The King's Grey Mare (65 page)

‘Whom do you seek?
I know them all.’

‘William Gould.’

He flourished, rose weightlessly from the ground as if bound for the sky, clapped his heels and alighting, bowed again.
He was one of the highest paid entertainers in London, but he liked Grace on sight, and grudged her none of his performance.

‘There,
doña
!’
It was one of the larger shops.
The entrance was dark with sides of beef.
The second storey projected far into the street, and had ornately carved pentices.
Grace turned to thank the Moor but he and his pet were gone, had faded instantly, almost into another dimension.
She approached the shop, seeing that outside hung the Sun in Splendour, as if King Edward were still alive.
Gould had insisted on this, and so far none had forced him to take it down.
The butcher appeared in the doorway.
He had seen Salazar, and hoped that he came to command a big order.
Although disappointed, he gave fair greeting to Grace.
Introducing herself, she spoke of Lord Stanley.

‘So, my lady,’ said Gould, impressed.
‘You are perhaps a servant of the Countess of Richmond?’

She let it pass.
The butcher remained cordial until she told him why she had come.
A terrible change assailed his face and he came out of the shop so that he might spit lawfully.
He said, thunderously, that he could take no message, wanted no part of the errand, and she argued with him, finding within herself undreamed-of resources.

‘He
is
here, though,’ she said eventually.

‘Aye.
The murderer’s son is here.
God rot him.
Only at his Majesty’s pleasure do I have him under my roof.
‘Tis none of my wish.’
And then he stopped, said: ‘You are his friend?’
Grace answered painfully: ‘His acquaintance.’
Gould spat again, and said: ‘Go up.’

She threaded through bleeding carcasses, and the green birds hung head down and beautiful in death.
The butcher waved his gaping prentices aside so that she might pass by the counter to the black studded door that led aloft.
‘Have caution, mistress,’ he said sourly.
‘That one has the devil’s temper, but as he came from the devil, who can question it?’
He opened the stair door for her, and shut it, so that she was closeted in narrow blackness with a chink of light showing from under another door above.
She heard her own breathing, loud and sickly, hemming her in.
She lifted her skirt and ascended, knocked and waited, and then the loudest sound in that tomblike space was her own heart, over the rumbling gnaw of the rats.

John opened.
As if he had lately been asleep, he was pale and shivering.
When he saw her face he made to bang the door swiftly upon it, but like a weasel she nipped inside leaving a shred of her cloak caught by the draught of his vehemence.
So she was in his poor and sordid room, with the bed unmade and the shutters half-open, through which came the stench of offal and slaughter, enhancing that of his own desperate grief.
Once she was inside he was not angry: his face was closed like a Sunday shop.

‘My lord.’
He was still so designated, although his Captaincy of Calais had been taken from him.
He was the son of a king, as she was the daughter of one.
He should not dismiss her today without a fair hearing.
Determined, she struck deep and fearfully into the matter’s heart.

‘My lord, it is more than four months since Bosworth Field.’

‘My father is dead.’
He did not weep now, only repeated it like a dreadful nervous gesticulation.
He walked to the window, pushing the shutter apart.
He looked down on the coiling mass of men and women at market.
On the corner Salazar was giving a free dance and making his monkey juggle two silver coins.
Black Salazar, saying a Spanish prayer under his breath for an unknown maid, whose looks he liked.

‘John.’
She grew nervous, speaking his name.
She had the wit not to call him by any of the endearments that had come to them both, among the flowers, in all their transient meetings.
‘Listen to me.’
He half-turned from the window, and again she saw his resemblance to the dead King; the sombre eyes, arrogant nose and thin lips.
His looks made him a danger to himself.
At court, the Tudors would think they came face to face with a ghost, and question their victory … No wonder he lived in these deep-hidden surroundings.
Elizabeth, too: would the sight of him strike up old rancours?
This was an unbearable thought; the two people she loved best were mortal enemies.
She saw that his hands shook, although he held them hard against his sides.
She longed to take his hands to her heart.
His fine linen shirt was crumpled and soiled; she longed to make it fresh and fair.
Yet there was an extravagance in his attitude; he needed only a smear of ash on his brow, and this emboldened her.
She said again, steadily:

‘Four moons since the battle, my lord.
You cannot grieve forever.’

He turned fully, and his face filled her with awe.
It said: I can.
I do.
I will.

‘You are unwell, John,’ she said gently.
‘Have you food?’

He smiled his awful, remembered smile.
‘Why?
You are hungry?
You see, I have become a hermit and barbarous; My servants will attend you.’
He stepped towards the door.

‘Your servants?’

‘Gould’s prentices; they wait on me if I call loudly enough.
Surly, greasy slovens … no!
My father loved the common people.
Much good did it do him,’ he said savagely.

Now she remembered what she had to say.
‘John!
Kings have died before.
Many have died.
It is a part of life; to the strong, the victory …’

He crossed to her and stood so close that their bodies almost touched.
His face was masked by loathing, and his lips were white.

‘Christ’s Passion!’
he said softly.
‘Of what do you prate, lady?
You, who know naught of true princes, or of courage or of despair?
The Tudor had no strength.
His paid assassins, though sworn men of my father’s, did that bloody, day all that was needful.
Stanley and his brother – there’s a special corner of Hell for them!
Northumberland, who jealousy held his hand back from the fight until it was too late.
And the others, devils every one, whose poisoned minds kept them from my father’s side.’

He spoke then of the battle, quoting the witnessed account given to him by Sir William Stonor, who, wounded ands broken, called at Sheriff Hutton on his way to York.
He recounted, word for word, the tale that had almost stripped him of sanity and still haunted his heart.

‘…he would have killed Tudor; he was so near.
Then Stanley made a flank attack, and the Household, a hundred against two thousand, was shattered, destroyed.
Some of the Tudor’s men were the gaol delivery from France, desperate villains pardoned so that they might murder the King of England.
Chivalry died that day.
And the betrayal in battle was the noblest part!’

He swallowed hard, and said:

‘They stripped my father and threw him across a mule.
They spat on him and struck him even in death.
They brought him back, naked through Leicester with a rope about his neck, a rope such as common felons wear.
Crossing the bridge, the mule ran amok and broke my father’s hanging head upon the wall.
With knives they dishonoured his poor flesh … No more, mistress.
Go away.’

He was again at the window, darkly silhouetted.
Grace sat down upon the tossed and tearstained bed.
Twice she tried to speak and failed.
Then a whisper emerged.

‘Before God, I did not know of this.’

‘Yes, you did,’ he said, quite calmly.
‘If you live close to the witch, you knew it all.’

Like a blinding blow, remembrance came.
She had witnessed Elizabeth, crazed by Richard’s rejection of Bess, saying:
Let him be killed with ignominy.
Let him be reviled.
Do this, Stanley, in remembrance of me
.
And Stanley’s answer:
It is done, Madame
.

The tired, monotonous voice went on.

‘Tudor gave him no grave, no kingly interment.
He lay in Leicester’s Swinemarket for three days while the flies and the buzzards drank at his wounds and the people came to curse him.
Poor naked wretch!’

He made a queer sound, half laugh, half sob.

‘Where…’ said Grace.

‘Where does he lie now?
A nun, whose place is sure in Paradise, came and took him away.
She and her sisters buried him in their mean and holy house, and bought Masses for him.
These were women!
Shaped in the same wise as your mistress, and as remote from her as dove from serpent.
Yes.’
He turned a little towards her.
‘Bear back this news, that Richard lies easy.
Watch Woodville frown.
She cannot touch him now.’

Grace’s fingers found the red-eyed ring.
Slowly she pulled it off and held it in her palm.

Again John came to stand before her.
His eyes were deeply sunken, as if weeping had drained them dry.

‘Did you not know she was evil?’
he said quite gently.
‘She is the canker in the rose, the scourge of dynasties.
Men have died for her; men have died through her.
Before our time, there was the fierce Queen Margaret.
Men said she was of Hell, but beside her handmaid, Elizabeth, she was saintly.
Weigh my words, and before you run back to your mistress shed a tear.
For England and Plantagenet; their curse is accomplished.’

She was silent.
She extended her palm where the ruby glowed.
He looked down at it.

‘Would to God things had been otherwise,’ he said.
‘Why were you not born a milkmaid or a tapwench, someone apart from the court?
Like that poor maid who guided me when when I wept.
I would have loved you as well.
Why were you destined to serve my enemy?’

And she knew he was giving her the chance to denounce Elizabeth, to join him in vilification.
Wearily, she bowed her head.

‘I do not know,’ she said.
‘Who can measure destiny?
I love you, John.
And I love Elizabeth.’

‘Despite all?
Why?’

She looked at him again.
‘Would that I could tell you.
Perhaps … because I am her one advocate in all the world!’

‘Whom she does not deserve,’ he said grimly.

‘I have always loved her.
I have always been loyal.
If I miscall her now, I betray my own loyalty.’

‘What is loyalty?’
he said slowly.

‘Your father’s
raison
.’
Her eyes were dry.
If she must look her last on him; let it be clearly.
‘Loyalty binds me.
He never swerved.
When he had time to talk to me, my father King Edward, used to tell me of this.’

She took the ring, placing it on the carved windowsill between the shutters; it caught the sun, being bright as new blood, with rays of light making it a star.

‘Farewell,’ she said.
‘I sorrow for you, and love you.
You need not see my face again.’

As if she walked through water, she crossed the boards of the small and dusty room.
Faintness caught her for a moment; she touched the bedpost for support.
Farewell, kiss; farewell, unknown joy.
This little death has dignity.

‘O Christ!
I want to die!’

His voice impaled her.
She turned and saw him on his knees at the window, the ruby clutched in his hand.
His head was bowed, resting on the sill.
He trembled so much that one of the shutters, unlatched, swung to with a crash.
So she came back to his side, and touched his slender, shaking back, and tried to raise him, but he had deadly heaviness so she knelt with him, and for the first time in months, laid her hand on his and touched his burning face, and kissed him.
He whispered: ‘Don’t …’ and no more.