The narrow band of hair revealed at the edge of her coif was still a rich coppery gold.
She wore many rings, and about her neck lay a ruby and diamond reliquary reputed to hold a bone of St.
James.
She was holding a parchment letter from a personage of some note, for from it dangled a great seal like a gobbet of wet blood.
A letter newly arrived; Elizabeth knew suddenly that it concerned herself.
Her eyes flew to her mother’s, and were held in a strange, perceptive gaze.
Her heart beat hard.
Good or ill lay in that parchment.

The gamey scent of the roast peacock wafted to her nose, but her stomach fluttered fretfully.
Now she would be able to eat nothing, even in her father’s honour.
Not all Anthony’s wit could sharpen her taste, until she knew the content of that roll.

Still Jacquetta’s eyes, all-knowing, fathomless, held hers, as the clarions sounded for supper.

Early morning sunlight pierced the chapel windows and gleamed upon paten and pyx and chalice.

Confiteor tibi in cithara, Deus, Deus meus; quare tristis es, et quare conturbas me?

The chaplain watched Elizabeth constantly, while he tongued the Mass by rote.
The words meant little after years of repetition and left his mind free to wander.
He marked her trembling as she took the Host; this was in itself the sign of conscience, as was the way she bent her head to draw comfort from her missal.
Soul, why art thou downcast, why art thou all lament?
A tear crept softly down her cheek and the chaplain’s stern mouth relaxed.
So the eldest Woodville maiden was penitent.
She rued the disgraceful scene in Hall last evening, caused by a letter which, thought the priest, should have been hailed meekly and with gratitude.

The eldest Woodville maiden was, however, weeping not in penance but with renewed rage.
She murmured, choking: ‘
Spera in Deo, quoniam adhuc confitebor illi …’
Wait for God’s help … my champion and my God!
The painted saints about the altar studied her coolly.
Everywhere there was a candle, starred by her own tears, cold as the light in her father’s eyes when she had run from the Hall last evening.

They had given her the letter to read aloud.
Its heavy seal had fallen across her wrist, the writing was powerful and black.
Sir Richard had stretched himself in his chair, jewelled goblet in hand, prepared to enjoy his daughter’s pretty voice.
At first, reading, she had been proud, then incredulous, and upon reaching the fierce, swarthy signature her tongue had trembled in fury.
In the body of the Hall there had been whisperings.
A young page, waiting near the dais with his dish of venison frumenty, had started to grin.
Amid this growing interest, this knavish amusement, she finished the letter, and the echo of its words fed a sudden, incredible anger.

To Dame Elizabeth Woodville:

Right worshipful and well beloved, I greet you well, And forasmuch as my right well beloved Sir Hugh Johns, knight, which now late was with you until his full great joy, hath informed me how that he for the great love and affection that he hath unto your person, as for your great and praised virtues and womanly demeaning, desireth with all his heart to do you worship by way of marriage, before any other creature living as he saith.

I, considering [ – the lordly
I
!
here she heard her own voice becoming high and strained] I, considering his said desire and the great worship he had which was made knight at Jerusalem … And also the good and notable service he hath done and daily doth to me, write you at this time, and pray you effectuously that ye will condescend and apply yourself unto his said lawful and honest desire, wherein ye shall cause me to show unto you such good lordship [here her tongue tripped over immoderate rage] as ye by reason shall hold you content and pleased, with the grace of God, which everlastingly have you in his blessed protections and governance,

Signed: Richard Earl of Warwick.

That name made folk tremble.
Warwick was a living legend, hand in glove with half the crowned heads in Europe.
It was said that he used Richard of York as his mammet, driving the Duke, his cousin, willy-nilly into uprisings, and lording it in England and in Calais, where Elizabeth’s own father was second-in-command to the Earl of Somerset.
Warwick used folk to his own ends; some even said that Warwick’s word was law!
She had always disliked the sound of his arrogance, his power.
And now, here was Warwick, treating the whole business of her betrothal as a
fait accompli –
foisting his ditch water-dull liegeman upon her as if to bestow the greatest favour!
Reading between the lines, the letter was tantamount to a command.

The words burned.
‘Wherein ye shall cause me to show you
such good lordship
as ye by reason shall hold you content and pleased!’
Reason left her.
She would not suffer his good lordship.
She would not be Warwick’s chattel, to marry to whom he thought fit, not even for the grace of the God he invoked so confidently.
She was Elizabeth and none other.
In that moment she felt that not even her parents, not even the King and Queen could command her, bend her ferocious, adamantine will.
The nurse could beat her and the priests pray.
She was Elizabeth, who would not be bidden!
In that terrible moment of madness she had tried to tear the thick parchment across, had crumpled and ground it beneath her little shoe; all this under the company’s astonished gaze and her father’s mounting wrath.

Rising from the dais, he had shouted at her: ‘Dame, have you lost your wits?
Is this the way to treat a fair offer?
Earl Warwick …’

She had screamed back like an eelwife.
‘Warwick!
Pox take Warwick!
And you hate him yourself, my lord, for his treasonous talk against the Crown!’

Even Anthony, behind his father’s chair, had blanched, for there were several visiting Yorkist partisans in the Hall, dining in precarious amity.
Sir Richard’s face had turned the colour of Clary wine.

‘God’s Passion, is this the speech of my daughter?’
he cried.
‘Madame, go to your room.
Before this, I was not of a mind for you to marry Hugh, but by Christ, he shall have you now!
And may Our Lady give him grace to tame that temper!’

At that instant the grinning page had laughed out loud, through sheer nervousness.
Maddened further, she rounded on him and caught him a stinging blow across the cheek.
The boy, who was the son of one of King Henry’s courtiers and new to the Woodville household, set up a noise like a pig being butchered.
Two great hounds leaped roaring from under the table, and Sir Richard hurled his goblet across the chamber.
Only Jacquetta had remained calm.
Recalling the scene like a nightmare, Elizabeth realized that her mother had not spoken one word.

The Mass was over; she touched her lips to the Book.
The chaplain rose, and, followed by a hobble of aged chantry priests and the singing-boys, came down the nave.
She intercepted him in the porch.

‘Father, I wish to be professed as a nun,’ she said.
Her lips were trembling.
He looked at her not unkindly.
‘Nay, my daughter.’
He made to walk on.
She caught at his vestment and he looked down, surprised.

‘I am in earnest,’ she said softly.
Anything, rather than be used, be bidden.
Anything so long as she, Elizabeth, could choose.
In some convents life was, she believed, almost gay.
She would be admired by her sisters as the fairest nun in Christendom.

‘No, my child,’ repeated the chaplain.

‘You yourself said,’ cried Elizabeth, ‘that my soul was wayward.
For my soul’s good, Father, please …’

The chaplain smiled palely, twisted his gown from her grasp.

‘Your reasons are wrong, daughter,’ he said, as if he read her mind.
‘And do you consider yourself fit to be a Bride of Christ?’

The choir filed past.
Standing abjectly in the porch, she heard the chaplain say to an acolyte, ‘My lady is to wed Sir Hugh … by the Rood, Jack, this chalice needs scouring; ’tis foul with fingermarks …’

The nurse escorted Elizabeth back to her apartments, where she was in durance with no company but that of the baby sisters.
They had not allowed Anthony to visit her, and he was leaving that morning, bound again for the house of his patron in the south.
Since last evening she had set eyes on neither parent.
She sat down before her tapestry frame and began to work with short vicious needle-stabs.
Appropriately the picture was one of St.
Jerome lecturing some maidens.
Elizabeth pushed her needle through his eye.
Through the half-open window she could hear voices and the jingle of a bit as a horse tossed its head.
She stole a glance at Dame Joan; the woman was drowsing, oblivious of a summer fly crawling on her neck.
Elizabeth rose, crossed to the casement and pushed it wide.
In the courtyard below a few of the guard lounged, gossiping.
A saddled horse waited.
Anthony was within the house, making his farewells.
The few short sweet hours were over, unshared by her.
Again she cursed Earl Warwick’s insolence.
Hated Warwick!
the fault was his.
Warwick, powerful, remote, had, without even setting eyes on her, caused disappointment and grief.
Dispiritedly she leaned from the window and listened to the men talking.
Policy, of course, the old war-talk that bored her so; the familiar names: York, who last year had returned from Ireland ready to do battle with the royal House of Lancaster.
He had been pacified only by a seat on King Henry’s Council, and the King’s declaration of trust in him.
Beaufort of Somerset, under whose command her father had once been at Calais; true knight and liegeman of the King and especially of his Queen, Margaret.
Hated by York, for some reason, more than any other man.
Now they spoke of the Queen; the free, fortunate, beautiful Queen.