The King's Grey Mare (51 page)

‘Excuse you for what, mistress?’
he said softly.
For being happy?’
At his elbow Lord Stanley said: ‘such truth, highness!’
Stanley and his brother Sir William were very near, proper and subservient, falling over each other to do the royal bidding.
Richard motioned to John and Grace to rise, and suddenly, painfully, he saw them as himself and Anne, standing handclasped in the green-gold day.
So long ago.
Now Anne was ill, trying to gather strength for the progress and unable to join him even for this brief hour of pleasure.
He said abruptly:

‘We ride for Westminster now.
John, I trust you will be ready for tomorrow?’

‘Yes, Sire,’ John said eagerly.
‘It will be wonderful.’

Richard inclined his head, thinking.
Yes, by God’s mercy, it will.
I shall see York, and my little prince again.
I pray Anne will stand the journey, and that Buckingham’s temper will improve.
There was something amiss with him – an arrant insolence, an ill-covered fermenting of – what?
He was almost like a cardplayer who has presented the wrong suit and regrets a better ploy.
The King turned his horse.
Its pelt flamed white in the sun; its rider’s cloak made a purple swirl about the saddle.

‘God be with you, mistress,’ he said to Grace.
To a page: ‘Escort and assist her.’

They rode away, in a leaping gallop through the high grass.
Lord Stanley’s mount switched its quarters from side to side, avoiding rabbit-holes.
John took Grace’s hands and kissed them solemnly.

‘I must follow him.
Sweet Jesu Christ keep you always, dearest, dearest mistress.’

She turned from him, from the future Captain of Calais, from the adventurer to be, thinking dully: Why do they sing of love so, if it’s as sad as this?
Then she felt his arms pulling her to him, a rain of kisses on her face.
The next moment he was in the saddle, spurring so that his mount leaped forward in a cloud of petals and the seeds of grass.
He was soon diminished; at the edge of the meadow he waved violently before merging with the King’s train.
Grace murmured to herself:

‘Of all the pains that ever I knew

It is the pain that most I rue.’

and found no comfort in it.

As the chariot bearing Bishop Morton through the night skirted St.
Albans, the rain began again.
A solid fall of black water descended as if someone had emptied a pail from the sky.
Frightening in its vehemence, the torrent thundered on the wooden roof of the litter, startling the horses and extinguishing the frail lanterns.
Morton lifted the sodden curtain and peered out into the murk.
He absently murmured a curse, withdrawing it next minute, for in one way the foul weather was a blessing.
Few would brave such a tempest to hunt the Bishop down, fugitive and renegade though he was.
The King’s men would not look for him tonight and any vigilantes among the people would be busy mending their roofs.
Such nights as this had ruined the plans of a month ago; a torrent had fallen ever since Buckingham had engineered the rebellion and Morton had been permitted to escape.
Folk were already calling it the year of the Great Water.
He sank back on damp cushions and pulled his fur closer, stroking the collar as if it were a docile beast.
If the roads were not too foul they would reach their destination in a few hours.
Morton’s hand, blue with cold, left his collar and caressed the icy gold chain at his breast.
Calmly he listened to the curses of the drivers, flogging the horses through thick mud.
These men would not fail him – he had paid them handsomely.
He had paid Buckingham too – with lies and promises and flattery, although Buckingham had proved, to say the least, unfortunate.
He lay now in October clay, headless, with his right hand fashionably struck off to mark his treason against King Richard.

For Morton, this journey was a necessary madness.
The Dragon himself had warned him to take care.
‘Remember, my lord, I shall need a Cardinal Archbishop!’
smiling that swift glassy smile, pressing Morton’s hand in his skinny nervous fingers.
Yet implicit in that warning had been a command to accomplish what was necessary.
The last campaign against that ageing, impetuous Woodville.
The final dangling of the mammet.
‘I will see her dance,’ he muttered to himself.
A jet of rain through the storm-tossed curtain soaked his robe.
He leaned and shouted to the drivers: ‘How goes it?
There’s a bridge ahead, if my memory serves,’ and received back the eldritch cry: ‘Rest easy, my lord!
We’ll have you there by midnight!’

He had said a Mass for Buckingham; the poor fool gone to his end not knowing that he was only a catspaw in a game of such magnitude that death was an integral, even a necessary part of it, like the blood-sacrifice laid beneath the walls of a great abbey; the founding of a dynasty.
Morton put his long blue hands together and prayed: ‘Let me live for many years.
Let me laugh in secret, and don the Cardinal’s hat that Richard Plantagenet would now never give me.
Let me retrieve the schemes ruined by Hastings’s bungling and Buckingham’s ill-luck.
O Thou, whoever and whatever.
Thou art, let me live!’
Wind battered rain against the carriage, rippling the curtain and spraying the Bishop with pungent filth.

‘The pity of it is, I need her,’ he said to himself of Elizabeth while the chariot ploughed lurching on.
The Dragon had stipulated his price.
And certainly there was sense in it.
Sir Edward Woodville, with his stolen fleet, had been of great value, lying ready in the Channel and still ready … Despite the rough ride, Morton slept a little.
He dreamed he was eating strawberries at Brecon with Buckingham who had received a secret bill in a pig’s trotter; a letter that touched fire to his spleen and made him pliant, ready for rebellion.
Morton breathed on the flame.
‘Harry, such ingratitude!
After all your loyalty!
What recompense!
But there is one who would not use you so, one who recognizes a good heart.’
Buckingham’s bright eyes were thoughtful, his bent head listened.

‘Sheen, my lord!’

Morton woke up, looked out of the carriage.
A light in a tower flickered ahead, a light half-hidden by drenching rain.
They were making good time.
Stretching his shivering limbs, he wondered how Dorset was.
He had hoped originally that Tom might come from his refuge in France to uphold the Dragon’s invasion.
Since that invasion had proved abortive, the Woodville’s son had been, in the event, wise.
The litter rolled on through the long wet night.
It had been a tortuous journey from Ely; Ely, that cowed diocese that did and was as Morton bade it.
Soon he would be in Westminster Sanctuary.
He felt for the friar’s habit rolled up under his feet; it would soon be time to don the disguise.
Shameful?
With such a stake?
He smiled.
Never.
With laboured, mudsucking breath the sodden horses ploughed north of Sheen and he caught the first sound of the Thames.
He reached down and lifted the friar’s mantle.

At Westminster the river had risen, nearly lapping the Sanctuary door.
The Bishop’s thunderous knock resounded against a carillon of rain from the gushing gargoyles.
He was admitted at once.
Despite the friar’s habit, the brothers knew him, and Abbot Milling was afraid, lost long ago in the deep waters of conspiracy.
The Bishop went in and left a trail of mud along the cloister; he stood dripping while Elizabeth was roused.
In the chamber where he waited, a fire still burned in the hearth; a miserable half-dead flicker.
He extended his wet foot to it, and was standing thus when Elizabeth entered.
Hands clasped inside the sleeves of her gown, she walked towards him.
A little shiver ran over her body.

‘
Domine vobiscum
,’ he said, and threw back his hood.
He lowered his hand for her salute, and felt her icy lips on his fingers.

‘So you have come at last.
My lord–’ some irony in her tone amused him – ‘how was your stay in prison?’

‘Comfortable.
I was protected from storms such as these.
Such a night!’

‘Buckingham let you escape?’

‘Ah, Buckingham!’
He crossed himself.
‘He left this world in a vile humour, cursing the King, cursing me, and cursing you, Madame.
He cursed you on the scaffold, for sowing the seed of his revolt.
That letter your sister wrote ‘– those were your sentiments, not hers.’

He saw her face whiten: ‘Where is the letter now?
If Buckingham cursed me, then I curse him.
For his failure to overthrow the usurper and bring back my sons.
What incubus thwarted this latest plan?’

‘The weather,’ said Morton coolly.
He bent to feed the sullen fire with a branch.
‘The bridges were down, the passes sealed off by storm and Gloucester’s armies.
As for the letter – do not fear implication this time.
I myself saw it burn.’

She was able to smile.
‘My lord, I misjudged you.’

He moved to grasp the moment.
‘You did not trust my doctor friend.
You asked for me in person and here I am, come through a night of devils, Madame.’
He watched the hem of his robe steam.
During a summer of frustration he had aged somewhat; the blue-white skin hung in folded dewlaps at his throat and eyes.
He felt a hand upon his damp sleeve.

‘My lord,’ she said, ‘how can you help me?’

‘Shall we be seated?’
he said gently.
They sat on either side of the fire which shifted, revealing deep red caves, a grey abyss edged with white, a falling tree, a withered serpent.
The night grew close and secret about them.

He said: ‘There is one whom you would destroy?’

Wariness sprang again in her.
Margaret Beaufort had often spoken thus to her, with wisdom and provocative confidence, and where was Margaret now?
She let the Bishop answer for her.

‘King Richard,’ he said, and jetted his spittle into the ashes.

‘An anointed king,’ she said, without expression, and waited.

‘To be ruined and vanquished by you.’

Instantly she was convinced that he was a
provocateur
and said stiffly: You think too highly of my power.
I am a poor widow.’
The tears would come at a thought – no need, these days, for feigning.

‘
Madame
!’
said Morton with a deep and withering smile ‘let us, for Jesu’s love, be plain.
Have you not been death’s instrument, more than once?
Have I not been witness to your deeds?’

She was silent.
The fire settled itself.
A little blaze built up, like Hell-Mouth, in a tunnel.

‘Lady,’ said the Bishop softly, ‘God forbid, I should judge you.
You have been sorely tried.’

She lifted her eyes and looked at him directly.

‘Richard of Gloucester is young, and a great warrior.
He has a certain reputation.
You may kill an old man, but not a King like the usurper.
Like the Hog!’
she said violently.

‘Yes, the Boar, the Hog,’ the soft hypnotic voice agreed.
Morton looked disgustedly about him.
‘Devil damn me, this is no place for you!
Have I not said you will dance again in Westminster?’

‘What is the price of this solution?’
she said, surprisingly sharp and cool.

‘Your eldest daughter, the Lady Bess.
In marriage to Henry Tudor.’

She gasped, her brow wrinkled.
‘Tudor!’
she said incredulously.

Morton said: ‘He will be King of England, at my guess, within a twelvemonth.
Your daughter will be Queen, and you Queen-Dowager, with all the pomp and pride you wish.
I will help you to a height.
Henry Tudor will invade …’

‘With what?
Who will follow him?’

‘Tudor will conquer with the aid of your forces.
Immured in Sanctuary as you are, have you not realized that all of Lancaster is now for Tudor?
Sir Edward Woodville’s fleet still runs free, with all the treasure amassed by your son Dorset.
It is enough to pay for another invasion.
There are men in France and Brittany willing to spill English blood for Tudor; Lord Stanley will …’