The King's Grey Mare

by Jarman, Rosemary Hawley

  ‘Tis like the confessional!’ said Jacquetta, with a tinge of laughter. Elizabeth crept closer.

  ‘And truly I would beg forgiveness, Madame.’

  ‘Be still, Elizabeth.’ The strong white hand took hers, and mother and daughter sat silent for some minutes. In that clasp a force was born, communicating itself from the older woman to the younger. It was like the moments before a storm strikes, and there was in it also warmth, power, something so all-consuming that Elizabeth tried vainly to withdraw her hand.

  ‘Do you think,’ said the Duchess, ‘that I would have you wasted on any paltry Yorkist cur?’

  Light rippled on the water. The leaves shook themselves at the incredible words.

  ‘You did not come to me,’ said Jacquetta, ‘being content instead to rave in unseemly fashion at my lord, which put him in a passion I have taken all night to still. Yet stilled he is,’ with a tiny smile of triumph. ‘You have much to learn of the ways of men. Obstruct them with rough speech, rantings, and, like a hog’s bladder kicked by boys, they grow more resilient. Yet, apply a sweet pinprick, a loving word, a sigh, a tear, and you cause them to think, and think again, and grow womanly, and do your will.’

  She released Elizabeth’s hand, and uprooted a reed.

  ‘Or this, a better allegory-’ twisting and bending the stem brutally. ‘Force will not master this pliant reed. Yet – ’ splitting the green tip with sharp fingernails – ‘apply cunning, art – ’ the reed began to peel in layers – ‘some deviousness so slight ’tis scarcely there at all–’ the stem flaked, showed hollow – ‘and your adversary is undone. So it is with men, and policy, and love.’

  The hypnotic voice ceased. From the further shore of the lake there came the whirring of wings as a brace of wild duck rose and made for the freedom of the forest.

  ‘So they fly,’ murmured the Duchess, watching. ‘And so they escape the ennui of Grafton Regis. How fair the female is, with the sun on her wings!’

  She knows my every thought! marvelled Elizabeth. And, mother of mine though she is, I know her not at all. The past years had done little to bring them close. To Elizabeth, Jacquetta had been a distant, awesome figure, spending much time in Calais, London, Rouen, and almost yearly enceinte with another Woodville child. Jacquetta had seen the London court many times. Yet it was not she who had whetted Elizabeth’s fancy with tales of its glory; these had been gleaned from grooms, maidservants, and were often inaccurate. In all her fifteen years, Elizabeth had had only formal speech with her mother. The Duchess was talking again of Sir Hugh Johns.

  ‘The knight is pleasant enough,’ she admitted. ‘But his policies sour my stomach. No Yorkist shall have my daughter.’ Her pearly face was suddenly savage, then she laughed. ‘This day I will send word to the great lord Warwick declining his liegeman. Not even a King could gainsay me in matters of the heart! No upstart scion of York shall bid my blood!’

  Intrigued, Elizabeth slipped through the screen of willow to kneel at her mother’s feet. The Duchess studied the upturned face. So perfect was its symmetry that she looked, spellbound, for longer than it took for a white frill of cloud to drift across the sun, and for the light to return, blindingly gold. It shone upon Elizabeth’s broad brow, small full mouth and pointed chin. Her eyes reflected back the sky; her hair was silver and gold, utterly unreal in its beauty. By the saints, Jacquetta thought: she is fairer even than I was, and men would maim one another for a smile from me!

  She said: ‘It is time you knew my history. My life with Bedford was happy, almost to the time of his death, some sixteen years ago. I say almost; for, when Suffolk was my husband’s captain – (aye, Suffolk, butchered by Yorkists on Portsmouth strand two springs ago!) – I was with the army in France. Our captains were there, of course. There was one … ah, Jesu! it comes once in a lifetime.’

  The handsomest man in England,’ said Elizabeth.

  Jacquetta smiled. ‘Aye Sir Richard Woodville and none other. The first sight of him was like a strong blow to my heart. Thereafter came pain, the pain of partings. The pain,’ she said softly, ‘of loving, and of being bound to another man.’

  She lowered her voice even more.

  ‘I believe, Elizabeth, that strong desire can cut through destiny; that even the planets can be turned in their courses by thought; worlds shaken by it, consummation achieved. For … my lord of Bedford died.’

  She took Elizabeth’s hand again. Again the feeling of shattering power was born, and mounted.

  ‘There was no need thereafter to quell our longings, our hungers. There was no need for me to avoid Sir Richard’s eyes or run from his voice. He had been knighted by the child king Henry at Leicester, yet his lineage was not so high as my own. All the same, his was the face I had been born to look upon. It was the coup de foudre, the power and glory of the heart.

  ‘We were married full secretly, for my dower had been granted upon Bedford’s death by a patent of the King. I was pledged to do fealty to my uncle, the Bishop of Thérouanne, the King’s Chancellor in France. I was forbidden to marry without the King’s edict, given under the Great Seal of England. Yet soon I had no choice but to throw myself upon Henry’s mercy. I was great with you then, Bess. My uncle fumed and my brother, Louis of St. Pol, declared himself outraged by my disobedience. So I wooed the King. I besought him to extort whatever fine he wished, while my kinfolk railed at me. They threatened your father and me with all manner of punishment.

  ‘We were fined one thousand pounds. I smiled at the young reed of a King, I put him to my will. I knelt to Cardinal Beaufort, offered him my manor of Charleton Canville, and looked into his soul. He paid my fine; yea, gladly. Then your father was appointed to the royal commission of Chief Rider of the Forest of Saucy.’ She pointed. ‘Over there, Elizabeth, where your desires lately flew, in the guise of a wild duck!’

  Her gaze wandered across the lake. A fish jumped, suddenly silver.

  ‘You love the water, Elizabeth,’ said the Duchess, her voice changed. Closed within her hand, Elizabeth’s fingers felt a throb, a vibration that encompassed flesh and veins, striking at that which was hidden, and deep.

  ‘In all water,’ said the Duchess, ‘there are spirits. In all fountains, meres, rivers, the sea. One spirit above all. Omnipotent. We are part of her and she of us. You knew it,’ looking at Elizabeth with a fierce tenderness, ‘My blood runs in you, my wit and will are yours. My shameful secret, Elizabeth, you were once, carried within me through anger, and born triumphant. Now, my fairest, my eldest. My Melusine …’

  She was the Jacquetta of youth, burning-bright, all-powerful. Eyes closed, Elizabeth listened to slow, mystic words.

  ‘I am of the royal House of Luxembourg. I am of the blood of a water-fay, who ensnared Raymond of Poitou. Melusine met with Raymond by her home, the fountain in the forest; and took his wits away. She asked Raymond for as much of the land around the fountain as could be covered by a stag’s hide; she cut the hide into ten thousand strips so that her land extended far beyond the forest. There she built Lusignan. She bore Raymond children: Urian, with his one red and his one green eye; Gedes, of the scarlet countenance (for him she built the castle of Favent and the convent at Malliers); Gyot, of the uneven eyes (for him she built La Rochelle); Anthony, of the claws and long hair; a one-eyed son; and lastly, Geoffrey of the Tooth. He had a boar’s tusk.

  ‘She obtained an oath from her husband that she would be left alone each Saturday in strictest privacy. Raymond kept his word, though his courtiers swore that Melusine betrayed her lord with fiends. But one day he weakened and sought her out, deep in the heart of a lonely lake. There he saw that her nether parts were changed into the tail of a monstrous fish or serpent. He spoke to none of this, nor did Melusine betray that she had been discovered. One day, however, news came that Geoffrey of the Tooth had attacked the monastery of Malliers and burned it, putting to death his own brother and a hundred monks. So the house of Raymond rose against itself, and Raymond cried to his wife: ‘Away, odious se
rpent! Contaminator of my noble race!’

  ‘At this Melusine replied: ‘Farewell. I go, but I shall come again as a doom. Whenever one of us is to die, I shall weep most dolorously over the ramparts of Lusignan; whenever tragedy strikes a royal House, I shall do likewise.’ So she departed, after suckling once more her two youngest sons, holding them on the lap that owned scales shining like the moon.’

  Elizabeth opened her eyes. The Duchess said: ‘This, then, is our heritage. We can fear naught with this immortal ancestry. Raymond, like all men, was a fool. Melusine is our strength. She lives in us. She fortifies us. Receive her power. From the time I bore you in my womb, Elizabeth, I knew you would be a fit child of Melusine, and fair enough to grace the ramparts of Lusignan. It was all written, long ago.’

  ‘Two days hence, you and I will say farewell for a while.’

  Elizabeth, confused, said: ‘Madame, you are leaving us?’

  ‘Nay, it is you who will go. The time is full for you to visit the court. Queen Margaret will receive you into her service, she loves me well. Bear yourself discreetly; do the Queen’s will in all things. Now come, and beg your father’s pardon for last evening.’

  Joyful, amazed, Elizabeth followed her mother. A summer storm was rising, gathering light from the lake. The Duchess of Bedford moved on under luminous clouds. The water rippled obeisance to her light passing. Her face was like a mask, beautiful, with a beauty that was worn, and knowing, and strong and evil.

  My lady’s fair eyes

  Put Dame Venus to shame

  I drink to her name

  In mine own tears and sighs.

  I shrink from her scorn,

  Though ’tis sweet as her breath;

  Wellaway! I was born

  To a love sharp as death.

  The scrap of verse, as usual unsigned, had been concealed in Elizabeth’s dancing slipper. Reading it, she smiled impatiently; she knew from whom it came. Jocelyne de Hardwycke of Bolsover was constantly leaving such ditties in her path. She would find them tucked beneath her platter; they would flutter from her missal in the royal chapels of Westminster or Greenwich. These were the undying messages of courtly love, of which she had once dreamed so avidly, and which now, ironically, left her stifled with boredom. For Jocelyne only served to remind her of Grafton Regis, left far behind. Only a week after her arrival at court, she had looked up from her place at the board among Queen Margaret’s gentlewomen straight into the lovelorn eyes of her childhood neighbour. Mary have mercy! she thought, letting the note fall to the floor; I played Hoodman Blind with him when I was six years old! She continued the slow contemplation of her reflection in the polished oval of bronze. Her hair, as she sat, hung almost to the floor. She combed with long, languorous strokes; the silvery mass crackled like a hundred small fires. The Queen would soon be summoning her and the others to wait on her for the evening. Behind Elizabeth, there was whispering; from Ismania Lady Scales, with her long upper lip and snapping dark eyes; from the ladies Butler and Dacre, both pretty, with simpering, vacuous mouths. They disliked her, and she did not care. Margaret Ross was there also; kindly Meg, the arbiter in squabbles. Elizabeth combed and combed, while the hostile air in the chamber sang like a lute. Ismania’s face appeared, distorted by the mirror, behind her own.

  ‘Dame, we would like to complete our toilette,’ she said frigidly. Covertly Elizabeth watched her retrieve, and read, the dropped note. One of the ten little maids who were part of the Queen’s personal retinue stood near, holding a bowl of rosewater, and Ismania flung herself round to face the child.

  ‘By St. Denis! Renée! Do you know no better than to bring such as this into the chamber of virgins?’

  Renée had been bribed by Jocelyne to secrete the note. Elizabeth watched while the child’s eyes filled with tears. Ismania was the last to talk of virgins. Everyone knew that she had been jilted recently by a gentleman from Ireland and, desperate, had paid the herbman extortionately for a special receipt a fortnight ago.

  ‘Corrupt, vile trash!’ Ismania cried, tearing up the note. ‘It is surely meant for none here.’ She looked spitefully at Elizabeth’s straight, slender back. ‘Mayhap it is, though … I’ve heard that in Northamptonshire virtue hides in the pigsty.’

  Margaret Ross said, ‘Hush!’ and glanced anxiously at Elizabeth, who turned, smiling from the mirror and held out her hands to the bawling Renée.

  ‘Dry your eyes, chuck.’ Anger seethed within her like a hidden fiend, yet still she smiled. She pushed a dish of sugared violets towards the child. ‘Fill your purse, sweeting, and then you may put up my hair.’

  Renée crammed comfits into her mouth, knelt eagerly, gathering up the gilt fall of Elizabeth’s hair. Dexterously she set to coiling the shining mass and covered it with a heartshaped, horned cap waiting on its stand by the mirror. Elizabeth rose at last from the only chair in the room. Her dress was of scarlet sarcenet, billowing below a gold cincture. Tiny marguerites, the Queen’s device, were powdered on the skirt. The low bodice revealed a silken swell of flesh and the shadows between Elizabeth’s breasts. On her first finger she wore the pearl-and-ruby rose, a parting gift from Jacquetta of Bedford. A single jewel hung from the veiling at her forehead; her eyes blazed blue fire. Ismania glared like a gargoyle.

  ‘That is a most unseemly gown,’ said Lady Dacre in a voice of hoar-frost. ‘I beg you, Dame, raise the bodice a whit. The sight of all that flesh will turn me from my dinner!’

  ‘Nay, leave it be,’ said Ismania unexpectedly, and strangely agreeable. ‘It is rumoured that the King will dine tonight.’

  Elizabeth studied her ring, feeling uplifted. At last she would see the King, and not before time either, she thought. During the weeks she had been at court there had been that empty throne. She conjectured on the King’s appearance. He must be at least thirty, yet surely handsome. Was he not the son of Harry of Agincourt?

  ‘Where does the King go, these long whiles?’ she asked Margaret Ross. ‘To France? Ireland? Has he been negotiating about the war with York? What manner of man is he?’

  Lady Ross was bathing her large hands in rosewater. ‘The King is holy,’ she said quietly. ‘He knows naught of war. He has been to the shrine of Our Lady at Walsingham, and to Canterbury to gaze on the relics of blessed St. Thomas. As for his manner – you will see for yourself.’

  There was a tap on the door. The Queen’s page, Thomas Barnaby, was revealed.

  ‘Mesdames, her Grace commands your presence in her bower.’ Oddly smirking – ‘King Henry’s back.’ His eye travelled over Elizabeth’s tight bodice and the milky upswept bosom. He gave a whistle. ‘Ma foi! Dame Woodville might be well advised not to …’

  Ismania rose quickly. ‘Your pardon, Master Barnaby, but it grows late,’ she cried. Like a full-sailed carvel, she surged across the room and out of it. ‘Come, ladies!’ she called over her shoulder. They followed her to the next apartment, where the Queen sat under a canopy of blue cloth-of-gold. There, the women knelt to kiss her hand. When the turn of Elizabeth came, she raised the hem of Margaret’s gown to her lips in an especially gracious gesture.

  The bower was airy and well appointed, but in other parts of the Palace of Westminster the hangings were in tatters and the furniture broken with age. The court was poor. By now Elizabeth had heard tales of the Queen’s financial hardship. Although Margaret had come as a French princess to wed Henry of England, she had pawned her silver plate to buy food for her retinue on the journey through Mantes, Pontoise and Rouen. King Henry himself was in debt to the tune of ten thousand marks.

  Yet this evening Margaret of Anjou was dressed in all her available finery. She was small; the hand with which she beckoned the women from their knees was scarcely larger than a child’s and bore five heavy rings. Beneath a delicate diadem of fleur-de-lys gold, her fair hair hung free. From her purple mantle shone a broken mist of pearls. Pendent pearls wept on her sleeves and skirt forming a repeated motif of marguerites. In her mellow southern accent she greeted her ladi
es, while her small strong hand rested upon that of Elizabeth. She made no effort to conceal this mark of favour.

  ‘Bon soir, ma toute belle,’ she said. ‘Tu es ravissante ce soir.’

  Elizabeth tried a discreet compliment in return. Margaret laughed.

  ‘Moi’ she said. ‘C’est vanite!’ – disparaging her own beauty as a man might mock his certain vigour. Her face glowed. Elizabeth thought, romantically: Love for her returning lord illumines her.

  ‘Dame Isabella–’ still she addressed Elizabeth. ‘This is your courtly name, and so we shall call you.’

  She looked at the hand, with its one bright jewel, in hers. ‘So! My pearl and ruby, which I gave to your mother, returns to court! La sage Jacquette served me well. Will you be as loyal, Isabella?’

  ‘Always, Madame.’ Elizabeth heard a tiny hiss of chagrin from Ismania standing behind her, and tried to check a smile.

  ‘Ah, you laugh!’ said the Queen. ‘Doucette, I fear you are too gay for this dull court. We must find you a husband. Now, where is there a knight fittingly endowed for Isabella?’

  Though the Queen spoke teasingly, Elizabeth’s spirits fell. Sir Hugh Johns was now wed to a stout wealthy lady named Maud, but there could be others as glum and tiresome as he.

  ‘I have seen Jocelyne de Hardwycke at Mass,’ pursued Queen Margaret. ‘At no time does he follow the holy writ; his eyes wander over to what he deems earthly Paradise. He is well-purveyed of lands, and the Stag, his father, grows old …’

  ‘Madame, I pray you,’ said Elizabeth, disturbed. ‘Jocelyne pays court to all. He loves only love!’