The King's Grey Mare

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by Jarman, Rosemary Hawley


  Dressed in her furs, Elizabeth met her household at the steps of the watergate. Through the archway rain fell in drifting spears and the wind moaned up the slime-green stairs leading to the river. A handful of men held torches high, and the flames billowed and swirled with a ghastly leaping light. A flurry of wet dead leaves, blown by a far-off gale, slapped against the portcullis. Agitated by tempest, the swollen river flowed by, black, then red in the cressets’ glare. Frightened, the nurse, Lady Berners, was fussing over her three fair-haired charges: Elizabeth, in her fifth year the replica of her father, Mary, a year younger, and eighteen-month-old Cicely. The gentlewomen wore an odd assortment of garments hastily donned, and were shivering with cold and fear. Margaret Cobbe, the midwife, had her little coffer of medicines firmly beneath her arm. Renée was still sobbing. Elizabeth said sharply:

  ‘My mother! Where is the Duchess of Bedford?’

  ‘Here, my liege.’ Two more women were supporting Jacquetta along the narrow way. She came like a brittle-winged black bird. The wind tugged her widow’s veil, and blew it aside, revealing the crudely rouged cheeks, the vacant stare. Elizabeth set her foot upon the slippery step while the torchbearers milled about her, whispering: ‘For God’s love, Madame, take care!’ their hands trembling protectively about her cumbrous body. She had begun the descent when there was a cry from Renée.

  ‘My liege, wait! We have forgotten someone!’

  She stopped, half-turned. The esquires saw her shudder and marked it down to the cold. Oh, Renée, Renée, she thought. I had hoped that none would notice. How the past follows us! One of the men was already running back to the nursery.

  ‘Oh, my liege,’ said Renée, laughing and crying. ‘We had forgotten Mistress Grace!’

  The man returned after a moment. He held a drowsy baby girl clasped against his mud-splashed doublet. Secretly he hoped the Queen might reward him – with a coin, or even a smile – for saving the bastard daughter of King Edward; the child by whom all seemed to set such store; this flaxen mite, who shared the princesses’ nursery. But the Queen gave no sign of approval. She looked down once at the yawning infant, drew her furs about her and proceeded down to the waiting boat.

  ‘Rest easy, little maid,’ said the esquire kindly. He had six sons and longed for a daughter.

  As they rocked on the black water, Elizabeth sat stonily withdrawn. On either bank cressets flamed eerily as Warwick’s advance guard entered the City; she saw them, but paid little heed. The cold reproachful wind tossed the dark river around their small craft. Mary was crying, and Jacquetta of Bedford muttered to herself. Elizabeth heard neither of them. Her mind was filled with Edward’s angry voice, two years ago, in the chamber with the white roses and the damning grief.

  ‘I go to spend my time with a lady who is kinder than you. And should I get a child upon her … it shall be a reminder of your evil work this day! Oh Desmond, Desmond …’

  As Westminster Sanctuary loomed ahead, dimly lit by monkish tapers, the Queen glanced down once more at the living token of her guilt. And Mistress Grace, seeing only beauty, stretched out her arms and smiled.

  Lancaster! Lancaster!

  The name was carried in the beating hoofs, in the hiss of the rain, in the rattle of spur and bridle and arms, as the Earl of Warwick, flanked by a score of harnessed men, rode on London. And he recalled how in his youth, among the fresh winds of Yorkshire, the toast had always been: ‘Death to Lancaster!’ Now Lancaster was his buckler and battle-cry; it jangled sickly in his ears. The outriders growled it, like a talisman to ward off ill. Warwick rode for Lancaster and yet he rode for England, and at an unthinkable price. Memory rose like bile. As the miles swept by – dull, damp November roads treacherous with leaves – he was back, in thought, at Angers, in high summer. There and then, he had wrought the impossible, for England’s good name. He, whom they once called ‘le conduiseur du royaume’ had grovelled like the meanest cur. To a woman!

  Blood sprayed from his rowels; his horse shrieked and went faster. Riding mechanically, he saw again that French council chamber with its effeminate furnishings: fanciful tapestries, curlicued window-frames. The sun brightened the rich blue and green of the carpet. He had had time to study that carpet minutely, kneeling on it for the best part of an hour before a woman whom he hated more than any other. Save Isabella Woodville, who by her guile had brought him to this.

  He knelt before Margaret of Anjou; she who had ridden with fire through England, who had set his own father Salisbury’s head on Micklegate. To Margaret, whom he had denounced publicly all those years earlier, he sued for aid. She was his only hope, with her French troops and King Louis (the wily old spider, hand-rubbing upon the dais) ready to uphold his kinswoman in any overthrow of England. Warwick had always found Louis’s attentions flattering and it doubled his humiliation that Louis had to witness this sickening confrontation. Yet he, with his long Valois nose for intrigue, had engineered the meeting.

  At first Margaret would not speak at all. Her eyes were two cold flames, gazing somewhere rapt and lost. Warwick was null; an entity so loathsome that he had ceased to exist. Yet he persisted; he had rehearsed a speech until it was a second skin on his tongue. A classic paean in which he abjured all his past insults against the Frenchwoman. He debased himself absolutely yet left room for his usefulness to be gauged. He had been careful to ride to Angers escorted by sumptuously armoured men. During his plea, while Margaret stared stonily away, he drew his sword and laid it symbolically before her. To all this he added a soupçon of flattery; flattery in truth, for Margaret’s beauty was much diminished. At last, one flicker in her eyes showed her resignation to the hideous fact that she and Warwick needed one another.

  While Louis, like a pander, washed dry hands and quirked his lip, Margaret deigned to address her old enemy. She berated him in a hoarse and searing voice, opening old wounds – the death of Suffolk, Clifford, Northumberland, and Beaufort of Somerset. He was amazed at her long memory. He knelt abjectly; the carpet’s green and blue merged, shimmered. No fury like a woman’s, he thought, and was himself angry, his thoughts turning again to the one responsible; the Woodville witch. Sweat trickled down inside his shirt. There was a grinding in his vitals, a constant discomfort around his middle which he had had for a long time and grown used to; this day, however, long kneeling and tension made it unbearable.

  His witch-hunter, Thomas Wake, had mentioned waxen images, had repeated the description given him by one of the Sewardsley nuns. No trace of them remained, however, and Wake had seen no physical proof. As for the nuns, they were all under a terrible penance imposed by their bullying Abbess; they could speak to none. He thought: God’s Blood! – as Margaret’s ranting voice continued – I would fain have seen those Woodville women brought down; the old one walking the streets with a taper, and the other … the red lips, the sinuousness, the unjust, unholy power of her! Her image wound about him like a doom. Margaret was coughing, a rough draining sound. Beaufort of Somerset the younger stepped forward with wine, and Warwick raised his eyes.

  Margaret gulped, taking wine like a man, wrist stiff. She said: ‘I have listened. Your words stink in my nostrils. Non! Jamais!’

  Warwick said, douce as a maiden: ‘Most noble Queen of Heaven …’ and she turned, white with fury to Louis.

  ‘Hear how the dog mocks me!’

  ‘It will not hurt to hear him further,’ soothed Louis. He found Margaret’s histrionics irksome; he had housed and fed her for months and now hoped for some recompense.

  ‘Madame, I come in peace,’ said Warwick simply. ‘Join forces with me and return with an army. I will help you to claim the throne of England for–’ reverently – ‘your sacred son.’

  A long silence followed. Hope trembled within him. Then Margaret said:

  ‘My son. My prince. Whom you called bastard!’

  ‘Your son, the Prince of Wales by right,’ said Warwick. ‘His father, noble Henry, lies now in the Tower sorrowing for you.’

  Louis i
nterposed. ‘To me, the scheme sounds fair. With French and English force, the realm could be snatched from Edward of March. French troops in the majority, though, monsieur. We would not wish for another debacle, as when Englishmen refused to follow …’

  Warwick coloured at the barb, controlled himself. He said sagely: ‘True, mon roi.’

  Margaret was waspish. ‘My lord Warwick, you are a traitor. Once you upheld Edward of March; how do I know you will not betray me?’

  He said steadily and with truth: ‘Yes, Madame. I loved Ned of March, and gave him my heart’s loyalty. That was before he was ruined by his Queen.’

  ‘Ha!’ said Margaret, savagely amused. ‘Isabella! I doted on the child. She rose high.’ The amusement faded. ‘She usurped my own estate!’

  ‘She did, ma, reine,’ agreed Warwick. ‘And now she and her family are no more than night-thieves. They rob, degrade, murder. They must be dispossessed.’ His voice shook.

  ‘I do not trouble over which of your barons is robbed or which rewarded,’ said the Frenchwoman icily. ‘My concern is for my son.’ Her voice grew unrecognizably soft. ‘Le Cygne d’Argent … La Fleur d’Anjou!’

  God, let us make an end, thought Warwick; she rambles of silver swans and flowers. He said stoutly: ‘The throne is promised to Edward of Lancaster, your son, Madame.’

  He fancied she weakened, and again his hope built. ‘Well, Madame?’

  ‘Clarence!’ she spat the word. ‘What of his claim?’

  Inwardly he sighed. She knew all. It had been folly, the way he had used Clarence, giving him Isabel, promising him the throne once Edward was deposed. But Clarence could be bribed, blinded with words, fobbed off.

  ‘There is no other heir,’ he assured Margaret. ‘Only your son, Edward of Lancaster.’

  ‘Vraiment.’ Then she shook her head. ‘I mistrust you, my lord. You will betray me.’

  ‘Madame–’ he had this last hurdle already breached – ‘I can make surety against that. Let your prince marry my youngest daughter, Anne. Then if I play you false, I butcher my own line!’

  The Queen burst into ugly laughter. With renewed venom she beat Warwick with words. She would as lief marry her prince to a pig than to Anne Neville, who was unfit to tie the points of his hose, whose blood was scullions’ blood compared to that of the Swan, the Flower. He thought: Margaret of Anjou is mad; a different malady from that of Henry her husband; but mad none the less.

  ‘Ma reine,’ he said patiently, ‘the lady Anne and your son are all slips from the same tree. Are we not all descended from the great Edward Third?’

  For a further hour they wrangled. Even Louis’s wily calm was tried by their arguments. A distraction was provided in the form of Edward of Lancaster himself. He entered with a train of foppish noblemen. He wore blood-coloured satin and looked older than his seventeen years. Strong and slender, with hard eyes; a warlike mien, Warwick thought approvingly.

  ‘I shall give the Prince Edward my stoutest captains for the affray,’ he promised. ‘We shall grind York into the dust and Edward of Lancaster shall be immortalized in the annals of chivalry.’

  We shall grind York into the dust. The words were iron in his throat. For the first time he looked into his own mind; anguish writhed there like snakes, and every snake a Woodville. Why, oh God, did Edward ever wed her? Those small white hands have stabbed York to the heart.

  ‘Yes!’ the Prince was saying, sharp and bright. ‘I will ride on England, and claim my throne. I will wed your daughter, monsieur, and make England mine for ever!’

  Queen Margaret looked appealingly at Louis, who spread his hands, smiled like a depraved cardinal. Warwick carefully rose from his knees.

  ‘It tears my heart, this,’ she said, sighing deeply. But I see there is no other way. One thing.’ She raised a fierce admonishing hand. ‘Your Anne shall have my prince. But they shall not lie together until Lancaster is strong in England. I forbid it!’

  She looked ardently at her son. Warwick bowed.

  ‘So be it. When shall the arrangements be made?’ Margaret was coughing again. She said: ‘I care not; but let us ride on England soon.’

  Louis said kindly: ‘I will arrange all. The contract shall be solemnized here, in the Cathedral of Angers.’

  ‘Bien.’ Margaret looked viperishly at Warwick. ‘And we will both swear on a piece of the True Cross to keep faith!’

  Sweating, Warwick had quit the chamber at last. The pain in his bowels was like pincers. By sheer mental strength he threw it off, and rode to his lodging. Anne waited there for whatever news he brought. Waited patient, helpless, scarcely out of childhood. When he climbed the curling stair to her bower he found her weeping, as if she knew already that her destiny was tied to Lancaster’s star. In the next room her sister Isabel, Clarence’s wife, lay moaning in child-bed fever, nursed by two unskilled slovenly Frenchwomen. Warwick stood on the doorsill and watched while his youngest daughter dried her eyes. He knew more of her heart than she realized. Long ago at Middleham, when both she and Richard of Gloucester were children, she had given him her heart, lastingly, with every expectation of a happy marriage. Now Gloucester should never have her. Warwick had offered her to him once (at a price) and Gloucester’s loyalty had rejected the bribe. Clarence had had no such scruples regarding Isabel. Gloucester, Clarence, Edward! How long since they were all together? And who was it who had slashed that bond to ribbons? The endless permutation. All evil, all disorder, all betrayal. Like a great spider-web, it flung itself over the houses of Plantagenet and York. And inevitably at its nucleus – the divine corruption of Elizabeth Woodville.

  So thought Warwick as he rode on London, to the heart-heavy beat of Lancaster! Lancaster! Unknown to him, Edward and Gloucester tossed on the North Sea, exiled into darkness. Something within Warwick brought forth a groan, and muffled words.

  ‘Ah, God, Ned! Once we could have conquered the world, and now I must ride against you!’

  Butcher William Gould was on his way to the river. With him went his wife, three prentices, and half a beef and two muttons already rank from hanging in his Chepeside shop. The prentices were a necessary evil, brought along to shoulder the meat, and Mistress Gould had simply refused to stay behind.

  ‘You promised I should see the Queen.’ She caught up her kirtle and ran, trying to match her husband’s long strides. She was a pretty woman, dressed in her best scarlet houpeland trimmed with rabbitfur. A snowy wimple starched with arrowroot haloed her small bright face. Gould looked at her indulgently.

  ‘So you shall, dame.’ Although, as they fought the seething crush that spilled down Mincing Lane into Tower Street – fishporters, carters, vagrants – he wondered on this score. The last time he had gone to Westminster Sanctuary with the weekly carcasses, the Queen had been closeted; praying, Lady Scrope had told him tartly. Gould had smiled, knowing he had a right to inquire. For he had promised King Edward long ago, that he would succour ‘his Bessy’ in any emergency. And this was one, in truth.

  Warwick’s men were conspicuous in the City. Everywhere the Bear and Ragged Staff or Clarence’s Bull were blazoned on tabards, carried on banners by small knots of wary-eyed foot-soldiers. Gould grinned as he saw how the Londoners persecuted these men – in little ways subtle enough to ensure impunity – a carelessly outthrust foot, a jostle, a curse half-spoken. Rancour fermented, and lately a lack of hope obtained. Two months had passed since Edward and his followers had been driven from the shores of Norfolk. It seemed that Warwick was master; all the frowns and praying, all the tears (Gould’s wife had wept copiously) could not gainsay this. And yet, on neither occasion when he had been admitted to the Queen had Gould seen tears or hopelessness – only a poised tension. Cool she is, the butcher mused, catching his wife’s sleeve as she migrated to a pedlar selling ribbons. Was she always? He wondered, unrealistically, what it would be like to bed the King’s Grey Mare.

  He turned to chivvy the prentices who staggered redfaced beneath the reeking joints of meat. Royal me
at! He pushed the youths in front of him so that he could watch their safe progress. At the corner of Tower and Thames Street where the way narrowed and the carved house-gables leaned drunkenly down, Gould’s little party was brought to a sudden halt by people sweating, swearing, elbowing. Gould was pressed close against the stinking habit of a friar, whose creeping lice transferred themselves to the butcher’s doublet. Incensed, he brushed them off and tried to push on, his passage blocked by a row of broad backs. Something or someone was coming; the people were straining on tiptoe; the hubbub of voices soared a semitone higher. Gould peered over the shoulders of a small fishmonger. From Billingsgate and Petty Wales, from Eastchepe and up from Dowgate on the Thames, folk were crowding towards a procession that filtered slowly from the Tower. The Tower itself looked unreal, an almost luminous grey-white against a hanging pall of fog. Several urchins were clinging on to a water conduit and Gould pulled them down, himself climbing to this vantage point, and craning upwards. The procession struggled nearer; they were Warwick’s men, and their coming was halted by a carter’s mischievously overturned wain. Vile language drifted through the misty air. Then the company came on, escorting someone who rode in their midst. A ragged cheer went up, followed by shouted insults. Throughout the crowd a shiver of incredulity ran as they saw who came; Gould whistled in amazement.

  ‘Why, the devil damn me!’ he cried. ‘They’ve got Daft Harry from his prayers!’

  King Henry sat limply upon a spavined horse. A worn velvet robe had been flung about him and the Lancastrian collar of ‘S’s, green with verdigris, clanked upon his concave chest. He wore his black skull-cap crowned with a tarnished diadem, and in his hand he bore a staff from which three foxtails drooped: the emblem of Agincourt! Gould spat in disbelief. With one flaccid hand King Henry clutched the pommel of his saddle, and now and then looked at his homemade sceptre wonderingly as if it were a mysterious extension of his own arm. His pale face was expressionless, but his lips moved in a ceaseless babble of prayer.

 

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