The King's Grey Mare (53 page)

‘Madame, don’t weep,’ she whispered.
‘I am sure my uncle of Gloucester will take good care of us.’

‘Oh, he will,’ sobbed Elizabeth.
‘On my soul, he will!’

That evening she walked into the hall at Baynard’s Castle with downcast eyes, primarily to retain her composure.
Were the truth known, she found the sudden warmth and noise and life of the court disturbing after the spectral peace of Sanctuary.
Even though there were only about a hundred sitting at table that evening, she felt their presence crowding her, their eyes vying with the thousand firefly candles and seeking her out.
The usher’s voice rebounded from the walls and the hammerbeam roof: ‘Dame Grey!
Grey!
Grey!’
Behind her, so close that she could feel Bess’s breath touching her bare neck, came the daughters.
The rustle of their new gowns, the hard little slither of their dancing shoes, sounded like a school of adders in stealthy progress.
From the corners of her eyes she caught the lazy movement of the White Boar bannner and the fidgeting of a page standing with his fellows against the wall.
About fifty of Richard’s Council were seated above the salt, whose great silver barrel divided nobles from relatives, henchmen, and hangers-on.
Trestles lapped in shining damask flowed past on either side her slow advance to the dais where King Richard sat with his Queen.

She had planned her most obsequious curtsey, thinking to inject mockery into the swept-back skirt, the crooked knee.
No sooner had she begun to bend to the throne than Richard rose and came to her on light hurried feet down the two steps; he took her hands, holding her up from the obeisance.
His thin grasp was cool and strong.
She dipped her mouth to his hand but his arms went about her.
He held her stiff, outraged body against him and spoke loudly over her head.

‘My lords and councillors!
I bid you give welcome heartily to our well-beloved Dame Elizabeth Grey!’

Was he the mocker now?
One insult, and she would turn and leave him to humiliation.
With her unwilling face grazing his soft velvet doublet she heard him bidding the court rise and salute her.
‘Drink, my friends!
to her who gave comfort to King Edward for many years.’
He released her then, enough to look at her, saying softly:

‘Your presence here gladdens me, Elizabeth,’ and would have said more but for the shudder of distaste she could not hide.
He whispered again, ‘Welcome,’ and she stared into his dark face.
The blue eyes were tired yet vital, but there were ageing marks of stress in his high-boned countenance.
She looked, past his dark head with the glittering diadem, to the dais, to her place for so many lost years.
Queen Anne was watching anxiously, twisting her hands above her damask napkin.
Mortal sickness lay upon her.
Her skin was so pale that the blood could almost be seen moving beneath it; on each cheek flew the dangerous bright flag of a wasting disease.

Elizabeth smiled faintly.
She raised her lips and gave to Richard a dry and dutiful kiss.
In contrast to his hands, his face burned.
His whole body was hard and tense and feverish.
She thought with sudden clarity: born under Mars, with the Scorpion rising.
Mars is burning him up, and the Scorpion will sting him to death.
She was instantly assuaged.

A place had been set for her at the top of the right-hand trestle.
From it she watched her daughters received in turn, saluted, and presented to the company.
Bess was first in line – weeping anew, Elizabeth noted angrily; weeping, casting herself into her uncle’s arms so that a pleased indulgent murmur arose from the Hall.
Elizabeth was uneasy.
For some reason unknown, save perhaps that he had coddled her when she was a child, Bess had always been fond of her uncle.
The girl’s face was hidden against his shoulder.
At any moment she might complain to him about the unwanted Tudor marriage … dare she?
Elizabeth half-rose, but the danger was past, Bess was leaving the dais while Richard embraced her younger sister, Cicely.

As the meal began Elizabeth wondered if it were a celebration – of her own capitulation?
A line of butlers served the company with roast swan; the carvers dismembered a dozen roasted oxen.
There were wines like liquid jewels, a syllabub covered with coils of spun sugar, and a great subtlety depicting in honied pastry and crystal fruits the Coming of Christ in Majesty.
Young Bess fell upon the food, eating until her small belly was as tight as a tabor.
Her sisters flirted and giggled with Richard’s younger henchmen.
Elizabeth stared down at her platter from which rose the smell of well-hung meat and herbs.
Famished yet nauseated, she could eat nothing.
Despite the concern of Sir Richard Ratcliffe who sat by her, she left all untouched, crumbling her bread-trencher, barely tasting her wine.
From a seat across the hall, Margaret Beaufort was trying vainly to catch her eye.
Let her wait, she thought.
I will make my peace in my own time.

For much of the banquet, and when the board had been cleared for entertainment, she watched Anne Neville.
Yes, death sat by her, she coughed and coughed and held her throat, her eyes bright with tears of anguish.
As the jugglers strutted, throwing up lighted brands, her colour worsened.
A woman came with a consort of viols and sang, piercingly sweet, of love and flowers and destiny.
Anne left the dais and slipped away; her physician followed close behind her.
The King forced a smile to his lips and looked away down the Hall.
Near him Bess, rosy with food, made careless by wine, raised her goblet in a gay salute.
Courteously he returned her gesture, while his anxious eyes reluctantly registered her youth, her health.
Like a small candle on a dark plain, a thought flickered in Elizabeth’s mind and she too smiled at Richard.
Across the Hall Margaret Beaufort whispered to Lord Stanley.
It was their turn to be uneasy.
Later when the guests were dispersing, Elizabeth approached the Duke of Norfolk.

‘I wish for an audience with his Grace,’ she said, trying to speak kindly.
She must bring out of retirement the silver tongue which had seduced Edward, were she to serve his brother likewise.

‘I will inquire,’ said Jack of Norfolk.
Serpent
.
The word hovered with him as he went away.
He loved Richard dearly but sometimes thought his actions unfathomable.

They brought her to him after a little while.
He was in his private apartments, writing at a table, with a great shaggy hound at his feet.
A grim old lady knelt before a prie-dieu in the corner.
Her raiment was crow-black and a great bunch of keys hung at her waist.
Proud Cis Plantagenet, mother of two kings.
She finished her prayer as Elizabeth entered.
She rattled her fingers down her rosary with a sound of skeletal menace, and stalked towards the door.

‘I shall retire now,’ she announced.
Richard got up.
The hound followed him to where the Duchess of York stood; it waved its long banner of a tail.

‘Good night, my son,’ Her gaunt face swivelled so that her eyes, deep hollows and black ageless fires, rested on Elizabeth.
‘Good night,’ she said again.
Still looking at Elizabeth: ‘May God protect you, Richard, through this night.’

Moving strongly like a black ship, the hound in her wake, she quit the room, and left behind a mood of grave disquiet.

‘Be seated, Elizabeth,’ Richard said.
He had a fair idea of why she had come, and did not delude himself that it was out of affection.
Her enmity had communicated itself plainly in that public embrace.
In nine months of power he had discovered that people can forgive much, but not the crime of being forgiven.
Magnanimity hurts.

‘It is a long time since I was here,’ she said, laughing nervously.
He bowed agreement; sitting, contemplatively turning his finger-rings.

‘I fear your lady wife the Queen is sick,’ she said next, and saw his face grow more haggard in the space of her words.
‘I have no doubt her doctors are skilled’ she went on, ‘but I have remedies, tried remedies, for evil of the breast.’

Take woodsage, horehound … It had not cured Marguerite!
Neither would it heal the Fiend’s daughter.

‘God grant that she will recover soon,’ she continued, and knew by his expression that he had already given up hope.
And the little candle of thought, lit while she watched Bess salute her uncle, smouldered and burnt up brightly.
How much better for Bess’s bridegroom to be already King!
No need to parry then with Tudor and his uncertain conquest … it would be satisfying, too, to hatch a plan without Morton’s knowledge.
To serve Richard as her own mother had served Edward – by seduction, witchery, the torments of temptation.
It was a thought to be mulled over very carefully.
Bess would be Queen of England by some means; Tudor was not the sole solution.

Richard said: ‘Madame, I am a little weary, and I must look to the Queen.
What is your desire?’

‘I came to thank you,’ she said, ‘for receiving me back into your grace and for the gifts to me and mine.
I am conscious of –’ it was hard to say, even in feigning – ‘of my transgressions against you in the past.
I hope these are forgotten out of your great generosity.’

His tired eyes brightened.
‘This is more than I hoped for,’ he said softly.
‘Elizabeth, believe me I spoke truly when I bade you welcome to my household.
I wish to live at peace.’

‘And I, Sire.’
Lids lowered, she smiled her little downward smile, not knowing that it was now a grotesque twitch, unnervingly without appeal.

‘I shall while I rule give you every comfort,’ he went on.
‘None shall harm or mistreat you.
Did Nesfield deliver my grant from the Privy Purse?’
She nodded.
He said: ‘And after my time is done, my son Edward will, at my decree, continue to cherish your children.
For God’s sake, let the next generation use one another more kindly than we have done!’

She exhaled a long sigh that wavered the candles in their sconces.
She raised eyes full of blue piteousness.

‘My lord, I must speak … you talk of your son and this grieves me.
Sire, I have sons also.
This is my request.’

He listened, the candlelight shuddering on his face.

‘May it please your Grace to receive back my son, Thomas Grey, Marquis of Dorset.
Would you permit him safe-conduct from France?’

It would be wonderful to have Tom near her again.
He would be so much more useful than kicking his heels in Henry Tudor’s camp.
He was the one prop and ally of her blood who was as close as Anthony … Anthony.
She felt her jaw tighten despite herself.
She heard the King’s quick answer.

‘Aye, gladly.
Write him tomorrow.
He will be welcome as you are.
Certes, bring Dorset home.
I harbour no grudges.
I will pardon him.’

She thought – how easy it all is!
Now for the last and most important gamble.
The pin on which all could hinge, if all else failed.

‘Your Grace is bountiful.’
He waited.
‘One more thing.
I am certain you have not forgotten the existence of – my other sons.
Edward and Richard, in the Tower of London.’

‘The Lords Bastard,’ he said instantly.

She bit her lip.
‘Yes.
I would dearly love to have my boys with me again.’
Once more, she looked down.

He was silent for a long time while a feeling of sour self-congratulation on his own wit crept over him.
For a few moments he had wondered whether he was wrong about Elizabeth’s purpose – now it seemed she had only been taking her time.
The knowledge that he had read her aright filled him none the less with disillusion.
Within him, a second Richard sneered at the first’s gullibility.
Overall he felt downcast, flattened.
He stared at the slender face opposite, willing her to raise her eyes that he might look and be confirmed in that which disappointed him.
As if so commanded, the veined white lids flickered upwards, revealing a glittering hardness of purpose which no loving smile could temper.

‘May it please your Grace?’
she repeated softly.

‘Nay, Madame,’ he heard himself say.
‘No.’
He saw the lit eyes dull like two doused fires.
He bent and stabbed with a poker at the green logs in the hearth, occupying himself until she should speak again, and thinking: Jesu!
we are but two actors in some tawdry play.
How often I have foreseen my part, and hers, and this moment.
In a blinding instant of clarity such as that experienced in high danger, he saw his own future spread before him like a plain on which grew bloody flowers.
A plain, ending in a sheer abyss frighteningly near.
The mystic vision appalled him.
He straightened abruptly from the fire and heard Elizabeth’s voice pathetically say: